Monday, April 30, 2012

Cliff hangers


Lets talk turkey.


Six turkeys to be exact. Bill and Ted and Thelma and Louise, Vern and Ernest.


They were my prestent to myself one day when I was feeling down.


I didn't know turkeys could enrich your life in more ways then by consuming them.


I scooped up the white turkey chick and showed KSS how one leg was twisting and turning backwards.


"This deformity sometimes happens to Turkeys K, Ernest will never be able to walk on it. He will be in pain all his life. That's why he has to be put down." I said without feeling. I gently set him back in the warm hay filled box. "farm life is filled with hard desisions." I turned to her and met her five year old tear filled blue eyes.


She awkwardly shifted her weight and readjusted her crooked leg with its heavy brace on it. She squeezed my hand. "If I had been born a turkey, you would have killed me too?" she whispered.


The crushing weight of her question leveled my heart to a point I stuggled to breath.


Many time in my life I have been biffed and sent straight to the mat in an emotional knock out.


I turn the page over to keep reading...only to find it blank. WHAT THE ?! AAAUUUGGHH! I did it to myself again! I flip the page back and re-read it, where was I going with this story? What happened next!

Sigh.

My writing folders are like that. Filled with snapshots of story fragments that I had hastily jotted down with full intention of expanding on at a later date. I get sucked into reading those files sometimes, totally oblivious to the fact that I am the author. That what I am reading are my words, and I can just pick up my pen and at any given moment and write more.

Enter discipline. Getting my mind to focus and write even when it doesn't want too. Writing for some comes easy, and to some extent its easy for me. When I am motivated. When I am not its like trying to cook pancakes from scratch with only having a bowl and a cup of flour to do it with.

I have lots of ingredients for my writing laying around. I just need to find the right motivation to get me to write. I am hoping this blog will give me some focus...cause heck I have been reading this author's work for sometime and she is really good. (P's first rule of being a writer, be your own biggest fan. If you don't want to read what you write how can you expect others to want too?) I need to stop wasting my talent and do more writing. I am a good writer and I have lived an interesting life, why not combine the two? I am a writer worth reading.

Need proof? check this out:


It definetly was not what I expected to hear when I picked up the phone.


"Medical records, this is P"


"Its JEH" his 10 year old voice cracking and a gaspy choking sob added the punctuation in his statement. "I ran over KSS she's laying in the drive way bleeding"


The adreneline reved and my heart stopped beating. I stepped up to the plate. "is she breathing?"


" I don't know, she's just laying there not moving"


"JEH hang up and call 911"


"I can't" he wailed and disolved into tears.


"JEH, hang up and I will call them" 


That moment seemed like forever. The severing of my one link to the kids. Silence in my ear as I tapped the receiver and punched in 911. As I calmly relayed the info to the dispacher, I became aware that my heart wasn't beating. I was in a weird frozen moment in time. No emotions, pure action.


The 911 operater commented "I have an ambulance responding, stay on the line...."


"No" I told her, "I'm on my way out there, those are my kids!"


I hung up the phone whirled and grabbed my purse and keys, and took flight. The over head page caught me as I was running past the nurses station. "P you have a call on line 2"


I lunged over the desk and grabbed the phone expecting it to be him telling me she was dead.


Instead I heard something that set my heart to beating again. 


"P its KSS! I'm ok!"


Over the course of my life I have heard many things that have set my heart to beating and have stopped it cold.


The nurse rushing into my hospital room and pointing at my 11 hour old son "PUT HIM TO BREAST HIS BLOOD SUGAR IS NON-COMPATIBLE WITH LIFE"


Stop.


Entering the NICU and hearing his tiny voice filling the place as he hollered about being hooked up to all the tubes.


Start.


Grandma handing the phone to me and as she ran for her car keys "MPs at the house with a gun"


Stop.


Putting the phone to my ear and hearing C and baby KSS both crying in the back ground.


Start.












You can stop frantically scrolling down now. I just did it to you again. I did warn you though heh, (Cliff hangers)

I made myself this deal years ago. I was in high school struggling to write and feeling discouraged. Part of it was I knew with my spelling/grammar issues, it was likely I would never be published. Um yeah, I am so old that when I went to high school there was no internet. Anyway I made this deal with myself..."you keep reading, and I will keep writing."

I think I want to amend that deal.

P lets work on breaking that bucking bronco of a writer in you. I see an unfocused talent there. Imagine how beautiful it would be if it was polished and perfected and dancing dressage in a show ring.

Sunday, April 29, 2012

Fighting with my husband


"You leaving early?" The charge nurse asked me as I walked past him at the nurses station.

"Yeah" I commented as I stopped to adjust my bag, " Have to go home and finish a fight with my husband."

His brow furrowed , "what are you fighting over?"

"England." I sighed. I waited for that to sink in a bit before I continued "I'm having a hard time stopping his bombers from taking out my bunkers on the coast. We are playing Panzer-General, I'm the British, he is the Germans"

He laughed and then gave a deep sigh..."I wish my wife would play war games with me. He is a lucky husband."

Nope I'm a lucky wife. To have been asked by a beautiful man to join him as his partner. After years of loneliness to discover my equal in a soft hearted gentleman who could accept me with all my flaws and prove to be a challenging opponent for our many battles.

I love fighting with Corey. Whether it be over the board in chess or with him in my group as we slay virtual bad guys in cyberspace. Sometimes I win, sometimes I get stomped. Yet I get back up and do it all over again. I am the type of wife who waits at the window, watching for my hubby to come home so we can fight.

We have these kinds of conversations at our house:

Son: Can you get me a glass of milk?
Mama: Just a second, I am almost dead.

Daughter: Dad? you kill mama?

Mama: AAGGHH!! who sniped me??!!
Son: wasn't me! I'm shooting my sister
Dad: (muffles giggle)

With four serious gamers in the house the competitions are ruthless at times. There is always a space battle or two going on. Plenty of lost sleep as we battle into the wee hours of the morning.

I love fighting with my son too. Have to watch him though, he's a sneaky one, he can get a fleet of Borg cubes coming through the worm hole to assimilate me. He's a worthy opponent just like his dad. Hansolo no slouch either, she loves to play games too. The old nintendo 64 in her little hands a formidable weapon.

Mama: AAGGHHH! who threw me into the lava?
Hansolo: You was in my way mama!

After twelve years of marriage I gave in and let Core teach me Birth of the Federation last week. You can see his game review here. Our very first game was the four of us. My daughter wasted no time getting a ship into my space and killing my scout. Do you know humiliating it is to be wiped out by a five year old? LOL.

I am not a big fan of this game. Its too slow for me.Too much micro-management and not enough storming the castle and combat for me. I am a melee type of gal. That is why I have resisted learning it. I gave in when I saw how much fun he was having playing with our children. It made him very happy to teach me....and even more gleefully happy to bombard my planets and take my systems away from me.

So many games out there so little time. Our living room looks like a computer lab / rec room. We have no time for chit chat at our house, it either log in, deal the cards, roll the dice or draw your weapon!



Farm life

Why do you want to read my blog?

Well for starters I might talk about you. You should keep up with what I am telling the internet about you.

Secondly you never know when I will post pictures of Poop, and you wouldn't want to miss out on something that fun.




That is Me, JWJS and Poopoutside. JWJS is all grown up and stationed in Japan. Poopoutside is happily living in where ever pigs go when they die. No doubt with a hug smile on his face after living a good life and escaping baconage.

I know you are wondering how such a fine hog ended up with the name Poopoutside. Hearing this story should give you all a very clear idea of what a truly insane person I am. Just in case you ever got plans to make me normal. I am too far gone.

When KSS was 3 and being potty trained Grandma set her potty chair outside on the porch. K would sit on it and watch the farm going ons. After many days and many tries and no success, grandma and I were so excited when she opened the door and shouted "I POOPEDOUTSIDE!"

We ran to marvel and her doings. We got to the door just in time to see TJ the doberman eat the turd.

K screamed "I POOPED OUTSIDE AND TJ ATE IT!!" and burst into tears.

Grandma and I laughed so hard we thought we were going to die.



Two days later at Abbey's having pizza K had followed me up to the counter and then since she was still walking slow in her AFOs I beat her back to the table. Grandma and I watched her slowly make her way down the isle. She stopped at each table and talked to everyone. We wondered what she was telling them. When she was two tables away from us we could make it out.

"I pooped outside and TJ ate it." she would tell them and them give them her famous smile, and head to the next table.

Oh K, oh how you made me laugh.

Being the kind of people we were Grandma and I ran that phrase into the ground endlessly for weeks.We leveled ourselves into giggling puddles by finding any excuse to wedge "I pooped outside and TJ ate it." in to the conversation.

So naturally when the scrawny runt pig came into my possession and Grandma asked what I was going to call him I said in all seriousness. "I'm going to call him Poopoutside."

Over his life his name got shortened down to Poopside, and then finally just Poop.

He was as funny as his name. I enjoyed him. One of my favorite memories was when the vacant land next to our farm was for sale. Poop's pen bordered that area. I had awoken late that morning and jumped out of bed to do chores. It was a beautiful sunny morning so I stepped into my farm boot and headed out in my birthday suit.

I got his food and went to his pen. "POOP!" I hollered. He was sleeping with his back to me. Since pigs are hard of hearing I screamed on the top of my lungs "HEY POOP OUTSIDE!!!" and banged the bucket against the fence post.

That is when everything swam into focus and I noticed the Realtor and a group of people in the next field. They were all looking at me like I was insane. They had a clear view of me but not my pig as he was in a wallow shallow.

Trying to clarify the situation I specified who I was calling to. "HEY YOU! YOU BIG PIG POOOOOOP!!!!"

This didn't help the situation. Apparently alarmed by the sight of a naked obscenity hollering woman the prospective buyers fled.

I am not sure why it took them so long to sell that land.

Saturday, April 28, 2012

...I see disabled kids....

Hansolo goes back in May for her third speech therapy eval. We started teaching her to read a month ago and breaking her speech down to the basic sounds really emphasized just how off she is.

With the family history and speech issues I am concerned. While she was having services at the tail end of 2010 she plateaued. I then asked to have her put on inactive so not to waste services. All along I have been hearing slight things in her speech that just set my THAT IS NOT NORMAL alarm bells to ringing. But I have been listening to those bells so long I have grown deaf.

After KSS was diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy I lost my ability to see normal kids. Something about having a panel of doctors tell you that the beautiful perfect child you love so dearly has brain damage (even though I already knew as Grandma and I had diagnosed her with it year and a 1/2 earlier) has altered my brain.

I see disabled kids where ever I go. Its like my eyes zoom in on everything. I can't stop checking out the kids I meet. Was that toe walking, minor flicks of the wrist, eye patterns, speech issues, tics etc etc...I am seeing?

So since I can no longer tell whats normal and what is not I instigated a re-eval. She ages out of the system in Sept as she starts first grade. It will be much easier to roll over into an IEP if she is already back on and receiving early intervention services.

In the Star Trek series they use universal translators to communicate with other species...I wish my brain was hard wired into one of those. At work I have learned to understand and decipher stroke speech, Alzheimer's speech, Parkinson's speech etc.....

Resident restlessly thrashing in bed.

I lean over his bed and gently touch his shoulder, "what is it Mr. Y?"

"Mifoogisold" he says.

"your foot is cold" I say as I readjust his blankets.

I never had issues with communicating with my residents. Never.

But when JUR was young and talking normally at 2 years old and then suddenly his speech dramatically changed over night when he was 3 my ability to translate disappeared. Then to add to the issue everyone  kept telling me he was normal.

It got really bad before he got help. Botched referrals that never happened, phone tag that never ended. I finally took him to a early intervention round up and found a speech therapist and made her listen to him. I didn't leave that day until I had gotten him help.

Its awful not to be able to talk with your son.

Its equally as painful when he is talking to you and you can't translate.

When he was four he used to try to get me to understand something.

"Mama, fjliaehfu efifahiasf jfoieuowifh." he would say. (those are not the exact sounds, but might as well have been, that is how clear the words were.)

My heart would just crush. I would get down to his level and ask, "can you show mama?"

He would tear up and again repeat slowly "fjliaehfu efifahiasf jfoieuowifh"

I would then make some attempts at translating. Each time his face would fall further as I didn't get it. Until it got to the point he was crying and just repeating it over and over.

"fjliaehfu efifahiasf jfoieuowifh fjliaehfu efifahiasf jfoieuowifh fjliaehfu efifahiasf jfoieuowifh fjliaehfu efifahiasf jfoieuowifh fjliaehfu efifahiasf jfoieuowifh fjliaehfu efifahiasf jfoieuowifh"

My soul would just contort and turn inside out and feel as if it was being skinned with a potato peeler. By then I just hold him and cry with him. Occasionally sobbing, "mama doesn't understand, I'm sorry...I"m sorry."

At last he would give up, his shoulders would slump and give me that, you failed me mama shrug and he would go off.

I would retreat to the bathroom and punch my face till it bruised.

Bless his soul he never gave up on me and he tried for months to get me to understand him. Then one day he stopped telling me those words.

 I missed something important.

I missed nothing with Hansolo. As soon as I saw she wasn't speaking right at 2 1/2  I got her evaluated. Not old enough for services they reevaluated her ON her birthday when she turned 3. Once the speech therapist got her to slow down she had a good listen.  She told me she was no longer hearing anything that alarmed her so after 3 months of ST she went on inactive.

Han's speech issues have never been anywhere close to the degree of her brothers, to the point if I were a normal parent I might not even notice.

They might tell me next month that I am being a overprotective mother and I have nothing to worry about her speech is fine. That's fine. I can handle that. I am not a normal mother, nor can I be after where my lives journey has taken me. I get freaked the hell out when I see/hear anything that is not textbook-Gerber baby-100%-spot-on normal in my kids. And that is okay too.

I just want a professional opinion....no NEED one actually. Just to put my heart at ease.

Friday, April 27, 2012

no babysitter

P's blog ground rules:

No posting nudie pictures.

Aaaw COMMON!! This is a whole new audience, they haven't seen my butt!

No nudie pictures, sorry woman your behind isn't cute anymore.

There is an expiration date on butt cuteness?? Well being a grown up sure sucks! grumble...fiiiiiine.


what about wardrobe malfunctions?

Are you serious? Do you need a chaperone?

Oh totally!!! LOL. I have yet to grow up. Heck I am barely house broken. I am two fig newtons away from throwing my own poop like a monkey.

I have been blessed to work for a company that allowed me to bring both my children to work with me. That was an experience like no other.  Tending to an infant and juggling my work in medical records, made for long exhausting days. The residents in the nursing home benefited too, they had a baby to play with.

I have two favorite memories.

The first one with my son. The male owner had come into medical records to talk to us.  I had swiveled my chair to face him and give him my full attention. JUR was happily having his boobie chow. As the boss talked he kept backing up and squirming his way out of the narrow small office. When he was gone my co-workers turned around bust up laughing.

At some point in the bosses talk, my son had popped off and turned his head to give the boss his full attention, leaving my giant DD industrial size nursing boob in clear view. I spent the rest of the day chuckling over wondering if HR was going to talk to me about boob harassment.

Years later it was Hansolo  the one at the bar having a drink. It was after 10 pm and I was at the nurses station doing paperwork. A resident wheeling by in his chair stopped to look over my shoulder and exclaimed: "FANTASTIC!!"

After he had gone one of the nurses piped up, "Aaaww isn't that sweet he thinks you breastfeeding is fantastic!"

I glanced up at her over my glasses. "I like to think he was commenting on my 41 year old boob."

P...you just broke the first rule of your blog.

Yeah I did...I should write others to break too.

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Round pen

Horses get lazy and cantankerous when you pull them in from the winter pasture and get them back to work. They will rebel and fight you till you get the bucks out.

My writers mind is like that.  Oh sure it was well disciplined and highly trained when I put it out to pasture twelve years ago to get married. I was actively writing and sending stuff out. I still have my first rejection notice.

I treasure it. It means more to me than if I had been published. Its proof that I am a writer. Not a good writer, but one none the less.

Hansolo my youngest is going into kindergarten this fall. I will have time to write again. Alone time.

ALL ALONE TIME.

My mind is still in the psychoticly gleeful stage of excitement over this pending break from 24/7 parenting the last oh, bazillion years. Do you realize I have been changing diapers since the 60's???

That makes me very old.

I started this blog cause KL asked me why I didn't have one. I could come up with no good reason. Surely the internet is complete without my run on sentences and bad spellings.

No?

Okay then lets do this.

Dog