NaBloPoMo be hanged, I’m going offline til after Thanksgiving. I’ll be checking my mail if anyone needs me for anything, but only once at night.
I really enjoyed less computer time over the weekend. I may be hermit-ing soon in terms of “social networks.” I get easily sucked in to Facebook, among others, and it’s much easier to avoid completely than regulate.
If you need me, I’m here! Expect more blogging, I think.
Took a break over the weekend. I forgot to post on Saturday and only remembered to post on Sunday at about 11:52. So.
I have finished Trixie’s grey sweater. It has secret purple armscyes! She likes it very much. I realize how useless this is without pics.
Today I made three loaves of bread and a bunch of fried chicken. MMM FRIED CHICKEN. One of the loaves is raisin cinammon brown sugar bread, made like a giant cinnamon roll. It will be consumed for breakfast tomorrow in the blink of an eye, I’m sure.
I am feeling nibbled to death by ducks in terms of feeding my children. I feel like I am constantly fixing food or drink for them. I am damn sick and tired of it and rather than continue to be resentful and angry at all of them for, God forbid, asking their MOTHER for FOOD, THE NERVE, I am going to have clear kitchen open and kitchen closed times, with water always available of course. We’ll see how that works. I expect Gilbert will flip out because he is very into Inflexibly Controlling All Situations right now. I hope the transition period is as smooth as possible. Wish me luck!
I’m doing Christmas pre-shopping, deciding what I want to get for each child. It’s so difficult! Trixie will be getting a new toy barn, Gloria a very paticular toy cat with a handknitted sweater (by both myself and Faith), Abby a series of books called Dear Dumb Diary aaaaand… that’s it so far. This is one of the most fun and most agonizing times of year to have six children!
So dear reader, what are you giving to the children in your life for Decemberween?
Today was very long, and busy, but I can’t really remember it. We enjoyed the lovely weather outside, and drew pictures, and baked brownies, and did many things. I washed dishes at least three times, because we ate three meals and we have no dishwasher. I did laundry. I changed diapers. I discussed Matters of Import with various family members. I talked on the phone and was visited by a friend. I made enchiladas for dinner and they were awesome.
I’m tired and three of the kids are still awake. Dang.
Oh, I watched Waters of Mars. I don’t want to spoil it for anyone, but it was really, really top-notch. David Tennant’s acting was the best I’ve ever seen. Bring on The End of Time! (only don’t, because [sob] I don’t want to say goodbye to Ten.)
Some LDS missionary boys came to visit today. They’re so cute. It kills me that they’re “Elder” when I’m twice their age. One was Elder Bill and the other was Elder L-something-Venezuelan. They were pleased with my large brood and the fact that we homeschool, and no doubt disappointed that we’re staunchly RC.
Bede was very interested in them because they offered him a book and some prayer cards but mostly because they had nametags. “ELDER BILL ON YOUR BLACK PIN!!!!” he noted, and then in a delighted undertone, “Helvetica. Mmmhnnmm!”
That’s my boy.
Just a dull litany for tonight. I baked bread today and made a huge pot o chili. I slept very poorly due to 1. Trixie, who woke about every hour for unknown reasons; 2. Gilbert awakening once and needing my assistance; and 3. Gloria waking twice. I don’t think I got an uninterrupted hour of sleep all night, so I was very spacey today.
See you tomorrow (yawn.)
ETA: And Bede, Bede woke me up too. Frack.
Today we baked cookies. Many, many cookies. We’re trying to get away from buying baked goods around here. So far we’ve eliminated storebought bread and my nemesis, Pop Tarts. Up next is cookies, then crackery snacks.
Making 100 cookies with two spoons to scoop up and drop them is a real pain in the neck. I want a cookie scoop
It’s crazy how much flour we go through with this though. When we first started about a month ago I thought that bulk flour was a bad idea for us. “How could we use fifty pounds of flour before it went bad?” I wondered. Well. Very easily, as it turns out. We use five pounds in a week on bread alone, and we aren’t up to full baking capacity yet. (We eat a loaf to a loaf and a half of bread a day on average.) By the time I’m doing all the baking it will be between seven and ten pounds a week, I’m thinking.
I have two choices: organic or local. Well, I guess I have three – also nonlocal nonorganic, but that’s not in the running. I’m leaning towards local. I’m going to call them tomorrow and get prices for their bulk flour.
I’m in Waters of Mars mode. All thought will cease until I have seen it.
Today was so nice. Our dear friends came for a visit and seeing the smiles on their faces as they ran up our sidewalk was fantastic. The kids all played and talked and Renee and I got to talk. Renee is one of those friends who really hears what you are saying. When I talk to her I feel like I have all of her attention, that she is listening to me and extrapolating meaning from my words. Not one of those people who is just waiting to talk! Tabitha you’re like that too :-)
Then we all had lunch, turned the kids (all eight of them!) to the backyard and Renee and I made challah. Which is baking now. Mmm.
Bede was attentive and fairly calm today. It was a relief for all!
The plumbing issue continues to plague us; we have misaligned pipes. With a little lip of pipe for things to catch upon it’s no wonder we keep having trouble. I think we’re going to see about buying our own power auger.
Sean had a second interview today at the same joint he was at earlier. The intervening days have given me time to get used to the idea and I’m now 90% excited and 10% anxious, and officially hoping he gets the job. I reckon we’ll find out next week. He said the interview went well.
Tonight we had a simple potato soup and homemade bread. One of those delightful plain meals that get overlooked for more sophisticated fare. Potatoes, onions, milk, butter, salt. Honestly, what’s not to love? I made enough to feed our army with a bit left over and then some – I had planned to feed my niece and her boyfriend as well as the Gleesons, and he was unable to make it. So there’s enough for lunch tomorrow as well! Yum. It’s especially good with grated cheddar in it.
Bede had another rough day. He seems to be ’stuck’ more than he has been in the recent past, and gets more and more agitated as the perseveration goes on. I find that it’s very difficult to break him out of it once he gets started, and even if I do he’ll return to it later with renewed insistence and frustration. Whenever possible we have been trying to avoid situations where we have to bluntly say “no” and instead we are smoothing the way beforehand – keeping things he will become agitated about out of sight, attempting to compromise in the early stages of a ‘moment’ and so forth.
I am not unconditionally saying okaysure! i getchoo whatever it is you want! because I don’t like the precedent it sets in his mind: if I am insistent enough, loud enough, physical enough, I will get what I want. Sometimes there are just “no” moments: you cannot sit on your siblings or assault their persons; you cannot eat food, chew it to a pulp and spit it on the stairs; you cannot do many things. And so on. So when they occur I try to Just Be with him, consistent and kind and empathetic.
The hardest part about these times, beyond the episodes themselves, is the uncertainty of the peace when everything is calm. Knowing that the calm can be shattered any moment by an upset seventy pound autistic boy is more than a little nervewracking. I am on edge and jumpy, which makes things even more tense, and Bede more likely to react in kind.
All the more reason to keep the peaceful, easy feelings in the fore…
This post-every-day-for-a-month thing has made certain that I don’t have time to blog. Just typing that sentence I heard Trixie and Gloria scream at each other and had to go sort it out. Twice.
I have to choose each night between solitude and sleep. Even if I do choose solitude I’m in no shape to blog; I write things like “Home day kids played me go sleep now” and even more incoherency.
Not that I’m better than that now, either.
The toilet was faking and was actually still broken. It was fixed, briefly, this afternoon but is broken again now. It’s usable but really slow, and the guys who temporarily fixed it today are coming back to try to fix it better tomorrow.
Bede has been having a really tough time lately, for reasons unknown to me. He’s been sensory seeking and very easily upset. In the past, these times have presaged periods of intense developmental growth for him so I think that might be what is happening now. In any event it’s difficult for all of us but especially Bede. I hope it passes.
Faith is really enjoying the Warriors books. They’re full of war and angst and love – with cats. Like Watership Down. Abby spends most of her time drawing and making things out of cut paper. Gilbert is growing up but still has many little boy traits. He wants to play sports. Trixie and Gloria are delightfully themselves.
That’s all now.
Today the bathroom pipe was clogged in such a way that the entire system was backed up: sink, tub, and most importantly, toilet. We have one bathroom for eight people, so it’s more than just an inconvenience. Sean fixed it.
Sean also had a job interview today, wow! I am simultaneously excited and filled with dread at the idea of Sean working fulltime outside the house. On the one hand: money. On the other hand: no husband. Bede, Gilbert, Trixie and Gloria have never had a daddy who leaves every day. But interviews aren’t job offers, so I’m trying not to be anxious. Much.
Oh would you look at that, the pizza is ready.
Today I left the house with no children!
I’ll just let that sink in a bit.
My mother and I went to the fabric store, the drugstore and the thrift store. We emerged with fabric for Christmas presents, some toys, and winter pants for Gilbert and Bede.
I was universally assumed to be a store employee everywhere we went. I like to think it was the air of calm I have in situations where I dont have six children clamoring about my feet. Anything is easy when you’re a Mother Alone; all the effort I usually expend in keeping my ducks in a row was just there for the taking. But… it was mostly due to my attire, no doubt: blue dress shirt, tan cords and Chucks. Instant non-personhood. Thanks for calling B. Dalton Booksellers, this is Phoebe.
Have you ever answered the phone at home like the one at work? Heh.
No, not pig flu. Very unlikely to get that one. The other lot.
We selectively vaccinate on a very delayed schedule. We don’t start til seven at the earliest, for one thing, and we don’t get any that the kids could just as easily decide to get for themselves later. That gives us DTaP, inactivated polio, MMR, and varicella. I’m really hesitant to get the MMR vaccine (specifically the rubella component) and the varicella vaccine because both are human fetal cell vaccines, so I’ll keep waiting on those, but I need to get the other two for the >7 Glees.
Finding a doctor in the Oklahoma City metro who
a.) takes our poor people insurance and
b.) is accepting new patients and
c.) won’t harrass me for our vaccine choices
is turnng out to be damn near impossible. We have been going to the family practice we were defaulted to when our old doc closed shop a few years ago and we have never seen the same doctor twice. It’s the training clinic for the Resident-O-Matic of Saint Anthony’s Hospital here and the physicians are uniformly young, pleasant, and, well, inexperienced, I guess is a nice way to put it. And I don’t mind that, honestly, but between that and never getting to establish a history with the same doctor I’m tired of it and I want to go somewhere else. Which is turning out to be difficult, QED.
More phone calls tomorrow, I expect.
Gloria gives it her all.
Bede threw scores of leaves and called them flying birds.
Gilbert steps up on the logs. Best play structures ever.
Gloria hopes for a pull. She sat there optimistically for a good five minutes…
…and Faith obliged her.
Abby and Faith also looked for a dirt fairy, in the style of Five Children and It.
Trixie was delighted by everything.
Gilbert was too. He saw a rainbow!
Sometimes it’s all so beautiful I have to close my eyes.
I’m Phoebe Gleeson, and this is my perfect life.
I did it one year and really liked it. I’m doin it again. I’m tired of fast food Facebook. It tastes great, satisfies momentarily, and leaves you wanting more vapid, empty knowledge. I’ll still be checking it, but I’m going to try to blog more meaningfully here instead of just posting a status update on Facebook.
So. National Blog Post Month. I’ll be posting every day in November.
Who’s with me?
In the last 24 hours I have finished knitting a sweater for Beatrice and started one for Gilbert, hung many loads of laundry in the lovely St. Martin’s summer we’re having, homeskooled the Monkeys Six, and baked two loaves of bread.
Golly I love this time of year.
I was wondering, if you don’t mind, could you leave a comment? No content necessary – a simple “yo” will suffice. I’m curious how many people read me from a feed reader, or from the Livejournal feed.
I know it’s a pain in the neck. Pretty please? No pressure to be either witty or relevant, just say “hey”.
Sharing is Caring:
for one week, recommend / share
Day 1: a song
Day 2: a picture
Day 3: a book/ebook/fanfic
Day 4: a site
Day 5: a youtube clip
Day 6: a quote
Day 7: whatever tickles your fancy
Today is a Site. I’m going to send you all to The Baldwin Project. It’s a fantastic collection of public domain children’s literature, all formatted nicely and so forth. It’s an invaluable resource. We use it for read-alouds all the time.
Sharing is Caring:
for one week, recommend / share
Day 1: a song
Day 2: a picture
Day 3: a book/ebook/fanfic
Day 4: a site
Day 5: a youtube clip
Day 6: a quote
Day 7: whatever tickles your fancy
Today I’m doing all three, lucky reader!
Book: Old Man’s War by John Scalzi. I sat back just now and tried to think of the one book I’ve read in the last few years that really surprised me, really stayed with me, and that was it. Heinleinesque first person military mindbender.
eBook: Little Brother (available as a free download at that link, courtesy of the author, Cory Doctorow.) This one’s near-future dystopia.
Fanfic: The Chaosverse, by earlgreytea68. Of course it’s Doctor Who, what else would it be? “And then there came a day when Rose said she was having a baby.”
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