I can always tell when my youngest son, Alex, is ready to go back to school after having time off – his behaviour is intolerable. Right now I’m trying to ignore him while he plays a game on his Wii U and screams and claps louder than one would think is humanly possible. The alternative is to shut him in his room until tomorrow morning, in which case he won’t get the nutrition he needs because he’ll unplug his feeding pump.
If tomorrow is a snow day I may just kill something.
Don’t let the above post scare you off! Post on your site, and join Just Jot it January. The rules are easy!
It started out with colours, when I was a small child and progressed to “…something that begins with…” a letter of the alphabet when I was old enough to spell. It was a great way to pass the time on long drives.
I have since graduated from that delightful little game however. Sure, I played it with the kids when they were little. But around the time when my eldest son was born, my ex and I started playing another game in the car. The first one to guess the name of the band playing the song on the radio got a point. The game would start when we got in the car and wouldn’t end until we arrived at our destination. New trip, new game.
Since then I’ve started playing it with my eldest. At nineteen years of age, he’s almost able to beat me, especially when the music is of the newer variety. It’s taught him to appreciate the music that is the same age as he is and older, which is great as far as I’m concerned. I thank heaven to this day he’s never been interested in rap – possibly because of years of listening to his dad and I play “The Game.” It’s amazing how far a little competition can go.
When was the last time you played a silly game with your family and/or friends, and what was it? Let’s have some fun today, and teach each other a game or two!
2013 has been a year like no other for me. It’s been a year of beginnings, and a year of finalities. From friendships to my figure, from anonymity to zealous writing, I’ve seen it all.
I’ve stayed in a house where I was haunted by my own characters, I’ve grown – not only by the twenty or so pounds I gained since Hallowe’en – but as a writer. I’ve finished two novels and have two blogs of my own, as well as having been included in two of the best sites on WordPress – The Community Storyboard, which will be up and running again in the new year, and by my dear dear friend, THE Opinionated Man on HarsH ReaLiTy as a guest.
But most of all I’ve had my dream come true. I’ve gone from a woman isolated from society by her life’s circumstances, to a blogger with connections worldwide, with people I have more in common with than I could have dreamed, and a few true friends as well.
2013 has blessed me with the discovery of community, and the privilege of having spent yet another year with the most loving three children a mother could wish for.
Every year I make resolutions which I never keep. This time around I realize their importance and will do my utmost to uphold them – not to mention this is the first time I’ve ever declared them in public. I have face to save!
To lose above mentioned twenty pounds is just the start. My intention is for this to be the year I come into my own as a writer and to get something published, whether it by my epic novel (my first choice) or an article for which I am paid. And finally, I wish to bring calm and love to those I hold dear – the one thing I strive for always.
A happy, healthy, wealthy, and peaceful 2014 to everyone!
It’s taken me twenty seven days to run out of things to say, which isn’t bad I don’t think. Okay, so I cheated for a couple of days when my dear friend Navigator1965 posted for me. But I would have come up with something excellent to blog about. Honest.
One little bit of good news – the kids are being picked up by their dad for the weekend, so I’m getting some time to myself, for the first time in four weeks! This will be my fifth weekend off since August. I want to spend as much time reading my manuscript as I can, since I haven’t looked at it for almost two months. I wanted to give it time to rest. Apart from that, I think sleep will be a priority.
And wine and chocolates. I have a box of Godiva truffles to wade through, which is nice, as I have insanely expensive taste in chocolate. Hey, go big or go home, right? The wine is a different story. I’m going to save the good stuff for a grand occasion, like when someone’s book hits the best-seller list. Which it will. You know who you are.
What else? Oh, I went back to delivering my papers today for the first time since my accident. It went well – not too much ice underfoot, nor any branches dropping on my head. No giraffe encounters either (Joey), nor did I see Megan Fox (Paul), so it wasn’t a perfect outing.
My next door neighbour lost his back fence to a fallen tree that stood about five feet tall laying down (the trunk’s diameter), so that was pretty exciting. I missed it actually falling, but I was sitting at the kitchen table when it happened, so I caught the cloud of ice dust that surrounded it when it hit the ground. It missed the other neighbour’s shed by inches. I’m glad I wasn’t standing under that. Surprising, considering my luck this holiday.
Alex seems to be doing well. I’m not sure why the doctor only treated the symptoms of his pneumonia and didn’t mention removing the piece of food from his lung. Maybe it’ll dissolve? I can’t find any information online one way or the other.
Here’s some more ice, in case you haven’t seen enough this week.
Why do they call it Boxing Day anyway? Is it the day you get rid of all the boxes from the gifts you received? Or find a spot to put all the ones you have to keep because if the devices that came in them prove to be defective, the guarantee is void if said device goes back without its original packaging?
Is it the day you put all your Christmas decorations back in their boxes? (Or in the case of Christmas lights, tie them in a ball so that next year you’ll have as much fun cursing yourself for not doing a better job packing them away as you did this year?)
Is it the day you go out to the sales and gather even more boxes because finally everything has gone down from it’s pre-Christmas over-inflated price?
For me, Boxing Day is a time to recover from the Christmas frenzy, and has nothing to do with boxes at all… unless you count staring at them, hoping they’ll throw themselves in the recycling bin. I won’t even mention the damned twist-ties that are strewn all over my living room floor. Oh, wait…
‘Twas the night before Christmas
And all ’round the kitchen
There was choking and coughing
My son, he was bitchin’
…that his head ached, he was dizzy, tired, and everything hurt. It was about half an hour after dinner. Within the next fifteen minutes he was asleep on the couch and his breathing was fast and shallow.
I started looking to the internet for solutions as to what could be wrong. All day he’d been active, happy, and looking forward to opening his presents. On a hunch I looked up ‘aspiration.’ Bingo. I checked his temp. He was burning up.
Fifteen minutes later we were at the hospital. By midnight he’d had an x-ray – they found a piece of food lodged in his right lung. It took one hour for him to go from fine to having aspiration pneumonia. He’s at home now, happily playing with his new Wii U, on antibiotics.
I’ve said it so many times and I’ll say it again. A mother knows her child much better than any doctor can. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in a position where I’ve had to tell a doctor flat out that he or she was wrong. I’ve demanded a second opinion from a pediatrician more than once.
This wasn’t the case last night, however this post is to say that if you are a mother, always trust your instincts over a doctor’s opinion.
Had I not trusted my instincts, the scenario right now could have been much much worse. Apparently the chances of survival for this sort of thing depends on early detection.
A Christmas miracle indeed. Merry Christmas everyone!
For the seventh and final edition of “All I Want,” I decided to save the best for last. Giving, after all, is what the season is all about. Interesting how circumstance would have me posting this on Christmas Eve, instead of Sunday.
Christmas Eve is special to many people. For myself, it’s a time to finish wrapping presents, to stuff stockings, and to enjoy the anticipation of my children as they climb off to bed with thoughts of what they will wake to in the morning. A little glass of Baileys always goes down well, also. 🙂
But if I could give anything at all to the ones I love, it would be to give my children perfect health. To Chris I would give complete access to that brilliant mind of his – to unlock it from the constraints that autism places on his abilities to process his thoughts. And to Alex I would give the gift of music – a revelation to his deaf ears; the chance to fill his taste buds with the wonder of flavours, where now he eats through a tube; and finally I would give him a perfect heart, to replace the one he was born with, that beats precariously in his chest.
So, finally, I ask you, my readers. If you could give anything at all to the ones you love, what would it be? Dream big, my friends.
Is it just me or does it seem like this is the worst time of year for colds? Every year at Christmas time, someone in my family gets sick. It’s awful when it’s me, because I’m the one everyone counts on to do all the shopping, the wrapping, and the cooking, on top of everything else. This year (knock on wood) it’s not me though. It’s Alex, my little guy.
If it’s just a cold, I’ll be able to keep him home. It’ll be rough, with sleepless nights and plenty of whining, but we’ll make it. If it’s the flu, off to the hospital we’ll go for a nice leisurely stay (for him, he loves the hospital) and for me it’ll be running back and forth for this and that, because they don’t have the equipment to feed him, they can’t get the formula he drinks, and they can’t make up his medicine without the recipe. They also don’t have his size in diapers. Oh, and of course they don’t have sign language interpreters, and none of the nurses, nor any of the doctors (so far) know American Sign Language. It’s loads of fun for Alex – he laughs at them when they try to sign to him – unless he’s very sick, and then I receive phone calls in the middle of the night asking for translations.
But I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I? I certainly hope so. Wish us luck!
Having never had a blog at Christmas before, I had no idea what to expect. Okay, technically I did open this blog in July of 2012, but I wrote one post and promptly forgot about it until late January of this year.
So how am I enjoying my first Christmas experience on WordPress? It’s good and then it’s not. I’m very pleased with the comments I’ve had on my posts so far – many people have shared their own past Christmas adventures with me and I love it. What I’m disappointed about however, is the fact that I can’t seem to be able to write about anything else. Christmas has consumed every part of my life it seems. I haven’t written anything fictional to speak of (other than a few poems and my The Note series on my fiction blog) since NaNoWriMo finished.
So I’m hoping you’ll bear with me while I try to find something else to talk about. I realize my blog probably hasn’t been very interesting lately to those who don’t celebrate Christmas, and to you, I apologize.
As I look around the rooms of my already cluttered house, I think about all the ‘stuff’ that will be unwrapped come Christmas morning. As always, I’ll gaze at all the unwrapped presents and think, ‘Now where do we put all this new stuff?’
I seriously wish I had enough money and time to get rid of the old ‘stuff’ to make room for the new. What can’t be sold must be put into the trash – garbage is expensive to put on the curb these days – and for what can be sold or given away I need time. The very same time I need to go out and buy NEW stuff for Christmas.
Remind me, would you? To do some spring cleaning come April.
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