Ordinary Time

Most people by now will recognize that line I put up in the title, even if, like me, you didn't watch the Superbowl last Sunday. Ever since it aired, it's been all over my Facebook feed causing mothers to cry into their football snacks, and I have to admit that I've had to sit with it for a while before attempting to tackle it.  First off, let's just get the obvious out of the way. I still, for the life of me, cannot figure out what this has to do with selling cars. Mobility for all sounds like a nice tag line, but really, we're talking a major corporation who just wants to sell cars. Forgive me if I find it hard to find the real altruism underneath the sound bytes. I'll admit that I have an extremely strong bias against advertising, but I as a result, I find it a little icky to pair something like adoption with the selling of vehicles. Yes, it's a commercial that made people feel good, but it's really just to hope that those positive feelings transfer t...

Brains are weird. That's all I have to offer you tonight. Though probably to be more specific, the effect of medication on brains are weird. Today was a better day. There were some blips, but compared to what we had been dealing with, they were pretty negligible. Among the blips, I had moments of being astounded. First, R., being regulated enough to join us at the table for school, was tracing the number '2'. She has '1' down, so I decided it was time to move on. Not only did she do a good job tracing the number '2', but when we got to the bottom of the page where she had to write her own, she did it. She wrote two rows of absolutely recognizable '2's. I was so surprised (and pleased) that I allowed the rare occurrence of letting R. go upstairs to show J. her work. What's even better is that she is remembering the name of the number. (We can go over and over something, then the second we take a brief break from it, the knowledge is gone again. To...

What can you accomplish while sitting on a couch nearly all day keeping the disregulated child slightly more regulated? Quite a bit it turns out. You can... Direct various children to feed and turn out the horses so that they [the horses] are cared for. Do an entire math lesson. This is helped because the other children sense that today is possibly going to be a rough day, so they shine their halos up and complete their math before you even make it downstairs. Rearrange you school lessons for the week because you realized that you could have everyone watch the Jason and the Argonauts movie today and do something else on Friday. Be a very popular mother because you told everyone that their school work was a movie. Make your Covid vaccine appointment because you saw you received an appointment invitation as you were idly scrolling through your inbox. Again. Read the disregulated child some books. Watch several YouTube videos about spinning techniques that you never seem to get a chance t...

It sometimes feels as though I make these lists more than once a week. I know I don't, but boy, it sure feels like it. This week turned out to be rather a nice little tour of world cuisines. I didn't set out to make it that way, but it's where we ended up. Monday, Feb. 8 Pork and asparagus stir-fry      I had accidentally thawed two pounds of ground pork last week, so needed a recipe to make use of it. Fresh noodles Eggrolls Tuesday, Feb. 9 Spaghetti with Italian sausage      I don't have anything on the calendar for tomorrow, so making sauce seemed like a cosy thing to do on a cold day. Garlic bread Salad Wednesday, Feb. 10 Lemon chicken      This is one of those rare dishes that everyone likes. It's thinly sliced chicken, dredged in panko bread crumbs, and then fried. I make a lemon sauce to go over it. Egg noodles Roasted broccoli Thursday, Feb. 11 Dal      From my Indian cookbook, using red lentils Naan Jaiper slaw   ...

This weekend turned out to be all about blankets... at least until it wasn't, but that will come later. Since we never quite out of the negative digits today, it seems appropriate, huh? It started out because the forecast for this weekend earlier in the week was projecting horrible numbers such as -47 windchill. I wanted to be able to double blanket the horses if that was going to be the case, which meant I had to fix this. These are two long seams on the front of an otherwise decent (and not inexpensive) blanket. The top picture is the far more significant tear, the bottom was fairly straightforward. I managed to get them all sewn up and repaired. They are not beautiful, but it should give me at least another couple of years of use out this blanket. This is the repair of the top photo. I resewed the seam and then found tom webbing to make a cover. The webbing is not as heavy duty as the original, but it will be better than nothing. The cover at the top of the pleat is supposed to ...

I'm just about finished reading Integrative Parenting: Strategies for Raising Children Affected by Attachment Trauma by Debra Wesselmann, Cathy Schweitzer, and Stefanie Armstrong. It had been sitting on my pile of books for quite some times, and I decided, what with the past week and all, that perhaps this would be a good time to pick it up and read it. (About that... I don't remember where this book came from, but I'm 100% sure that I didn't purchase it. This means that someone gave it to me or loaned it to me. Please, if you did, let me know! And if you loaned it to me, I'm sorry I've been holding it hostage for such a long time. I can return it now.) This is a very good book. I've read (and lived) so much of this, that it was basically a review for me, but I was impressed with how well done the book is. If you are new to the idea of connected parenting or if you are parenting a child from a hard place and feel at the end of your rope, I strongly encourag...

The week has ended far better than it began, even if it is getting colder and colder outside. I have come up with a possible reason for R.'s latest week long trauma extravaganza. As I mentioned we are upping some of her seizure meds. Well, what if this is another example of forced normalcy? (Forced normalcy is where something that had caused the brain to not function well, for instance seizures, is mitigated somewhat. As a result, there is more access to thinking and remembering, often resulting in harder behaviors as these things are brought to the surface.) If the meds are working, she might be remembering things that hadn't been accessible before. This would explain the nightmares which were the first indication that something was off. I may be totally making this up, but for whatever reason, having some sort of explanation has made it possible to regain my own equilibrium a bit. We also ended the school week on a good note. As you might remember, Tuesday wasn't particul...