This book lays out how Bush has trampled on our constitutionally guaranteed rights in a much more coherent manner than I can. Please, please read it!
This is a great book! Find it and read it! It’s unbelievable. We don’t have to drown people, strip them naked and terrorize them to get information! Who knew?
The only way the terrorists can win is if we allow ourselves to become like them.
Me: Sighing, “No, he really doesn’t.”
Every time Will gets a new teacher at school or goes to a new school I get the same frantic and disgusted phone call. I talk to them about poop for 5 minutes and usually they deal with it. (I could write a treatise on Will’s poop but I will spare you.)
The conversation continues thus:
A: “It really looks like diarrhea.”
Me: “I know. He’s had it for 7 years.”
A: “He sat on the toilet for 15 minutes.”
Me: “Often he’s in there for a half hour. It’s kind of a special place for him because everyone leaves him alone.”Will broke the toilet lid. I can’t even fully express my happiness at the fact that he broke the one thing that was not ugly in that room. Why not the Formica makeup counter or the tan specked soap holder? I’d even be happier if he had broken the tan specked tile towel holder! But, no; I think Karma either has a wicked sense of humor or is severely pissed off at me. And if it is the case of the latter I want to take this opportunity to sincerely and humbly apologize to Karma.
(I try not to mess with Karma because it never works out well for me – because well, I have a couple of kids that freelance for her.)
I need to buy a replacement lid and quickly because an open tank is an invitation to Will to be inventive. Case in point, I kept hearing the water run in the toilet and when I investigated I found that Will had stuffed a package of wet wipes down the drain. I don’t know what he’ll stuff down there next but I have a feeling I won’t like it.
I eventually stopped using that phrase.
Then I had Lizzy and she is more of a girly girl than Bri but in her own unique way. For instance, she started dressing herself at one and a half and she would only wear what she wanted to wear. She wanted pockets and belt loops. Knit pants or leggings? She wouldn't be caught dead in either. I would parade the most adorable clothes in front of her to hear, “No.” And she meant it!
When she was younger I would keep some of the clothes she refused in her drawer in hopes I might be able to get her to wear it at some future date. I think it worked once. I remember Brianne spent a half hour one morning convincing Lizzy to try on a non-preferred item of clothing. Lizzy put it on for her. But since I can’t waste 30 minutes every morning only to fail in my aim, she wears what she wants to as often as she can.
Lizzy is a child who literally wore a hole in plastic rain boots! Yes, she did. She will wear the same dress to church week after week after month after month. Case in point, she has four dresses in her closet. She’s worn the same one every week since November. But that isn’t even her record. She once wore the same skirt and top every week to church for five months straight. If I had any pretensions left at that point I would have been humiliated, but since I was mostly worried about Will stripping down to his underwear and parading up the aisle I was just relieved she had clothes on.
My brother in response, “Uh, it’s January.”
“We’ll build a snow cave to sleep in.”
“My ancestors came from
I know that water is ahead. I hope that today I will arrive in an oasis of happiness where no one is water boarded and where the government must get a warrant before they listen to my phone calls. Happy, happy day!
I can be proud of our President rather than frightened, disgusted and embarrassed.
He has now developed a new skill, a precocious teenage skill, that of saying, “Yeah, whatever, anything to get me out of here.” We were standing in the boy’s clothing section of Target. I showed him shirts and asked, “Do you like this one?” When I turned back around with a new shirt to show him, I happily noticed that he had taken off his shirt and was trying to squeeze into a Sponge Bob tee-shirt several sizes too small. “Will that shirt is too small. Do you like it? Do you want one? Put your shirt back on! It’s not your shirt.” I alternatively asked, pleaded and demanded as we tussled over it.
But I’d ruined everything and he said yes to everything just to get us out of there. But the next morning when I tried to get him to put on some of the new shirts I’d bought for him; he looked me square in the eye and sternly said, “All done!”
So, I made them an omelet. Because I was in a hurry I didn’t dice onion and green peppers to add to it – well, actually we had run out of green pepper too. Jake eyed the omelet suspiciously. His Something is Wrong meter was pinging. He took a bite. “It tastes like egg!” He complained. “I can’t taste the cheese because it doesn’t have green peppers!” He started complaining to Lizzy. “It’s not a true omelet! A true omelet has two things like: tomatoes and cheese, or green peppers and cheese, or red pepper and cheese!”
I interrupted him, “Put salsa or ketchup on it.”
“It tastes like egg!”
This is a child that only started eating green peppers willingly over the Christmas holiday. Truly, I wonder what he would have done if I’d added tomato. But I love the idea that I fed him a false omelet. Is that the culinary equivalent of a false church?
I had entered a state of wallpaper removal that I like to call the anti-zen. I was steaming and scraping off the wallpaper when I noticed a repeating zapping sound. I thought, “Darn it, I’d better check on that.” And stepped down to the chair to notice an even larger smoky haze had spread. I ran into the kitchen to find that Will had put the already burned waffles back into the toaster oven and turned it all the way up. A little flame was curling out of the toaster oven and charring the wicker napkin holder filled with paper napkins that was on top of the oven. I paused, wondering how to put out the fire. The zapping noise reminded me that I should pull the plug. I did, but smoke was still pouring out of the oven; so, I put it outside in the snow lest it should explode. Our house was still smoky when the kids got home from school and later when we opened the toaster oven we found ashes perfectly shaped into miniature waffles.
But sometimes, I just don’t learn the first time! Because later that day when Will wanted popcorn. I put the popcorn in the microwave, pushed start and walked away. Jacob found Will holding a towel in front of the microwave futilely trying to stop the clouds of white smoke pouring out from the microwave.
My husband was working (including the commute) 12 hour days and I came up with an absolutely brilliant plan that would save him time so he could spend more time with us. The car needed new brakes. I thought I could take the kids to the mall, drop the car off at Sears and then take the kids to lunch and play in the play space.
The first inkling I had that my plan was actually a really, really bad idea was when I tried to take the children into an actual store! I had Bri and Jake in a stroller and Will in a backpack but Jake wanted to touch everything and he wasn’t necessarily gentle with things. As I was already a ridiculous sight we quickly left the store. Then Jake saw an escalator. He really, really liked escalators and wanted to play on it. When I said no he started to scream and lean out of the stroller. I tried to distract him with a hamburger. It didn’t work. I tried to distract him with the play space. It didn’t work. In fact, I had three separate woman come up to me and ask if they could help me. But they couldn’t. I was trapped at the mall with three children five and under, two of which were autistic. The obvious response would have been to leave but my car wasn’t done yet! So, I walked the mall with a screaming three year old leaning out of the stroller.
I decided that I didn’t ever need to go to the mall again. And I didn’t go often and only by myself until I started going with Marcy. Today we went because I still hadn’t bought a calendar and the one I wanted was at the Calendar store. But I did a lot more shopping than walking today!
I’ve shaped his behavior enough that now he usually adds a “What’s your” to his previous query, “Name?” But now I have to stop the chest touching. The problem is that usually it makes me giggle. It’s ironic that we spent years trying to teach Will to point, and now he does, but . . . at the wrong thing!
On the way home NPR was doing a segment on Jazz. I heard a snapping sound from the back seat. I sneaked a peak only to see Lizzy swaying back and forth, waving her hands and snapping her fingers along to the music.
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