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!
My weekend has only one hour left, meaning the kids will be home at 6:30. I’ve spent much of it relaxing, eating far too much yesterday and making up for it today by behaving myself, reading my manuscript – I’m almost two-thirds of the way to the end – and becoming reacquainted with the music to which I wrote my novel in the first place. In all, it’s been lovely. But far too short. Then, half the weekend I spent sleeping.
I wanted to write another, longer post today, but I feel like I need to jam as much “me” time into the weekend as I can, so my other post will wait for tomorrow.
There’s no real point to this post, other than to say I wrote it, and kept up my promise to blog every damn day in December. We’ll have to have something like “Just Jot it January.” What do you think? Doable? Perhaps a post of no more than a hundred words, every day in January?
Let me know if you think it’s a good idea. I might just do it anyway.
I read an article in the paper today about something known as “Frost Quakes,” or “cryoseism.”
Apparently they are caused by the sudden freezing of ground water below the earth’s surface, and they cause the earth to shake and can make very loud noises, much like that of a tree landing on one’s house.
Anyway, it explains why all of the ice from the tree branches is on the ground today. It didn’t melt off as it usually does. It came off as though it was shaken off, still solid.
Have you ever heard of such a phenomena? It’s a first for me!
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.
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…
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.
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.
lindaghill.com 