 On the 100th anniversary of your birth, we remember you! Family hero, personal hero, MN hero, national hero, hero and champion of humankind. Take a moment to reflect on all the wonderful things this great individual did for the world. You can read my memorial at Care2 News and Causes. Add Comment  Oh, I don't know why. Maybe because there are just so many extraordinary dogs and cats and...llamas out there who have insightful things to say (and some dogs who don't). No one wants to see a life lived in quiet desperation. Here are some of my fave local tweeting canines: @MollyIvinsDog @GeorgeWBeagle @mayorscoutie But really, there is such a crowd of chatty pooches on twitter, you'd be amazed. There's at least one clearinghouse site to keep track of them. Not to mention all the other animals opining on the twitterz, including one squirrel with over 27,000 followers, who has the ear even of our very own President. Life really is a zoo.  Remember the Swedes? If you were a follower of my old blog, then you probably know the whole sordid tale, but this is a new-ish blog, and so I won't get into that whole bad scene again. Suffice it to say, some good things did come out of my time with our rigid and humorless in-home ABA therapy friends from Scandinavia. Well, one good thing anyways. Through my work with the Swedes, I participated in a county-sponsored program which allowed me to become trained and certified in autism ABA therapy practices at no cost. And did you know, in MN there are grants available to pay you to be your own child's therapist? Yes, yes there are. Governor Timmy didn't manage to dip his greedy paws into everything! How delightfully socialist! Hub and I have decided that after ages of enduring an abysmal parade of under-qualified and afflicted PCAs, we will go Scandinavian and apply for a Consumer Directed Community Support Grant. The spirit of this grant basically says, Dude, why pay someone else to treat my autistic child when I know his needs better than all you slackers? And while I do enjoy the 47 jobs I am already doing, helping make the best men possible out of Toe and Roo is the most important one among them, so bring on the funds! You can get the 411 on this type of grant and other such commie pinko services through the MN Children and Special Health Needs Information and Assistance Line. Woo hoo!  discussing secrets of the yaya borhterhood Just FYI, I wasn't raptured. No one was as far as I know (although suspiciously Ronald McDonald disappeared, though I think he might have gone somewhere with a little more fire for grilling, if you get what I mean). Here's the 411 on my time astray, as if you care: 5/8/11 Roo begins using the "F" word in exasperation when anything goes awry for him, as in "Oh, fishsticks!" His #2 and #3 cusswords of choice are currently "Nuts!" and "Rats!" Roo gets frustrated a lot these days. 5/9/11 Thanks to a freebie from Tante Donna, we all get our game on at Pinz for the little tykes bowling session. Toe loudly proclaims, "I like my balls pink!" Hub and I both lose to Toe and Roo, who Hubs says, "only won because they got to use those unfair side bumpers." Hub also whined that his game was off because of his "bad shoulder." Mmmm hmmm. 5/10/11 Level 9 pain and Queen Latifah movie marathon (she got me straight trippin' boo!). Not a productive day. 5/11/11 Physical therapist diagnoses me with bloggermortis. It may be terminal--we could find out any day. 5/12/11 Ridiculously expensive tests reveal there is finally absolutely no blood left in my blood, and coincidentally leave me unable to afford "new" blood. Also sadly learn you can't get "bargain" blood on Craigslist. 5/13/11 Lose nearly $1000 in monthly income for Tovi's autism therapies and special services due to the loving legacy of former governor Tim Pawlenty and newly instituted GOP guidelines for special needs children. Considered committing an act of violence, but balked after realizing it might mean spending all eternity with Tim Pawlenty (see "raptured: NOT"). 5/14/11 Gibbs Farm Museum. Rain, raw wind, goat poo. Let's just move on. 5/15/11 Day-long debate on whether or not Hub could "commute" to take a university job in Duluth while I stayed in St. Paul during the week alone with the kids. Decided a firm "maybe" since working for bubkis with scary nuns at a Catholic college in a frigid landscape about equivalent to what woud happen here in this case. Equality in marriage. 5/16/11 After 4 appointments of looking into the fire of my mother tiger eyes, pediatrician finally and nervously agrees it may not be normal for a 4 year old to cough phlegm every morning like a two-pack-a-day smoker and orders tests for Roo in June. 5/17/11 Received my first blogging paycheck. About enough money to buy the wrist splints I now need due to carpal tunnel. 5/18/11 Frost bite from 5/14 has finally healed. Giant gasball of sunfire takes over and forces me to pull out the big floppy hat and wearable ice packs. 5/19/11 Something rotten in Denmark. All day cleaning extravaganza. 5/20/11 Delightfully aloof California yuppie suns-worshipping lawyer neighbors up and decide to move back to California lickity split on the spot. We believe they may have been suffering from vitamin D deficiency and/or post Arnold & Maria traumatic disorder. They abandon us with an abrupt goodbye, two ziplocs of candy they've been hiding from their kids since Halloween, and an adorable new neighbor (do you recognize her?) both the boys adore. 5/21/11 Woke up to not being dead. Day went downhill from there. Well, that brings us currrent. You can use your imagination to flesh out the details for yourselves.  Have I mentioned I've got children? I do, human ones. And before that I had dog-children (and still do), and of course I was a "mom" to Barbies and baby dolls, and also to a few wayward girls back in college also. Isn't every woman kind of a mom in some way? I think she is. Now that I have human children, though, there is feedback on my momming. Dogs and Barbies usually keep their critiques quiet, making them excellent subjects on which to practice your parenting, BTW. Homo sapiens, they use their words. In his recent Kindergarten project--a book called My Mother--Toe has revealed the me he sees through his eyes: My Mother Name: "Anula" Favorite Sport: "Soccer" My Mom and I Like to: "Play Xbox Crimson Skies" (and when he says "play," what he really means is "argue over whether or not she will crush the game disc under her shoe if I ask for it one more time) Age: "29 years" (no, seriously) Word to Describe My Mom: "nice" (aw...) Favorite Color: "purple" (not on your life, Prince) Favorite Food: "salad" (he's asleep when I drink all the beer and eat the poutine)  what the hell is Anula doing in this picture? The images of Mommy in this book give an even more intriguing insight into my youthful soccer-playing, Xbox-addicted alter-ego "Anula." There is a drawing of me on each page, apparently there to illustrate what the words alone cannot, a la Vanna White. My hair--as-above--is always blue. Apparently I have no eyes, but do possess an incredibly large mouth to compensate. In most cases I am a triangle equipped with canoe-like feet or angel wings, sometimes holding a flower. In one I am just an assemblage of sticks projecting a singularly large boot making contact with what is either a ball or (perhaps) a child's very rounded buttocks. My ears poke out of my staticky long hair akimbo--they are bigger than my feet. I only have four fingers. Total. Forgive it all, though, because on the last page is a drawing of Anula holding Tovi's hand. He is leaning on her, hard, and she appears to supporting his full weight as she smiles off the page and out into the audience of all humanity.  Roo scans faces on the rink for signs of terror If you don't recognize the place in this picture, it's because, well, you probably haven't been here in 25 years. Think back on leg warmers, Slurpees, Molly Ringwald, friendship pins, pink wide-wale corduroys and the music of Tears for Fears, and maybe it will come to you. If not, download yourself an MP3 of "Abracadabra" and walk 'round and 'round a room of dorks at high speed. You'll get the je ne sais quoi. Since Toe and Roo absolutely love rollerskating and rollerblading, we promised them some rink time during the peewee skate session at the legendary Saints North. It was their first trip outside of school for indoor skating (we have planty of pavement where we live, so really, who needs a rink?), and they were generally charmed by the flashing lights and mirror balls, the cheesey under-10 crunk music selection, the hoola hoops and free popcorn and overly cheerful masters of ceremony. Seeing Mommy and Daddy lose occasional control over their own motor abilities I think was also a hit with the boys.  Toe is fearless on wheels, while Roo retains a cautious deathgrip on the Rock of Daddy  | QUOTE OF THE WEEK
Dear brothers
and sisters, never get tired of doing good. ~2 Thessalonians 3:13  AuthorWriter, blogger, advocate, religious lefty, Christian crackpot, mother of lads, great wife shark   CLICK HERE TO RIDE THE WEBBYCOASTER! ArchivesJune 2012  Visit the Webrary |
RSS Feed