By request, Bede sings

http://flickr.com/photos/feebeeglee/2537729050/

my biggest and my smallest

Faith and Gloria, just now.

singing

Bede is singing! He’s kareoke-ing on some kids website. It’s one of the sweetest sounds I’ve ever heard.

Yay hyperlexia!

bede’s computer…

OKLAHOMA CITY, OK, US
05/29/2008
5:55 A.M.
OUT FOR DELIVERY

Hoppity, hoppity! Today is the day!

Ford Econoline

We just got a new (to us) 1988 Ford Econoline Club Wagon diesel van! Our friend Kenny gave it to us because he’s just about the most awesome man on the planet.

It looks a lot like this:

Sean’s not a gambler, and we’re Catholic, not Mormon. Oh, and we have six kids instead of five, so I spect he’s got nothin to worry about.

But go have a listen to Nancy Griffith singing “Ford Econoline” anyway, because it’s just a great song.

She drove west from Salt Lake City to the California coastline
She hit the San Diego Freeway doing sixty miles an hour
She had a husband on her bumper
She had five restless children
She was singing sweet as a mockingbird in that Ford Econoline

She’s the salt of the earth
Straight from the bosom of the Mormon church
With a voice like wine
Cruising along in that Ford Econoline

Now her husband was a gambler, he was a Salt Lake City rambler
He built a golden cage around his silver-throated wife
Too many nights he left her crying with his cheating and his lying
But his big mistake was him buying her that Ford Econoline

Now she sings her songs around this country
From Seattle to Montgomery
Those kids are grown and that rounder knows
You cannot cage your wife
Along the back roads of our nation, she’s become a living legend
She drives a Coupe DeVille but her heart rides still
In that Ford Econoline

laptop for Bede – done! 2go pc ftw!

Last week I mentioned that I’d be buying Bede a laptop with his SSI back pay money. I was leaning towards the ASUS eee, but instead I went with the 2go PC, the second generation of the Intel Classmate. It’s designed especially for kids to use and abuse (it can withstand a 6-foot [1.8m] drop, for one thing) and it looks like just what we need. The eee seemed too flimsy for the likes of a 5 year old autistic boy who likes to balance things on his feet while he lies on his back.

Laptopmag’s blog has a pretty good review of it, with a video to show how small it is. It’s about the size of a trade paperback and weighs less than 3 pounds, and it gets around 3 hours of use per charge.

I’m very excited.

cleaning

I’ve been mildly depressed lately. Some of it is postpartum, some of it is just me. But today! Today I cleaned the house, which is so satisfying. Sean held Gloria and fed the other kids basically an entire box of Annie’s Cheddar Bunnies while I cleaned the living room, dining room and upstairs hallway. Ahhh!

It’s amazing how much my mood lifts when it’s tidy(er.) I have PTSD from our run-in with DHS two and a half years ago. (We were maliciously and falsely reported to CPS by a real estate salesman who wanted our home, which we were renting, to be show quality while we still lived in it. CPS came, checked us out for a few weeks of hell, and then said it was unfounded.) So anyway, whenever I see a car I don’t know pull up in front of our house or even just slow down a bit, my heart leaps into my throat, I break out in a cold sweat, hyperventilate and my mind jumps to “It’s CPS!!! Coming to take my babies!!” You can imagine that this is pretty debilitating when it happens every. time. I see a car. Even at, say 2AM.

So the cleaning helps because then if they did show up, my home is what Sean and I (not so) affectionately call “CPS clean.” Yeah.

I’ve been attempting some half-assed cognitive behavioral therapy on myself every time I have those thoughts and you know what? It’s working. Thank God, it’s working! Every time I think “ACK!! BABY THIEVES!!!” I say to myself “That’s a glitch in your brain, Fee. It’s just someone in a car you don’t know.” It’s helping. I will rewire my brain! New firmware, for Feebeeglee 2.0!

Ah, Gloria is fussing a bit, needs nursies. Did you know she was 4 months old yesterday? How did that happen?

airplane

the week in review

So let’s see here.

Gloria rolled over several times and looks like a little airplane on her belly. She holds up her arms and her legs with just her tummy touching the floor and just looks so pleased with herself.

I got approved to use Bede’s SSI back pay to purchase his laptop. This is a big deal because the back pay can only be used for medical and therapeutic costs, so I had to demonstrate that he needed it, not just that he wanted it. Now I get to shop in earnest, as the money should be in his account later this week. ANyone have any recommendations? I’m looking at the ASUS Eee because it is small, lightweight and fairly shockproof, but I want to wait to buy the 9 inch screen, I think, so Bede won’t have to scroll as much. If I buy that one I’ll buy two of them so if one gets crushed I’ll have the other. Hell, maybe I should buy 3. It’s like buying him a voice, after all, and three of them cost as much as one midrange Dell. Hmm.

Faith is thrilled with your comments! I’ll post a detailed version of how to make your own screencaps for kids later. SHort version is, get the screen to look like you want to modify and press the Print Screen key on the keyboard. Open Paint and choose Edit – Paste. Use the select tool to pick the area you want to modify. Choose Edit – Copy. Open a new instance of Paint (i.e., open Paint again.)  Then choose Edit – Paste again in your new Paint and go to town. If you mess up more than Undo can help you, go back to the first Paint you opened and select the part you want to edit again.

And now I have tarried long enough.

Faith’s First Fandom – Club Penguin!

Faith’s been having fun modding screencaps of Club Penguin. I’m sure she’d love it if you all took a look.

Faith’s Club Penguin Stuff

Had a Bad Day?

The Mom, over at Shoved To Them, posted the video for Bad Day, a charming song. It reminded me to post our favorite Club Penguin version of Bad Day by Kraziiboi498. Enjoy!

my neigbor’s keeper

I was outside today to check on the volunteer mulberry tree we have in our front yard. It’s right under an overgrown yaupon bush and honestly it’s a total mess of a botanical war as the two plants duke it out. The mulberry had a few berries last year but this year it looks absolutely loaded with them.

As I wandered around it, trying to find an early ripener, I saw a man riding down the middle of my street on a bicycle. He looked to be in his early twenties, black, with short hair, a beard and moustache, and glasses. He was wearing a baseball cap advertising the tire shop down the street, football jersey and sweatpants, and athletic shoes. I waved as he rode by and he stopped his bike and said “Hi!”

I said “Hi! It sure is a pretty day. This tree’s just crazy, isn’t it?”

As I spoke, he walked his bike over to me, a bit too close, and squinted at the tree.

“It’s mumblemumble!” he said, and pointed. Then he walked right up to the tree and plunged into the underbrush. He gestured to me excitedly, and I walked over to look where he was pointing, inside the trees. He spoke like he had a mouthful of marbles.

“It’s two trees, two trees, two trees!” he said.

“It is two trees!” I said. “And look, this one has berries!”

“Two trees, and berries!” he repeated, beaming at me.

“The leaves are different too, this one has small leaves, and this one has big leaves,” I said.

“Well look at that!” he said.

“I have to go back inside now, my children need me. Have a nice day!” I said.

“Have a nice day!” he said, got back on his bike, and pedalled off.

So, bike man’s loved ones, somebody else on 24th Street is keeping her eye out for him. No worries.

recent amazements

Bede’s visit with his psychologist was good. My mother was able to come with us and got to meet Dr. Mobley, who(m?) she liked very much. We were late getting there due to getting a bit turned around in Norman, but it was fine since Bede was able to handle about 30 minutes in her office before he became completely unable to control himself. When we left he was trying to remove all the clocks from her walls and scale the Dutch door into the office kitchen. Yeah, time to go!

Diana noticed Bede’s mental flexibility and ability to cope with the unexpected had improved markedly from last year, which is true, and his referencing of me for cues as to what is going on/how to feel. She also thinks that occupational therapy to address his sensory integration problems will help a huge amount, so we will definitely pursue that and see. (Regular readers of this blog will remember that Bede does not wear clothing, well, ever, unless he’s in a public place and actively reminded to remain clad.) She noticed he was toe-walking to avoid the berber carpet in her office, which would make sense in the deep-pressure seeking, light touch avoidant kind of way that Bede is.

She also said she thinks I’d have gotten an Asperger diagnosis as a child had there been one to give me, which didn’t surprise me at all. When I said “Well, sure I had those traits as a kid but now, you know, I’ve outgrown the diagnosis, right?” she actually chuckled and said something like “No, no, I don’t think so.” So I guess I could pursue a formal diagnosis but I don’t see the point. That’s enough for me to know I’m not making it all up, you know? Expect some introspective posts about all this soon…

Good Lord, look at the time! Have to go to bed.

Happy Mother’s Day, all you mothers!

diapers drying on the line

I pledged to myself to not use the dryer on days I do use the air conditioning, you know, as a trade-off. Last year we didn’t use a dryer from May to November!

Steampunk Moves Between Two Worlds

Being Miyazaki and Firefly fans we love us some steampunk around here. Here’s a NYT article all about it too.

Package Mapping

I just ordered some stuff from Dharma Trading and I was wondering where it was. So I checked the email they sent me when it shipped, logged in to the UPS website and saw it was last seen in San Pablo CA. I wondered where that was, and then had an idea: what if I could track the package on a map?

This being the internet and all, of course someone has already thought of that, and here they are. Yay, internets! The kids ask me all the time where things are on their way to us, I can’t believe I didn’t think of this sooner…

mosquito teen repellent and autistic annoyer

Kristina Chew blogged recently about The Mosquito, a device that emits a high-pitched obnoxious whine that is generally only detectable by people under 25, and is used to deter teens from hanging around a given area. As we age, our ears lose the ability to detect really high sound frequencies, so it doesn’t bother adults with normal hearing. It seems to drive many autistic people up the wall, however, whatever their age, so some businesses are not going to use The Mosquito any longer. (Here’s a BBC article about the device, if you’d like a little background.)

So, my question is, can you hear it? Post yes or no, along with your age if you dare, in the comments.

It’s the pulsing “beep beep beep” noise, not the voices and background noise. I expect nearly everyone who’s not hard of hearing or deaf can hear that.

the many moods of Gloria