In Remembrance of Me

Sunday, March 01, 2009

Procrastination Tool

1. What is your favorite sit-down restaurant? Rich & Charlie's in St. Louis

2. What food could you eat for 2 weeks straight and not get sick of it? Pizza

3. Have you ever had anything removed from your body? Do kids count?

4. What is the last heavy item you lifted? Do kids count?

5. Have you ever been knocked unconscious? nope

6. If it were possible, would you want to know the day you were going to die? nope

7. If you could change your name, what would you change it to? Soibhan

8. What’s your goal for the year? Get through it in one piece

9. Last person you hugged? Kids

10. First place you went this morning? Bathroom ;D

11. Do you always answer your phone? nope

12. It’s four in the morning and you get a text message, who is it? Rich, drunk at a pub talking about basketball or his girlfriend.

13. If you could change your eye color what would it be? Violet

14. What’s on your wish list for your birthday? Go up to Acadia

15. Does the future make you more nervous or excited? Nervous

16. Do you have any saved texts? Tons

17. Ever been in a car wreck? A couple

18. Do you have an accent? When I'm drunk

19. What was the last song to make you cry? Something's Gotta Give by Big Boi feat Mary J. Blige

20. What did you do last night? Watched some of season 2 of new Dr. Who

21. Have you ever felt like you hit rock bottom? OH yeah

22. Current hate right now? Tennant's leaving Dr. Who.

23. Met someone who changed your life? Yep

24. How did you bring in the New Year? Getting jumped on by kids

25. What song represents you? Dunno, suggestions?

posted by Kimber at 5:45 PM :: ~#~
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Sunday, February 15, 2009

Scrappy Meme

This called for a scrappy project in the round, so here's mine. Ah, I miss the days when she'd only cry a lot. LOL

posted by Kimber at 11:52 AM :: ~#~
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Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Thinking about parents and children

I've been reading a book Aunt Shirley got me for Xmas called "Raising Witches" which is quite the cool book, even without the witchy bits. One of the points it makes is that if you don't belong to a coven, it's very important create your own coming of age or initiation ceremony for the child. Pretty much every civilization has or has had such a ceremony so I can see that there is some general wisdom behind it. Which got me thinking, which is often scary and leads to convoluted reasoning and long, rambling blog posts.

My own parents, who I'm beginning to think didn't mean to be awful, but I'm not quite ready to go there yet, treated me like a recalcitrant seven year old my entire life. Until one day, during one of the biggest self-implosions of my idiotic youth, they turned around and said "You're a grown-up now, we can't tell you what to do." Thusly leaving me in a bizarre state of mixed euphoria and shell shock. I was never prepared for adulthood. I was never ushered into adulthood. In fact, it's just occurring to me, but they rather treated it the same way they taught me how to swim. They threw me over the side of the boat in the middle of the river and said swim to shore. Except then I had a life-jacket. If I hadn't had John when I was suddenly thrown into the raging current of adulthood, I probably would have completed the self-implosion, I suppose.

So I suppose it's part subconscious and part deliberate intent NOT to parent like I was done that has caused me to treat my own kids with a certain level of maturity. I've tried to let them know that they are not only going to be held responsible but that I am going to teach them how to be responsible and that they are capable of being responsible. I try to let them know what I expect of them, what the consequences are for their behavior, both positive and negative, and that it's completely up to them how they choose to use these responsibilities.

Last night at dinner, Aidan mentioned how cool it was to see the inside of the High School when they had the Holiday concert there. They got to see they lunch area and there were kids sitting on the floor eating, to which I said "Well, that's cool, we never got to do that." And there were kids sitting on the table, which Aidan thought was cool. At that point something in my head said I needed to draw a line. I have no idea why. LOL So I made a point of telling both of them that there are going to be some kids who do things that our rules don't allow, like sitting on furniture. I said I'm letting you know up front that at no point do I want to hear "so-and-so gets to do this" or "so-an-so's parent's let them do that" because I flat out don't care. I don't care what other people do, I don't care what other parents let their kids do. We have laid out a set of rules that don't only apply at home but everywhere they go for the rest of their lives or until they are 18 at which point they can follow the rules or move out. They seemed to accept that alright. I'm sure that won't last, but at least they've been forewarned. :D

This evening John found like five breakfast bar wrappers on the floor, under some stuff. Now I HATE that. And I've hollered at them about it MANY times before, so I was more than a little annoyed. Ok, I was pissed. So I lay down the ultimatum. The next time a breakfast bar wrapper is found on the floor, and I don't care who left it there, they are both going to get doomed. I think it's important that they kind of start looking out for each other a little bit. Especially Ian. He has enough trouble getting out of his own head, I at least want him to understand the concept of being part of a family unit. A team model kind of thing. Relying on and being relied on. I think that's a good thing.

The other day Aidan was goofing around while she was brushing her teeth and pulled the shower rod down. It's one of those tension rods so it doesn't take much. She tried to put it back up herself by standing on the side of the tub and asked Ian for help, but he just ignored her. I don't want him to feel like he needs to do things he isn't old enough to do, but I want him to understand that when someone asks for help, you should at least respond. Either by helping or getting help. I want him to feel like he is responsible as an older brother and member of this family to either help his little sister or come and get us when she needs help. I think Aidan is starting to get the responsibility thing, but at this point it's more of an after the fact thing. She'll get smudgy fingerprint mess all over the windows, but when she gets caught she's wicked happy to get the rag and clean up. Hopefully the "don't do it in the first place" thing will come later.

Dude, parenting ain't for wimps. Peace out.

posted by Kimber at 7:20 PM :: ~#~
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Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Nothing is painless

To quote The Princess Bride, "Life is pain, Princess. Anyone who tells you different is selling something."

Suicide is the ultimate selfish act. The most self-centered It Really Is All About Me decision someone could make. When you wake up every morning, you have to remind yourself that there are all these people depending on you and who care whether or not you get out of bed that day. And you have to reinforce inside your head that you have responsibilities, if you don't keep going bad things will happen to the people you care about. You won't be working to pay the bills anymore, you won't be there to make sure the school stays on track with your kids' education. On the days when you hear your kids both had three time outs at daycare, you spent $25 in gas to drive out to a work lunch to be "appreciated" and the best thing they can say about you is that you love technology and you're organized, when you take a day off because you're sick and the boss calls you because she can't figure out how to use the state Managed Care website, the next day when you come in everyone makes you feel guilty for not being there. Not one person expresses sincere pleasure in your continued existence, not for what you can do for them, but just because you are... The scales get way out of wack.

You start thinking how unfair it all is, how tired you are of people needing and expecting things from you. And you can't just jump in the car and drive because they're still there, inside your head. Back in the place you just left. You just want to drop it all. Just put it down cause it's so stupidly heavy and you're so damned tired of it all. You just want to tell them all "Let me go. Please. Just let me go. I'm tired and I want this for me." I'm tired. I'm just so tired.

posted by Kimber at 10:31 AM :: ~#~
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Sunday, June 22, 2008

Randomness

All this packing is making me sneeze. LOL Taking a break.

1. Who are your favorite authors? Isaac Asimov, Anne McCaffrey, Mercedes Lackey

2. What are your favorite books? Mists of Avalon, Foundation Series, Dragonriders of Pern Series.

3. What kind of books do you tend to read? Sci-fi, Romance, Mystery...etc...? Yes.

4. Do you prefer to borrow books from the library or buy them? Buy them (when I have the money. LOL)

5. Do you prefer hardcover or paperback? Hardcover, but they're rather expensive. :D

6. What was the last book you read? What are you reading now? Double Dealer, Max Allen Collins. See Left. :D

7. Do you read everyday? Something, not always my books.

8. On average how many books do you read per year? It's gone down quite a bit. 10-20 I'd say.

9. Do you belong to any book clubs? Used to.

10. Recommend a good book. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Series. First book that actually made me laugh out loud.

Monday is Read Aloud day here in Shine Family Summer School which will start after we get settled into the house. One of the things I thought I might do is find some books on responsibility and character building and have Aidan write reports on them. How a Geek responds to parenting predicaments. LOL

posted by Kimber at 12:52 PM :: ~#~
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Friday, June 20, 2008

Updates and whatnot

Hmmm...since last we encountered out intrepid heroine...

Meh. Let's see. Ian went to see the autism doc. According to the tests, he has 2 spikes in the borderline area of ADHD, but not enough that she would officially diagnose him with it. Which is fine because I really don't think he has it. He just needs a little help to get engaged in the world around him when it doesn't involve Pokèmon. His teacher was pretty good at that.

We had a bit of drama a few weeks ago. When I got the email from his Special Ed Case Worker saying that he's doing so well he doesn't need the Ed Tech anymore so she doesn't go down there, I was all happy. Then there was an issue they were having, can't remember what it was off the top of my head, but I emailed back and said, Hey, this might be a good way to utilize the Ed Tech time, to support him in this since he doesn't need her for other stuff. Well, that's when I got an email from the teacher saying Boy we'd love to have the Ed Tech back in the classroom, but she stopped coming. So yeah, I panic. I want to know what's going on that I'm getting two different stories from these two people about something as important as Ian's support in the classroom. So I decide I'm going to go down to the school and spend the day, just to see what's going on. I don't tell anyone I'm coming, I just show up. Well, I'm down waiting for the bus to get there when the principal comes out and kicks me out. Says I can't be there without letting them know I'm coming. Well OF COURSE they would say that. How else could they cover up the fact that they're screwing up if they actually let parents see what's going on in the school! I kicked and screamed and wrote the school board and all kinds of stuff, but before I got myself in too deep I heard from someone I work with that the school had just lost a law suit for doing something similar to another family. The fact that they would do it again after a judge telling them it was wrong led me to believe that any further pursuit of the issue on my part would be both painful and fruitless.

So I plunged myself into getting Ian situated at the new school ASAP. I wanted him to be able to go to Step Up day, meet the new teacher, see the classroom and the other kids so he would be prepared for it when school started the next year. The person I talked to at the new school led me to believe this wouldn't be a problem. I should have known better than to believe her after having found out that they had just forgotten to show up at Ian's PET meeting. The girl who took the message of when it would be was horribly embarrassed to realize she had put the sticky on her computer and forgot all about it. As far as I know they didn't go observe him in the classroom or talk to his teacher either. I think they had one conversation with his case worker. So when I called to find out about getting him registered, they tell me I have to have special permission from the superintendent's office to register him without a current address in the city. Well, of course we didn't get the special permission. So we scrambled to find a place to rent in the city, I arranged with out current landlord to move out a month early so we could get things in place in time for Step Up day. I won't go into the gorey details, but it was hideous and stressful.

Got it done, though. We're renting a little bitty house with absolutely no yard pretty close to downtown. John doesn't think it actually qualifies as a city, but I sure do. Anyway. I got both kids registered. They won't be going to the same school anymore. K-3 goes to a school way out in the sticks, right behind the high school. 4-5 go to a school just up the road from us, actually. They won't even ride the same bus, I believe. Aidan didn't get to go to her Step Up day because it was on the same day as their field trip to Ft. Williams and she'd been looking forward to it for a while. She's really going to miss her friends, but luckily at least one of them is moving to Windham as well, so that will be nice. (More about that later.) However, when I found out who her teacher was going to be I emailed him and he told me they were having an Ice Cream Social that night at the school. So we went to that and she had a great time. They have a nice play ground and a big ol hill out back. And her teacher seems very nice. Ian got to go to his Step Up day and it went well. His new case worker, at least I think she's going to be his new case worker, came along to observe, which I really appreciated. It was a bit chaotic as the teacher handed out a paper to fill out while she was going over the summer homework folder, and showing everyone the class pet. You're not going to believe what the class pet is. Wait for it.... a HERMIT CRAB! LOL She asks everyone to guess what's in the tank and our boy was the first one to answer right. She asks all kinds of questions about crabs and he's all over the answers. He tells her about the time he got pinched and she asked what you're supposed to do when that happens. After he answered that one she says "Well, I guess we know who's going to be the first one to take care of the pet!" Hee hee hee. My boy. I had to redirect him a couple times to get him to finish the sheet, but as I looked around, I realized that he wasn't the only one not finishing it. That actually made me feel a bit better. The teacher was trying to take pictures of the kids with her digital camera to put with the info sheets, but her camera wasn't working, so I with my "luggage" as John calls it, whip out mine and offer it to her. I tell her I'll put the pics on disc and send them to her. Getting in good with the teacher already, dude. Proactive I am.

For some unknown reason, Ian's teacher gave the kids two research projects at the end of the year. DOH! The first one was a simple biography of someone famous. Ian picked Steve Irwin, which is cool. We do all the research and he types up the paper, makes the poster, then we get a note saying they have to bring "something special" to the presentation to represent their person and dress up like their person. Oh brother! Well, he picks his huge stuffed crocodile as his special thing and since we don't have a lot of khaki hanging around the house we did the best we could with some cargo shorts and an animal TShirt. She had them do a demonstration of their person and Ian actually wrestled this stuffed crocodile in class. She sent home a picture on Tuesday. I'll get it up on MySpace as soon as I can. It's a riot. He got an Exceeds Expectations on that one. The other project was to pick a Maine animal and do a report and poster. This one was more detailed. The research questions were three pages. Now, we helped him a bit more with this one because some of the stuff was just to hard for him to read by himself, but since that's one of his accommodations at school I didn't feel to badly about it. I will cop to typing up the paper, but he actually answered the questions and composed the answers for me to type. He picked lobsters. I don't know what he got on it because she didn't send the grading sheet home, at least that I could find. However, she did give him a big ol rubber lobster toy because he was the only one to pick lobsters and he did his report at home, so I guess that's a good thing.

Overall he did well at school this year. Now I don't know if she was letting him skate on some stuff, but I don't think so. He does seem to know the material pretty well. Some of the stuff he forgets, like government stuff, but heck so do I sometimes. And he got all Exceeds in science. :D My little junior geek.

Aidan is another story all together. She got all 3s in subject matter, which as good as you can get. Well, I think she got one 2, but anyway. The girl is smarter by half than most regardless. However, her behavior went in the tank by the end of the year. UGH! Mostly 1s. ::cry:: Now I think at least some of it had to do with the fact that her teacher was rather lazy. She just kept telling me she thought Aidan had ADHD and never wanted to hear anything about perhaps she needed a different approach in the classroom. I'm hoping this new guy is better. Our PCP took one look at Aidan and said unequivocally that she doesn't have ADHD so we're all going to have to do some work and figure out how to get this girl turned around. I have already given up my dream of her going to Cornell. I refuse to drive around the Old Port at 3 in the morning looking for her when she's 16. If it kills me, she's not going to turn out like me, dangit.

On the last couple days of school, I gave Aidan some "business cards" with our contact info on it to give to her friends so they could stay in touch if they wanted to. Sure enough, yesterday I was sitting at my desk working and I get a call. It's for Aidan. I tell this little girl that Aidan's at daycare, can I take a message. I get her phone number and tell her Aidan will call her later. And on the drive home from daycare yesterday Aidan was chatting away with this kid on the phone. It was hilarious. "I'm going to be in this daycare until such and such, then I start my new daycare on such and such, but I won't be in any daycare on this day and I'd love to have a playdate." I'm still laughing! SHE'S SEVEN! She's seven and she needs an address book and a planner. Cripes.

Anyhoo. We're moving on the 28th. I couldn't get seamless transition with the internet, so I may be unreachable for a couple days there unless you have my phone number. And trust me, that's going to be painful for me. The internet is kind of like my security blanket. Even when I'm not on it, I just like knowing it's there and I can get on it if I want to. LOL It will also mean we won't have cable which will also suck, but I do have a backlog of movies I've been meaning to watch, so I suppose that will be a good excuse. Hee. We're going to be taking over a couple loads of stuff this weekend since we've paid for the last two weeks in June. Much easier in the long run to not have EVERYTHING piled up in that dinky little joint. Wouldn't be able to move. Literally. I mean this place is SMALL. I'm hoping it's only for a year and we can find something larger further out from the city. I'm going to be wicked uncomfortable in this joint. It's right next to an all night gas station and an oil change joint. ::shudder:: The very first investment is going to be blinds for all the windows.

Work is going well. I'm building up my cred as IT guru with the higher ups. I just wish that meant I'd get paid more. Sadly that's not likely to happen any time soon. My boss has been trying to get me a raise forever. It's gotten to the point that she actually suggested that the next time they try to add something to my job description I just say no. How sad is that?

So that's my rant and ramble for today. More later. Peace out.

posted by Kimber at 1:51 PM :: ~#~
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Tuesday, March 18, 2008

I am reminded

Saturday was Aidan's 7th birthday. We went to Jokers which is kind of a Chuck E. Cheese type thing. (I, being a dunderhead forgot my camera, but I took some pics at home so fear not. LOL ) This place has a GINORMOUS climbing structure though. I mean this thing is twice the size of the one at Chucky's. So we get there and one of the girls I work with is having an official "invite people and have cake and presents" part there because her daughter's birthday was the next day. They're the same age and I was hoping we would get there quick enough that they could play together, but John got home from work a half hour later than we expected so by the time we got there the kids were already out running around. So we sat and ate our pizza and doled out the tickets and tokens and then let loose the hounds of play.

They spent most of their time in the climbing structure and really, I don't blame em. Did I mention this thing was ginormous? The only one I've see that was bigger was in St. Louis and that one had older kids on staff to go in and find the little ones when they got lost. They did play some games and go on some of the "extra" things like the inflatable slide and moonhouse. Ian really wanted to get tickets so he could get Aidan something for her birthday with them. hee hee Pretty early on Aidan wanted me to go in with her and since I'd seen some other grown-ups in there I figured it would be alright so in I went. Dang it was fun. LOL I was climbin and slidin and all kinds of stuff just following Aidan around. Then I got out for a while so I could go do some stuff wtih Ian. We played and he went on some of the extras, then he wants me to go in the climbing structure with him. Cool! So in I go, but Ian just ain't an intrepid climbing structure explorer. He has his area he likes to stick to so when I suggested going up he wasn't having it. So I went up myself. ::bad mommy!:: I'm climbin and crawling and who should I run into but Aidan! So we head off and as we're passing through this juncture I look up and see a climbing hole in the mesh. I say to my ever adventurous daughter, lets see what's up there! And up we go. This thing went ALL the way to the top so by the time I got up there I was starting to feel a little something in the knees and I was breathin a bit but what should we find when we get up there ::insert heavenly choir here:: the opening to the CORKSCREW SLIDE!!! Oh yeah!!! So down she goes and down I go and of course, we gotta do it again. We're scramblin up there and at the top I'm definitely noticing those things a bit more, but...it's the CORKSCREW SLIDE! But when we got to the bottom and I roll out of that slide I suddenly hear my body screaming at me "YOU'RE 40 YOU IDIOT! STOP IT!" I swear that was the first time I'd actually felt the repercussions of being 40. I still didn't feel 40 though. I was rather offended that my body was being such a killjoy, truth be told. Youth really is wasted on the young. >p So once the tickets were used, tokens spent and stuff gotten at the prize counter we left and headed for home.

We stopped at Wal Mart because Aidan had some money from Great Grandma burning a hole in her pocket so to speak. She picked out a couple Pokèmon (gods they're taking over the whole house!) and we went home. We watched the first Pokèmon movie again (Ian finally got to watch it for the first time the night before and yes, I had to watch it again on Sunday) then we had dinner and cake and ice cream. And presents. Her favorite part. LOL She got some money from Gramma and Grampa and I got her some speakers for her Mix Max.

Daddy got her a little stuffed Turtwig. I never thought I'd ever say this, but I think there is finally a toy that has pulled even with if not taken the place of Blankie. She LOVES this thing! Takes it everywhere makes up whole stories about what it does when she's at school. She leaves it a little (imaginary) cell phone so it can call her if there's an emergency. She leaves him grass sandwiches for lunch and a little TV so he can watch in the afternoon after he trains in the morning. The first thing she did when I stopped to pick them up after school was to call Turtwig and let him know we were on our way home so he wouldn't worry. I'm kind of torn between being amused and being disturbed by the whole thing. LOL Last night when I was tucking her in she was talking to Turtwig and putting his little twig on his head down flat. I asked why and she said it was in case there were any girl Turtwigs around. He wanted to look slick for the ladies. O-o She has another smaller stuffed one that comes in a Pokèball called Pachirisu.

That was actually her very first Pokèmon. When we were getting ready for school today she said that Pachirisu slept through training yesterday because he was up all night playing rock, paper, scissors with himself. Tonight she told him he needed to sleep or tomorrow he'd get doomed. Honestly, I have a whole new respect for what goes on in that child's head. She may actually succeed where I have failed as an author someday. Ian and Aidan are both working extra hard this week to behave so they can watch the second Pokèmon movie this weekend. Oh joy. At least after they've watched them a couple times with us so we can make sure they're understanding everything and getting the appropriate message out of them they can watch the silly things on their own. Here's a picture of Aidan and her Turtwig (and Blankie).

I got a VERY good email from Ian's Special Ed Case Worker yesterday. She said that she and his teacher Mrs. E spoke and they've come to the conclusion that Ian is doing very well in class without his Ed Tech so they wondered if it would be alright if she only came to class when Mrs. E though Ian might need her. Geez, I wish Mrs. E could be his teacher forever. I said sure, as long as he is doing well, keeping up and interacting appropriately in class I'm all about him getting used to doing it on his own. I decided that it was time I put that into practice at home as well, so yesterday I told him about the email and said that from now on, he would be doing his homework without me being in the room with him. If he ran into trouble he could ask for help, but he needed to keep himself on task and get everything done on his own. I was a bit nervous, but I'll be buggered if he didn't do great. Of course the first page of homework is always the easiest. It's just sorting spelling words. He flew through that and only flipped a couple of Ss backward. The second page is a bit harder as it has questions he has to read and answer with the appropriate spelling word. When he came and told me he was ready to do his homework today I told him he was on his own again and I could tell HE was a little nervous about it this time. But I told him the same thing, if he got stuck come and get me, but otherwise he was on his own. He got stuck maybe three times on the whole page and only made one error aside from a flipped S. Once again I am confronted with the fact that my child is WAY more capable than I'm giving him credit for. Here I am trying to make sure he's able to advance on par with his peers and it seems I may actually be holding him back. UGH Once I reviewed the page and told him how well he did his face just lit up like a spotlight. I hope he didn't think he couldn't do it because of me. Well, anyway, now we both know he can do it. LOL I really need someone to smack me in the head once in a while and remind me to give the boy more credit.

I'm taking him to the Autism Specialist tomorrow to get him re-evaluated. He hasn't had an evaluation since he was three and since he'll be going into a new school next year I want a current eval to present. They are also going to look and see if he has co-morbid ADHD, which is possible. I'm not ruling it out, because the boy is easily distracted and rather fidgety at times. And since Mrs. E isn't going to be his teacher next year, even though it's a better school district over all, he's not likely to do as well as he is this year, so I want a good, solid IEP in place when we get there. He's really going to miss his Ed Tech, she's been with him since Kindergarten. He already said it's going to be sad knowing he's not going to see her every day this year. I'm a little worried and probably over reacting, but what else is new.

I'll see if I can get some pics up at the MySpace of Aidan on her birthday in the next couple of days. I think that's it for now, though. Lord I can ramble. LOL Peace out.

posted by Kimber at 8:39 PM :: ~#~
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