(Christine Kane)
The midnight sky all stars and black
Like darkened glass and glitter
Suggests that I go back inside
And wait for warmer weather
So here it's New Year's Eve again
And everything keeps changing
I raise my glass and toast the Gods
In charge of rearranging
All of the world is designed to remind you
All of the light you could find is inside
Under all of the noise
What's it like to be overjoyed
In spite of day-time planners higher standards
Dreams defended
There's not a single thing that's turned out
Quite like I intended
And so you learn that holding on
Is nothing less than panic
When big things fall apart
Then hearts get that much more gigantic
All of the world is designed to remind you
All of the light you could find is inside
Under all of the noise
Are you scared to be overjoyed
It used to be a race to see
Just who'd get there the fastest
But this frozen night it's only right
To consecrate the madness
All of the world is designed to remind you
All of the light you could find is inside
Under all of the noise
Here's your chance to be overjoyed
Overjoyed
photo essay
There's a photo essay in the Moscow Times looking back at 2004. This picture in particular, following the school siege in Beslan breaks my heart. There's also an article about how the town isn't celebrating New Year's (looks a lot like Christmas here, from the Soviet era, new year's trees, etc. Also Russian Orthodox Christmas is around January 13 or so). In the town of 40,000, six people lost their entire families (spouses and all of their children), "18 children lost both parents, and more than 100 children lost one parent."
stupidheaded AIM
is letting me use my old screen name again. No, it wasn't shut down for 2-4 days, it was cancelled and not recognized for over a MONTH...
BTW, if you have an explanation that involves anything along the lines of "user error," I'm not in the mood.
Dethroned
I'm sorry to say that Julynn's prize for the funniest Christmas present ever has been ousted from that position. Why? Well because, last night after going to Michael's and JoAnn trying to get more yarn for my sister's poncho I'm knitting (no dice, they don't carry the color I need here, I forgot to get enough of one dye lot, so will have to order it online and hope it's not TOO noticeable of a color difference), as well as the crafts needed to make the captain's apron and visor, Crazy Mara picked up a latch hook kit. Yes, to make her own Froggy rug. Then, after a dog-feeding break and an online IM conversation I made my way back to her house where we watched Jersey Girl. No, I wasn't expecting it to be good, but I expected it to be better than, say, our home movies from the mid-80's. Anyhow, she gave me a lovely little gift. I've been googling it trying to find an online image of it, but without an artist's name or title, just typing in keywords is not as fruitful as I would like. It's a pen and watercolor drawing about 4x6. At first glance it's kind of funny. Then the closer you look, it gets funnier still.
At first you notice it's a dance studio. There's a grand piano in the center of the frame. Being played by a white and black St. Bernard with a moustache. (For being a St. Bernard one would have hoped that his legs would reach the pedals a bit more easily, but there you go) Sitting on the edge of the piano is a tiny ballet director. Who is a frog that is either a woman or a dandy - it's a little ambiguous as to which. On the floor are 5 ballet students - also frogs - two males and three females. The students are all in second position, except for one of the girl frogs who is doing a lovely arabesque. As you look closer, however, you see the frog doing the arabesque is actually reaching toward an errant fly in the studio with her frogsnout (presumably her tongue is to follow). And the dandy director is holding up a sign that says "Lunch Break."
Should anyone be able to find an online copy of this, please, please let me know! In the meantime, my personal quest to find it shall also continue.
Cockamamie traditions
Typically, on Christmas, my family has scaled back over the years. For the past 5 years my sister has had a disabling neurological condition. My sister and my mom have been also known to contract nasty cases of bronchitis in the weeks before Christmas. My dad gets random, yet frequently severe medical conditions out of the clear blue. So, when I make my way to California a day or two before Christmas, any decorations in my parents' house are usually left up to me - the only one who is still upright in the days before Christmas.
However, this year, I got in to my parents' house around 10:30 pm on the 23rd to find them in the midst of a massive sewing project for their church that needed to be done by about noon the next day. It hadn't been designed yet, much less patterened, and it was with a tricky material. So my first two hours was helping design it, pattern it, then finally collapse into bed around 1:30 am (after having been up nonstop since 3:30 am California time to make it to work at 6:30 am on Thursday morning).
At 9:30 am Friday, Christmas eve morn (it was really 8:30 but the clock in the bedroom hadn't been reset to standard time), I awoke to realize I had a WRETCHED migraine, which got progressively worse through the day regardless of medication, homeopathic remedies, rest, etc., and culminated in my arrival in Urgent Care at 9 pm Christmas eve for a dose of Demerol and Visterol which knocked me on my can for the rest of the night, the rest of Christmas day, and half of Sunday the 26th.
So this year, the Christmas decorations that were up when I got home were the sum total of the Christmas decorations we had. (see photo above) There's no scale, but that bad boy is about 7" tall and has flashy lights all around it. There was also a creche set in the other room. Mind you I'm not really complaining about that - I'd just as soon spend time with my family than feel duty bound to decorate when we're all half unconscious, but this was a little piteous, even for us...
Multi-disciplinary approaches to Autism
I spent several years working with children diagnosed with Autism, and LOVED it. It's some of the hardest work I've ever done (Freddie, if you have the link to the Salon article, that'd be faboo), it's definitely not for everyone, and Autism (or Autism Spectrum Disorders - ASDs, such as Asperger's Syndrome, Rett's Syndrome, Autism Spectrum Disorder - I know, don't get me started - etc. etc.) is a difficult disorder to explain, much less treat. I worked in several different fields, using quite a few different frameworks and applying different skill sets under these frameworks: music therapy, applied behavior analysis (ABA), Lovaas, cognitive development, Floortime, socio-emotional development, on and on and on.
Today there's an article in the NYT about Autism, and each time the mainstream media spotlights the disorder, I alternate between thrilled and discouraged. It is a difficult disorder to spotlight in that it's manifested ever so differently from person to person - it's a spectrum disorder and a syndrome so a person diagnosed with ASD and the different syndromes manifests a different set of skills and disabilities, with different levels of severity in those areas. No two children with ASD present exactly the same. When an article or news story appears, it brings levels of awareness abou a disorder that is grossly on the rise for reasons unknown, widely misunderstood (Rain Man, while a start, is one of the most high-functioning people with Autism I've ever seen - possibly second only to Temple Grandin, whom I met a few years ago and is remarkable in so many ways and a beacon of hope for so many parents) but also does not do enough research to present a story that may leave the reader or viewer more confused - sadly without them ever realizing their confusion. Often it presents ABA as the be-all, end-all of Autism intervention.
This article bemoans the lack of current, pure, scientific research of the effectiveness of ABA Autism because the parents often interfere with the would-be effectiveness of this research by accessing multi-disciplinary treatments. In an online article that covers 4 pages, today's article mentions numerous treatments and interventions and gives them cursory, derogatory explanations, or no explanation at all. Sensory Integration is not a wild, unknown, fringe-treatment, as portrayed in the article - there's years of research to back it up, not to mention testimonials from parents whose child never showed any interest in playing even near other children in the sandbox during recess because they couldn't tolerate the feeling of the sand (I, personally, totally understand that one - sand on my feet triggers a gag reflex). Gluten-Free, Casein-Free diets are helpful for some children, and also address sensory processing difficulties. Floortime, helps parents and children to interact with each other - a skill never previously addressed as developmentally necessary for the child or the parent. I've met families with children 7 years old, and the parents seem as emotionally distant as their children; they've never played with each other because the parents have never learned that their patience and persistence in reaching out to their children is as important for them as it is for their kiddo, and using Floortime models, these parents have interacted with their children for the first time.
I definitely understand why research is important in the treatment of any disorder. However, I also understand the need for parents to treat their children with as many interventions as possible - since Autism comes in as many colors as there are water droplets, no single treatment or combination of treatments is likely to work universally as the Cure for Autism. Many people illustrate the parents as accessing interventions as a way to manager their grief as going into overdrive. In many cases this is true - but if you look at the motivation, it's difficult to portray them as therapy-seeking maniacs who want their children to spend their whole lives in therapies. In most cases, these parents are doing whatever they can to give their children what every good parent wants to give: their child a happy, healthy life where they can live as independently as possbile to go on and do the same for their children further down the line.
Christmas traditions...
I got to California only 2 hours late (they forgot to find someone who was allowed to fly the plane, as opposed to the pilots who had been flying for so many consecutive hours that regulations would not allow them to fly 2 more hours to get to Ontario from Denver so we had to wait until they could recruit 2 pilots who thought they'd spend the night in Denver, but instead had to spend the night in Ontario, and this would be okay with them... can you tell I spent many of my formative years reading Sassy the parenthetical mama magazine of them all?)
I got home and, true to tradition, there were no Christmas decorations up. Well, almost none. My sister has had a disabling illness for the past 5 years, and everyone has been so busy for the last 10 that it has become my LEAST favorite Christmas tradition that I have to decorate the entirety of the house by myself, usually on Christmas Eve day whenever I stroll in off of a plane from wherever I happen to be living. So on the 23rd, since I got in around 10 pm, had been up since 3:30 California time, my family took pity and didn't push the decorate NOW issue. I went to bed and woke up on Christmas eve day.
With a blazing migraine (the likes of which haven't been seen since the ugly incident this March that kept me out of workfor a week, and made Dilaudid my friend. ) And I slammed the Mountain Dews, took the drugs, slept in the dark room (which isn't fun for a whole day, when you only have 4 to visit with friends and family), and eventually wound up going to Urgent Care.
Ah, Urgent Care, the next Heatherfeather's Family Tradition. Usually it's my sister with her inflamed cranial nerve who goes to Urgent Care on a major holiday (usually Thanksgiving or Christmas, but sometimes Easter). If it's not my sister, then it's my dad with a Slicing Onions Gone Horribly Wrong injury, pulmonary embolisms, etc. But this year, it was ME. We had planned to go to midnight mass for Christmas (which here is 11pm - mass, not Christmas) but didn't even get back until 11:30, so that plan was out the window. Not to mention the re-visiting of the Attack of the Killer Sidewalks after the Demerol and Visterol (sp?). So I went to bed. And this morning I still have a touch of migraine, so will go back to bed soon.
Merry Christmas from my house to yours!
Thanks to...
...Julynn for giving me the funniest Christmas present ever:
A big bottle of Benadryl.
How well she knows me...