Stop this crazy thing!

I read somewhere, that private armies and terrorist sleep whenever they get a chance-that way they are refreshed and ready to move when they need to get going … I’m not to sure where I read this but I know I read it somewhere and I suppose if you wanted to be a revolutionary or fight Nazi’s or behead zombies, it would be important for you to sleep whenever, and wherever possible.

It is for this same reason, that whenever I can get away from Booga- I do.

Yes, it can get that bad.
The same movie over and over again and the constant typing on his typewriter, these things can drive an average citizen insane.

Therefore, I really take advantage of anyone who is related to me and working in the pole barn outside our house, to emancipate myself. The whole idea of actually enjoying a few minutes “Booga- free” makes me happier than a chance to sleep till noon in January, on a Monday.

I get out of the house before Booga has awakened or while he is watching a movie; and I and run into town in my car- with the moon roof completely open and the stereo blaring.

I’m free!

Booga is capable of staying in the house by himself if someone is out in the yard or in the pole barn (this is in case he needs them). I leave a simply worded note somewhere he’ll be sure to see it (because Booga can read some sight words) or I tell him I am leaving and that he is not allowed to use the stove (The later is not the best option because you take the chance of having Booga wanting go with you…Which makes the whole idea of getting away from Booga a mute issue) and I leave for a few precious moments alone.

I’m not unhappy with Booga, but as any primary caregiver of someone like Booga, I need a break. And the more I get, the better a caregiver I am.

Where did you find Booga a typewriter you ask?
Well, the typewriter is a story unto itself….

I was at a yard sale in the country, when I came upon this ribbon typewriter in a case. Booga’s teacher had told me that he should probably work on his typing skills as they were learning how to use computers.
Now, I’m very odd about who is on my computer and what they are doing on it. I actually bought two computers for my two older children and Booga had his very own computer, with learning software on it, specifically purchased for him.

One day he walked out and announced to me that we should throw his computer in the fire pit.

So, I took off all the software and gave it to one of my students. Who had a neighbor who fixed him up with a modem and he was more than grateful.

And so that was over.

Then one day I found this typewriter quite by accident at a yard sale while my friend and I were rummaging through someone else’s memories. My friend found it first and said, “Hey you should buy this for your son!”
It didn’t have a ribbon and I was pretty sure I could find a ribbon at Staples somewhere, which I did and so I bought the thing for a couple of dollars (yes I know) and brought it home to him….Case and all.

For sometime it was used sparingly by Booga who would rather draw his words than type them. But then this year he decided to write The Great American Novel on the archaic manual, and now it makes us crazy on occasion with its final taping.

So we’re trying to watch “America’s Got Talent” and he’s banging away on his typewriter. The typewriter is okay until you want to hear something on television.
Then it just bangs.

We have now set limits on how much time he can spend typing.
I wonder how setting a timer would work for me when most of the time that I’m working, I’m typing?
Hua.

Autism Speaks

Booga was five before he spoke.
The things you take for granted when you have other children that are so-called "Normal".
I remember looking at him thinking, "Do you know who I am?"

He had said random words but never sentences and never anything that made a connection.
Then one day I was swimming in the lake with him and I was watching two other children who were throwing seaweed at each other and I remember thinking, "Wait till your mom's see your hair."There are all kinds of junk that's unsavory in seaweed...Yuk!

And I heard something I never thought I would hear, I heard my son say to me, "Mommy, watch me!"
I turned around looking for someone else standing near, but suddenly he was in front of me, "Mommy watch me" He repeated.
I started to cry.
And I bet everyone that saw me leave the water at the lake thought I was dragging my drowned child on shore, but I had heard something I never thought that I would ever hear from my son.
Not only was this his own declaration that not only did he know who I was, but that he wanted my attention.
All those times looking into his eyes and seeing someone there that truly loved me back was confirmed. I went home and began making him tell me what he wanted instead of letting him point to it.
From then on the jig was up. Booga was a part of the world and we were his parents and he was going to have to be a part of this slightly different, oddly dysfunctional family.

Booga hadn’t spoken till then; and for years we worked getting him to look us in the eyes when he said something to us, learning to hold a meaningful conversation with us, and tolerating a world of noise and people.

Booga is nineteen now. He holds conversations and goes to school and fights with his brother and gets mad at me when I tell him he's done something wrong. He sometimes talks too much and we have to tell him to shut up. He loves words and is an avid movie buff. You ask the director of any of his favorite movies and he will not only tell you the director but the producer and the stars of the movie and possibly what movie company produced it.
He has won awards for art. His art.
I see my personality in him.

He might never live alone, or he might live in assisted living, I don't know.

But I remember the days when there was little hope and the day I saw the light at the end of the tunnel and the end of his silence.

Whoops! Lost my mind dad...How could I be so remiss?

Okay, here’s the scoop, a couple of things....

1. My grandmother was not fourth cousin to Wallis Simpson, but third cousin, according to my father. She was my great grandmother’s great aunts daughter. Like, that is something I would know right?
   
2. Yes, my grandmother’s grandfather on her mother’s side of the family was Dutch. Extremely Dutch, in fact, like off the boat Dutch, they were very well to do according to my dad. My grandmother’s father’s father was born in a very Swiss region of France, and they too came from a very well to do family also. So essentially my grandma pooched us by marrying grandpa, however, I don’t care. I think he was a very cool, interesting character and I miss him very much and I named my son after him I missed him so much. I love you Grandpa, even though you were a turd sometimes.

Last night I was watching Rachel Maddow, and I found out Walter Cronkite died (by the way, I like Keith Olbermann better, and watch him faithfully every day. No offense Rachel, I just like his voice better) and I immediately said, “No! Not Walter Cronkite! Oh dang!” Of course, everyone passes away….But sometimes it seems like we are on a run of losing key people in our lives whether they be celebrities, family, or close friends.

Sometimes when those things happen you think everyone is leaving you alone to deal with this crazy world….

This morning I woke up missing my children and my friend and thinking about all of them.

I

I’m avoiding mopping my floor today. It’s a bad idea. The floor has not been mopped since before the Fourth of July and it’s the 17^th. I sweep it. It’s not like lots of people trod on it. However, it requires I move lots of stuff into the living room and I don’t feel like it today. I will eventually do it today….However, I don’t want to do it right this minute.

Onward….

Laughter is the best medicine.

That is so true….It’s also a very elusive medication in my life and it’s difficult for me to cope without it- because I’m addicted to it, so I feel I have to create my own humor….

And you dear reader are the victim of my addiction.

I know some of what I write is not funny. I understand. Everyone’s humor is different. However, I am writing this for the benefit of my children and myself and my friends who accept my lame attempt at hilarity and if you don’t like it, well, it’s like watching television…. You are ultimately the decider of what you watch and read.

You can always stop reading and go make yourself some Ramen Noodles.

The choice…………….Is yours.

Family Histories!

Some people have really cool family histories. Some people have adventurous families and some people have famous families and some people have families right off the boat and they are really exotic.

I have a weird family.

On one side of my family are my grandparents from my mother’s side which include my grandfather, who was totally German. I mean, his grandparents fell off the boat.

Literally.

My great great grandmother fell off the boat from Germany into the water and was kept afloat by her petticoats. A sailor had to jump in the water to save her.

They were what we call now “Euro-trash”.

Seriously.

My great great grandfather was asked to leave Germany “because of his indiscretions”.

My mother says it was probably somebody’s wife.

I’m afraid it was somebody’s goat.

I thank my maternal grandfather for my art and love of flowers. The man was hideously violent.

The woman he married, which would be my maternal grandmother, could tell you her family history back to the revolutionary war.

They were a very well off family and one her cousins was an ambassador and another one her other cousins a general in the Korean War. The family was made up of lawyers and teachers and other brilliant people.

She eloped with my grandfather to spite her family.

That seems to be a trend with us.

In her circumstance, it all went bad because my grandfather was an abusive alcoholic, who beat my grandmother and my mother and my uncles.

My mother told me the reason she didn’t want to go back to her family because she was afraid that her mother would do the whole “I told you so” thing; and so bound herself to a private purgatory.

When my grandfather died in 1970, at a young age, my mother thanked God that her mother finally would have peace without him.

Yeah, that’s how bad….

Her family was originally from England. Then more recently they included Scottish and Irish girls in their gene pool.

Hence, our silly sense of humor and predisposition towards loving Monty Python.

My grandmother was an awesome woman. She made a lot of my clothes and she laughed all the time after my grandfather died. She played the piano for the silent movies and then all the way up until her death she continued to play for her own enjoyment and that of her family’s.

For years I had her piano. Then a shirt tail relation bought it from me for his little girls to learn piano on and since it was going to waste here because I never had time to play it….I think it was something my grandmother would have thought was a little bit of okay.

The Other side of my family, my father’s father; my grandfather, (whom I just found out information on recently) didn’t give up much information on his family, possibly because he didn’t know it, possibly because of the stigma of his generation….Or possibly because he didn’t care.

And to be honest…That’s fine.

He was English, German Jew and Cherokee.

Yeah, put that in your peace pipe and smoke it.

He was a born story teller (even though none of his stories gave us any clue where he came from or what our lineage was) and it is probably where my brother and I get our storytelling gene or more less our predisposition to write.

The man read the entire newspaper; remembered poems from when he was eight. He graduated the eighth grade and ran a farm most of his adult life. He had the soul of a cowboy. He declared to his grandkids one time that he had considered at one point, going back to his home state and murdering his step father.

Yeah.

No grandpa, tell us how you really feel. Don’t hold back.

My grandmother on my father’s side of the family was, in my humble opinion, one of the last great ladies of the United States. That’s just my opinion mind you….Other people might not agree so much.

Her family went all the way back to England, and she was descended from royalty. She came from an aristocratic family and she eloped with the hired hand.*

She was third cousin to Wallis Simpson, (and I do apologize to England. It’s just the way the women in our family are, we make men give up thrones for us). And her family was pure as the driven snow up until her mother married my Dutch great grandfather. We are a D.A.R. dream.

Her family bumps into, it seems, every English and American icon in history.

It’s like the Forest Gump of family histories. (My husband’s family has a moment like that with Abraham Lincoln- but they are no where near as bizarrely tied to history as mine).

She told me once that I was the fifth cousin to the Duchess of Windsor, when we were planting flowers- I think?

I believe I took the news like- there would be tuna for lunch, not knowing at that time what Wallis Simpson was…. and frankly, not caring.

My grandmother on my father’s side, made her own soap; she made her own hand lotion. She made her own arthritis balm; she had a ginormous garden in the backyard. She had grape arbors which she used for jam and jelly, a raspberry patch that she and I spent time picking raspberries in and singing “Ma, He’s Making Eyes At Me,” and she made the most interesting cheese cake with Jell-O. She and my grandfather ate organic peanut butter. A fact which I thank her for, because when I and my friend went to buy organic peanut butter (and my friend freaked out because of the oil separated on the top of the jar) I knew enough to tell her, “No, no, that’s normal, you have to stir real peanut butter up because the oil separates.”

It’s not pretty, but it is all natural.

She gave me a love of history and I’m not the only one she gave this love to in my family. This love of history permeates my family now. My nephew is a history scholar and is bent on getting his doctorate in history, my one brother is a civil war aficionado and I just love finding out about my own history through my family history. She told me all about her family, and so now when I do research, every once in a while I come across a name I recognize and it’s all due to her. She was wonderful and I didn’t appreciate how wonderful until she was gone or until I was grown up enough to see what a really neat person she was while she was alive.

She could cook and bake like no one I had ever met.

My dad takes a close second.

So I have this weird family that just goes from being Doritos’s to being Caviar and Vodka. It’s really really weird and interesting to research.

*see my paternal grandfather.

Holy moley!

My cat Inky, from time to time, presents me with a mole on my porch. In exchange, I give her a wonderful can of wet cat food. Wet cat food is only given as a treat or reward for good behavior or fantastic critter catchin.

This morning I got up and let her in and there on my deck, was a mole.

As if to say,” Here mom, I brought you a present!”

This followed up with a lot of, “Oh what a good kitty you are, yes you are such a good kitty, good mole catching Inkster! Good girl!”

You have to praise cats for their presents because if you don’t they will think they’ve failed and bring you larger and larger presents I don’t want a deer on my porch or an elephant to arrive on my deck. I just think that would be bad taste.

Don’t meow with your mouth full.

My cat Max loves to fetch.

My husband believes that he probably thinks he’s a dog and doesn’t understand why he can’t bark.

He plays a game called “throw the mouse”. And in this game we are forced to throw the mouse repeatedly until Max no longer thinks he wants to play anymore. If we do not play with him we are punished by being followed around the house and meowed at non-stop.

The other day he decided that I needed to pay attention to him even though he had not yet dropped the mouse out of his mouth. So, in a crazy moment, he meowed with the mouse still in his mouth. Now that was weird enough but what happened next was almost insane.

In an almost human reaction, he spit the mouse out and meowed properly. As if to say, “Sorry, I had my mouth full, let me repeat myself.”

I just stared at him.

Strange kitty.

Shabing Cream.

The other day Booga told me that we were out of shaving cream. I don’t want to know how he knew that (I am afraid that he was going on covert ops to see if he could shave without me knowing…However, that’s another story).

Anyway, we have a chalk board in our kitchen we use to write on what we need to get from the store, so that when we get ready to go we can quickly write down all of it and eliminate having to go over a mental list all the time.

Well, sometimes I forget that Booga is not like your normal kid (having raised two of the other kind) and I told him, “Go ahead and write it on the chalk board.”

Booga has a certain way of saying things. Because of this, I can more easily understand two year olds than the average person. It’s part of his autism and we just praise God everyday that he can even speak. This was a miracle, and something the doctors believed might never happen, so we just accept what he says and do our best to comprehend him.

Anyway, he went to the chalk board and had me spell out “shaving cream” and when I went and looked at the chalk board, to write down what we needed, instead of seeing the word “shaving cream”, I saw what resembled the more phonetic spelling of “shaving cream”, according to Booga’s mind.

It said, “shabing cream.”

In the spelling world according to Booga, that is how shaving cream is spelled ….phonetically.

Sometimes, I create my own humor, and sometimes God provides it through Booga.

Jesus was from Morocco!

Jesus was from Morocco.

Did you know that?

I didn’t know that but apparently it’s all true….That is according to Booga.

We were having dinner (and dinner seems to be the time that all Booga’s latest epiphanies are voiced) and he looked up at The Lord’s Supper copy I have framed in the dining room and explained to me that all his vast research indicated that Jesus was from Morocco.

You can imagine my astonishment at this revelation as I have always been told that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, Judea.

According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Jesus' childhood home is identified as the town of Nazareth in Galilee. Except for Matthew's "flight into Egypt", and a short trip to Tyre and Sidon (in what is now Lebanon), the Gospels place all other events in Jesus' life in ancient Israel.^[57]

Nothing in there says “Morocco”.

I checked on the WELS website and it has a page that actually says, “Grew up in Nazareth”.

I checked it and there is no mention of Morocco….

Ahua.

So I asked Booga if he saw this in a movie.

Yes, it was filmed apparently in MOROCCO.

Ross [reporting]: The Nativity Story was filmed in Italy and Morocco. Catherine used her expertise to make sure the Biblical accounts were realistically portrayed.

Ah, well now that makes sense.

I had to explain that to Booga.

Who was confused because it said in the movie credits that they had filmed in Morocco.

Because why would they film anywhere other than the place where Jesus grew up?

Well, I didn’t try to explain to Booga that Israel and most of the middle-east is kind of volatile. He wouldn’t understand. However I did correct him.

I told him, the movie was filmed in Morocco, and it didn’t mean Jesus was from there.

A lot of people think that they know what being a Christian is and they know who Christ is, and they only get what certain people have told them. Sort of a third party influence.

It’s kind of like believing that you read the book by watching the movie version.

According to my brother, who reads a lot of Sinclair Lewis (his favorite writer….right now – that could change in a matter of months…For a while it was Mark Twain) was not always the devout Christian that we remember him as…Actually; it was a very very Catholic J.R.R. Tolkien that who convinced him to give PEACE a chance a long with some other friends in his circle.

Lewis had started out with a lot of pagan beliefs.

These facts are according to my brother. I don’t know if they are actually true.

I’m not the authority. I don’t know a lot about C.S. Lewis; although I do know that Tolkien and Lewis were very good friends and that Lewis did struggle with his Christianity.

This illustrates that sometimes people think they know things and find out that those things are different than what they thought they were. I mean how many people read C.S. Lewis and thought he was an undoubting, devoted Christian all his life?

Yea, you just don’t know unless you know- do you?

So maybe it’s good that Booga makes me explain mistakes sometimes, maybe it’s good that someone made me explain that Jesus was not from Morocco.

Booga needs not to believe everything he sees in the movies.

We all need to re-evaluate what people tell us from time to time and be assured of our beliefs. That’s why we need to sit in church for an hour every week, even though some of us-including myself- make it twice a month or worse sometimes-once a month….

I admire those who find themselves at worship services once a week-unfailingly.

Booga needs to find another hobby.

And I think I need my neurons to cool down for a bit.

Perfect Match

After a day I might say has been kind of crazy, Booga announced to me and his father that we were, "A Perfect Match".
With this he did a rather large flourish with his hands and went back to eating his dinner of potato chips and scrambled eggs...
(?)
Don't ask me, I just live here.

We had a sort of odd week or so, with the putting in of a new front window and annual return of the ugliest looking air conditioner on record.

It hangs out our front window, with as much grace as a dead canary hanging on a perch.

It's hideous and makes me want to vomit.

Here is this beautifully crafted window sill that I painstakingly worked to put stain on and that my husband painstakingly sawed and measured and woodworked until he could carpenter no more.... and this brand new window that we waited and waited and waited to put in (and finally did.....) and the brand new vertical blinds that are gracefully hanging there looking like they should belong to my mother and not me....

And hanging out of all this loveliness, like a clear plastic sack of unburied dog refuse is our two year old air conditioner.

UGH!!! In so many ways.

I was not a happy camper, especially because my husband tried to reposition it in the window and that didn't work and then tried to make it look better and that didn't work. So it has all sorts of duct tape around it...Like that will stay there; which with the humidity- it won't. And it looks like the worst kind of sore thumb ever.

And it's not his fault.
It's a window air conditioner and it needs to be in a window that was designed to have a window air conditioner. Not a window designed by some government funded miscreant who built Farm Home houses that were not meant to last for the twenty years we have lived here.

Yes, we have essentially for the passed few years been slowly rebuilding this sad excuse for a starter house that became our home for twenty years and more. This house we raised our children in and built bedrooms in the basement by carving out the cement walls and putting in escape windows, so we could call them bedrooms. Yes this crazy plot of land that was not supposed to be our house for more than a tiny march of years became our "home."

Simply because, not only have been rebuilding it from the inside out...But because it's a pain to move and somewhat silly if you ask me.

I have always looked at people who moved constantly as having some kind of problem, there have been four places I have lived in my life-With my parents, at college, by myself in my tiny house near my parents and here, in Farm Home Heck.

I know, sick hua? I don’t know why, but it seems an unnecessary bother to leave one home to move into another one for more room- when in a mere few years your children are grown and gone and your left with this ginormous house.

Oh well, apparently we were meant for each other, my husband, my self, Booga, our children in another state, and this pile sticks called "home"- apparently that's good enough for the autistic one.

Good enough to deserve a rather large flourish with his arms declaring we were a perfect match.

I remember...

I remember who told me about armaments being in our national anthem- It was my son Chewie! In other news.... They had Michael Jackson's memorial today. That's pretty much all that's been on.I'm not going to kid you, It's nothing too shabby to be loved that much.My hope is that he had a relationship with God that was good. It would be shameful if someone so gifted did not. It is unfortunate that he had such calous and greedy people around him.

Disco balls and Fireworks

Have you ever watched the dots from a disco ball spin on the wall?
I have.

I have a disco ball in my office and from time to time I take a flashlight (my flashlight requires that you shake it up to use it….It doesn’t use batteries) and turn on my computers sound system and shut off the monitor and just watch the lights dance on the wall while the music plays.

It occurred to me that disco ball sparkles are somewhat like stars in the sky and that they spin around for no real purpose other than to be bright and sparkly and look pretty in the dark. I mean, honestly, what good ever came from Mars?

So what parts of these stars are for anything other than to look nice?

In The Bible it says that the stars are the handiwork of God.
This I believe, I mean, can you imagine the skill and artistry it took to place each one of those planets in orbit and stand back and go, “Hey, that looks pretty good.”
I can’t even get pictures to hang right and symmetry is something I strive for but have to work to achieve.
I can’t imagine having to do that on a galactic scale.
Can you just hear God’s conversation with himself?
“Well, that planet they’re going to call 'Pluto', it needs to go right here to set off this planet that they are going to call ‘Neptune’.”

See what I’m saying?
________________________________________________________________

Fireworks on The Fourth of July are meant to represent the bombs and so forth going on during the revolutionary war….

How odd is that? And did you know that our national anthem is the only one in the world that talks about armaments?

I don’t remember where I heard that but it sounds plausible.

But bigger than that; there is something really cool about fireworks...Don’t we all get excited at the prospect of standing in the dark and watching that pyrotechnic light show?
Doesn’t matter who you are, everyone looks at it; either in awe and wonder or fear and panic. Little children look at it sometimes in fear and panic, I remember holding on to my aunt while fireworks displays burst into sparkling flowers above me, only to watch as sparks flew to the ground not far from my feet…It terrified me.

However as an adult I wouldn’t miss a good fireworks show on The Fourth of July….

I remember asking my mom why it was that we get all excited and flustered when there is a death in the family, why is it that we all kind of feel a little flash of electricity in the air along with the dampness of depression, and was I weird for feeling that way?
She told me it wasn’t weird. We’re all saddened by death because it’s a separation, but as Christians we embrace the fact that we are going to live with God and we’re excited for our loved ones because they are going to be reunited with those who have already passed and see their Lord face to face.

And that terrified me but excited me at the same time.

One time a nun chastised her while she was going through chemotherapy because she told her that she was afraid.
She asked my mother, “Don’t you believe you’re saved and are going to heaven? Why are you afraid?” And it bothered my mother- that she was afraid.

So as my mother always did and still does, she went to her pastor and asked, “Why are we afraid to die?” And the pastor answered, “Because we were made to be immortal and because of sin we are mortal. We’re not meant to die. It’s unnatural for us, and that’s why we are afraid of death.” Then he added…. “Next time she says something like that ask her, ‘why does The Pope go around in a bullet proof Pope Mobile if he’s not afraid to die?’”


Good point.