Life in progress

Category Archives: Parenting


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The Push

I sometimes wonder why I push myself so hard. My determination to write a post every day here on WordPress; my aspiration to finish my novel; my involvement in The Community Storyboard, HarsH ReaLiTy, and A Good Blog is Hard to Find; my ambition to read more, and write book reviews; my wish to help out friends by critiquing their unpublished works… the list itself is overwhelming. Most days I barely notice the work piling up. I love being busy with writing and the pursuits that involve it.

But, Spring Break. Yes, it’s that time of year again. While I’ve had much of today to do the things I needed to get done, I know it’s only a matter of time before Alex gets bored keeping himself busy. And just because the kids are home doesn’t mean the shopping doesn’t still need to be done – a task which requires me to leave my Autistic son by himself – and my paper route, and then there’s my mother’s appointments because I’m the only one who can take her… again, overwhelming.

I think everyone gets to this point occasionally. It’s the stage where we just have to start saying no, and not give in. While it’s exciting, and best of all not boring, there’s a limit at which one shuts down and curls up in a little ball with a straw and a bottle of one’s favourite Merlot.

So if I up and disappear at some point this week you’ll know why. And if I do manage to keep it all together AND keep my blog going without consuming a bottle of wine per day, well, give me a cape and call me supermom.

Just don’t push me off the side of a building to see if I’ll fly. I push myself too hard already.


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Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS) Start with a Verb

Kicking and screaming is how they’re going to have to pry my cell phone out of my cold dead hand.

Okay, not really. But seriously, I’m not sure I could live without my cell phone. But it’s not only me, either.

Consider this: When I was young (a teenager) I used to go out with my friends. (Of course.) I’d have a curfew and my mother would be sitting in the kitchen waiting for me to come home. She made sure I had a dime in case I needed to call. I’m sure she must have sat by the phone as well.

Now (these days), when my son went out (he’s moved out now) I’d not have to sit by the phone – it would be in my pocket. He didn’t need a dime – he had a cell. I knew that at any given moment he could call me without needing to look for a payphone.

How did our parents survive back then? I’d be worried poo-less!

I can’t imagine having to go through all that waiting, and wondering, and worrying about my kids. I don’t worry as much about my own safety now either.

I suppose it prepared my mother for when I went to Japan by myself – I didn’t have a cell phone then. But in Japan I felt very safe.

Anyway, I’m starting to ramble. That’s what SoCS is all about though.

What do you think? Could you live without a cell phone? Would you let your kids out of the house at night without one?

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See the rules of Stream of Consciousness Saturday here: https://lindaghill.wordpress.com/2014/03/01/socs-stream-of-consiousness-saturday-the-rules/ and come and join in the fun!! 😀


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Ahhhh

My day is winding down; I have just enough wine in me that I’m not sleepy. Contentedness folds over me like a warm blanket.

The sound is down on Mickey Mouse, because my son is Deaf–gone are the days of having to listen to a certain purple dinosaur, for whom I feel absolutely no love, and who I suspect doesn’t love me either. There are walls and windows between myself and my family, and the frigid winter air. My tummy is full of a simple dinner of pasta and canned tomatoes, with mozzerella cheese melted on top… What more could I ask for?

I love nights like this. It’s like comfort food for an exhausted soul.

Tell me, what is your perfect evening with family?


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Giggling Bob – The Story of a Possessed Toy

For sale: One laughing ball

No, that’s not right. But I don’t know the actual name of the toy. Was it a “Laughing Bob”? The label is long worn off.

For sale: One Giggling Bob ball. Good for ages 1-4.

That’ll do. Sure, I feel bad selling it off to someone else. But I don’t know how else to get rid of it.

When I first bought it for the kids – I’m sure it worked fine in the store – I got it home and I couldn’t get it to work. According to the instructions, all you had to do was bang it and it was supposed to giggle. The kids loved the crazy high pitched laugh. I figured it would drive me nuts, but what the hell. Anything for the kids, right?

I tried changing the batteries. Nothing. Banged the hell out of it… no laughing (or giggling) Bob.

The first time I heard it go off, about a week later, it was 3:14 am. I got up to see if the kids had wandered out of bed, but they were fast asleep. And there was this stupid ball, laying in the middle of the living room floor. I just shook my head and went back to bed.

Next morning I kicked it. It didn’t make a sound. Maybe I dreamed it, I thought. Ha!

About a month after that, we were packing to move. One of the kids threw the ball into a box. I said we should just toss it in the garbage, but the kids liked it. They’d been using it to play catch, even though it wouldn’t make a sound. I said fine.

3:14 the next morning… Yeah. Giggling Bob was at it again. This time I got up and threw it in a garbage bag.

Garbage day was four days later.

Have you ever taken the trash to the curb and had it laugh at you? I’d have tossed it with no problem, except the kids (who I was taking to the bus stop at the time) caught me red-handed. Since the toy was in a trash bag with a pile of carpeting, and not with anything disgusting, back Giggling Bob went into the house.

Well, moving day came and went. Giggling Bob made it into a random box that, four years later remains unpacked. And I swear to God, if I am woken up at 3:14 again…

One Giggling Bob ball. Good for ages 1-4. Free to a good home.

That’s better.

Note: This story is semi-fictional, only in that I haven’t tried to sell the possessed ball yet. Yet.


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Not Listening

somebody

For all you parents out there who think their young kids take advantage, consider this:

A Deaf child who doesn’t want to go to bed, really can act like he’s not listening if he refuses to look at you…


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Making Everyone Happy

They say you can’t make everyone happy. But what if you can’t help trying?

I’m okay to a point. I can say no to people if I feel that what I’m saying no to is in most people’s best interests. Or if what they’re asking for is impossible. Take Alex, my youngest son, for instance. He asks me to take him to the toy store a minimum of ten times a day, every weekend. I tell him I don’t have the money to buy him a video game every weekend and I stick to it… mostly. On average he somehow ends up with about six a year.

On Friday my mother moved into a retirement home. She is of course not happy – I’m told that it’s rare anyone is, for the first little while. If she lives alone it will be up to me to get her groceries, take her to her appointments, make sure she’s safe and healthy, and all this from the other end of town. Granted, it’s not a big town. But when I’m faced with dragging a kid around who may or may not be hooked up to a feeding pump and leaving my Autistic son, Chris, at home alone for an indeterminate period of time, it is a big deal for me.

Having her in the home where she can be supervised 24/7 is a huge worry off my shoulders, both because I know she’s safe and I know she’s eating well. And yet I can’t stop thinking, What’s one more thing? I can handle it… make her happy and let her live alone.

How do I convince myself that I matter in all this? I have to stay strong.


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Shhh! Don’t Tell My Mom

The last thing I want to do is worry my mother, so I’m keeping this quiet. I can tell all of you though, because she doesn’t read my blog.

I think her car is trying to kill me.

I went out in it today to pick up some groceries, for myself as well as for her. As I came up to a stop sign I put my foot on the brake and the engine started to rev. The more I pushed the brake, the faster the engine went – and the faster the car went. Luckily there was nothing coming (and there were no cops around) because I blasted through that stop sign.

Since then I’ve started putting it into neutral when I want to stop. That’ll teach it.

But in the meantime, would someone please tell it I was only going to buy her cookies?


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Awareness

Child abuse is a subject that keeps coming up around me of late, and not only because I’ve recently re-released my semi-biographical story, “Boy Series – One through…” A few minutes ago a glimpsed on Facebook a photo which made me want to throw up. I refuse to describe it – it’s one of those things that once seen cannot be unseen, and I’m sure I will have nightmares because of it. It’s worse in my mind than anything I could have imagined by myself, and in many ways, so is my series.

I’ve made the decision for a few reasons, to reveal the man behind the story. It’s not a big secret, and I don’t claim to be the one-and-only person to know… but I think having all the information that I’ve researched in one place will make the true story that much more interesting. I’ve been working, therefore, to compile links to interviews and decide what of his work might be most relevant to the story of his life. Strangely, something he said in one of the interviews I read last night cemented the decision in my mind to do this – it was almost as though I received a sign to say that it’s okay to go ahead.

The excerpt from the interview spoke of a song that he wrote about the tragedy of war. He has written several. He said that, (paraphrased) although there is little we can do about it, just spreading awareness that it exists and what it is like for those who are a part of it, whether it is their own decision to be or not, might cause someone to act differently.

And so I believe it is the same for my story of abuse. The more we are aware that it happens, even in our own neighbourhoods, the more we may look for the signs. Though we may not be able to help all of the children everywhere who suffer, if we can be kind to a child who we think may be abused, it might mean the world to that one child.

To Nav, John, Willow, and to all the people who had a hard time reading my series, I thank you for your perseverance. It was as heartbreaking to write as it is to read, just as it was for me to hear of it originally. I hope you’ll all stick around to learn the truth; to see that the man who was the boy has done well for himself despite the odds, even though he still bears the scars of his own, wretched war.


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Missing the Magical Switch

Greater, more successful writers than myself (not a stretch) state that in order to be a writer one must dedicate one’s effort into writing: a writer must write. Here lies my conundrum.

I have no qualms over calling myself a writer. It’s what I do constantly – if I’m not physically typing on a keyboard or writing little notes, I’m composing something in my head with hopes that I’ll remember it.

But being a single mom, 80% responsible for two kids (meaning that I get to sleep 15% of the time and the other 5% is when their dad takes care of them) and having to be always within calling distance of my own mother, I don’t have time to write. What might take me three months more of full-time editing on my novel to render it publishable is, at the rate I’m going, bound to take me three years. Frustrated doesn’t begin to describe it.

I imagine there is, somewhere in the universe, a switch that can be flicked which could cause me to be able to stop merely calling myself a writer and become one. I realize that I cannot expect to ever take on a full-time job; my life is with my children, and taking care of them is apparently my job and mine alone. Would I want it any other way? Absolutely not.

Yet writing is also my life. I don’t live for my children – anyone who says they do, in my opinion, is in for a huge let-down when their kids leave home for good. I live for myself and I am a writer. I have a story that I feel needs to be told, of a world where I hope one day people will be able to escape, as I have. It’s inside me, it’s on my screen and it’s on paper, and all it wants is to be polished to a bright, shiny tale that many will love.

If only the magical switch to make it all come true wasn’t so far out of my reach.


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The Scorecard on my Life for the Past Week

Snow – 1, BBQ – 0

Family members alive – 5, Novels edited – 0

Hairs left attached to my scalp – 100,000, Hairs in my shower drain – 99,999

Hours of sleep – 35, Brain cells remaining – 2

Icicles – 100, Buckets full of water inside the house from ice melting on the roof 20

Bottles of wine consumed – 3, Contentedness quotient – 3

Blog posts conceptualized – 21, Blog posts posted – 7

Hours worked – 133, Earnings – 0

Family members alive – 5, Laughs – countless

In all I’d say I’m doing okay.