Life in progress

Category Archives: Parenting


by 48 Comments

Technology Sucks!

Incoming rant: be prepared to duck.

Why can’t they make computers that will last? Okay, fine, my desktop is four years old, and my son Chris is on it all the time. Almost. Today it started acting up. It has some sort of bug going on – whether it’s a virus or the hard drive is failing (which I think is the case) I’m not sure. But for an Autistic kid to deal with it’s the end of the world. I’ve spent most of this morning trying to fix the computer while Chris sits beside me beating his head with his fists and yelling.

All this after Alex came home yesterday to an infected laptop. Thank goodness I have Kaspersky on his machine – it cleaned it up quite well, though it took almost two hours to do it. It would work even better if it didn’t give him the choice when it detected an attack to go ahead and trust the virus or get out while the getting is good. He’s a very trusting little guy.

But it’s not only that the technology we use is so delicate which has me upset. Alex’s school has a great new program in which they’re using iPads to carry around in the community so they can communicate with hearing people. Wonderful, right? It would be if the school didn’t expect me to buy him an iPad. And I thought the expense of indoor shoes was bad enough!

And now Chris is asking me for a new computer. What I need is a car. A real one – not the 1993 puddle-jumping Tempo I inherited from my mother when the doctor took her license away in February. Wait, did I say technology? I suppose even the Flintstones thought their “cars” were technology. Anyway, the Tempo has taken to stalling every time I stop now… which I suppose is better than when it was zooming through stop signs no matter how hard I pressed on the brake.

Ugh!

End rant.

Seriously, I detest whining. I just had to get that off my chest. Thanks for reading.


by 20 Comments

Stream of Consciousness Saturday – Ages (Can’t Keep ’em Separated)

Today is one of those rare days when I have no idea what I’m going to type. So I’ve decided to type into my thoughts rather than type what I’m already thinking.

The coffee is hot, the morning is pleasant as I sit at my kitchen table, watching the squirrels in my back yard search for places to hide their nuts. One, I see, has been in my flower pot. Ah well, the flower’s already dead.

I’m supposed to me talking about age. I remember a time when there was no way I’d have been content to just sit at the table and watch the squirrels. But we go through phases, don’t we? So energetic when we’re young. I consider myself lucky to still have energy – to be able to move with close to the ease I was able ten years ago, though the aches and pains seem to linger longer… linger longer. That’s just weird. Anyway, where was I?

254819_10150265043565692_5700301_n

Fred, as crazy old Maurice from Beauty and the Beast

In four short days I’ll no longer have three teenagers – my eldest, Fred, turns twenty years old on the 2nd of September. That tiny little baby I used to hold and rock to sleep to the beat of heavy metal (he LOVED The Offspring’s Keep ‘Em Separated. With Chris it was anything Metallica, and Alex, well, he’s Deaf. As long as it had a beat…) now drags himself through the door at all hours of the morning after partying with his friends. Has much changed? Nah.

 

This was posted as part of SoCS. Find the rules at the click of the link and join in! https://lindaghill.wordpress.com/2014/08/29/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-august-3014/

Badge by: Doobster at Mindful Digressions

Badge by: Doobster at Mindful Digressions

 


by 33 Comments

Plans? What Plans? & Date Night With Me

I had it all planned out: clean up the house and get together the stuff for the garage sale, write one book, edit the other, read lots, learn Japanese… So what do you think happened? None of the above. Between my mother and my eldest son hanging around, I’ve barely had a moment to myself. Not that I’m really complaining of course. But I had plans, damnit!

Unscheduled was the turning around of my living room and the exit of my old wall-unit that I was thoroughly sick of looking at, and then the subsequent cleaning up of my living room which included vacuuming places that haven’t seen the light of day in almost five years. The good news is, I’m happy with the result.

Here’s the most recent pic. I obviously need someone who can paint a mural.

2014 - 08 - 28

I went to see the movie If I Stay on Tuesday night. I went Tuesday because it’s half price, which gave me just over $5 off. I didn’t make it to the showing I wanted however, so I decided to head over to the book store. Bought a book (How To Be a Canadian by Will and Ian Ferguson which actually had me laughing in the aisle) and cashed in my loyalty points which gave me $5 off. Then, having almost 2 hours to kill, I went to Boston Pizza (no, Jay Dee, I didn’t have the ribs) and ordered a salad with my meal and a big-assed glass of wine. I sat alone and enjoyed my meal (the waitress forgot to bring me the salad) and killed myself laughing while reading the book I’d just bought (How To Be a Canadian, if you didn’t catch it the first time) and when the waitress came to ask me if I was ready for my bill, I mentioned the salad. The bill came -$5, which made me happy.

Total bill for the night:

less than $20 for the movie and popcorn and a drink

less than $20 for the book

less than $20 for a meal with a big-assed glass of wine and a coffee including the tip.

I think I did quite well. The movie though? Made me cry. A LOT. But it was extremely well-acted and well-scripted. I’d recommend it for sure.

Tonight I’m sitting down with a bottle of white and some music to, with any luck, do some editing. Or writing. Or at the very least, reading. I have too much to catch up on before the kids come home on Saturday.

As for the garage sale? I can’t see it happening before Sunday. I need a break.


by 27 Comments

Stream of Consciousness Saturday – Prepositional Selling

Badge by: Doobster at Mindful Digressions

Badge by: Doobster at Mindful Digressions

Over the course of my day today, I will be going through boxes in my basement to find things I want to get rid of sell in a garage sale next week. First, I could use the extra space, second, I want to declutter, and third, I need the money for a trip I’m going to take in December.

I feel fortunate to live in a place where I can stand on my front lawn and sell things I no longer need. Garage sales are big here – I don’t know if they are in other places in North America. People spend their entire weekends out driving around town looking for bargains, and bartering around prices until they get what they want for next to nothing. Even if I get next to nothing, I figure I’ll be up a little bit from what I had when my stuff was sitting in the basement just growing older.

It’s amazing the things we accumulate, isn’t it? I have boxes of things I haven’t looked at since I moved them here almost five years ago from my house in Gatineau, and most of THAT stuff was already in boxes there and hadn’t been used in the fifteen years I was there. I would love to live light, with few possessions. But when you have a six bedroom house with a basement it’s difficult to justify getting rid of anything – I have the room. I have rooms I rarely go into so the mess gets ignored.

I was very lucky to find this house when I first moved here. It was originally a two bedroom bungalow, but the previous owners built three bedrooms and a half bath into the attic. When I moved in I kept one of the two original bedrooms as a guest room and turned the other bedroom into a computer room. The final room my eldest son moved into – he was happy to have the entire basement to himself and, as teenagers are wont to do, came out only for meals, showers, and to go out with his friends. He was as white as a ghost before he moved out.

Ragweed season is here and both Alex and I are sneezing. That was a left turn out of nowhere!

Wish me luck with my sorting and selling, if you please.

This post is part of SoCS: https://lindaghill.wordpress.com/2014/08/22/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-august-2314/  Click on the link and join in the fun!


by 50 Comments

A Difficult Day

It’s been a particularly tough day with my son, Alex today. For those of you who aren’t familiar with him, he’s a Deaf, four foot tall, cute as a button thirteen year old who has somehow managed to combine adolescence with the terrible twos. He has scabs on both knees from a fall he took last week. They were both healing nicely but …

Alex can’t leave a scab alone. It doesn’t matter if he opens it up again, he’ll just keep picking and picking until it gets infected and I have no idea what to do. Today I tried the following:

1. Telling him “no.”

2. Taking away his laptop and turning off the tv.

3. Putting him in his room.

4. Saying please (trying to reason with him).

5. Putting a bandage on it. (He took it off.)

6. Restraining him.

7. Ignoring him.

8. Putting a cloth damp with rubbing alcohol on the cuts (which by that time were oozing pus).

9. Threatening to put MORE alcohol on if he didn’t stop touching it (in the end he held the alcohol-soaked cloth on it himself).

And what, of all this worked eventually? Ignoring him. For a limited amount of time.

This has been my day from the moment I woke up to the moment he finally went to sleep after whining that his knees hurt for about an hour from the time he went to bed.

Any suggestions? Because I’m looking forward to the same thing tomorrow and every day until he goes to his dad’s on Monday… and at this rate every other day ’til Christmas, if it’s healed by then.

P.S. If you “like” this post I’ll consider it support. 🙂


by 92 Comments

Starving my child for kicks

I had the pleasure today of going out for lunch with my son, Alex. For those of you who are new to this blog, Alex is Deaf and he is tube-fed. He nibbles a little, drinks even less, and has never eaten a meal in all of his thirteen and three-quarter years. However it’s fun for both of us: I get to treat myself to a meal and he gets to people-watch, which is his favourite thing in the whole world.

So we went into Montana’s and sat down in a booth and the waitress came over to ask if we wanted anything to drink. I ordered him a glass of water without ice (I’m won’t pay for something he won’t drink – he did end up sipping about a half-teaspoon of it though) and I ordered myself a beer. A few minutes later she came back with that and took our order. We had agreed on a salmon salad – Alex liked the picture – so I asked for it and he pointed to it.

“Just one?” she asked.

“Yes,” I answered.

“Shall I get him a plate?” she half-whispered, I suppose so as not to embarrass me.

“Sure,” I said.

She looked at me briefly as though she was assessing how cheap I must be and left the table. Five minutes later she came back with not one, but two small plates. I mean seriously, SURELY I was going to split the salad evenly. I did manage to not tell her to go fuck herself however – I said thank you instead.

When the salad came she put it in the middle of the table. Of course I immediately moved it in front of me and gave Alex a nibble on his plate. After two miniscule bites of salmon he was full.

The thing is this: every time this happens I’m tempted to lift up his shirt and show the waitress his g-tube button, permanently implanted in his stomach, and explain why I’m not feeding him. But then I think, why should I have to? What I do in a restaurant, as long as I’m being polite and paying for my food, shouldn’t matter. Yet how much do you want to bet she went home and told her husband, “There was this woman who came in today and ordered herself a beer and a salad and let her kid starve, blah blah blah…” Actually, it’s kind of funny, when you think about it.

Would you explain to people why you’re not feeding your child? Or would you just allow them to judge and tell everyone about it who will listen?


by 31 Comments

Distraction and Randomness

Am I the only one who is incredibly distracted by all the articles on Robin Williams? I think it’s the vast contradiction between the man who made us laugh and the exceptionally sad circumstances of his death that have me reeling so much over the news. I’ve tried to write more on the subject, but no matter what I write, it just makes no sense.

In other news, I went upstairs to go to bed the other night (it must have been more than a week ago by now) and Alex was talking in his sleep. Keep in mind that he doesn’t speak – he only signs. I actually walked to my room to the sound of applause. I’ve seen him do it before though. It’s quite funny to watch him have a conversation with someone in his dream. He giggles a lot as well.

When I was at the Museum of Nature in Ottawa I saw a Splitfin Flashlight fish. Try saying that three times fast.

Don’t forget to get your entries in for the badge design contest tomorrow!

That’s really all I can come up with at the moment. (See first paragraph.)

Blah.


by 12 Comments

Stream of Consciousness Saturday – Twice

If I could live my life again – if I could go back to when I was younger to redo the things I’ve done in the past, I wonder which ones I’d skip and what I’d do twice.

I know I wouldn’t drink all that tequila I did that one night when I was in my twenties – the time I wanted to die and get it over with the next day. And I wouldn’t say to myself, Sure, I can handle going over this jump without my feet in the stirrups! What’s the worst that can happen? I’ll fall off the horse! Little did I know I’d somehow land on the ground before the horse did. Can you say squash? Luckily it was only my ankle.

I’d probably go with my gut the second time around and call off the first wedding the night before I was to get married. But then I’d never have met some of the people I did. And I’d never have adopted the greatest dog that ever lived. George, the St. Bernard.

So what WOULD I do twice? I’d definitely fall in love. That has to be one of the most wonderful things of all. And I’d travel again, especially to Japan. I would laugh at all the same things over again, and I’d race like a daredevil down the side of the highway on horseback. I’d go up in a hot air balloon again. …oh wait, I’ve already done that twice. And I’d take so many of the chances I took the first time around.

But if there was one thing I’d do twice, it’s have my babies. All three of them. …but not at the same time so it wouldn’t be one thing, it would be three. I’d do those three things twice.

What would you do twice, if you had a chance?

This post is part of SoCS: https://lindaghill.wordpress.com/2014/08/08/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-august-914/ All you need to know about Stream of Consciousness Saturday is behind the link. So click the link and join in the fun!


by 12 Comments

Random Life in Progress

CAM00319

As you can see by the photo, I’m thoroughly enjoying the weather as I sit on my back deck with a glass of white wine, writing this post. Life is good. After I finish this post I’ll probably go back to editing my novel. Just yesterday I found a huge, gaping plot hole wherein the history of my character’s family didn’t match up with the present. I had to go back and write an entire backstory (to keep it straight in my own mind) on a character that won’t even exist unless I end up writing a prequel to my novel. On a happy note, I have enough history to write a prequel. Seriously, I’m putting an awful lot of effort into this mythical epic that I keep talking about. It WILL see the light of day if it kills me.

In other news, I’m going away for the weekend. My son Christopher wishes to go on his annual pilgrimage to Ottawa to visit the museums. I found a great deal on a place to stay: one of the colleges in town is offering a whole two bedroom apartment, including a kitchen, for $64/night. Can’t beat that! And since I lived close by for fifteen years I know the area, so getting around is going to be a breeze. On the way home we’ll pick up Alex, who has been visiting with his dad all week (which is why I’m able to sit outside in peace) so it’s a bonus for my ex too, not having to make the three hour drive to get him home. Long and short of it, I won’t be around to read the SoCS posts this weekend. I’ll do my best to get caught up early next week though.

The best news of all comes on the heels of my post from a couple of days ago entitled “How for would YOU go?” I looked into getting backstage at the venue that my main character performs in at the beginning of the sequel (written in July as part of CampNaNo) and guess what? http://nac-cna.ca/en/special/event/9938 So I’ll be going back to Ottawa again on the 28th of September to tour the National Arts Centre backstage! I’m so excited! 😀

I tell ya, sometimes the universe comes together just right.


by 6 Comments

The Trip to Queen and Back

Now that I’ve written the official Queen and Adam Lambert concert review, it’s time to relate the story of my trip.

We arrived in Toronto with about four and a half hours to spare before the show so we decided to do some walking. And some lunch. We chose a nice English pub downtown and sat down to have a beer with our meal. This is only notable because it marked the first time I’ve ever had a beer with my son in a restaurant. But I didn’t feel old AT ALL. I’ll just keep telling myself that.

After lunch we walked until our legs gave out (and no, it wasn’t just me). We sat on a flight of steps in Yonge-Dundas Square for a rest. Whilst there, we watched as a member of the security crew poured a bucket of soapy water on a rectangle of chalk that a group of kids had drawn on the pavement. Then, another employee came along with a broom and mopped it up. Can’t be too careful about that graffiti here in Canada I tell ya.

Of course, that called for a coffee. Since there were no tables available at the first Tim’s we went to, we walked a little more and then stopped to sit beside a fountain. There I took a picture of my traveling companions:

My eldest son Fred and my best friend John

My eldest son Fred and my best friend John

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We got to the Air Canada Centre long before the concert started and got to listen to some really annoying people behind us, who complained about everything: their own seats, other people’s seats, the line-ups, when was the concert going to start… I had had a headache all day and these people weren’t helping it to go away. But you know what did make my headache go away? Queen!

I didn’t think about what putting my hands above my head for almost two hours was going to do to my poor shoulder, let alone what singing at the top of my lungs was going to do to my throat. Strangely enough, my shoulder hasn’t felt better since January. Funny what adrenaline can do.

We got back home at 1:00am on the dot and I was still feeling the effects of being tired yesterday. Today I seem to have finally recovered. Not only am I fully awake, but I no longer sound like a teenaged boy whose voice is cracking either.

But you know what? I’d do it all again in a heartbeat.