The Amazing Adventures of SuperMom - now in color...

Taking a child with Asperger's (autism spectrum) and a child with Down syndrome to the doctor is NOT like going on a trip to Vegas... at all.

So with school starting in about 2 weeks, it suddenly crossed my mind that both the girls needed their yearly physicals done before they'll be allowed to actually go to school. I really don't have a problem with this since I don't want my girls catching something like, say, the plague, from classmates that haven't had a yearly inspection. My issue is remembering to make an appointment for my kids before school actually starts.

I totally lucked out today because when I called to beg and plead for an appointment, they had just gotten a cancellation for this afternoon. Yay!

So we loaded up and got to the doctor's office only 3 minutes late which is pretty good for us. The Skink is still leery of all doctors (or even anyone who wears a lot of white) after last year's little hospital stay where unpleasant things were done to her around the clock for a week. She shook the whole time we were there, but did very well, all things considered. I'm happy to report neither of my girls has Ebola, rabies or the plague!

Just when we thought we were home free, the doctor was kind enough to share with me that both girls needed immunizations.

Happy, happy!

Iraq was very unhappy to learn this little tid-bit! At first she said she would go first and get it over with, but then proceeded to lock herself in the bathroom for 10 minutes. I went ahead and let them stick The Skink 2ce... she was supposed to have 4, but since autism runs in our family, I avoid "overload" by spreading them out instead of allowing them all at once. (We'll be going back in 2 weeks so they can torture her again.)

When we finally coaxed Iraq out of the bathroom, she came into the examination room and promptly hid under the big, wood exam table! The poor nurses (who didn't want a malpractice suit brought against them for cruel and unusual handling of a patient) informed me that I had to remove her from under the table.

It's very unfortunate that I didn't have an extra person with me to take pictures... and you know how I am about getting pictures of the crazy stuff that happens. So, since I don't have actual photographs of this exciting and unusual event, I have taken it upon myself to illustrate my story like this:

I even made my muscles look comic-book-big for effect! And while I may have taken the liberty of making myself appear about 20 lbs thinner, you'll notice that I did include the lovely plumbers crack issue that appeared mid-pull.

It was like pulling a calf... not that I've ever actually pulled a calf, but I've seen it done on a show about cattle ranchers. I got down and stuck my arm under the table, grabbed a thin-but-powerful 8-year-old arm, avoided being bitten, got myself into a sitting position, braced both flip-flopped feet on the side of the table and PUUUUUUUUUUUUUULLLLLLLLLLLLLLLED!

Amazingly, I was able to get her out... but not without one heck of a fight.

Just another day for SuperMom, right? So in celebration of comic book-style illustrations...

See? I even put the crackly-paper on the exam table :o)

By this point The Skink (who had already calmed down after her own shots) was pretty much freaking out again. Who could blame her considering her sister was shrieking like a stuck pig. In fact, Iraq was screaming so much and so loudly, every nurse in the building ran to our exam room expecting missing limbs, alligators and Ebola.

It took 3 of them to hold down my 43 lb 8-year-old and administer the necessary chicken pox booster. The second they got her subdued enough to actually stick her, she stopped crying and exclaimed, "That didn't even hurt!"

REALLY?

All that and it didn't even hurt? After everything SuperMom and the herd of SuperNurses went through, it should have at least lived up to Iraq's expectations a little! 

So... by the time the fire department arrived to save the Ebola-stricken girl under attack by an alligator, we were all tear-free and running like heck to the car! (OK - so the fire department didn't actually show up, but you should have seen how the other parents were looking at us!!)

And to celebrate their health, I treated them to some cholesterol-laden happy meals from McDonalds.

So... SuperMom has gone back to her secret layer in the bosom of Spa Mountain (in Vegas, babyyyyy!) where she does nothing but recline and eat bon-bons until someone sends up the super-secret SuperMom beacon to alert her to another world-threatening emergency... or at least until those ear drum-piercing screeches emanate from her 8-year-old again...

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If I Die Young... Please Incinerate My Cold, Empty Carcass Before It Starts To Stink!

"If I Die Young"
By: The Band Perry


Refrain:

If I die young, bury me in satin
Lay me down on a, bed of roses
Sink me in the river, at dawn
Send me away with the words of a love song...

Every now and then we find ourselves  unwittingly confronted by our own mortality. I had just such a moment today. On my way back home from Walmart, I saw this:

Yup - that's a casket on the back of a truck. Sorry the picture quality isn't very good - it was taken through my windshield with my phone camera, but you get the idea.

There it was as I pulled up to a light with my SUV loaded with milk and random frozen goods... a fake-marble casket being rather unceremoniously hauled to it's destination on the back of a truck dotted with rust and mud. I assume it is being taken to a funeral home or some sort of casket show-room (do they have those?)... and not to it's final-final resting place, which would insinuate it was already occupied. Personally I'd be a little disappointed if I had reserved a hearse only to have that truck pull up in front of the funeral home... but then my mind started wandering to whether or not I would want a hearse. Or a casket. Or a headstone...

And while all these cheery thoughts swirled about inside my cranium, I began hearing the melodic strains of a current pop hit by The Band Perry, If I Die Young.

If I die young, bury me in satin
Lay me down on a, bed of roses
Sink me in the river, at dawn
Send me away with the words of a love song

Well, I certainly don't plan on dying young, (not that I'm currently as young as I was 20 years ago... but youth is relative) but unless terminally ill, one hardly plans on dying at all. My grandmother is a spry 102, so I figure I'm genetically predisposed to torture my children for a looooooong time before I get to haunt them.

 My grandmother shortly after her 100th birthday. If you think that's cool, you should have seen her go down the Olympic bobsled slope in Lake Placid, NY for her 90th!

But... young people (like I like to believe I am) die every day in car accidents, drownings and random miniature donkey attacks. So really, I suppose I might put a little thought into what I'd want done with my remains (provided they could be scraped together after the donkey was done with me).

First and foremost, I rather doubt that in my state of deceasement I will care what kind of fabric is around me, so just do what you can to locate the remnants of my shredded (or scorched, or whatever) jeans and T-shirt and shovel them in with me.

As for sinking me in a river and sending me away to the words of a love song...

Unless you really want to make yourself look like a psychotic serial killer, I really think this means of a burial would be a bad idea. And just think of the poor person down-stream who experiences the joy of believing they have scored a free boat only to find themselves eye-to-foggy-eye with a purifying corpse. I have a feeling all those rose petals you sprinkled on my carcass will do very little to mask the odoriferous nature of my remains... especially if I die young in the summer time. At least in the winter there's a chance I'd simply be rendered a corpsicle by the freezing temperatures.

And while Anne Shirley might find the whole satin, boat, river burial very "romantical," in the US at least, it would be very illegal. Romantical abuse of a corpse?

So... rather than going on and on about what I don't think you should do, I'll line out some thoughts on getting rid of my "left-overs."

I hold the stolid belief that the body is just a vehicle for the soul. Once that vehicle reaches about 200K miles (or in my genetic case, about 300K miles - - after all, I am like the Toyota of the human species) that vehicle craps out at the side of some road somewhere, or perhaps gets totaled at a lower mileage. At that point, the soul calls Triple A and gets a ride back to the nearest shop. Now, if you happen to be Hindu, Buddhist or Taoist, you can simply get another vehicle (but be careful! If you haven't been very well behaved, you could end up in a beetle!) but if your Christian, you get to take an elevator either up or down, depending on the kind of person you are/were.

I'm not really sure about the whole heaven vs. hell thing. As my grandmother says, "Who wants to sit around picking daises for the rest of eternity?" I'm not sure that would interest me that much. My belief is that the soul (comprised of electrical impulses) is free to go anywhere once freed from it's fleshy vehicle... pretty much at the speed of light, too! That sounds like a blast.

At any rate, the vehicle was just that. A vehicle. Regardless of if a person's vehicle is a Lamborghini or a scooter, much like milk, it won't do anybody any good to keep it about past its expiration date. Some choose to have their vehicle buried, and some have theirs set ablaze and then have the ashes buried. Others want their ashes to be scattered in some favorite haunt (did you know Disney has a rule against sprinkling ashes on its property? Yeah... I'm glad too!).

For the record, I want my vehicle incinerated, please. The idea of filling it with preservatives, burying it hole and then letting it slowly transform into sub-terrarium gelatinous effluvium doesn't really float my proverbial romantical boat. Nope - burn me up. Heck, you don't even need to invest in one of those fancy urns or anything. If you're gonna recycle my vehicle, for goodness sake, just stick the ashes in an old, 2 liter Pepsi bottle or something.

Check it out...You can just make me out dancing about in the flames...

And what ever you do, please don't stick me on a mantle somewhere! I'm still alive and I already hide my thighs from view, so let's just assume that ain't nobody wants to see that on your mantle! No - go ahead and sprinkle me about. Dump a little of me off a scenic over-look on the Blue Ridge mountain chain. Scatter a little of me in my favorite lake. If you travel, leave my heart in San Francisco... and Greece - Greece should be worth an arm and a leg! And while you're out that way, I'm sure nobody would notice a few extra ashes tossed into a volcano somewhere, so put that on my "bottle list" too, please.

So, what do you want done with your vehicle?

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Don't forget to check out my new book on Kindle - and you don't even need a Kindle to read it!

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>>End shameless plug<<

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If You Can't Beat Them, Join Them!

In keeping with the old saying, "f you can't beat them, join them," we took our very own wild-things to the zoo today. As you can see, they found the tiger especially frightening! (Do I have a couple of Drama Queens, or what?) We live in a small city, but we consider the zoo to be good enough because they have some real animals too.

I don't remember what this bovine creature is called. Luckily for me, I have a 16-year-old who knows everything. I just don't feel like dragging him away from his adventures in World of Warcraft at this very second to remind me. At any rate, this critter would have come home with me if we'd let him. He's in an area where there is just a fence between him and his admirers. Of course I had to reach in to touch him (I have a taste for danger!). Within a second of him getting close enough for me to reach him, I had found his itchy spot. After I gave him a good scratch, he proceeded to try to follow me until his enclosure prevented him from going further. Poor guy! I personally think he'd look very nice in our back yard.

My husband and son are real cat people, but they don't sport cool spots like this girl. So stylish!

 

To the right. To the right...

To the left. To the left...

Now hop!

OK... 'nuff of the Zoo boogey.

Oh... well maybe just a little more zoo-boogey...

¿Cómo estás, Issa?

(Wow - all that Dora has really paid off!)

Swiper - Noooo swiping!

All three kids had their favorite animals and exhibits, although The Skink may have thought the wacky mirror was the best exhibit of all.

Afterward we went to our favorite Chinese restaurant for dinner. Broadway and Iraq quickly found what animal represents their birth years. Broadway is proud to be a Boar. He was kind enough to explain to The Skink that a boar is a pig. Later The Skink was playing with one of the apps on my iPhone and found a picture of a pig. She held it up and said, "Look! It's Broadway!"

And don't forget to check out my new book on Kindle - and you don't even need a Kindle to read it!

Don't have a Kindle? Click Here for other ways to read the book!

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Disaster Flambé - putting the FUN in... your Kindle?

I'm excited to announce my new book Disaster Flambé is available on Kindle at Amazon.com!

And just to put the FUN in FUNd raising, for a limited time (ie: until I say so) I will be donating 10% of ALL profits from the book to Reece's Rainbow Adoption Ministry! You get a few hours of good, humorous entertainment, and at the same time, you'll know you're making a difference to differently-abled orphans in Eastern Europe. How can you loose?

Do you want a taste? OK - but just one. For more you have to buy the book.

Meeting the Neighbors

As I went out to check on the horses one last time one windy evening in March of 1994, I noticed a reddish glow coming over the hill to the north of the house. It was 10:30 at night and I reasoned with myself that due to both the time and direction, it probably was NOT the rising sun. I wandered up the hill to investigate, and came about as close to experiencing heart failure as I ever have. A large wall of fire fueled by the 40 mile an hour wind, was racing across the dried grass land directly toward me. It was still about 500 yards from our property line, but was wasting no time in getting there.

“D……………!” I yelled as I ran toward the house. “D…!”
An irritated voice replied from within the house “Whaaaaaat?”
“D…, there’s a FIIIIIIRE!”
“Where?”
“It’s (pant) almost (pant) here!” I managed to say as I reached the house.
We had been warned that the fire department was all but useless out where we were. There were no fire hydrants – just a small stock pond on the eastern portion of the property which would likely be serving up boiled bass by the time any fire trucks arrived. Frantically searching through a mess of letters and scrap paper on the kitchen counter, I finally found the scrap of paper the last home-owners had left for me that simply read, “If you have any problems, call the F.s at the following phone number.” The F.s were our new “next-door” neighbors who lived three miles to our east. We had yet to meet them, but this seemed as good a time as any.

I dialed the number as quickly as I could, and after a few rings, a motherly female voice answered. Doing my best to be polite and introduce myself, I quickly filled M. in on the details.

“Honey, I’ll git the boys and we’ll be right down.”

We then stood anxiously on the front porch to await the arrival of M. and “the boys.” Reminiscent of some lost scene from The Beverly Hillbillies, an ancient, red pick-up truck came racing over the winding gravel road, kicking up a long trail of dust .There were a number of shaggy looking men standing in the back yelling “Yeeeeee-Haaaawww!” and clearly enjoying the thrill of the ride. As they grew closer it became apparent they were armed with shovels, pitch-forks and wide, excitement-filled smiles that showed various missing teeth. Ah, The Boys were here, and apparently ready to do battle with ogres!

The mostly rusted-out truck, which seemed to be held together by duct-tape and bailing wire, slid to a halt in our driveway with billows of dust emanating from muffler-less underbelly. “The boys” hopped out and introduced themselves as B., K. and H. Then M. stepped out of the cab and shook my hand.
“Here we are!” she exclaimed.

Once the introductions had been made, someone noticed that the fire was cresting the hill and starting it’s short decent toward the house.
“Oh, BOY! Y’all got a REAL fire here!” called B. from his new vantage point on the hill, where he stood precariously close to the offending flames.
Buckets were passed about and filled with water. Worn-out, denim Wranglers were submerged in the buckets. My husband was handed a jeans-and-water filled bucket and instructed to beat out the fire with the wet jeans. Shovels were slung over shoulders and the pyro-posse launched its attack.

M. took me by the arm and led me toward the house, calmly asking how we liked our new place and wondering if we had any “little-uns” yet. Before I could answer or break down in tears from the stress, she went into a long explanation of which of The Boys had kids, how many, what ages and how many had already ridden a sheep in the mutton-bustin’ contest at the state fair rodeo.

If it had been up to me, I would have been outside beating flames into submission with wearable, wet weaponry, but M. would have none of that. According to her, women shouldn’t do that sort of thing because they never knew if they might have a “bun in the oven.”

“It don’t do no good to burn your oven while you’re cookin’ your bun.” she stated wisely.
I must say her freely given insights and advice worked quite well to take my mind off my burning property. They didn’t make complete sense to me, but just trying to sort them out in my mind made the time pass quickly.

After finishing her lecture on prenatal health, she asked, “You wanna go out on the porch for a cigarette?”

I was sure it would have been very wrong to start laughing just then. I held my tongue as I accompanied her out onto the front porch where we could see a number of dark, smoky figures moving about, silhouetted by huge red and yellow flames. The acrid smell of burning hay and trees was oddly soothing, bringing back memories of campfires and ghost stories.

“Where are you going, hon?” M. asked as I opened the front door to go back inside.
“I know I’ve got some marshmallows in here somewhere!” I called back as I ran toward the kitchen.

Not long after, another neighbor who had seen the flames showed up unannounced from the west bearing more shovels and jeans. For the next five hours the men fought the fire, keeping it away from the house and barn. M. and I swapped stories as we took cold beer and more marshmallows out to The Boys. By three-o-clock in the morning we were all covered from head to toe with black soot and grime.

The men had back-burned the property and kept the fire from spreading any further to the south or west. According to H., there were rocky ravines to the east which would stop the flames soon enough. House and barn saved, the tail-gates came down on the trucks and everyone took a seat with a cold beer in hand. In the moon light, all that could be seen of our soot-covered guests and saviors were the reflections of the moon’s glow off a random tooth when someone laughed or the twinkle in a friendly eye. The party finally split up around 4:30 in the morning when M. told The Boys to “round up all those old Wranglers” so she could get them into the wash. I have always wondered if they were planning on wearing them again, or if they just needed to be clean for the next fire?

Through our adventure we became fast friends with the F.s. Sometimes new neighbors knock on your door bearing cookies or casseroles, and others show up Hillbilly style in the back of a beat up pick-up truck to help save your homestead. It seems these days it’s just nice to have neighbors that care either way.

· Names have been modified to protect the identities of the toothless.

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Yes - in my book I also talk about pregnancy, my 3 children (with their various diagnosis') and even my boobs, because... why not? Please spread the word - I'd really love to raise some funds for Reece's Rainbow! I need people to read my book and leave a (hopefully) good review on Amazon.com so that other people will want to buy it and read it and so on... thereby raising more $$$ for RR! If you can spare a moment to blog about it, I'll be more thrilled than you can imagine.

So - funnest fund raiser yet, right? Hope you like the book and get some good giggles from my (mis)adventures!

Don't have a Kindle? Click Here for other ways to read the book!

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Birthdays, Bikes and Dogs, Oh My!

So while The Skink's birthday is actually on August 6, we celebrated early because daddy will be working on that day. Daddy has a funny schedule... one year we even moved Christmas back one day so we could celebrate it with him.

Anywhooo...


Apparently The Skink's new camera pose and "OhmygoshI'msurprised" pose is this:



LOL - I think she liked the cake and presents!





























Yes - all in all, it was a successful not-quite-a-birthday party!















The next day we simply had to take the bike to the park for a test-drive!

























We always try to remember to hydrate in this hot weather.
















Um... who taught my just-about-5-year-old to vogue?









Yippee... Inchworms!














And then off to play again. Broadway was "displeased" that I wanted to take his picture. Can you tell?

And last-but-not-least, I took on a little project.

Brandy Ann is very difficult to fit with a service dog vest because, well... she's not your typical service dog. Yesterday I happened to go into a JoAnn's Fabric store, and guess what I found? Almost a full yard of the most beautiful neoprene sitting in the remnant bin for 50% off it's original ridiculously insane price! I grabbed it quickly and did a happy-dance right there in the middle of the store. Neoprene is perfect for a dog vest because it is durable but has the right amount of stretch to cover my puppy's massive shoulders without gaping or bunching up.


And my favorite picture of all:
































Hope everyone is having a great week!

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Poor Naked, Singing Barbie

She used to sing with the sweetest little voice,
And for a while has been the toy of choice,

But with time and with age her voice has grown rough,
Her dress has been lost so she plays in the buff.

Though aging, no plastic cellulite sticks to her thighs,
No little wrinkles surround her blue eyes,

She’s been carried about near everywhere,
With this brush or that to brush her blond hair.

But alas! Last night there arose a great spat,
For whom should she sleep with? This sister or that?

Each little girl, only thinking of herself,
And now poor naked, singing Barbie has been put on a shelf!

And now, who knows just how long she will stay?
How long will it be ‘til she can come down and play?

Unless she is liberated by some impish young elf,
Poor naked, singing Barbie will stay on her shelf.

But...

While Barbie is incarcerated, The Skink is keeping herself busy by learning to cook.

And no... unfortunately my blog is not yet fixed. I'm having to post in the non-updated blogger format (thus the non-centered photos). At least I can post on this site, though it may take 2ce as long. But... such is life!

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