Life in progress


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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


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EDDD 21 – All I Want – Travel

It’s Day Six of “All I Want” and we’re almost at the finish line, my friends.

Today I’d like to know, if you could go anywhere in the world, for a visit or to live, where would it be?

After falling down three steps on an inch of ice this morning and almost cracking my skull open, I’d have to say anywhere in the Caribbean sounds nice. Until April!

The world is your oyster today – where do you want to go?

Blog post of December 21st, in honour of Every Damn Day December. Check it out!


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Is It Just Me?

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!