Powers

January 9, 2013 by Rieshy
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As a mature woman is wont to do, I spent time while in the hospital with my son mentally designing the superpower I would like to have.

What?  Mature women don't daydream like that?

Yes they do.  And sometimes they even ponder what they would do if they won a lottery, even though they never have and never will buy a ticket.

My superpower would be instantly transporting myself and anything I touch with my bare hands.  What mom couldn't use the ability to instantaneously arrive with a child at a Karate class across town?  There would be no need to schlep all the children; take your cell phone along and if your kids at home need you, poof- you're back home.

The homeschooling opportunities abound.  I could take both my littles to a park in Mödling, Austria each day for German language practice.  Field trips to the Parthenon, the Chagall museum in Nice, France would be just afternoon visits with no passports required.

I could visit my sisters, both of whom live over a thousand miles away, for tea.  I even briefly imagined transporting one sister to visit her son- but he's stationed in South Korea and my daydream was sidetracked by being arrested by military police and being held as possible spies.  Daydream gone bad.

Which led to the conclusion that a transporting ability needs to be coupled with some sort of slow morph into visibility so as not to attract undue attention.  Super-powers are very complicated things, I know because I watched Smallville.

Powers are also enticing things.  Especially when one feels relatively powerless.  I didn't daydream about being able to heal sickness and disease.  Why?  Because the very idea hurts and makes me admit that I don't have any hope for my chronically ill son ever being totally healed.

I wonder if it is universal that we don't skirt too near the aches of life when we are daydreaming? Perhaps daydreaming is a power, a power to be thankful to God for?

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Beeping In the New Year

January 7, 2013 by Rieshy
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I was crazy busy over the Fall semester.  I started having free brain space as 6 months worth of being able to sleep a full night without having to get up to administer meds. to my 6 year old son started to accrue and payoff dividends.

My hair even got thicker.

I lost some weight gained in many E.R. visits and hospital stays from the last 4 years...

We marked 21 months without a metabolic crisis.



I started thinking that this blog, this blog I started as an escape valve for all my stressed-out thoughts on the topic of childhood chronic illness seemed a bit, well, superfluous as well as a time gobbler.

Then the flu hit my house.  The flu doesn't play well with inborn metabolic disorders.  My 6 year old had to go to the E.R. on New Year's Eve and ended up admitted to the hospital for several days until the flu ran it's course.

I now feel sorry for security guards nationwide- I'm sure they are praying for the gods of fashion to bring back simple leather flats; every woman entering the hospital (including me) set off the metal detector  because of buckles and/or large zippers on their boots.  Beep, beep, beep....

My 18 year old daughter had accompanied us to the ER; she set off the metal detectors once with her boots and once with the folding knife she got for christmas.  Beep, beep.

We got to watch the Times Square celebration.  Right as the ball dropped and the crowds cheered my son's IV occluded, BEEP, Beep, beep....

Strange times.  But, we left the hospital a few days later.  I left with the same number of children I went in with and that's what really counts.  I don't mind beeping in the New Year after all.



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Raising a Lawyer

December 17, 2012 by Rieshy
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Semantics

Mysteriously on Sunday morning 2 long locks of dark brown hair appeared on the kid's bathroom floor.  All but one of my 7 children have dark brown hair.  The process of elimination began.

My teens may have messy rooms but they don't generally cut random hunks of their hair and leave them scattered across a floor.

My 11 yo has hair too short for the length of the mystery hanks.

I know I wasn't in the kids bathroom (I try never to enter that realm of grunge) cutting my hair.  

No one came to breakfast looking odd.  

Time for the big guns.  The most obvious culprits?  The 5 and 6 year old boys.  Both have messy hair so missing chunks would be hard to notice.  I inquired, "So did either of you find some scissors and cut your hair?"

Guileless big brown eyes and guileless big hazel eyes looked up at me and in chorus they responded, "Nooooo, I didn't do that."

Hmm.  Defeated.  The frontal approach often fails.

Forward to this morning sitting at the table with my teen girls over coffee and wondering aloud at the still unsolved mystery, my 5 year old wanders over.  With sudden inspiration I casually asked said 5 year old, "So what did you use to cut your hair."  Cheerfully he ran off, dug in the bathroom for a moment and came back with his 20 year old brother's razor.

A razor is definitely not a pair of scissors.  



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Parenting Advice for the Musically Insane

November 30, 2012 by Rieshy
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If your goal is to accidentally make small boys wild with exuberant and unfocused energy on a winter morning while marooned inside by cold weather, play this opera by Alban Berg as loudly as possible:



Isn't being trapped inside with wildly exuberant and unfocused energy every parent's dream?  Unlike most parenting advice this suggestion has been tested and found to be 100% successful.

Ravel's Bolera works too.


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Organic Paper Shredder

November 16, 2012 by Rieshy
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A Green Home Office





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The Whole Point

November 9, 2012 by Rieshy
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If you don't eat dinner at a table with your children you are missing something.  All the years of dirty diapers, croup, temper tantrums and gum stuck in hair are eventually rewarded... around the dining table.

At lunch today on asking if anyone had heard anything more about Ireland's voting to decide whether to leave Great Britain I was met with blank stares.  Because well, Ireland isn't involved- it's Scotland. Close enough, eh?

Which prompted my husband to mention Quebec's long desire to leave Canada at which my 13 year old pipped in, "Where will they go?"

We are slow, it took us a few minutes to realize she was kidding.

Then we all quacked a bit trying to say Quebecois properly.  Though none of us would know for sure- even though I used to live in Canada.  All I remember is that if you are not of French-Canadian descent it is prohibited for you to say the term and have it deemed properly pronounced.

What's the mood in Scotland?  How do you pronounce Quebecois?  I don't know.  The point is- eating with family is precious.



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Animals are Animals

November 1, 2012 by Rieshy
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Animals are animals and must somehow earn their keep.  Dogs should be dogs and by definition larger than rats. This maxim is engraved in my West Texas and Louis L'Amour tutored genes.


Except for this animal; I'm unexpectedly smitten.  
Meet Horatio.



I know.  It's silly.
In his defense, there was not a crumb of rice under the little boys' dining chairs last night.  I'll count that as a day's work.  

Plus, Horatio doesn't own a sweater so I can pretend he's a little bit tough. 


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