BlogHer broke Twitter Again

or else the Fail Whale was just feeling lonely.

Waiting

I seriously waited nearly all day for a PhD student to come to our home to humiliate us
give Jake a language test. We are part of her sleep study, which so far has consisted of Jake fighting with us about putting on something called an actigraph (a watch that measures motion) and me filling out a lot of psychological profile information.

Clearly the woman has no children, and no friends who have kids with autism…or toddlers.

Whatever. Descartes wants me to pull out of the study because she has only been condescending, and then basically rude. I am going to try to stick it out just in case we help even one other family with her research.

By the way, if this is what it takes to get a PhD these days? I should totally do it.

haha

I just got a call from a market research firm, and was asked if I was the oldest person at the house. I was about to say my husband is older, but before I could correct the person, I was told that they would try back later when my parents were home.

I would so love to be the not responsible one at this household right now.

Read any Plutarch Lately?

Yeah, Plutarch. Mestrius Plutarchus A.D. 46?-c.120 born in Boetia, near Delphi. (Those are not things I knew 20 minutes ago.)

So I was reading The Art of The Personal Essay an anthology collected by Phillip Lopate, and I decided to read Plutarch’s Consolation to His Wife

I was moved. I cried. It is an essay intended for his wife regarding the death of their daughter. It is at once, both a reminder of the decorum one should demonstrate, and a letter of thanks to his wife for already displaying all of the traits he so admires in the face of such a great loss. Among other things, it is also an essay that rejoices in the life of their daughter, rather than the life she could have had. I cried. (italics below mine)

The two years of her life that intervened must by no means be effaced from our memory but rather reckoned as a pleasure, for they afforded us delight and happiness. We must never consider a small good as a large evil, nor be ungrateful for what fortune has given us because it has not filled the measure as full as we expected. Always respectfulness to the divine and a cheerful uncomplaining attitude towards fortune produces fruit that is good and sweet.

I found it both comforting and curious to have my daily battle summarized into one sentence; one sentence written 2000 years ago.

and there is another passage which was particularly poignant about pitying the child for all that she could have grown to be:

If you pity the babe for departing unmarried and childless, again you have the consolation of knowing that you yourself enjoyed a full share of such experiences. It is not fair to set a high value upon these matters for those who lack them and a low for those who have them. She has arrived where there is no distress; there is no need for us to be distressed. Why should we be afflicted with grief on her account when she herself can experience no grief? The loss of treasures loses its sting when they reach a state to which the sting is no longer appropriate. It was only of little things that your Timoxena was deprived, for all she knew was little things, and in little things she took her pleasure. How can we say that she was deprived of things of which she had no knowledge, no experience, no desire?

I do not exactly mean to compare having a child with special needs to losing a child to an early death, the passage merely spoke to me in that I quite often find that the pain I endure is much more about the loss that I perceive…and those are things of which Jake knows very little. It is my pain, not his.

“And so…” That’s what my mom would say. And so, I am going to read a little Michel de Montaigne and go to bed.

Giving Up. Admitting Can’t do Everything Myself.

I have hired two guys to help me finish remodel my downstairs bathroom. I have purchased all of the materials already, but after this many months I have decided that I actually cannot hang drywall/cement board, solder in a new pressure valve shower handle and still have two kids who want to play in the kiddie pool. That’s not true. I could do it. I could. but since I haven’t in all of these months I am guessing I should just give in on this one. Same thing happened in the backyard. I get very frustrated when I must pay people to do things I know I can do myself, but I think I was being unreasonable on this one. Maybe if Lucy was 5? Maybe if Descartes didn’t have a more than full-time job?

Anywhooo. It will cost some money, but not that much and I may have a bathroom within a few weeks instead of months.

And the rear bumper is back on my car after I left it at the shop yesterday to be repaired…after I backed into our LandCruiser, after Jake was late to catch the short bus..which not surprisingly we missed.

apologies to those of you in Pocatello and Flagstaff who probably heard me yell ffffuuuuCCCCKKKKKKKK! After Descartes let me know that I should stop gunning the motor because I was not pushing a trashcan out of the way I was trying to move a 2 ton truck with the right rear bumper of my Not-so-Mini van.

Uhm yeah. But it is all better now. They were able to pop off the bumper, warm it up and smooth it out. The paint just looks a little scratched.

Hmmm some things do go right sometimes…hmmm

I am going to fold some laundry while I can still see straight. I am so tired. I think it was the last three 3×5 Cement boards which weigh I don’t know how much each, but loading them up at the lumber yard and then into the van…. just so tired.

**************************

as it turns out…did not go to bed… over an hour later I am still in the kitchen because I forgot I was cooking wild plum lemon spread in a vat on the stove. Ugh. Now the kitchen smells a little like burned sugar. It has not st up so I will need to put it on to cook more tomorrow when i am more awake and less likely to burn contents and/or put the pot out into the back yard and say “forget it.”

No Use Crying…Right?

from before the Holiday weekend:

I know there’s no use crying over spilt milk.. but is there a caveat for spilled chocolate milk, a full 9 oz of it, streaming across the counter and onto the recently mopped and swept only 5 minutes ago floor? DO you think there is use in crying over that? probably not i s’pose.

What about the aide for Jake who just yesterday was so awesome, and on time and great with Jake and Lucy too, and cleaned the counters and the trash heap we had piling up next to the recycling…what about how she sent me a text at 12:49 letting me know she can’t make it at 1:00pm. I hate looking for new help.

The last time I posted an ad for an aide on Craigslist I got people making horrible rude remarks about my post because I referred to my then 5 1/2 year old son as “my darling crazy monkey boy”. I created a list of criteria which was honest (wiping buts and noses), and apparently I did not volunteer to pay 20 bucks an hour for a babysitter. Three years ago I was offering $10.00 cash. I know it’s not a lot, but we always pay for the hours we book, even if we don’t use them, and I didn’t want a therapist. You didn’t need a MA in Economic theory. I was also quite clear that they would need to have a sense of friggin’ humor because that was the only way we were making it through our life with a special needs child. Here’s one response I got:

Is it just me…or is this woman totally spun? Did anyone read her posting? I mean I realize everyone is different but talk about strange….Actually aside from her bizarre wording and “humour” in her posting, I think the humour truly is what she is offering in terms of salary. That little per hour for all of these expectations and demands for a special needs child???!!! This lady truly has lost her marbles. I feel sorry for this child….

That was not even the most cruel. I deleted those because they were too painful. This was the nicest response I got back:

Wouldn’t it be great if every family with a special needs child had a big fat income and could afford to pay top dollar…

There are jobs posted on craigslist that ask for a master’s degree and want to pay $12 to $15 an hour. Where is the whining about that?

Reality is this family is probably not making enough money to pay somebody $18 per hour. Heck, even the job ads I have read for social service type agencies don’t pay that high to work with special needs children.

Seneca wants a BA degree for a classroom counselor and is willing to pay a whopping $12 an hour…

or check this ad out:
Milieu Therapist III: MA or MS degree in a behavioral science subject (child development, psychology, counseling and guidance, early childhood education, human services, nursing, social science, social welfare, social work, sociology) or a BA or BS degree from an accredited college or university with a major in a behavioral science AND four (4) years mental health experience. MTIII: $13.95 + Benefits

So hm. $10 an hour,probably cash, tax free money actually works out to more than someone who is required to have a MS or 4 years solid experience working with special needs and they don’t even get to make fun trips to the ice cream shop!

I think there are a few people on here who think that if they respond to ads saying that rates are really higher than what is being asked for, then they will somehow force higher rates.

Sorry.

Elementary economics will dictate — supply and demand.

Supply of child care type people is far far far outweighing the demand in the bay area. Just look at the craigslist ads. Tons of people scrambling for a few jobs.

You want higher wages for babysitting/nanny work? Eliminate about 70% of the people trying to get these jobs, or create a whole bunch of families that will need the services.

That will inflate the wages.

If the job ad doesn’t suit you, then move on to ads that have a higher dollar pay and good luck getting and keeping them.

Also, it is PAINFULLY obvious that the mother has not lost her sense of humor in dealing with life. She clearly loves her “little man” or “monkey boy” and who the hell are any of you to judge the nicknames? Maybe this little boy named himself monkey boy after curious george or who knows what book or story.

You’d all do to lighten up a bit. Her sense of humour was obvious throughout the ad, and spelled out at the end in plain English.

Live and let live, little man monkey boy probably feels as loved or more loved than most kids in America.

Rock on Monkey Boy’s Mamma. Don’t let them mess with you. Congrats on the new baby.

So we’ll see. I am so overwhelmed by the daunting task of learning to trust someone that it makes me want to throw up. Here’s another thank you to my husband for working more than full-time to ensure that I don’t have to entrust Jake and Lucy’s entire development to someone else. What the hell do other parents of special needs kids do when their provider flakes and both parents work? I think this alone keeps me from ever having a job with set hours ever again. Ugh.

Anniversary Trip Day Six: Picking up the kids

We left Sebastopol early and picked up Lucy at Oma and Papa’s house. It appears she had a great time. They look exhausted, but happy. Lucy falls asleep in the car the minute we pull out of the driveway.

We drive across the entire bay to pick up Jake from camp, stopping only briefly at home to drop off some of our belongings and to pick up Jake’s five point harness car seat.

Jake looks happy and tired. His counselor is precious, kissing Jake on the forehead several times before we leave. His English accent makes Jake sound even more “brilliant” than Sam claims he is. It was a good time for both of them and Jake looks very well taken care of, though he is rather grubby from all of his dirt sorting. I’m his mom so I can tell he’s skinnier.

We stop at a drive through on the way home to get Jake a vanilla milkshake. He sucks it down in five sips. We stay at home all afternoon, everyone playing quietly. Descartes and I are beat. We have driven nearly 1200 miles since Sunday afternoon. Jake has a nice long bath and is sound asleep by 5:45pm. Lucy follows just an hour and half later.

We are so lucky.

Anniversary Trip Day Five: Fort Bragg and the Wine Country

Fort Bragg–> Glass Beach
Glass Beach–>Husch Vineyards Alexander Valley
Husch–>Scharffenberger Celllars
Scharffenberger Cellars–>Philo, CA
Libby’s Restaurant
Philo, CA–>Stryker Sonoma
Stryker Sonoma–>Martinelli Winery
Martinelli Winery–> Dutton Estate Vineyards
Dutton Estate–>Sebastopol

Anniversary Trip Day Three: Crossing the State

We start out in smoky Reno. We won’t need to stay here again any time soon, especially since my sister lives in Lake Tahoe, but it was fun, and cheesy and cheap and the room was clean and the food at Trader Dick’s was actually pretty good.

We get on the road and head west.
Reno–>Eagle Lake total miles driven today 114 miles

Eagle Lake is very pretty with no real place to eat, and apparently we are sort of hungry. The campground at Eagle Lake looks promising for a family trip possibly with Descartes’ parents and their RV. Fairly easy road in, lots of flat area to park, and not crowded, always a plus for our family. It was a little sad for me in Yosemite to really look at the tent cabins in Curry Village and realize that we will probably not be able to do that with Jake. It would just be too crowded and too close to other people. Heck, it might be too much for Descartes too. Again it brings up the problem I am constantly churning..how to ensure that we give Lucy access to all of the things we love and believe in, like the great outdoors, and camping and hiking and sea kayaking and bicycling, and public transportation and fine dining and funky locals dining and travel to foreign countries where you don’t even speak the language. How do we do all that with a kid that does better with routine and our Not-so-mini-Van. It will mean splitting our family up in the future, so Daddy can take Lucy hiking in the back country, or Mommy can take Lucy to Paris and Barcelona. We did a lot of scouting on this trip, and did find a few places that looked safe for Jake and fun for both kids.
Eagle Lake–>Chester total miles driven today 170 miles
We are hungry so we stop in Chester. The catalogs which advertise houses for sale leave me chuckling. I guess there are a lot of Country Club type places around Lake Almanor and has gained a bit of prestige. Still looks like a small lake town to me.
Chester–>Bumpass hill total miles driven today 211 miles We hike at altitude 8000-8300′ for nearly four miles to see California’s version of Yellowstone.It is a great hike, and we laugh that we sure do exercise a lot more without our kids around. I vow to figure out how to take Jake on a hike. I have friends who would go with me/help me. It is now a summer goal. Descartes and I take mental notes of the people we pass wearing inappropriate footwear, given that there are sheer cliffs, talus slopes, snow, geothermic, bubbling gooey pots

and fumaroles. Jeesh people at lest wear some tennis shoes. It takes us a bit longer than the two hours..more like three because there are people wearing Tevas and no socks trying to avoid puddles, and there is a lot more snow than we expected. I think they had just opened the trail. Quite often high-country trails don’t open until July. We wind our way through the rest of the park. We’ve both been here before, so while we are impressed by the beauty, we decide not to hike anything else.
We are headed to Shingletown and possibly Manton, where there is a small winery and an inn.

Bumpass–> Shingletown total miles driven today 247 We enter Shingletown and spot 5 fire trucks in front of the local pizza parlor, none of them local. Fresno, Clovis, central valley types. After purchasing a local paper we discover there is a fire named after the town. Can’t stay here so we head towards the other small town.. only to find that the road is actually closed because the road runs right through the fire. We go back to 299 and continue west.

Shingletown–>Redding total miles driven today 276 miles. We simply can’t stay here. It’s too smoky and ugly. I tell Descartes that we can’t stay in Reno and Redding on the same trip…but there are good burgers at a roadside stand and a Starbucks at the right turn to continue on 299 west

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Redding–>Whiskeytown/Weaverville total miles driven today: 321 can’t stay here there’s another fire.

Whiskeytown–>ARCATA BAY total miles driven today: 417 on nearly all windy roads
There is fire nearly the entire length of 299. Beautiful at night. We pull over to the side of the road near the seven rivers area and listen to the crackles and pop of flame and watch an entire river valley go up in a frightening blaze. There is no wind, so it is quiet except for the roar of the fire. Beautiful and tragic.

Arcata–>Eureka total miles driven today: 425
We land in Eureka and expect to find a hotel room at 11:30 pm because it is Eureka in the middle of the week and there are a ton of little Travel Lodge Best Western type places because Humboldt State is not far from here. We go from hotel to motel to dive and find everything is booked except for one room which is so disgusting the owner of the motel offers to show it to us first because she says it is “really no nice at all.” It was so bad. It was bad like meth head bad. Like Trainspotting toilet scene bad (at least from what I remember because I can never watch that again

Eureka–>Ferndale total miles driven today 444.
We head to Ferndale, hoping for a small in with a door bell and a grumpy but hospitable inn keeper. It is 12:43am and it looks like Ferndale is asleep for the night, which I think is pretty reasonable for a Victorian Village and then guess what happens as we are calmly and quietly going 5 miles an hour down this quaint low-lying coastal town? The tsunami warning siren goes off.
As it turns out our Not-s-mini-Van can flip a u-turn and drive 68 mph through a very small town and over a one lane bridge very very quickly when Descartes is driving. Faster than I could google “tsunami warning” or “major earthquake”. Descartes makes an executive decision that we are going inland even if the siren was a mistake. I love my husband. There is no way in hell we would have slept if we were in a hotel near the water. We would both be waiting for the water.

Ferndale–>Grizzly Creek Redwood State Park total miles driven for the day 472
We head back towards the center of the state on highway 36. It is 1am. We are on plan “Q” seeing as plans A-P have fallen apart slowly over the course of the day. We head to the nearest campground, clean out the back of the van (stuffing everything in the front seats, crack open a bottle of expensive wine and toast our good luck. We are alive, and dry and not on fire and although Descartes is 6’5″ and has size 16 feet, he can still fit on our Japanese Not-so-mini-Van. I praise his foresight in having brought a lantern, two headlamps, two pillows, a blanket, a tarp and a wine bottle opener. We wake in the morning to find ourselves, not so entirely sore or cold, and in the midst of a great, uncrowded campground. We smell like a campfire from having driven through 600 of them, but overall, we are no worse for the wear, and it makes for a much better story.

There is no one in the world with whom I’d rather take a road trip. Days like those.. they make me know Descartes and I make a great team and work really well together. Now I understand how we made it through those 50 days when Jake didn’t sleep…

Anniversary Trip Day One

(Lucy was picked up Saturday afternoon by Oma and Papa… we are down to three of us at the house.)

Sunday we finish loading up the car. I am able to sweep the kitchen floor before we leave. Jake is excited about Camp as we drive away. Our bikes are on the back of the Not-so-Mini Van. The trailer hitch scrapes the driveway as we make a right off of the hill. We don’t care. My suitcase is filled with clothes I’m sure I won’t need, and a bottle of really good aged Cab that I’m sure we’ll want. We have Rockst*rs, and Lifesavers and we have remembered Jake’s sleeping bag and pillow.

Jake is safely deposited at Camp until Friday. He has an awesome counseleor, Sam and his counselor from before Liz is the cabin head in charge of his cabin. Jake is quiet, and happy and we leave the Santa Cruz mountains knowing that Jake is in good hands.

Miles driven: 21.6 Time: 2:45pm Sunday June 22, 2008

We take off. Descartes has loaded the CD folders with an amazing collection of music. Lots of it is oddly enough from ten years ago. We realize that this is not because we loved the music then (although we did like a lot of it) but because this is the last time we spent money on music. With one year of being married we spent 8 weeks in Europe (which is a reasonable way to spend money..) Then we got pregnant 6 months after that, and bought a house 5 months later…. there goes the music budget.

It is hot and a bit smoky as we head inland, but the car has just been tuned so the A/C runneth cold and the air filter removed all of the large particles. We had to the center of California, and keep going. We check in with Oma and Papa. Lucy is precious on the phone. She apparently is he mother’s daughter as she has decided her new bedtime is many hours after it should be..but she still wakes up before 7am. A little miniature both-end candle burner. That’s my girl!

We decide to stay in Groveland, CA. The Hotel Charlotte is technically booked but they have an “off-site” property.. which is a house. So we rent the house, drop our stuff and drive into Yosemite for the evening. It is more than a little bit cool that we have managed to go to Yosemite for dinner. The park is packed, but the beer is cold and we find a table to eat our pizza and salad. We listen to part of a park ranger lecture about the Firefall as the bats fly about. Then head back to our house for the night. Along the route home we stop at a vista point and watch the stars for a minute and gaze out at a roaring fire across the valley. It seems like there are more fires than we have ever seen before in previous years.

The house is cool and quiet. The bed has three mattresses and takes a ladder (practically) to climb into. We drink a beer, toast our good fortune and sleep well.

Miles driven since last stop: 252
Total Miles driven: 273.6
Time: 11:45pm Sunday June 22, 2008