Taking the Scenic Route

I worked up some sock yarn on some #1s and #3s.  I need a gauge of 8st/inch.  On the #3s I got 7 stitches and on the #1s I got 9 stitches.  Guess what size I don’t own.  lol.  I gotta tell you, knitting on #1s feels a little like knitting on long toothpicks.  I thought it would be tedious to knit at such a small scale, but I am really liking it.  My hands don’t hurt as much the next day which is a big bonus too. 

Does anybody know of a lace pattern for sunflowers that would fit on a hat for Zora?  She needs some summer hats and one of her outfits would be great with sunflower pattern and the yarn I have is a yellow cotton that will probably be worked up on #3s.  The limited stitch libraries I have don’t have anything that is good for what I am wanting.  Any ideas?  

I am scanning in some old photos and ran into these gems.  Guess who?

Now a much older picture.  We have no idea who this is, but deduce that it is probably taken in Italy.  What intriged me was the naked baby on her lap.  Well, that and the fact that everybody obviously held still long enough to take a picture.  If I would have grown up in that time period, there would be no non-blurry pictures of me.  lol.

We think we know why Zane has been a chewing maniac of late.  His bottom tooth is loose and wiggly.  We have noticed that his teeth were growing apart on his lower jaw over the last months, but I didn’t think kids started losing teeth this early.  Of course, he got his teeth abnormally early too and I know I had my two front teeth out the Chrith-muth when I wath thix. (6) (yeah, thanks mom.  lol.  my front teeth were marginally loose and mom ‘helped them along’ so I could sing “All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth” for everybody.  *shaking head* )  It looks like he will be starting to lose his baby teeth soon.  To fast for this mama.  He needs his baby teeth, he is still my baby!

Ok, so I probably shouldn’t write about politics, but hey, it’s my blog and I can write what I want.

I bet you think you could guess my opinion of “In Inconvenient Truth” since I definitely lean liberal.  You would be wrong.  I really didn’t like it at all, for several reasons. 

1. I am less sold on ‘global warming’ after the film than I was before the film.  I found a lot of room for the statistics to be manipulated and interpreted.  I totally agree that there is a shift, but I am more in the camp of a polar shift causing climate change than global warming.  I am also not buying a total doomsday scenario.
2. It made some basic assumptions (like the measurement of temperature was as accurate in the past as it is now) that I just am not comfortable hanging an entire theory over.
3. The voice-overs.  ugh.  After a while I felt like the movie was more about manipulating my emotions than presenting me with actual science.  The science in the film could have been put in 10 minutes or so.  I would rather see that and then a discussion of how they arrived at the statistics (methods used, exact descriptions, the science stuff…how the studies were done precisely).  I felt like I was wasting my time listening to sentimental bs about a scientific issue.  It actually made me more angry when I looked back on it than it did at the time because it seemed purposeless.  Granted, my version would have been over the head of a lot of people and would have garnered criticism for being to dry, but that is what *I* would have liked to have seen.  Plus, I felt like if the science were totally sound, like they kept insisting it was, they would have spent time defending the science instead of that halting beatnik style voice and swelling music over nature cinematography.  And why did he put the thing in about the elections in Florida.  Why?!?  I think the election was stolen from him and despise Bush, but I don’t understand the purpose of putting it in the film, unless, of course, the film was more about him than the issue.

I rarely debate the issue with anybody though because the RESULT of people believing in global warming is totally in line with my belief system.  If people need to believe that global warming exists and the only solution is to be better stewards of our earth, leave a smaller ecologic footprint and find alternative fuel sources, then I will gladly push the global warming agenda.  I think that as Christians we should be doing this.  Jesus talks more about being stewards of earth than He does about almost all other issues, with the exception of being loving and kind to people.  Finding alternate fuels serves both of these….better use of resources and less violence and war trying to get to the fossil fuels.  win-win situation there.

In other politics –

I am still a big fan of Obama.  Everything I hear about him makes me like him even more.  I love his idealism, his energy and his vision.  I am also growing tired of the spam and false information I keep finding in my email.  It is like there is no REAL reason to dislike him, so people are making stuff up to attack his character.  I can respect disagreeing, but I just find it infuriating when I get a bunch of lies disguised as ‘information’.  I am sure there are people stupid enough to believe it too.

On the other hand, I am less than enchanted with Hilary.  I liked Bill for the most part.  I didn’t agree with some of his legislation, but overall, I liked him.  I think the only way I would vote for Hillary is if she was the lesser of two evils.  It wouldn’t be hard for a Republican to be a greater evil, but I imagine that there are a few I wouldn’t have a problem with since I am fairly moderate.  About the only motivation for seeing Hillary as president is seeing Bill as the first man (or whatever that would be called). 

Feeling a little more human today.  That is good.  Accomplished something this morning I have been waiting to do for years…paid off a debt.  We bought a stove about the time Zane was concieved on a brand spankin’ new Sears card and, shortly after, our lives got really complicated and that debt kept growing.  For a while we were able to make payments, but we lost the ability to pay when dh got laid off when Zane was 5 months old.  It has been hanging over our heads ever since.  Until this morning.  I spent a few hours on the phone verifying the people now harrassing us were the legit owners of the account now, and they were, and gave them a counter-offer (knocking off just a bit, because the offer wasn’t as outrageous as the previous ones) and they accepted.  So, that is no longer hanging over us.  That was our biggest consumer debt.  In the end, we probably paid for the stove, that, ironically we never even used, about 3 or 4 times over, but never put anything on a credit card again and it was the last big credit goof we ever made. 

http://www.xanga.com/zac_zac/570682351/item.html

edited to add:  that is my maternal grandma and my uncle’s first wife in that picture with me.

I now understand why miss Zora has been miss cranky pants.  She shared.  I feel like crap today, even though I don’t have much of a fever.  I am really glad now that I have let her nurse and snuggle as much as she wanted to, even though I was about to lose my mind with the amount of attention she was demanding while STILL crying.  Ugh.  I want to just curl up and sleep and be left alone, so it is even harder to have patience now.  We aren’t going to his literacy playgroup again this week because I feel dizzy-ish and have zero business driving, much less hanging around a roomful of kids and teachers.  

In a really unusual twist, Zach got sick a day before me.  However, he is doing better today already, so maybe this will be short-lived for me.  Serves me right for pointing out yesterday that maybe I wasn’t sick because I had been vigilant with my vitamins.  lol

Zach discovered today that it isn’t an ST student that has been driving us nuts, it is the OT student.   Maybe OTs don’t have as much education on how to interact with ASD kids or something.  I will still be talking to the main teacher about it because I am pretty sure that kind of aggressive interaction with kids isn’t going to work well for a lot of kids and she needs to be more aware of how her actions are being percieved before she goes out and does this with hundreds of kids.

Nothing particularly dramatic, but this week has really been tough.  Zora is pretty much crying all.the.time.  She is teething again, and I think she just had a growth spurt, she seems gassy, we are fighting a diaper rash on and off, and possibly has a sore throat (probably from crying).  She is mostly wanting me, but even in my arms she is still only consoled some of the time.  She isn’t running a fever or anything like that, just grumpy and not sleeping well, which is making her even more grumpy.  I am so tired of hearing crying.  It is so frustrating and I can’t seem to ‘fix’ it. 

Zane, on the other hand, is doing great.  He is getting back to normal and making gains again.  He is ever so slightly becoming more understandable and we are able to pick out words in his spontaneous phrases that have always sounded like speech, but we could never understand.  He made me my first valentine on Monday in ST (and a second one yesterday at preschool), and made one for his daddy today.  *happy tears* For each of us he came running into the apartment all excited to give it to us.  I am the luckiest mama EVER. 

I can’t find the second one.  I keep putting it up next to my computer so I can look at it and he keeps absconding with it.  lol.  I guess he is proud of it.  I’ll post pictures of it tomorrow, hopefully the second one will turn up.

On other notes, I need to remember to tell the individual therapy ST people tomorrow that he needs to have ‘how to grab the pencil so you can hold it correctly’ re-inforced.  In every other ST/OT setting, we are working on pencil grip, although I am insisting on teaching it in both hands because he isn’t showing a preference and I don’t think it is right to decide for him.  (I think that is irritating everybody except the OT simply because it isn’t convienient for them).  I also need to talk to the preschool teacher because I am going to go clean off on one of the ST student teachers if she doesn’t back off a bit.  She greets Zane by grabbing his shoulders and getting right up into his face to try and garner eye contact…like 3-4 inches from his nose.  Dude, eye contact is not important enough to torture him over it.  I know plenty of people with less that spectacular eye contact and I wouldn’t DREAM of getting into their face like that.  Just because he is a kid is no reason to not treat him with the same respect you would treat an adult.  She also, evidently, kept making ‘helpful’ comments to dh when he was the one attending the Valentine workshop at the school with Zane.  Zach said she was downright insulting to him, treating him like it was a total novelty that the Dad was the one helping instead of mom.  He said it was everything he could do not to lose it with her.

It’s been a tough day. 

Zach took Zane to preschool, then I got Zora all bundled up and took Zach over to Robert’s place and dropped him off and ran back to pick up Zane.  Originally, I was going to take Zane back to the literacy playgroup in the afternoon and then run to the funeral, but when we discovered that the funeral was about as far across town as possible for us and started the same time as his preschool, we decided that Robert needed us more than Zane needed to be in preschool.  So, after I picked up Zane I had less than an hour to get the three of us fed and dressed and back out the door.  It was mad test in multitasking.  Zane didn’t want to get changed, he didn’t want to wear his black shoes (no biggie, that one I could accommodate) and he wasn’t thrilled to be leaving.  Zora was a crying mess because it hit right when her nap should have been.  She flailed and screamed as I was changing diapers and dressing her.  I also had to remember to grab Zane’s gameboy and games, the card Zach forgot this morning, and directions to get there.  Oh, and my period started.  I felt like I had been run over by the time I straggled out the door.

The only thing I didn’t check before leaving was the traffic reports, because that isn’t really something you do around here very often.  I ended up in massive road construction for miles once I got off the interstate.  Ugh.  I did get there eventually though, but was about 5 minutes late.  We walked in to the sanctuary and Zora starts crying and Zane can’t sit.  I start nursing Zora to help quiet her down and Zach gives Zane the gameboy with the volume off and he starts protesting rather loudly to having the volume off.  With Zora still latched on, I try to scoop up Zane and he gets even louder.  Zach helps me out of the sanctuary and I send him back in to be with his friend.  After some pinballing around the not-kid friendly lobby, I find a tiny viewing room that isn’t in use, close the doors and lock the kids in with me so the noise is at least contained.  Both calm down after a few minutes.  Zane settles in to his game and I do endless rounds of patty cake and itsy bitsy spider to keep Zora entertained.  Eventually I hear Eilysh out in the hallway with her Grandma (Dori’s mom) and poke my head out.  Grandma was dealing with the beginning of a tantrum because she wanted to go outside, and I say hi, getting Grandma’s attention, who then gets Eilysh to to notice Zora.  That had her jogging back away from the door, and we spent the last part of the services watching the girls play together and talking.  It was probably the person I knew the best at the funeral, outside of Robert’s immediate family, because we had been at so many of their family gatherings before. 

I really would have liked to have seen the service.  Zach said it was an interesting combination of Christian and Native American (Cherokee I believe), with reading of Psalms 23, and then some ceremonial dances and chants by a medicine woman. 

After the funeral we went back to their house and hung out for a while.  Eventually we came home and Zach all but passed out from exhaustion after the difficult day.  As it turned out, we were the only people, beside’s Dori’s folks, who were there but not related to the deceased.  None of Robert’s other friends showed up.  I am disappointed for him because I know some of his friends have been friends since childhood and I know him well enough to know that, even though he will say it is fine, he is going to be hurt by it.

Robert is planning on coming over tonight, so I need to clean up the tornado I created when I was getting the kids ready.  *sigh*

I am glad the day is over.  I wish there was a way I could take away this pain for Robert.