My attentions are elsewhere, so I apologize for not posting consistently of late. I continue to find respite and gratitude daily while dealing with quite a bit that is beyond my control.
Treasure moments of peace. I will be more consistent at a later time.
Apologies to Elvis Costello as I give a brief update, since I really shouldn’t be sitting up at the computer:
Much has been going on here in the land of mayhem, and then a car accident, and I was hurt, no blood, no bones, but I hurt ten days later. A lot. Working on some things, and I start physical therapy on Monday.
While I was trying to heal and rest and being on meds, Mr. Cynic similarly got into another accident within days of mine. So now we have two totaled vehicles.
Working on figuring out everything, moving forward, while trying not to move, but the mayhem continues, and so must I. But I shouldn’t quite yet.
I can laugh about some of this, but it hurts. But the good news is I can laugh.
Writing is currently on hold, except I decided to toss the sermon I was working on for months and had several drafts. That’s right, chucking it completely. After the two car accidents, I found “the piercing arrow” that is discussed in writing circles. Now I have about two weeks to get it right. It’s okay, most of my better work has been produced under the pressure of a deadline. It’s epiphanous.
As Samuel Beckett said,
I know I’ve been pretty quiet on the blog lately.
The obvious place to start is with my grief over the loss of our dear sweet Lucy. It was so sudden, I think I’ve only begun to process it. I am not in a complete fog, walking through molasses and crying at the drop of a hat now. I think it piggybacked our autumn loss of Babette, which was within a week of the loss of my mother’s last living sister, and I couldn’t make it to the funeral. I lost a couple weeks of normal, quieter in some ways. In the meantime, we have been busier than usual in others.
Wrestling season ended for Captain Comic, but not before the number of hours spent in gyms across the Bay Rivers District increased exponentially.
I am proud of him for trying hard, and always being game for a tough 1st season in the sport. Next year, maybe he’ll win a match from time to time.
Mr Cynic and I have been traveling to colleges and auditions for their music departments and Scholars Competitions, etc. and to have a look around. That has been a couple of adventures in traveling to Boston and to western Virginia. That has been a bit of roller coaster of pressure, comic mayhem, not so comic mayhem, seeing good friends and my niece, sleeping on sofas, floors, random beds and hotel rooms. We crossed many bridges, literally and figuratively.
In the meantime, he has been involved in the Bay Rivers District Choir, and auditioned and won a spot in the All-Virginia Choir! The performance for that is the same weekend as his birthday in Richmond, at the end of April.
Toots is forever Toots, and a spark in our lives, and she apparently has a preschool boyfriend. I told her teacher on Valentine’s Day, that when I asked her who she loves after writing the family valentines, she answered, “D—?” sheepishly, knowing she should have said at least one family member in the context of the conversation. It was adorable. She also has been wanting to invite him over for sleepovers for a couple of months now. The teacher cracked up and then told me she is always trying to get them to sit with other friends or at recess to play with other friends, but the two of them are stuck like glue everyday. I asked Toots at one point what she likes about D– so much and she answered, “because he is kind.” I couldn’t be happier, honestly, that she has found a best friend who is kind regardless of gender.
She has also been getting into trouble a lot at home, but she is approaching five, seeking independence or when we are preoccupied, seeking attention by plugging the sink, flooding the bathroom and soaking herself from head to toe. Or by poking the bear: Captain Comic, by doing the exact things she knows will trigger a negative response from him. Kazoos and pennywhistles she earns for good behavior in preschool are a big tool of torture for the noise sensitive Aspie.
But she is still our girl and how could we ever stay mad at this:
One day, I will remember to hold this smartphone horizontally while recording…
Meanwhile, in the writing department, I have started sending out queries to agents, and the rejections have started coming in. At least I’m starting at the top:
Since Captain Comic’s wrestling started, my schedule, as well as stuff for all of my progeny, has officially gone off the rails.
I’ve managed to hold the reins of the runaway train for a good long while and at least keep it on the track, but that time is over.
The horse power has run amuck. So amuck is that horse power that my train metaphor has turned into a wild stampede.
Yesterday, was a no school day, which SHOULD have slowed things down a little, but no.
I was going to take Captain Comic in for lab work early in the morning because he had to fast and so he would not miss school.
I told him not to eat anything at least 12 times between the night before and yesterday morning, then suddenly, from another room, my awareness grew of the sound of a spoon clinking rhythmically in a cereal bowl.
So that was out.
I was supposed to go to a preschool Parent-Teacher Conference for Toots at 9:30, but that went off my radar sometime before the lab work fiasco.
I took Captain Comic to see a dermatologist to deal with his acne, during which time, Grandma dropped Mr. Cynic off at work, which was after his driving lesson that I made him come home earlier from, because I wasn’t certain when Grandma was due back in the house to look after Toots while I was the Captain’s appointment.
Then I had to drop off prescriptions, which weren’t going to be ready for lalala time, so then I drove Captain Comic to the late wrestling practice which was a workout equivalent to two days worth in two hours. It was awesome, and it completely wore him out.
This overlapped into my belly dance class I usually attend on Monday evenings, which was going to make me late for a one shot gardening class in another town which i really wanted to attend to help me with soil PH balancing, which is something I’ve been having a lot of difficulty with since my move south.
By the time I got home from wrestling and picking up the prescriptions, and stuffed some food in me, I knew there was something I was forgetting, but didn’t see the email that I missed the gardening class til this morning, which was around when Honey glanced at the calendar and saw the PTC appointment for yesterday morning.
It’s okay, though, because I still had to pick Mr. Cynic up from bagging groceries at 8pm, right in the middle of the gardening class. And then I was reminded that the few of us who are friends who were going to attend the class together had planned, at my inspiration, to go for margaritas after the class.
I was notified there was dancing.
So that was yesterday, which included the cat box being so neglected our new kitty has taken to using the space next to it to pee, which is under the desk in the garage where Captain Comic has his Art Studio, the floor of which is covered in tiny scraps of paper I asked him to sweep up last night. I need to hide the scissors from that boy again.
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So this morning, I woke up extra early (5:30) stuffed some coffee in my face, told Mr. Cynic to take the bus instead of walk to school before dawn in the pummeling rain, and drove the Capt to get his lab work done before school, hit Starbucks to get him some breakfast, dropped him off at school with a bottle of water and told him to refill it at least three times so that he might make calibration at wrestling this afternoon, and zipped home before Honey had to go to work, thank goodness, or he was going to drive Toots to me at the Labcorp near his office.
Then I started laundry, cleaned the cat box, the mess around the cat box and washed the dog.
Then I ate my lonely three hour old croissant from Starbucks while typing this and grinding my teeth from the latte after the two home mugs earlier, and now i am trying to sort out in my head how i am going to make it throught the rest of today, organize the Time Space Continuum in relation to my family, called Honey to tell him I may cry or have a breakdown today, and then there is college application process to stay on top of with Mr. Cynic, a new hygiene and med regimen for Captain Comic, a driving lesson, a bass lesson, and a parent meeting for the wrestling team when we usually eat dinner….
And nano? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAahahahahaa….
Shucks, I have neglected posting pics and telling stories from Halloween adventures, etc, but….
I swore I was never going to do it again.
I swore this is process is not conducive to how I write.
I have tried this little challenge twice before and only driven myself crazy while mayhem increased ten-fold around here with household epidemics of flu and colds and viruses galore.
I swore I learned my lesson and would never do it again under any circumstances.
(click to to join)
Yet, after professing much cheerleaderness to many friends who are participating, I got a waft of its heady perfume and became transfixed. On Day 2.
So I am a few thousand words behind, swore I will just use it to play, but in playing, I think I really do have something worth pursuing, and it’s another children’s novel.
What is wrong with me?!
Well, nothing really, I was bogged down in the edits of my ongoing manuscript, and I craved a little more creative freedom.
I am using it to get back in the habit of daily writing, of exercising my imagination, and I do not care if I make the 1667 words per day that nano made me insane with before.
Now the only thing driving me crazy is that I can only focus on the joy of this new little story in bits and pieces throughout my days of Continuous Interruptus. And a little guilt that I am not wholly focused on the old project to finish its Draft 4.
But it’s not a lot of guilt. I feel like this is going to free up my brain a little bit so that when I do focus on the other project, I can be more creative where I’ve been stuck for so long.
Besides, I usually only give those edits a few hours once or twice a week at most lately even before Nanowrimo.
Why not add to the mayhem? At least this time, it’s for me.
Hampton Roads, Virginia was supposed to be hit with an anvil with this storm. It was hit pretty hard, especially in flood zones. Overall, though, not as hard hit as the 100 years storm with no name a while back. Friends I expected to flood are all fine as far as I have heard. We’re fine. Cooped up for a couple of days, but fine.
All of my Connecticut family is fine, too, but without power. Not bad considering they are pretty much all in coastal towns, but one brother’s family, and he’s close enough and has plenty of potentially damaging trees.
Friends in other areas like NYC are reporting damages and power outages, but people are fine overall. Some are heart broken for their homes and blocks where families have lived for generations.
I am grateful that most of those I know seem to have weathered this weird weather – Hurricane, Tropical Storm, huge swath of of an ocean spiral Sandy – well.
Now we wait for the power to come back for much of the Eastern Seaboard, and count our blessings.
Again, we have had a lot – a . LOT. – going on around here, so I will make this short and sweet and add a gallery of a few highlights via cell phone pics.
Last week, I threw Captain Comic into JV Wrestling at the high school. He is taking to it better than a fish to water, his enthusiasm fills me with pride and joy. He is still awkward and funny as he is learning, but he is challenging the toughest biggest guys repeatedly during these couple of pre-season conditioning weeks. Even the Varsity guys are proud of him. The coaches are great with him.
Thursday was Toots’s Pumpkin Farm Field Trip with her preschool class.
This weekend we went on a Fellowship Retreat up in the hills at Pocahontas State Park. It was beautiful, we canoed, roasted marshmallows and froze our tuckuses in the drafty cabins in summer weight sleeping bags. We saw Great Blue Herons, turtles, and a snake climbing a tree. The snake posed best for pictures. Toots was talking about going fishing endlessly from before the trip, and I kept responding that I didn’t know if that was going to happen, maybe someone would have a pole she could use. As it turns out, she found a young boy and his dad fishing at the docks when we went canoeing. The boy was about eight years old and very patiently showed her how to hook a worm and repeatedly dropped a line from the docks, for her to watch fish nibble at the worm. He even caught a sunny at one point, and let her hold it. She was in seventh heaven.
Sunday, we came back in time for the Wrestling Team photo shoot. I didn’t realize Captain Comic didn’t even know what a singlet was. 
I love that there is a girl on their team.
I took all photos with a cellphone. It should be in order of Pumpkin Patch, Pocahontas State Park then Wrestling, but I think things got a little jumbled in the upload. For instance, the yellow leaf on the step of our cabin should be horizontal, not a vertical shot. Toots and Mr. Cynic are sleeping in the car on the ride home Sunday morning, we canoed on Satuday afternoon.
A friend from my fellowship took my boys out canoeing Saturday morning, and brought back a tale of a killer beaver, GNAWS, parodying JAWS that he said the three of them came up with and laughed about the whole time they were canoeing. Apparently he GNAWS trees to fall on campers…It’s funnier when they tell it.
We had a great weekend. I hope you did, too.
Saturday night, at Busch Gardens Hall-O-Scream, Captain Comic is nearly out of his skin as we head into The Roots of Evil Scare Maze. However, Toots, 10 years his junior declares, “I’m fine, Mom.” Hands on hips. “Dere’s no such sfing as weal ghosts!”
Once inside, Captain Comic and I lose sight of Honey and Toots immediately, and we make our way through lots of hanging damp misty, spooky things. He squinches his eyes shut and walks through with his head down and his shoulders in his ears, anticipating Scarers jumping out at every step. I talk him through it. “It’s less scary if you open your eyes. You can see them before they jump. Lift your head, Open your eyes. Here comes a corner, someone might jump.” In the meantime he is screaming like a 3 year old girl, I am laughing til I am wheezing and a few Scarers understand. He really is enjoying this even though he seems like he may have a heart attack at the ripe old age of 14. So they jump again.
Later, Toots and Honey make it out. Captain Comic and I are catching our breath, me, from laughter, him from utter anxiety and excitement. I am still laughing, Captain is laughing, too, while holding his heart. “Oh boy. I’ve never been so scared in my entire life!” He chuckles again, I am hooting. I declare him the funniest person in the world to go through a haunted maze with.
Toots’s eyes are saucers, and she is clinging to Honey’s shoulder for dear life. Honey declares no one even jumped at them.
Later, we find some kiddie rides and the carousel to bring everyone back to a normal happy state. Toots is riding the horse ride in Scotland, just prior to our exit. She looks like she is falling asleep in the saddle. Captain is standing next to me, swinging from the fence, in a rocking motion. He is not typically a rocker in the Autism behavior spectrum, he’s more of pacer and hugger.
Me: Are you Okay, buddy?
Capt: Nnnnot really. I’m still traumatized from earlier.
He laughs about it with me. He’s going to be fine.
~~~~~~~~
Sunday evening, Mr. Cynic and I attend a show at the Ferguson Center for the Arts, a great jazz Big Band, called The Birdland. Please check if they are going to be playing anywhere near you. This is a live music experience that you should not miss. They are an incredible ensemble of musicians and they bring down the house!
Back to my story: So we get in the car, it is raining, it’s a cold night for southern Virginia. If you don’t know, we moved from Massachusetts in 2006, when Mr. Cynic was 11 years old, now 17.
I look at his short sleeves in the passenger seat.
Me: Really, Bud, no jacket?
Mr. Cynic: This is the weather of my Homeland.
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Monday morning I spend in a frustrating chase of info regarding scholarship deadlines, etc for Mr. Fall of Senior Denial, with whom I had such wonderful time the night before. I also simultaneously am scheduling out the rest of my already insane week, when I track down that JV Wrestling, for which Captain Comic is now eligible as an 8th grader has already started pre-season conditioning practices. He can start NOW– at the same time I need to drop Mr. Cynic at work at the grocery and pick up Toots at preschool, which is the same time Captain’s school bus drops him off on a good day from the middle school. Practice is at the High school. Hooboy, how am I going to make this work? I shout it to facebook and between drafting Grandma to go pick up Toots while I play Runaround Sue for the boys, I pull it off.
Fair warning to parents of young kids: Enjoy them now, soon they become above insanity, most of which I did not mention, but I think I finally got through to #1 about scholarship deadlines. Another piece of advice: try not to schedule anything at 3PM. Ever.
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Captain Comic has been craving physical outlets since he quit Tae Kwan Do a few years ago, and that has been taken out on us in hug attacks galore and wrestling a giant stuffed polar bear in the backyard, hence my searching out about JV Wrestling. Small problem: practices start before the middle school lets out, sport bus from middle school doesn’t start until the regular season starts, so I have a couple of weeks of getting him from middle to high school right when Mr. Cynic usually needs to be dropped off for work and Toots needs to be picked up from preschool. Among other chauffeuring needs…
Captain Comic went to his first practice yesterday. He flung himself into it, no holds barred. After many conditioning exercises, weights, and such, where the coaches and Varsity guys were coaching the new guys and girl on the team, they wanted to show him a few moves and matches so he could have an idea what he was getting himself into.
He took to it more than a fish to water. I’ve never seen anything like it. He didn’t stop, even when the coaches and other guys were out of breath. As soon as he hit the mat, he was back up again and crouched to shake hands to challenge the next guy. Finally I had to call out, “Have you guys had enough of Shea for one day? Because, obviously, he hasn’t had enough yet.” They all laughed and said “Yeah! We have!”
Then he said, “Ew, I’m all sweaty.” And they laughed again and insisted he hasn’t even begun to sweat.
Both of the coaches seemed to know about dealing with kids with disabilities. One coaches the town league, and said he coaches two kids with Downs Syndrome and one with Severe Autism. We confirmed that he would know exactly how to deal with Shea and his Asperger’s very quickly. Both coaches were really open to having him join the team. He is so ready to do this!
I couldn’t be more exhausted this week, or more proud. And it’s only Tuesday.
Mr. Cynic is a senior. A cool senior.
This is how he really feels about it.
I swear I just gave him lipstick kisses on his belly to reassure him as he went off to preschool.
Captain Comic was up and at ‘em well before dawn, but this is his official stance.
Me: So how do you feel about eighth grade?
Capt. Comic: Eh, cause it’s (counts on fingers outloud) nine and a half months of labor.
Toots has been ready to start at her new preschool since the day her old preschool ended back in June. Every morning of the summer started with an enthusiastic”Is it time for school yet?!” or a tentative, “Is summer over yet?” She is in the PM program at what will be her Elementary School. but she was ready to go first thing this morning.
For her, it is all about the Dora backpack.
Sigh. They grow so fast.
After picking up our old stuff in MA, we headed a little south to Connecticut, the state where both Honey and I grew up, though we met in Massachusetts many many many moons later. He was a city boy in New Haven. I grew up south of there in more suburban bucolia. We both grew up on Long Island Sound.
We visited his brother, sister, niece and the rest of their family, including the two adorable little boy cousins who are closest to Toots’s age, but are the next generation. Funny how these things work out, huh? Toots is definitely a second stage of life baby. Her oldest cousins of her generation on both sides are in their twenties. My brothers’ and my kids are spread out pretty evenly from 23 down to 4. But I’m getting lost in my thoughts here, so pictures! Alas, I only seemed to get shots of her little cousins at Honey’s niece’s place.
Again with the two camera loads into the gallery, one of these days I will figure out how to reorder. From the cell camera, we have the little New Haven cousins and Honey’s sister, who is about to have a third grandson! We had a nice afternoon visit on their father’s birthday, and then we scooted down to my parents’ house where that pic of my brothers and me from 1975 sits out for everyone to view that incredible wardrobe.
In the mid-80s, my dad, a big tennis player, built a soft court in the backyard. It’s a little hard to keep it up now that he hasn’t played regularly since his knees and serving shoulder have given up the game, and the berry brambles are taking over from the borders of the yard. Toots loved picking berries with Papa and me and on her own. Mostly the groundhog, deer and birds have eaten the easiest berries to reach.
We retrieved the boys, and visited with my brothers and their families. The younger cousins picked berries together and roamed the yard, and the older cousins talked bands and such. We ate and laughed and shared old misadventures from when we were growing up. Then we got back on the road home and Toots crossed her eyes, and the boys huddled in the back and we crossed the Delaware then Bertha crossed the 100K mark, and eventually we arrived home.
But the day before we got the boys back, my old friend, also named Cathy -we’ve known each other since second grade when one of us was drawing the other’s name in the back baseball field dirt of the school I had just moved to and the other said, hey how did you know my name, and we can’t remember who was which Cathy in that fateful meeting – took Honey, Toots and I and her son to the beach where we grew up.
It was high tide, and that beach has always been popular, but holy cow, not as crowded as that day. But the boats and the swings and the sand and the Sound were the same, though the pavillion has grown and they’ve put weird breakers up in front of it so it seems the pavillion has eaten up half the beach, but I still loved it.We still had a beautiful day, catching little fish in buckets and playing in the sand and chasing sea foam and shooing gulls from our snacks, and just hanging out.
While things change, some things never do, and my daughter played on my beach the same way I did, and some things, like the wind and the sea and the sand rolling into each other are constant, and can always be counted on, even as I move away and grow up and become two families and then one, always one, because these are the things that matter, which is why I didn’t really get pictures of when my family was all together, and I am grateful they are still where I grew up, even if I am too far for many visits.
And that is the end of our epic Summer 2012 East Coast journey north that was only five days, but was just packed. I have the boys back, and we’re revving up to school already, making preparations.
I hope your summer has been full of wide open spaces and adventures and long hazy days, beaches, blue sky, berries, big rains, lightning bugs and night peepers.
