I Love My Father-in-Law

Did I ever mention that this man is from Portugal? And pours his ports with a free hand? Result: I am beyond spoiled when it comes to fortified wines. None of that tawny crap for this cephalopod. Vintage ports, and nothing after 1985, thank you very much.

Last night I got to listen to him spin long, wild tales about his childhood in the Azor3s, and the happenstances of being the son of the owner of the largest whaling factory on the island. This is a man who can wield the word 'flense.' Delightful.

Merry Xmas

Xmas is and continues to be crazy, but the kids are loving it, and Iz liked the gift I made for her so much that she stopped opening her presents to groove on it, and refused to continue until threatened by people who are not me.

Way too much stuff for the kids. Most of it will be disappeared and they'll never even notice. There was a good proportion of gifts that people spent time, thought, and energy creating, which is preferable to the standard all-out assault on The Mall.

Everything for Leelo is truck- or train-related. Except for the My Little Pony which his grandmother (Seymour's mom, bless her) had no qualms about giving him even though it comes in a pink box.

My sister and brother-in-law got me a cheese subscription, which almost made me cry. Seymour got me a couple of Sandman books and the Animatrix DVD and no more, which means that he is being a very good listener. Bless him, too.

Hope you're all having a happy happy day. Tomorrow we are driving to meet Sienna for the first time, and scope the situation. Wish us luck.

(BTW, I have and will continue to purge a lot of blog material related to her, for confidentiality reasons. If you want details feel free to email me via the questions link to the left.)

Incommunicado

There will be no more blogging for the next week, from this corner anyhow. We'll be Christmassing in Seattle.

(Then again, if I can't find the tennis racquet they got for Iz before we leave, I may find myself staying elsewhere.) Iz's grandmother loves her tennis and especially loves watching her grandkids (try to) play.

Happy times to you and yours.

She Fails

I am just a fuckwad. How did I get into this mess? My fabulous gifts got gutterballed. They are in a format unprecedented for this procrastinator, and I just didn't get how hard it was going to be. Plus, duh, I have a much more insane life this year than in years past.

Regardless, I won't get to sleep (again) tonight or make my plane tomorrow if I even look at them sideways (but I can blog, it's my sanity break). They are about five hours away from being done. Perhaps I can churn them out up north. Does Seatt1e have 24hr Kinko's?

Managed to get out presents to all the adults, but their kids will hate me this year. They'll get nothing and like it! Well, maybe I can air mail some coal to the little darlings after I get to Seymour's folks' place.

Seymour's mom has planned such an amazing event for the grandkids that I can't even believe it. Santa, his reindeer, and elves are coming to their house to meet the kids and do a little show. Plus their friend who commutes from Snoqua1mie has been bringing a truckload of snow to them every day for a week. It'll be a white Xmas at the Rosenberg compound, no matter what. Seymour and I both think this is slightly insane, but agree that his mom deserves to have whatever kind of Xmas she damn well pleases.

P.S. Apologies to anyone who got grumped at today. You know I love and feel comfortable with you if I'm able to let loose with bitch mode right in your face.

Well, Maybe I Won't Stay Up All Night

Until 5 A.M. is good enough, neh?

Earlier on I drafted Seymour to help out with some of the more mind-numbing Xmas tasks, for the fist time ever. Very funny watching him spend hours and hours addressing 150 cards, writing the treacly newsletter, putting photos in frames, etc. He was a very good sport. Tomorrow he has agreed to face the Saturday morning post office Xmas rush crowd with a tower of packages and his imp of a daughter, while I take Leelo to Bioset. If he survives that I might even let him help pack for the trip to Seattle.

I spent my evening madly banging away on my holiday various projects, one of which involved making a CD for Jo. I sort of lost it about 80% of the way through. You'll see--the theme changes rather abruptly. In a good, necessary way.

Off to bed.

Ba-Boom! There Goes My Head!

Aaaaigh! No sleep for the next two days! I hope that Kinko's isn't swamped at 3 A.M. this morning when I will probably be there, madly copying away. And somehow I have to figure out how to retrieve my car from the mechanic in San Mateo before 5:00. Yes, that is a bald plea for assistance, locals.

The funny thing is that this project of mine is something the kids won't even give a crap about, compared to the piles of molded plastic product tie-ins they've been brainwashed into craving. I remember quite clearly what an ungrateful little shit I was about homemade vs. bought presents, and so will not be offended.

Leelo seems to be a different boy lately. Many people have commented on it--he's observing and looking at and scrutinizing people, even if they look back at him. Overall he seems to be much more with us. I hope the trauma of travel doesn't upset him so much that he retreats back into remoteness mode while we're staying with the grandparents who are funding most of his therapy and are hoping to see results.

Iz and Merlin have apparently come up with a game called "Army Kids," where the kids all run around with knives and shoot guns. Seymour is not amused, but I told him that the kids are starting to get to that age where this is standard playground discussion fare. It's not our job to just say "no, you can't play or draw guns because they're bad and that's that." We have to go into active parenting mode, where we advise and discuss and try to inform and get battered with left-field questions we'd never considered.

So, long discussion with Iz in the car this morning about how real guns and knives are not for play, they are weapons. Weapons are for hurting or killing, so unless you are an an adult and a highly trained soldier, pirate, hunter, or police officer, weapons are not really appropriate. Her response: "Well, the Army Kids are teenagers and they are soldiers, so they are almost adults and they can use weapons." Goddammit. I am very interested in how other people approach this topic.

Here is Iz's rendition of Cindy, the head Army Kid. Note the firing gun and knife, and the USA on her skirt:



Fuck fuck fuck fuckity fuck! I am freaking out. Someone should probably come protect my poor husband from the screaming, puffing harpy wife who will greet him at the train station this evening.

Shaking Head

http://www.marriagepoll.com.

Why can't the American Family Association just put their ample conservative energies into helping families in need? Why are they meddling with the business of committed people who want the legal ability to protect each other?

I have had very little sleep so this is probably incoherent. LOTR was 98% rocking, good enough for me. Some eye-rolling moments, but I can live with that.

Thanks Minnie for the link.

Punchy

So this one time, a friend of mine in Vancouver was working at a tattoo studio and he told me he'd tattoo the Klingon Symbol on my ass for free!

Yes, I'm loopy tired. Really. Why? Bad time management skills. Still, I would arise from a coma to go see the last installment of LOTR, which means that's what I'm doing tonight. Coffee, don't fail me now!

You Wouldn't Believe Me Anyhow

What a fun day! Somehow amidst the eye appointments (Iz, fifteen miles north), therapy sessions, dental appointments (Leelo, 25 miles south) and car breaking down in the middle of bumfuck with two kids and their carseats in the back and being assured that the tow truck driver could accommodate them and then having him arrive and tell me there was a miscommunication and no he couldn't fit us all in his truck and sobbing to saintly Ep to please come save us (which she did, altruistic soul that she is), those Nanaimo bars got made. My assistant Iz was so thorough in her dispensing of powdered sugar clouds during the step between therapy and the eye appointment that, by the time Ep deposited us on our porch two hours later, the entire kitchen was carpeted with ants. All I can say is that Jainism is not for me, because each and every one of those little fuckers died a horrible death at my hands (thank you, Orange Guard).

Was greatly amused at Iz's eye doctor's office. Iz still has a little pinhead-sized rust ring in her eye from that metal splinter a few weeks back. Her eye has otherwise healed perfectly, and the doctor isn't worried about it. I told Iz that she could think about it as an "eye tattoo," at which point the doctor told Iz that she certainly wouldn't want to be getting any tattoos, would she, as tattoos are just wrong. Huh? To Iz's credit, she didn't bring me into the discussion.

Leelo's visit to the dentist was amusing in a different way. I went in there telling everyone at every step that Leelo is autistic and bloody well unlikely to be compliant. "Oh, well let's just see if he'll tolerate the lead apron while he's holding this x-ray film in his teeth just so with the x-ray camera one centimeter from his nose." Seymour afterwards: "Was all that screaming Leelo?" At the end of the visit they suggested maybe we should try knocking him out for the processes. Well, duh.

Should probably mention that Seymour took off half his day to chauffeur us around to the dentist and Iz's holiday potluck. La la la, wee kids singing and dancing. Leelo couldn't take the caterwauling of thirty pre-schoolers, so he and I hung out in the back room and Seymour watched the show. Moomin and Badger joined us later, and the two boys played animal puzzles for a nice bit, Leelo even seeming to copy Moomin's animal parade.

Best part of the potluck was the look on Ep's face as she failed to get that last Nanaimo bar (they are the food of her people as well). Fortunately I had hoarded an extra one, and gladly handed it over in recognition of services rendered.

I am trying very hard to finish my secret project. It may implode, as the last part hinges somewhat on my ability to conjure up a good verse--not a challenge I usually take on. Lord. Next week will be mellower.

A Goodish Day

Leelo, despite his nuttiness and perpetually low-hanging drawers (the boy has no butt; thanks to my dad's genes he looks like he's wearing my dad's jeans, snarf snarf) had a wonderful, fabulous, incredible day during his two therapy sessions and one facilitated playgroup. His therapists and Supervisor M were amazed and surprised, and kept re-checking their data to ensure that no mistakes had been made. No, sorry, he just kicked ass!

Then he went to Ep's playgroup and used his cobra-like reflexes to snag a sip of juice and a bite of cookie. God fucking damn it. We'll see if there are repercussions. He is so damn quick, it is flabbergasting. Several wary and watchful parents, myself included, were standing around both times, yet none of us were fast enough to intercept him.

Tomorrow is a potluck at Iz's school. We are supposed to bring the food of our people. I don't really feel like making bacalau, the food of Seymour's people, and so will spend part of the evening making Nanaimo bars, the food of my parents' people. The other part will be spent making my new top-secret holiday gifties even though they require focus and a nimbleness of mind that I've never yet achieved. Send good, creative, sustaining thoughts my way, please!

What the Fuck? And, Hurray!

Leelo has been on a hyper-driven crazies bender since last Thursday. It is driving us completely fucking nuts. Seymour can't take it, sometimes he just has to leave the room. The weird thing is, despite this, when Leelo concentrates we're getting some of his best behavior and responses ever.

For instance, when Seymour walked in the front door after running outside to check on the mold level in the hot tub, Leelo said "Hi, Daddy!" totally spontaneously. He has never in his life greeted either one of us spontaneously, without prompting of some sort. He's also reciting much longer passages than usual from his books, with much clearer enunciation. Demonstrating increased understanding of what we say to him, e.g., "I want book" "which book?" I want My World," and interacting correctly with TV programs that ask viewers to yell responses at the screen. But then he starts gibbering and laughing like a lunatic and there is no reaching him. Seymour is upstairs fretting about it as I write; neither of us have ever seen anything like this before.

Those fabulous poos we so adore have gone haywire, too. Now we're getting seven or eight of them a day. We're not used to that kind of production, and his little butt is getting raw. We thought it was because of the lemon and lime oil in the cold liver oil (citrus has always shredded his poor little bottom), so we stopped it after Thursday night but the rash and numbers still haven't abated.

The two differences in his routine are 1) he's not sick and 2) B12 shots. So, why the crazies and diaper onslaught? Well, when it comes to so much of this autism shit, the answer to far too many questions is simply "I'm sorry, we just don't know." I must state that groping in the dark with a variety of tools and hoping we find gold is starting to wear on us both.

But, yay, my cousin DD and his wife JP had a little boy. DD came dancing in the door to pick up his adored girls and announced "I have an heir!" Later on he confided that this was the happiest day of his life. Now, before you start muttering disapprovingly about "Men" (which is what my mom did), fuck off and let him have his day.