My best friend called the other day and said, “So, I had no idea Toe really had autism!”  She has read my blog every day since the first entry and knows Toe as well as anyone.  I love her like a sister.  She is a bright and compassionate woman, but, as sometimes happens when you love someone, her heart has built a little wall against the truth of anything that would harm me.  It’s like my gentle, tender-hearted big brother.   When Hubby called him a few months back to tell him we wouldn’t be able to make it to a get-together (due to a pretty severe flare-up of my condition), Bro responded (disbelievingly), “Is Angela still sick?!”

I wish suffering had a uniform.  Maybe different ones for each of many particular travails we all endure:  say, a coat covered with broken circles for a survivor of divorce, or a sash of colorful question marks for the parents of the autistic.  Maybe just some kind of universally-recognized anything that would mark me, like a soldier’s fatigues or a fireman’s badge.  Something to say, Hey, I have been through unthinkable, terrible things.  I may disappear into an emergency at any moment.  Something that would speak for me when I am just too tired to speak.  Something to save my beloveds from asking the questions it hurts their hearts to hear answered.

On our way home from a just-Mommy-and-me trip to Target today, Toe started singing his favorite Bob Marley song with me.  We play B is for Bob in the car a lot, and we sing together a lot:

One Love! One Heart!
Let's get together and feel all right.
Hear the children cryin' (One Love!);
Hear the children cryin' (One Heart!),
Sayin': give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right;
Sayin': let's get together and feel all right. Wo wo-wo wo-wo!

My little boy is every inch beautiful.  Funny, smart, handsome, loving, creative.  Broken.

Sometimes when we go to the store or anywhere in the community, if Toe is having a bad day and, for example, can’t stop talking about everything everywhere to everyone (incessantly) in a very audible voice, he will wear his little button from Autism Speaks.  It says, “I have AUTISM.  Be understanding and patient.”  Only rarely do I have him wear it, since in most cases most people find Toe charming and adorable, and stop what they’re doing to make a point to converse with this oddly verbal and uninhibited little lad who is so enthusiastic about, say, the sailboats on the lake. 

Other times, when I am alone out in the world, carrying on, I wish a button for myself.  “I have an autistic child.  Pray for me and maybe give me a cookie—it was hard just to get up, breathe in and out and brush my teeth today.” Of course that is too long a sentiment for a button, not at all catchy.  Also I am nowhere near as charming as Toe--I would probably be dismissed as just another red-eyed weirdo with a button.

It’s that time of year.  I’m the daughter of a displaced urban farmboy, so I know what the prep work entails for a citified garden.  Somewhere in the still caverns of basements, spare rooms or garages all over the still-frozen Minnesota landscape, growlights are humming.  Freshly filled egg cartons and peat pots wait to birth the first tender green tendrils of the fledgling tomato, pepper, and marigold.  Seed catalogs are thumbed through and ogled over coffee; tiny, tidy plots are plotted. By Memorial Day our frostbite will turn to sunburn, and we can’t be a minute too late.

Living in the inner-city, with limited space and tight budget, I have long exercised my growing knowledge neighborhood or urban foraging.  Well, it’s actually more like gleaner gardening, since it is less about thievery and more about not letting useful produce go to waste.  For example, neglected neighborhood apple trees that hang heavy with rotting fruit no one has even thought of picking—mine.  Vacant lot raspberry canes heavy with fruit—mine.  Neighbors who go away on summer trips and miss a few harvest cycles for their tomatoes—mine.  Wild blueberries growing along the roads and campsites of the State Park—mine.  Orchards who open themselves to the general public for unlimited gleaning at the end of season—mine.  Family members and friends and neighbors who grow far more than they can use, or who grow weary of canning, or who have a high standard of perfection for their produce and cast aside “grade B” specimens—mine, mine and mine.  It may sound like a shady endeavor, but in reality all these victims of my foraging  are, whenever it is possible, informed victims, so I have given a bit more ethical bent to the whole endeavor.  It’s really a sort of “waste-reduction” or recycling program, except instead of the earth benefitting, per se, it’s, well, my family and anyone with whom we share the bounty.  And we do share.

I do grow my own things, too.  After all I am a native Minnesotan, not a barbarian.  I believe in edible landscape, container gardening and community gardens.  However, this year Hubby and I have decided that with a small yard, growing boys and space-hogging dogs, we are going to branch out into guerrilla gardening.  Have you heard of this?  It’s becoming quite the movement with urban sprawl and multi-family homes becoming more and more the norm.  Guerilla Gardeners even have an international organization to share information and report on their practices. 

Basically guerilla gardeners lob their seed wherever there is untended, opportune earth to be found:  a vacant lot, along a neighbor’s garage, the boulevard.  “The seedball is the Molotov cocktail of the urban homesteader.”  Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen.  Simply mix seeds of your choice with dry clay and a little compost, roll them into marble-sized balls and lob them into the waiting arms of mother earth.  Wait, see, tend, (perhaps) harvest and share. 

You know that tacky old color-blocked soccer shirt you love?  Or the giant metallic-orange hobo bag?  I know you have something everyone else hates but that you adore.  It makes you you.  For better or worse, it’s part of your style. And usually it has a story.

 In middle school Dad gave me a beautiful gold Bulova watch.  He had given my mom a dainty gold Bulova in their Original Lives, before six children had made attention to time and jewelry laughable topics in their marriage.  Slowly, over time (as all earthly things must), my Bulova decayed.  It lived through 4 band replacements, a couple of new crystals and several mechanical cleanings.  One day in 1997, its poor little ancient gears, stripped and worn, died.  The jeweler told me, very unsympathetically: Nope, she’s a goner. He had a little spyglass stuck in one eye and belched his lunch while he examined the watch.  This was New Richmond, Wisconsin, so what do you expect?

A graduate student with a full time University job, a new husband and a Germanic affliction for punctuality, I needed a functioning watch immediately.  So I ran over to the local Pamida and disinterestedly picked up the first and cheapest thing I found.  It was never meant to be a permanent replacement watch—I mean my Bulova wasn’t truly dead, was she? Surely something could be done.

Twelve years later the Bulova is still dead, entombed in the little velvet sarcophagus of my mom’s jewelry box, which I inherited.  Next to the Bulova are my baby teeth (which my parents creepily kept), my dad’s “emerald” birthstone baby ring from 1930 (tin ring, green paint), my mom’s cultured pearls (which she claimed to have never worn past 1965, after the birth of baby #5) and a St. Paul streetcar token. 

And Cassie, well, she is going strong.  In over a decade I have only needed one replacement battery, and she is as clean and resilient as a new snow tire, with the accuracy of a Swiss horologist.  Folks have offered sweetly—pleaded really—over the years to replace her with the “gift” of a more respectable timepiece, but I have always politely declined. 

Someone tried to force the issue when many years ago I received a gorgeous and girly gold watch anonymously through the mail.  The serial- killer lettering disguised the sender’s identity, and the postmark gave away nothing.  Having been grilled for years, my family and current circle of friends have long ago asserted innocence, and have by now closed the cold case file of the mystery watch.  The five possible perpetrators from 1988 I suspect: John E., Nguyen Ta (now “Chris”), EJG and Daniel S.  Of those characters, one is dead, one swears believably he didn’t do it, one is a brilliant pathological liar who could have murdered your puppy and told you he didn’t with a straight face, and the other one is lost in a cloud of theo-political literary stardom and self-promotion—he couldn’t own up to sending it if he did, for fear I would write a “tell-all” about who he really is and his book sales would drop.  Anyway, if you did it, let me know.  Chances are you are less peculiar than anybody on the suspect list and so maybe finally I can retire Cassie. 

Probably not, though.

Probably not, though.

Probably not, though.

Every early spring, before Easter and just around my birthday, I re-read my lifelong favorite book, A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter    My mom first read it aloud to me in chapters one very hot summer when I was almost too little to remember.  By the time I could read myself I was pouring over the story at least twice a year—once in the dark quiet hours of Christmas holiday and again on the tire swing under our great big backyard maple in summer.  It was Mom’s lifelong favorite book, and I saw her reading  it many times without me—the cracked board binding still smells like her Evening in Paris perfume.  There is a purity and light to the book that always puts me in a place of hopefulness.  After reading it, mom always seemed more cheerful and deliberate in her love.  She could be caught kissing Dad out of the blue more often, her arms slung gratefully around his neck in the while he poured his coffee (one of my most secret favorite things).

Gene Stratton-Porter was an amateur naturalist and wildlife photographer, and way ahead of her time.  She wrote the A Girl of the Limberlost in 1909 (although she is most famous for several of her other  novels, including Freckles  and Freckles Comes Home) when no one was ecology-minded and very few were advocating women’s higher education.  The book is the story of Elnora Comstock, a young country girl left alone with her grief-embittered and unloving mother after her father tragically dies in the quagmire of the surrounding forest/swamp called the Limberlost.  It’s a coming-of-age story, but also a story about the fragility, stewardship and beauty of nature, the complexity of parental love and the wonders of discovery and education.  There are other wholesome themes like neighborliness, caring for the less-fortunate and the fatherless, strength in character and the power of love to transform even a stony injured.  Sure there’s a cornball happy ending including a fairytale marriage to a prince-like character, the promise of joy and wealth and children (who of course will in no way interfere with Elnora’s scientific endeavors and education).  Read the lunchbox scene, and see if you fall stupid in love with the story like I did:

She followed the road until well around the corner, then she stopped and sat on a grassy spot, laid her books beside her and opened the lunch box. Last night's odours had in a measure prepared her for what she would see, but not quite. She scarcely could believe her senses. Half the bread compartment was filled with dainty sandwiches of bread and butter sprinkled with the yolk of egg and the remainder with three large slices of the most fragrant spice cake imaginable. The meat dish contained shaved cold ham, of which she knew the quality, the salad was tomatoes and celery, and the cup held preserved pear, clear as amber. There was milk in the bottle, two tissue-wrapped cucumber pickles in the folding drinking-cup, and a fresh napkin in the ring. No lunch was ever daintier or more palatable; of that Elnora was perfectly sure. And her mother had prepared it for her! "She does love me!" cried the happy girl. "Sure as you're born she loves me; only she hasn't found it out yet!"

You love it, don’t you?  If so, you can download the book for free at the Project Gutenberg website or read it online at Google Books--how cool is THAT?!  But  do not watch the 1990 made-for-tv movie that is a slash-and-burn mockery of the original story (sooooo bad).

I am teaching my men to cook.  Well, maybe teaching is a bit strong, since there is more cunning and persuasion involved than instruction.  Cozening?  (coz·en·ing \ˈkəz-niŋ, ˈkə-zə-\Etymology: perhaps from obsolete Italian cozzonare, from Italian cozzone horse trader, from Latin cocion-, cocio trader. Date: 1573,  meaning:1 : to deceive, win over, or induce to do something by artful coaxing and wheedling or shrewd trickery)  Yes, I am cozening my men to cook.  Hey, lookie!  We all learned a mafia word (and it’s a good one).

Anyway, Roo’s interest in cooking is pretty Benihana.  Anything to do with sharp knives and a lot of fast blade work brings him into the kitchen.  This I have been able to translate into vegetable peeling with a flashy chrome device that is both safe and scary looking.  Toe is less interested in the culinary, especially since about 98.635% of all human ingestibles repulse him to the point of gagging.  Toe does like stirring, though, something he can do absent-mindedly while plotting his next activity or peeking around the corner to see if the TV has been mistakenly left on.  This interest he gets from Daddy, who also likes stirring, as it allows him to both shut himself into a DO NOT DISTURB unavailable cocoon of “I’m cooking!” and still make headway through his latest alternative history novel. 

We have soup a lot.

Happy Birthday, Birdie!  You are now 6 but you look 10; you are a beagle but you smell like carrion; you’re brain’s a pea, yet you cleverly circumvent authority at every turn; you were a gift to us, though at times you seem more like a citation; you make us laugh and bring us to tears; you are unlovable but we love you. 

This is not you. But still, you deserve a poem:

As we’ve said, Toe’s weekday PCA (and new BFF) Kayla is married to a Canadian.  In fact, Karl is so Canadian, he doesn’t consider the Toronto Maple Leafs (no, it’s not “leaves”) to be a Canadian Hockey team.  Blasphemy!  Well, they are too awesome a n organization to be Canadian anyway.

So, Karl.  He is crazy for Toe.  Himself a PCA, Karl works with Huntington’s patients, exclusively men over 40 suffering from severe and terminal central nervous system degeneration.  Karl loves his job, but it is hard to find the happy.  Young Kayla and Karl (or “Y2K” as we call them) are God-loving , kid-friendly, salt of the earth people, childless and with great senses of humor.  In other words, they are the perfect targets for Toe’s charm and now Toe has another BFF in Karl.  Yay, Toe. You can never have too many buddies.

Yesterday we also found a weekender, Janay.  She will be starting in March, and will serve as Toe’s para during church and children’s Bible Study, and also stay through the Sunday lunch period so we can go out as a family with an extra hand to the fire.  Janay is adorable, a licensed special education teacher (she works in deaf education in Faribault), and wait for it:  a former Swede.  Yes.  She worked for the Wisconsin Swedes (they have cells everywhere), and quit.  She is decidedly anti-Swede, which was a little bit of a bonus, not that the Swedes didn’t have their good points.  Let’s just say Janya is our kind of people.

Bonus, Janay has a beautiful head of auburn hair (she looks just like Amy Adams in this picture) which intrigues Toe to no end.  During the meet and greet Toe kept taking my hand and leading me into the hallway for side conversations: 

Mommy, her hair is red.

Yep, it sure is.  Isn’t it pretty?

Um, yeah.  And it’s red.

Isn’t that cool?

Yes.  I like that red hair!

Needless to say, Toe and this author will likely be referring to Janay as “Red.”

Ever try to find a movie (fiction) that doesn’t have adultery or a strife-filled marriage as a majoror at least sub- theme?  It’s hard, really hard.  Hubby’s pet peeve in movie fiction is couples in selfish bickering strife.  He can’t watch it the way I can’t watch anything in which animals are neglected, killed or even mildly sad (people getting killed though, not a biggie).  We are weird this way, which narrows our choices in American cinema a bit.

All this led to discussion the other day.  After 13 years of happy marriage, I’m not really worried about Hubby straying.  Sure, when you hitch your wagon to a smart handsome man, you always run that possible risk, but if you choose carefully (ie: someone who’s vacation dream is going to LegoLand then sleeping undisturbed for 7 days consecutively), you’ve got yourself a little insurance.  It helps too if they are stupid in love with you for no apparent reason you can fathom, and if you have borne their children.

Hubby knows that if he ever cheated, I’d leave and give him and his Homewrecking Tart full custody of the kids.  Now, I haven’t read the Homewrecking Tart blog recently (I cannot provide the link—this is a family-friendly site, people!), but I am pretty sure that for most harlots, this would be an adultery dealbreaker.

No, the only thing I am really worried about losing Hubby to is high fructose corn syrup and his acts of self-neglect.  Typical evening conversation in the BCD house:

Are you drinking another “Throwback” Pepsi?

No

Did you take your Man Pills? (lovebird shorthand for “Men’s Formula Vitamins”)

Yes

Are you watching “Pawn Stars” again? (This is a show which I have never, nay never, nor will I ever, have any interest in watching: a reality show dedicated to one of the sleaziest professions of all time, though Hubby swears it’s really just a “lowbrow” version of Antiques Road Show)

Okay, TV won’t really kill him, but this kind may kill his soul.

Lord, hear my Lenten prayer:

Though I am against arbitrary and freedom-limiting legislation, please, Holy Spirit, lead the FDA to add Pepsi  to the list of Schedule I narcotics before it is too late.  Amen.

Alert!  The American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is making its revisions for their latest edition of the psychiatric bible in 2013, the DSM 5.  Among the new things that will mean you are crazy: gluttonous over-eating (sign up for group therapy, Americans!), Asperger’s Syndrome, kids who have tantrums (“temper disregulation disorder”—no joke) insomnia due to overuse of caffeine (no more Redbull, you nut!) and pack-ratting.  Poor old cousin Butch.  Yah, it’s a little controversial.

Take it with a grain of salt, though, you my fellow pscyhos.  The APA is the same group who has in the recent past legally defined the mentally ill as those suffering PMS, gays and lesbians, people with environmental allergies and sensitivities…and, a little further back in the past, women who want to work. 

I guess we can be calm and wait it out, see what happens.  But remember, the DSM is a powerful document used in healthcare and criminal legislation and court decisions like commitment hearings and psychological fitness descisions.  If you are really mad (pun intended), read Call Me Crazy: Stories from the Mad Movement or look into the growing popularity of the International Mad Movement.

I’m not Catholic, but I do groove on Lent.  I groove on Lent in my own specific evangelical protestant messed-up individual way, which usually involves judgementally pshawing the heathen Mardi Gras tourists and tsking the bare-chested beaded ladies of Rio.  Fat lotta good Fat Tuesday is.  As if one day of godless celebratory hedonism is going to be enough to get you through the 49 days of soul-searching denial ‘til Good Friday anyway (the costumes are cool, though, and crafty).

So, this year, after much thought and prayer and inward reflection, I am giving up television for Lent.  It’s not as sensational as, say, going full tilt boogie by swearing off food, but I’ve considered it and it has real spiritual heft.

My whole life I’ve never been a TV person.  No, really.  Okay, yah, sure, as a child of the 70s/80s I had my shows like the rest of you:  Monkees, Brady Bunch, Muppets, Little House on the Prairie.  But really past age 14 I didn’t much pay attention to the box, and usually the TV in our house was O-F-F.  My mother despised what she referred to as the boob tube—I don’t think I ever saw her watch more than maybe 45 minutes of TV ever in my whole life (once or twice she would watch The Sound of Music when they aired it at Easter, but only the “good part” which meant up until Maria left the convent and got “saddled with all those bratty Von Trapp kids”).  My dad did have his shows:  the 6 o’clock news, the 10 o’clock news, 60 Minutes, Rockford Files, Gunsmoke—and for a strange period he did go through an oddly uncharacteristic Dallas/Who Shot J.R. phase (but with 6 kids and 3 jobs, Dad wasn’t really home all that much to watch them).

Since living life with chronic pain and fatigue (and chronic children), my will has weakened along with my flesh.  In times of rest—the few I have—it can be so much easier to surrender to the soft pillowed world of glowing images and mental sloth.  When I am emotionally and physically spent, these are my gateway drugs to tranquility:  quasi-intelligent comedy on DVD (Arrested Development, The Office), cooking challenges (damn you, Food Network!), documentaries on anything I am too lazy to read up about, and of course, the best television ever made, The West Wing.

In honor of the sacrifices of my God, I will, for 49 days, attempt to say “no” to this, my drug*.  For the hour in the evening when the kids have gone to bed (or, like at least2-3 hours on the weekend), I will transform my TV time and turn my mind more deeply to Him.  Prayerfully I will search His Word and my own heart, and ask that God speak to me more deeply of his plan and purpose for me.  And that is the part of Lent that is truly groovy.

*By threat of marital discord, this offer does not include denial of the short stack backlog of movies Hubby and I are dying to see, but have shelved due to brutally insensitive children.  These include Adam , The No Impact Man, and Thinking in Pictures: My Life With Autism, The Temple Grandin Story.

Unless you’ve been to the very exclusive 3 a.m. Roolympics, you’ve missed out on the whole fascinating world of the 2010 pre-K Insomniac Night Games.  Let me recap:

The Intermediate Dog Collar Houdini Wrangle







Twirling (not to be confused with Curling)

Advanced Downright Adorability

Advanced Downright Adorability

Toe takes after his daddy with an interest in all things Asian (well, with the exception of paint-peelingly spicy food).  In his own romantically descriptive way of talking, Toe refers to the spellbinding je ne sais quoi  the Asian cultures have for him as “dragon-style.” Anything with a Southeast or East Asian flair is described by him thus.  As in:  Mommy, can I get a purple shiny dragon-style jacket? (or)  I really like the red dragon-style picture! (or) Can we make sparkly dragon-style cupcakes?  (Hubby’s PoliSci degree had a minor focus in East Asian Studies, so sometimes I will rely on him to help me transliterate what, say for example, a dragon-style cupcake may be—often the answer we lazily come up with is to simply
draw a dragon/tiger/Chinese
character/Thai symbol/lily on it). 

Yah, Asia is not Mommy’s area of expertise.  I am more of a Ancient Hebrew, Roman Empire, Charlemagne, Crusading medieval Europe, Old Norse barbarian, Frontier America, British Colonial Empire sort of girl.  Asia, I know a bit.  I know Seoul is really hilly like San Francisco, and I have all manner of knowledge about Asian cuisines.  I love Gao Sai, the assistant ECSE teacher who used to tell me stories about coming to Minnesota from Laos, and how when she stepped off the plane in winter her first thought was, “what horrible disease has killed all the trees here?”  Burma kind of scares me.  I understand the sad deal in Tibet and know that things are not good between Taiwan and China.  Also, my husband ate stick-roasted lizards, eggs brined in horse urine and sweated off 40 pounds in Thailand.  There’s some other stuff I know too, but Toe has made for me a desire to improve myself.

Great books alert!  I have recently read both Paul Hillmer’s A People’s History of the Hmong (Hillmer is a History professor at Concordia, director of the Hmong Oral History Project  there, and is producing a six-part History Channel-funded documentary, From Strangers to Neighbors, about Hmong people and their resettlement in the Twin Cities) and Kao Kalia Yang’s The Latecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir. I cried through both of them, and felt incredibly angry about my own stupidity. Mostly I was just astonished, and in the end so grateful that I live where any number of buildings in my ‘hood proudly display the word “Moob.” 

Lucky for Toe (and us), there is plenty of dragon-style around here.  For one thing, the East Side is rich with Asian immigrant culture.  There is plenty of opportunity for Moob-- which is traditional Hmong culture—experiences, as well as Laotian, Cambodian, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai , Korean, Chinese.    St. Paul has the highest Hmong/Laotian immigrant population in the United States, and we, like Toe, feel the blessing of this addition to our world. 

Today we visited our favorite grocery , the Golden Harvest Market, a large Hmong-operated store offering high quality and diverse produce.  Here we can get some of my menfolk some of their harder-to-find favorites like miniature asian pears, sweet papaya and Costa Rican red bananas.  And for special occasions, we can pick up some authentic, low-priced and freshly-made vegetable spring rolls, noodle salad, pad thai, ginger soda or Thai Coke. Shopping there is fun and frugal, and the people who work there are truly dragon-style sweethearts.

When I asked Toe to tell me a story about “dragon-style”, this is what he said, word for word.  Maybe it will reveal a little more about the magic of dragon-style to you:

This is a Kmart smart story, and I want to see Kmart smart.  Once upon a time, Toe went to school and he wanted a dragon-style coat, and he went to the Kmart.  Then he found the dragon-style coat and he found it and he bought from the nice friends and he took it home.  Toe was at  home with the dragon-style coat (it was a red coat and not a purple coat), and said, “With the dragon-style coat we can find the Snoopy computer!”  We wore  a dragon-style coat and went for a walk.  Toe got dirtier and dirtier and dirtier, and squash!  Then the Spot Kung Fu dog came fast to help find some dragon-style chocolate.   The End.

My poor right-brained little misfit.  He has decidedly inherited my left-handedness, the curse/badge-of-honor of the exceptionally odd (from the Old Norse oddi, meaning “point of a triangle.”  See: PINHEAD). 

It’s not really so bad, being a southpaw.  Well, the nicknames do suck and typically have something to do with crude animals or mental illness (cack-handed, cow-pawed, sinister).  And spending your whole life smearing your own writing, bumping elbows at tables with the other 93% of the human population, and having a permanent blister where your wrist hits the spiral on the cheap Meade notebooks (from about grade 3 to 12) aren’t so swell neither.  But, at least we have the shorter life span and higher incidence of rare immune system problems, autism, and seizure disorders to look forward to.  There’s also being 10 years old and looking up “left-handed” in the dusty 1919 Encyclopedia Britannica that came included with the Victorian house you grew up in and reading, “a notable sign of insanity.”  Hmmm, that was a moment.

There is some upside to hanging port.  For example, although only 7% of the population is left-handed, 6 out of the past 12 presidents (including Bill and Barack) have also been leftys.  So, we have statistical significance on our side.  Also, astronauts tend to be disproportionately left-handed, which may be a sign of amazing giftedness for leftys in the sciences (or could simply explain the slow pewling death of the American Space Program).

Famous Leftys:  Joan of Arc, Beethoven, Benjamin Franklin, Leonardo Da Vinci, Micelangelo, Picasso, Mark Twain, Buzz Aldrin, Pele, Jimi Hendrix, Dan Ackroyd, Jim Henson, Kermit the Frog, Toe and me.  And only about 2/3 of them are crazy.

So PCA Kayla did not fall prey to our germs, yay!  She came back willingly, too, which is an excellent sign.  Finally, we found out she is married to a Kanuck, but have decided to forgive her (it’s love after all; what can you do?)  Domestic bliss!

After a week of delightfully successful PCA services in our home, teams have formed.  Or gangs.  There is Team Kayla and Team Not Kayla.  It is very easy to tell the two apart: everyone is on Team Kayla and they win anything they do every time.  Their uniform is a smile.  Team Kayla plays games and practices the three Rs with panache.  They go for walks and take field trips to museums and libraries and they dance and sing and well, I could go on and on.  If you were in the presence of Team Kayla, you’d want to be a part of it too, and you can’t so I feel so sad for you!  It is the Olympics of fun (have I overextended the metaphor?).

Now we are looking for The Weekender.  Because of her fabulousness, of course Kayla is not available to us 24/7.  She has other fans, other followers, other fish to fry.  Today we will meet and greet with our possible future weekend PCA, whose primary function will be to serve as para to Toe during Children’s Church and Bible study, giving an extra hand to the fire (and brimstone) in ole First Church of the Nazarene.  The Weekender is a young new special education teacher who lives in our very own ‘hood and is looking to bankroll some extra bucks and autism ed experience as she moves on for her Ed.D.  She sounds like a peach, so wish us luck!

So after three nights in the heart of earth (the depths of hell, the cavern of despair, the belly of the whale—or insert your own euphemism for mini-depression here…), this is what I have learned:  influenza has not only a brain and a motive, but a determined, wicked soul engineered by Lucifer to

1.       Mark me as a personal target

2.       Bankrupt my physical person

3.       Destroy my life

Okay, maybe that’s extreme, but some days the Insomnia Child is up by 3:45 a.m. and I have lots of time to think (and be bitter) and google.

Our family flu (despite standard and H1N1 vaccines back in November) has resulted in the failure of my surgery, and now I have to have it re-done in 4 weeks time.  Apparently all the hacking and sneezing and retching are worse for internal sutures and delicately-healing visceral systems than hauling shingles (and I could have been doing that!)  While I took great pains to not lift more than the restrictive 10lbs., incommoding my lads, dogs and husband most vexingly, my post-op appointment with my surgeon has revealed the worst .  And here I was hoping all the pain and symptoms I was having were just a temporary reaction to Roo’s flying Kung Foo karate chop to my transverses abdominus (he got overly-excited watching Hong Kong Phooey).

There is little consolation, though I know how you cry for me (right).  Even Dr. Bollywood was desolated (But why, why why did this have to happen?), and I ended up comforting her by the end of the appointment.  Her gold-bangled gorgeous little heart is so tender.  Oh, one day at a time, sweet Jesus.

As I remember it, starting Kindergarten meant milling like cattle in a huge auditorium full of yawning and/or crying 5 year-olds waiting for your name to be called.  My parents were there, maybe, waiting with me, I don’t really remember.  I was too distracted and stricken.  It may have been that they just rolled out of bed, fed me Cornflakes, handed me my tin Snoopy lunchbox and pointed me toward the river: It’s four blocks north of the grocery store—you can’t miss it.  I know I struck gold and got Mrs. Garnette for my teacher, a bit of grammar school lottery luck.  She was interminably patient and soft-spoken, played the piano, loved Elvis and books where the animals told the story.  And she had a huge red beehive she decorated with tiny butterfly barrettes to my childish wonder.  What else could I need?

Nowadays, getting a child ready for Kindergarten is like triathlon training.  Or being on Survivor.  Just imagine something both brutally difficult and cutthroat, then add ridiculous deadlines and State Laws and politics and the adorable little apple of your eye, counting on you.  You have an ulcer yet?  Then you know.

So, Toe is off to the garden of children in the Fall of 2010, and it’s crunch time.  First there are all manner of invasive intellectual, physical and psychological tests to make sure your child is neither deviant, unteachable or has worms (DONE).  I am not sure what they do with the children who do, say, have worms, but I am sure it involves further testing and pigeon-holing, possibly medication and labeling of some sort.

Then comes the burden of choice.  MN was the first place in the country to adopt statewide open enrollment, and in my opinion, that may have just been a clever ruse by the government to further vex me.  Yes, me, specifically (I am not popular with that institution).  For Toe, with his Autism Spectrum Disorder, we can choose among the following types of Kindergarten (not to mention the actual individual school sites):

Ø  Half day

Ø  Full day

Ø  Year round

Ø  Academic Year

Ø  Magnet, charter, standard

Ø  ASD specialized

Ø  Mainstream

Ø  Inclusion (combo of ASD and mainstream)

Ø  Coyote Chipotle Chocolate (wait, that may be an ice cream flavor…)

Once that is researched, agonized over and decided (DONE), we move on to school shopping (more research, more agony, and the added bonus of site visits to places with cinderblock walls that smell like meatloaf).  Don’t let the word “shopping” in any way mislead you into thinking this part of the endeavor in any way involves, fun, lunching out, relaxed browsing or time with friends.  It is a hike through mosquito infested thickets in short pants, and at the end you are purchasing your child’s future.  Stomach ache?  Headache?  Okay, you get it.  These are the four schools down to which we have painfully culled our list (real names of course cannot be used, as that would be very un-Survivorlike and lay us open to the betrayal that one of you out there would steal that last slot for the apple of your eye):

1.       Pinko Academy

Pros:  multiple MN School Excellence Awards, funky charter school approach to diverse learning styles, award-winning and highly specialized staff, rooftop garden and playground, lots of windows, focus on community involvement and out-of-classroom experiences, principal wears Birkenstocks

Cons:  lame school song, terrible parking, enrollment may one day lead to Toe being called before the House UnAmerican Activities Council if the New World Order comes, one speech pathologist plays the pan flute--the other has eyebrow ring

2.        Throne of the Great Achiever Elementary

Pros:  top 10 highly-sought after school, within transportation zone, state of the art educational facility and tools, overeducated teachers with cult-like obedience to their profession, endless parental involvement opportunities, rigorous and broadly defined academic choices for the student

Cons:  the Brownshirts rule here, principal is 47 but looks 70, all work and no play make Toe a possible future teen suicide

3.        Lakesy Leafy Outdoorsy School of Sunshine and Harmony

Pros:  less than 10 minutes from home, several buddies of mine went there (and turned out pretty good), on a lake and adjacent to beautiful park, strong school performance scores and statewide recognition of excellence in autism education, focus on integrating earth and environmental sciences into all curricula, heavy on the outdoorsy time for younger grades

Cons:  some clearly godless hair-twirlers among staff, just outside “transitional” border of unsavory neighborhood, no year round school option, expect lots of homework shaming parents over size of their carbon footprint

4.        Better Than Nothing Last Chance School of Okay

Pros:  pretty good school, pretty close, pretty well-equipped, prevents Toe being “school homeless” if 1, 2 and 3 are full

Cons: clearly a Plan B school, YAWN!

When Hubby is sick, he does a reverse Tom Hanks in Big and becomes 12 years-old overnight.  He’s not a demanding child though, and always weakly croaks the same simple request:  Woman, ginger ale and a video. Have mercy.  So I run to Walgreen’s and get him a 2 litre and whatever new Redbox selection has the most star power mixed with testosterone.

In the past year, all three of our local video stores have gone under.  We’re not talking some small cheese Bob’s Video View or whatever; I’m saying bye bye Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, Movie Gallery.  I suppose it’s partly the economy, partly the prevalence of Netflix and On Demand cable and Redbox.  I guess it’s going a bit far to complain about the loss of these tiny luxuries (I mean, it’s not like we have no hospital or bank or pharmacy or fire station), but it’s my blog and I’ll cry if I want to.  Here’s why I hate my new Redbox-only neighborhood:

1.        Sure, I enjoy a good popcorn movie or romantic comedy.  But Redbox is just not the kind of facility that’s going to traffic in my preferred type of film.  You aren’t going to find the William Kunstler documentary, Disturbing the Universe, the Bob Hope and Bing Crosby “Road” pictures or much from The New German Cinema there.  Jennifer Garner and Vin Diesel you’ll find, maybe even a documentary about Iraq.  Movies for the “other” you will not.

2.       A box is not a shopping experience (unless you are 3 and your Mommy has turned a refrigerator box into a faux “antique store”outfitted with your toy cash register and all the breakable mock-tique tchotchkes she is trying to find a reason to get rid of).  At a video store you can, much like in a book store (and yes, I am one of those people who still like their books to be made of paper and lined up like fascinating little gift packages on their shelves), hold the product in your hand.  You can examine the summary, look at the cover, feel the weight of it.  You are surrounded by choices, and you can let your mood and your intuition lead you to your selection, instead of basing your choice on what the evil touchscreen pressures you to do.

3.       Until I have like a 30-inch screen on my computer (not until after the Rapture), Netflix is either too long a wait or, for instant purchase films, too small a picture.  I mean, I realize in this house the 6 of us are experts in miniaturizing fun, but I draw the line.

At the risk of being called “Granny” (Hubby!), I remember the days.  John Waters films and Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown on the huge curtain-framed screen at the Uptown.  Once I saw a hilarious Hong Kong-made spoof of martial arts movies there—the funniest movie I have ever seen in my life (true story), just because it happened to be what was playing when we got there (I’ve forgotten the name, but think This is Spinal Tap meets Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon).  When I was kid we biked to a local theatre and saw movies regularly and without permission, and even though my taste was not developed back then (Night of the Living Dead, Clash of the Titans), it meant something to have a theatre down the street.  Or at least, now, you know, a video store.  Somehow biking to the box wouldn’t have the same thrill then, and it doesn’t now.

Yesterday we had our first shift of services with Kayla, Toe’s new and very unSwedish PCA.  Since the BCD house is still in the grips of plague, we all found it very surprising that Kayla would willingly enter the den of pestilence, and cheerfully interact with the lepers here as if she were some sort of superhero named Immunity Girl.  We pow-wowed in the sick bay/living room, flopped febrile on beds, wore our blankets like capes of contagion.  Nothing phased her.  She chatted with Hub and me about her life, asked thoughtful questions about Toe’s therapy plan and the house rules, relaxed into the virulent vibe and played gently instructive games with the Toe (and buttinsky Roo) who hopped from his sickbed with excitement to please and impress her.  By the time Kayla was ¾ into her shift Toe and Roo had disappeared into darkness of our bedroom, Toe summarily announcing  with a shout he was too sick to play and falling instantly into a croupy and fitful sleep (followed within minutes by Roo).  It was an atypical first day for Kayla, since her charge was more of an inert lump than a highly strung hyperactive boy--although she did join us a brief fresh-air walk through the quiety, snowy streets to try and rid ourselves of the vapors (which we all did enjoy between death gasps).  Five boxes of Puffs Plus later she left us, and will return again next week, pray God she is not ill.

Note:  Today the camel’s back was broke by continued fevers (we are on day 8 of this thing), so a morning visit to Dr. Darling (the lad’s regular pediatrician Dr. Sick’s fill-in—and yes, that is his real name).  When she asked Toe where he hurt, he was eager to show her with concern a papercut on his finger.  Roo drank about 11 glasses of water during his exam because he likes the tiny little Dixie cups (I think he may have a career future in minaturization technology).  After all that, the diagnosis is that this (powerful) virus has morphed into bacterial issues—Toe with both ear and sinus infections, Roo with double-dose bad ears and bronchitis. We are home again, armed with antibiotics, and waiting on relief.

Have you met our adorable daughter of compassion, Cutie Patootie? She writes and writes from her little Nazarene school in the heathen Middle East, sending pictures and telling 5^th grade tales.  She is part faith promise, part pen pal, part adorable little desert string bean with a tidbit of protective secrecy thrown in.  Patootie does not live in a place it is easy to know Jesus.

Yesterday I got another letter from her.  CP prints in the huge horsey script of an eleven year-old not native to the Roman alphabet:  I AM LIKING SWIMMING ALL THE TIME, SO MUCH SWIMMING.  This idea is even more precious coming from a girl who doesn’t exactly live in a land of 10,000 lakes (or even, I think, 10,000 raindrops), where I’m pretty sure they don’t have enough clean water to drink let alone practice the butterfly stroke.  Come to think of it—where is Patootie doing all this swimming?  Another ignorant question for me to add to my (probably) culturally insensitive imperialist “sponsor mom” diatribe:  DO YOU HAVE FOOD?  DO YOU HAVE HOSPITALS?  DO YOU HAVE APPROPRIATELY CHLORINATED WATER AND LIFEGUARDS AT THAT SWIMMING POOL?  I AM SENDING $5.  In my romantically feeble mind I imagine Patootie saving my letters in a box under her exquisitely made Spartan little bed.  For all I know she takes them directly to the school principle who thinks I am a moron and runs them through the shredder. 

Despite any stupidity on my part, CP has been an enormous gift.  She has a child’s knack for making me think of important things, and knowing her has meant so much more to my life than any paltry contribution of mine ever could mean to hers.  DO YOU ENJOY TO THANK JESUS EVERY DAY SINCE YOU CAN THANK JESUS EVERY DAY, EVEN ON THE STREET?  I CAN THANK JESUS ON THE PLAYGROUND AS IT HAS WALLS, SO THAT IS WHERE I SWING.  DO REUBEN AND TOVI SWING A LOT AND SING ABOUT JESUS IN THEIR SCHOOL?  I don’t have the heart to try to explain:  JESUS NOT REALLY WELCOME AT FREE SCHOOL HERE. JESUS-FRIENDLY SCHOOL HERE REQUIRES MUCH HIGHER TUITION THAN $20 PER YEAR, OR HOMESCHOOLING WHICH WOULD SURELY KILL ME.  Come to think of it, Patootie’s principal probably flat out censors my letters before the tender impressionable little dove ever sees them.  All she gets are probably pages of Sharpie-blackened lines with Love, Your Minnesota Family at the bottom and a receipt for the deposit made in her school tuition passbook account.  And for me, another questionable notation in my NSA file.

Valentine gift wishes say a lot about a couple.  Here’s what last night’s brief discussion on the topic (held while on our knees in the half-dark scrubbing Reuben’s latest projectile vomit incident from every corner of our recently shampooed carpet) yielded for Hub and me:

NAY:  Hot air balloon ride over St. Croix valley with doves released at sunset, any sort of homemade “coupon,”  anything edible with a glycemic index over 7, (in fact, “edible” anything), restaurant meals that involve a)sitting on the floor b)eating with the bare hand c) travelling outside the 694/494 loop.

YEAH:  Menard’s Trip! (a deluxe new toilet seat, industrial-sized pumper of Nature’s Miracle, or sturdy clothes hamper say “I care”), a bucket of caffeine and a book and my true true love, a gypsie on retainer to periodically “kidnap” the children, the 2011 Bentley Continental Flying Spur.

Only 11 days to decide!

If my dad were here, he would expect I’d be writing about political things tonight.  He took me to my first caucus when I was eight, mostly because I was his shadow and pestered him relentlessly, partly because my mom gave him that look after our meatloaf and said, Wally, take her. 

Back then I already knew Dad’s activist routine and was attracted to its fringe benefits for the child (me).  First there were would be heated discussion in the AFL-CIO hall among strapping uniformed men (including my own gentle father) who shouted and spit and shook their fists—who appeared, frankly, on the brink of homicidal acts toward one another--but who, in the end, would miraculously slap each other on the back in fraternal agreement.  Then there would be the curtained mystery of voting, during which I was left alone to scuff my feet and wait (soundlessly, under strict instruction) on the fringes of some broken-down community center or high school cafeteria.  Finally, there would be cribbage with the homicidal men and the also the women and sometimes the children too.  A caucus, like a union meeting or school board vote or strike planning event, usually ended in a familiar and cozy downtown establishment of drink with a name like The Top Hat or Ryan’s Corner.  There would be laughing adults who ignored us minors enough to let us watch the bar TV way past our bedtimes on a school night.  There would be free Beer Nuts and lemon sour and spirited discussion of concepts of charm and mystery to me, like OSHA and Iran Contras and muggin’s.

I did caucus tonight, and when there are over a dozen viable candidates for the progressive party of your choice alone, caucus is a verb.  The men seemed smaller, there were a lot more women, and afterwards, sadly, no cribbage.

When the voting was done, I quickly headed home to tend to my sick family, struck down this week with what can only be, I’m guessing, some newly malignant strain of killer monkey virus come to thin the herd.  Hubby, shaking and diminished by fever, has stopped all pretention of caring one whit about our future governor, my blah blah blog or anything outside of the cocoon of healing balm he has created to comfort himself as he suffers through said pox.  He desires only that I minister to him with cool hands and an icy glass of ginger ale, that I keep our ailing lads alive.  Toe and Roo, so tall and long for their ages, disappear like tiny minnows into the sea of comforters that warm them.  They moan and shiver, beg Mommy for drinks and bark ominously from their chests like one of those yappy dogs with a goiter.  And the noses, red and blistering, run, run, run…Mommy, they plead, where have you been?

In the midst of all this nursing, there is one thing I discovered (and, due respect, Dad, but this is completely removed from and more important than any politics).  Here it is:  a fistful of Puffs Plus tissues--by some miracle of alchemy --lotion and cheap cotton fiber and petrochemicals—smells exactly like you in one of your circa 1976 white cotton tee shirts.  It’s oddly true, and on this night, it is an amazing and welcome discovery.  As I sit here with these small boys on my lap, asleep in the final surrender to sickness, I hold these tissues and breathe in the memory. 

I am five, nestled on your lap in the big arm chair while the 10 o’clock news droned on about the Soviets and how many missiles they had pointed at, say, East St. Paul.  I pretended to be asleep so you would feel unable to shoo me, as you were never one to ever disturb a sleeping child or sleeping anything.  That way I could go on resting blissfully, securely there, my sweaty little head buried in your cottony chest, a summer storm rumbling outside and the long, white curtains billowing, the GE fan oscillating as it hummed.  In that place, I was more sure of anything than I have ever been or ever will be again, safer, with your huge calloused hand (scented with some delicious combination of fuel oil and ointment) resting like a mitten of protection on my back.

With this memory comes also the memory of all you taught me, Dad, all you stood for, all you believed to be morally imperative and unmistakably just.  Because of you I grew up knowing about things like worker safety, living wages, health care, pension plans, job security, provisions for the poor, social justice and good government.  You made Jesus more than a story in a book or a high ideal for dreamers and church folk—you made him a living person of action, a message of conviction, a kick in the butt from God to us to get it together and care for each other as He intended.

So, I know there was a gubernatorial caucus tonight, and it was an important one, and what happened there will have tremendous impact for our future in this State we’re still so proud to live in.  But I’m so tired and a little bit sick, Dad, and I hope you don’t mind too much if I write about something else—just this one time.  Tomorrow I will fight some more.

Good news, as if you care.  Our #1 PCA chose us/Toe too,  and will be starting in the BCD house of mayhem this Thursday!  Yay!  We will call her Moxie to protect her privacy (she's new, and you never know--she may come to hate me, my blah blah blog and my cold cold heart), and we can't wait!