Happy 2013!

New Year's Fireworks in NZ by Neil Kramer

Happy New Year, Friends!

Also?

The kids go back to school, the kids go back to school, the kids go back to school!!!!!!!!

Don't get me wrong, I have loved much of my vacation time with the kids.

We went to my in-laws house in the country, we skied (well, some of us did), we sledded, we made a snowman, we drove in a blinding snowstorm in our decidedly NON-4-wheel-drive ancient Toyota and lived to tell the tale.

We came back to the city and went to movies and museums and watched WAY too much TV and made lots of cookies and popcorn.

But enough is enough.

I am dreading the rise tomorrow morning at 0-dark-hundred and the fight with Jake to get ready and down to the bus on time, but thrilled with the idea of a few blessed hours in the day to not be the cruise director and referee so that I can GET THINGS DONE.

Really, the laundry pile is close to the ceiling.

(Don't you wish you had my exciting life?)

Also? I really need to start writing again. Real things, not just lists and round-ups. Because as much as I love to obsess reflect on the past, it's time to turn my eyes forward and look towards the horizon.

2013... what will you bring?

Hope it's good stuff for you all, my friends.

Daylight

One short week of school vacation - time off the clock - and the days have gotten noticeably longer at the fringes. When I took Jacob down to wait for his bus this morning, we were watching the early-walking dogs and their people stroll by in daylight, not darkness.

The yellow of the school bus rounding the corner popped against a truly blue sky. And my dour wintry spirits lifted, too, sniffing hopefully towards spring.

*

Tonight, walking home from picking up Ethan at Hebrew School, for the first time in forever it was not completely pitch black night at 6 pm.  Ethan and his friend, our next door neighbor whose mom I “foot-pool” with, were busy talking their 9 year-old-boy-talk of video games interspersed with mock battles that threatened to engulf the sidewalk-sharing passersby.

I just didn’t have the energy to scold, hoped no bodily harm was being done, walked three paces ahead with Jacob on my arm, ever chivalrous.

Jake and I had one of our typical conversations the whole way home, he repeating the same three or four questions over and over, never ceasing in his delight at the correct-to-his-mind answers I doggedly offer back. 

And while the topics often skew to the obvious, they also occasionally delight and surprise.

Jake was talking a lot about the earth and the sky tonight, impressed, as was I, by the moon playing peekaboo with us between the tall buildings. It was in between phases, not quite crescent yet shy of half full, and fuzzy about the edges, giving it a soft, somewhat unearthly glow, as if we'd slipped into a Maxfield Parrish painting. 

"Where is the planet, Mom, where is the earth?" Jake asked. And I assured him we were walking upon it, each and every time.

"When you were dead, before you were a baby, did you live in the sky, Mommy?"

OK, didn't expect THAT one.

A complex and somewhat... unusual cosmological concept going on here. A moment's reflection upon his current Japanimation obsession, though, solved the mystery of its origin. 

In the DragonBall-Z-Kai universe, people are always dying and being brought back to life, and hanging out on a platform in the sky while waiting for that to happen. 

Explaining the improbability of all that to my autistic son was quite beyond my ken tonight, so I just waived my hand in the air and proclaimed it to be a bunch of "made-up TV story nonsense" and not the stuff of real life.

He smiled indulgently, knowing how much more real his beloved Goku and Piccolo are than I will ever know, and, as we were on our block, no more streets to cross, ran the rest of the way home, West toward the fast-fading, last pink echo at the horizon.

I trudged behind, watching the evening's first stars emerge, casting their fuzzy glow about the sky; setting down, one in front of the other, my feet upon this planet, following my boy home.

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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

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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.

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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.

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Wordless Wednesday (now with more words)

I was going to skip Wordless Wednesday today because I feel like talking, but I've got a few readers that would disappoint (and I'd hate to do that).  So this post is going to be a double header.

First: a few cute pictures of my family.  And then?  Some chatter because my brain is all a-clatter.  And me?  I like to share the noise.

It's the second day of winter.  Let's take a walk down memory lane today to winters past...

Here's one from 2004:

Jakey and Me, February 2004 (when my hair was still blonde-ish)

Snowy day, December 2005: 

Time to get 3 year-old twins into bundled into snowsuits?  Half hour.

Maximum time 3 year-olds will spend out sledding?  15 minutes.

How about these from New Year's Eve, 2008?   We had been up in Great Barrington and were supposed to return to the city that day, but got socked in by a blizzard.  So we played in the snow for hours.  Yipeee!

That was a lot of snow!

What could be better than a toboggan pulled by Dad?

Snowy Jacob

Snowy Ethan

Looking at these pictures is making me long for snow.  So far this winter: bitter cold aplenty, but no snow.  Sigh.

And now, for part 2 -- those pesky words:

I'm actually feeling human today.  Today, for the first time in nearly two weeks I woke up without feeling like I was something scraped off the bottom of a shoe.

I forgot how reductive pain is, how it strips the layers of the self away.   I have been hunkered down in survival mode for so long, I was shocked by clarity and lightness.

It made me see how I have been not thinking for days.  When you are deep in the brain fog you can't see it, it just feels like atmosphere.  It's only when it lifts that I understand how limited of vision, short-sighted as well as short-tempered I have been of late.  I know I've been less than 100% present, but how much less was not clear until today; today when I am at least somewhat myself.

My beast-brain had been at the forefront, large and in charge; now somewhat quelled.  My executive functioning is up and running (as much as it ever is in this ADD brain of mine, that is) my frontal lobes asserting themselves once more.

I felt like throwing myself a welcome home party.  I've missed me, truly.  But I so didn't have time for that.  I had so much that needed to get done, that I had not just left un-done but hadn't even realized was sliding off the plate.  Especially: arrangements for my post-surgery recovery, which surely involve other people tending to my children for a few days.

Yesterday I slept all day.  Really... ALL. DAY.

I made it to Ethan's class publishing party at his school, got the car re-parked (NYC alternate parking, it was on the wrong side) then came home and collapsed.   Set the alarm for 3:55... five minutes before Jake's bus wait-time begins and thanked the gods that someone else was picking up Ethan to take him to Hebrew School.  Then?  Sleep.

My husband and I have a running joke...  I say: "I'm so tired I could sleep for a week."

He says: "Honey, that's called a coma."

I pretend to consider the consequences, then conclude: "That's OK, I'll take it."

Only yesterday?  It wasn't so funny.  I really did feel that I was nanometers away from not being able to wake.

If you could call the zombie-like state in which I have been carrying out my minimalist functioning  "awake."  It's a miracle that I have been able to execute the bare minimum required of competent parenting (kids are taken to school and picked up, fed, clean, homework done and in bed before midnight - CHECK!)

So you can imagine how happy I was today to be able to think, to function like a normal human being (well, my usual crude imitation of one, anyway).

And all this makes me think of Jake, and wondering how his level of internal distraction and discomfort is contributing to his sometime foggy state.   When he's so busy trying to get enough input to make sense of his senses, there's no room in his brain for the other good stuff.

He clearly has attention issues, but they're not of the ADD variety.  We've tried ADD meds; they do nothing for him, just make him highly cranky and even more distracted (if that's possible) and who needs that?  His attention issues are puzzling and seeing how distracted and completely unable to think I've been these past two weeks gets my brain a-humming (now that it's finally awake).

Anyway, I don't have any answers to this, no conclusions drawn.  Just musings and questions, lines of inquiry worth chasing down a bit, sometime.  When I have some spare time.  (Don't all fall off your chairs laughing now.)

And now my energy is flagging, and the sofa so inviting.  My spurt of productivity of has sputtered out; time for rest and renewal.  If I am going to retain my human form tomorrow?  I must now put down the mouse, step away from the keyboard.

Goodnight, my friends, goodnight. 

I’m linking up to Wordless Wednesday at Angry Julie Monday.

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