I'm Here - AND THERE!

Hi everone! I wanted to let you know I haven't dropped off the face of the earth! Some of you, actually, have managed to find me. I am writing as the parent-of-special-needs-child/working mom representative at Chicago Parent Magazine's online component. You'll know how to find me when you get there, I promise. Life is still as crazy as ever. If you read the post below this one, then you know that even our sacred "7th Day" is no longer ours. We've been busier than bees, running to this, that and the other - usually at the same time. The band is on a roll and is gearing up to complete our CD!!! Stop on by ChicagoParent and say hi! There are many posts in there that I'd love your feedback on. Leaving a comment is as easy as clicking in the upper right corner where it says, "Join," creating a username & password (kind of like here at blogger), and then just leaving a comment (also kind of like here at blogger). I'll keep writing here, too...no worries, just not as often!

Get Your BookMarks & Your BookClubs Set

It's getting time to pull out the summer reading again, and boy do I have a great one for you! Following up her first book, Confessions of A SuperMom, Melanie Lynne Hauser is releasing SuperMom Saves the World. Super Mom picks up after the Horrible Swiffer Accident, and has our main character, Birdie (and her alter-ego, SuperMom) struggling with many things: The Phantom of the BallPark and the Secret Super Duper Swiffer, her ex-husband, her fiance, the Astro Park-O-Dome that seems to be an all consuming thing for the town, and a teenager who drives.

I haven't finished yet, but reading it is so much fun, I hate putting it down. I MUST go back and read her first book! What I really enjoy, aside from the fact that I can relate to Birdie, as she tries to do 12 things at one time. Go to Amazon NOW and order this book!!!!

My next MUST HAVE book, I recommend on a personal note. I know the author well and can tell you, without ever having read the book that it's fabulous, because I'm extremely familiar with the story. The book is called, Daddy's House by Jane Meadowcroft. It is the story of a little girl who lives with her mom. She visits with her daddy every weekend. Jane's book tells about all of the adventures the two have in their precious time together. It is the story of a beautiful relationship between a girl and her Daddy. It is a story of love, unconditional and from a bit of a unique perspective. This is a perfect book for families with children who travel between two houses. Check out Jane's book. You can buy it at Author House. This book is soon to be followed up by the story of a Prince Charming who sweeps an exhausted over-worked, underpaid mother of three (with one child on the Autistic Spectrum) off of her feet, and how they all begin, as a family, to grow together and create a whole new life.

I have more - but I haven't finished. I've been trying to read multiple books all at the same time and am still finishing a few. I'll keep them coming for you, though, I promise. Check out these books and let me know what you think!!!

Short , for Me, and Probably Missing LOTS of Important Stuff

I made it, somehow to the weekend. I think I have the flu, SmallBoy's just been having the most awful week, life is insane, and tomorrow's cookie day...oh, wait, this morning my alarm went off at my weekday wakeup time, entirely too early, I was convinced it was Friday until PC told me it wasn't, and then, I couldn't get back to sleep. WRONG.

I'll post tomorrow or Monday about my Not-So-SmallBoy, but I'll just suffice it to say that the hyperlexia - weakness in reading comprehension - is REALLY getting to him. When that's added onto his already overful plate, full of stress, social struggles, Ex being an asshole issues, lack of time to do what HE wants to do (video games), it just makes things incredibly difficult for him. So today, in the few hours that I didn't feel like total and complete crap, just partial, incomplete crap, SmallBoy and I made a couple batches of cookie dough for our big giant family Cookie Day - which I'm pretty sure I mentioned in the post below. That kept him focused and happy for a while. He's just been SO sad and pained lately, so it was nice to see him genuinely interested in doing something and being happy about it.

Girl's Christmas program was Thursday night and I never got pics up from it, so here are a few:





She had a basketball game today, well, two, but only played in one of them. Thankfully I was still feeling somewhat ok - tired cuz I couldn't go back to sleep this morning, but relatively ok. Took some pics there, too...can you tell I don't feel like writing, but want to post SOMETHING?





She made it, we won - of course. Low scoring game, but we won, and that's what mattered. Second pic was from the half time shoot-around.

OH....DUH....Meem is in the process of publishing a children's book about Princess & ET, it's called "Daddy's House." PC built her a myspace to help promote. There are no pics or blurbs up about the book yet, but it's going to be wonderful. The book is a story about a little girl who lives with her mom, but visits her daddy every weekend. It tells about all of the fun things they do when they're together, their adventures, and their love for each other. Obviously, I'll keep promoting it here, too, but hop over there and check it out - say hi, whatever. Don't worry, I'll let you know as soon as we know when it's going to hit the shelves!

Alright, Loves, it's almost midnight, I feel like crap and we've got a busy day tomorrow! Smoochies. Good night, sleep tight and don't let the bed bugs bite!

I'm Stumped

Last night while I was posting for yesterday, I had tons and tons of ideas for todays post. Now, I'm at a loss. I think I was so intent on staying on track for the big gigantic post that I wasn't about to stop and write down my ideas, lest I change tangents mid-post. So, in the meantime, while I'm wracking my brain for ideas and reading YOUR posts, go back and read my two posts from yesterday and then look at the slide show post from our weekend.

Creamed Corn

I had this beautifully moving and extremely cathartic post going last night which, of course, I was just writing and writing and writing, moved by a song that brings me to tears every single time I hear it, when my mouse froze, my screen went dark, and another screen - a blue one this time, popped up and told me that my computer was about to start to auto-dump its contents. Well, LargeBoy streamed into the room, unplugged, yanked the battery and stopped that process from happening - THANK GOD! Unfortunately, though, I hadn't thought to save the post as a draft while I was composing through the tear drops (ok, streams). Yup. How 'bout that for a big ol' dose of Post-Be-Gone. I'll post that post another time, it's sad, but sweet. So instead of yesterday being a two-post day, it was just the one. Today, however, I'm going to post about something funny.

Word of the day - Creamed Corn. My niece, Princess, despises creamed corn. To her, it is the AntiChrist. For me, it is a happy comfort food memory, I ate it all the time with my grandparents. My grandfather always thought it funny to challenge us to eat it with a fork (where's the fun in that?). Princess would rather bleed from her eyeballs than to look at, breathe near, hear or utter the words "creamed corn". This, in our family, means large quantities of ribbing and an endless supply of jokes and pranks that could, very likely, carry over through the holidays in many very evil ways. Yes, we are evil when it comes to practical jokes, we all have very wicked senses of humor. Mainly we focus on each other, but every once in a while, one of the kids gets brought into the loop - because, well, it's his or her turn in the rotation, as we like to say.

ET plays this game with her, taken from the esteemed Pee Wee's Playhouse (long before that meant a dark movie theater). He'll establish a word of the day and every time one of them uses it, the do something goofy. The favorite word, so far, has been "armpit", which is usually said while smothering the other in said armpit (UGH). Now, I'm not certain as to how creamed corn came up, probably while ET was planning a meal, but Princess voiced her complete and total disgust at the idea. She was quite insistent that creamed corn was gross, sickening, and Blehechkbluhr (how does one spell the sound of wretching?), and went streaking from the room letting out a scream. You have to know our Princess to know that the scream is almost always accompanied by hysterical laughter, rolled eyeballs, and some other comic facial expression, completed by the wild waving of the arms over the head. As she ran, she left the door to PrankLand wide open.

ET's first prank was to buy a multitude of cans of creamed corn and line the cupboard shelves with them, hiding the rest of the contents. He called Princess into the room, casually, and asked her about what they should make for their meal together. You can imagine the shock when she opened the cupboard to all of the cans staring at her, taunting her. Again with the screaming out of the room, followed by the maniacal laughter of her father. From then on, the more common "armpit" word of the day, frequently was replaced with "creamed corn," evoking similar responses. Keep in mind, of course, this is all in good fun, and Princess plays along with us (perhaps humoring US).

Last week, and over the weekend, ET spent quite a bit of time at our house helping us with the many many Herculean tasks that needed to be completed in order to host the giganto family party. As he retold the creamed corn story, flashes of light appeared, on a regular basis, over PC's an my heads, and then again over ET's. We decided that, indeed, we would drag this out until Christmas. The only catch is that we have to let it die down enough that she begins to forget about it...and then bring it up again before it's a "been there/done that" kind of a thing. Ideas, ideas, ideas: for the Thanksgiving feast, let everyone else be served whatever the vegetable dish may be....give her creamed corn (we'll all eat it when she won't, don't worry, no waste involved), stuffing of her stocking with creamed corn, complete with a note from Santa saying that he understood her deep affection for this delicious dish and wanted to make sure she had a nice supply of it, wrapping her Christmas gift from PC & me in a smaller package, but then giving her a nice big heavy box all wrapped beautifully, with a big red bow - only for her to discover when she opens it, that it's ....yep, you guessed it...creamed corn!

Oh yes, you're right. We certainly are awful, but the fun thing about Princess is that she'll TOTALLY play along, and quietly plot and plan about how to retaliate. All of this, and she's only "7, duh!" Yes, yes, we're grooming her well. Heh heh heh heh.....

Am I Crazy or Am I Needing Motivation? (oh yes, and I need HELP!)

Yup. I'm crazy. I haven't been writing much lately, so, with a good swift kick in the pants in the form of a nice little challenge, and a little encouragement from Kyra and my family, I've decided to participate in NaBloPoMo this month. For those of you unfamiliar, it is a challenge to post on your blog every single day for the month of November. It doesn't have to be anything profound, it can be simple, short, or you can babble on and on, which, I find, I have no trouble doing. I don't think I'll have too much difficulty with the posting part, it's the uploading of the logo that is challenging me.

I'm not certain if it's me or if it's blogger or if it's a little of both...it took me all day just to get the photo into THIS post...and I KNOW how to do THAT. Well tonight we trick or treat, tomorrow we embark on the post. In the meantime, I need HELP!!!!! Kyra and I have been, as she put it, the blind leading the blind when it comes to figuring out how to get our friend Yoda, here, into the sidebar. There are many logos for the NaBloPoMo challenge on the page. This is the one I chose to use. However, I am terribly challenged in the area of doing anything to the blog except actually posting. If you know anything about adding these little tags to blogger, any knowledge you'd like to share with me would be MUCH appreciated! Send it through my email - in my profile! HAPPY HALLOWEEN!