From Here To There, From There To Here... Funny Things Are Everywhere!

Well, what a week it has been! Though our family had initially planned a nice little camping trip for this past week, life has a funny way of throwing curve-balls. Curve-balls that mean you leave the camper at home, but have a chance to see a lot more of nature... and human nature... and...

If you recognize the picture above, you might be a redneck... or a Texan. Last winter, my father-in-law moved from Georgia to Texas. Unfortunately his health has been declining and it was recently suggested to us that we come visit... soon. The trek from VA to TX is a long one at about 1,152 miles... but I think that number doubles for each child in the car. (Am I wrong?) If it weren't for the DVD players (yeah - that's plural) and the dog, it would have seemed even longer than that.

And right now you're probably saying to yourself, "You traveled 1,152 miles with 3 kids and A DOG? What, are you nuts?"

Yes I am! Obviously we should have left the kids with someone!

The dog was a saving grace! As some of you may know, I put our Olde Victorian Bulldogge through Service Dog training. The picture above is her, crashed out in a very crazy-busy Tennessee McDonalds in the PlayLand area where we were allowing the 2 youngest of our brood to play off some energy. Not only does our dog not beg or drool when she smells Big Mac-luciousness, but if you drop food on the floor next to her, she pretends she doesn't even see it.

What service does Brandy Ann provide? Well, Iraq (who has Asperger syndrome) often becomes very over-stimulated - especially in busy, noisy, colorful places... like in a McDonald's play land.We can see the tell-tale signs. First she plays like all the other kids. Then, her play starts becoming a little wild and loud. Then louder... Then... she begins trying to find a private, quiet place within the giant habitrail-like plastic tubes. (Good luck with that, kiddo!) She resembles a feral cat as she slinks and hides when anyone comes near her or if we try to call to her. Once we are able to GET HER OUT... a task that is usually far easier said than done... she goes into full, non-verbal melt-down mode. As we pull her away from the multi-colored maze of plastic, the shrieking will begin and the limbs stop working.

Without the dog, we may stay in melt-down mode anywhere from 10 minutes to some giant indefinite number of minutes. As if it's not bad enough that I am having to subdue a shrieking, flailing child, it's usually at these cherished moments when I am bequeathed with dagger-stares from other parents. (My favorite part of any meltdown!)

With the dog? Well, the moment she is placed next to Brandy Ann, the shrieks stop immediately. She puts her arms around the dog's neck and buries her face in her neck. In about 5 minutes, she has calmed down completely and asks politely if she can go back and play.

Yes - - the dog DOES help!

So how was Texas, you ask?

 

Yup - that about sums it up! Not only was it hot, but the state is experiencing its worst drought since Texans started keeping records... so like, before the Alamo and all that. It was so hot and dry in fact that we all spontaneously combusted the moment we stepped out of the car.

Anywhoo... We are very thankful that we got to see Pawpaw. The kids will have some very nice memories of time shared with him... except for The Skink who would get no closer than about two feet from him. (So it's been a while since she last saw him.) Iraq and Broadway got snuggely for a picture.

And we got to see cousins... however I think poor Pawpaw may have gotten just a liiiiitttlllle overwhelmed...

We even took Pawpaw to the aquarium in Grapevine, TX...

And we got to see an old friend just for a few minutes. Cyndi was one of The Skink's favorite nurses during her (rather loooonng) stay in the NICU, 5 years ago.

After 3 very short days in Texas enjoying Pawpaw, we headed to Louisiana to further torture ourselves by adding humidity to the unbearable heat and to visit my sister. On the way, we got stuck in a traffic jam, (due to a brush fire obviously caused by spontaneously combusting swamp-grass... or possibly by some moron throwing a cigarette out a car window - my vote is for the spontaneous combustion thing) but it allowed us to see one of the funniest scenes ever. Some cars were using the median to turn around and avoid the jam. Well... a motorcycle cop saw the cars driving through the median and made them turn around, drive back through the median and get back in line! Go LA police - you tell 'em!

The offending white car takes the drive of shame back to her place in line... ROFLMAO!

Eventually we did get to my sister's house un-charred and in one piece so that Broadway could get some good chicken cuddles from Chick-A-Doodee. What? Doesn't everybody have a pet chicken?

Iraq got to ride Aunt Kate's new mare, Jelly Belly, all by herself. We later found out that the belly isn't due to jelly at all! The vet came out and confirmed that in a few weeks Jelly Belly will be a mommy! My poor sister hyperventilated on the spot!

I got to ride too for the first time in way too long! (On one of the non-pregnant geldings.) Yeah - couldn't suppress that big ol' silly grin!

And while New Orleans is not exactly on the rout back home, hearing that Hurricane Irene was bearing down on our home state, we thought there would be a certain amount of fun in the irony of taking refuge in that fine city! At least long enough for lunch and some window shopping.

 

We did discover one little over-sight in NOLA, however. It became VERY clear that prior to our next summer trip to a city notoriously as hot as... someplace even further south... we will have to invest in some doggy booties! Heat-resistant doggie booties! Poor Brandy minced over each hot patch of brick sidewalk until she reached the next shady portion where she slowed waaaaaayyyyy down to cool her poor feet. Smart dog!

And what would a road trip be without a blown tire in Nowheresville, Mississippi? Yeah... and I'm not even going to mention getting pegged by another car in NOLA (their fault) and getting some retread thrown under our front end by an 18 wheeler, causing further unnecessary vehicular damage. (Oops - I mentioned it.)

We saw the inside of far too many McDonalds' in the duration of our trip. We also saw tons of caravans of tree removal trucks and line-repair trucks coming from LA and MS toward the areas targeted by Irene. I don't know why I chose this particular caravan of about 10 trucks to photograph, but we saw them again a few hours later - just 2 hours from our home  :(    Oops!

After all our adventures, we got home very late - and very tired! It was an adventure for sure, but there's no place like home, is there?

  *Disclaimer: We do not live in a white picket fence, but in a house that happens to have one.

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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 in a 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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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!"

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