Jake said Blue

Perhaps he was leaning Obama? He was choosing between crayons and his teacher said "Jake you have only two more to choose from. Which color do you want, brown or blue?" and he answered: "Blue!" and grabbed the crayon and dropped it in front of his teacher.

Go Blue (states!)

Grocery Shopping with Coupons

Takes about an hour longer than  it would otherwise. Luckily  we were fortified by a bagel  which we procured during a morning visit with Leila and her mom Pollyanna. Here are our cute kids at the table.

We Voted!

Yesterday actually, but it was really exciting this time.. and made slightly more complicated by the fact that we vote by mail and therefore had to fend off small Halloween-candied grubby fingers from ruining our ballots while we voted.

We dropped our ballots off downtown. We are the County Seat, so there was actually an early voter area open as well. It was so great to see all of those people in line to vote. Hundreds of people in line. Will it be record turn out this year? Wouldn't that be great if every American who is eligible to vote, actually voted? I cannot imagine not voting. I feel like it is one of those things that reminds me of how lucky I am to live in the United States. Did you watch the John Adams series on HBO? I cried when they they voted on the resolution to declare independence. The bravery! The courage! And then there's the women's suffrage movement How could you be a woman and NOT vote? It took until 1920? jeesh. 

 

Political discussion is generally interesting in my family (especially with my family of origin). We are an opinionated lot, mostly the type that pays attention to the news, the price of oil, the DJI We are admittedly, rather homogoneous: white Californians who own homes and can read, but the differences start after that: private school, public school, GED or college, Christian or Jewish or Uncertain, Pro or Anti Choice, and obviously different generations are in different places in our lives. We are in the midst of health care costs for a disabled child, and wondering about school vouchers, and saving for our children's college education. Perhaps we overlap on capital gains for home sales, and each have an interest in the estate taxes for different reasons. The conversations have finally become a respectful acknowledgement of differences. I *think* that my parents are starting to see that I am not  "crazy hippy" from Berkeley who is so liberal I want to live in a socialist country. It's possible that they are starting to treat me as if I am merely an adult with a different opinion which has been thought out just as thoroughly as their opinions. I am more liberal than any of my parents, but I laugh because most of the things I think? I  thought them before I even went to college, which means that they influenced me (and for a longer period of time)  than four and a half years at Berkeley ever did... it's their own fault for raising me to think (how's that for spin).

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I am sort of feeling like all of the talk from the candidates is just rhetoric. The country is sort of broken right now. We all believe that we are resource depleted or going there, so we are tightening our belts and not spending, which makes stores go out of business which puts factories at a slow down so there are more unemployed people with less money to spend on things. It is a cycle, and in my odd mind it is a cycle that is fixed one person at a time (with some bank bailouts along the way probably). If we believe that things are looking better? Then that little "Consumer Confidence Index" will look great and the traders will trade on that news. I know it's not as simple as that, and certainly Descartes is trying to ensure that I do not "do my part" by buying everything at Target, but I am trying to stay positive. It will NOT be years and years of depression. I cannot bear the idea that the peak of my husband's career will be during the longest economic depression the country has ever seen. I cannot be consumed by the idea that (the collective) we may be the first generation which is less successful than the previous generation, and less financially secure.  I refuse. I will remain optimistic (is this sounding like more Jack Handy?)

and I will remain hopeful. 

NaBloPoMo

It's National Blog Posting Month again. I toyed with the idea of joining the National Novel Writing Month game, but decided that working on CISWY (www.canisitwithyou.org) is enough for now. I am already behind (right Squid?)

Halloween went off fairly well, considering the rain we were expected to have, the disabled kid we have and the crazy week Descartes has had at work. I still don't really like the holiday. I don't like watching children be picky when a kind neighbor offers a bowl of treats, and it equally annoys me when someone opens the door with a bowl of candy the size of New Jersey and gives each child a dum dum lollipop and says she needs to save some for the next (non-existent in these hills) children. That sounds awful doesn't it? I guess the adult part is secondary, mostly it's the chances for children to be greedy that makes me a bit crazy. The kids we were with though were for the most part really very nice, and always said thank you and/or have a good night. They also had interesting costumes and stuck together and used flashlights, and were sweet with the little ones. 

It's fine. I don't need to like every celebration right? I like New Year's day. Yeah. 

But Jake loved it. He laughed. He did a great job, and Descartes got Jake's wheelchair and wheeled him up and down the hills. I swear it looked like a flat street when we parked. Descartes passed out on the couch when we got home,and the children fell sound asleep within 15 minutes. 

Long day. long week. 

Happy Halloween. Happy first blo of the mo

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I just re-read this post this morning and I sound like a curmudgeon! Our entire family had a great time last night...the children were fantastic, the costumes were great, the food was delicious, and perhaps I just needed some sleep to better appreciate all of it. Thanks friends.

All Treats

Jake and Lucy are home today... no school. We may head to the Cal Academy of Sciences

if we can get it together. It's chillier this morning and it's rainy and overcast.. and Californians are bad drivers who cannot figure out how to drive in the rain after all these years, so I am always loathe to get on a highway but this is all beside the point...

Jake said "Trick or Treat".

Jake SAID "TRICK OR TREAT"!

His bus driver told me that he said it on the bus yesterday afternoon. His teacher was talking with all of the kids as they were being pinned down. buckled in.

She asked the kids "Who's going to say Trick or Treat?" and they were answering, and Jake at the front of the bus said "I say trick or treat."

and from the back of the bus his driver, who speaks English as a second language, said "Jake! I heard you say trick or treat." and ran up and hugged him.

She told me all about it when they arrived in front of our house, and I mostly believed her, and wanted to encourage Jake so I asked him if he had said it... and he smiled and giggled!

then

this morning I asked him, when it was just the two of us lounging on my bed, "When we go out to night to get candy, what do you say?"

and he said "trick or treat" and he smiled.

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appropriate language, answering a question, responding to a general query put out to a group, 

timely responses 

what's happening? is he talking more often? will there be more?

hope is such a painful wonderful emotion.

Jack Handy by Jennyalice

Tonight I talked for a very long time with my dear friend DB (Descartes did too.. which is impressive because Descartes probably doesn't even know where the phone hangs up in the house he uses it so infrequently). DB is in a place few of us ever thought she would be. She's probably going down the path to being a "divorcee". Phew. Wow. 

So a whole new chapter of life, and so we talked through what it means to be this "new person". Actually we talked a lot about deciding who exactly we are in this life, any life. I am trying to be the same person wherever I am, with the same moral code, a similar disposition; dynamic but stable. Somehow I want to recognize that I am this person now because of all that I have encountered; the fabric of my life makes me who I am but doesn't dictate my future entirely. I know  I am not going to wake up and be someone new, and neither is she, but I can make changes, make choices.

While we were talking she said please just email me some of these things we've been talking about. They don't encompass our entire conversation, nor is it my new mantra, but here are my "Jack Handy" thoughts for the evening

I am trying to be a woman first who has a husband and children. I need to be me first. I need to figure out what it means to walk a mile in my own shoes. If I do not know who I am  I cannot effectively be much to anyone else, not my spouse or my children. 

I spend time with people I respect and admire. I want to cultivate relationships with those people who have attributes which I want to emulate. I do not waste my time with people or in places that do not add to my heart or spirit. I start fresh every morning. I wash my regrets away at night when I wash my face.

I do my best. 

I choose the right thing whenever I possibly can. 

I love.

Time Slows Down

Today, twice I double checked my phone for its clock... it seems that I gained extra time in this Peet's Coffee shop. That almost never happens to me. It could be that this is the first true alone time I have had in weeks. 

I worked on the book for a bit. I need to use my bigger screen at home to get the paragraph spacing right, and see the layout.. and try to get the pagination right ( and trimmed so Squid doesn't cil me.) It is exciting to work on it. I know we don't have an agent.. that there's no flashy book tour, but I feel good knowing that the proceeds all go to SEPTAR and there are kids who might read the words on those pages and feel just a little bit better, a little less alone. God willing and the creek don't rise, the book should be available mid-November.

Jake and I went to urgent care yesterday. He does not have a broken meta-tarsal, as was feared. After a few x-rays we discovered he had only chipped a little tiny bit off of a little bitty bone. Given that one quarter of all the bones in the human body are in the feet, it is not surprising that he would break something. We are having the convergence I think of a few things:

• Jake has profound disabilities. He is unable to effectively communicate when he is in danger or injured. 
• Jake does have cerebral palsy. We forget this sometimes because he is so physical, and he eats by mouth and he has no tubes or crutches, and mostly does not use a wheelchair. Most of the kids we know with CP, they are more stereotypical. 
  
• Jake is an eight year old boy. He loves to climb and jump and explore and race around and feel the dirt between his toes. 
• Jake likes being in bare feet.

I had not actually prepared for weekly urgent care/hospital visits. I did not break any bones until I was 11 I think. By his age I had chipped a tooth,  and had stitches (once), but I'm pretty sure I didn't break anything until the roller skating incident. They used to have speed skate/a race at least once during each skate night. I was pretty fast, but not that fast, and was especially not in the winner category when I tripped over my own slates and landed on my right wrist. I also broke my left wrist falling off of someone's back in a game of horse (now who the hell was I ever smaller than? Perhaps that's why I fell?), and the third break, on my right arm again was from? I have no idea. I just remember that I had a wrist brace on both arms for three days during a period of time when one was healing and the other had been fractured.

Anywhoooo. I guess I forgot that Jake would get injured from normal playing too. I read a lot. I played some sports and rode my bike, but for the most part, Jake's play life is much more physical than mine ever was. I am trying to find a balance between keeping him safe and keeping him from being bored. 

Jake's bus is coming soon. I must swill my coffee and head back home to pick him up from the bus. It's been a nice little vortex here, full of time, no children,  many business conversations going on around me. I am well caffeinated now, and thus fortified against what this afternoon may bring. Hopefully no injuries. These co-pays are killing me.

She's Incredible

before breakfast...


and later at the Halloween party...

Chit Chat

Sometimes in this little Special Needs community I have become a part of, we joke that the "apple doesn't fall far from the tree." Meaning that it is not always surprising to meet the parents of a special needs kid and discover they are just as odd if not more quirky than their child.

I have noticed lately that little Lucy is a rather chatty little girl. She came out ready to go. At 2 hours old she had her eyes wide open and her mouth poised to speak. She has a LOT to say. She says it well, very well even, for a not yet 2.5 year old in big long sentences sometimes. She is remarkable, and people, friends, find it amusing to note that she "talks almost as much as her mother."

That's the other thing about these quirky kids, and more often their parents... we don't aways get social cues. This was one area that I had always thought myself rather savvy, the social cues part, but I am thinking lately that I have really, really, not heard all of the subtle and not so subtle ways people have been letting me know that I talk too much; too much, too often, over people, through people, dominating conversations and dictating when others speak. This trait I had always put on my assets side, the side with thin ankles and a college education, when it's looking more like this trait falls, apparently much more solidly on the side with thinning hair and my inability to remember people's names. I am ashamed.

I have always filled the space. Ask my sister, my dad. It's a family joke right? Actually I think I AM the family joke, and now with a bunch of people I really admire, I am starting to feel that way too.

How does it happen that something I thought was a skill, something I actually liked about myself, has become something that has gotten away from me and has ultimately turned into a flaw? Does this happen to other people? Are there things you thought you were good at that end up being something everyone else hates about you? Something you never thought of as a problem that once it comes to light makes you toss and turn?

We are loathe to label our children because we are afraid it will define them, limit them, make it so it's hard for people to look past their disability. What if they change or develop past that label? Will anyone notice, or will they look at what was decided about them years before and just prejudge them? What about when I am introduced as someone who talks "more than anyone else on the entire planet"? What chance do I have to learn new tricks there? Or will I also disappoint if I am tired and just don't feel like holding up both ends of the conversation? I used to love, love, sharing something funny that happened in my life, but I am realizing that I am so self conscious lately that I almost found myself unable to speak in front of a crowd the other night when I was on a panel. I've been speaking, or singing, in front of audiences since I was in the third grade. It's something I have done hundreds of times and enjoyed every single time without butterflies, and the last several times? well...

It's good to face your flaws. It's good to have people care enough to point them out to you. It gives you a chance to right them. Better now before I'm 40 so maybe I have a chance at the second half of my life of being a little less ego centric and little less selfish. Maybe I can ask more questions. I can hold my tongue and not share my opinion, because Lord knows I have one on every subject. I have already tried the not calling people thing; I don't need to be that phone call that people dread answering.

Although, and I'll be honest, I can have this sick feeling in my stomach and vow every night that tomorrow I will keep my mouth closed, but in the moment.. I don't know how. I don't know how to keep a story inside. I don't know how to give the short response. I don't understand how to keep the phone on the table when I want to share something. I don't know what it's like to walk past other people in the grocery store or on the street and not say hello, or chat with the checker or the person behind me in line. I've been teaching Lucy that we do not stare. I've been teaching that when we make eye contact with someone we say "Hello" or "Good morning" or "How are you?" I've been teaching her because people are going to be staring at my family a lot over her lifetime and I want her to be armed with words so she can make the situation of having a brother with special needs less awkward.. for herself, for others.

Lately I'm feeling like it's just one more thing I am doing wrong in the parenting department because clearly it's not working out for me to have learned to be a "Chatty Kathy".

Clean Not-So-Mini Van, Friends and Art

I cleaned out my car. This means I now have at least 2 Costco-sized, and 3 Trader Joe's bags filled with krap in my kitchen and guest room. That's the bad part. The good part is that I was able to pile friends in my car yesterday and wind our way all over the Bay Area.

Emerald Hills at Ep's house is a peaceful way to start an October morning. There are quail and deer and birds and had we stayed even a few moments longer we would have heard the bees buzzing in her lavender bushes. It is a slice of country just blocks from my own home. It is one of my new favorite places, which makes sense to me as this is now the second woman that I really like who has owned the house.

280 North is always a beautiful drive. The lanes are wide and the road sweeps in gentle curves back and forth... and people drive fast. I love to drive fast. From the back seat I am asked by Captain Blog "Are you a lead foot?" I ease off the pedal as Squid reminds the carload of potential San Bruno area drivers that this particular area is a happy hangout for the Po-lice. I ease our way into a pack of cars who have slowed to 70 and realize that I rarely relax.

The Golden Gate Bridge shed its fog for the morning and a necessary potty break landed us in the Vista Point parking lot with clear visibility all the way back to the San Francisco peninsula. I take a short walk around the parking lot and returnto my seat behind the wheel thinking, "Wow. We sure are lucky aren't we?"

Sebastopol is farther away than I remember, but not so far that my coffee cup still has some warm caffeine when we hit some sort of magical coffee hut/hip people mash-up. I enjoy a Lattacino, which is perfect for me unsweetened with less milk than a latte and more than a cappuccino. There are lots of children with striped tights and layers of clothing.

We head into downtown and unleash ourselves on the farmer's market. DT and I debate whether we need to create a makeshift icepack so we can enjoy tasty cheese later at home. We meander about. I eat a peach the size of my daughter's head and buy award winning honey and a loaf of bread which I share a bit of, but mostly I hold it and nibble on it as if it is a lollipop in my hand.

Do I have this out of order already? probably. It was the Sebastopol Art Trails, and at Squid's invitation we (mostly) follow a schedule of bliss which also includes time for amazing artists, lunch on a patio, a visit to a nursery and because we still had time a new tea house. One of my favorite stops was Patrick Amiot and Brigitte Laurent Their work is fantastic. It is whimsical and interesting and charming and edgy and beautifully painted and I want a sculpture in my front yard. I buy my sister a calendar, and hope that she will know that I wanted to buy her half the art in the place when she opens up the calendar for her birthday (which is today).

The countryside was beautiful, and while Squid is the most perfect navigator, I almost think she let me meander a bit on those winding roads purely because I was enjoying the scenery. The grape vines are all turning and the apple trees...the apple trees! Everywhere and loaded, and dropping their fruit. It would have been a good day to be a drifting horse, munching gravensteins here and Mcintosh there.

In Graton we viited two artists who share a space, and, I believe a life together, Lisa Beerntsen and Tony Spiers They also had a beautiful garden. They have been a part some incredible group art (Art Farm) which has been at Burning Man. It was neat to see the art in the studio, because my current life path does not indicate an adventure to Burning Man is going to happen. Lisa's art was very beautiful. In some of the current pieces she had incorporated vintage fabric. I love mixed media in general, and I love fabric even if I will probably never win any prizes for my sewing skills. I'm certain I will always have a pile of fabric in a box. Perhaps someday it will be vintage and I will make a mixed media art piece when I retire to Sebastopol.

We also visited Helen Caswell, a beautiful woman with a precious husband. (How many times have I said beautiful?) I would love to be the new renters on their expansive property. I wish she could be in my family, and in an eerie sense I feel like she is. My grandmother was an artist. She was many other things professionally, but I think had she been born in a different time or circumstance she could have made her life as an artist, as Helen has. Sifting through her prints I was amazed to see just so many portraits; so many faces she's painted over the years. I can't imagine having the ability to distinguish each face and render each one so accurately. Don't tell Descartes, but I bought two small prints. They are not originals of course, but I will love them as if they are.

Our last art stop of the day was Rik Olson. A charming man who manages to create beautiful and witty art in so many ways. He is one of the few masters of wood engraving left. It is painstaking work, and making color prints takes layers of art. Ep and I discussed the idea of thinking backwards and in steps and decided it will not be my next career. Rik also participated in this really cool benefit thing where they made prints using a steamroller.

After breathing in a little bitmore apple-scented air at the Olson studio we went back to downtown Sebastapol and tried Infusions The tea selection is amazing here.

Hmm funny here I am getting tired writing, just about the same time I got tired in real life.

The end of my story is that I enjoyed a really lovely day with some very lovely people and came home to my son sound asleep, my daughter awake for a potty break and my sweet husband tired, but just happy to see me, and not cranky at all about having watched the kids for more than 12 hours (of nearly all awake time). I got to read Lucy a story then pass out asleep on the couch before Descartes nudged me to go downstairs to bed.

Clean car, good friends, interesting art and a happy family. Now that's a pile of luck.