Atropa Belladonna~ Raven (a.k.a. Nightshade)'s Weblog ~
These are the ARCHIVES of NOVENBER 2006. For more archives, visit the Archives page. For the current Weblog entries, check the Main page.
Atropa Belladonna| Wed, Nov 29, 2006 (1:05pm) Things I can do: (since Starlin' put out the Challenge on her weblog) Sewing cloaks and Building life-size Dungeon environments and Swordfighting and Archery and Dirty Fighting and Cooking delicious Sweet & Sour Pork Ribs and Creme Brulee for dessert and Hand-coding a web page and Sorta accidentally hacking a Unix site to make it run a MUSH program and Hemming pants and Sewing a button back on, and Doing 10 chin-ups and Balancing a Chequebook and Paying Bills Online and Quoting Jabberwocky Spotting a Scam in a videostore and Swimmging 20 laps and Driving across Canada in February and Writing a Sonnet Talking down an angry drug user so they leave the clinic without needing a police escort and Knowing when a child is in Respiratory Distress and needs to go to ER or whether a trip to the Doctor's office will suffice, and Applying a burn dressing on a toddler so they can't get it off and Multiplying in Binary and Saying "The Head Gasket is Broken" in French and Telling the difference between a Raven and a Crow in flight and Reading Japanese Katakana and Raising an Autistic Child and Using sign language and Solving quadratic equations without a Calculator and Changing oil on my van at 9 months pregnant and Holding a meaningful conversation on religion with a number of different denominations Reading an unimaginably large quantity of Harry Potter Slash fiction and Drawing effective illustrations and Teaching First Aid techniques and Assembling furniture and Installing magnetic "baby-proof" cabinet latches and Making Vampire Fangs and Educating people on safe(r) sex practices and Naming a dozen different types of Piercings and Recognizing the works of a dozen Renaissance painters and Baking Gluten-Free cookies and Making a Patch cable (and a Cat-5 o' 9 tails!) and Constructing various other fetish gear from leather & metal and Installing a therapy swing indoors and Recognizing most constellations visible in the Northern Hemisphere and Naming 30 stars and celestial bodies and Cooking Soup and Beating the computer at Solitaire. What can you do? |
| Fri, Nov 24, 2006 (9:15am) NOW with EVEN MORE COMMENTS ADDED Wed, Nov 29 (12:30pm) Something I've been thinking about, re: friends. It's been said that you can tell a lot about people by the friends they keep. But how can you tell about those friends? Do you have to look at the friends they keep, too, to tell what kind of people they are? And what about the friends' friends? And their friends? It doesn't seem to be a very useful system, to me. Not to mention that it says nothing about the sort of relationship you have with those friends. Is it a friendship of the barest tolerance? Or one forged from bonds of trial and perseverence? I propose that you can tell a lot more about a person by the things their friends ask of them, and what they are willing to give. For example, you've got people whose friends are constantly asking to borrow money off them. That says something. Or what about a group of friends whose most serious demand is, "Hey, man, can I bum a smoke?" Whether the friend is willing to part with a twenty, or even has smokes to give - that says a great deal about the kind of person they are. Then you've got friends who ask to borrow eachothers cars, or ask if its okay to sleep with your girlfriend, or want you to help hide a body. Isn't that more telling than just "Oh, yeah, he's friends with Joe and Mike. I dunno about those guys." What about friends who feel comfortable calling you up at 11pm to ask if you'll do coffee with them? Or friends who want to borrow your longsword? Doesn't that say a lot? Do your friends ask you to help them move? Or sit their kids for a week? Or just help them shop for a corset? You need a certain comfort level with friends to ask certain things. After all, hiding a body is pretty easy. But watching kids? That's another matter entirely. So, what do your friends ask of you, and what does it say about the sort of person you are? Feel free to send email or comments. If you mark them 'Public' I may even post a batch. As for me... I don't want to recount some of the requests which I've received, but one does stick in my mind... One recent Friday evening, I had a friend ask if I happened to have a 60cc syringe handy, so they could get some gas out of a baby's feeding tube. That's just not the sort of your average friend asks. But then, my friends are far from average. |
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Comments... Dr. Ursa has this Public comment: Comments : My friends ask me to butt out. Myrna has this Public comment: Comments : To drive her to get a baby at 3 in the morning because she isn't safe to drive. Fox has this Public comment: Comments : What have friends asked of me? Rides. Lots and lots of rides. In the cabal, the car is rare. Much less so amongst the worst. And usually when asked I do end up providing the ride, though I may grump about it. RavenBlack has this Public comment: Comments : I'm not sure what your friends ask for necessarily says much about you - my friends don't often ask for anything because, eg. I don't drive, don't live anywhere people really want to visit near, and so forth. So what you can tell about me from what my friends ask for is, er, that I don't drive and don't live somewhere exciting. They also don't ask me to help them move because I'm not nearby and, again, don't drive. I also don't smoke or have significant spare money, nor do my friends smoke or have significant dearth of money. James has this Public comment: Comments : Thinking back on it, I'm not really sure where the line between offered and asked for exists between me and my friends. At one point one of my friends and I were paid on opposing weeks and we just lived off of the income of whoever had been paid more recently. anonymous has this Public comment: Comments : The strangest thing a friend has ever asked of me was when they called from a camping event to ask if I could please bring them some 'sex towels', because they'd forgotten to bring any... I'm not sure what that says about us except that we have no problem at all talking about sex...lol |
| Thurs, Nov 23, 2006 (9:15am) with edits on Nov 24, for belated birthday greetings Unconditional Love Coryn has this Public comment: Comments : lollyblogger! I've looked at your blog at least twice a day for the past week. Is your life so empty there is nothing to write about or so full that there's no time to write? Whatever... your mother probably loves you no matter what ;-) - - - BTW - Happy birthday to my Brother! |
| Wed, Nov 15, 2006 (10:55am) IT SUCKS!!!! (In a good way!) Our vacuum cleaner is functional again! I did not, to my surprise, find any lost socks, or toys, or my missing measuring spoons, all of which I thought might be contributing to the problem by clogging the built-in tube. What the repairman did discover was a disconnected tube. Somehow, possibly during the renovations back in June, something became a little bit loose, and over the course of the last few months it had worked itself looser and looser, and finally fell apart. So, the vacuum system was legitimately broken, and not merely sabotaged by toddlers. It was repairable for a little over $100, most of which was for the housecall to Sh. Park. The repairman also replaced our bent vacuum insertion cover with a new one which is all cool space-age looking (the whole thing lifts, instead of a little flap door). So my life not only sucks, but it does so in an aesthetically pleasing way. My world is a better place. |
| Tues, Nov 14, 2006 (10:20pm) A Dose of Real Life And now for something completely different: This weblog entry will not feature an amusing anecdote, or update on kids, or cool pics, or fun links, or anything. I will talk about me. Because - hey, it's my weblog, and it can be All About Me if I want it to. I am stressed. There's these kids, ya see, and appointments, and school, and housework, and the never-ending routing which is day-to-day life (you know, the one where you clean up the livingroom and turn around only to find it messy again, and meals needing to be made every frakking day, and laundry baskets which fill up with dirty clothes even before the clean ones hit the closet) and sometimes I just don't feel like I can handle it. Yes, of course - I can handle it. I've been handling it, and I have no doubts that I will continue to handle it. But that feeling grates on my nerves. I don't like feeling like I'm running on a gerbil wheel. Normally, when I get stuck in a rut, I say "Screw It - I'm going to make a change here!" But how do you change the fact that your kids have special needs? How can you change that people need to eat, every day? How do you change the fact that you need money in order to live in this world, and that means a job, and not being able to do everything/go everywhere/buy whatever you want? Life sucks, doesn't it? (Yes, there's a lot of people whose lives suck with greater suckiness than mine. But this is about me - they can go bemoan their fates in their own weblogs.) No, honestly, I have it better than most. I am very, very lucky to have a strong support system. My Mom has helped me out of more tight spots than I can count - coming to babysit when I have kid-related appointments, or being a sympathetic ear on the phone. I have friends who will let me vent to them, or offer advice on dealing with various kid behaviours, or get me my BSG fix when I need it. And, of course, I have an absolutely fabulous husband. I Could Not Do This Without Him. He is the one who gets me through the day-to-day of it all, and always says thanks when there's warm food ready when he gets home, and helps around the house without even being asked, running laundry, changing diapers, fixing malfunctioning toilets, etc. He even drove to St. Albert on miserable roads to get me my special-order game of Emira. Okay, he has his off days, too, but he never ever makes me feel like they're my fault... and that's a really big thing, when living with the stressors which we do. The fact that Shades is out of town right now is probably why I'm feeling the frustration more strongly this week. But it's been there for quite a while - probably since the school year began. I'd thought, just before September started, that it would be so great to have them all in school. Wow! Two free hours per day, child free! I've learned, though, that to pay for those hours, I have to do at least 3 hours per day of prep-work and afterschool activity. The two hours are nice in that they give me the flexibility to do child-free grocery shopping or housework or snow-shovelling, but it's not as if someone added two extra hours to my day, to do with as I wish. And maybe I thought it would be like that. So here I am, stuck in the daily grind, and wondering whether the next few years will just bring more of the same. Or worse, since I have no idea what new problems will turn up with Connor or Jase... or Kalen for that matter. Or me. Or Shades. What if one of us is seriously injured in a car accident? What if one of us loses his job? What if the stock market crashes? What if our house burns down? What if World War III starts? And the Aliens!!! What if the Aliens attack?!?!? Yes. That is really how my train of thought goes. And that is how I can tell that I am stressed. I do not normally worry about World War III or Alien Invasion when I am coping well. So... I think I need a bit of a change. Just to break the routine, and let me get a better perspective on things. I could wait until Gen Con in the summer (Mmmm, GenCon...) but that's a long ways away, and it brings its own sorts of stress with it. I want a break sooner than that. I'm going to try taking some time off work, around the holidays, to enjoy being with that guy I love. I want to take a class or a course on something which is just for me and not about the kids at all. And I'm going to go to Vancouver, for an Autism Conference, to learn more about this stuff I'm dealing with every day, and stop feeling helpless. It's gonna cost a lot ($345 for the conference, plus $800 for the hotel) but I have decided that it is a work expense. Shades gets to go to Nashville for a conference related to his job... I get to go to Vancouver for a conference related to mine. See? My rationalization circuits are working perfectly. This way, when the flying saucers land amidst the heavy fall-out of the WWIII nukes, I will be up to date on all the current Autism theories and therapies, and can teach Connor how to deal with the noise from the air raid sirens, while I serve gluten-free snacks to the aliens. |
| Mon, Nov 13, 2006 (12:15pm) with edits on Nov 15 for spelling. Connor has just informed me that he likes Plaid Trews. I had dressed him, originally, in a different pair of pants, and then stepped out to get Jasen from his school bus. When I came back in, Connor was wearing Kalen's old plaid trews (they're too small for her, but she likes them as pajama pants). I grabbed Connor's original pants, and walked towards him. He laughed, pulled the intended pants out of my hands, threw them in a corner, and ran off laughing and holding the waist of his chosen pants. Ya know, for a kid who doesn't talk much, he is quite capable of getting his meaning across. |
| Sun, Nov 12, 2006 (11:00pm) Gifted! I felt like posting a couple pics of some recent gifts we received, because they're awesome, and must be shared. The first is Darth Tater! He's a Potato-Head, from Connor's therapist. The second is the ultra-cool gauntlets my brother gave me for my birthday. They are modelled by my fabulous Oma (click the pic to see how intimidating they truly are!)  
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| Thurs, Nov 9, 2006 (2:45pm) Watch as I reel in shock from the sheer surprise of it all! Yesterday I had a meeting with Kalen's grade one teacher. We needed to discuss some "behavioural issues" which were becoming a problem in class - things like Kalen's inability to focus on classroom work, her seeming fearlessness in the face of disciplinary action, and most specifically her insistance on kissing boys. The thing with the kissing is that she doesn't seem to recognize that the boys don't want to be kissed. When the boys shout "Ew!" and run away, she thinks they are enjoying the game. In fact, she claims that the main victim of her affections is her "boyfriend" even while he repeatedly states that girls are icky. The relationship is completely one-sided. The teacher elaborated that Kalen seems to have a very hard time reading the emotional cues of the other children, she doesn't socialize well, and she often has a hard time remaining engaged in any meaningful conversation. This is all very minor stuff at the moment, but there are "concerns" that this may be the early signs of more serious behavioural difficulties. In fact, the school would like to keep an eye on her behaviour, and perhaps do some screening for developmental issues. Not that there's necessarily anything wrong, but that if there is, its better to catch it early. So after telling me all this, the teacher took a deep breath, and, in a very cautious voice, asked me if I might ever have heard of a condition called, "Asperger's Syndrome." |
| Tues, Nov 7, 2006 (11:05pm) Today, I was Superman! Well, except for the flying. But I managed to run faster than a speeding toddler, leap tall hurdles, move a mountain (of groceries), and have an awesome spaghetti supper with home-made garlic bread on the table by 5:15pm. I s'pose some of you might think I should call myself "SuperWoman" instead, but I disagree. For one thing, I don't do the whole 'woman' thing so well. And for another, the job of SuperWoman is already taken - by Starlin' - who can apparently do all of the above, but with 5 kids instead of 3, while juggling tube-feedings for 2 babies, making hospital appointments, and attending Fosterparent workshops. Plus, she makes her own bread by hand instead of cheating and using a bread-machine, like I did. I am in awe of her super-powers. |
| Sun, Nov 5, 2006 (11:15pm) Dear Starlin', I hope you are enjoying Bermuda, the warm sun, and the hot Capoeistras. We are getting along well, taking care of 'Sana. Despite a couple minor glitches like the initial lack of car seat, no bottle, and a surprising dearth of socks, we have managed to keep things running as smoothly as can be expected from any house full of young kids. Since you are frequently pressed for time, I thought I would take a few moments to make some observations on your daughter... just in case someone, someday, hands you an assessment form which asks you to fill out a variety of words which you think might apply to your child. You are, of course, under no obligation to use this list, but I thought it might be helpful if you have one of those moments where your mind draws a blank due to the sheer magnitude of possibilities. Enthusiastic Energetic Spontaneous Impulsive Adorable Curious George Incarnate Breathtaking Zooooom Crash Delightful Herd of Elephants Smiling Careen Affectionate Intense Self-Injurious Resiliant Shining Exhausting Care-free Abandon Lovable |
| Sun, Nov 5, 2006 (10:50pm) Remember, Remember, the 5th of November... Happy Guy Falkes Day, everyone! |
| Wed, Nov 1, 2006 (6:45pm) Spawn... Jasen has this game he likes to play, where he stabs you with a (toy) sword, and you fall down. He giggles like mad, and can't wait to do it again. So, as soon as you stand up, he pokes you in the chest again (good thing the sword is made of foam). And you fall down again. And you get up again. And he stabs you and you fall down again, to the accompaniment of much giggles. And over, and over again. It's gotten to the point where he'll just stand over top of you, so the moment you begin to sit up, he can laugh and "kill" you again. Yes, that's right: My son practices Spawn Camping. |
| Wed, Nov 1, 2006 (11:10am) Face Blind Wally told me about an article in Wired Magazine discussing Face Blindness, or "Prosopagnosia" as it is properly called. Fascinating article, especailly since I've known for a long time that I have trouble with recognizing faces. I'm far from being fully Face Blind, but I think I can comfortably say that I have moderate Prosopagnosia. Luckily, I've got a lot of very functional coping strategies, and mostly accepting friends. You know all those times when I see people at BP's and say "I can't remember your name"? That's actually me saying "I can't remember your face." but people seem to be more insulted if you say you can't remember their face, because that's like saying "I don't remember you" The thing is, I do remember people. I remember hundreds of people. I just won't always recognize them when I see them, particularly if they're wearing a different coat, or have changed their hair. I don't file my memories of people under what their face looks like. I file primarily under their name, or their character's name (usually more colorful & memorable than 'Dave' or 'Chris'), or under their online alias. Lacking instant recollection of their name, I look for clues like nametags, jackets, tattoos, distinctive jewelry, etc. to help me identify people. This sheds light a lot of things... like why I prefer email communication, why I like people who wear unique coats or color their hair unusual colors, and why I like subtitles which give the name of the character speaking on TV. I find this particularly interesting because a lot of Autistic kids also have modedrate to severe Prosopagnosia. There is an excellent chance that Connor has as much, or more, trouble than me with identifying people in his environment. Certainly something to think about. |