Exciting Times

Masks has taken a strange turn thanks to a book I'm reading.

I love it when that happens.  And I love strangeness, especially when it feels familiar despite the fact that it's bizarre.  Stuff like this encourages me to play with my brain.  

I'll review the book that upended Masks and sent it spinning into unforeseen directions when I'm done.

In other news, the boy is home for a visit.  I'm always happier when he's here.  He has a project he's working on and I'm hoping to guide him through the process of creation.  I know how hard it can be to begin something creative.  When we face a blank page, we're really facing ourselves.  It's weird but true that when we're faced with ourselves, we don't feel up to our own challenge.  You'd think that hey, it's my challenge and I want to do it, what's the harm in trying?  And there is no harm ... just terrible, nasty doubt and that doubt knows all your buttons and switches because it's you.

Anyway, I have to go to work now.  I wish I could stay home, but I'm just too darned ethical to call in sick, even when I'm feeling sick-ish, since my malaise is entirely my own fault.  It's not a cold, it's not a broken bone or a severed artery ... it's called insufficient sleep after a huge day and then waking up before first light to take my DH to the airport.  Thank you to all the folks who turned out for my DH's first-ever book signing and reading at Cedar Hills Powells last night.  I had a ton of fun before, during and after, and I'm all right with feeling dragged out, headachy and feeling like I want to eat nothing all day today because my tummy is unsettled.  It was totally worth it.  

Totally.

Proud to be a Mom

Wow.  It's a whole new month!  

Here, at last, are pics of the girl just before she went to the prom.  The extra string by her neck is from her purse--I couldn't get her to hang out for pics very long because she was in quite a hurry to get out the door.  I think I may have overdone it in the fussing department.  

She had a wonderful time, and even danced with a boy.

I don't know who will look back on this night more fondly--the girl, or me. 

The boy is visiting for Mother's Day.  I sure miss having him home.  I love having him here on Mom's day, and I feel totally pampered.  He helped me a ton around the garden.  The girl helped too, but not much.  Rain and thunder drove her off and she never came back.

Peas are in, artichokes and cardoon (hardened off seedlings that are under a protective cover until things nice'n up) and the onion sets which couldn't wait any longer.  I think the onion sets will be fine, since some onions that overwintered have plenty of green on them.

Cake, gardening, crystalline gifts, and a good talk with my mom this morning.  Awesome day.  It'll be hard to go back to work tomorrow after being spoiled rotten all day.  I'm so proud of my kids, and spending time with them was a huge treat.  

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there!  I hope you had a good one.

The Milestones are Getting Bigger

My youngest child is at her senior prom. I'm at a local pub not drinking, eating good pub food and I'm desperately hoping she's having fun.

She'll never know how beautiful she is, not just to me but to everyone who sees her. I wonder if it scared her a little to see herself in makeup, with her hair up, in a formal floor-length gown. It didn't scare me. I see her as a incredible young lady whether she's dressed up or she's in grubby jeans and a stained sweater.

Meanwhile my eldest child is finding out about the work world in a way that no one likes to learn--through the frustrating process of endless job hunting in a bad economy, where people with no experience are forced to compete with people who are overqualified and desperate for any kind of income. And he's met someone his age. A couple of years older, actually, but how different she must seem from his high school friends. She has a job, is old enough to drink ... yeah.

I seldom thought this far ahead when I had kids, and I only could think that way in unfocused abstracts, especially since we had autistic kids. I think that turned into such a blessing in so many ways. I was never tempted to pigeonhole them or force them onto a track. Everything was up for grabs. Would they go to college? That was nothing--I wondered if they'd be able to make friends. Would they participate in team sports? Let's just worry about whether they would be able to stay in a mainstream school.

I don't think I ever set the bar low, or decided that they couldn't do anything they wanted. They did surprise me a lot, but that doesn't mean I didn't think they were capable. It was always about what they wanted to strive for, and I was never sure what they would want to do with the resources they had within themselves physically, mentally and emotionally.

My kids taught me how to be a supportive parent by unveiling the difficulties and exceptional capabilities given to people born with autism-spectrum stuff. If they'd been born 'normal' I wonder if I might not have turned out to be a crummy parent, that terrible combination of helicopter and controlling that only allowed them to be all they could be as long as that being was within the realms of my vision for them. I did too much of that as it stands. But they didn't, and I had to immediately let go of any kind of planned future for them.

And that turned out to be a very good thing. I'm not going to stress about my daughter going to the prom without a date or a gaggle of friends. She wanted to go to the prom, and she went by herself, and I did everything I could to make her prom night special within the context of her desires. Just between us, I'm proud of her, because I wanted to go alone but I chickened out and went with someone I didn't like so I could conform. Unlike me when I was her age, she is a true individual, and her high school class is full of like-minded kids. Amazing. I doubt they will bat an eye at her showing up by herself.

I'm not going to stress about my son not finding work either. He's taking a community college course on his own dime and looking and learning and discovering so much about what happens to a plan when it meets up with the real world. There's time yet to learn about how to work at a real paying job. Right now he's in the middle of plenty other lessons, and I can see his mind spinning and working and going into overdrive trying to figure out how to make things work. Part of that learning will involve trying to hold onto or fall back onto old habits that made life comfortable for him at home, and figuring out how well those habits serve him now.

None of this is about me, of course. But I'm going through a process too, not so much of letting go but seeing my children in a whole new way. Not as independent beings--they've always been that--but as rapidly changing beings. Like seeds growing into trees, they stay little for such a long time, and though they're growing at the same rate on a cellular level they seem to suddenly explode into so many branches and leaves that it's beyond counting.

I finally get to see them as the trees, and not just an assortment of leaves and twigs that I feed and water and nurture as best I can.

And that's a very awe-inspiring thing.

The milestones, they are ganging up on me

We had the boy overnight for the first time since he moved out to the big metro area (to look for work.) So of course he gets his first call for an interview ...

First real interview.  How kewl.  Wish him luck!  If he gets this job it'll be a great entry-level one that will teach him a lot about working and wages and all that good stuff.  It's a huge step, even bigger than living someplace other than home.  There's so much stuff about working for someone that I take for granted that he's going to have to learn for himself.  

Assuming he gets the job, of course.  I'm really proud he even got an interview, considering how the economy is these days.  I don't know how many places I applied for and got nada, even though I have quite a bit of retail experience.

Another milestone.  They're coming in faster these days.  And soon now, the girl will be graduating.  Eeeeeeee!

Mother, Son

I'm sicker today, with a long work week ahead.  Wish me luck.  The good news is that the rest of the fam is getting better.

The boy was particularly sick last night.  I stayed up, watching while he slept.  I haven't been that worried about him, or felt the need to do that, since he was about half his current size.  I expect as he goes out into the dangerous world, I'll worry about him even more.  A rational part of me understands that any sense of safety and security I feel or feel that he has while he's in our house is false security.  Still, it's a peaceful feeling, and one I'm sure I'll miss when he leaves home.

At the same time I'm excited to see what he does with his life when he's completely on his own.  This is the one area that I think he worries more than me--I think he fears he'll flounder.

I think he'll be brilliant.  Not immediately.  Even the brightest, most motivated of us had to start with uncertainty, with little or no experience, with little or no confidence.  I know I judged my own first steps into the 'real world' really harshly, comparing myself endlessly to what my parents had achieved during the various stages of their lives.  Even the way they started out, with little or nothing, left me in awe, because they escaped Communism and survived in a nation without a good grasp of English, never mind employment qualifications.

The boy has to jump some hurdles I never had to face at his age.  I think, if anything, that'll make him a better, stronger person than me in the long run.  And that's a great thing.  My DH and I had always hoped that our kids would be stronger, faster, smarter, and more adaptable than we are.  I don't think a person like that can be patched together with genetics and upbringing (though those things help.)  I think a person has to make themselves, to become the adults that they hope to be.

That's all fine and good, but last night, watching his quick, shallow breaths as he slept uneasily with a hard fever, I wanted to protect, and help, and shelter him.  That won't ever go away.  He'll always be my son.

Running

When I was a spry nineteen year old, my sister began her first term in college and moved in with me on special dispensation. Normally the college required first term students to live in the dorms, but they could live with family if the place was close enough to campus. Later we took in one of my sister's best friends, who several years later passed away in a single-car accident. (She fell asleep at the wheel.) In those days, at least how I remember them, we had good times.

One of the things my sister did was join crew. To be part of the team, you had to go running a certain distance every day. To help her out, and because I'd gained my freshman fifteen (and some) I promised to join her at least every other day.

So we went running around, usually after dark because of our schedules. I'd always hated running until I started running with her. We'd joke around, talk about stuff, and challenge each other. When she couldn't run on a given night, I missed it enough that I went out on my own. And it was great. I started to feel truly alive, and light--not just in weight but in spirit, like I could go on forever (though while I was actually running I felt like a lead butt.)

Then one day, when my sister got a bit ahead of me on the big, last-stretch hill that we lived on, something in my knee went ping. It wasn't a particularly sharp ping, but I stopped running and started to walk, and then limp, and then found I couldn't really bend my leg much.

By the time I got to the apartment my knee had swollen up. I thought I'd snapped something, but it turned out to be less serious, but at the same time, more extensive damage. By running on pavement, and not just any pavement but sidewalk cement which is the worst, I'd turned the normally smooth surface under my kneecap into a rough road full of potholes.

It took a lot of ibuprofen, months of physical therapy and rebuilding to get my knee to bend again, and then another couple more months to walk without a limp. The doc told me that I'd probably need knee surgery by the time I reached forty.

Well, here I am at 42, and I'm running again. No surgery, just the application of lessons learned and reaping the benefits of years of keeping my legs, especially my knees, in the best shape that I could. I try as much as possible to do 'silent running'--trying to run quietly as a measure of how much impact my joints are taking. I also practice good alignment--feet, ankles and knees all pointed in the right direction. And last, although I'm forced to run on pavement most of the time because of our local roads, when conditions allow I take breaks from asphalt running by running on the shoulder wherever it was recently mowed and flat enough.

I'm not there yet, but I'm looking forward to feeling light again. I've taken up running since college a couple of times, and stopped, and started and stopped. I don't know how long I'll stick with it this time, but I have a new incentive.

The boy wants to be able to run an 8 minute mile. We've worked him down to about nine and a half minutes on the flat, about eleven and a half on the grueling hills around our house. I love running with him. We joke around, challenge each other, and talk about stuff ....

The Boy Will Drive! Eeeeeee!

The boy is in his first driving class today. Eeek! Watch out for him on the roads over the next several weeks.

Looks like it's going to be an excellent class.

One small step for a man ... one long leap for a chicken

It's been crazy around here.

The chicks are doing really well, but as you can imagine they're a daily (and nightly) handful.   They're too big for the aquarium, but they can't go out in the coop yet.  So they get trucked back and forth between the greenhouse and our bedroom every day.  They also went out for a field trip (literally, ha ha) and had a good time chasing bugs, picking at greens and perching in a small noble fir we have out in the grass in back.

It's been wet, or as the boy and I say, wehehehet.  Poopyheaded wet grass.  Poopyheaded long wet grass that we can't mow because it's poopyheaded wehehehet.  But, it's just as well that it's not mowing weather, because the boy had GRADUATED FROM HIGH SCHOOL and he deserves a break from work.

We're really, really proud.

It's supposed to be nicer weather later today, so I'm planning a little bbq.  Sadly, my DH is away, but unsadly, that just means we'll have to have another bbq when he comes back.  Or a broil, if it's rainy again.

It's been quite the week.  I'd like to say I'm looking forward to things going back to normal, but as I haven't seen normal in quite a few years, it'd be wiser to say I'm looking forward to what happens next.  I'm all a-quiver in anticipation, or I would be, if it wasn't so wehehehet.

Congratulations, O-bean.  Soon, all these chicken coop alfalfa bucking goat chasing days will be behind you, and you'll be able to shape your own future.  I can't wait to see what it looks like!

All My Children

We've almost gotten all the tansy out of both pastures.  That's where most of it was.  We figure tomorrow morning we'll have it all done.  Our neighbors plan to have their lower west field cleared this weekend.  It all comes together at once, like poetry, only with sweat.

O bought his first piece of furniture with his own money.  I think it'll work well for him, a kind of portable mini-papasan chair.  He's so happy and proud, justifiably so.  He got it very inexpensively, and it was love at first sight, the way lasting purchases ought to be.  It fits in his room, with his room, like it's always been there.  I suspect it will not only follow him to college, but into his first apartment and maybe beyond, one of those things his first live-in girlfriend will tell him is way past throwing out but he'll hang onto it even though it's threadbare and has a smell.

Lately, though I've been trying to be more and more frugal, it feels like money is pouring out of my accounts.  Part of that is car stuff, and part is animal stuff.  Carey, our fluff-fluff, is very ill.  She started looking a bit raggedy a couple of weeks ago.  The vet has done blood work and we're anxiously waiting on results.  She's lost over four of her original 11 pounds she had when she was at a healthy weight and fully recovered from her bout as abandoned outdoor kitty.  You can feel her spine clearly when you pet her.  The vet gave her a camelback (fluid infusion) and that helped perk up her appetite.  She ate twice today, much more than she has in a while.  She's going to be on rich, fatty wet food and restricted to A's room so we can monitor all her stats.  The vet told us one of three common things might be responsible for her rapid weight loss--thyroid, cancer and diabetes, in order of likelihood for a kitty of her age.  I didn't like to see cancer as #2.  My mom has a kitty with thyroid problems and that would be something I could deal with.  It was wonderful how quickly Lady bounced back once she was on the right meds.  

Anyway, the other animal thing is that Dakota (who is doing well, don't fret) needs a wellness check and arthritis check in order for the vet to be able to legally extend her arthritis med prescription.  I doubt he'll order any changes, but it's a necessary formality, as in if anyone catches a vet prescribing meds to an animal s/he hasn't seen within a certain time, that's considered malpractice.  Dakota has been camping with us and seemed to enjoy it.  I expect she'll hop right into the car expecting more camping fun, and will be terribly disappointed.

We're still working on getting the garden and house ready for ABBB.  It's a huge job.  Safety is the primary focus of the garden, with appearance coming second.  That's good news for the western goldfinches, who are enjoying the thistle seeds throughout the garden.  They'll be working off of a depleted supply before too long, as those are pokey plants and I don't want anyone walking the paths to get scratched up.  But mainly we need clear stairs with flat surfaces (level molehills, fill mole holes, weed wack,) mowed pathways (so that people recognize sudden changes in grade,) and blackberry access (so that they aren't tempted to lean out to get berries--I want berries in easy reach, no guests falling into blackberry patches please!) and a completely weed-free firepit area to reduce fire danger.  In the house I need the kitchen and bathrooms to be spotless, floors to be completely clear of anything trippable, all tabletops clear so we have places to put food and drinks, beg borrow and steal chairs from wherever I can get them, arrange furniture for lots of open spaces, and steam cleaning the carpet so that folks with animal allergies are a little more comfortable.  

Piece of cake.

Sometimes all that plus prepping for an important sekrit arrival to the household plus trying to have something approximating a writing career plus fretting about whether I'll get a job offer before we spiral into financial oblivion plus volunteering for a big job for OryCon (head of programming) plus trying to keep the kids engaged in stuff that'll be good for them (SCA, fencing) feels like too much.  But I haven't started drowning yet and I don't think anything has is being seriously neglected, so I must be doing okay.

Eighteen

I received lots of mixed news today.  Good, bad, weird, exciting, scary, all at once.  It's going to take me a while to settle down to sleep.

Anyway, the boy has been 18 for a while now.  He's a man.  Ish.  Like many men his age, he's both eager to meet his future but unclear about what he wants it to be.  And that's the thing.  Creating a future is a tricky thing, especially to so many young people to whom it seems things just happen.  After all, they've had their whole lives planned out and scheduled for them up to this point.  

He hasn't been cast adrift yet, but I've been more than hinting that the creation process must now begin and that the clock that measures how much more time he has to live at home has begun to tick.  To me all the possibilities are clear, and if I were him I would be exploring like crazy, researching those possibilities, discovering new ones, searching for my passion and joy and getting prepared for what I want to be.  I'm happy he's content at the moment, and I'm glad he has some plans, but they're typical tentative, small-scale, short-sighted things or so far flung (like being a colonist on Mars--not an explorere but a settler when everything's set up (he's assuming this will happen in his lifetime, a hard suppose)) that he can afford to be very hand-wavy about what he'll do in the meantime.  Normal, normal, normal.  I'm not concerned, and I refuse to start bossing him and directing him because then he'll never learn this stuff.  If I do, it'll always be forces outside of him moving him around like a puppet rather than he himself moving himself around learning what it's like to be an adult.  It's hard to watch him flop about on the ground, though, when I know he can fly.  It's the classic 'if I had to do it all over again, I would' moment in a parent's life.  

Patience, young mother.  He too will learn, and he will soar.

Being the Bad Guy

I've started the kids exercising.  Boy, you should listen to the griping, the whining, the moaning about the stupidity of it all, the dodging ... mostly from the man-child.  From the girl I got cursing while in process (she chose Bollywood--wow, tough even for me, who's been bellydancing a long while.)  She cursed at herself, at the video, at herself again, but by the time she got through it all she was grinning and happy.

They were both grinning.  They'd accomplished something, no little feat, neither.  I hope it won't be like pulling teeth when we do it all again tomorrow.

But mom!

Sometimes I have to be the bad guy.

They have my eyes

At the dinner table today, we had Star Wars dinner theater.

Darth Vader:  Luke, I'm your father.

Luke:  No, that's impossible!

Darth Vader:  You know it's true.

Luke:  You know, now that you mention it, I noticed we had the same eyes.

The boy has a school project where he has to cook dinner for us four nights in a row and we all have to sit at the dinner table and talk.  We do the sit down dinner with candles and all that for holidays, but most times, dinnertime is movie time.  We eat, watch a movie, and keep up a running commentary.  I don't think his teacher realizes how dangerous it is for our family members to talk.  We could take over the world or something.  Besides, I know she wouldn't approve of what we talk about.  The Darth Vader stuff was the tamest part.  It's much better for the world if we have distractions to keep us from thinking, planning, and having fun.  

The Car is Tired and Happy Milestone O

I've been driving all over almost every day for as far back as I can think, which is not very far at the moment.  I want a day at home.  A whole day.  No shopping of any kind, no classes (which btw O passed with A grades!  Yay!) no meetings ...

And yet I thrive on meetings, enjoy shopping, and driving O to class turned out to be great discussion time.  I don't want to give anyone the impression that I spent the last couple of weeks or so being dragged from one thing to another and that I hated every moment.  I had a lot of fun.  I'd do it all over again.  But I do want to give myself a day off.  Tomorrow sounds good.

Today is the boy's b-day.  He's so tall and strong and smart.  I'm immensely proud of him, especially now because he's coming into his own.  After years of childhood luxury where failure held no terror and success didn't interest him, he's learned to succeed.  He's learning he's powerful, and that with not very much effort he can achieve a great deal.  He's learning that success isn't negative.  That seems obvious but it really isn't.  When failure has been working for you throughout your living memory, why in the world would success hold any interest?  Why change and grow when things are good?  People told him it would be better, but he had only our word (and the word of every adult) to vouch for success?  He knew he'd need to succeed eventually, but putting it off was easy and didn't cost him anything that he could relate to.  

The beauty part of where he's headed is that he decided to do this.  I didn't even give him choices.  We looked over his options together and this is what he decided to do instead of extending his high school education or the drawn-out failure he seemed willing to accept.  He's been given opportunities like this before, but this is the first he's made his own.

My son is becoming a man.  Now if I could only get him to stop teasing his sister ...

The Yanks

When I have a sick boy and a girl with a broken hand at the same time, the temptation to call my boss and tell him I'm ready to be a stay at home mom/writer again is intense.  

Added to the maternal nurturing thing is the fact that the boy is behind in his math and I love math.  (Yes, you read that right.)  When the boy asked for help the other night I was in math heaven.  Right now he's working on trig.  Because my mind grasps math and creates fantasy, I introduce him to the concepts in a way that he finds appealing and we both find entertaining.  

These were guarded secrets, and some considered them magic, I tell him.  I think, in a way, they really are magic.  

Together we reveal the mysteries and use them to solve problems that matter, problems he can imagine having to solve in other contexts.  It's great fun.  Every twenty minutes to an hour he'd hit a stumbling point and come upstairs with his book and paper in hand and I'd start to grin.  Okay, yes, maybe it's wrong for me to enjoy his struggles, but then again, when he can't see a solution that's a learning opportunity.  He'll understand the material that much more deeply if we have to arrive at the Aha by a roundabout way.  And I think he secretly enjoys it when he doesn't get a problem too, because he knows I'll make finding the solution entertaining.

With the girl hurt I can teach her too.  She's plenty independent, too independent in some ways, and I can show her how to accept help without feeling weak or stupid.  She worries about being weak or stupid.  I can show her how to do things for herself, so she's accepting help (the teaching) without sacrificing independence (doing the work for herself.)  

And of course there's the writing.  After a long short story dry spell where I'd decided I'm too lousy at short stories to waste my and others' time with them, I'm back to working at short lengths.  I started on them again mainly as a way to keep from going crazy while editing. Too often  I let myself get distracted by writing a first draft on a new novel during those times when I'd rather scrub toilets than edit.  Also, I was intrigued by the Writers of the Future contest and wanted to play.  I'm constantly amazed how disruptive a part time retail schedule is to daily writing.  I write maybe an hour or two a day, as opposed to 4-8 hours a day, even on my days off.  That's just not good enough.  I want to be more productive than that, and still have time to eat and sleep.  (I can hear a familiar voice saying 'sleeping and eating is for the weak!  Heh.)  What's the holdup on my days off?  Catching up on chores, gardening, and spending time with my family, because I don't get to do those things, or do them in a very limited fashion, on work days.

Sometimes I feel guilty because I have the luxurious option of quitting my job if I really want to.  I believe that's kept me there longer than I otherwise would have stayed.  As everyone there knows, I've made no secret of the fact that I'm basically on my way to Australia (to quote from the brilliant "Support Your Local Sheriff.)  But like the character from the movie, I'm still in town, still working despite the fact that I signed on to be holiday help for the 2006-2007 season.  Like other retail jobs the turnover is high.  I've seen a lot of employees come and go, and I've gotten to know the long term employees pretty well.  It's definitely a great place to work, and I feel loyalty toward my coworkers and the business.  It's just that right now the tug to get back to my 'real' life  has turned into a series of hard yanks.

I doubt I'll make a decision any time soon, but if my boss has any senses beyond the traditional five, he'll definitely get the feeling that I might pack up and head off to Australia after all.