Winds of change

Seasonal change is in the air today. A cool wind blows, caressing us with the crisp scent of fall. Leaves are starting to scuttle on the sidewalk, and the carrots are ready to harvest.

Welcome, Professor Wind!

October gave a party;
The leaves by hundreds came -
The Chestnuts, Oaks, and Maples,
And leaves of every name.
The Sunshine spread a carpet,
And everything was grand,
Miss Weather led the dancing,
Professor Wind the band.
~George Cooper, "October's Party"

Late night musings

Sometimes I worry that things are getting lost in the shuffle of life. Am I doing the best that I can? Am I giving each child what he or she needs? Am I missing something big or something little that will become big?

Being a parent is stressful. What if I mess up? What little incident will the kids look back on with fondness or with horror twenty or thirty years from now?

We all do the best we can with what we know at the time. I know this. But am I doing my best?

The late night worries of a mother...

Isn't that Special?

I heard an interesting little ditty on NPR this morning while driving to the city. They played a snippet of a the question session at the end of a recent McCain rally. One woman spoke up with a comment for the media, not the candidate. She said (and I quote because I just listened to it again on the Morning Edition webcast) "We want the media to start doing their job and stop picking on little children because of their age and their pregnancies. Shame on you! Shame on all of you!", said to a ringing round of applause and catcalls from the audience (she starts talking at 1:50).

Oh. Really?

So it is no one's business who gets pregnant how and at what age except for the kid in question and the kid's parents, eh?

Tell that to all the teen moms that have been vilified by the Religious Right, the media and the Republican party for a couple of decades now.

Wait, those wicked teen moms made the mistake of not being privileged white kids of respected parents.

Hypocrites. Shame on you. Shame on all of you.

Reason #8976 I love my area

While at Cheese Days today, we stopped in at the Hospitality Tent to watch locally renowned chef Wave Kasprzak give a food demonstration. Wave is the chef and one of the owners of the four star The Dining Room at 209 Main in itty bitty nearby Monticello, a destination restaurant if there ever was one.

He was preparing Tomato Blue Cheese Bruschetta. I never thought about blue cheese on bruschetta, must give that a try some day. He also made canapes with leeks and prosciutto. The leek mixture smelled heavenly. As he was cooking and giving out the ingredients, he said that recipe sheets would be available at the end.

Then he stopped a second and told us he was not very good with recipes, that he did not use them often. So, he said, if anyone had any question, just give him a call. He would be happy to help.

I love it.

26 or even 28 please

Just a couple more hours in the day would be very helpful. That is all.

For disappearing acts, it's hard to beat what happens to the eight hours supposedly left after eight of sleep and eight of work.
~Doug Larson

Different Like Me

Isabella has some Big Issues going on, has for years, but it came to a head this year and we are getting her some help that she needs for her anxiety and other things. Unfortunately, she has been resistive at home to implementing some of the things we have been told to try for her sensory issues and her anxiety.

I cannot believe it took me until today to figure out the reason why. She had wanted the help, she has reacted positively right after the conversations with the therapists, she tells me they help when we do them, yet other times at home, she resists these completely. Well, except for the one strategy that has her earning a Really Cool Reward. That one she is all about doing.

Today, as she said that she did not want to implement a visual coping strategy if her friend came over, it hit me. She does not want to feel different, to have her peers realize what she is coping with. A few quiet questions confirmed this.

What could I say? She is different, but everyone has differences. We talked a little about what makes her different, what makes her siblings different, what makes me different, but still it didn't help much because they were not, as she said, "different like me". Today, more than any other day in my parenting career, I was thankful for the amazing community of parents I have known online in the last decade and their openness in sharing their lives and the lives of their children over the years. I was able to tell her about children who have the same issues she does or even more severe ones. Being able to talk about real people with real names was concrete and helped so much more than the abstract "there are lots of people with this."

Still, it breaks my heart to watch her struggle.

I just wish I could wrap her up and kiss it better like a skinned knee or stubbed toe.

Att-i-ca, Att-i-ca

Please help keep my husband out of jail!

Luis is getting locked up on September 30 in support of the Muscular Dystrophy Association. He needs to raise his bail of $1300 in donations, and luckily they give him advance time to get started.

If you can help, please visit Luis' Lock Up page. As much fun as it would be to tease him mercilessly for having to make phone calls asking for help while behind bars, it is a great cause and he hopes to raise more than he needs before the 30th.

Oh, even if he does raise enough bail, he still gets locked up for an hour or two! I promise to post pictures for all supporters.

I ams who I ams

So I was listening to NPR on the drive home from Madison a couple of days ago. They were doing a snippet on the new shishi coffee bar going in to a couple of hundred McDs in the northeast US. They aired a snippet of the commercial, which was supposed to mock Starbucks and coffee bars as something for elitist people. It went like this:

Woman 1: Did you hear McDs is serving lattes, mochas, espresso, capps..
Woman 2: That, that, that is .... GREAT. We can go there and start wearing lipstick and heels again, we don't have to listen to jazz, we can start reading trashy gossip magazines again.......

Once I picked my jaw up off the floor at the overbearingly divisive "us v them" mentality of the commercial, I started thinking.

Am I not supposed to go in to coffee bars wearing lipstick and heels? It would never have occurred to me there was a dress code or rules for people who frequent coffee bars or any other establishment.

To probably misquote a cartoon character of my youth, I ams who I ams.

In the last few years, I have become much more comfortable in my own skin, more at peace with who I am, that I was in my teens and twenties. My lack of confidence and ability to be myself made many of the experiences I had in those years something akin to torture.

Now I have enough peace to be someone who reads Mother Earth News, Gourmet, Midwest Living and People magazines. I have painted toes peeping out of my pink heeled slides which may wear with a fru-fru skirt to an organic event. I will sling my baby and breast feed him even at art center events where the average attendee is 68 and conservative. I embrace my lipstick and eye liner while vegetable gardening.

I like the improving me. I look forward to the woman I will be in another 20 years as I become even more comfortable with me. I make the prediction now that I won't dye my hair as it changes color, and I will probably switch to brighter lip sticks to contrast the hair. The heels will probably still be on my feet, but I will likely pay for the pedicure if bending down to paint them myself becomes harder. I will probably still like jazz, and I will probably have worked my way up to straight espresso.

What will you be in twenty years?

Stick to the Real News, Please

I am So Very Tired of the invasion of privacy that comes with each presidential election in the modern political climate.

John Edwards had an affair. So? Does it change his political beliefs and political record?

Sarah Palin's daughter is pregnant. So? Does that change who she is as a politician?

John McCain thought about leaving the Republican Party. Cindy McCain won't release her tax returns. Barack Obama received 15 parking tickets as a college kid that he didn't pay until 17 years later. Michelle Obama is on the board of a company that sells pickles and pepper to Wal-Mart. So? So? So? So?

I will vote based upon the individual candidate's espoused political stances and track records. Paparrazzi-ish stalking of candidates and sifting through the lives of the candidates and their entire immediate families cross the line in my opinion, and I want no part of it. Is it any wonder that the people best qualified for high political office in our country will not undergo the microscopic screening we call the electoral process?