Taking the Scenic Route

We are officially a one car family now.  (one fairly crappy car, but one car).  Dad came up today and towed the Olds to it’s final resting place on the farm, where it will salvaged for parts.  It will turn on, but won’t stay on once it is put in gear, so he had to winch it up to the trailer.

Zane “fixing” something

It wasn’t a bad car when it was working.  The driver’s side window hadn’t worked for a while, so if you went through a drive through you had to open your door.  lol.  As much as it annoyed me, I was sorry to see it die.

Well, it certainly is heating up now.  I am so beyond shocked that the candidate I like the best is actually winning.  That has never happened before.  I have been a huge fan of Obama since I heard him speak at the democratic convention during Kerry’s campaign.  I wished he was running instead of Kerry.   In the intervening years, I have only grown to like him more.  He inspires me and makes me feel like maybe we can finally move forward as a country again.  I doubt all the damage of the Bush administration can be undone in one administration, but he would at least take us the right direction. 

It probably makes me a bad Democrat and feminist, but I am SO glad he is beating Hilary.  I really liked Bill for the most part, but Hilary has always bugged me.  I would love to see a woman as president, and I am glad to see one get powerful enough to run, but I don’t like her personally.  I would have a really, really hard time voting for her if it came down to it.  If she was against Huckabee (who is pure evil and has changed his image to trick Christians into voting for him since it worked so well for Bush) I would have to vote for her, and some of the other candidates would make me look twice.  If it were her and Ron Paul, I would be crossing party lines.

The thing that surprises me the most is that there is a a Republican candidate I actually don’t hate.  Ron Paul.   He is, without a doubt, the best candidate for Homeschooling.  Unlike the Huckabee, who is probably the worst candidate and has ruled against homeschooling in his administrations.  (isn’t he the one who made it illegal to homeschool special needs kids in his state?  I could be wrong on that, but it fits with some of the other things I have read about him)  I like his polices on the war (which are “get the heck out of there”) and he seems to want to go back to a gold/silver economic standard instead of just printing money when we need it.  He wants to get the foundation back and is very much a constitutionalist.  (something current Republicans have strayed very far from)  He seems very libertarian to me.  He seems to have something to tick everybody off, but it all is moving towards the original plan of how to run a democracy.  The thing that might stop me from voting for him is his desire to get rid of all subsidies, including farm subsidies.  From what I can tell, it would kill the family farm and not really put a dent in corporate farms.  It would be a sad day in this country if all the farms were corporate farms.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

eta:  after seeing some of the comments, I went to read some more about Ron Paul.  I had somehow missed the fact he is an extreme racist.  Yikes.  (I guess homeschool boards where I heard about him are very wacked)  I already knew there were some serious issues that I disagreed with him on, but I was appreciating his anti-war stance and that he doesn’t seem phony, like the rest of the pack.  I know I am voting for Obama, and would consider doing it on a write in if he isn’t the party’s candidate, but I wanted to at least see what the Republican field was and was so relieved to see somebody that wasn’t a neo-con.  Although I do still like his stance on some things, the racist stance is really disturbing.  It was one of the reasons I find Huckabee so terrible, so I guess I can just add this guy to that list. 

Just when I thought I could find a Republican that didn’t bother me too much.  lol.

It has been an unfun day.  Both kids are fine, but today Zach got sick, and within the last half hour it hit me.    It passed within 8-12 hours with the kids, so hopefully Zach is now done and it is just me for the night.  It came on really fast too.  I was making myself a baked potato and it hit in between putting the cheese on and putting it in the microwave.  For some reason, I just put it in the fridge.  I don’t feel like seeing it again tonight.  lol

This was inspired by a thread on one of the boards I go to talking about wierd quirks/sensory issues in adults.  The weird things that you don’t really tell people, but affect your life. 

Let’s just say that ds comes by his sensory issues honestly. 

• Texture, texture, texture.  All of my clothes are felt before they are really looked at.  There is many a beautiful outfit I won’t even put on because the material feels hellish to me.  Yarn is the same way.
• Food must be eaten off of white or off-white dishes.  They can have things on the edges, but the part where the food goes must be white.
• Coffee mugs must be white on the inside.  I might cope with a solid light color, but I can’t drink out of a mug that is dark on the inside because I can’t tell if it is really clean.
• Bare feet on carpet & socks on carpet.  The feel/sound makes my teeth hurt.  I wear shoes all the time.
• One window down in the car.  You must have the opposite window also down, the same distance, or my ears will start popping.
• Tight shoes.  I can not stand shoes that pinch or are tight at all.  I have wide feet, so this is a real problem.
• Socks must be perfectly matched (feeling wise…cheap socks sometimes have one tighter, or one a tad longer, ect), on straight, with either no seams or minimal seams. 
• Polyester makes me cringe.  Some of the newer nylons are tolerable, but I still can’t wait to get home and get changed into cotton.  The worst thing is those staticy, clingy, polyester pajamas.  Ugh, those are terrible.
• Bras.  I really dislike bras.  I never wear one at home.  I hate getting sweaty in my entire bra area, with or without a bra, but with a bra in actually painful for me.  (I am too big to go without a bra in public…about a C cup)
• There are times I can’t stand hair in my face.  I wear my hair long so that it can be totally pulled out of my face when I am in that mood.  (and wear scarves a lot to keep stray hair from flying around)
• I am a picker. I never met a zit, scab, ingrown hair, or weird puslike lump I didn’t like.  I have a really hard time leaving something like that alone.  really, really hard time. 
• I hate sitting in a way that allows somebody to come up behind me.  I want to be against a wall looking out.
• I don’t like super cold foods.  I have to wait until my ice cream melts before I can eat it. 
• Popsicles drive me batty…besides the cold factor, they drip and the sound people make eating them makes me crazy.
• I can not STAND the sound of ice being chewed.  It makes me want to puke.
• Florescent bulbs.  HATE them.  They buzz, they give me a headache and I can see them flicker.  I will never change my home lights to those new “energy efficient” bulbs.  I have to deal with them whenever I go out, when I am home, I want light that doesn’t make me feel homicidal.
• Midi music.  I can stand it for a while on some video games if I am playing it, but the old midi files when you open a web page are the reason I never have the sound on my computer.  (I always have my headphones plugged in)
• The feel of lotion on me before it has soaked in.  That rubbery feeling almost makes me itch as bad as dry skin.  It is better in a few minutes though.
• I love it when the wind is really strong. (as long as it isn’t too cold)  It feels like you are flying, makes you feel strong and powerful.  I love it.  Feel it often here in Kansas.  lol. 

Zora has it now.  poor baby

First, he is feeling better and nobody else has caught whatever he had.  *knock on wood*

Now for the funny thing:

Zane, in typical big brother fashion, has begun name calling when Zora irritates him.  What name do you think a verbally delayed kid would call his little sister in such a situation?   He emphatically states “UNDERWEAR!” at her. 

We have NO idea where that came from, but it is really hard to keep a straight face when we hear “UNDERWEAR!  UNDERWEAR! UNDERWEAR!” being said in his exasperated little voice. 

He has some sort of stomach thing going on tonight.  This evening, about a half an hour before bed, he walked downstairs where I was with Zora, and puked all over the place.  I managed to grab a plastic box to catch the last of it, but most of it was all over the stairs and landing.  Zach was just finishing up a “bath to relax” (that didn’t work out so well) and the tub still had warm water in it, so we just took him over to that tub and washed him off.  He has spent the evening on the couch, except for standing up in panic when he is either about to puke or, as the most recent development, when we got to him in time and were holding the box under his mouth to catch the puke, he had explosive runs.  Wrong end.  Poor guy.  As we were asking if he needed to puke (and following him with the box, that he kept dodging) he kept saying “no! no! and crying.  Finally, as it was too late to do anything, he said “Diaper!, diaper!” in tears. 

We got him to the toilet post-problem, to see if he needed to finish up (no such luck) and told him how proud we were of him that he got up so it wasn’t as messy and was able to tell us.  It was a pretty miserable situation, but he at least recognized what was going on, even if he couldn’t get the words from his brain to his mouth in time. 

I just feel so bad for him.  He is so miserable.  He tried so hard to let us know something was going on but wasn’t able to, but he tried.  I wish this were easier for him.  It just breaks my heart.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have Zora, who was pointing at Zane behind me when he came downstairs, with the weirdest look on her face.  I turned around to see Zane puking.  As I was gently leading him to the tub (downstairs), I looked back to make sure Zora wasn’t playing in the resulting mess to see her pretending to “puke” into the box.  If there could be anything funny in the midst of this, that was it.