Wordless Wednesday: Winter Wonderland

The view from my front window today.

How unexpected...

I just popped into my blogger account to maybe write something. I have 10020 page views. It's a little odd. I wouldn't have expected that to happen for a couple of months. I don't know what caused the surge, because it's not evident that it was one post getting super hit. Crazy. And so much more exciting that any thing I was going to force myself to talk about :)

Don't you put that evil on me, Ricky Bobby!

Okay, soooooo, this is a bit how I feel, what I feel like saying lately in certain conversations.

This could also be called Asperger's is the new ADHD, but you probably wouldn't have looked at then.

I have a sometimes boisterous

son. I hesitate to ever say my kids are intelligent to other people, because other people just assume I am slightly biased. He is not a bad kid, and that is not a trumped up denial. Some days though, OMG, I can't do it. I can't handle him. He seems so over the top it's ridiculous.

It came up in conversation at the grocery a couple of weeks ago, and the cashier offered that maybe he has Asperger's. Holy expletive deleted hell! Why would you say something like to someone? Two complete strangers have made similar comments.

I also have a sixteen year old daughter. She to some end was less intense than her brother is sometimes, but she still had her moments. When she was his age though, any kid who was the least bit fidgety ADD, ADHD. That was always what people armchair diagnosed. The only time that ever really came up with her was when we were out with some girlfriends of mine and she was misbehaving. Not horribly, just climbing under and around the table and being a show-off. Like most parents, I made the mistake of asking her what was wrong with her. You know the sentence and the tone, we've all gotten it from our exasperated parents at some point. "I have ADD!" she laughed and crawled back under the table.

It is not my intent to take away from or upset those of yinz out there who are dealing with the diagnosis. I know it's out there, and I know it's a bitch to deal with some days. I just hate that there are people out there who are such expletive deleted parents that rather than take the time to pull themselves away from their own ego that they would rather choose the convenience of pumpin' their kid's developing brain full of drugs.

It really bothers me that anyone would feel comfortable diagnosing my son with Asperger's without a medical license. What's worse is that the things about my son that are challenging to me...they aren't even symptoms of Asperger's...or ADHD for that matter...they are symptoms of an under-stimulated boy who had too much rope.  I know this because his daddy and I cracked the whip so to speak and he has responded. If he had these other issues, we'd still be where we were, if not more, frustrated with him.

Discipline is hard expletive deleted work. We have been on the older one, and not even at full strength for the past two or three years. Now this with the boy. Such energy, such enthusiasm, such willful disregard!

I guess all I am saying is before YOU go and start armchair diagnosing people because you feel your over 2000 viewing hours of Dr.Phil and The Doctors make you feel somehow qualified to offer unsolicited medical advise. DON'T! Bold. Italics. Underline. DON'T! Compassion has nothing to do with your opinion. Compassion to some degree just means you say this is none of my business, I hope everything is okay, I am thinking of you. Southerners have this covered in one simple phrase,"Bless His Heart". Easy enough. It really is. And I wish I knew why people felt like they need to make situations worse by offering their opinions.

There is nothing wrong with either of my kids. They are kids and they act accordingly. Maybe if you felt better about yourself, you wouldn't feel so inclined to judge mine. I am just sayin' there's something to be said for a little understanding. I mean if I feel this passionate about being asked if my kid had Asperger's and he doesn't...imagine how hurt you've just made the Mom of a kid who does. A kid she loves with all her heart. Her kids...any kid...is every bit as wonderful as their parents, their family, their village say they are and you're a dick to suggest otherwise.

So unless you are clinically or theologically trained...don't try to fix people. Just love them. Accept them as you wish you were accepted.

Amen.

All I want for Christmas is a dashboard camera.

I am not kidding. I wish I was but I am not. I noticed this phenomena awhile ago but tonight, oh tonight made me realize the necessity of a good dashboard camera.

If you are going to insist on coasting rather than braking, then eventually you will get rear-ended. I have been noticing this little trend for awhile. I blame the "Econ" mode, the hypermiling, possibly straight-up ignorance, down right shameful stupidity.

See my friends, there is a definite and distinct difference between a mere tail light and a brake light. In case you were unaware when you press your brake pedal it illuminates the brake light thus allowing the drive behind you to make the appropriate adjustments. I would rather be behind someone riding their brakes than someone who seems to not know what that horizontal pedal is for.

I am not trying to be overly cranky but I went out by Dayton Mall tonight. The drive out was easy. Thank God, Mad River is open. I don't think people know this because getting through Mad River and Alex Bell was a breeze. I expect traffic. I wasn't born yesterday and despite my best efforts, I don't live under a rock. There was traffic, and I know how to maneuver traffic. The problem came on the way home.

I took 675 home. Off at 48, no biggie until I realized I was behind one of those non-brakers. I gave them the benefit of the doubt at first. Maybe I wasn't seeing correctly. To be fair, some modern taillight configurations and light sources play havoc on my eyes. By the time we passed Elsa's though, I started thinking about this dashboard camera.

"Assured Clear Distance" is like the three most evil words in the English language. I started thinking about how if I rear-ended this j-hole then I'd be the one in trouble. Traffic was heavy. I was doing five under most of the time, and partly because I realized that the guy in front of me was incapable of braking properly. His brake lights did work, but the only time he used them was to turn onto Brookmont. C'mon folks, I am no physics genius but even I know that if I am coasting downhill it might not give the appropriate appearance to other drivers that my intention is to slow down and possibly stop.

I have noticed it a lot. Like I said, I think some of the fuel efficiency features on newer cars have made people forget about the world past their shiny dashboard. I don't care if you are getting 99.9 mpg when you do it and I know that you won't either when I slam full force into the back of your vehicle.

So, yeah, dashboard camera so that in the event I do slam into a brake deficient person I can show evidence that they had not indicated that they were stopped. Would it hold up? I don't know. In lieu of that, I am just going to slowly become one of those weirdos who doesn't drive because other people are so unpredictable.

No, no, no that won't actually happen. More than likely, I will just become like my grandma and saying things like," That's a shame, you spent so much money on the car you couldn't afford to add on brake lights." and a lot of other things that aren't postable from a polite society perspective.

If I can't have a dashboard camera, then Santa could you please see to it that all the decelerating but not braking people in the world have a horrible nightmare where they wake up in a cold sweat and vow to ride their brakes 'til it hurts. Nothing to psycholigically damaging, just enough of a jolt with enough physics and Troma effects to make someone rethink their fear of the brake pedal.

18 Days Until Christmas...roughly...

I am guessing. I am too lazy to count it out. It hardly seems like anytime at all really.

I have really been busy. I have inadvertently done a lot of my shopping online. Plus, the only one Santa is filling a stocking for is the boy. I love doing the stocking thing but I tend to go overboard. So, I asked my daughter if her feelings would be hurt if she didn't get a stocking and she looked at me like she has been waiting for that question for years. So there's some time and money saved.

I am not really in the spirit yet. This weather certainly isn't helping. I don't know what my problem is. I got to go to a "hanging of the greens" service on Sunday and that's like one of my favorite Christmas things. The boy saw Santa on Monday. I've boxed up like 50 gifts of goodies with a ton more to do tomorrow and possibly Saturday. Still. I don't know. I'm just not feeling the cheer this year.

I still have a number of gifts to pick up. Usually, I am all over it. It's not even the matter of the "perfect gift" I can't even think of anything to get folks. I pretty much have the people in my house done. They sorta easy really but past that I haven't a clue. If money were no object, I'd probably be done. If I didn't actually care about what I gave people, I would be done. If I could just get a big cup of Yuletide cheer, I am sure I'd be in a wrapping frenzy.

So, eighteen days to get my butt in gear, huh? It will surely be a Christmas miracle. I am not kidding.

Any suggestions to help me get on my mistletoe?

Revamp or reinvent or maybe just relax

A few weeks ago I had this unintentional brainstorm of ideas, and I was gung-ho...well as gung-ho as I get...about it.

If you don't know me on Facebook, then you are not aware that I am "Unemployed by Virtue of my Esoteric Awesomeness" I am not that awesome, it just helps deflect the pain of perpetual rejection by the "work" world. A few days after I posted that I started my little seasonal gig which doesn't at all suck or really even feel like work. That little gem set a fire in my brain aka the aforementioned brainstorming.

The only way that I am going to get a regular thing like that for myself is if I make it myself. Gulp. Scary. I don't know if I am up for something like that. Seems complicated. Plus, I need more support than a pair of 80 year old double Ds. I am more than a little shattered in the esteem department. Sigh.

In the midst of all this daydreaming, as I was trolling the internet and all it's various outlets, a name came to me. The most awesomesauce and appropriate name in the world...or something like that. No one is using any form of this name as far as I can tell. There is something unique left to conquer on the internet, can you believe it?!

So there's where the revamping comes in, everything refocused under one umbrella of an identity that actually suits me. It is an idea that seems boundless to me. The boundlessness scares me. At this point, there is no indication to me that there is a light at the end of this tunnel-vision or if is me imploding into a black-hole of my own design.

I could just iris in on what I have got and make it all work. It's a weird combination of escalation of commitment and internet optimization that leads me that way. There's much less work in reworking something.

Decisions. Decisions. Decisions.

I really don't even fully know what I would be doing. I am kind of working under a whole "if you build it, they will come" delusion. So, yeah, that's sound. Shrug. I can keep putting one foot in front of the other, but I am kind of a klutz so it isn't guaranteed that I'd get anywhere.

Do nothing. Relax. It's the way I am leaning but even that has it's downside. I relax myself out of the whirlwind of excitement and eventually talk myself out of whatever good idea I thought I had. Right now, though, it's more of a not acting from a place of chaos. I'll keep babystepping but I am not going to get obsessive. The ideas have merit. I, however, do not have 24 hours a day to do my own bidding.

Who knows, maybe I can do both. As in keep this little blog up under this title and do my thing under the other and who knows what is in store. I don't. If I did I wouldn't be writing this and feeling all amorphous. (<< That my friends is why popularity eludes me, when was the last time you heard them drop "amorphous" on TMZ of the X factor?)

Don't get me wrong, I am still working on my ark. I just don't think I have the right set of plans yet. No more going half-cocked and building sinking ships. I need a sturdy ship because I still have quite a ways to journey in this life.

Wasting Time: The Story of My Life

So, I have just wasted a large amount of time arranging a photo book because I had an email for a free one. I failed to notice that the email was lacking a code and the date was kinda jinkie. Plus, we are about an hour over the deadline because quite honestly the My Publisher software really is not so user friendly. Seriously, would get to points and wonder where certain pics had gone only to have to relocate them on the hard drive.

It's not like it was a Christmas gift. The bad news is that I have been pouring myself into for the last several hours because it was going to be a gift for my husband on the occasion of our fifth wedding anniversary. No wait, the bad news is that because of who I am, I now feel compelled to create this little book myself in a much more fantabulous and albeit probably more expensive manner.

I probably won't though. How could I manage to create it and keep it secret all at the same time? We do live together after all.

Sigh.

It is a little upsetting. I could have been sleeping. Heck, I still need a shower.

I sometimes feel like this is the story of my life. I put a lot of work and heart into something only to have the whole thing blown by some strange circumstance. I'd really kind of like to think that I am exaggerating a little bit. But then I'd also like to think that it is my couch that is uncomfortable and not the fact that I have been sitting here working on a failed project for two hours.

I can't in good faith pay for it, because given the trouble I've had to this point I don't trust that it would come out as designed. It's not entirely wasted time either I suppose. I've just looked at six years worth of pictures. Well, what I could find. 2009 seems to be missing but then that was the year of never-ending sorrow (or something like that). I couldn't even find Christmas pictures. It would have been our last Christmas at the little house. Things were some what less harrowing by Christmas, surely they are around here somewhere.

Maybe someday all this mud will dry out and my wheels can actually get some traction.

G'night friends, I am going to hit the showers and contemplate why bad websites happen to good people.

So, what ark aren't you building?

I know.  I know. I don't post for a whole month and then when I do post it's got a weird title. What ark aren't you building, yep, it's a reference to Noah...and his ark which he apparently spent 120 years building while everyone looked at him like he was, er, a little crazy.

I am asking this because I am asking myself this.

To be honest, I have been in something of the Port-o-Jon of life lately. My self-esteem. My confidence. "My ability to deal rationally with my disconcerted precarious emotional situation." So many factors and facets and shrug...I don't know. I get discouraged very easily any more. I don't expect life to be easy but this latest round of butt-whoopins has been more than I can take. I know I am not very much fun to be around lately. It's not my intention. It's just how things are working out lately.

So, anyway, while I was working on Friday (it's really still today to me but I don't want to get too confusing) I started thinking about something. It's one of those thoughts that has come up before. A bad penny of a thought you might say, and it's really starting to look like my ark. The specificity of it might as well be in cubits. But it's nothing I know anything about so I don't even know what the hey I am supposed to do with any of it.

Plus, this  whole idea makes me think a little bit of "Lollilove" and it kinda makes me wonder if it isn't just a little idealistic. Oh, but then I just see such a bigger picture. And the what-ifs start rolling in. And just how possibly explosive the appeal of it might be. Oh my gosh.

Sigh.

Maybe I should just start working on the things that come to me...repeatedly. Maybe you should too. Maybe immediate gratification, immediate acknowledgement, immediate glory isn't what you (or I) need to keep persevering. Maybe it is 120 years of hard work and seeming a little off. I don't know. I really don't. If I did, I probably would be doing something more worthwhile with my time.

My dampened spirits are making it hard for me to really live anymore. Maybe I need to start working on this idea and trusting that I will all come to fruition as it is envisioned. It certainly is as monumental of a task as building an ark. I don't have to collect animals, but it would involve a lot of human interaction. I am willing...if I could keep my "pragmatic" mind out of the equation.

So while I wrestle with this...what is YOUR ark? What thing keeps reoccurring to you to do? What is your calling that you keep shrugging off because it seems too hard, too arduous, too long a time frame?