Life in progress

Tag Archives: children


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JusJoJan 2 – A Day and a Half In

Well, we’re only just over a day and a half into January and Just Jot It January is thriving. I’ve met three or four new bloggers already! In keeping with the first prompt I’d like to say that I’m really enjoying reading everyone’s entries and I hope to be able to keep up. For those of you who are also trying to read everything there is to read, please note that there are a few pingbacks on the prompt page that aren’t on the “rules” post, so don’t forget to check that out too.

This will be a short jot since I was delivered a sick Alex today. He’s been with his dad since Monday – break’s definitely over! It’s a pretty bad cough but I think he’ll be okay – hopefully no hospital stay this time around.

Happy Jotting to all!

JJJ 2015

This post is part of Just Jot it January. Click the link and join in! It’s never too late to start! https://lindaghill.com/2015/01/01/just-jot-it-january-pingback-post-and-rules/


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Guest Post – Shaking Up Christmas

Well, I’m making one last post before departing the inner circle of this lovely blog of which I have been so honored to be a part.

For my exit post, I would like to share something related to the season.  My sole motivation and purpose for sharing this is not so that you will look at my family and say, “Oh, wow, look what they are doing!” but only so that you might be inspired to consider shaking up Christmas.  (Also, this post is not meant to leave out other holidays related to this time of year.  Our family’s holiday for this season is Christmas, so that is naturally how this project was born.  It doesn’t mean the same idea can’t apply to other same-seasonal holidays.)

The first two children we adopted came to us from a bio relative home.  Another story for another day – on my own blog – but part of the problem in this home was a lack of boundaries, and one of the ways this was evident was in the fact that the children were literally showered with gifts at every possible opportunity.  This meant that Christmas equated to an entire Toyota Highlander filled to the brim with toys.  AskmehowIknow.  That first Christmas, which was somewhat transitional, was something of a nightmare.  I hauled no fewer than eight garbage bags of stuff up to Mini-Me’s bedroom, and spent an entire day sorting through it, keeping only the most appropriate gifts.  I ended up donating about two-thirds of it to charity.

The children never noticed.

For the following two Christmases, I made it a priority not to ask my children what they wanted; rather I watched and listened and made Christmas present purchases based on what I knew my children to be interested in.  I made it a goal to purchase few but meaningful gifts, and I met each “This is what I want for Christmas” with a “What is Christmas really about?”

But by year four I knew I wasn’t getting through.

This post isn’t about religion, but I will tell you that part of our family’s definition of the true meaning of Christmas stems from our belief that it is the celebration of the birth of Christ.  But we believe that because He is our reason to celebrate, we need to be Him to the world.  Therefore, we believe that Christmas ought to be about giving to others and doing for others, and that it should definitely not be about “me-me-me” and greed and self-centeredness and consumerism.

So after trying unsuccessfully for three years to get our children to change their focus, we realized we needed to change their focus – we needed to shake up Christmas.

We got rid of Christmas presents – at least, the Christmas presents for ourselves/our family.

We traded our own presents in for Christmas presents for others.

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The first thing I knew I wanted us to do was something for children in the hospital; we decided on books.  So every year since beginning our project, we have taken books to our local hospital’s children’s ward.  The second thing I knew I wanted to do was to help other whole families.  The first two years, we found ways to be matched with individual families who were in need.  This year, in place of an individual family, we have decided to take a delivery to a local homeless shelter.  It won’t be as “fancy,” but it will hopefully benefit many families.

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Now, to be completely transparent – and before you call me a complete monster – we now do “New Gifts for a New Year” with our children – but we have cut them down significantly to “something to wear, something to read, something they want, something they need.”

(And if they had continued with the “me-me-me-for-New-Year” attitude, I would have completely done away with gifts except at birthdays.)

But let me tell you, this seems to have done it.  For the third year in a row, I have not heard a single “me” as related to Christmas – or New Year’s.  They all get in on the planning and the shopping and the putting-together of gifts for others, and I can tell that their hearts are happy.  They couldn’t wait to go do our shopping for the shelter, and they reminded me today that, “Mama, we haven’t finished our book shopping for the children at the hospital yet!”

I absolutely LOVE the way we’ve shaken up Christmas.  The whole day is now about the time we spend together as a family, rather than material gifts – we make our deliveries, the kids pitching in and watching the joyous faces and experiencing the joy of giving; and then we enjoy a quiet Christmas dinner at home while watching classic Christmas movies and just being together.

Maybe for some, our story is drastic.  I actually know very few who can fathom the idea of giving up Christmas morning presents.  That’s okay!  I share our story of shaking up Christmas not because I expect every other family to do what we’ve done, but because I hope to inspire others to find one way to do one thing for others at this time of year, in the true spirit of Christmas.

Thank you again to Linda for the opportunity to guest post here in her absence.  I had a truly marvelous time, and any dents and dings you may find – well, I have to be completely honest – they came from Pav.  😉


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One-Liner Wednesday – Ah, Innocence

While listening to You Can’t Always Get What You Want by the Rolling Stones on the radio in the car:

My son, Chris: Is this a Christmas song?

Me: It should be.

 

P.S. I’m not online (this is a scheduled post) so I’m counting on all of YOU to visit all the pingbacks in the comments. 🙂 Thanks!

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Anyone who would like to try it out, feel free to use the “One-Liner Wednesday” title in your post, and if you do, you can ping back here to help your blog get more exposure. To execute a ping back, just copy the URL in the address bar on this post and paste it somewhere in the body of your post. Your link will show up in the comments below.

As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday, if you see a ping back from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. It’s bound to be short and sweet.

The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are:

1. Make it one sentence.

2. Make it either funny or inspirational.

Have fun!


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Nano Poblano Day 12: NaNoWhatever

I’m starting to think writing a novel would have been easier than this NaBloPoMo thing. Writing a post every day, especially when I’m being forced into it, is HARD! Writing a novel when I’m being forced into it, on the other hand, is a piece of cake as long as life doesn’t come along and bite me in the arse like it did during NaNo ’11.

Yep, NaNo ’11 was a doozy. I was going along strong and then suddenly everyone got sick. Alex, my youngest, was in the hospital in Kingston, which was miles away and so I figured I’d sleep there, save the drive home. Only I got woken up at two in the morning to find out my eldest, Fred, was puking up blood. What do you do?

I rushed home as soon as I’d talked to Alex’s doctor the next day–which was almost dinner time–and I don’t even remember what happened after that, ‘coz I got sick. At least I knew Alex was taken care of.

The manuscript that came out of that there NaNo ’11 took me another year to complete, as it turned out. Today I printed out all 627 pages of it–again–so I can give it what I hope is a second-last once-over before it goes out to my beta readers. That should take, oh, a week or so if all goes well.

And no one gets sick.

This post was brought to you by Mr. Mark:

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and NaBloPoMo

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One-Liner Wednesday – Grissom

We have a winner! On Sunday, at the end of my Nano Poblano – Day 9: 10 Random Whos post, I stated that the funniest answer would be featured today for One-Liner Wednesday. Here is the lovely and talented SuzJones’ answer:

5. Who are you? Who? Who? Who? Who? Why Grissom of course!

If you don’t know Sue, you should definitely check out her blog. 🙂

Sue’s answer brought back a lot of fond memories. I watched the original CSI religiously back when Grissom was still around. He had some of the best one-liners on TV at the time, so I went to IMDB to look up a good one. However, it seemed all the funniest ones needed the context that they were put in in the show. As I was going through them all I came across one that I remember well; it stuck with me as the mother of two special-needs kids:

Gil Grissom: [to Billy Rattison about how he called Randy Traschel, the man with Down Syndrome that he murdered, a ‘retard’] By the way, the definition of the word retard is to hinder or to hold someone back. I think your life is about to become retarded.

Thanks so much, Sue, for reminding me of the fantastic one-liners that came off CSI!

__________________________________________________________________________________________

Anyone who would like to try it out, feel free to use the “One-Liner Wednesday” title in your post, and if you do, you can ping back here to help your blog get more exposure. To execute a ping back, just copy the URL in the address bar on this post and paste it somewhere in the body of your post. Your link will show up in the comments below.

As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday, if you see a ping back from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. It’s bound to be short and sweet.

The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are:

1. Make it one sentence.

2. Make it either funny or inspirational.

Have fun!


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Happy Hallowe’en!

My house, this morning.

spiderman!

Spiderman looks more like The Fly

chefalex

Who was that masked man?


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How Do You Do Tired?

Now that I’ve finally caught up on my comments I’m allowing myself to post. Except… I can’t think of anything to write. Add the fact that I’m so tired that if tired was an animal, my tired would be an elephant. And it would be sitting on my lap. Do you have any idea what it’s like trying to type with an elephant on your lap? Ugh. He just farted.

This is how my family can tell when I’m exhausted. I either go hairy and bounce off the walls until someone placates me with either a cup of coffee or a glass of wine (depending on what time of the day it is… though if I’m honest I’ll take the wine any time) or I get creatively silly.

How ’bout you? Do you scream everyone around you into complete jelly-bowls of submission when you’re tired? Do you giggle until your insides hurt and your bloodshot eyes are ready to walk up the stairs to bed without you? How do your loved-ones know you’re tired?


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SoCS – When Things Go Pear-Shaped

I like circular. What comes around, goes around and what you give, you get back. Rectangular things are better than trapezoids, but not better than squares. I suppose I’m a little obsessed with order, though you wouldn’t know it looking at my house. Tidying up is at the bottom of my list of things to do.

Order in the way of plans are also important to me. When things go pear-shaped I get stressed. Not that I need to stick to a schedule – it’s more for my kids than me. Both of them are obsessed with schedules.

Today will be a busy day. If things don’t go as planned it will result in a late night.

This post sucks.

But that’s Stream of consciousness for you. Pear-shaped indeed. Show, don’t tell, right? Haha.

Badge by: Doobster at Mindful Digressions

Badge by: Doobster at Mindful Digressions

If you’d like to participate in Stream of Consciousness Saturday, click here to get the details! https://lindaghill.com/2014/10/17/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-october-1814/


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A Rose by Any Other Name…

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It took me a long while to decide to use my real name on my blog, and a little while more before I really felt comfortable with it. To start with, this blog was about me “coming out” as a writer. You may think it silly to equate it to announcing one’s gender preference (granted its nowhere near as traumatic as all that) but in a way it was the same. I’d seen, after all, the way people looked at me when I told them I was writing a novel. The word “flake” might as well have been stamped on my cheek for all the lack of praise the confession got me. It seems if they can’t see the finished product, the product will in their mind never be finished.

So it was with a certain amount of trepidation that I signed up with WordPress using my own name. I was tentative – worried people I know would see my efforts and laugh. I still worry about that. But, having said that, I have gained a certain amount of confidence in myself. I started a Facebook page recently with the title “Linda G. Hill, Author” (you can find me here: https://www.facebook.com/lindaghill.fiction?ref=hl Like me!!) and that felt weird particularly when it asked me if the person I was making the page for approved. I think I actually yelled at the screen, “It’s ME!”

I still think about blogging under a pseudonym, even now that I’ve been blogging consistently here with my real name for a year and nine months. There’s a freedom in not using your name; what stops me is not being able to see the point. I’m quite happy here this way. I feel relatively secure in that I don’t disclose my precise whereabouts; I post pictures of my children knowing that they can’t be identified by their surname. (It isn’t “Hill.”) I find it easier than trying to keep up a facade. I don’t need to be careful not to give myself away… and I’m so close to being ready to get published that I’m no longer shy about calling myself a novelist. You’ll get your proof, damnit!

I would say the majority of blogs I follow here are anonymous. I realise there are many reasons for wanting to remain that way. For those who don’t use their real names, have you ever been tempted? And for those who do, was it a difficult hurdle to get over? Please share your story.


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Update on a Weirdish Week

First, I’d like to say hi and welcome to my new followers. I appreciate your interest in my blog, and I promise to come and visit all of yours the moment I have a chance. I’ll put a few pertinent links in this post so you can keep up with the rest of the class. Here we go.

I have no clue why I posted not one, but TWO one-liners today. Okay, I do have an idea – WordPress wouldn’t let me not schedule the one I had scheduled, and when I tried to change it to next week I must have messed up. If you haven’t read them both, you probably should. Each have links to other people’s one-liners. There are some great ones this week!

Then this afternoon I was contemplating life and dreams and things when I came up with a great concept for a new novel! Only I’m not going to have time to write it. Editing is slow-going these days, even though I’ve been working on it every spare minute I have to sit quietly. Only 50 pages to go out of 524. 😀

I’m still searching for the perfect sleeping companion. I’ve tried a few but none have worked out. I can tell you, it’s frustrating having a different one every night of the week and never finding the satisfaction I was hoping for!

My doctor’s appointment went… okay. She’s going to get the records from my old doctor’s office to see what my x-ray and ultrasound from last May said about my right shoulder, but she doesn’t want to give me any exercises to do until she knows. The last idiot doctor said, “Just stretch.” He also said it was arthritis, but the symptoms don’t fit. So I have to wait for another month before I get any results.

On top of that now, I had a hellish weekend with Alex and had to move all the furniture except his bed out of his room, by myself, because he was smashing it and putting dents in the walls. Mostly, I didn’t want him to hurt himself. So what happened? I hurt the other shoulder.

BUT, I had this weekend to look forward to. The kids were going to go to their dad’s… but wait! He’s sick and so are the rest of his family! So no break. He offered to take them anyway, but with the new super-bug that’s going around, I don’t need to take the chance that Alex will end up in hospital like when he had H1N1… or when he had pneumonia… or RSV… or bronchiolitis… or… you get the picture. I did however manage to wrangle some hours out of my eldest son for Sunday so I can do the backstage tour of the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. I’ll take pictures!

And speaking of pictures, it was Alex’s picture day at school on Monday. He looked so dapper I couldn’t wait for the official photos. This was taken before school.

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He came home, however, with his shirt untucked and done up one button off, and the knot on his tie reaching his breastbone looking much like a drunken businessman.

Kids. 🙄

So that’s been my week. How ’bout yours?