How does this happen?

How on earth does 8 months go by before I post?

I think that I am too busy living life right now to sit down and reflect. Work. Kids. PhD (ha!).

I should report that Weight Watchers Online has been a success. I've lost about 30 lbs, but then I've stalled. I wish that I could make myself get serious about it again. Fine. I'll go track yesterday's food.

Done.

See? I need more reflection in my life.

Now, of course, I need to eat (something healthy!) and go teach my last class.

Autism Awareness Day

Every day is autism awareness day at my house. My autism awareness is aided and abetted by my son, who has autism. He is 6'4" and weighs close to 300 lbs. He's hard to miss.

Turns out, autism (well Asperger's), is not the hardest thing about living with my son. I mean, we're kind of a quirky family, all in all. (They say that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, after all.)

But the past couple of years, I would say since 8th grade, the boy has been depressed. Severely depressed. Keep in mind, he has been seeing therapists on and off since 7th grade, now. I suggested, during a family session (because secretly, the therapist thought I was the crazy one), that W might be depressed. The therapist paused, and said, "I can see that" and spoke to the psychiatrist about Celexa. (Really? What was I driving to Little Rock and paying that man for, anyway?) The Celexa helped. For a while.

Fast forward to last year. W is going into 10th grade. We ended up having to get the courts involved because he was knocking holes in the walls and occasionally striking myself or the girls. He was completely out of control.

We found a new therapist, through a tip from the wife of a former student of mine who is a psychiatric resident in another state. The therapist is very behavior-focused which is wonderful.

With the new therapist came a new psychiatrist, who played with the dosages a bit.

That went on for a few months. In January, though, W became suicidal, and got a few days at Methodist, where they changed is anti-depressant and took him completely off of stimulant medication. He's on Wellbutrin and Abilify. There is night and day difference. Suddenly, the suggestions that his therapist made are working, and he is back to being a wonderful kid. Now, he is still a teenager. Still a bit socially awkward. Still a bit lazy. And disorganized. We've been using Flylady to help with the organization.  And Parenting With Love And Logic to help with general parenting. But now the programs are helping.

Mostly just a ramble

Today, I got my hair cut, which was long overdue. Now if I could just get motivated to color it, I'd be in business.

My current project is rehabbing a couple of American Girl Kirstens that I bought on eBay. One of them, I knew was a Kirsten. She even had her "meet" dress. But some darling child had styled her hair in what can only be called dreadlocks. Her hair is dried out and in really terrible shape. The other one came in modern jeans, tennis shoes, and a jacket. It was billed as a "Just Like You" doll, which is one of the modern ones that have a variety of eye and hair colors to match the girl they are intended for. But she is also a Kirsten. And her hair is in much better shape. Mea and I have washed it, sprayed it with vinyl restorer and will probably get her ready to sell on eBay next week. I am hoping for a nice return on her, since Kirsten dolls are retired. The other one? I don't know. Her hair is soaking in Downy right now, which is really a "last resort" kind of treatment for doll hair. If it works, I probably sell her, too. I could sell her anyway. I saw a doll listed for "parts" sell for more than either of these did.

An old friend came over last night. He is grad school, so he had spring break, too, and spent at least part of the week with his family, who live about a half-hour away. Yesterday, though, he came to visit his friends here in town. It was so nice to see him and just visit. :)

Really, that is all that is going on. Oh, except my daughter's boyfriend broke up with her yesterday. Really, how is that to top off the week she's had?

Spring Break, Part II

First thing, Wednesday morning, Mea got a phone call from her friend, R. R had called to tell her that two of their friends, who were brothers, had been in a wreck. The younger brother, Jacob, was dead, and the older one was in the hospital. As the day went on, it became apparent that the older brother, Keith, wasn't going to make it, either. He passed away Wednesday afternoon.

Mea has not really lost anyone to death, other than her grandmother. But her death was hardly a surprise. Mamaw had brain cancer, so we all knew that it was coming. At the end, she couldn't even talk, which hurt her and hurt us to watch.

The death of these two young men, though, was unexpected. They were young. They never got into any trouble. They didn't drink or even dance. They were what we all hope are children turn out to be. Their lives ended so unexpectedly and so quickly-- they were just out running around on the back roads. Keith was driving with one of his college friends in the front, while Jacob and another friend were riding in the back. (I cannot tell you how many times I've ridden in the back of a pickup.) Keith lost control of the pickup and it rolled several times.

And they died. On Tuesday they were here and yesterday they were gone.

Two of my colleagues had Keith in their comp classes this year. By their accounts, he was a smart, dedicated, hard-working kid. He was acting in a film that one of my friends is making for her thesis.

He leaves a hole in our college, our town, his church, and in the lives of his friends.

Jacob, Mea says, is a "great big puppy dog." A "Labrador retriever" she says. Always upbeat, kind, sweet. He was in band and his locker was near Mea's.

The funeral is Monday-- after school. School on Monday, though, will feel hollow.

I doubt Tuesday will be much better.

Spring Break, Part I

This week has been a busy one. Mea and I went to Norman, Oklahoma to visit the University of Oklahoma. We left Sunday night, and came back Monday night. I have to say, I've been on a few campus tours, and OU knows how do a tour.

Tuesday morning, we got up and drove to Kansas City to see my husband's mother, Mabel, who is in a nursing home there. She has Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's. My sister in law, L, manages her care, and spends a lot of time at the facility. She also pays a couple of women to come in a stay with Mabel. Mabel, however, is difficult to be with. She is agitated, and really doesn't know why.

She's just moved to a new unit, the Memory Care unit, on Monday because she needed more oversight than she was getting in assisted living. She's not adjusting terribly well to the new unit. She wants to get up and walk, she wants to be wheeled to different places.

On Wednesday, Todd spend the day with his mother and gave L a break. She got to go home and spend some time at her home, which was nice. Todd, however, had a pretty miserable time of it. His mother has always lacked tact, and losing the controls that helped her keep her quiet has only added to her bluntness. Several times, she asked Todd when his sister was coming back. She also asked when his wife was coming to pick him up.

I can't say either of them enjoyed the visit, but L enjoyed having a break, as well as having someone understand what she goes through. Every.Single.Day.

Weight Watchers update...

I've been on Weight Watchers for three weeks and have lost five pounds. This may be as well as I have ever done on a diet, except Phase 1 of South Beach. But South Beach leaves me light headed after a day or two. So I am avoiding it.


WW is not without it's challenges, though. Some points sneak up when I am not expecting them. (Mac & Cheese is 11 points? Really? Homemade chocolate chip cookies are only that high if I eat six.) I am often a little hungry. Quick fixes for hunger, like nuts or peanut butter, have points that start high and add up quickly. I should learn to eat carrot sticks when I am hungry. Today, unfortunately, I chose to eat a cupcake instead.

Regardless, I now weigh less than I did when I took my comps, a year ago. I would really like to lose another 15 or so pounds and get down to the weight I was before I started studying for the comps.

What I'd really like to do is get down to the weight that I was when we moved back to Arkansas after Miss O was born... But that is a goal that will likely take exercise and a lot of it.

Weight Watchers

At the point that my fat clothes were only kind of buttoning, I had to do something.

We had paid to subscribe Todd to Weight Watchers for a while. He has sleep apnea, and his doctor told him that if were to lose weight, he could also lose his bi-pap machine. This summer, though, he switched to a gluten-free diet. With the gluten-free diet and the subsequent elimination of all things made of flour, he was losing enough weight that he did not feel that he need to use Weight Watchers. I, however, forgot to cancel the automatic payment.

When January came around, and I decided to get serious about losing weight, I hopped onto his Weight Watchers account and changed everything but the name.

I started on January 18th, right after the "new" points system started. Unaware of the change, I logged in, typed in my vitals and how much I wanted to lose. Weight Watchers oh-so-generously gave me 29 points. (As nearly as I can tell, that puts me at about 1200 calories a day, plus weekly points.)

Then I saw that my Lean Cuisine lunch, three tiny "Thai-style" spring rolls were five points. I was still starving. I wanted to cry. A granola bar would be another five points. Anything from the vending machine would start from five and go up. So I starved.

I think I have it sorted out a bit better now, though. I figured out what the weekly points were and how they worked. And "free" (zero point) fruit is kind of a godsend. Unfortunately, I tend to hoard the points, and then splurge on the last day before they expire. And, the points expire the day before weigh in. I've done two full weeks and two weigh-ins. I have weighed more at weigh-in than on any other day in the week.

But, I weighed less at Monday's weigh in than I did the previous Monday. I guess as long as the overall trend is down, I'll be okay.

I'm not promising to be happy about it though.

Long overdue update...

We're still working with our son's psychiatrist to sort out medications. That leaves our lives kind of chaotic.

Just in case I don't have enough trauma, I decided to start a diet. It takes a solid level of obsession to make this work. I have to do something, though. I have gained about 40-45 pounds since starting my PhD. I am not happy with the way I look in my clothes. My blood pressure tends to run a little high, and I am concerned about my blood sugar. So it seems like obsession may be necessary.

Library Books

I went to the local library the other day and paid my fine, so I am once more able to check books out of the county library.

Here's a rundown of some of what I checked out and my assessment.

The Sewing Machine Guide: Tips on Choosing, Buying and Refurbishing by John Giordano is dated. It was written in 1997, so anything about prices is way off. (A sewing machine that can interface with your computer is priced at about $4,000.) It has a lot of basic information, though, about the different brands and the capabilities to expect. It also gives basic information about how to maintain a machine. The maintenance information, though, is minimal.

I also checked out  The Gluten-Free Gourmet Cooks Fast and Healthy: Wheat-Free Recipes with Less Fuss and Less Fat by Bette Hagman. Since my husband and son went Gluten Free last spring, I've been mostly cooking food they can eat. I have couple of cookbooks, but they are far from simple to use. I checked this out in hopes of finding the "less fuss" advertised in the title.
 
While it did have some useful recipes (I can count them on my fingers), I was not impressed overall. Many of the recipes rely on mixes that should be made in advance. This seemed like unnecessary complication. Compared to other books,  this seems fussy. It also relies a *lot* on bean flours, which are not easy to get where I live. 

Nothing to Say...

I am coming to the conclusion that if I wait until I have something to say, it will be weeks before I write anything. But since I wrote yesterday,  I thought I might write again today.

At work, I am still working on finishing up assessment. The results are compiled, but now I'm trying to find "representative papers" as well as papers that are problematic. That is, they have significant strengths but also significant weaknesses, which makes them hard to grade.

Assessment sucks my brain. My energy. My ability to think.

Mea and I have been watching the first season of Mad Men. Todd, of course, hates it. He idealizes the 1950s and early 1960s, when the economy was good. And, of course, women stayed home and cooked and cleaned. Of course, women in my family, worked on the farm or what-ever kind of factory they could get. My grandparents also cut staves and sheared wool. Personally, I don't see much to idealize from that time at all, except the dresses.

And, oh, the dresses are sweet on Mad Men. So lovely. I would love to be able to shop in their costume department. I adore the fitted tops and full skirts.

The show itself? Too much soap opera for my taste. And too depressing to even be a good soap. I prefer my soaps a lot less dark.

Graves are imporant

Graves are important to us hill-folk. Tending to those who have gone on before reinforces our connection to the past. I remember being little and my mamaw taking me to the cemetery to "work the graves" of her parents, grandparents, and siblings. We also usually made it over to see to her father-in-law's grave as well. All had to look good for "Decoration Day" when people might be coming to visit the cemeteries.

This week, my high-school friend Amy went to check on her mother-in-law's grave. (Her mother-in-law is Arvilla, whom I've written about before.) Anyway, Amy and Sonya (Arvilla's daughter) had put a ceramic angel on the grave, and someone threw it out. I am sure that it was some teenage boy or other that they paid minimum wage to clean up the cemetery.

Because a lot of us don't do it any more. I never go up and tend to the graves. My mom and my aunt do, I guess. Although I'll ask about it, I won't go check and make sure they did.

When they are gone, though, I guess I'll have to. I can't imagine anyone else would.

What I Learned From Roadrunner

For better or worse, my comps are done. Unless, of course, I failed, in which case the whole thing starts all over again.

Anyway, Monda suggested that I write something frivolous. While I didn't actually write anything new, I found this in my notebook that I wrote with my freshmen class. We were responding to one of Monda's Easy Street Prompts.

We only got two channels on television: 3 and 10. These were the Springfield Missouri affiliates for NBC and CBS. My dad did not really "believe" in television, but kept one for the nightly news. Our television watching was pretty limited, when I was young. But we were allowed to watch all the television we wanted on Saturday mornings. So we watched whatever came on.

Evidently, Looney Tunes were cheap. They were certainly widely available. Looney Tunes came on every Saturday morning-- sometimes twice. There was the Bugs Bunny Road Runner Hour on channel 10 and then the Children's Hour on channel 3 also showed Looney Toons cartoons, as well as Davey and Goliath. Roadruner was my least favorite of all these. It bothered me, what happened to Wile E. Coyote, Super Genius. I felt sorry for him. After all, I grew up in a world where people hunted for their meat, so I didn't find it all that bad that Coyote wanted to eat the bird. But I did learn some important lessons from the show, nonetheless.

This is what I learned.

1. I learned that being smart is one thing, but being clever is quite another.
2. Life rarely works out like it does on paper.
3. We rarely make good decisions when we are hungry.
4. Machines are only as good as the operator.
5. I learned not to believe advertising. People who are selling things do not have my best interests at heart.
6. Some name brands can't be trusted.
7. If the first anvil that I buy from ACME explodes, so will the second.
8. Never buy anything from my enemies.
9. And, most importantly, I learned that the deck is stacked. Not everyone gets an even playing field.
10. And some people just go hungry at the end of the day, no matter how hard they work.

While there were certainly shows that I enjoyed more growing up, I am not sure that any other show taught me so much about life.

Aakk!

My qualifying exams are scheduled for the end of February.

That is a month away.

One month.

Before I take my test.

The test that determines whether or not I become a PhD candidate.

I get one more chance, if I fail this one. But just one.

And every day I wait is one day further away from the classes that I took.

Aakkk. Aarrg. Eeek!

Tables turned...

Today, I was sitting in a meeting, and there was a student standing outside the door, waiting. After the meeting was done, I nudged my friend and co-worker, since the student was obviously waiting for her. Turns out, it was her daughter, who looked so different that I hardly recognized her. She's in danger of being dropped from her classes because she missed last week because her two-year-old was in the hospital and she could not bring herself to leave his side.

It is rather startling to see a student in my university, if not my class, so starkly from her mother's point of view. Of course, I walked away and gave them their privacy, but not before I saw the concern on my friend's face. Concern for her daughter who, in being a good mom, seems to be in trouble as a student.

I have to wonder what is going on with my colleagues in other departments? This young woman is bright, a brilliant writer (although I won't link to her blog here, out of respect for her privacy). I had two children before I graduated with my BA. I don't know that I could have done that if I had not had wonderful, understanding professors. Professors who held my work to high standards, but were flexible about some deadlines. Professors who encouraged me to finish college, despite my choices. Professors who believed in me. I wish my friend's daughter such professors, although I am afraid she's not as fortunate.

I wish her luck. And I wish both her and her baby good health for the entirety of the semester.

Pleasant Weekend...

It has been relatively slow this weekend (so far). Both girls spent the night with friends last night, and W wasn't feeling well, so he was kind of quiet. My husband and I watched Frank Sinatra and Shirley McClain in Can-Can. Then we watched Holmes on Homes.

Saturday was kind of laid back, too. W had quiz bowl, so T took him out early to catch the bus. They won, by the way. This has been W's week-- he placed second in his district in FBLA in network security. T and I hung out and watched A&E for a while. Then, of course, we had to start collecting the girls. Mea and I ran to Children's Place to pick up a gift certificate for my friend's twin girls' birthday. Then we stopped by Sally to pursue her quest for purple hair (a pretty purple-- not a blue).

We were planning to go grocery shopping this evening at Sam's Club, but the torrential rain kept us in. Instead, I am watching Caprica. Not sure how I feel about that, yet. I skipped the Battlestar Galactica revival, mostly out of respect for the original. I love the original Battlestar Galactica, which I almost completely missed in its original run, because we didn't the channel that it aired on. But love it I did. I watched it in reruns and on SciFi channel marathons. I feared the revival. Years later, The Prisoner was certainly a disappointment. I watched part of it, but found myself just not caring what happened.

Caprica, however, has no such baggage. It is set in the Battlestar Galactica universe, but is all backstory. As I said, I haven't yet decided an opinion. It lacks spaceships, but does appear to be on a different planet. A lot of the plot seems to revolve around a virtual reality Second Life kind of environment. But I am also seeing robots. Robots are good.

Steampunk Laptop

This beauty is from Datamancer. I am always amazed by what creative people can do when they decide to. Really, who ever would have thought of modding a computer to look be Steampunk?

Datamancer sells these gems either by special order or on ebay. The late, great Victoria magazine (I have not even looked at the recent revival) used to have a theme that women should follow their bliss-- do what makes them happy. They would profile women who were making a living (or at least an income) owning businesses where they sold things or services that they believed in. Small runs and special orders were, of course, most common. But what makes these business special are that they are created by someone who loves them. The owners love the products and (generally) love their customers.

I can see Datamancer fitting right in.



(And for my friend the typewriter fanatic, Datamancer also makes keyboards.)

Meme Oddness

The Internets are a strange place, indeed. Here a a couple of sites that prove that beyond doubt:

• Internet Meme Timeline
• Know Your Meme

I'm not referring to memes in the sense of "List 25 Random Facts About Yourself" but rather in the Dawkins sense of "Bits of Culture," kind of like genes are bits of life.

The month that I am a gardener...

Some days, I channel my late grandmother. When this becomes painfully apparent is when seed catalogs come in. Burgess is the first one to hit my mailbox this season. I have about $70 worth of plants picked out, but see that it has a lousy reputation. Who knew seed companies had ratings?

I think, though, somewhere I'll order some Apache Blackberries. They are thornless, and goodness knows, I like to be able to pick blackberries in the summer. I prefer, though, to skip the ticks, chiggers, snakes, and thorns, if I can. So maybe I'll plant me one of these in my back yard. Unfortunately, companies that actually send plants, charge more for them. So I am not sure how many I can afford. Now, I am seeing that all the catalogs we used to get: Henry Field, Gurney, Spring Hill and others were all bought by one company and don't send out high quality plants any more. The one that I wanted to order from, Burgess, seems to be less that 50% in sending out viable plants.

I guess I'll have to wait patiently, and shop local. But really, what does local mean? Wal-Mart? Home Depot? Lowe's? Those are hardly local. Plant Outlet is pricey but everything I've bought there lives... Decisions decisions...

I did fine one immediately useful thing today: Conway is in zone 7. I've never been able to read those stupid maps, because they don't list the counties. But this site told me. Now I am informed.

Amusement/Tourture of Choice

Every morning, a couple of newspapers deliver their headlines to my email. One, the one I never fail to open, is the Harrison Daily Times. I did my student teaching there in 1998 and subbed at the junior high for most of a semester in 1999. I worked at American Freightways before it became FedEx Freight. It is also the daily newspaper from close to where I grew up. (Understand that "close" is a relative term.) They also publish the Newton County Times, which tends to publish more stories about people I know, but it only comes out weekly.

Of course, all the friends that I had from Harrison when I was young have moved away, so those aren't the people I read about. My relatives and childhood friends from "home," however, are occasionally mentioned. The cousins with untreated ADHD,depression and other problems that drive them to self-medicate. Self-medication is expensive, so that drives them to manufacture and sell products in order to imbibe.

I truly believe better mental health screening would solve a lot of this. And some kind of job program. Something certainly needs to be done, because the drug problems are becoming generational. What used to be a few bootleggers getting into a bit of trouble turned in to marijuana growers and has evolved into meth manufacturing.

I know there are people who would like to turn the area into a giant National Park or something, but I would really like to see small-scale manufacturing return. Throw in mandatory drug testing. But people need jobs and dignity. Not weed and meth.

Another one gone...

Our friend and neighbor Conard Middleton died this week. He was 86. He was a lifelong Republican and long time member of the Newton County Quorum Court-- a JP.

The reason that I tell you that he was a Republican is because my Papaw was a Democrat. In the world where I grew up, such designations mattered. A lot. Such things determine if your road gets maintained and what jobs are open to you.

But Conard was bigger than that. He cared about people more than parties. I know that he called over a time or two to someone to get them to grade our road, because when the "wrong" party was in charge, our gravel road sometimes became virtually impossible to traverse in a car. And my mom always drove a car, in the days before quad-cab pickups and SUVs. (She still drives a car-- better gas mileage.)

And, when I was a beginning driver, I spilled some hot tea on myself and landed my dad's car in a ditch. And he pulled me out, and never called my parents.

That, my friends, is a good man.