Sometimes we have happy hour,
and sometimes (apparently at 9pm especially) we have sad hour.
We all have to work, in some capacity, to feed ourselves
but I’m reminded by my son that every once in a while we just have to stop
and smell the flowers.
(Preferably the ones without bees.)
You never know what you’ve got until you lose it. It’s a saying we hear all the time; sometimes in moments of profound loss, sometimes it’s trivial. In my case, in many ways it’s the latter.
There’s no summer camp for my youngest son this week. I used to think it was a luxury to have the time to write. Now, however, my luxuries include sitting for more than two minutes at the table to eat a meal without being interrupted, showering, and going to the washroom.
The latter of these I believe, falls into the profound category.
So if you see a woman walking around the grocery store buying finger foods, with stringy hair and smudges of dirt on her face and with eyes bulging out of her sockets and her legs crossed, try not to point and laugh. It’s probably just a woman who’s missing summer camp.
freedigitalphotos.net
Being polite in this town I call home runs rampant. So much in fact that it normally takes twice as long to get through a four-way stop because everyone is insisting everyone else go first, regardless of who gets there first. Today takes the cake though.
I was sitting in a long line of cars at a red light waiting for it to go green. Finally we get to go (it was a long light); I was behind a Cavalier. We were almost at the light when the Cavalier almost rear-ended the pickup truck in front of him. Why did the pickup stop at the green light we’d been waiting so long for, almost causing an accident? To let a pedestrian cross in front of him on the red.
Fuuuuu…
As the population in this town ages – I believe it will be half empty in the next fifteen years – it seems that many of the drivers lack more and more the concept that the rules of the road are more important than being nice. And it’s scary! I’m trying to teach my son to drive around town, but it’s unrealistic. The first time he leaves town and goes to a big city he’ll be run into and over top of. There is no such thing as aggressive driving here. I actually had a ball when I went to Montreal last month, getting to experience that again after so long. At least when everyone is only looking out for themselves you know what to expect.
This little town with all its nice people is, I think, the most dangerous place I’ve ever gone out in public. Unless I’m walking of course.
Being someone who gets most of their inspiration from watching people and trying to imagine why they do the things they do (see photo), I’m finding it difficult to write anything new these days. What with summer vacation and the fact that I’m trying to save money for the trips I want to take, it’s hard to get out of the house, even for a little while. You might say, ‘Just take your kids out with you!’ but that doesn’t work when you’ve got an autistic teenager who’s bigger than you and has definite opinions on what he wants to do with his day, none of which involve leaving the house.
I suppose I could watch TV. *gasp* But whatever I see there has already been done, hasn’t it?
I should probably count my blessings. As long as I’m not finding inspiration to write something new it means I can work on editing my novel. The going is frustrating on that front as well. The re-write I’m currently working on (a section that I’m not pleased with) requires me to fully get into character. That’s difficult when you’ve either got someone looking over your shoulder asking, ‘What are you doing?’ or simply being interrupted every ten minutes.
Oh, shut up whining, Linda!
Needless to say I’m looking forward to my weekend trip next week. I plan to view the house in which I’m staying through the eyes of the girl my main character brings home with him. Her fascination will be my path to detail.
As for finding inspiration, who knows? On top of a fresh perspective on my major work, I may have time to find inspiration for a number of other things as well. I certainly won’t be sitting in my room the whole time I’m gone. Such freedom is a rarity for a single mom, especially during summer vacation.
As a writer I need time to myself. I need the opportunity to be able to think and imagine without distraction. I have to say it’s even more difficult now that I’m working on the second draft of my novel; the writing, when I was fully into it, could sometimes be done even amidst the chaos that is my children.
Every other weekend, typically, I have this time alone when the children are with their father. What I think annoys me the most is that it takes me a day to simply wind down from the twelve previous days I’ve had to take care of them. They leave on Friday night, but it’s usually not until sometime late Saturday afternoon that I am in a state of mind where I can sit and concentrate.
So why am I not working on it now? I’m coming up to a major edit and this post has been bothering me, niggling in my brain to be written. This is me, getting it over and done with. At least that’s what I’m telling myself.
I also wanted to say that, writing a novel makes me feel a bit like this guy:
The Eye, by David Altmejd
Disturbing, isn’t he? I found him at the Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal two weekends ago. The hands are my characters, wrapping themselves around my brain and wanting to get out; the hole is the feeling I have as I pour forth my entire being into my writing, onto the pages.
I hope my writing talent is worthy of such sentiment. If it is, I’m sure to be successful.
It all started Tuesday morning at 2:41am. I was woken from my sleep by one sick little boy. You have to understand that when this kid gets sick, he really gets sick. Stomach flu has, up until now, always landed him in the hospital because of his heart condition; his heart doesn’t do well with dehydration. So after being up since above mentioned 2:41 I took him to the hospital to get him set up on an IV before his condition became critical. Then I learned something new.
They don’t automatically hook up the IV anymore. First they try a very strong anti-nausea medication. So we did that, and after they were sure he would at least be able to handle electrolytes he was sent home. Five hours later he wasn’t tolerating anything anymore, so back to the hospital. I’ve seen this kid when he’s been in distress, and believe me, I don’t want to go there again. It’s no fun seeing your 12 year old in cardiac arrest.
8:30pm we arrived in emergency again. 3:46am we were called into a room… still no real signs of distress from my little guy but he looked pretty dry having kept down the equivalent of two glasses of water all day – it was Wednesday by then. So we got into a room and he layed down on the bed and went to sleep. I managed to nod off for about 45 minutes sitting up in a chair. Then the doctor finally came in, woke me up, and demanded answers none of which I could remember right away, so she was pissed off. She informed me that they would give him some more of this wonder drug and try to feed him a half hour later, meanwhile they would send him for an x-ray because of his history of bowel obstructions. That was fine. We got back from that and I nodded off again, sitting up – 45 minutes later (an hour and a half after he’d had the drug) two nurses came in with a needle saying the doctor had ordered blood work on him.
“I thought you were going to try to give him water!” I exclaimed, tired beyond belief by this time.
“Nope,” they said. “Just blood work.”
They asked me to hold him still for them while he screamed his poor bloody head off but I was too much of a wreck. I felt sick. So they went about it without me. When I did turn to help they had poked him, unsuccessfully, and given up. Oh, did I forget to mention the discussion they’d had between them where the least experienced of them had offered to let the more senior one try and the more senior said no, you try it. … even though I told them it was difficult to find a vein on him when he WASN’T dehydrated? Yeah, that happened.
Then they left. Without saying a word to me, they walked out. I managed to snag one of them about half an hour later and I asked her what was happening.
“What’s happening with what?” she asked.
“With the blood work!” I said, shaking my head.
“Oh, he struggles too much and we don’t have enough people to hold him,” she said, and rushed away. This was at 6:50am.
I stood up after that, hoping to catch a glimpse of someone who would actually tell me what was going on. At 8:30am the doctor finally came in. She took one look at Alex, who by this time was busying himself getting packed up to go, and one look at me, and declared I looked worse than he did. Well yeah, after 4 hours of sleep over the course of 48, what would you expect? I was total mush.
I had everything explained to me, finally. His x-ray didn’t look normal so she told the nurse to let me know they were holding his water and giving him blood work instead… but the nurse didn’t. Had they done that I would have been able to tell them he looked better and saved him from being poked unnecessarily. Apparently the doctor had also requested a bed for me so I could get some sleep… Lovely.
So we were sent home.
Then I got sick.
I completely lost Thursday to sleep and, well, bed. There was NO WAY I was going back to the damned hospital.
So here I am. Both of us are better and almost back to normal. So what did I miss?
So I’m in the grocery store today. You can probably figure out from the title where this is going.
For my international friends I’ll share some background to the story. Recently in Canada we did away with the physical penny, which means if you’re paying with cash they now round it off to the closest 5 cents. Not so with debit and credit cards. So my bill came to $4.07. I asked for a plastic bag and the cashier added another $.06 onto the bill to make it $4.13, which is what I paid with my debit card.
I commented to the cashier, since there was no one else in line, that the government and/or the stores are really making money on this penny thing, because if I was paying cash she would have asked me for $4.05 but the plastic bag would have cost me $.10 because $4.13 would have rounded up to $4.15. She looked confused. So I went on to explain that the difference between $4.05 and $4.15 was more than the $.06 that the bag cost but by that time I’d lost her. She was staring in the other direction looking for customers (that weren’t there) and ignoring me.
More and more I’m seeing this. As the kids come out of school and start working in stores with cash registers that tell them how much change to give (when they deal with cash at all) they’re at a complete loss if they ever have to figure it out for themselves. I should probably add that the cashier I had today was in her early twenties.
Between this and text shorthand, I’m all but ready to give up on the future of mankind.
I had help today! 😀
Slave… I mean Alex
He even took some pictures for me!
His favourite
But the real adventure didn’t start until we came across the lady playing catch with her unleashed dog.
Me: (holding Alex by both hands as the dog is running towards us) He’s afraid of dogs.
Lady: Oh, he’s friendly.
Me: But he’s afraid of dogs.
Bitch: (looking around me at Alex who is straining to see where the dog went) Does he want to pet him?
Me: (hanging on to Alex for dear life so he doesn’t run into traffic) No, he’s afraid of dogs.
Psycho bitch: But he’s smiling…
Me: (in my head) Hey fuckflap! Have you ever considered how shitty you would feel if a kid got run over by a car because of your friendly fucking dog that you won’t restrain because you obviously know my son better than I do? Wake the fuck up and listen to me! HE’S AFRAID OF FUCKING DOGS!!!
In reality I said nothing because the dog had run off again. I should have said something.
Dear Natasha,
P.S. When I told my son you were moving he smiled but his eyes glazed over. He turned away and tried to hide the fact that he had to take his glasses off to wipe his eyes. I imagine he’s upset because he remembers the two times, at the beginning when you allowed him to come over and play baseball with your kids, and because he’ll miss watching them have fun while pretending to ignore him for your sake, surreptitiously waving to him when you weren’t looking. I wonder if your kids wonder why they didn’t get to say goodbye to him.
I hope your kids rebel so bad…
Now normally I’m not the vindictive type. I usually just let things go. But before my backdoor neighbour has a chance to move out (which she will any day) I’d love to be able to give her a little present in the form of a song.
Here is my letter:
Dear Natasha,
When I met you and became friends with you we had in common the fact that we both have children. You have six of them, which you repeatedly pointed out were little angels, I have a normal teenager who tends to swear (what teen doesn’t?) an autistic teenager who has tantrums, and a Deaf child who wants to be friends with your kids.
I didn’t really notice there was anything wrong with you until you commented on the fact that you’d traveled all over the world but would never go to a country like Japan because they weren’t Christian there. 
After a few weeks of summer break that year, and after having lent you all my DVD’s that teach kids how to speak American Sign Language in a fun way, you gave them back to me, saying that your children weren’t interested in playing with my son (they showed no indications that they felt this way) because of the way he showed his enthusiasm for actually having friends his own age by looking into your back yard and screaming with delight when he saw your kids doing something fun. You then went on to explain to me that I needed to teach him how to behave himself… after all, you didn’t have any problems making your kids behave.
So, Natasha, I leave you with this song. The heathen I am. And a big nakayubi to you.
No love,
Linda
To my readers: Please note, when (and if) you listen to this wonderful gem, the chanting at around 2:19. Apart from the fact that I can imagine myself singing along at the top of my lungs exactly the way Sakurai Atsushi belts it out from on top of the table on my deck, my teenaged son and a few of his friends (if I have my way) would be trudging slowly around a bonfire in my back yard, fully cloaked in robes with pointy hoods. Please also note that the lyrics don’t matter. It’s the thought that counts.
lindaghill.com 