The Crab Chronicles

Thursday

We started going to Children's Hospital of Atlanta, to the orthotics and prosthetics clinic, when Michael had been here about a year. Brian [the prosthetist] and Colleen [the physical therapist] have since become friends. They are wonderful to Michael.

Yesterday, we went back for a fitting of a new hand:

I like to take photos of Michael in that waiting room because you can see how much he has changed and how little the room has changed since 2008. See the corner of the train set?

It was an impossibly beautiful day yesterday, although colder than it has been lately.

When we got home, Lola was needing a walk. She hates wearing the Gentle Leader harness, but if she doesn't wear it she pulls too much. Mike was comforting her. I think it's such a sweet photo:

Not much else to report. I had my second rehearsal for The Atlanta Women's Chorus. Fun to sing in a group again.

Happy Friday!

Awesome Spaghetti Casserole

I love spaghetti casserole but spaghetti? Not so much. It's OK. MY spaghetti is better than most, IMHO. I tend to go overboard with herbs and spaces and such because.... why not?

Below, a staged photo of my casserole so you can see what I use. Click on the photo to see it bigger.

Spaghetti Casserole

6-8 oz. of noodles [any kind]

1 jar Classico sauce [I like Fire Roasted Tomato and garlic]

1 small onion, chopped

1-2 tablespoons minced garlic

1 lb. ground beef

2 cups shredded Italian cheeses

Italian seasoning

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 cup red wine

This is an easy casserole to make and it makes a great amount of food. You can feed 6-8 normal adults or 3 adults and 1-2 teenaged boys. Or 10 women who are on diets. LOL

Get your pasta ready. I hate "al dente" pasta and I don't care if all the TV cooks say it should be that way. We like pasta that's SOFT. So cook it twice as long as the directions say. Put some salt and olive oil in the water and stir it frequently. Also, you don't have to use 10 gallons of water to cook pasta. Used about 4 cups of water for 6 oz. of dry pasta. I always heat the water in my electric teakettle and pour it over the pasta, and add some more water.That brings it to boiling much faster.

OK, once your pasta is cooking, chop your onion and saute it in about 2 tablespoons olive oil or canola oil, until soft, about 10 minutes. Add in your ground beef and minced garlic and Italian seasoning. Cook it until browned, stirring well. Add your Classico sauce. Take the jar, when it's empty, and put in your wine. Put the cap back on the jar and shake it, to dislodge all the tomato sauce left in the jar. Empty it into the meat mixture and stir it around.

Drain your noodles once they are done.

I like to use the big Pyrex dish pictured above. Any sort of large casserole dish will do. Mix the noodles, meat, and about half the cheese. Spread it out smoothly and spread the remaining cheese on top.

OK, so everything is ready, and you can just run it in the oven at 350 for maybe 20 minutes. Or, you can refrigerate the casserole and serve it the next day. It gives the flavors time to meld altogether and get even more tasty. Then you'll want to heat it, uncovered, for about 30-40 minutes, or until the cheese on top is melted and bubbly.

Below is my casserole, ready to go into the oven, but guarded from Lola by the foil covering and the bottle of Woop Woop wine. (I buy wines with funny names. Have no idea if it's drinkable. Don't care.)

BTW, you can see the corner of the electric tea kettle in the photo. We bought that one in 2005 and it's still working beautifully. I make mother's coffee one cup at a time, with a Melitta one cup filter, plus I make my tea every morning. Takes less than 5 minutes to boil a big kettle. Awesome appliance.

If you have all the ingredients this is a super easy meal to make.Add in some fresh spinach for a one dish meal, or add a salad.

The Random Day to Day Stuff

I was thinking after breakfast this morning, what am I going to blog about today? There is nothing earth shattering to report. Then again, my brain is always buzzing with this or that tidbit, so why not share?

So here are some random thoughts and ideas...

My friend Cindy shared this, which is wonderful and so true to life:

When you feel overloaded, you are trying to deal with too much at once.  Things are much more manageable when you break them down into separate components.  When you try to handle everything at once, you often don’t know what to do first and so you can wind up doing nothing at all.

It’s as if you are attempting to lift a large basket filled with bricks.  It is just too heavy.  You will exhaust yourself trying to move it.  Lifting one brick at a time however is easily manageable.  Using this approach, you can easily move all the bricks.

Boy, I really need to hear that one, a lot of days. My brother always says "How do you eat an elephant? One piece at a time," which is basically the same philosophy, but geared towards carnivores.

Michael is suffering from allergies already. We went to get in the car the other day and the windshield was covered with a fine dusting of pollen. Usually we don't see that until March or April. So far, the only product we've found that helps him, somewhat, is Allegra. It doesn't work perfectly, and it's pricey. Any holistic remedy you want to suggest, I'm willing to listen.

Lola is our bacon-stealer right? She recently has eaten a couple of packages of raw bacon, right off the kitchen counter, with no ill effects, remarkably. Well last night I was sitting in my chair watching TV and she was bored. So I look up and see her pulling out from under the chair part of the bacon package which she had stashed there. I hollered at her and grabbed it away from her. I'm sure she thinks I am a mean old witch for doing that...

Lola knows how to tell time. At about 3:00 each day she starts whining and pacing, wanting to see Michael. He usually walks in the door from school around 3:30.

I bought dirt and seeds day before yesterday, the weather was so nice. I like to start seeds and not have to buy pricey seedlings in May. However, I cannot sit on the back patio right now. I took Lola out a little while ago without a coat and nearly froze. Sunday it was so nice I was wearing sandals.

One of my favorite veggies is asparagus. There is no reason to do anything but steam it or boil it for a few minutes and throw in some butter and fresh lemon. Michael loves it, too. We had smothered steak and gravy and rice, but the asparagus made the perfect veggie, light and simple.

Michael is on a chicken pot pie kick. He can microwave them himself, which is a blessing. So last night after dinner he went over to Dynamo to swim and practice for his lifeguard test, and when he came home he was ravenous. Swimming always makes me hungry too. So he heated up a pot pie. It's not a nutritional powerhouse, but there is protein and there are veggies, and it's not a bad snack for a growing boy.

One of my cousins who is elderly fell the other day, and she was lying in the floor for 3 hours before her husband got up and found her. Y'all, seniors need call buttons so they can call for help. When my mom fell here at the house in 2005 and was in the floor for several hours, I realized the seriousness of that. We use a company called In Your Home, in Macon (478) 207-4143. When I am not here Mom wears a wristband and if she gets in trouble she presses a button on it and the IYH people call her on a speakerphone. If she can't answer they call a neighbor to come check on her. If they can't reach the neighbor they call the police. This has provided a great deal of comfort to Mother, and to me, because if someone has a stroke or a heart attack, getting them to a hospital quickly is so crucial.

I need to spend some time today practicing my music for the Atlanta Women's Chorus.

Much to my horror, I have learned that Ben & Jerry's [what I should have named each of my thighs, years ago] has wicked new flavors that involve cores of fudge and Nutella and all those yummy things that make my pants tight. Aaaargh!

Finally, I want to leave you with a remarkable trailer [sorry, don't watch the ad at the start, eeeuw] for a new film, Unbroken:

 

Finding Yourself at 17

I have a moody teenager on my hands. I am trying to figure out how to motivate him. I am not doing so well. So I decided to try and remember what it was like when I was 17.

There aren't too many parallels. I was a chubby girl who wasn't into any particular clique. I had a few friends, but I wasn't terribly social.

I turned 17 the summer between my junior and senior years of high school. So I was further along in school at age 17, simply because of my birthday and not being adopted like he was. I was always among the younger kids in my grade.

Michael will be 19 when he graduates. I can't do anything about that.

However, although I was young, I was just as anxious to be done with high school. I remember being deeply bored and/or irritated by a lot of the behavior in high school, the immaturity of many of my peers. My school, Farragut, was a huge school, and it was easy to get lost in the crowd.

I didn't fit in anywhere. I wasn't a jock or a cheerleader, or a nerd, or a smoker. I didn't care about football or go to the games. I think I went to maybe 2 games the entire 4 years?!

I wasn't into Young Life, the evangelical christian organization that a lot of my peers were into. I am Episcopalian. We don't evangelize that way; we encourage people to talk about their journey, or not. I was active in my tiny church youth group, but we didn't do a whole lot.

I also wasn't a nerd. I never touched a computer until I was in my late 20's. I was smart, but not nerdy. Not into Science and Math.

I wasn't a smoker or a "bad" kid. I didn't smoke cigarettes or pot or drink. I didn't pull pranks.

I was a Drama kid. Loved working on plays. Also sang in the chorus and worked on the newspaper. Those were my main activities.

I wish that Michael could find a peer group in an outside activity that he likes. He decided not to do the tennis team this year. It wasn't much fun for him last year.

I was a shy teenager, but I could be more open when I was in a small group of kids; my busy schedule saved me from being bored too much.

I look back and of course wish I had studied harder, but so be it. I could do 90% of my homework on the bus.

The hardest part of convincing Michael to stay in school is trying to get him to understand the concept of deferred gratification. Study hard now, and in college, and then get a job you don't hate where you can support yourself. Look years and years down the road. Hard for him to do.

I can remember having a basic faith in my parents' wisdom and knowledge, even though I didn't always agree with them. They said college was the thing to do, so I aimed to do it. My mom always talked about college being fun, despite the fact she had to work her way through.

My dad didn't talk about his college days much, but he had a great regard for education. He also had to work hard and put himself through. I was taught to be grateful to have parents who were happy and willing to pay my tuition.

I loved college. It was SO MUCH more fun than high school - than anything, up to that time. I wish I could get him to understand the concept of how different college will be.

Michael is getting ready to take his lifegaurd certification course in a few weeks, so he can be a lifegaurd at the pool this summer. He is small but VERY strong and athletic. I know it will be good for him.

We went to Walmart yesterday and I bought a 20 lb. bag of potting soil, so I can start my garden seeds. Michael hefted the bag like it weighed nothing. With one arm.

What I most recall about being 17 is wishing I could skip school and just get life started. Just go ahead and grow up. Get away from mom and dad and do what I wanted.

Then suddenly, one day I was 22 and I had my own apartment and my first real job and I was BORED SENSELESS...

My prayer for Michael is that he not be restless and bored, and that he find his future occupation with a minimum of anguish. And of course, I want him to be happy..

Lola loves Nutella... LOL

Freedom to Discriminate?

I was an employment law paralegal for many years, and I know well that when an employer is accused of discrimination, there are always many ways to view the situation. Sometimes discrimination is clear and blatant, but usually it's very hard to figure out what really happened and why.

However, I firmly believe that nobody SHOULD be discriminated against for any superficial reason.

I was very disturbed to open Facebook this morning and see a link to an article about a new bill in the Georgia legislature that looks to open the door to discrimination based on "religious reasons."

Marriage Equality Campaign to Launch; Proposed bill could discriminate against LGBT

From the article: "...at 4 p.m., Georgia's General Assembly will hold committee hearings on HB 1023 and SB 377, otherwise known as the "Preservation of Religious Freedom Act."

According to the Democratic Party of Georgia, the potential impact of both bills is far-reaching. Under the proposed laws, individuals and private organizations could claim an imposition on their religious freedoms to make decisions otherwise protected by current law. For instance, both of these bills would allow employers to discriminate against potential employees based on current protected legal statuses — like race, sex, age, pregnancy, sexual orientation, nationality and even religion under the guise of protecting the employer's religious freedom.

Much like bills proposed in Arizona and Kansas, these bills would grant business owners from serving LGBT people, as well as a host of other discriminations."

Now, I am not one to blindly believe one source on anything, so I researched this. I found the actual bill itself and read it. I can certainly see why Democrats oppose it.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution's Jay Bookman has a great editorial about this bill, and it details the alarming consequences if it passes. He says:

"Georgia has no law that protects gay people from discrimination, and is extremely unlikely to be passing one anytime soon. It thus has no reason -- not even a bad reason -- to pursue HB 1023. The bill was filed and is being pushed solely because that's what all the cool conservative kids are doing, and because it sends a message of defiance to those who believe that gay Americans ought to be treated the same as everybody else."

I have always loved Georgia and I've always been proud to be a citizen of this great state, like so many generations of my family before me. However, if this insane bill passes I will seriously consider moving. I have neighbors, friends and relatives who are gay. They deserve exactly the same legal protections as everyone else, and to deny them that is simply WRONG.

I am also proud to be Episcopalian, because we have led the way in not discriminating against gay people - in fact, quite the opposite. There are churches here in Atlanta who have floats in the annual Gay Pride parade. We have a gay bishop.

You can sign a petition to tell folks in the Georgia House and Senate not to sign this horrible piece of legislation. I urge you to do so.

However, there is very little being said about this in the media here. We need to mobilize opposition to this bill! Let's get the word out.

Back Online

OK, so I got on the phone with AT&T this afternoon - after seeing the AT&T service guy had been at our house and not fixed the internet connection - and I was nearly in tears. Fortunately, I got someone who was American and spoke clearly recognizable English.

I'm telling you, this no internet thing has been horrible. I could see emails and do things on my phone but I dislike that, a lot. I like my desktop computer.

So with no internet, I was forced to READ.

Play with Lola.

My kitchen has never been cleaner.

I have been keeping notes about the internet drought experience, and they are below.

Thursday morning

It started quietly.

 I was sitting in front of the TV after dinner last night, and I tried to play Words With Friends.  I tried to spell out CIGAR [which is a good word because C and G are 3 points each] and I couldn’t drag the letters up to form the word.  I kept trying. No dragging happened.

I tried to check Facebook messages. I got an ugly red bar saying INTERNET CONNECTION FAILED.

I couldn’t get email either.

OMG!!

Just then, my mother hollered from her room “My computer’s messed up!”

At 80 years old, Mother’s computer is her window to the outside world. This is really bad, I thought, feeling much more sorry for my mother than myself. I can always find something to do, from laundry to cooking to cleaning my room [perish the thought] but Mom’s arthritis limits her activities a lot. Unlike most seniors, she is not a big TV watcher. She reads newspapers online, Googles stuff, emails her 5,000 friends, and happily farms on her Facebook farm.

However, I have a 17 year old son, so I figured he could get the situation under control. He worked on my phone, and shrugged. “Can’t get it,” he said.

I was tired and not feeling well, so I headed up to bed. Michael came in my room and worked on the computer some more, but the internet connection was still down.

This morning, I popped awake at 5:30, ravenous for my messages. I checked my phone. I could see that I had emails, but they wouldn’t let me see the content. Aaaargh! I am job-hunting. That makes my email super important.

I called my friend Paul, my computer guru. I wouldn’t call most folks at 5:45 in the morning but I know Paul is an early riser and I figured he would be in the car, headed to his office in Alpharetta. After I described the problem he said “Call AT&T.” My internet comes from AT&T, formerly Bellsouth.

I got a very polite and perky lady in India, at 6:30 a.m. We talked for over an hour. It was very hard to understand her accent. Michael kept listening and stifling a giggle, because every minute or so we would heard the words “sorry” or “apologize.”  My son checked all the connections, plugging and unplugging. We tried everything. I held on while she tried stuff from India, or Florida, or wherever. Finally, I had to let her go because I had to take him to school. She promised to call back at 9:30.

I raced Michael to school, came back and helped my mother get ready for the day, ate a couple of eggs, and came back upstairs to wait for my call.

At 9:36 I was going insane. I called AT&T back. I got another lady in India, who was much easier to understand, and not quite as apologetic. However, she could not help me. She finally said “I have scheduled a technician to come to your house but not to worry! He will work on the line outside and not bother you!”

“When will he fix the line?” I asked, hoping she would say “today.”

“The earliest he can get out there will be Monday the 24^th,” she said.

“Um, I am a writer, and my work depends on my internet access. Are you sure that’s the soonest the line can get repaired?” I asked, trying not to panic.

“I am terribly sorry but Monday will be the earliest.”

“What time Monday?” I asked.

“Between 11 and 7.”

I sat in utter silence, feeling defeated and desperate.

“Why is the line messed up?” I asked.

“I am seeing it is due to the bad weather in Georgia recently,” she replied.

“I would be sure and call the billing department as soon as you get access back, and let them know the situation,” she added, trying to be helpful.

“Thanks, “ I replied, thinking um hell to the YES, I will be pursuing the billing department. My monthly AT&T bill is my biggest monthly expense.

I went to Kinko’s and got on one of their computers for about 20 minutes, and let my friends and family members know of this situation. I wracked up $8.99 in charges. Aaargh! Next time, the library.

So now it begins.

When I picture the internet, I see in my mind a huge cloud up in the sky, and millions of people at their computers and iPads and phones, all plugged into the network, or perhaps I should say the matrix. Our virtual community. A place where I can chat with my cousin in South Carolina every day, and not add to my phone bill. I can Google my third grade sweetheart and see if he has gotten fat, too. I can check online job listings and fire off resumes in a few minutes instead of the laborious process of faxing or snail mailing a resume, as we had to do in the old days.

The internet is my virtual world.

Is this a good or bad thing? I don’t know. Arguments could be made either way.

I am sitting here pondering what to do. I have a new book I can start. I can walk the dog, work on laundry, clean the kitchen, catch up on the bills, make a pie. All the crap I prefer to ignore so I can troll Facebook.

It’s Thursday, noon. I will report back later this afternoon and advise how the day has gone.

With any luck – and lately I haven’t had any – perhaps by the time the man fixes my internet connection on Monday I will have a much cleaner house, happier dog, and if I get really desperate, my house may even, perhaps, by cleaner.

Or I may be spending a lot of time at the library…

 

Now it’s almost 4:30.

My house is going to benefit from this internet-free existence.

I made Mother and me a bowl of chili for lunch – leftovers, but yummy. I have spent most of the afternoon watching TV and doing laundry. I also cleaned up the kitchen. I made a lemon pie, too – the one with condensed milk and lemon juice. Super easy pie.

When Michael came home, I made him a turkey sandwich.

I have no idea what anyone on Facebook is doing, and I don’t care.

Well, OK, that’s not entirely true. I care a little bit. Mostly I miss hanging out [in the cyber way] with all my Facebook buddies like Mike, Linda, JT, Pat, etc. Many of them are related to me, too, either by blood or marriage. I miss them.  I know that sounds weird.

This whole experience sounds like a Sci-Fi story, but in reverse. I should go out to California and offer internet-free weekends, including animal therapy and music. [walking Lola, and listening to me sing in the shower]

I just took a terrific shower. It’s 70 degrees here today so I didn’t freeze. (This time last week we were thawing out from an ice storm.) Today, I spent more time than usual. I exfoliated. I smell good lemony. My hair is squeaky clean, and I moisturized. Heck, I even looked under the sink and found some lovely Caswell and Massey scented soap I had forgotten about. Win win, all around.

Tonight I have my first rehearsal for the Atlanta Women’s Chorus. I am excited about this. I have long wanted to get back into singing. The chorus is awesome. I went to a performance they gave a couple of weeks ago. It was a little weird, not hearing low men’s voices in the blend, but they sounded lovely. My voice has lowered a lot in recent years. I can sing tenor.

10:30

The rehearsal was fun.  I hadn’t read through music in a long time. The other Alto 2’s are strong singers, so as long as I could hear them, I was fine.  The frustrating thing is that Dr. Arasi put audio files of all the parts on the intranet for the chorus and yet I cannot access it. Why not? No internet! Aaaargh

Michael fixed my phone so I can check stuff on it using the AT&T network. That’s good, but unsatisfying. It’s like eating a protein bar instead of a real meal.

Friday and Saturday

I read an entire book, Guests on Earth, by Lee Smith. Excellent book.

Sunday

Michael and I went to Kroger for groceries and when we came back, we passed an AT&T van. We walked in the house and Mother said the AT&T guy had been at the door but she didn’t want to answer it. She doesn’t usually answer the door when she’s home alone.

So I went out to walk Lola in the yard and when I came back in I saw a hanging thing on the door saying they had fixed the problem at the street but they couldn’t get in the house.

I am now on the phone with AT&T customer support. At least the woman on the phone is American and speaks good English. When I called her I had to work hard not to cry.

Michael is downstairs trying to get Mother’s new TV hooked up. Her old TV in her room died. The “new” one is a Goodwill purchase. I have a feeling he is going to have to call DirectTV before it will work, but I feel bad for her in there with no computer and no TV.

I HAVE INTERNET!!! Praise God!

Now I just have to get the WiFi thing fixed, and that will take a visit from my friend Paul. Gotta get Granny back online.

and Mike. He likes to play games online.

Internet Woes

After 2.5 hours on the phone with AT&T this morning I was informed that my home internet line is messed up, and I will have no internet until.... MONDAY NIGHT. To say I am ticked would be the understatement of the century. So internet usage will be sparse for the next few days, and likely there won't be a new blog until Monday. I am at Kinko's at the moment, where they are charging me a fortune...

The only explanation I got for this was "the bad weather recently in Georgia."

We never lost power during the recent ice storm. Hmmmm...

I don't blog using my phone, fyi. I do very little with my phone except calls, text, and Words With Friends.

Elva is offline too, needless to say..

Fear not though, I will return asap...

Jaws, a Dog Story

I am seriously thinking of re-naming Lola for the fictional character she most resembles - JAWS.

So far today she has eaten:

a pencil

half a large bag of potato chips I stupidly left on the kitchen table for 30 minutes - the chip clip didn't even slow her down

foil [which had recently held half a roast beef sandwich, Mom's lunch]

Yesterday, she ate a pack of chewing gum out of Michael's backpack. I told him to get some more gum when we ran to Publix today. He happily complied.

She still doesn't have minty fresh breath.

She watched me make 2 pans of homemade lasagna this afternoon, and drooled and barked until I started giving her some of the extra lasagna noodles. I always make too many.

Of course, as soon as Mike came home from school, he ate a number of lasagna noodles too, right out of the colander in the sink.

I had made both pans of lasagna by then.

"The noodles are much more tasty if you put them in the microwave for a minute with some butter and salt," I suggested.

"I'm good." [this is teen-speak for No Thank You]

I took the extra pan to my friend Lee Ann, who rode with me on Monday night to pick up Michael at the airport. She was so sweet to accompany me and I wanted to thank her. Now she is sick, bless her heart! At least she doesn't have to worry about dinner tonight.

I loathe trips to the airport. Driving 45 minutes through downtown Atlanta is my idea of hell. Driving 45 minutes home at night, when it's dark - still icky, even though the traffic had mostly cleared out. The older I get, the less I like to drive at night, unless it's a very familiar route. LeeAnn and Michael chatted with me on the drive, which helped make me less nervous.

Other than that, I didn't get much accomplished today except working on taxes. I had to total up what I spent out of pocket on medical expenses last year - a horrifying $6,000. Hysterectomies are pricey. Now, I cannot even get a human being on the phone to discuss the fact that I am in limbo with my health insurance coverage. I've spent hours on the phone and gotten nowhere. Just thinking about it ruins my normally low blood pressure...

I am now going to think of something else, something much more pleasant than health insurance and driving at night and voracious dogs who will eat anything....

Here's my laugh for the day. Be sure and watch the whole thing - the interview is a hoot. Check out this kid:

 

Looking Back and Looking Forward

This was posted on Facebook this morning by a friend of mine, and while I certainly understand it and there's a bit of cleverness to it, I fundamentally disagree with it:

"Don't look back. You're not going that way."

Well no, you're not. Human beings can only go forward, but I propose that people who don't look back are missing a lot of things, and they often stumble blindly into the future, unprepared and vulnerable.

Shelby Foote said [I'm paraphrasing] "The southern man doesn't live in the past. The past lives in him."

From our antiques, to our treasured old bibles, to the language that persists from grandparents to grandchildren ["swap" / "my people" / "y'all" etc.] - we are tethered to the past, and it lives within us, just as Shelby said. We re-visit battlefields, and talk about old linens, and name our children for great-grandmothers long dead. We are living sentinels of the past.

my great-great grandmother, Charlotte Wood

 

I spent most of my 20's trying to figure out "what just happened?!" - in terms of my childhood and teenaged years. There was a lot of turbulence in my family, a lot of it related to my Type-A personality dad. I also wondered what to do with my life. I couldn't really move forward until I really grappled with it all. It was when I started smoking. I got into a lot of arguments with my dad. I planned out my marriage and children and home and all those plans kept getting revised because none of it happened the way I thought it would. Those were the years when I questioned the existence of God, and tried to figure out how to be a writer, and wondered why nobody would fall in love with me.

By the time I hit my 30's, I was slowly starting to figure things out, or at least make peace with not knowing.

Then I was 34 years old, and a week after my birthday, my dad died. Suddenly my entire life was jolted into a different groove, and I didn't like it. I had to re-calibrate, the way one always does when an important figure is jerked out of your life.

me, Dad, and my uncle Lewis

Once I became a parent, I stopped so much looking back. I quit trying to force people to come to big family reunions. I quit trying to write a novel or a screenplay. I became so engrossed in trying to help my daughter, and then manage a household that included my mom and a medically fragile dog, and work full time, that life just sort of crowded out everything else.

I think that happens for a lot of us. The day-to-day stops us from being reflective because we are simply too busy.

Now I am close to being an empty-nester. Michael has 2 more years of high school, but I know they are going to whiz by. 

We talked some about his trip last night, and he said he loved skiing. This is good and bad. He may one day want to live in a place where you can ski in the winter, which is certainly not true of Atlanta.

So now I am having to re-imagine my life once again. I have some time to make the transition. It won't happen instantly.

But back to the original premise of this blog: looking back. Here is what I've learned about it, after half a century on earth.

It's OK to look back and try to understand things. In fact, it's vital. Sometimes life events happen so quickly, you're like a grain of sand on the beach, picked up, pummeled, and thrown onto the shore by forces that are huge and uncontrollable. One minute you're suspended in the warm sea, drifting along, and the next thing you know you're naked and baking under the hot sun.

OK, maybe I got a little carried away by the beach metaphor, but I think you see where I'm going with this.

I don't recall what we were discussing the other day, but my mother said "We are strong. We keep going." In other words, life knocks us down, but we get back up. I think it's behavioral, sure, but it's also genetic. Generations before me have faced hardships, and nobody has given up and/or run away. We women are strong and we pass that strength to our children.

This past year has been really bizarre, for me. I was meeting with a recruiter yesterday and trying to explain what happened in 2013, and it was almost impossible. The first part of the year I was a lame duck in a job that didn't fit. Then I was home for months and feeling horrible, and grappling with health issues. The summer was all about preparing for and recuperating from surgery. The fall was trying to re-energize my blog, and looking for more work, and then all the issues with my daughter coming home and leaving again.

So in 2013 I was the grain of sand, thrown around willy-nilly, and hating it. But I keep remembering two things.

1) However random everything felt last year, there was a plan, and God saw me through all of it. Faith is what keeps me getting up every morning.

2) I am not giving up.

I don't know what 2014 holds for me. I am still trying to work it out. I do know that for me, re-examining the forces that tossed me around last year is like picking up clothes off the floor, and folding them neatly and putting them away. If I don't pick them up, I may stumble over them and fall again.

Even if I fall again though, I will rise again.

photo by Michael Thompson

the sky

lights itself on fire

as the day slips away

reminding us

night

is merely

a breathing exercise

a precursor

and morning

re-lights the way

forward -

always

forward

Returning from a Journey

As I ponder my busy day ahead, it's hard to keep my mind on what I need to do today. I keep thinking about how Michael will be tonight when he gets back, and what he will say to me. He has traveled somewhere I've never been and done something major that I've never done [snow skiied] and he has seen how another family operates.

Except for a few trips to camp, and one weekend in the mountain with friends, he has not spent a night away from me in the 7 years since I adopted him.

As most folks know, travel changes you.

I wanted him to have this experience for a number of reasons. One, he has expressed a desire to learn to snow ski and snowboard for a long time, and watching the OIympics coverage re-ignited that wish. Two, my friend who hosted him is an amputee, and has a son with the same limb difference as Michael. Jim is also a very successful man, and a very moral man. Great role model.

Michael comes from a background and a culture [Kazakhstan] where people who are "handicapped" are considered completely un-employable, and usually not even seen much in public. Although he has been with me for 7 years, his first 10 years were that culture, and I don't want him to think of himself as "lesser" because of his missing hand.

Although Michael is almost thoroughly Americanized in so many ways, occasionally he will say or do something reminiscent of his birth culture, and that is to be expected. Sometimes it's a little worrisome but most of the time, it's just part of the deal. He will forever negotiate life in a way that a child born here cannot even fathom. He will also forever struggle with insecurities, wondering if people view him objectively, or with pity, or some other way.

I firmly believe - and I've told him - everyone has a handicap. Everyone. Some are visible, some invisible. It's how one deals with that that matters.

In talking to him about the future, I haven't been able to get him to really dig down and start thinking seriously about what he should be doing after high school. I don't expect him to make any big decisions at 17. Most kids don't know what they want to do at that age. However, most American-born kids are trained to be looking ahead, pondering choices, pondering different courses of action, from the time they are small, in some instances. He doesn't even like to discuss it.

In an orphanage, most kids don't look towards the future or want to think about it, because it's too scary.

The one thing I've tried to really emphasize to Michael is the importance of doing what he loves, not what anyone else wants him to do. However, even figuring that out is a challenge.

He loves people, and animals, and sports. He loves games. He hates boredom - anyone with the high IQ he has will totally understand and empathize with that.

What I hope this past weekend accomplished is that Jim was able to show him what it looks like to be a successful man in an unconventional life. Most folks don't lose a lower leg and then go back to school to learn to make prosthetics. Most men don't adopt children as singles. Most men don't spend significant amounts of time in foreign countries helping limb difference kids there, for no reward whatsoever except the smiles and gratitudes of kids living in dire poverty.

I also hope that Michael was able to light some fuses within himself, fuses of curiosity and ways of thinking. He knows his life here very well, and his role. He needs to be around other people and other families, and see how they operate. He needs to be around guys - something our all-female household simply can't give him. He needs to think about choices in life.

He told me once that being around other limb-difference people is easier, because they totally understand what it feels like to live that way. I can't understand it. I haven't lived it. I hope this weekend was not only a great life example but a time to relax, because when one feels relaxed it's easier to think about a lot of different ideas.

However, as Mother said last night, I also have been thinking a lot about how much I've missed him. We have missed him terribly.

This is the hardest part of a mother's love, letting your baby go, knowing they will come back changed, and trusting that the love you feel for them, and they for you, is strong enough to withstand different experiences. I trust that the "new Michael" will have some better ideas about his future and what he likes and doesn't like.  I hope and pray he will know he can be a successful man, despite his limb difference.

He is very loved. He has so many choices. As much as I hate to let him find his own way without me, my heart soars to think of him being more sure of himself as he goes into the future.