I had to drive and hour out of town to feed my youngest son his lunch today – the teachers aren’t allowed (according to school board rules) to give him a gastric-tube feeding.
Normally I get pissed off when I have to do this, but today, as you can see from the picture I took with my phone, it was worth it for the scenery.
Kurashiki, October, 2005
A flight to Tokyo on December 27th and coming back January 9th would cost me $1148.73.
Just sayin’.
As you may know by now, I have a seventeen year old son who is severely autistic. Occasionally he has violent outbursts at school. He goes to a regular high school and is, for the most part, integrated into regular classes, though he does have a one-on-one EA with him at all times.
Today, when he had one of his outbursts, the school called to let me know. To their credit, this year (it’s new) they have an “in-school suspension room,” where he goes when he misbehaves. Up until this year, I’ve had to pick him up and bring him home for the remainder of the day. The exception this time was that he had pinched his EA, and apparently they don’t put up with physical contact. So they sent him home.
Apparently there are many things the high schools don’t put up with. The “in-school suspension room” is reserved for special needs students. In the case of infractions carried out by mainstream students, such as skipping school, the usual punishment is a three day “at home” suspension.
Yeah.
Maybe it’s the new method of teaching irony in English class.
I’m too hard on myself. I know this. I think it’s a common condition in artists of all disciplines – of course, we want to put our best foot forward. What is the use, after all, of showcasing mediocre work?
Even in blogging – maybe especially here on my blog – I tend to wait until I have the best idea before I post. It has to be not only interesting, but worth at least a hundred words (more if possible, but not so many that no one will open it in their reader), and it has to be something that other people can relate to. The grammar and spelling must be as close to perfect as I can achieve, the wording has to be right and with any luck it will evoke at least one emotional response from my readers.
So many requirements! So many, in fact, that often my posts never see the light of day because I don’t deem them good enough. In essence, I paralyze myself with my self-imposed need for perfection.
What is the alternative? Write articles and blog posts that no one wants to read? Put out such drivel that I lose followers?
I think I need to find a happy medium somewhere. There must be one, right? Maybe I should stop proofreading fifteen times – that would certainly cut down on the hours I spend writing only a few lines. It would also allow me more time to work on my course, edit my novel, and – hey, here’s an idea – do housework! Ha!
Nah!
So here’s a question or two: How many times do you proofread your posts? And are you, like me, a perfectionist? Is it a thing artists do, do you think?
Okay, that’s three questions. Maybe I’m not that much of a perfectionist after all. 😉
One day last week, two of my neighbour’s trees were marked by the city with bright orange Xs.
I’ve come to know these marks as the Xs of Doom. Within the next few weeks these trees will be drying in some lot, waiting to be bagged for firewood.
At least the one closest to the street is going out in a blaze of glory.
The following sign is on a route which has little pedestrian traffic and is written to target drivers:
All two sentences of it.
…. Seriously?
Or perhaps they should just save energy and put the target on the bumper of the car you’re tailgating while you’re trying to read the stupid sign!
I couldn’t sleep at all last night. Not one single wink. So I got up and had my breakfast, the kids are gone to school and my papers are done. Great, I thought. The rest of the day I’ll spend sleeping, until the first school bus arrives.
Wrong. I lay down in bed… nothing. Still awake. After an hour and a half of trying (okay, maybe the two phone calls didn’t help) I’m up and trying to figure out what to do next. I have two blog posts I want to write… except doing anything is difficult because I can’t think straight and I can barely see straight. If I couldn’t touch-type I wouldn’t be writing this.
What does one do when they are too exhausted to sleep? I’m not sure how the hell I’m going to be able to look after my kids when they come home. I’ve never experienced such a thing before.
I’m a hoarder. There. I admitted it.
That’s not to say that my house is full of stuff I’m never going to use. In fact I love throwing things away. Keeping my life as simple as possible, by not buying what I don’t need and not keeping what I haven’t used in years is something I strive for.
No, my hoarding is reserved for my technological devices. I keep everything, sent and received. Thank goodness for online resources, because I don’t own enough hard drive space to store everything I keep by a long shot.
Why do I keep everything? Some of it is obvious. Pictures, for example, are not easily replaced when they are of family. And stories – I have some as old as ten years and more. Looking back I can see what I’ve done to hone my skills… or at least I like to think I have.
However, it’s my stash of emails that I find the most useful and fascinating. I’m continually moaning about what modern technology has done to disintegrate social interaction: it has become easier and more efficient to email or text than talk to one another. But that’s where the beauty lies.
I remember having arguments with people about what they said or didn’t say. Sometimes these conflicts would last hours, days, even months, and they could never truly be resolved because it was one person’s word against the other. You see where I’m going with this, right?
Now, not only can we retain proof of what was said, a well organized collection of communication can even make it easy to find what we’re looking for, and at the click of a button, we can obtain a proof-positive record of exactly what went down. Not only that, we can record with ease, pictures of the point we’re trying to prove. Say, for instance, you have a friend who ALWAYS does something – take that funny face they make when they’re concentrating for instance – but they are convinced they don’t do it. With technology at our fingertips, all we have to do is whip out that handy phone, snap a pic, and Voila! Told you so!
You didn’t tell me you were going to meet me at 8pm on Thursday for drinks? HA! Here’s the text that proves it!
So there you have it. The reason I hoard everything; because I never know when I’m going to want to prove a point.
And possibly why I don’t have very many friends. 😉
It’s Erotica Week over at the Community Storyboard! The “Submission” post can be found here http://neverendingstorydepository.wordpress.com/2013/09/15/erotica-week-submit-to-us-he-he/
I’m finding myself rather distracted by all this. I know what I want to write, so I should probably just go ahead and do it. I’ll probably submit more than once before the week is finished anyway.
So check it out! A few things have gone up already, so to speak. Come and join us, won’t you?
I have to say, I’m probably enjoying my online courses more than I have a right to. When I was a teenager I hated school. I took off every chance I got – would drive to Niagara Falls for a day instead of going to classes. But now that I’m an adult I don’t understand my mindset back then. Okay, sure, to me high school seemed pretty useless. After all, what better way to learn about life than live it? The walls of an institution didn’t seem the most conducive setting for LIFE with capital letters. I suppose, now that I’m writing about the life of a teenager in my novel, it’s good to look back and remember as much of that time as I can.
But I digress.
This post is supposed to be about my current schooling. I passed my grammar course with a fairly decent 83% and now I’m on the last phase to getting my certificate – Writing Short Stories.
Before the course started I thought I was just going to sail through it, much as I thought I would with the grammar course. Why wouldn’t I? After all, I can bang out a respectable short story in an afternoon. When I received the lesson plan however, I was stopped in my tracks. You see, the course will take me almost up to Christmas and I will have one short story to write. First I must submit an idea. A few weeks later, my task is to hand in a first draft, and at the beginning of December I must write the final draft.
So I’ve got all this time to write a short story. No problem, you would think. But I’ve got all this time to write a short story, and that’s the problem! To come up with ONE idea and ruminate over it over the course of two months is torture to me. You see, I’m what is commonly referred to these days as a ‘pantser.’ I get an idea, but I not only have to write it down right away, if I don’t actually write the story right away, I’ll lose it.
You might say, so just write the story and have done with it. Hand it in when it’s time. That would be fine, except my OCD won’t allow it. If I know myself well, I will write it, review it, edit it, edit it some more, and given that much time and that much editing, it’s going to look like a pile of steaming crap by the time I go to submit it, because I’ll have overthunk it to death.
I have decided, then, to try for once to actually take my time. Do the whole outline thing, maybe even draw myself a storyboard; create characters before I write the thing… I’ll treat it like an experiment. Do it the way the other half – the non-panster – does it. It’s going to be a challenge.
