SOC Sunday: Nearly Human

Yup, Sunday again. Technically. It still feels like Saturday to me because I haven't gone to sleep yet. Or rather I should say "haven't gone to bed yet." Because that hour spent semi-sitting up, slumped on the sofa with the TV playing to my closed eyelids was sleep. Sorta.

@@@@@@@

Well, I am happy to report that rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated, and I am, in fact feeling much better. FINALLY. Feeling something like a human being again. SHOCKING.

Not quite human enough, unfortunately, to take the kids sledding, in spite of the inches of snow today. Human enough, however, to have fun tossing snowballs with Ethan on the way to the corner diner where we met his best friend for lunch today,. We scraped fresh snow off the parked cars on the two blocks of our walk and packed it down as best we could.

The snowballs were fluffy, disintegrating as they flew. Which was fine by me as Ethan still has the tendency to make up for accuracy deficits by standing WAY too close when he lobs them.

It was lovely to get out of the house, to snarf down a quick lunch and steal a few minutes of uninterrupted grown-up conversation with my friend, the mother of Ethan;s friend. Sacrificing my iphone to the boys greasy food fingers was so worth it.

And then, Saturday being Saturday, there was basketballl. This week was my turn with Jake, who did not want to leave the cozy confines of home/cat/TV, but I made come out anyway because the wide world must not be ignored.

He kept thinking that every snow-covered car we passed was OUR car, and it distressed him no end that we had not found our car yet, no matter how many times I explained to him that we were, in fact, parked one block away in the OPPOSITE direction of the school he plays basketball in, so would definitely NOT not be seeing our car on our walk there.

But Jake being Jake, he still had to ask about it. Every. parked. car. we. passed. And I also answered the question "What color is our car, Mom?" about 1,000 times on that 10 block walk, too. (It's still green.)

I was worn out by the time we arrived. Getting Jake out of his snowboots and into his sneakers left me wanting to collapse in a puddle. And taking his mittens off reminded him how he had left his other pair at school and nearly set off another crying jag like the one he'd had upon arriving home on Friday. But only nearly. (Thank goodness.)

But still my heart swelled with pride as I heard the coach setting up Jake's new helper this week by telling him: "You'll be paired up with Jacob today, he;s our best shooter." And even though Ethan's games are more exciting and coherent, actually recognizable as "games," there is something so sweet about the special needs division; our kids trying so hard, their one-on-one helpers so kind.

And then afterwards we met up on Broadway with Ethan and Daddy for a snack and slogging home through the snow together. And then, home, the boys even played together for a few minutes -- if you count sitting on each other with the sitee attempting to throw the sitter off to be playing. (And i do, i SO DO!)

@@@@@@@

OK, I cheated tonight! Clearly this was longer than 5 minutes - more like 10-15. But it felt to good to feel human enough to want to write, I just couldn't stop. I figure I will be forgiven. (Right, Fadra?)

And now? To bed!
 
New to SOCS?  It’s five minutes of your time and a brain dump.  Want to try it?  Here are the rules…

• Set a timer and write for 5 minutes only.
• Write an intro to the post if you want but don’t edit the post. No proofreading or spell-checking. This is writing in the raw.

You can do it, too!  Click on the picture link and let's hear your 5 minutes of brilliance...

Looking for comments? To read or leave a comment, click on THIS post's title, or HERE, to bring you to the post's page view. Comments should appear below.

Wordless Wednesday: Dreaming of Summer

Yes, it's another nasty, dreary, grayer-than-gray winter day here in New York City.  An ice and sleet storm this morning made bringing Ethan to school treacherous, although he genuinely enjoyed the slip-and-slide aspect to it all.

Jacob's school had tossed in the flag the previous evening, declaring their third Snow Day of the season (although technically more of an "Ice Day" I suppose) and all my plans for today just went to hell in a hand-basket. 

Jacob has been watching way too much mindless TV and I (and most of the snowed-in North-East it seems) have been spending way to much time mindlessly tweeting on Twitter.

Looking through my photos, thinking about what to grab for this week's "Wordless Wednesday" I just couldn't stand to post a recent wintry picture.  I am reading my West Coast, Southern and Australian friends warm weather posts, turning all shades of green with envy.

So I set the wayback machine and pulled a few summery shots from my iPhoto archive, because if I have to look at another picture of snow, I will weep (and I actually LIKE snow!).

Moments from Summer, 2010: 

I loved the soft grass under my feet

Jacob loved to pretend to drive

Ethan proudly rode a horse

 And now for one from the way, wayback machine:

Summer 2005, Squashed family at my parents residence in Riverdale

I’m linking up to Wordless Wednesday at Angry Julie Monday.
I'm also linked to Special Exposure Wednesday at 5 Minutes for Special Needs

Vote for me yet today?  One click is all you need to show me your love!

Snow Day: Perfect for Two-Timing

There are actually two blog posts I really wanted to write for today.

One is supposed to be a short introduction to me and my blog for Household6Diva's Blizzard Bloghop:

And the other?  I wanted to share the lovely sweetness of yesterday's no-school Snow Day in photos and words.

As I was trying to decide which way to go, I thought: "why not have it both ways?" and thus this double purposed post was born.

{NOTE: If you are already familiar with me and my blog, don't need no stinkin' introduction, and just want the Snow Day news, simply skip down to the snow photo below for part two.}

First, The Squashed Bologna in a nutshell (perfect metaphor there, folks, think about it):

In February of 2010 my nearly 93 year-old father was actively dying, fast.  To avoid becoming completely squashed flat between caring for him, taking care of my soon-to-be-widowed mother, and taking care of my then 7 year-old twin boys with special needs (one of them is on the Autism Spectrum and the other has some ADD/anxiety) I began this blog.

Pouring out all my thoughts and feelings onto the page, finding my words instead of just howling helped me to sort things out, allowed me to plumb the depths without being torn apart by the pressure down there.

I found that I loved writing as much as I had when I was a girl, a young woman who had thought she might some day become a writer.

I write about the familiar: my family.  I write a lot about Death and Autism because these things press up against me every day.  I write about ADD because not only does my son have a brain that tends that way, but so do I, so you get to come along for the wild ride.

I write about love and thankfulness because that is what underlies all the other stuff, keeps it from descending into sadness and madness.

I write about friendship because without my friends I wouldn't be here, and I appreciate them with every fiber of my being.

I don't write much about my husband because he is a private man and the story of our marriage is half his, not really mine to tell.  (But he does come up from time to time.)

I also sometimes lighten things up, share delightful stories about my sons, Ethan and Jacob, now eight and a half.  Because I really am a funny, light-hearted person, most of the time (when no one is in the middle of dying that is).

Over the course of the past year I have gone from being an occasional writer to a steady, nearly every day one.  I am coming up on my "Blogaversary" and looking forward to seeing where this second year of blogging my life will take me, what 2011 has in store for us.

Now, 2010 was a fairly crap year: My father died, my Mother-in-law died, my gall bladder punked out on me.

But some mighty good things happened, too:

I started this blog and found a whole new amazing online community of bloggers, especially the Special Needs parenting bloggers.  And the Hopeful Parents site asked me to become one of their regular monthly writers.

We found a wonderful new school for Jacob that just "gets it," and where he is thriving.

Ethan started to fall in love with reading and books.

But, most importantly, we didn't let our losses drive us apart, but rather bind us tighter together as a family; sad but solid.

And that's us.  These nuts in this nutshell.

If, you've got a short attention span (no judgement here) and, curiosity satisfied, you're ready to move on, you can stop reading here, continue hopping with the hop.  If, however, you want to hear how the Squashed family rolls on a snow day and see some incredibly cute pictures of my sons and our snowman?  Read on for a bit.  It's short and sweet today.

(Well, what passes for short and sweet around here.  I didn't develop my frequently used blog tag: "Ruminating Rambles" and earn my title: "Queen of the Run-On Sentence {with parenthetical clauses}" for nothing you know)

Wednesday afternoon: snow coming down on Riverside Drive

And now the magnificence of our Snow Day:

Well, we, of course, had an official Snow Day yesterday, here in New York City, with an unexpected 19 fresh inches of the fluffy white stuff coming our way Wednesday into Thursday morning.

(Only the 9th time they have closed NYC public schools for a Snow Day since 1978.  I told you, we are NOT wimps about snow here in New York)

Our apartment building is right next to one of the best sledding hills in Riverside Park, so our apartment becomes "sledding central" on Snow Days.

Which means that yesterday we had a gaggle of 8 year-old boys (and a younger sibling) over both before and after the big outdoor sledding / snowman building / snowball fighting event.

Here is what it looked like out in the glorious snow:

Jake

This year's snowman: kind of wistful face, no?

Ethan

Our sledding hill: "Suicide Hill" Riverside Park at 90th Street

Jakey talks to the snowman

Ethan contemplates his next snowball fight target

Ethan and friend Sage defend their home turf

I loved the moody sky

An hour and a half in the snow and we were done. We retreated back to our apartment, peeled off sodden outer layers, hung them to drip into the tub, dry on the radiators.  Fresh dry socks from our excessed sock bin were distributed all around.

Lego towers were created and destroyed.  Apple slices and goldfish crackers were munched and crunched.  Vats of hot cocoa were guzzled (mocha coffee for the moms).  Mmmmm.  Snow Day.

Vote for me yet today?  One click is all you need to show me your love!

Snow Dome

Riverside Park

Today is Wednesday again, exactly one week since I bid my gall bladder a fond farewell.  I am certainly recovering, but still taking things easy, slowly.  I did not slip foot out of our apartment until Saturday, and I have left my building once, yesterday, briefly.

Otherwise I am living a rather small life inside these walls.  Drinking ginger tea and moving about gingerly; resting, waiting, putting most of the rest of everything on hold.  Living in a bubble, cocooned. Not quite ready to pop.

The snows that have fallen?  Were watched through windows.

Friday's fat happy dancing flakes looked lovely drifting down.  It was a giant shaken snow dome of a day.  I had a visitor.  I was still loopy on percoset.  I drifted in and out of a gauzy sleep, my children kept at the periphery, pain still ever-present at my core.

Today's snow was sharper, colder; a different shape to its crystalline structure.  I was sharper, too; the pain receding, the pain-killers now three days tossed.

We had all been waiting on tenterhooks: Snow day / no snow day?  Six inches...  ten...  fourteen?

A rumor whipped around Ethan's school yesterday, fueled by children eager for fun...

If you want a snow day the next day, you must do three things:
1.  Put a spoon under your pillow when you go to sleep that night.
2.  Take some ice cubes and flush them down the toilet.
3.  Put your PJs on inside out and wear them that way to bed.

None of us have any idea where this came from, although one Kindergartner told her mom that her TEACHER had told them to do this.  I guess she really wanted a day off.

However, we moms needed the day off, too, so a bunch of us made our own counter-magic by buying new sleds.

The Mom magic prevailed.  At 5AM the mayor spoke: No Snow Day; business as usual; carry on.  This is par for the course here in New York.  This is not a city of snow wimps, we are walkers.  We go out in it all (well, I didn't, but you know that story). 

If there is less than a foot, a foot and a half of snow?  Go to school!

Jacob's school, on the other hand, had called a snow day early the evening before, as had most of the other private special ed schools in the city.  That's because there is so much more prepping that takes place to get these kids off to school, and they thoughtfully know we need more lead time to scramble and lay plans for an unexpected day off. 

I needed to know earlier rather than later whether or not I would be waking my son as usual at o'dark hundred to make ready and catch his way-too-early bus, for his way-too-long ride to school.

Ethan, of course, was livid, wailing at the injustice of it all.  He had been pulling hard for a snow day to spend holed up with the upstairs neighbor boys in front of screens, large and small.  His hopes had been dashed, his plans all gone to rot.

And his brother, HIS TWIN BROTHER, got to stay home in pajamas and watch TV while he had to bundle up and shuffle off to school.  The disappointment nearly did him in, but off to school with his father he went.

As better as I am feeling, I was still in no shape for a full day of Jacob, challenging and sweat provoking even in the best of circumstances.  So I called in the cavalry: a sitter.  Mid-morning, as my barely emerging energy was flagging, I sent Jake out into the world with movie, library and snowballs on his plate for the day.

And me?  I furled my butterfly wings back in, tucked them round.  Cocooned* once more, facing a day of sleep, healing and listening to the snowplows grumble as they slowly scrape their way down our street.


*Ethan would surely like to tell you that I am using the cocoon metaphor incorrectly here. Butterflies form in chrysalises, cocoons are the exclusive domain of moths.  I say pffft, poetic license, dude.

Looking for Comments? I still haven't fixed my "Intense Debate disappearing comment link on home page problem" yet, so if you are viewing this on my home page and want to read my comments or make one of your own, click on the post's title to bring you to the post's page view. Voila!   Still don't see them? Is your browser's pop-up filter set too high? (Hopefully this will get fixed soon - sorry!)