Life in progress


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The Most Wonderful Feeling in the World

Our homes are like our little life-pods. We go out in public and we think we’re like everyone else but we’re not. Not quite. We all have our little lives, our little traditions, our family secrets – our way of brushing our teeth.

But then sometimes we find someone we’re like, more than most of the people we meet. There is a connection and all of a sudden it’s like a light switch has been turned on and we start to wonder if maybe we knew this other person in a different life. It’s an amazing feeling to find someone we connect with. REALLY connect. Someone who is so like us that it’s like we grew up with the same ideas.

Perhaps this has to do with the zodiac, or simply with the fact that we had similar backgrounds. But what is even more shocking is when we know neither of these things is the case. It’s just the luck of the draw.

Or maybe we were siblings in another life.

Have you ever met someone who just rubs you the wrong way, before they even open their mouth to speak to you?

Have you ever known someone for a very short while who, if you look in their eyes, you know without speaking that they are thinking the same thing as you are?

I’ve felt both of these things. The latter is the most wonderful feeling in the world.


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EDDD 27 – Random

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.

iceice

 

 Blog post of December 27th, in honour of Every Damn Day December. Check it out!


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EDDD 26 – Boxing Day

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…

What does Boxing Day mean to you?

Blog post of December 26th, in honour of Every Damn Day December. Check it out!


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So the Like Button isn’t working, WordPress!

I’ve had 15 likes on my previous post, but only one is showing up. I only know this because I have notifications in my email that people have ‘liked’ it.

Also, I have been the ‘first to like’ every post I’ve clicked the button on all day.

So if you don’t have email notifications, don’t worry. People really do like your posts. It’s a WordPress glitch.


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EDDD 25 – Trust Your Instincts

‘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!

Blog post of December 25th, in honour of Every Damn Day December. Check it out!


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EDDD 24 – All I Want – Giving

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.

Happy Christmas Eve.

 

 

 Blog post of December 24th, in honour of Every Damn Day December.


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Thank you!

Greetings all!

Just a short note for now to say thank you so much to all of you for the well-wishes and the concern over my well-being these past few days. I seem to be on the road to recovery, and happily the road is no longer as slippery. Luckily I have insurance through the newspaper – I was delivering when I fell down a customer’s steps – and so after seeing a doctor and having the proper forms filled out, I don’t have to deliver the papers again until Friday. The concussion was mild.

I’d like to send out a very special thank you to the amazing Navigator for guest posting for me and helping out with Every Damn Day December, with his wonderfully amusing posts. If you haven’t already, you should go and visit him at http://navigator1965.wordpress.com/

He has written a fantastic book, The Mirror, Book One: Welcome to the Evil Sisterhood, due to launch in February, which you’ll definitely want to check out.

Thanks again everyone. I’ll be posting again later for EDDD and replying to all your kind comments as soon as I can.

Happy Christmas Eve to you!

ice


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She’s Alive! EDDD 23rd, Navigator edition

The Christmas Ladder

The Christmas Ladder

Relatively good news, everyone. Linda survives. Minor concussion, with dizziness, fatigue, and blurry vision symptoms. Her biggest complaint is of a stiff neck. While not the best of Christmas presents, given how serious her icy fall could have been, I think we should all be grateful that it wasn’t worse.

So, until Linda’s symptoms abate sufficiently, I’ll try to keep her EDDD alive.

Right. The image. You may be witnessing the first ever Christmas ladder. Someone who is a working Mom and whose husband has been away on business got fed up with the commercialized nature of Christmas. So she said to heck with it, not going out to buy another tree, what do I have on hand?

Voila. Thus is born the Christmas ladder. A new tradition. If she had been a known artist, the Art Museum of Canada would have paid millions (of taxpayers’ money) to buy it and put it on display.

What are your thoughts on this new Christmas tradition?


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Ho Ho Ho! Navigator Santa’s coming to EDDD town

Wrapped by a former grade 1 felon

Wrapped by a former grade 1 felon

While the very delightful LindaGHill, blogger extraordinaire, recovers from her ice storm battle scars—wounded in action, or WIA as we like to say—, it falls to me to (wo)man the ramparts of this blogosphere bastion. The chain of command remains intact.

Right. So when I was in grade 1, a wee lad all of six years old, I had the venerable old Mrs. Thompson for my teacher. Not only did she strap me for talking in class, she actually once gave me detention for Valentine’s Day.

This little boy didn’t like arts and crafts. Mrs. T had deemed that my Valentine heart didn’t meet her standard for my mother, so the Thompsonator kept me after class until I got it right.

Mean old bat. No wonder I have issues.

As the image above shows, there is a reason why I didn’t like arts and crafts. I flat out suck at it. The image above is my most recent attempt at wrapping a pretty Christmas gift. It’s pretty, alright. Pretty gruesome job of wrapping.

So my question to you, fellow devoted followers of Linda, is whether or not the quality of the gift wrapping matters.

And happy 22nd EDDD to each and all.


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Ice Storm

I’m writing this on Friday night but scheduling it for Saturday, the 21st of December. If this goes live, it means I’ve lost my power due to a massive ice storm that’s coming this way. I lived through the ice storm in Western Quebec in 1998 – we went without power for three days. Luckily my mother was living in a subdivision close by which had all the power lines underground. This time I’m not that lucky.

I feel like I’m leaving a note to say, “If something happens to me…”

Anyway, it’s not that serious. I’ll just be without internet access.

AHHHH!!!!

Edit: Saturday evening – if this goes live tonight it may be because I’ve gone to the hospital to have my noggin’ checked out.  I’m feeling kinda dizzy as I write this, and from what I understand that’s not a very good sign after having fallen and hit it on a slab of concrete…

ice