tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-59386225030262163752024-03-13T22:12:48.129-04:00Passing for NormalRaising children with neurological disorders and realizing, after all these years, that I've only been "passing for normal"Sarah Boyle Webberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02926451548743350125noreply@blogger.comBlogger339125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5938622503026216375.post-56814677522561113252020-05-29T17:42:00.001-04:002020-05-29T17:42:08.246-04:00Quarantine Quotidians, May 29, 2020<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I persuaded my library to buy this for me to read after hearing glowing reviews about it from Romancelandia and then I bought a copy for myself and then 2 more for friends. It was my favorite book of 2016. If it's not the perfect contemporary romance, it's close. Maybe I should read it again.<br />
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<b>Media Matters</b><br />
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I've been trying to clean up my Currently Reading section on Goodreads because earlier in the week it was like 15 books. Now it's 11. I was trying to listen to the audio book of <i>Good Omens</i> but I gave up after realizing the television series was (gasp!) better than the book. I skimmed through <i>The Tale of Despereaux</i> last night to be done with it. I gave it 2 stars instead of 1 because it introduced new vocabulary well. Really not my thing. I finally finished <i>Rock Addiction</i> by Nalini Singh, who is my current favorite author, but I was not in love with the book. When I asked for comments about it on one of my Romancelandia FB groups, I was assured the rest of the series was up to her usual standard of excellence. And Rock star romances aren't a trope I go out of my way to read. What I really need to finish next is <i>Ethan of Athos</i>, the next Vorkosiverse book, even though I'm not loving the set up. But I also recently started <i>The Song of Achilles</i> by Madeline Miller and it's gorgeous. I enjoyed <i>The Iliad</i> when I read it in college, but this is a whole new world. And the prose is so beautiful. I have also started craving hockey themed romances, which is not a world I really follow, in life or romantic tropes. Maybe because it's so hot outside, my mind thinks the books will cool me off. Whatever. I read all of Pippa Grant last year, including her hockey romances, and she writes excellent books. I'm looking at Sarina Bowen and Avery Flynn's series presently.<br />
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Last week, we watched <i>Star Trek: Picard</i> and agreed it was the best television we've seen in a long time. We haven't agreed on what to watch next because I needed something fluffier than <i>Expanse</i> series 3 and Marshall doesn't want to watch <i>Avatar: The Last Airbender</i>, (now on Netflix) which neither of us have ever seen. We watched the first 2 episodes and he fell asleep. I guess I'll be watching that alone, along with <i>Star Wars: The Clone Wars</i>. Maybe we'll go back to <i>The Witcher</i>. He highly recommends <i>Tales From the Loop</i> (also on Netflix) which I only watched half of because of how much it made me cry. It's very good, though.<br />
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<b>Family Dynamics</b><br />
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Yesterday, Marshall and I Zoomed with someone who may be a new family counselor for us. Miranda continues to be singular and stymies most people who try to help her, including us. We've decided to do daily checklists for everyone in the house (took a shower, put on clean clothes) and start posting the weekly calendar again (even though it's mostly empty) on the fridge for everyone to see just so we all know what day it is. There isn't a lot of structure to our lives and we need to add an artificial one to help our brains from permanently turning into laptop screens.<br />
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Alex has also started talking with a psychiatrist from The Autism Center at the Nemours Hospital in Wilmington, DE, (which is only an hour away by car) about his eating issues and after meeting with her 10 days ago via Nemours' proprietary teledoc system, we were going to start reintroducing foods he used to like. A few days ago, I had despaired because nothing I said convinced him to eat pancakes again. And then a few days ago, he wanted a new book and I said he had to earn it by trying pancakes 4 days in a row. 2 down, 2 to go.<br />
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I have to go cook that pancake now.<br />
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Palate cleanser<br />
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<br />Sarah Boyle Webberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02926451548743350125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5938622503026216375.post-63308859131425639292020-05-20T16:19:00.001-04:002020-05-20T16:19:27.195-04:00Quarantine Quotidians: May 20<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I wouldn't recommend starting your reading of Sherry Thomas' books with this book because I always recommend reading authors in order of the publication of their books, if possible. And if you read this one first, you'd be reading her best work first. (Well, I haven't read everything she's published; I haven't yet read her YA series or her last few books. I will, eventually.) I still think this book is tremendous and it will make you cry. I've read it or 5 times and even though I know what's coming, each plot point still leaves me breathless. Very angsty. Not fluffy. Not a <a href="https://oliviadade.com/2017/12/11/warning-extra-gooey-cinnamon-roll-heroes-ahead/">cinnamon roll hero</a>.<br />
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<b>Harder Things</b><br />
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I haven't blogged in 3 weeks. There hasn't been a lot of happy news to share. Quarantine goes on, although we tried dinner in my parents' backyard on Saturday (physically distanced and since the children don't eat barbecued ribs, they ate before we left) it wasn't terribly successful. Both kids flipped out when told to get ready or get in the car. It had been 2 months since they'd gone anywhere but our backyard and the change didn't go over well. Autism in a plague year sucks.<br />
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Miranda's given up on school and I'm done trying to persuade her to do anything schoolish. So she's learning to do her own laundry and other helpful things when I think of them. Alex will still do a few things and pretend to be in school for a few moments each day. We're still hopeful that he will have his regular 6 week summer school session, even if I have to drive him to Atco and back every day (about 35 minutes one way, 15 miles cross country. Although, if there's no traffic I might save 5 minutes by going down 73. But I digress.) I wonder if it would be best for Miranda to just repeat 7th grade, since, academically, the year has mostly been a loss. I guess that depends on if there is school in September. If there isn't, it doesn't really matter.<br />
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It's hard to look forward in a plague year. Two months at home has made us all absolutely nuts or deeply depressed or both, but there is no end in sight. There is no cure, no vaccine and no real treatment for Covid19 and the virus is invisible in the wild. Alex's school can probably do the distancing necessary because it's small and private but part of its population is medically fragile. Miranda attends a middle school with all the other middle school students in the town. Classes are crowded, hallways are crowded and teenagers aren't great at keeping to no touching rules. Marshall's employer is going to start to allow people back in the building in June but never to full capacity. He expects to be working some days in the office and some days home, on a rotating basis. Herd immunity needs to be greater than 60% to be helpful, according to <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/5/16/21259492/covid-antibodies-spain-serology-study-coronavirus-immunity">this article</a>, and we aren't even close to that. Many more thousands of people are going to die before we get there, no matter what we do. And it's going to take years. As I said, it's real cheery around here lately.<br />
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I haven't been reading a whole lot. I've started a few books and finished even fewer. My favorite was another from my mother in law's shelf that I kept to read, a collection of the first three Jacqueline Kirby books by Elizabeth Peters. They were excellent; unfortunately, there's only one more in the series. I listened to Neil Gaiman read his collection of <i>Norse Mythology</i> and it was interesting but, as he says, incomplete. I finished my reread of Lucy Parker's London Celebrities books so now I can start the new one, when I get enough motivation to do so. I'm amazed I haven't yet fallen into a reread of the Guild Hunter or PsyChangeling series by Nalini Singh but I think that's mostly because I don't own all the paperback copies yet. I'm continuing to collect them. I miss my library but the only way to disinfect books is to leave them in an empty room for a week. I'll keep using their online options, thank you.<br />
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Marshall and I finished watching both seasons 1 and 2 of <i>The Expanse</i> and then I needed to take a break and watch fluffier things, so we finished <i>The Mandalorian</i>. I've also gone back to <i>Star Wars: The Clone Wars</i>, restarting at season 2, so I can finish the series. I gave up somewhere is season 4 last time, when it got really dark. We haven't decided what we're going to watch next. We started <i>Picard</i> but then he wants me to read the book that precedes the series, which I haven't yet. There's always <i>The Witcher</i> (stopped after episode 4) or <i>Jessica Jones</i> (somewhere in season one) or <i>Daredevil </i>(early in season 2) or <i>Luke Cage</i> (I think we finished season 1). I'm not sure <i>Iron Fist </i>is worth finishing; we were like halfway through season 1. I do want to watch <i>The Defenders</i> and I hate not watching things in order. But when a show gets darker and scarier, I am reluctant to continue. Do I frustrate my husband when I do this? Absolutely. Do we process visual media differently? Yup. Things stay with me for hours or days. He is better able to shrug them off. And no, we don't like sitcoms or reality television that isn't Mike Rowe and most crime procedurals like NCIS or CSI get boring or piss me off or both. Maybe I should start watching <i>She-Ra</i>.<br />
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Palate Cleanser: <i>Presto</i> never stops being funny<br />
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<br />Sarah Boyle Webberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02926451548743350125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5938622503026216375.post-5730935320496992382020-04-29T16:48:00.003-04:002020-04-29T16:48:51.988-04:00Quarantine Quotidians, April 29<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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If you've never read Georgette Heyer, you should. <i>Faro's Daughter</i> is a very funny, sometimes mad-cap Georgian romance first published in 1941. Our heroine is not quite respectable and when a lordling falls in love with her, his family makes great efforts to distance them, most of which backfire. She is the most intelligent person on the page, save the hero, and watching her make good decisions while the waves of crazy crest around her is delightful. Of course, there is a happy ending.<br />
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My current favorite thing to listen to is the soundtrack from the movie <i>Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse</i>. First, it's an amazing film in every sense and you don't need to know anything about Spider-Man to watch it. Somehow, when we watched it again a few weeks ago, I was reminded how much I liked the music. And it's available on Hoopla. I just have to renew it weekly on my library card. This is what I was doing with the <i>Frozen II</i> soundtrack a month ago. <b>Slightly</b> different genre of music. Slightly<br />
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<b>Hard Things</b><br />
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(I wrote, in my head, an excellent blog post when I was in the shower last night. If someone could create a device to record all the amazing and useful things I think of while I'm in the shower, I would be eternally grateful. In the meantime, I will try to recreate my thoughts.)<br />
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So, this online schooling thing is not going well. Somehow, I thought I could be everything Miranda needed. (No, this is not a logical conclusion but I had early Covid enthusiasm that has obviously waned when it crashed into reality.) When she is at school, she has 9 teachers, a case manager, and a guidance counselor to help her and she was still barely passing her classes. Now, at home, with just me and her lukewarm attitude towards completing assignments, we are floundering. And I don't even know how far behind we are because I still have logged into Powerschool and counted, but we haven't even touched math in almost a month. I know she's doing work in most of the other classes.<br />
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Last weekend I had a serious, extended panicked mood about her schooling, so much that I was avoiding all the emails and phone calls from teachers and case managers for both kids. You know what, asking for help is hard. I hate to do it. And this is about me, not her.<br />
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I had to come to grips with the fact Miranda is not a straight A student years ago. She is not Sarah 2.0 (and for the record, I didn't have straight A's until they stopped grading me in handwriting and PE). Miranda is her own person and her AD/HD especially makes exams and essays a serious trial, so much so that we may have alternate grading in place for her in future. Which is perfectly acceptable according to her IEP; we just have to keep making those changes. She has no difficultly learning in her favorite subjects of history and language arts, she just needs help expressing it. Other subjects are more difficult but her teachers are the most reasonable, helpful people you could imagine. They don't want her to fail. And her case manager is amazingly compassionate. But I had to say I was failing and couldn't keep up. And that's hard.<br />
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Since then, I have been honest with her case manager and social studies teachers. I haven't figured out what to do with math yet, but I don't feel so hopeless now that I've admitted I'm not coping well. I can't manage both kids' schooling and the house and my own stuff and food and laundry, etc. And you know what? It's not possible for one person to do all that. It's not a reasonable request of any one person. And I wasn't doing it alone before. Miranda had her staff, Alex had his staff, Marshall was able to go in to the office and have the support of his co workers instead of trying to figure out everything from a desk in Miranda's bedroom. I had people I paid to clean my house once a month and I wasn't afraid to go to the grocery store. Not to mention my library! I was at the library twice a week to pick up or drop off books. And my mother and I shared a lot of the errands that we could that are much more difficult now. And I could go to church on Sunday morning and Wednesday morning and feel the support of my spiritual community.<br />
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Without all these necessary supports, I cannot expect myself to function well, much less at optimum. It's not reasonable. Ben Aaronovitch, an author I follow in Twitter, wrote last weekend that he had started coughing and was overwhelmed by such a sense of existential dread, the kind he hasn't felt since the end of the Cold War. And that's a great description. We don't know what's coming, how bad the virus will be, if we've already had the virus (Alex has a new fever as of yesterday because, of course), how much worse the US political world will get as people keep dying of Covid19 and the poorest of the world pay the debts of those of us who have more. I have more: a house, health care, access to testing and enough money to survive a hospitalization. Many people I know don't. And if you spend ten minutes on Google news, you'll find millions of others who don't either.<br />
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Lord, have mercy.<br />
Christ, have mercy.<br />
Lord, have mercy.<br />
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To quote a favorite Nalini Singh book, save the ones you can right now. If helping yourself is all you can do, do that. If you can help others, do that. Your local food pantry. Your favorite non profit. Your church. Your friend's church. Your parents, your family that isn't necessarily blood related. Try not to fall into thinking that your life or your way of life is more important than anyone else's. Jesus came to save all people. All of us.<br />
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My current favorite song from <i>Spiderverse</i>:<br />
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<br />Sarah Boyle Webberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02926451548743350125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5938622503026216375.post-53983779633746841722020-04-26T14:01:00.001-04:002020-04-26T14:01:22.878-04:00Quarantine Quotidians, April 26<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In the spring of 1993, before my high school graduation, before I would start my university education at Seattle Pacific University in the fall, I read Dorothy L. Sayers <i>Gaudy Night</i>. Not only does it contain a fascinating mystery, complete the courtship between Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane, but it explores the argument of the ivory tower v. real life. That is, can a person immerse themselves in the world of learning and teaching, in the <i>academy</i>, and live only for learning and teaching.<br />
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Before that spring, I had expected to spend my life as a teacher and a writer. After reading <i>Gaudy Night</i>, I realized I would never be an excellent writer. And soon, after some attempts at teaching at SPU, I realized I was a lousy teacher. All my future plans kinda died.<br />
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I did finish my degree at SPU in English literature, got married, then moved to NJ in part to pursue graduate school, or at least that was the plan. It never happened. I even took the GRE one spring. 2001? Maybe? Life didn't go that way, I didn't go that way.<br />
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Since I haven't blogged in more than a week, you can tell it's been tough going around here. My body is not cooperating by staying well and pain free. Nonetheless, I was able to walk a little more than 7 miles, which is more than the previous week and the week before that, so, progress.<br />
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Some post cards of notice from this last week<br />
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Turkish armor<br />
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Greek art</div>
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Cambridge, UK</div>
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Grand Canyon, USA<br />
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My book choices have been all over the place: contemporary romance, post-apocalyptic romance--it's not a genre I usually like but I make exceptions for Ruby Dixon--and young adult urban fantasy, which I read mostly to find books my daughter will read because she's still in a zombie fiction phase. Marshall and I made decided to spend more time together watching things I've been promising to watch with him. I do best with only one episode per evening so after finishing the latest series of <i>Doctor Who</i> last week (which we barely liked), we watched <i>Good Omens </i>this week (which we did like, all heresy aside), we watched the last 2 episodes of Steven Moffat's <i>Sherlock, </i>and then last night, <i>Ford v. Ferrari</i>, which he likes and I tolerated. Christian Bale and Matt Damon were excellent but everything else was slow and annoying. And it failed the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test">Bechdel-Wallace</a> test. I mean, even <i>Train to Busan</i>, a Korean zombie movie, passes that test. Funnily enough, <i>The Last Jedi</i> passes that test but I don't think <i>Rise of Skywalker</i> does. We liked the former more than the latter. Does it mean that in order to be a good movie it has to pass the test? Not always, but good movies often do.<br />
<br />
Movies from 2019 that I liked and saw (some) in the actual movie theatre:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><i>Captain Marvel</i> (um, yeah!).</li>
<li><i>Shazam!</i> (maybe?).</li>
<li><i>Avengers: Endgame</i> (probably but only because Gamora and Nebula had a conversation).</li>
<li><i>Late Night </i>which I wanted to see but didn't but certainly passes.</li>
<li>We saw the new<i> Godzilla</i> and it passes only because of mother-daughter conversations; that doesn't make it a good film.</li>
<li><i>Spider-Man: Far From Home</i> (maybe?)</li>
<li>I still want to see <i>Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw</i> but I don't expect it to ever pass.</li>
<li><i>Frozen II</i>, which I liked and does pass.</li>
<li><i>Knives Out</i> passes.</li>
<li>Still want to see <i>Jumanji: The Next Level</i> even though I don't expect it to pass.</li>
<li><i>Spies in Disguise</i> was very fun and it does pass.</li>
</ul>
And I need to go eat lunch. Here's your palate cleanser:<br />
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I wish I'd had this when I needed to learn geography.Sarah Boyle Webberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02926451548743350125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5938622503026216375.post-75831594813646796232020-04-17T17:19:00.000-04:002020-04-17T17:19:33.496-04:00Quarantine Quotidians, April 17<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYK-NJ4Sq0eXeymLWrqGdTXdqyMU4enKbxKf0711lcLsT4qlqrwQroHBCYGgSl17chOqE_IEKeIVc68zekTw7Es4bnsNMNiGBmuAleexgM05kuDxNU8VjlbwA-MsLNIpmY17YNmtn1cPIX/s1600/percy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="305" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYK-NJ4Sq0eXeymLWrqGdTXdqyMU4enKbxKf0711lcLsT4qlqrwQroHBCYGgSl17chOqE_IEKeIVc68zekTw7Es4bnsNMNiGBmuAleexgM05kuDxNU8VjlbwA-MsLNIpmY17YNmtn1cPIX/s320/percy.jpg" width="205" /></a></div>
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I discovered Percy Jackson by reading a <i>New York Times </i>review of book 5 of Percy's first series, <i>The Last Olympian, </i>which was published in 2009. I read lots of book reviews, by professionals and regular readers. One reason why I love Goodreads so much is that it aggregates reviews from many readers and gives you the opportunity to read about a book from someone who loved it as well as someone who didn't. Some of my favorite reviews are 1 and 2 star ones. Anyway, if you like Greek mythology and good young adult fiction, I highly recommend Percy Jackson. I, myself have yet to read Rick Riordan's <b>ten</b> most recent books. They're on my list, I promise.<br />
<br />
Today's interesting postcard is from my parents' trip to Greece and Turkey in the fall of 2015, when it was still fairly safe to travel there. They joined a group exploring many of the sites of early Christianity.<br />
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<b>Mental Health Review</b>: So Miranda and I have continued to talk to our counselor weekly. Thankfully, we have the resources to keep talking to her (and our HMO reimburses 50%) because I need someone to help me interpret Miranda and talk through alternatives when how I've been parenting her isn't working. Mostly, we are struggling with her school work because, 1) there's so much of it, and 2) I am figuring out how to adjust it to a reasonable level. It hasn't helped that we've been sick for much of the last two weeks (although, the kids are pretty much over their fever and headaches and I'm feeling better today that I have in 2 weeks, so maybe we're done with whatever it was) so I haven't had the energy to chase her down on all of the assignments and neither, honestly, has she.<br />
<br />
Something each of us in this building is struggling with is how scary it is to be staying together here all the time and understanding that the world outside is where the virus is rampant. Seriously scary. That stress lies on top of everything we think, all the words we snap at each other and every time we get annoyed by all the boxes of Mimi's stuff still in the front room. (Half of the boxes are her current papers that we still need available to manage her estate, which won't close completely until we sell her house, and the others are things of hers we wanted to keep but don't yet have a place for. I probably really need to clean the linen closet. A clean shelf in there would help. But I digress....)<br />
<br />
The kids can't go to school, where they are used to the routine, where they see people they like, and where they probably have better uses for their time. And where they have far better teachers than me. Marshall can't go to work in his office in Camden, with all of his co workers where it's easier to work because there are many fewer distractions and if he has a question, he can lean over the divider and ask his colleague. And he can talk about technology to people who actually care instead of his long-suffering wife (😇) who can often follow what he's saying but this latest project has her really confused. And I have to manage everyone all of the time <u>in addition to</u> doing all my own work. Sure, I prefer waking up about 7:30 am (my body has decided it really doesn't like sleeping longer than this, much to my dismay) instead of 5:40 am but the no peace and quiet thing except at midnight when everyone else is sleeping (which, since my body doesn't sleep in anymore, is not healthy) is wearing on me.<br />
<br />
And this is just the tone of the house with no outside interference. Marshall and I don't read a lot of the news, but we check it several times a day. And, I've discovered, Miranda's reading it too. So, add the political squabbling and virus updates to our emotional thermometer. And while Alex doesn't follow the news himself, he picks up the household's prevailing emotional attitude and reacts to it, whatever it is.<br />
<br />
To sum up:<br />
We're stressed because<br />
<br />
<ol>
<li>No body ever leaves</li>
<li>We still have to do all our own crap, but without the appropriate help.</li>
<li>Everyone eats every single meal here, requiring food and dishes.</li>
<li>Many of my destressing activities went up in smoke (watching tennis or Premier League futbol) or are quarantined elsewhere (parents and friends).</li>
<li>Marshall and I both have more things to do than energy to do them.</li>
<li>The kids are frying their brains on screens because it's hard to get them to do other things. Neither is a self motivated student.</li>
<li>I'm tired and it's time for dinner. </li>
</ol>
<div>
Here's your palate cleanser (this is Alex's other favorite)</div>
<div>
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Sarah Boyle Webberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02926451548743350125noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5938622503026216375.post-56660301697136639732020-04-16T16:46:00.000-04:002020-04-16T16:46:05.098-04:00Quarantine Quotidians, April 16<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkHpDm-r0T7AR-F3KNWJmS-64LIZqGoHGYjICT4ZDw1CcaOJZCR7pgFGZjL7rniag7-tlIl3PQheadLQeP6-k4beB_gvy11aEJllhlhFni5Fc7EzTrMLrSfdgS-v3YuVvsNZL-56uJ9DOI/s1600/penderwicks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="276" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkHpDm-r0T7AR-F3KNWJmS-64LIZqGoHGYjICT4ZDw1CcaOJZCR7pgFGZjL7rniag7-tlIl3PQheadLQeP6-k4beB_gvy11aEJllhlhFni5Fc7EzTrMLrSfdgS-v3YuVvsNZL-56uJ9DOI/s320/penderwicks.jpg" width="220" /></a></div>
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(This is book 4 in the series and I NEVER advocate reading a book out of order, so if you want to read this one, please read books 1-3 first. Still, it's my favorite of the series and left me sobbing uncontrollably at one point. Jeanne Birdsall writes so tenderly about the difficulties of growing up and discovering your parents aren't perfect and can, occasionally, make mistakes. In fact, you yourself might make mistakes along the way as well. I loved these books.)<br />
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<b>Post card of the day:</b><br />
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This is part of a group of postcards I bought for MaryLee when Marshall and I were in Cambridge, England, in 2002. As she was a photographer, I thought she'd appreciate seeing the deep contrasts in the photos. I found them again when I went through her personal papers and am now using them for their original purpose.<br />
<br />
<b>Angry Birds update:</b> I am resisting sewing up a seam on Bomb this afternoon. But I should probably just do it. I don't know where my black thread is. I have dark brown. I don't expect anyone will be able to tell the difference.<br />
<br />
I don't have a lot of focus today. Miranda refused to tell me how much of a particular assignment she's completed (which probably means none) which she's told me she has been working on for weeks so she is technology free for the rest of the day. On the other hand, Alex had tons of energy this morning which means he's finally feeling better. I feel the same; just groggier. I stayed up late reading.<br />
<br />
Last night, I discovered a new to me author, Katharine Ashe, and now I want to go read all of her books. I was being a good girl last night, finishing a book on my currently reading list (<i>At the Billionaire's Wedding</i>, a collection of short stories, including "The Day It Rained Books," by Ashe) that I started in February of 2019. I originally started the book because I was making my way through all of Maya Rodale's published works. But, obviously, something shiny walked by. Ashe's story is the third in the collection and by far the best. She takes the Cinderella trope and makes it into something beautiful. And I don't even like Billionaire stories, for the most part (Pippa Grant seems to do them well), but this story had me in tears.<br />
<br />
Anyway, so now Currently Reading (on Goodreads) is only 11 books which includes the Bible and my devotional but my official To Be Read pile is 781. For every book I read, I seem to add 3 more to my want to read list. I read about 225 books a year (Goodreads counts full length books, novellas and shorts each as a distinct work; if you want length reports, they do have a page counter) so if I continue in the fashion as I move forwards, I won't ever catch up.<br />
<br />
Maybe I need a break from technology, too, the form of a paper book.<br />
<br />
This is still my favorite <i>Animaniacs</i> sequence.<br />
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<br />Sarah Boyle Webberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02926451548743350125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5938622503026216375.post-88377003072333614012020-04-15T17:09:00.002-04:002020-04-15T17:09:58.411-04:00Quarantine Quotidians, April 15<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
(It's been fun choosing a book to head every post, which I only did the first day because then it explained by title but now I can pick a new one every day! I can't remember how many times I've read <i>Silver Silence</i> since it was published in 2017--half a dozen at least--but I never get tired of Russian bear Changelings. Russian bears! They are hilarious.)<br />
<br />
<b>Angry Birds toys I have repaired</b><br />
<br />
Today Nico from Angry Birds Rio got his hat reattached, which I recall Alex detaching almost as soon as he came into the house, years ago, and a small seam in his butt sewn closed. Photographic evidence of the change was difficult to gather.<br />
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<br />
<b>Strange postcard of the day</b><br />
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I myself have never visited Epcot Center and my mother only went for the first time last year, but this post card is old. I'm wondering if my paternal grandmother went, years ago, and brought postcards back. That's my best guess.<br />
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<b>Road Trip!</b><br />
<br />
So I had some bank deposits that had been sitting around for a while and then I needed to do one for my mother in law's estate but her bank is a 20 minute drive from our house so I'd been putting it off. I was feeling decent earlier so I decided to just drive down to her bank, and then hit our bank and McDonald's on the way home. (One of Alex's food groups is McDonald's French Fries, and right now we're trying to put even a tiny bit of body fat back on him because he's growing faster then his limited calorie intake can manage. And I got McFlurries for Marshall and Miranda. Because I'm nice.)<br />
<br />
I felt okay on my drive down (I swear, I missed every single light down Hainesport-Mt. Laurel Road to Greentree) but I was dizzy by the time I got back. So I'm not perfectly well; still enough sick that going out is inadvisable unless I'm just going to sit in the car. Lemme tell you how that makes me feel:<br />
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<br />
Yeah. It sucks.<br />
<br />
But a dear friend offered to do our Aldi shopping, so that's one less worry. Bless you, friend.<br />
<br />
There's not a whole lot of other new news. Miranda is still pretending to do her homework. I have yet to log in to Google classroom. Alex has been assigned by his counselor to work through "cartoon interactive social story type activities" on the computer and watches the clock until his allotted time is done. Marshall continues to work too many hours to reasonably ask him to deal with any of his other stuff around the house. He watched <i>The Ring</i> last night, the American version, which he said was okay. I read another Barbara Freethy book in her Off the Grid series, which has an over arching mystery along with one to be solved in each book. I've read 4 with 3 more to go and I'm curious enough to finish them this week to find out whodunit in the larger story. I have suspicions but Freethy writes cleverer mysteries that most people give her credit for. She's not as popular or flashy as Jayne Ann Krentz/Jayne Castle/Amanda Quick (all the same person but publishing under different names for different genres) or Christina Dodd. Even the Queen, JD Robb aka Nora Roberts, with her towering <a href="https://www.fictiondb.com/author/jd-robb~series~eve-dallas~3885.htm"><i>in Death</i></a> Series, often has obvious villians. (One of my accomplishments this year was finishing book 50 of the <i>in Death</i> series, the latest published. Most of the books I read last year were written either by Nalini Singh or JD Robb and I really have no regrets.)<br />
<br />
What's funny is when I count my authors (I love Goodreads; it's like having an extra brain) and I realize how few male authors I read any more.<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>John Scalzi is still a favorite and I haven't yet, unlike my husband, finished reading all of his back list. </li>
<li>Ben Aaronovitch has an excellent urban fantasy series that started with <i>Rivers of London</i> in 2011, but I still have to read the last few books. (We recommend the audio versions of any of the Peter Grant stories because Kobna Holdbrook-Smith makes you a Peter believer.) </li>
<li>I suppose Ilona Andrews counts because they are actually a husband and wife writing team, Ilona and Gordon Andrews. (I recommend everything they write. Yes, everything.)</li>
<li>Before the Netflix series launched, I started reading The Witcher books by Andrzej Sapowski and am now halfway through the series. Honestly it's some of the best fantasy I've read in years. His world building is impressive. </li>
</ul>
Except for the odd historian or graphic novelist, that's it for male authors in the last 3 years. I'm not sure if that says more about me or about them.<br />
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Now I really need to stop and scrounge something for dinner.<br />
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<br />Sarah Boyle Webberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02926451548743350125noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5938622503026216375.post-51408122894711953612020-04-14T15:49:00.002-04:002020-04-14T15:49:38.269-04:00Quarantine Quotidians, April 14<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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(Favorite book from seventh grade that I was just thinking today needs a reread.)</div>
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<b>First thing today: most interesting post card</b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifxpGggJGdqVRLv7Xq8m0CI1RrfZVFvK5bT4VU0S8HVwVSbyLHz6S8gs4-ltzML5B8WKZZyNJRCYbr2KGQZU1o5omWZO8Dh4l_XOmKZqmEyh51c16hIT6G61-2yqNDLNxyPUBuHbddWK-8/s1600/IMG_20200414_094715.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifxpGggJGdqVRLv7Xq8m0CI1RrfZVFvK5bT4VU0S8HVwVSbyLHz6S8gs4-ltzML5B8WKZZyNJRCYbr2KGQZU1o5omWZO8Dh4l_XOmKZqmEyh51c16hIT6G61-2yqNDLNxyPUBuHbddWK-8/s320/IMG_20200414_094715.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
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My father grew up in Los Alamos, New Mexico. My only visit to his old haunts was in 1992, when I joined he and my mother in a trip to Sante Fe to bury his father. So it's possible I could have purchased this in 1992, but it's more likely that my mother bought it on a more recent trip to NM she took with my dad.<br />
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Today, I think the card got sent to my youngest brother's house in CA.<br />
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<b>Also, Angry Birds plushies that I have repaired: Matilda</b><br />
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Alex loves the fact that we're stuck in the house and he can now shove all his limping stuffed animals at me for repair. I am not the most accomplished seamstress.<br />
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How many Angry Birds do we have? A dresser full. I'll take a picture next time Alex has them all out for an event.<br />
<br />
How do the birds get damaged? He pounds them into each other, reenacting some battle or other from <i>Star Wars</i> and a seam will start to give, and then he'll stick his fingers into it, making it larger, and then comes to me complaining that it broke. I've already done several of the smaller birds and on Saturday night, I had to sew up the rest of Might Eagle's throat that I hadn't previously repaired. Maybe by the time I finish all the bird repairs I'll have the energy to bring out my cross stitch stuff, which I haven't touched since my father in law died in 2016. That was a tough year. Though 2020 might beat it.<br />
<br />
<b>Health update</b><br />
<br />
So, the kids and I are now on day 10 of low grade fevers, headaches and general blahs. Do we have Covid-19? I dunno. The fevers never go above 100 degrees, nor do any of us remain feverish all day long. Our energy is lower and an appetites are definitely reduced. I haven't called the doctor because she's going to tell us to rest and drink fluids, which we are already doing. It means I have only left the house to weed the front flower bed and I'm getting a little crazed. At least I got to go to the grocery store before. Marshall went to Costco on Saturday and we're going to need him to go on a trip to Aldi soon; we can't run out of turkey bacon and scrapple. Well, we could, but it would mean Miranda and I wouldn't have breakfast and that could be scary.<br />
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<b>Entertainment News</b><br />
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Marshall has been binging on movies to cope with the lock down while I have, mostly, been reading instead. (If you've known me for five minutes, this is not a surprise to you.) If you want to follow my reading, you can stalk me on Goodreads.<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>We finally finished this season of <i>Doctor Who</i> last week and were exceedingly underwhelmed. Great cast, especially the new Master, but terrible, horrible, preachy writing. We are long time fans (we haven't seen <i>every</i> single episode since 1963 but many of them) and we hate to see a great show start to die. And Chibnall (exec producer) is better than this. Or so we thought. </li>
<li>We actually paid Amazon Prime to watch the new <i>Birds of Prey</i> movie and turned it off after half an hour. And I'm the kind of person who actually liked (parts of) <i>Justice League</i> and most of <i>Aquaman</i>. </li>
<li>Marshall would like you all to know he's going through a <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cin%C3%A9ma_v%C3%A9rit%C3%A9">Cinéma vérité</a></i> phase, reexamining films from the 1960's - 1980's that he's previously missed. Recent entries have been <i>Conan the Barbarian, All the President's Men</i> and <i>The Shining</i>. I joined him for the ends of Conan & Woodstein but skipped the last. Not a horror fan, except that my brief glances made me want to revisit <i>Ready Player One</i>. </li>
<li>I finally finished over the weekend <i><a href="https://smile.amazon.com/March-Folly-Troy-Vietnam-ebook/dp/B00589AYWW/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=march+of+folly&qid=1586890828&sr=8-1">The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam</a></i> by Barbara W. Tuchman. I started reading it in paper but finished with audio (I love my library!). She's an excellent analyst although it was dismaying to listen especially to the section on Vietnam, how each president from Truman to Nixon kept chasing verifiably incorrect assumptions about Vietnam and its people to rationalize more and more death. </li>
<li>In between, I've been reading breezy romantic thrillers by HelenKay Dimon, Jayne Ann Krentz and Barbara Freethy. And low angsty contemporary romances by Jackie Lau. I have a stack of angsty books on my TBR but I haven't had the energy for them. I have so far resisted falling back into PsyChangeling or Guild Hunter by <a href="https://nalinisingh.com/">Nalini Singh</a> (I read each series twice last year and that's more than 30 books and novellas) but I'm sure a reread will happen eventually during this calendar year. The new PsyChangeling book comes out June 9 and the new Guild Hunter in November. </li>
<li>Then, there's also the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorkosigan_Saga">Vorkosiverse</a> books. Marshall's all-time-favorite-reread-numerous-times-series that I have been trying to read since spring, 2016. I did finish <i>Cetaganda</i> (book 6) last week, finally, because I'd bought a used paper copy of it last year. I think because my husband prefers the audio versions (thank you, library), he can just cycle through them over and over again. Our library, however, has only the audio versions of the books. I can read <i>some</i> books via audio but not all and Lois McMaster Bujold just doesn't work for me in that medium. I need to see the words on the page. So, finally, I just went and bought Kindle versions of all 22 (?) books. For all that Marshall loves the books, I figured we should express our love financially at long last to the author. It's nice to have the means to do that at present. (I don't want to know how many books I've bought since December so don't ask; I'm afraid to count them.)</li>
</ul>
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<b>Scripture readings</b> for today are Proverbs, Luke and Deuteronomy (that I haven't listened to yet). I shall be glad to leave the Pentateuch soon but after all the fun blood lettering of Joshua there's all the depressing blood letting of Judges. I'm actually looking forward to the prophets this year. I started the Bible in One Year app last July so I'm counting from there as my read the whole Bible mark. Then I'll just start again. </div>
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Here's a good way to end things:</div>
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Sarah Boyle Webberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02926451548743350125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5938622503026216375.post-52853181979737991082020-04-14T11:20:00.000-04:002020-04-14T11:20:22.253-04:00Quarantine Quotidians, April 13<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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(If you haven't read this book, you should. It's one of my favorites.)</div>
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So, I decided in the shower this morning that I should start blogging again. I'm sure it's partly because I was texting my spiritual mentor yesterday and one thing I had promised months ago was to go back to blogging regularly. But Miranda had a mental healthy crisis in October and then my mother-in-law died in early January and then Surprise! Let's everybody have a pandemic. Time passes quickly and slowly simultaneously. Or, rather, the time doing fun stuff flies by and the time supervising my children's online education drags with foot long nails. No, homeschooling isn't going well. They are both special needs kids. This is not ideal. But it's the best we can do. Oh, well.<br />
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<b>Schooling Update:</b><br />
<br />
Technically, the children have spring break this week but she's behind on assignments and if she has to work, he should, too. For the first few weeks, I provided her a punch list of assignments to work on each day but that seemed to be overwhelming to her. In the last week, I have been ill enough not to have bothered to log in to Google classroom and assess the damage. (She has fairly severe ADHD and finishing assignments is often torturous.) So I keep reminding her every half hour or so and she twitches and, perhaps, goes back to work. She dislikes anyone watching her screen and I haven't been willing to push it yet. It hasn't seemed worth fighting over.<br />
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Alex and I are supposed to be reading <i>The Tale of Despereaux</i> by Kate DiCamillo together but after a month of homeschooling, we're only half way. Maintaining a regular daily schedule with no outside influences is pretty much impossible. But we'll keep trying.<br />
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We had both IEP meetings virtually this year. Alex's was by phone on Friday the 3rd and was done in about 35 minutes, which I think is a record. Everything that we have in place for him at Archway Lower School is still working so we just go to the next level.<br />
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Miranda's was by video call last Tuesday at 8 am which meant I had to get up at 6 to eat and shower beforehand. I'm not a fan of video chat. I prefer to write post cards or letters or emails. I'm not sure I'm really a Gen Xer. Her attitude towards others and herself has been a challenge this year so we're all trying to just gently push her through the calendar year and hope her brain grows again. We're also going to try some alternate assessments because asking her to write a paper about what's she's learned in class is pretty much useless. After many days stress, you might get a paragraph. So we may move on to videos for her.<br />
<br />
I will log in to Google classroom soon. I promise. Her teachers and case manager are lovely and supportive and they're not the problem. My daughter is just 13, not interested and doesn't feel like moving. I remember being miserable at 13 so I try not to heckle her enough to make her hate me more. I mean, she gets mad when I ask her to refill the ice tray, so I'm already on her list.<br />
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<b>Possible Future Categories</b><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Most interesting post card of the day (I'm sending daily post cards to my nieces and nephews on the West Coast as well as a few other family and friends.)</li>
<li>Health updates</li>
<li>Movies viewed and/or scorned</li>
<li>Interesting books</li>
<li>Garden updates</li>
<li>Favorite pod casts</li>
<li>Places I wish I were instead of in lock down</li>
<li>Amount of time I spent killing zombies on my phone today</li>
<li>Today's scripture (I use The Bible in One Year app from the <a href="https://alphausa.org/about">Alpha program</a>)</li>
<li>Alex's current fixation (<i>A Bug's Life</i> and the Stuff Mart Song from <i>VegeTales</i>)</li>
</ul>
Sarah Boyle Webberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02926451548743350125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5938622503026216375.post-74085599920401875412020-01-23T15:00:00.000-05:002020-01-23T15:00:27.011-05:00MaryLee Webber - Eulogy by Marshall Webber<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibrdM35T-EAB3m_zO_NqkyR6bnicibUzErXRf5znH_ZErTgAajw5xfU8B4Ksb-PMge42TqozlBaa3pgoXmwtRlDCx_SY8jCMSCbJ_6umJDCq7rM-l1X8J9656ElY7zC2l6w9_KEddUSg/s1600/surpise+baby.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="676" data-original-width="493" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibrdM35T-EAB3m_zO_NqkyR6bnicibUzErXRf5znH_ZErTgAajw5xfU8B4Ksb-PMge42TqozlBaa3pgoXmwtRlDCx_SY8jCMSCbJ_6umJDCq7rM-l1X8J9656ElY7zC2l6w9_KEddUSg/s200/surpise+baby.png" width="145" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Surprise Baby</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span class="tm5">My Mom was born in 1943 as the surprise baby to Epps Marshall and Elena Lowe Marshall in the tiny desert town of Blackfoot,
Idaho. Mom often said that she had four parents, because her eldest siblings, David and Anita, were both several years older and lavished extra care on their little sister.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibmUv33yYUml_ubJwOhhtVTWpe-1_yu1a5C7H5YV7AIPRJ7WmZFrCYccXz2SQDb9nWJQqyR9wyx70ItwzKNMUk6zsUqsJtKdK9dp6fh4IQNgJaMvTr5lexWT46DGs_Pxn89agWDZBSPQ/s1600/5yo+portrait.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="669" data-original-width="516" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibmUv33yYUml_ubJwOhhtVTWpe-1_yu1a5C7H5YV7AIPRJ7WmZFrCYccXz2SQDb9nWJQqyR9wyx70ItwzKNMUk6zsUqsJtKdK9dp6fh4IQNgJaMvTr5lexWT46DGs_Pxn89agWDZBSPQ/s200/5yo+portrait.png" width="153" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">5 year old portrait</td></tr>
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<span class="tm5">The daughter of ranchers and farmers, Mom grew up in hardscrabble poverty. There was no running water on the property until
she was twelve, so dashes out to the out-house in the howling dead of winter were part of her growing up experience. </span></div>
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<span class="tm5">Mom considered these inconveniences to be mostly irrelevant. As she described it, “We would have rice and raisin pudding
for dessert because there was nothing else.<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuvMOQuSEgGI9s1vPE2PKW5cY1RpmGnukmMlXerpoLU-mYZa0Q9nEfM3PNPaNmFC4FmkWTTzotG560LNI4MdUq3B-VMqfnEeeYEucz4dldES5LkXDkqmyxAJkA9Is07ljX2pbRK0HK8g/s1600/feed+sheep.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="544" data-original-width="992" height="175" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuvMOQuSEgGI9s1vPE2PKW5cY1RpmGnukmMlXerpoLU-mYZa0Q9nEfM3PNPaNmFC4FmkWTTzotG560LNI4MdUq3B-VMqfnEeeYEucz4dldES5LkXDkqmyxAJkA9Is07ljX2pbRK0HK8g/s320/feed+sheep.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Feeding the Lambs</td></tr>
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We kids had no idea we were poor, because it was our favorite dessert!”</span></div>
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<span class="tm5">David and Anita doted on their younger sister, giving her that “best beloved” feeling in her family. In that
tiny house that David and their father Epps had built, David and Anita would swing MaryLee high in the air like a pair of dock-workers and chant, “Shadrack, Meshack, and A-BED-YOU GO!” and toss her flying through
the air onto her bed.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzp4oWgyKDHqcX3Ys_uTZqo1H1PRI0qQ-dWZv2aVvv4AfaOn9KKeABxKc1XrTCJCivRvh9We18YDpEDOv_-7XF6BQS40O7szKQRJmgF09-v8zEzcthKXwe2gZg4wl8YPswPD5kBGGMMA/s1600/marshall+family.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="549" data-original-width="781" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzp4oWgyKDHqcX3Ys_uTZqo1H1PRI0qQ-dWZv2aVvv4AfaOn9KKeABxKc1XrTCJCivRvh9We18YDpEDOv_-7XF6BQS40O7szKQRJmgF09-v8zEzcthKXwe2gZg4wl8YPswPD5kBGGMMA/s320/marshall+family.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Epps McCord Marshall Family:<br />
front: David, Epps, Elena<br />
back: MaryLee, Anita</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span class="tm5">Riding horses, learning the piano, and playing games which required no electricity and no money were how Mom spent her childhood. She attended feeble, storefront churches which never managed to
stay running for very long, and this too became part of her spiritual expectation.</span></div>
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<span class="tm5">So let me pause here for a moment, and at the cost of surprising many of you, let you in on the secret life of MaryLee Webber: Mom was brought up to have two modes of interaction with people:
either politely public, or unguardedly personal. This was a regional and generational trait that let her gloss over personal conflicts, while at the same time letting some few people into her private life where things were </span><span class="tm5">a lot more zany than the surface that she projected for the public.<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN1BXDKxQjWWLY83Nh5__XPS2a6fALjRQ1tpDxB3sV3s3q5Xur2jF_2W_IyVPrSYPTClh8APEpBgKqe_V-lhLPeJ2TCFwZ4w3AKF7-2yi_HsNBivIMoSD_HJguL0jkzPPgamg9rTnEGw/s1600/too+funny.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="659" data-original-width="499" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN1BXDKxQjWWLY83Nh5__XPS2a6fALjRQ1tpDxB3sV3s3q5Xur2jF_2W_IyVPrSYPTClh8APEpBgKqe_V-lhLPeJ2TCFwZ4w3AKF7-2yi_HsNBivIMoSD_HJguL0jkzPPgamg9rTnEGw/s320/too+funny.png" width="241" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Zanier than you thought, <br />
but only when you weren't looking.</td></tr>
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</span></div>
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<span class="tm5">So let me clue you in: My mother was so sharp, her brain should have been continued on the next three people. In her youth, she was outgoing to the point of brashness. She also sported
a darkly macabre sense of humor that fed on the absurdities of life.</span><span class="tm5"> If you remember The Addam’s Family line drawn cartoons that ran in the <i>New Yorker</i>, that
was right up her alley: a vicious inversion of the proper 20</span><sup><span class="tm5">th</span></sup><span class="tm5"> Century American family. In college, she cackled over the satirical and controversial Smothers Brothers
Comedy albums. Throughout her life, she privately reveled in the</span><span class="tm5"> skewed visions of reality from cartoonists as varied as George Booth and his strange cast of characters
to </span><span class="tm5">Gary Larson’s “The Far Side” panels. These, of course, became running family “in-jokes” which my sister and I can quote as
shorthand for almost any situation. During the most trying professional times of my mom’s life in the late 1990s, she regularly escaped into</span><span class="tm5"> edgy animated shows like <i>Ren & Stimpy, I AM Weasel</i>, and <i>Cow & Chicken</i>. However, she rarely let her enjoyment of the absurd and dark humored show in public.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOkF9boHUZwaXSNkAtecZcOebXP6zKMhUUHGPTbDH0K_astTGg13GE5zdOK6jTSCHns7NGy6QmPCNQoce5K7PdnsYRguNjNIAEI6lQCDl_BuCL5QZg0pnZ70pCj8syfSZtJKmuSYQhiA/s1600/siblings.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="550" data-original-width="969" height="181" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOkF9boHUZwaXSNkAtecZcOebXP6zKMhUUHGPTbDH0K_astTGg13GE5zdOK6jTSCHns7NGy6QmPCNQoce5K7PdnsYRguNjNIAEI6lQCDl_BuCL5QZg0pnZ70pCj8syfSZtJKmuSYQhiA/s320/siblings.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The siblings</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span class="tm5">As was typical for her generation, her older brother went off to University for a degree and worked a surveying job in the summers to put money away to pay for both of his sisters' college educations. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8CQQV4-2n4cZFELYf5PgbIRGbepluoOU1QFamWv2B8X0j5UxiXyUdiWqPdiR1sOD8M6vCB3E1JphOCGMAxAjoltCV4SpeQeqR1JjmwaMoB7Pbn_H7dg56cqsfktdVRvfi_KtH93FU3g/s1600/the+beauties.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="460" data-original-width="456" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8CQQV4-2n4cZFELYf5PgbIRGbepluoOU1QFamWv2B8X0j5UxiXyUdiWqPdiR1sOD8M6vCB3E1JphOCGMAxAjoltCV4SpeQeqR1JjmwaMoB7Pbn_H7dg56cqsfktdVRvfi_KtH93FU3g/s320/the+beauties.png" width="317" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Beauties</td></tr>
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<span class="tm5">My Aunt Anita worked for the local phone company before she left for college, and my mother would
leave High School at lunch time and join her sister at the local lunch counter. The two beauties appeared in public as a pair of working office girls.</span><span class="tm5"> This experience with her sister gave Mom a sense of hope that there was more “world” out there to experience beyond a dull life in a one-horse town. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghbrFieZdeWr0U1jzMp5XNsPzP0j3XZpPYuNyP71AxDBwsh-5Qb0DCJ6tiffJxk3emrgOgwC8o7mGFLFv2q6yUtyWh2TIayRvY615QYo0_QuaSiREaQWcPvnuxOHHFsThrffXZLc5eyw/s1600/drawah+silliness.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="630" data-original-width="1114" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghbrFieZdeWr0U1jzMp5XNsPzP0j3XZpPYuNyP71AxDBwsh-5Qb0DCJ6tiffJxk3emrgOgwC8o7mGFLFv2q6yUtyWh2TIayRvY615QYo0_QuaSiREaQWcPvnuxOHHFsThrffXZLc5eyw/s640/drawah+silliness.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Off to College!</td></tr>
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<span class="tm5">Her brother David was eventually</span><span class="tm5"> able to pay for Mom to attend Whitworth College in Spokane, Washington, in 1962 to pursue a </span><span class="tm5">photo-journalism degree. At Whitworth, she glutted herself on the college experience as only a small town girl could, siphoning up knowledge, culture and everything that
always took an extra few decades to make it to her small town home. </span><span class="tm5">She left time for silliness, however. One of her escapades included piling into a VW Van at
midnight with some friends, including one who, for laughs, styled himself as the Guru “Drawah.” They roared around the snowy, wooded campus until Drawah proclaimed a random tree to be THE sacred tree and did donuts around
it in the VW. Mom later claimed that this was the closest she ever came to Eastern Enlightenment. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOx6oT5lz1OI_YyGh48Iukz7Q4ZQq2D6dnlGT2UahHN-qbs8JUt_qmEU_zr-TE9Oryg8OHl3HmyFyU8XJuAvGutQ2xC9JXhZjp9mADFkL6O2bqKacWMKXs61To5drjhh5H6Gumi7TYVA/s1600/mlw+etw.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="591" data-original-width="1112" height="340" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOx6oT5lz1OI_YyGh48Iukz7Q4ZQq2D6dnlGT2UahHN-qbs8JUt_qmEU_zr-TE9Oryg8OHl3HmyFyU8XJuAvGutQ2xC9JXhZjp9mADFkL6O2bqKacWMKXs61To5drjhh5H6Gumi7TYVA/s640/mlw+etw.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span class="tm5">Between classes and silliness, Mom earned money on campus as assistant to the photo-lab manager, a World War 2 army photographer
calling in his wartime benefits to get his degree. When this gruff character found out that she didn’t have enough money for bus fare to return home to Blackfoot for Thanksgiving, he took her home with him to his family of four.</span><span class="tm5"> No, this was </span><u><span class="tm5">not</span></u><span class="tm5"> my father. This was my Grandfather, research photo-journalist Bert Webber. That Thanksgiving,
when he took his lab assistant home to his family, MaryLee met Bert’s number one son, Rick Webber</span><span class="tm5">.</span></div>
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<span class="tm5">My father was a seventeen year-old chatter-box, so excited about whatever he had just learned that he wanted to share it...whether you were interested or not. My mother’s father, Epps, was a loving, but “strong silent type,” as was typical of his generation. Mom found talking with Rick to be like drinking straight from the fire hose. Still, </span><u><span class="tm5">finally</span></u><span class="tm5">, someone who could hold up his end of a conversation!</span></div>
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<span class="tm5">When I was young, I always thought that my mother was just average smart, and my father was the really clever one because he could
design, build, or improve anything. Somewhat later, I realized that while Dad was innovative in his field, my Mom was not only brilliant, but was also widely read across history, philosophy, and world literature. If I wanted
to build something, I talked to Dad. If I wanted to know why to build it, whether it had been built before, and what the socio-economic consequences of building it were, I talked to mom. If mom got to me first, I usually wound
up reading about someone else building it.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi-PrMOA_iDCeBCrgKaWHpcPLfS877Ed7VzN-prqKVLb66sUzMBD-wUp3nku3eUeRqgx7jF40TJX9phew8EPPX_p_mDR1wkNjmXLCwBMlQvXmeFhU3vDTWak60p2csZNX0erSbExSo7w/s1600/mlw+pro.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="693" data-original-width="535" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi-PrMOA_iDCeBCrgKaWHpcPLfS877Ed7VzN-prqKVLb66sUzMBD-wUp3nku3eUeRqgx7jF40TJX9phew8EPPX_p_mDR1wkNjmXLCwBMlQvXmeFhU3vDTWak60p2csZNX0erSbExSo7w/s400/mlw+pro.jpg" width="308" /></a><span class="tm5"><br />My parent’s courtship brought its own absurdities. Mom was grafted in to the Webber family </span><span class="tm5">in Spokane and joined in the hiking, camping and on one terrifying trip, spelunking, or cave-exploring.</span><span class="tm5"> My grandfather, Bert, continued as her professional mentor and shot poses of her to be used as portraits for her newspaper columns.</span></div>
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<span class="tm5">Since my Dad was about to do two years in the </span><span class="tm5">Coast Guard right out of high school, Mom agreed to be “his girl” while he was on the high seas. She was surprised and pleased when someone so young, travelling the world, decided that what he wanted
most was to come home and marry her. Mom did mention that the communications arrangements were not very romantic, nor very private, especially ship to shore calls. “I love you. OVER.” “I love you, too OVER.” </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI5FQ3aOjx1Qe8TtGjxV-9iSDfjtiWKVusto4A3Hnzq1ZBpx0A0cdLwAb34mq24Q7aCXxb1U7zyNQE52TBGtP7d2Ix46Bm-0ig6xWfdM73_WtkxsqIbpax1TLidRgZesDkh6y7ptywHg/s1600/married.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="619" data-original-width="1047" height="378" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI5FQ3aOjx1Qe8TtGjxV-9iSDfjtiWKVusto4A3Hnzq1ZBpx0A0cdLwAb34mq24Q7aCXxb1U7zyNQE52TBGtP7d2Ix46Bm-0ig6xWfdM73_WtkxsqIbpax1TLidRgZesDkh6y7ptywHg/s640/married.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Richard Ebbert Webber and MaryLee Marshall, married on June 11, 1967</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg385ep0H36iMgCGFhm3aRcBn4ZJCGa9bpzlcGYHPp1euiu13eV1yqLZEsaH9-32mCwtDFWVwOljHdWBrAO7NBwO4rCZituLt-CfnOd0p8zyiS2znh9gCv4wtqemzePzCgKuJhrsb05bw/s1600/rolling+pin.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="664" data-original-width="678" height="313" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg385ep0H36iMgCGFhm3aRcBn4ZJCGa9bpzlcGYHPp1euiu13eV1yqLZEsaH9-32mCwtDFWVwOljHdWBrAO7NBwO4rCZituLt-CfnOd0p8zyiS2znh9gCv4wtqemzePzCgKuJhrsb05bw/s320/rolling+pin.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">She let the mask slip a little there.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjND9TJeD1VOKeDGIDPhwq563JGVo6ZoiLQ1rXc6k04g2OhG7Egt6b3Gc2wdtWJKAdO63gLHmsCRGG4f0CCS_lhCTyT1DQNCrHK1TgDz5hZR-ENISspy_ynVwKvVGNBuZ-f0q0A1aoWZg/s1600/camera+pose.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="690" data-original-width="454" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjND9TJeD1VOKeDGIDPhwq563JGVo6ZoiLQ1rXc6k04g2OhG7Egt6b3Gc2wdtWJKAdO63gLHmsCRGG4f0CCS_lhCTyT1DQNCrHK1TgDz5hZR-ENISspy_ynVwKvVGNBuZ-f0q0A1aoWZg/s640/camera+pose.png" width="419" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Modern female photojournalist in action, photo by<br />
her mentor and future Father-in-law, Bert Webber</td></tr>
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<span class="tm5">While MaryLee did complete her photo-journalism degree, she opted to teach high-school English instead. She had started to feel
uncomfortable with the hyper-aggressive professional journalists who were disrespectful of their subjects. </span><span class="tm5">But her final decision was made by nearly being a side-lines casualty during an out-of bounds tackle at a football game she was covering. Five-hundred pounds of offensive and defensive players hurtling toward
her as she tried to scramble out of the way in a mini-skirt.</span></div>
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<span class="tm5">As my father started his Engineering Degree at Idaho State University, mom started teaching English and Newspaper copy-writing
at her old High School in Blackfoot.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbcoDZUbuSogm5qkvNJ7YBe8iUr_oqnbkpkV-Dc08oIxeVTW2qNBvX3XKPGnyjiWFhZKRNJzpDGXES0wT-LKQfsJBqCGM79XQ29HFcqVUOFTtzRVS4h73tohNtLMTwrWi0PDfHqnKgCA/s1600/snow+baby.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="816" data-original-width="1083" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbcoDZUbuSogm5qkvNJ7YBe8iUr_oqnbkpkV-Dc08oIxeVTW2qNBvX3XKPGnyjiWFhZKRNJzpDGXES0wT-LKQfsJBqCGM79XQ29HFcqVUOFTtzRVS4h73tohNtLMTwrWi0PDfHqnKgCA/s320/snow+baby.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Webber Family, 1969</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="Normal">
<span class="tm5"><br /></span></div>
<div class="Normal">
In 1969, I was born in my mother's hometown of Blackfoot. As young parents with adventure on their minds and no money, they worked like mad at their
education and jobs and regularly camped all over the Pacific Northwest. When my Dad graduated, he got a job that could be a single income for the whole family. The exciting part was that the job was in New Jersey.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="Normal">
<span class="tm5">My Mom was thrilled to move to New Jersey. While in college in Spokane, she had made visits to Seattle during the 1962 World’s
Fair and got a taste for what city living could be. For a girl from a one horse town, moving to the busy corridor between New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D.C. sounded wonderful. Mom came from the desert where
sagebrush was as green as it got. Her move to the Garden State is one she never regretted. Small time girl goes to the big city…and only goes back to the small town for high school reunions.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPln-e9LzuodieLTS8pQ69VcM9J3UmBm9EIfOrq1D6ox-6Vy0D8sXV3TI_CR1CJkaFumKnImo06maJfPSnTNYnT4piY00sWKViJYovvF0C996Qv_hGCchhYxHNvfqEf6VyEjUEp53F_g/s1600/webber+family+early.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1075" data-original-width="1355" height="253" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPln-e9LzuodieLTS8pQ69VcM9J3UmBm9EIfOrq1D6ox-6Vy0D8sXV3TI_CR1CJkaFumKnImo06maJfPSnTNYnT4piY00sWKViJYovvF0C996Qv_hGCchhYxHNvfqEf6VyEjUEp53F_g/s320/webber+family+early.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Webber Family, 1976</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span class="tm5">My parents moved to Westmont, NJ and mom stayed at home until a year after the birth of my sister, Leah, who was born in 1975.</span><span class="tm5"> It was at this memorable point that MaryLee took my father gently by the throat and told him if she did not get out of the house to start working a mentally stimulating
job, someone was going to get hurt. Mom went back to work in office management. She admitted later that it was more therapy than income. She loved being a mother, and was a great one. But there was more out in the world that
she wanted to do.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="tm5">About this time, my parents became involved with Laurel Hill Bible Church in Clementon. Until that time, our family had not been much in the way of regular attenders at church, though that
slowly changed while my father was getting his degree. As his faith blossomed, my mother took her own faith out and gave it looking over and decided it was time to get serious, too. By the time my sister was born, my parents
were at every service, every time the church doors were unlocked.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="Normal">
<span class="tm5"></span><span class="tm5">In an era when fewer American families gathered for meals, the Webber family usually ate dinner together in </span><span class="tm5">the evenings, with cloth napkins and with silver and china, a habit my parents set up so that from a young age, my sister and I could be taken out to any restaurant and have better table manners than most of the
adults. (Tricky, mom.)</span></div>
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<span class="tm5"><br /></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9wEJjGbNMAyo1M74Myf7zqOn2Q3nbNPNLgQ2fFh6dH_QEZRXCgidOFLFQHRYZ5sIH1oMPLzSLHgGx4ZgbWDYnjAmPRABPYuM-w2Bi8Akj3eWVOnCH_0gnmKnvm4MyJZcnHx0bng5k0w/s1600/parkview+early.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="590" data-original-width="780" height="302" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9wEJjGbNMAyo1M74Myf7zqOn2Q3nbNPNLgQ2fFh6dH_QEZRXCgidOFLFQHRYZ5sIH1oMPLzSLHgGx4ZgbWDYnjAmPRABPYuM-w2Bi8Akj3eWVOnCH_0gnmKnvm4MyJZcnHx0bng5k0w/s400/parkview+early.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Moving up to the Stratford House, Sept. 1978</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span class="tm5">Mom’s clever </span><em><span class="tm7">modus operandi</span></em><span class="tm5"> at the dinner table was the same one that she had used with her students while teaching High School in Blackfoot: "Get
inside their minds, figure out how they think, so that you can help them succeed." She used the same method on my sister and I at the dinner table. Get us talking, distracted by the food, and then she and my father would
often have a post-dinner debriefing where they discussed what my sister and I had said, where to apply pressure, where to back off, how to steer, and so on.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="Normal">
<span class="tm5">My parents were not trained in child development: They just did the things that they liked to do, took us along for the ride, and watched our reactions with great attention and then discussed our behavior in detail before adjusted
course. Mom spoke with us and not at us. (Dad could carry on both sides of the conversation.) Our opinions were solicited to keep the conversation going. Most importantly, they confined their social guidance to
ethical living, without any attempt to coerce Leah or I into their ideas for our careers or interests. Today, this is called “free-range parenting” and as a kid who was given his head to choose any subject to pursue,
it was wonderful.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPVx8C_Fje_buOFGONCPeeik0ZtX1zAq2HFvdKPKfaP09UpFG7Gyy7ZIux24_94lwo4yriTcpxczTk1oT4hFTXZTUzsdo539TZikzU31xWtBY_sWE1P5MAiMLgzeliH3-6fBykHQTDmA/s1600/ml+85.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="643" data-original-width="504" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPVx8C_Fje_buOFGONCPeeik0ZtX1zAq2HFvdKPKfaP09UpFG7Gyy7ZIux24_94lwo4yriTcpxczTk1oT4hFTXZTUzsdo539TZikzU31xWtBY_sWE1P5MAiMLgzeliH3-6fBykHQTDmA/s320/ml+85.png" width="250" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">MaryLee, circa 1985.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="Normal">
<span class="tm5">This included our spiritual lives, where we were expected to understand the essentials of </span><em><span class="tm7">my parents'</span></em><span class="tm5"> Christian faith, but the decision of whether or not to become believers in Jesus as our spiritual rescuer were necessarily up to us. Mom used to reinforce this by
telling us, “You can only inherit customs from your parents, you can’t inherit faith. You must decide that for yourself. We want you to be the person God made you to be.”</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="Normal">
<span class="tm5"></span><span class="tm5">I am truly grateful for my mom’s wisdom in being winsome and persistent when dealing with me, rather than trying get me into the kingdom of God with
her boot in my back. I can say that I own my own faith, and I know that my sister can, too.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="Normal">
<span class="tm5">Our family changed churches in the early 1980’s, shifting our attendance to Grace Bible Church in Mount Laurel. Mom took up
piano again for enjoyment and eventually learned enough about playing organ to offer to trade off with Grace Bible Church’s regular organist, Cathy Chattin, to give Cathy a break.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="Normal">
<span class="tm5">In their spiritual lives, mom and dad were a good compliment. Dad was an evangelist, the harvester who would encourage people
to make their final decision for a life of following Jesus. As a teacher, my mom was a planter, a sower of seeds of spiritual thought and consideration for a later harvester to come along and help. The Gospel of John, in the
4</span><sup><span class="tm5">th</span></sup><span class="tm5"> chapter records Jesus describing the need for both types: “What joy awaits both the planter and the harvester alike! You know the saying, ‘One plants
and another harvests.’ And it’s true.” </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="Normal">
<span class="tm5">My parents enjoyed the role of “auxiliary parents” to many here in this room today. </span></div>
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<span class="tm5"><br /></span></div>
<div class="Normal">
My mother’s own experience of having been brought in to the Webber home on a cold November
and my father’s enthusiasm for trying to parent any kid within arm’s reach helped set her on a course of loving and supporting kids and young people around her who were not her own family.</div>
<div class="Normal">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixb2FvF4pwlxNaBv1AYTxmI1BN3WSYwx5EeVLncMmC0peT-d8j5PGNDXJjKL9pkWMS36-LSt91MJyeslUkcm52S20ivcSx8plGRsJNiYNiUgC-FHAp6PeeyOHGujC3XzXl0a06N4rh2A/s1600/Webber+Family+1993.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1078" data-original-width="1409" height="305" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixb2FvF4pwlxNaBv1AYTxmI1BN3WSYwx5EeVLncMmC0peT-d8j5PGNDXJjKL9pkWMS36-LSt91MJyeslUkcm52S20ivcSx8plGRsJNiYNiUgC-FHAp6PeeyOHGujC3XzXl0a06N4rh2A/s400/Webber+Family+1993.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Webber Family, 1993, with our new 'plus one',<br />
Brian Rykaczewski. <span style="font-size: 12.8px;">They were married March 5, 1994.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="Normal">
<span class="tm5">One of those young people hanging around was my sister’s boyfriend, Brian Rykaczewski. When Leah was seventeen,
Brian asked my parents for their permission to marry her, presenting a meticulously drafted plan to have both of them living on his single income within just a few years. To the shock of many, my parents said yes. My folks recognized
Brian’s Christian faith, his drive, and his sharp business acumen when others only saw his youth.</span></div>
<div class="Normal">
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaIr1mjRBhmH1JsN-zzlgpuBLniCvlrigLDVxbJsJpiU7mdsKE3X8DaH-_dgQwJuiHrU_1jaoIBdLbmBWMrRB2qrsc_HifmSxSCPqUiqIkq2tGUNwKJHZaimJEk17CdPOLJZpcqo2qUA/s1600/mlw+cma.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="630" data-original-width="405" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaIr1mjRBhmH1JsN-zzlgpuBLniCvlrigLDVxbJsJpiU7mdsKE3X8DaH-_dgQwJuiHrU_1jaoIBdLbmBWMrRB2qrsc_HifmSxSCPqUiqIkq2tGUNwKJHZaimJEk17CdPOLJZpcqo2qUA/s320/mlw+cma.png" width="205" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">MaryLee Webber<br />
Certified Medical Assistant</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="Normal">
<span class="tm5">Over the years, my parents worked a variety of jobs to keep food on the table. When Mom tired of the chaos of her office management job,</span><span class="tm5"> she switched to medical office management. </span></div>
<div class="Normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="Normal">
<span class="tm5">This is the stress point where some marriages fly apart. Instead, my parents reverted to what they called, “Run the deer.” One wolf chases the deer while the other one rests,
and then they swap. My father had worked while my mother had started Leah and I on our way through childhood, then they had swapped, and my father went back and retrained. Then he “ran the deer” while my mother
re-trained as a Certified Medical Assistant, and back and forth over the years, each one back-stopping the other in various jobs while the other one took the next step up in their professional career.</span></div>
<div class="Normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="Normal">
<span class="tm5">This was exhausting. They often excused their lack of vigor in life with the quip, “We had a bad decade.” Still, when opportunities permitted, Mom escaped into historical fiction where
she often found the lift of a happy ending to keep her moving forward. </span></div>
<div class="Normal">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbkL9t9WyG5Bv68UcS3dIhwLdu1A2g0lPh4dCAJxdev8onHvNX2-IaeQzGbCaNz-i2SYqBjoXWWKUiRQePnQgeuPQq6zDs1aZyZFnFR2wmSUVZWF2_xgTRb3olR5XDrNHYKJw5jBvz9Q/s1600/97+wedding.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="632" data-original-width="911" height="442" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbkL9t9WyG5Bv68UcS3dIhwLdu1A2g0lPh4dCAJxdev8onHvNX2-IaeQzGbCaNz-i2SYqBjoXWWKUiRQePnQgeuPQq6zDs1aZyZFnFR2wmSUVZWF2_xgTRb3olR5XDrNHYKJw5jBvz9Q/s640/97+wedding.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Marriage of R. Marshall Webber to Sarah Boyle, June 21, 1997, in Fresno, California.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="Normal">
<span class="tm5">Mom got a daughter-in-law in 1997 when I married Sarah Boyle. Mom also got someone who shared her passion for historical fiction
and could also keep up in conversation about a wide variety of historical, philosophical, and cultural fields. Having looked up to my mother as someone who could keep up with a broad array of subjects, I had unconsciously
gone looking for someone who was as brainy as she was. She also got to switch to Grandma or “Mimi the Great” mode<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE0S0fGWeCALgp-shK8JVkjRv-uj-2JSib3Qw3UeGoA5_508M2aU0GVQE_KCr0DAl4GnGOtYTFhhMKH_O22y_pbT2m7lWCpvU0DzxzPaEQEXqOqawXPtYgtBQoKZ_X0_OnMD0hHjyzdw/s1600/enter+gc.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="625" data-original-width="411" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE0S0fGWeCALgp-shK8JVkjRv-uj-2JSib3Qw3UeGoA5_508M2aU0GVQE_KCr0DAl4GnGOtYTFhhMKH_O22y_pbT2m7lWCpvU0DzxzPaEQEXqOqawXPtYgtBQoKZ_X0_OnMD0hHjyzdw/s320/enter+gc.png" width="210" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Playing Piano with her first<br />
Grandchild, Grace Rykaczewski</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span><span class="tm5">when her kids started supplying grandchildren. She was happy to take out her bag of teaching tricks for a new generation.</span></div>
<div class="Normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="Normal">
<span class="tm5">Mom eventually found a way to squeeze what she loved into one job. At my father’s urging, she pursued a Master’s degree in Adult Education from Widner University. When things
got hard financially, she stopped for several years, writing it off as a missed opportunity.</span><span class="tm5">My father kept leaning on her try to go back and finish. Much to her surprise, Widner was happy to bring her back in, and she completed her Master’s degree. All of the cords of her professional life were
finally braided together: Teaching, anatomy and physiology, and medical records management, to students that needed a confidence boost, and the opportunity to let her personal zaniness out of the box a little to keep her student
engaged.</span></div>
<div class="Normal">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnqAUTKZw07KbpfSL9ICeUb__72bit_TI8HjmZkLXTOvkyk2s-KUP-HtGXoxuwu_jqLlAhZUmWBxscPgibvCI_xLS-zOFn7Tm8gpsIWIfbHAH7KIWgCcFPrxRsN8qV2AriBiSQz69BRw/s1600/back+teaching.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="513" data-original-width="1061" height="307" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnqAUTKZw07KbpfSL9ICeUb__72bit_TI8HjmZkLXTOvkyk2s-KUP-HtGXoxuwu_jqLlAhZUmWBxscPgibvCI_xLS-zOFn7Tm8gpsIWIfbHAH7KIWgCcFPrxRsN8qV2AriBiSQz69BRw/s640/back+teaching.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Back teaching, her first professional love. Still with Rick, both older and wiser.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="Normal">
<span class="tm5">She taught medical office management and medical assistance at Burlington County Institute of Technology to both adults and teenagers. She truly loved her students and sparkled
as each one of them took wing in their new career. Her greatest disappointment was being forced into retirement by BCIT administration in 2008.</span></div>
<div class="Normal">
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9JGWospeWQ4U66QcGmqm-Wok11TD-h7zaaoiLcFpOYEKZProZag6lLsapAtB5NM1PeRMhZJAjvgIF5ODHdJbIGKAeOd083tsTcwiV1YjzEQKsE3sA7cifv_Ps6fiiQszUBmbGo1aTPA/s1600/organ+redux.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="588" data-original-width="923" height="253" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9JGWospeWQ4U66QcGmqm-Wok11TD-h7zaaoiLcFpOYEKZProZag6lLsapAtB5NM1PeRMhZJAjvgIF5ODHdJbIGKAeOd083tsTcwiV1YjzEQKsE3sA7cifv_Ps6fiiQszUBmbGo1aTPA/s400/organ+redux.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">At the Rogers organ, Stratford Presbyterian Church</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="Normal">
<span class="tm5">In recent years, to supplement her retirement income, mom began playing the organ at the Stratford Presbyterian Church. It was an ideal arrangement,
she said. The congregation loved having an organist, and mom got to hear solid exegetical preaching each Sunday. For those of you here from Stratford Presbyterian, thank you for welcoming my mother in.</span></div>
<div class="Normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="Normal">
<span class="tm5">As some of you know, my father was diagnosed with a muscle wasting disease in 2000. </span><span class="tm5">By the time my mother retired, he was rarely able to stand. </span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy7uekd4L3tZNWDcxBe_sLQBhdBDS1GkoYNrdLGtTVk5i3CtE1n0xUFz-IkmXLJWRJrg86EX-A4vV8788urhf4tNoyjf2pPoZ4rqc5yXpEt-DHAwE1psO0VoY6KQbBjiYD3i-m7lFDhQ/s1600/with+ryks.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="556" data-original-width="974" height="227" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy7uekd4L3tZNWDcxBe_sLQBhdBDS1GkoYNrdLGtTVk5i3CtE1n0xUFz-IkmXLJWRJrg86EX-A4vV8788urhf4tNoyjf2pPoZ4rqc5yXpEt-DHAwE1psO0VoY6KQbBjiYD3i-m7lFDhQ/s400/with+ryks.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">With the Rykaczewski family:<br />
Leah, Collin, MaryLee, Rick, Grace, Brian, and Lilly.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="Normal">
<span class="tm5">Mom chose to care for him at home, even as he struggled to be out participating in symphonic bands with friends.
She once cracked to me, “I married a younger man to take care of </span><strong><span class="tm8">me</span></strong><span class="tm5"> when I was old. Oops.” They were able to get by together until both were diagnosed with cancer within a week of each other in 2015</span><span class="tm5"> </span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
These times were particularly tough. But my mother, who always considered memorized Scripture to be her backstop in bad times, began repeating Second Timothy Chapter One, verse Seven to herself regularly: “For
God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0KjOmjh7phFNPhy9cL1xNhamSrYtaRbk3eQc9mptd2q8HLhrhOB4K7c7dqYI4HUT3JhLKBmTdKCesBBzMcgzPB0QmaPLnIjpWDH-kyChkbUlua2VJn-OrTpjZcGxMyYWhPvztl7XeWQ/s1600/webbers+bw.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="718" data-original-width="919" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0KjOmjh7phFNPhy9cL1xNhamSrYtaRbk3eQc9mptd2q8HLhrhOB4K7c7dqYI4HUT3JhLKBmTdKCesBBzMcgzPB0QmaPLnIjpWDH-kyChkbUlua2VJn-OrTpjZcGxMyYWhPvztl7XeWQ/s320/webbers+bw.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span class="tm5">If you knew both of my parents, you knew that my Dad kept rolling ahead with an ever present grin on his face. Mom reverted
to her small town stoicism which kept her going from a well of deep toughness and faith that God’s Holy Spirit would give her just enough juice to make it through each present day. She worked to make my dad comfortable
until his passing in August of 2016, while at the same time working to care for her own cancer.</span></div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF7AKPrAMQMwqLx_upZQIfdBABhYTxtmYSKXJmf37dU_1OwYZhyphenhyphen4o17inEsP-aXKhVXZWwHPMMmLVL0u7WSvBhAOog6m8gCLsA4X58gXTEuqNOrD12dB3-EzGC2lE4mUpuFlKk-aGIBQ/s1600/with+webbers.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="591" data-original-width="900" height="262" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF7AKPrAMQMwqLx_upZQIfdBABhYTxtmYSKXJmf37dU_1OwYZhyphenhyphen4o17inEsP-aXKhVXZWwHPMMmLVL0u7WSvBhAOog6m8gCLsA4X58gXTEuqNOrD12dB3-EzGC2lE4mUpuFlKk-aGIBQ/s400/with+webbers.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">With the Webber Family (Nov 2019):<br />
R. Marshall, Miranda Elena, Sarah, Alexander Matthew, MaryLee</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span class="tm5">When it became evident in December, 2019, that her latest flare up of the cancer would be her last, Mom said to me, “I
got four extra years that I wasn’t expecting!” Indeed, she had made new friends, resumed old friendships, traveled, and for a few years, was able to relax in her retirement.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="tm5">When she was in her final days being cared for at Tom and Lorita Boyle’s house, the whole family was gathered for dinner on the other side of the house. We munched, talked, laughed
and made all of the raucous noises that large family gatherings do when they are happy together.</span></div>
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<span class="tm5">I snuck out to see how Mom was doing, and found her in the bed, limp as a rag, but grinning. “What’s funny?”
I asked. “I am attending my pre-wake,” she replied with dignity. When I nearly choked at this macabre comment, she continued, “Really! I’m enjoying just hearing my family all together with love in the
other room. This is better than a wake, because I get to attend. Most of all, I know that when I’m gone, this type of love is how things are going to continue for my family even in my absence.”</span></div>
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<div class="Normal">
<span class="tm5">The most remarkable thing I can say about my mother was that in her final days, she did not look </span><strong><span class="tm8">at</span></strong><span class="tm5"> death, she looked </span><strong><span class="tm8">through</span></strong><span class="tm5"> death, as if it were a piece of glass. Most people, even those of deep faith, look at death with trepidation. Mom saw no ending, just a mere transfer point, as benign as crossing a train platform to switch to
the express for Peoria. I have never known<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" id="aGoBack"></a> anyone who considered their dying days with more faith that her Savior would greet her at the moment of her passing, and with so little worry for what she was
leaving behind.</span></div>
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<br />Marshall Webberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10928162022059963920noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5938622503026216375.post-28600681780327659652019-03-20T08:20:00.000-04:002019-03-20T08:20:16.319-04:00Fragility<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe width="320" height="266" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/IjcL3RWqovk/0.jpg" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IjcL3RWqovk?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
(I have children. Of course <i>Cars 2</i> would be my reference for fragile.)</div>
<br />
I had promised to blog more in 2019. I had promised a lot of things. I have a compromised immune system now. Lots of things are harder. But what I didn't expect was that the hardest part is not the things I can no longer do physically (I really did like mowing the lawn myself), but the emotional pit falls I keep stumbling into. In the past, I have been terribly judgmental of people whose bodies are failing and how they didn't keep up with the changes emotionally. They didn't accept their failure with grace. I now understand (a bit more) how difficult that is. I'm not accepting my limitations with grace. I'm snapping at my children for not picking up their rooms because in the past, I could have helped. I'm spending all that time lying down reading (which isn't, in itself the problem) except hardly any of that time is spent reading scripture. Instead, I am reading escapist books because I don't want to confront my anxiety about my fragility. I am broken in ways I can no longer hide.<br />
<br />
I do not have the spiritual gift of faith. I have friends who do and they encourage me a great deal, but I have an average faith. It maintains itself intellectually out of habit but often <i>feels</i> like it fails me when I'm in an emotional ditch. How do I maintain my faith when it blossomed from going to church 3-4 times a week for services and bible studies and fellowship when now, it's a good week when I can manage, physically, to go once? I have volunteered with our Youth Ministry program for years and now can barely attend one meeting in 7. What do I do now? How do I live like a disciple essentially from my bed?<br />
<br />
If you know me, you know my children are on the autism spectrum. Which means we live a life full of procedures and routines, because there is comfort for all of us in that. But, lately, I find that I crave the routine even more than they do, because it means I know what to do next. I was a good student in school because it was easy (sorry; I came out that way) and because it gave me a concrete path to follow of what to do next. I enjoyed pleasing my teachers the same way I enjoyed pleasing my parents. When I worked outside the home before I had kids, it wasn't much different. Then they were small and home all the time, and I had plenty to do. But now, they are away at school much of the day (except this winter, when someone was home sick, with me, at least every other week) and I have to spend most of my day resting anyway and the silence is oppressive. Shouldn't I be <b>doing</b> something?<br />
<br />
I have a feeling the next year or so, I will be finding new ways to do things. I'm not sure I ever wanted a contemplative life, but here I am, with one shoved in my lap. I will never believe God doesn't have a sense of humor.<br />
<br />
<br />Sarah Boyle Webberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02926451548743350125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5938622503026216375.post-72437507582011262962019-02-02T12:05:00.000-05:002019-02-02T12:05:00.320-05:007 Things to Look Forward to in 2019<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjc0n6wXtAFOFtcNF-ooK5asJTlStjMFlhe-8hs-8fhPXDfy8pZOCchjoNViQpgbdb85X-QpS3mGuU8qOzMWoVnGtdL6IHm7VDA9QLtboqG13a9_aAuyfPZmQzBHJNBkPTZDfu9DzSw4tSi/s1600/piles-and-shelves-of-books.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1072" data-original-width="1600" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjc0n6wXtAFOFtcNF-ooK5asJTlStjMFlhe-8hs-8fhPXDfy8pZOCchjoNViQpgbdb85X-QpS3mGuU8qOzMWoVnGtdL6IHm7VDA9QLtboqG13a9_aAuyfPZmQzBHJNBkPTZDfu9DzSw4tSi/s320/piles-and-shelves-of-books.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
(I started this blog post 2 weeks ago and then we got the flu. We did all have flu shots so we didn't feel like death, but it's been a lengthy recovery for me. So, trying this again.)<br />
<br />
1. I have pretty much given up on television beyond the live tennis and futbol (Liverpool FC) that I watch. We still watch <i>Doctor Who</i>, of course, and <i>Star Trek Discovery</i> was interesting, if only for the excellent casting. But I don't like sitcoms and I've lost my patience with network series. We also don't do any streaming beyond Amazon prime. But I love movies. I've been trying to see <i>Aquaman</i> for six weeks. We did manage to see <i>Into the Spider-Verse</i> on Boxing day (it's excellent and beautiful) and I still want to see <i>Mary Poppins</i>, <i>Bumblebee</i> and <i>Ralph Breaks the Internet</i>. Maybe <i>A Star is Born</i>. Like my books, I need my movies to have happy endings. Life is hard enough before adding sad fiction on top of the regular depression.<br />
<br />
******Saw Aquaman last Saturday with my mother. Very fun; very pretty.******<br />
<br />
Upcoming films to look forward to?<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><i>What Men Want</i> looks very interesting even though I despised <i>What Women Want</i>. </li>
<li><i>Isn't It Romantic</i> could work.</li>
<li><i>Captain Marvel</i></li>
<li><i>Shazam! </i>looks very funny.</li>
<li><i>Hellboy</i> might be fun.</li>
<li><i>Avengers: Endgame</i></li>
<li><i>Pokemon Detective Pikachu</i> could work. </li>
<li><i>Aladdin</i>. Maybe. I love the 1992 film.</li>
<li><i>Godzilla: King of Monsters</i></li>
<li><i>MIB: International</i> could be fun.</li>
<li><i>Toy Story 4</i></li>
<li><i>Spider-Man: Far From Home</i></li>
<li><i>Lion King</i> might be pretty.</li>
<li><i>Hobbs & Shaw</i> absolutely.</li>
<li><i>Jumanji</i> sequel; the first one was so funny.</li>
<li><i>Episode 9</i>. Of course.</li>
</ul>
2. I read a lot of books. I love Goodreads because it helps me keep track of what I've already read and, more importantly, what I want to read next. However, my TBR pile hasn't fallen under 600 for more than a year and it's currently running at 682 while I'm (technically) reading 18 other books. I also am an equal opportunity reader: audio, digital and paper are all utilized, depending on where I am and how I'm feeling. I listen to lots of audio books in the evenings when regular headaches don't allow me to focus my eyes.<br />
<br />
In 2018, my favorite new writers included<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.ilona-andrews.com/">Ilona Andrews</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.taliahibbert.com/">Talia Hibbert</a></li>
<li><a href="http://jeanienefrost.com/">Jeaniene Frost</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.kerrelynsparks.com/">Kerrelyn Sparks</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.rubydixon.com/">Ruby Dixon</a> (famous for preposterous premises, but she makes them work)</li>
<li><a href="http://pennyreid.ninja/">Penny Reid</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.elisabraden.com/">Elisa Braden</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.joannashupe.com/">Joanna Shupe</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.jasmineguillory.com/">Jasmine Guillory</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.helenhoang.com/">Helen Hoang</a></li>
<li><a href="http://christicaldwell.com/">Christi Caldwell</a></li>
</ul>
I also continued to read<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="https://graceburrowes.com/">Grace Burrowes</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.catherinebybee.com/home.html">Catherine Bybee</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.kristanhiggins.com/">Kristan Higgins</a> (her latest is amazing!)</li>
<li><a href="http://www.sherrythomas.com/">Sherry Thomas</a></li>
<li><a href="https://whatever.scalzi.com/">John Scalzi</a></li>
<li><a href="https://jillshalvis.com/">Jill Shalvis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.eloisajames.com/">Eloisa James</a></li>
<li><a href="http://tessadare.com/">Tessa Dare</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.suzanneenoch.com/">Suzanne Enoch</a></li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ngaio_Marsh">Ngaio Marsh</a> (finished all of the Inspector Alleyn books)</li>
<li><a href="https://nalinisingh.com/">Nalini Singh</a></li>
<li><a href="http://jaynefresinaromanceauthor.blogspot.com/">Jayne Fresina</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.lucyparkerfiction.com/">Lucy Parker</a></li>
<li>Made progress on the <a href="http://vorkosigan.wikia.com/wiki/Vorkosigan_Wiki">Vorkosiverse</a> by <a href="http://www.dendarii.com/">Lois McMaster Bujold</a>, which is my husband's favorite series. Ever. </li>
<li><a href="https://lisakleypas.com/">Lisa Kleypas</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.benaaronovitch.com/">Ben Aaronovitch</a></li>
<li>(Queen) <a href="http://www.sarahmaclean.net/">Sarah MacLean </a></li>
</ul>
Two male writers on the whole list; (well, Ilona Andrews is a husband and wife team, so 3). I guess I have favorites. But I am always interested in a male writer who can write women well.<br />
<br />
Many of the writers I follow on Twitter encouraged those of who identify as WASP's to read books by authors who aren't. I've read at least a dozen excellent books and am trying to keep diversifying my author choices. I also managed to start reading romances with characters who are on the autism spectrum. Since I live with autism daily, I avoided it for years, but I've been pleasantly surprised by the quality of writing by Talia Hibbert especially.<br />
<br />
3. I have never read the Bible all the way through before and am still working on that project. I'm using The Message edition at present and am currently in the midst of the Psalms. Of course, alongside is <a href="https://www.patheos.com/blogs/preventingrace/">Anne Kennedy'</a>s <a href="https://smile.amazon.com/Nailed-Sarcastic-Devotions-Worn-Out-People/dp/1937063453/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1547936845&sr=8-4&keywords=anne+kennedy">Nailed It</a> devotional as my companion. I expected to be able to speed through the Psalms but am finding them more challenging than expected. Somehow I quail at the thought of calling down God's power on my enemies, but I have no difficulty complaining to God about my problems. I expect reading through the prophets during the current political climate will be very interesting.<br />
<br />
4. I am continuing to learn how to adapt my life with my new limitations due to my chronic Epstein Barr. I do still have grumpy moments when I can't do anything but lie down on my bed, but audio books help. We have a wonderful library with access to books in paper, audio and ebook formats and I take advantage of it often. And our church helpfully posts Sunday morning messages on its website<br />
<br />
5. In March, I will take the children to San Diego to attend a final memorial for my grandmother. We have not been to CA since 2015 and so I have a niece, a nephew and a second cousin I've never met. Bring on the babies! Well, toddlers. The youngest is currently 15 months old.<br />
<br />
*******************Insert another 2 week break**************************<br />
<br />
Really, I just need to finish this blog post.<br />
<br />
6. I am looking forward to a time when every encounter with my twelve year old daughter isn't a fight or a negotiation to get her to do homework. We've had a couple of ugly weeks here. I know she's trying to find out who she is in the midst of her disabilities, but this is painful. Any prayers for her well being welcome.<br />
<br />
7. I'm actually feeling better this week, which probably means my naturopathic MD has found the right dose of LDI for me. It feels weird not to be exhausted every single moment of the day. But I'm sure I will adjust. Of course, I'm taking my daughter to see him this week. That will be interesting.<br />
<br />
And here's <a href="https://thisaintthelyceum.org/the-mess-of-the-last-decade/">Kelly</a>.Sarah Boyle Webberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02926451548743350125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5938622503026216375.post-84377840293473975872019-01-02T18:13:00.002-05:002019-01-02T18:13:28.711-05:00I Took A Shower Today<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<br />
Anne Kennedy, whose <a href="https://www.patheos.com/blogs/preventingrace/">blog</a> you should already be following, wrote <a href="https://www.patheos.com/blogs/preventingrace/2018/11/25/washing-your-face-wont-make-you-live-forever/">glancingly about some new self help book about washing your face</a>, and I've continued to think about her words in the weeks since she posted this. I don't wash my face every day and it started me wondering about why "self care" is so difficult for people with depression.<br />
<br />
Then I was reminded of one of my favorite passages from Kathleen Norris' <i><a href="https://smile.amazon.com/Quotidian-Mysteries-Laundry-Madeleva-Spirituality-ebook/dp/B0051GEH02/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1546468679&sr=8-1&keywords=quotidian+mysteries">The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and "Women's Work</a>:"</i><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Our culture's ideal self, especially the accomplished, professional self, rises above necessity, the humble, everyday, ordinary tasks that are best left to unskilled labor. The comfortable lies we tell ourselves regarding these "little things"--that they don't matter, and that daily personal and household chores are of no significance to us spiritually--are exposed as falsehoods when we consider that reluctance to care for the body is one of the first symptoms of extreme melancholia. Shampooing the hair, washing the body, brushing the teeth, drinking enough water, taking a daily vitamin, going for a walk, as simple as they seem, are acts of self-respect. They enhance one's ability to take pleasure in oneself and in the world. At its Greek rook the word <i>acedia</i> means "lack of care," and indifference to one's welfare can escalate to overt acts of self-destruction and even suicide. Care is not passive--the word derives from an Indo-European word meaning "to cry out," as in a lament. Care asserts that as difficult and painful as life can be, it is worth something to be in the present, alive, doing one's daily bit. It addresses and acts on the daily needs that acedia would have us suppress and deny. Caring is one response to the grief of the human condition. (pg. 40-1)</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
(P.S. She also reflects upon acedia at more length in her book <i><a href="https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/1594484384/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i2">Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life</a></i>.)</blockquote>
<br />
One of my biggest struggles, living with chronic Epstein Barr, is finding the energy for self-care. Showers take a huge amount of energy and have to be planned almost days in advance. And I have to be very careful about the temperature of the water in my shower; if it's too hot, it will take more than an hour for my body to cool off again and I'll feel exhausted afterwards. Winter actually makes showering easier instead of harder because it's already cold outside and my body has that external help.<br />
<br />
Then there are the days when acedia has me in its grip and I just don't care. I go to bed thinking, Yet another day I should have showered. This is why I attend a weekly Bible study at my church. I need reasons to get dressed and presentable at least one weekday morning. Well, I first started going when Alex was a toddler because they had free childcare, but that was 14 years ago. Now I go for me.<br />
<br />
So, today I managed a shower, clean clothes, a quick trip to the grocery store, and several more calls to the pharmacy to find out why they haven't filled Miranda's anti-anxiety prescription yet. Apparently, the insurance company is sitting on it because it's expensive. And they're gone for the day. I left a voicemail.<br />
<br />
It's like the company is schizophrenic: Miranda needs her meds to be in liquid form now because pills make her vomit and THIS IS BIG DEAL and takes weeks for approval. But Alex's testosterone shots? No big deal. Here you go. Isn't this a controlled substance? And you're just handing it to me for ten bucks? My insurance company shouldn't be my biggest cause of stress. Oh, wait, it's America in 2019. And I'm ranting. Time to stop.<br />
<br />
Please, subscribe to Anne's blog and read Kathleen Norris as soon as possible. If I like you, I might loan you my copy.Sarah Boyle Webberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02926451548743350125noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5938622503026216375.post-10421728988504229272018-12-31T16:12:00.000-05:002018-12-31T16:12:51.804-05:00Brain Fog<div style="text-align: center;">
Brain fog is a general term for dysfunctions in focus, learning, </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
and memory that can create brief episodes of confusion, disorientation </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
and frustration. Brain fog is a source of anxiety for many patients.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
--random Google quote; true, though</div>
<br />
<br />
2018 did not go as planned.<br />
<br />
I know, tell me something you don't already know.<br />
<br />
I had plans. Specifically, I had blog plans. I was all ready to retire this particular blog and start a new one (I hope I have it saved somewhere because I cannot even remember the title). I was all set to post photos and poetry (not my own) to bring our far away friends and family up to date (somehow, it's become too hard to write Christmas letters anymore--too many feelings, too little rest) and then 2018 came screaming into being as the year of the adolescent girl in the house who is terribly unstable.<br />
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Everyone who has experienced adolescence with autism has warned us that it's like life is turned up to 11. And they are right. And our poor girl got my genes which means puberty = instant clinical depression. Lifelong. Just a wee bit discouraging. So we spent the winter and spring trying to rebalance Miranda with meds and counseling and additional supports at school. And we made some headway. But then summer came and all the things that were fun last summer that we planned to do again, she hated. And then September came and we needed to readjust her meds again since she'd grown several inches and ran smack into two more medical crises. Which we are still trying to recover from. If I never have to take her to another doctor's appointment, it'll be too soon.<br />
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Our poor boy's body decided not to start adolescence on it's own, so we're using medication to jump start his system and consequently waiting for his next shoe to explode.<br />
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In June, I was diagnosed with chronic Epstein Barr, which means I tend to run a low grade fever almost all of the time and thus have limited energy and wear short sleeved shirts if the temperature is above 40 degrees F. I got a lot of reading done this year because I spent so much of it flat on my back.<br />
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So here I am, at the end of 2018, trying to scrape through the constant brain fog (an actual side effect from the anti-depressant that allows me get out of bed in the morning), wondering what was the year for?<br />
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<b>Persistence</b><br />
The famous Eugene Peterson quote, "A Long Obedience in the Same Direction."<br />
One of the advantages of having classified children with IEP's is that you work with teachers and case managers who are required to keep creating new goals for your children once they've achieved the previous ones. You keep moving forward, regardless of how many tries it takes to make that next step. You keep in touch with the teachers frequently so you're all steering in the same direction.<br />
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<b>Find Ways to Start Over</b><br />
I had a particularly bad day with Miranda recently. By noon, everything had gone wrong and she was sick, again, and then threw up the antibiotic. So, I took a tranq, took a nap, and started over at 4 pm. I have to keep remembering she is not the same as I am and doesn't do things my way. I can't force her to do much anymore, so my persuasive skills and patience have to be what I reach for first.<br />
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<b>Remember Significant Achievements</b><br />
Alex started the Work Study program at Archway in the fall of 2017. They have a successful program of training kids with his kinds of abilities to work in the outside world. We were enthusiastic; he was not. For more than 6 months, it was the worst part of his week and he resisted all attempts to make it anything but personal torture. But his teachers persisted, and it slowly got better. And then it got better at home. He can (almost) clean his room without assistance. He does the trash, the recycling, the mail without complaint. His sister whines for days about taking 5 minutes to empty the dishwasher while he just carries on and gets his stuff done.<br />
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<b>Say Goodbye to (Most) Chocolate</b><br />
I am a chocoholic. I started binging on chocolate candy when Miranda would spend so much time screaming and refusing to be comforted (years 2 and 3 were pretty painful). My body doesn't tolerate alcohol very well and my current anti-depressant hates it, so a glass of wine is a difficult thing for me to swing. So dark chocolate Reeses peanut butter cups and York peppermint patties became my best friends. But when I was diagnosed with Epstein Barr, I realized the large amount of refined sugar I was eating every day was not helping my immune system. So I went through a typical 30 day withdrawal period (seriously not fun) and survived it and feel better on the other side. The holidays are difficult, as they are for many of us, but I still feel better.<br />
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<u>Aside:</u> I have been complaining, in recent weeks, of the overwhelming amount of sweets that are everywhere at holiday parties and celebrations. And yet, with my parents' help, we gave out several dozen plates of fudge to all the teachers, therapists, case managers and bus drivers that my children have accumulated this year. Hypocrisy much? We give fudge because it's economical to do in large piles to the large numbers of people we want to thank. And it's a family Christmas thing. Sigh. Again the classic American problem where healthy food is expensive and refined sugar treats are cheap.<br />
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Looking forward<br />
I expect 2019 will be as complex medically as 2018 was. Thankfully, I have amassed a pile of good doctors and therapists to help us through. I am starting to rearrange my life to accommodate my decreased energy and am thankful for the many others who are picking up the slack. I am thankful for my church and the many ways I am encouraged by my involvement there. I look forward to seeing my extended family in San Diego in March as we celebrate the life of my paternal grandmother who passed earlier this month. And, if you stalk me on Goodreads, you know my TBR pile never gets smaller. Now if I can just find the time to go see <i>Aquaman</i>.<br />
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<br />Sarah Boyle Webberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02926451548743350125noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5938622503026216375.post-34059921372088300882017-12-29T15:07:00.001-05:002017-12-29T15:07:15.710-05:007 Final Takes for 2017<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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(Christmas picture of my family with my parents)</div>
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1. It may come as a surprise to some, but I will be retiring this blog in the New Year. Passing for Normal has served its purpose. If you read my posts in the spring, you watched me come to grips with the diagnoses of my children and my acceptance that their permanent inability to pass for normal will always cause me a portion of grief. But I've also come to accept that I will never pass for normal, so there we go. It's time to leave the past in the past and look forward. </div>
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(And since Anne Kennedy went from <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/preventingrace/undercurrent-of-hostility/">An Undercurrent of Hostility</a> to <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/preventingrace/">Preventing Grace</a>, I have a process to follow. But I don't think I can quite come up to her level of snark.)</div>
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2. Adolescence in children on the spectrum is much more exciting than that in neurotypical kids. Life with Miranda this year has run the gamut from fascinating because of the real live person she's turning into to hair-pulling frustration with her inability to get emotionally unstuck (love that <a href="https://childmind.org/guide/oppositional-defiant-disorder/what-is-it/">ODD</a>), with plenty of tears in between. She is growing and changing, which is good, but it's painful for all of us. But we do have support from friends and family and church and school and doctors and therapists, so we are constructing a new normal for her in 2018. She'll make it and will be stronger on the other side.</div>
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3. Then there are the kids on the spectrum whose adolescence is delayed. There's Alex, with his wonderful long hair (one year into working towards the goal of a man bun), but much shorter in stature than his younger sister and much more immature. We've been watching him carefully and will be consulting an endocrinologist in the new year about <a href="https://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/human-growth-hormone-hgh#1">HGH</a>. He's 14 years old now and his program at school has completely switched to a vocational pathway. <a href="http://www.archwayprograms.org/">Archway</a> has been so good for him these last 2 years and we trust in their process. </div>
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4. My parents had a fun year, flitting back and forth to CA to see the other grandkids (they are very happy to have 7) and then a long vacation/pilgrimage to Italy. Dad had his second knee replacement and mom had cataract surgery on both eyes and both are well at present. </div>
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Love those darlings. Hope to see them next year.</div>
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5. My honey changed jobs in January and while, for the first half of the year, it was an appreciated new challenge, since August it's been crazy and crazy-making. Too much work, too few staff. Still, the opportunity for him to work from home on a regular basis was good for all of us. We miss him when he's not home. </div>
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6. I only read about 150 books this year (I think last year it was closer to 220) but that was partly because I read <a href="http://nalinisingh.com/">Nalini Singh</a>'s Psy-Changeling series 2-3 times over the summer and I don't count rereads. Fun books, but incredibly impressive world building. Other new authors I loved on first sight: Mariana Zapata, Ernest Cline, Ben Aaronovitch, and Loretta Chase. Plenty of old favorites in my reading pile; stalk me on <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/">Goodreads</a> if you want details. </div>
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7. I didn't see enough movies this year, but I never do. Of course we saw the necessities (<i>Jedi, Ragnarok, Guardians 2, Wonder Woman, Dunkirk, Blade Runner 2049, Kong, F8te of the Furious,</i> and <i>Logan</i>). I still want to see <i>Justice League, Jumanji, Darkest Hour, Logan Lucky, Baby Driver, Atomic Blonde, Valerian, Get Out, Molly's Game, Spider-Man, Cars 3, </i>and <i>King Arthur</i>. Eventually. </div>
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And that's the year.</div>
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Read <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/preventingrace/2017/12/29/7-pretty-good-things-2017/">Anne's list</a>; she's always good. And here's <a href="http://thisaintthelyceum.org/sqt-merry-christmas-im-a-unicorn/">Kelly</a>. </div>
Sarah Boyle Webberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02926451548743350125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5938622503026216375.post-12405824434284951512017-08-22T16:35:00.001-04:002017-08-22T16:35:32.373-04:00Vision, or Lack Thereof, Otherwise Known as Wandering in the Desert<br />
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When I was a child, when Keith Green's "So You Wanna Go Back to Egypt" (1980) was familiar background music, I did not understand why the Israelites of Numbers 13-14 refused God's direction to leave the desert and move into the Promised Land. They saw that Canaan was full of Canaanites who would have to be moved out by force, and they were afraid.<br />
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The child I was who was reading a children's Bible full of exciting stories remembered the miracles of Exodus only a few pages previous and was puzzled and scornful of a people who forgot God's faithfulness so quickly. I must have thought, <i>God said he would help you. Why won't you move?</i><br />
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Ah, the innocence and inexperience of youth. When everything seems easy, your parents know everything, and every decision is yes or no. I miss the certainty I had as a child. It helped that I rarely had to make my own decisions about the future; I just followed my parents and trusted they would take care of me. And they did. They had a Vision of where we were going and I was happy to tag along, even though, at the time, I was highly suspicious of the two younger brothers they provided me with for the journey.<br />
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My pastor at <a href="http://www.meethope.org/">Hope Church</a> spoke eloquently about Vision last Sunday (you can hear the message <a href="http://www.meethope.org/podcast-vision/">here</a>). He defined Vision as "a picture of a future possibility that can only be realized through effort and determination, a blueprint and fuel for decision making." And as he continued to talk about what Vision is and how it influences your life, I realized, sadly, that I don't have a Vision for my life right now. All I have is the day to day existence of survival. And I feel that lack of Vision keenly.<br />
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Friday marks the one year anniversary of the death of my father-in-law. And I thought, after all these months, that I was done with my grief. (I associate this Jars of Clay song with grief since I first heard it at my cousin's funeral in 2003.) I guess I thought a year was enough time to be reconciled to the loss of a parent, but it's still there.<br />
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I am reminded of my favorite quote from <i>Everwood</i>, from S02E01:<br />
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"After my mom died, everybody told me I was going to be okay, that it would take a little time, but I'd heal. That didn't ever happen, not really. What you're feeling right now, ... it doesn't ever really go away, not completely. It's not like you're going to go back to being the person you were before they died. That person's gone. It's more like . . . something inside your body breaks and your body finds a way to compensate for it. Like if you busted your right hand, you figure out how to use the left one. And, sure, you might resist for a while 'cause you get pissed off that you have to learn all this stuff again that nobody else does. Eventually, your body takes over for you and figures it out because if it was up to you, you'd just . . . look at your busted hand forever and try to figure out what it was like before."<br />
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I think grief has cooperated with my constant depression to act as a blindfold that prevents me from seeing an adequate, supernatural Vision. I have been able, in this past year, to walk in the familiar footsteps. I'm still the mom of two special needs kids, the household manager, my husband's lover and confidant. I participate in the church functions already on the calendar, see my doctor, see my shrink. But I always <i>feel </i>weighed down. All those things that previously energized me--prayer ministry, youth ministry, Bible study--I still do, but automatically. The good news is that when you invite the Holy Spirit into your activities, he still shows up, even if only half of you is there. But you remember how it felt before, when your heart was lightened by the process of sharing God's grace with others. And the absence echoes all around you.<br />
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Perhaps I am still trying to reach backwards, to the child who saw the world as black and white and found God's commandments easy to follow (or thought she did). Or to the 21 year old bride who was delighted by the kindness of her new father-in-law. Or even to five years ago when death didn't hang over my husband's family. I had a different Vision then. The way through seemed clear. I could see the Vision. But then life shifted and I lost my sight.<br />
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But, here, now, as August is falling away and September, the time of new beginnings, is nearly here, I can almost feel the hope of change. The boy will start 8th grade, happy in his school and friends. The girl will start fifth in a new school but with old friends and the promise of new ones. The husband now understands the new job he took in January and will have to decide how to fit the rest of life around it. And I, I can ask for a new Vision. A new pathway. A new hope for this future that is now, here, in my 42nd year. Altered by grief but refusing to let sorrow have the last word. I'm tired of wandering around in the desert. I want to walk in the Promised Land.<br />
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Sarah Boyle Webberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02926451548743350125noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5938622503026216375.post-23578242180026191752017-06-11T17:11:00.000-04:002017-06-11T17:11:26.122-04:007 Reasons Why I Haven't Been Blogging<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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So the last two weeks have been rather quiet around here, for a number of reasons. Let me innumerate them:<br />
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1. Both kids got the stomach flu, but not at the same time. Miranda had it last week and Alex had it this week. So by the time I got her all cleaned up and healthy, I had a headache for two days and then he got sick. However, I am happy to say he does vomit in the toilet now. Big improvement. She was not to skilled. She has a loft bed so when she got sick, she just leaned over and covered the floor, and then went back to sleep. Not a drop on her. I, however, discovered that gravity is not your friend when cleaning up slop. It creates a rather impressive splatter pattern.<br />
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2. My doctor changed my anti-depressant cocktail. I've been having pretty serious nausea from my meds and we tried one variation last month that didn't improve matters, so last week we tried something else. If you've taken SSRI's, you know that you should pretty much give up on a regular sleep schedule for at least two weeks. Caffeine and naps help, a little. You mostly just wait it out.<br />
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3. Since I've been mostly brainless for two weeks with sick kids and an unsteady neurological system, I've read 11 books, mostly by Nalini Singh. I am definitely enjoying her <a href="http://nalinisingh.com/books/psychangeling-series/">Psy-Changeling</a> series, which is part of the para-normal romance genre. Her world building skills are excellent and I like most of her main characters. A couple of them haven't worked as well, but no one can write the perfect novel, year after year after year. I'm now in the middle of book 12.<br />
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4. End of the school year! Alex's last day is this Wednesday and Miranda has 7 more school days. I did manage to get Alex's teacher gifts delivered last Friday (more fudge, like at Christmas, because it's just easier to do in bulk; Alex's "teachers" number 12 people). I'm not sure I'll have enough fudge in this batch to finish up Miranda's people because she is leaving behind her elementary school and moving on to the Intermediate School next year so I might need to make more this week for extra people we don't usually honor.<br />
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5. My parents are on pilgrimage in Italy. I'm so glad they are able to take this trip but it makes life a little more complicated here at home. Thankfully, Mimi the Great is still here and one of our favorite babysitters is back from college for the summer.<br />
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6. My aunt and uncle from San Diego were here visiting this week and we were able to share two evenings with them. We haven't been able to travel to see them recently so it was nice to catch up.<br />
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7. The words just aren't flowing as easily as before. I wrote the first ten blog posts in minutes with very little revising and so I've probably picked all the easy topics and it's going to get a little more challenging moving forward. Or I have lots of memory gaps; 2007 is pretty hazy for me. But I hope to get back to it when things slow down again around here. In a week or so.<br />
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Here's <a href="http://thisaintthelyceum.org/sqt-good-news-good-friends-and-a-not-so-good-mom/">Kelly</a>.Sarah Boyle Webberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02926451548743350125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5938622503026216375.post-16431974000825294742017-05-28T17:08:00.000-04:002017-05-28T17:08:03.360-04:00An Exquisite Kind of Grief, or I Hate Change, Part 13<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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My mother-in-law's favorite cartoonist is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Booth_(cartoonist)">George Booth</a>; <a href="http://eu.art.com/products/p15063039380-sa-i6839001/george-booth-the-trustees-feel-the-reverend-dr-clapsattle-does-not-harmonize-with-the-new-yorker-cartoon.htm">this cartoon</a> is her favorite, ever. I read <i>The New Yorker </i>for many years (I gave it up about 6 years ago because it was always so damn depressing) so I was familiar with his work, but I don't think I really appreciated his perspective when I was younger. When you are young and fresh and just out of school and starting your marriage, you imagine that someday you will reach this level of calm or balance or happiness or SOMETHING, and life will be ideal. But when you're older (41 and counting), you realize life is never going to reach this pinnacle of perfection and stay that way permanently. It's going to be a series of compromises and adjustments, especially when you don't get the kids you expected. George Booth specializes in drawings of real people (who may or may not have a lot of cats), and I appreciate him more now than when I was younger and still deluded about what it means to be an adult.<br />
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So, last week was Spring Music Concerts for both children. <b>Shout out to my parents</b> who never missed a one, which with 3 very musical kids, meant for a lot of really boring and painful concerts with a few good ones sprinkled in there at the end. Miranda had her fourth grade school choir concert, which was lovely, but we had to sit through the beginning violinists first. It was only fair; last year she was one of those beginning violinists. That was Monday night.<br />
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On Wednesday and Thursday mornings, Archway Lower School had it's spring musical show. They run it two days in a row to help out the parents with difficult schedules and, probably, to give the kids a chance at a do-over. I went Thursday morning because I didn't want to miss my Bible study on Wednesday. I was hoping Marshall could come too, but Alex nixed that. He only wanted me to be there. (Alex has been having some, "I don't like you, I only want Mom" issues for the last year. Some of it was probably because Marshall was gone so much last year--his father was dying; that was the way it was--but there's also some teenager obnoxiousness mixed in there. When I came home from the ladies retreat last Sunday, he was more upset with me than he's been in a long time.) Anyway, on Thursday morning, I made the 40 minute drive to Atco (it's almost 18 miles, door to door) and tried to "gird my loins" for the performance.<br />
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This is not like sitting in a room of 25 neurotypical third and fourth graders scraping their way through <i>Frere Jacques</i> on violin. That is a painful experience because they are beginners and are really still young children. They are trying something extraordinarily difficult and still only barely managing to produce notes. But if they practice a reasonable amount, they have the opportunity to be much better.<br />
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Concerts at Archway are painful to watch and listen to because they reveal just how disabled these students are. There are several classes of higher functioning kids where they do produce something resembling music, but that is the exception. The music teacher at Archway is excellent, truly. Each classroom is responsible for performing their own song and then there are a couple of other special solos or trios or whatever. This means that <b>everyone participates. Everyone. </b><br />
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Alex played drums for his class song, which was "Man in the Mirror." Three of his classmates took turns singing the chorus and a few verses. It was actually pretty good. And then Alex did a trio with his best bud and another friend, some Dvorak (currently, his favorite composer, after John Williams' <i>Star Wars</i> soundtracks, of course). Alex and best bud played piano and their other friend accompanied them on string bass.<br />
<br />
Now, since Alex is mine, I happen to know this happened because of 3 months of practice in private music lessons on Saturdays. 3 months worth. Are we back to <a href="http://www.centerforautism.com/aba-therapy.aspx">ABA</a> territory? Oh, yeah. And Alex has actual musical gifts, including perfect pitch. But the autism "gets in the way."<br />
<br />
I actually didn't find this year's concert as emotionally crushing as last year's, which means my perspective is improving. For all of these students, this is really hard work. They work for months on this one piece of music, just for these performances. And, honestly, I clap enthusiastically for each and every one of them. One of my favorites this year was a student who bounced on a small trampoline while he played his bells with his class. You just do what works.<br />
<br />
But there is still that exquisite kind of grief that you feel when you acknowledge the disabilities of these students. When you hear the other parents weeping because of what their child has achieved, which <b>should</b> be applauded, even when you know what is lacking. You can forbid everyone else in the world to compare your child to neurotypical children, but you can't help but do it yourself. For all that Alex can and will accomplish, it will always be "classified," that is, conditional to his diagnoses.<br />
<br />
There are plenty of people who will be outraged that I consider people on the spectrum "disabled." Yes, Alex's brain is wired differently than most. Yes, there are plenty of ways in which he "passes for normal." But this is a kid who is so obsessed with the end of <i>Return of the Jedi</i> that he can narrate it to you, with all of the correct drama and inflection, timed perfectly to the soundtrack. Because he does this at least four times a day. And he is so opposed to trying new things, even new media (<i>Episode 7</i> and <i>Rogue One</i> are so not acceptable, even though he can tell you in detail how incensed he was at the death of Han Solo), that he just cycles back through the old ones, again and again. I was not happy to see <i>Max & Ruby</i> come back into rotation this week; I was tired of it 6 years ago, although I do kinda miss <a href="http://maxandruby.wikia.com/wiki/Screaming_Green_Alien_Gorilla">Screaming Green Alien Gorilla</a>. But only slightly.<br />
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Somehow there has to be an emotional balance between accepting and loving the kid that you have and mourning the loss of what he could have been as a neurotypical kid. But I haven't found it yet.Sarah Boyle Webberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02926451548743350125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5938622503026216375.post-64663247593927914662017-05-27T16:20:00.000-04:002017-05-27T16:20:32.885-04:00But I Don't Want All the Feels, or I Hate Change, Part 12<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6GEqCVG1NQD9N2u31XEQ0lRBIy37sSYpo0HqF06NHvkQ3ZsGqqCkNzPhSbAReyvQN0wymaKYvv722x6hNl4oVV0OphEKn6hIS7hNmyaWQyV0scYlZXA1aCwlV187qfGI34XWwYlZkKNjp/s1600/duty_calls.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="330" data-original-width="300" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6GEqCVG1NQD9N2u31XEQ0lRBIy37sSYpo0HqF06NHvkQ3ZsGqqCkNzPhSbAReyvQN0wymaKYvv722x6hNl4oVV0OphEKn6hIS7hNmyaWQyV0scYlZXA1aCwlV187qfGI34XWwYlZkKNjp/s320/duty_calls.png" width="290" /></a></div>
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If you don't read <a href="https://xkcd.com/">XKCD</a>, you should. But this one is still my favorite. And it describes perfectly how I feel right now.<br />
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[Sidebar, if you want a great catalogue of wrongs, you should read Anne Kennedy's blog, <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/preventingrace/">Preventing Grace</a>. She keeps a better tally than I ever could and writes with a lot more polish. <a href="https://smile.amazon.com/Nailed-Sarcastic-Devotions-Worn-Out-People/dp/1937063453/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1495912335&sr=8-1&keywords=nailed+it">She even has a book!</a>]<br />
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But I digress.<br />
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One of the results of reexamining traumas of the past, of unwrapping all the crusty bandages I've wrapped around my heart, is that my emotions are rather more, well, present. And I have spent the last 24 hours irritated with everything. Lots of someones on the Internet are wrong, but so is everyone else, including me.<br />
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I read this cartoon about <a href="http://www.workingmother.com/this-comic-perfectly-explains-mental-load-working-mothers-bear">women shouldering more of the burdens at home </a>and even though it barely applies to me (dear husband is actually very helpful in the home, in addition to working a full time job in order to provide our daily bread), I was irritated. I spent most of the last week getting ready for the people who clean my house to come yesterday afternoon (yes, it really does take us that long to pick up our crap!) and when they were done, it was wonderful for about 5 minutes. Because then I remembered all the piles of stuff that I had just stacked higher instead of sorting them and throwing away half of it, because I was in a hurry to clear all the flat surfaces for cleaning. Half of the clothes in my closet don't fit me. I'm sure I have at least a dozen pairs of shoes and I only wear 4. What is wrong with me? Why can't I just let go of the stuff?<br />
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I have no difficulty sorting through my children's possessions. Books are recycled (if they got partially et), given to cousins or donated to the library. Alex shreds most his clothes before he grows out of them, so I rarely have problems there. Miranda's clothes go to her much smaller cousin in hopes that someday, she can wear them. Stuffed animals go in the trash when we're done with them. We had bed bugs once; once paranoid, always paranoid. Miranda, our budding artist, is having a problem with keeping every scrap of paper she ever drew a stick figure on but even then, paper doesn't take up that much space. Alex has two bins of birds. Here is a small sample.<br />
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But I have my childhood stamp collection in a bag in our bedroom, where it's been for nearly 18 months, because I want to give it to someone who'll use it instead of just throwing that part of my childhood away. I have all my favorite books from childhood on one shelf of the magnificent bookcase dear husband built me several years ago (Laura Ingalls Wilder, Janette Oke and L.M. Montgomery) that my children ARE NEVER GOING TO READ. And then there's all the clothes.<br />
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It is a truth universally acknowledged that parenting causes weight gain. I was one of the fortunate few who didn't keep my pregnancy weight more than a couple of weeks post delivery. I am, however, one of the many who "eats my feelings," usually in chocolate, from the stress my children cause. And the more stress you add, the less likely you are to take the time to eat healthier foods and exercise.<br />
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So I weigh more than I used to and most of my clothes don't fit. But, like almost every woman I know, I haven't given up the dream of someday weighing less and wearing those clothes again. At what point do I give this up? Should I just give away the size 12's and keep everything else. (Actually, I think I did do that last year.) I could get rid of some of the shoes I haven't worn in a dozen years and then I might be able to actually see the floor of the closet. But is that just a token response to a larger problem. And I am the larger problem.<br />
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When I started blogging again almost two weeks ago, words flowed easily and I thought this process had a foreseeable end. Now, the more that I look into the abyss, the deeper it gets. I raged at my father in law for years for his hoarding, but here I am, doing the same thing. Grasping my stuff in order to hold on to my past. I hate change.Sarah Boyle Webberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02926451548743350125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5938622503026216375.post-64631705559183055962017-05-26T12:23:00.001-04:002017-05-26T12:23:43.850-04:007 Reasons You May Have Brain Fog, or I Hate Change, Part 11<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It's cleaning day but I have at least 3 hours yet until the cleaners arrive and I'd rather blog than do the dishes, again. (I don't know why the sink keeps filling up with dirty dishes. Do I really have to keep feeding them?) I'm still doing laundry. That counts, right?<br />
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So, brain fog. What is it? According to the Internet, it's a kind of mental fatigue that makes you absentminded. You lose things, you can't finish your sentences, and you never feel completely awake. I'm pretty sure I've had brain fog since adolescence. Not pretty.<br />
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Okay, here are a few reasons <a href="http://www.nutrex-hawaii.com/common-brain-fogfatigue-causes">cited here</a>:<br />
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1. <u>Lack of sleep</u>. I remember when I graduated from college and got a "real" job (after getting married a week after graduation which caused 6 months of insomnia; 3 months before and 3 after. I don't recommend this cramming together of momentous occasions to anyone.) Once I started working my first "adult" job, I was getting less sleep than when I was in college. This made no sense to me whatsoever. Adulting sucks.<br />
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Then, when Alex came along, I quit my "real" job and started parenting a newborn. Yeah, you don't get a lot of contiguous sleep then, either. And by the time he was reliably sleeping through the night, I had another one coming. This mom thing is crazy.<br />
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By the time Miranda was reliably sleeping through the night (and this took a lot longer; maybe 4-5 years old), I had trained my body to sleep lightly enough that I would hear a crying child and run off and take care of them. I'm not sure this ever wears off. I take medication to help me get to sleep now.<br />
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We used to joke for years that we experienced "phantom baby syndrome." We were sure something was wrong with one of the children so we'd creep into their rooms to check on them, but they were fast asleep.<br />
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Nowadays, my alarm goes off at 6:10 to get Alex on the bus at 7:10 and it is a rare night that I am in bed and falling asleep by ten, so I'm probably not getting enough sleep. Still.<br />
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2. <u>Neurological Disorders</u>. Depression isn't mentioned in their list but it does fall in this category. I have a diagnosis of chronic depression and not just that, medication-resistant depression. I'm so special, and not just that, I'm a redhead. There is a <a href="http://www.sheknows.com/health-and-wellness/articles/1126943/health-issues-in-redheads">genetic variant</a> that comes with the hair that causes all kinds of fun things, and not just a propensity for melanoma. In my life, this means I need three times as much novacaine at the dentist as the average person and I get all the fun, rare and very strange side effects from most medications.<br />
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My husband doesn't not remember these days fondly: I was prescribed a sleep medication between pregnancies that, if I forgot to take some Benadryl with it, would cause me to wake up screaming. I was convinced a spider was coming down from the ceiling right over my head. It was the same dream, every time, and it didn't matter where I was sleeping (in CA or NJ); it would cause me to wake up screaming. I am extremely arachnophobic. But this was a new one for my doctor.<br />
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Back to depression. I've pretty much accepted that I'm always going to have some level of brain fog due to my faulty brain chemistry. It doesn't make me happy; it's just the way things are. And that leads directly to...<br />
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3. <u>Medication</u>. I remember about 18 months ago my doctor was changing my antidepressant regimine and we tried something new. It didn't do squat for my depression but for the first time in several years, I could actually finish my sentences! It was wonderful, but it only lasted a month. This medication wasn't working in any other sense, so we tried another medication and while this one helps alleviate my depression, it sent me right back into brain fog. I miss being able to finish my sentences.<br />
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4. <u>Stress</u>. Yeah, maybe I've got a little stress in my life. I'm working my way through that at present. (See parts 1-10, below.)<br />
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5. <u>Menopause</u>. I'm not there yet but it is coming. I have a hard time imagining the brain fog worsening. That could be bad.<br />
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6. <u>Nutritional Deficiencies</u>. I have been struggling with recurrent nausea since December. It may be caused by my primary antidepressant, but in hopes that it wasn't, I started throwing out everything else, sequentially, to try to find the cause. I changed everything I ate in the morning (which, as a person who hates change, was almost traumatic. I like to be in my groove, which means I tend to eat the same thing for breakfast for years at a time. It was ugly, and I was still nauseous.) I changed the time of day I took my medication. I started taking one antidepressant with breakfast and the other before bed (in this house, we all have medical cocktails; it's just the way it is.) No improvement. So last month, my doctor added Zofran, which solved the nausea problem, but do I really want to take it forever? Every couple of days, I try to go without it and the results aren't pretty. Dang it.<br />
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But this also means I haven't been taking my vitamins since I tossed them in December, trying to find a better solution for my stomach. I really need to get back to them.<br />
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I was hoping as my stress decreased, which it really has in the last year, my nausea would follow suit. No such luck yet. This is annoying. But as we have come to realize, stress can reprogram your body on a biological level; the way back is not always possible or even if it is, it's not easy. So annoying.<br />
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7. <u>Bad diet</u>. I am an indifferent cook. I was getting along okay until last summer, when I just gave up. My father-in-law was dying. My body's hormones got entirely out of whack which meant my body wouldn't stop bleeding so then my gynecologist gave me all kinds of progesterone which made me sicker but stopped the bleeding. Finally, now, almost a year later, my system is back to normal. But that's a long time to be out of the habit of cooking real meals for dinner. And it doesn't help to have one child who only eats 9 things (white tortilla chips, chicken corn taquitos from Whole Foods, turkey bacon, buttered toast, Libby's corned beef hash, motzarella cheese sticks, Wheat Thins brand crackers, Honey Nut Cheerios, and McDonald's French Fries. That's it; that's the whole list. Wait, I forgot the candy: Hot Tamales) so he has to have a meal cooked for him and my daughter is slightly better, and will share about 5 of the meals we eat, so half the time I have to cook something separate for her. Many nights, after that, I'm done. I have instant peach oatmeal and some sort of breakfast meat. My poor husband has become very fond of soups, so I keep a stash of them in the pantry.<br />
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So lots of fresh fruit and veges? Not really. Non-processed dinner foods? Not a lot of them. Possibilities for change? Maybe. I'd love to go back to cobb salads for dinner but they stopped making my favorite salad dressing. I really hate change.<br />
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Here's <a href="http://thisaintthelyceum.org/seven-ways-to-observe-memorial-day-as-a-catholic/">Kelly</a>.Sarah Boyle Webberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02926451548743350125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5938622503026216375.post-13597349068074285812017-05-24T15:03:00.000-04:002017-05-24T15:03:03.203-04:00Bleeding Heart ______, or I Hate Change, Part 10<div style="text-align: center;">
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you;</div>
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I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.</div>
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Ezekiel 36:26 (NIV)</div>
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[Sidebar: No, you haven't missed anything. I haven't updated this blog since Saturday night. Read a few books. Caught up on Twitter. Watched a bunch of Honest Trailers (see YouTube.) But the drive was gone. I was waiting for something to come to me, but I had nothing. Well, not exactly. I had the title and the verse for this post, but I didn't want to write it. I figured that if I waited long enough, something else would come to me. Nope. Nada. So, after 4 days of lollygagging, here is my attempt.]<br />
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We often use the term "bleeding heart ______" in a derogatory fashion. Bleeding heart liberal. Bleeding heart activist. Idiotic bleeding heart. It signifies someone, of any political persuasion, who expresses excessive emotion towards the plight of someone else. But in my first post last Monday, I described my condition as someone whose heart was still wounded, still actively bleeding from the life changing event that was Alex's diagnosis of ASD. But what does that mean?<br />
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Medically speaking, when your heart is bleeding, you find some heart surgeons and they stitch your heart right back up again. It may not work as well as before and your recovery time is probably lengthy, but it is often survivable. But we use the word "heart" to describe both the organ in our body responsible for pumping blood but also, metaphysically, as the seat of our emotions. And just as our physical heart may be wounded and require healing, so can our emotional heart.<br />
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I think what happened in 2006 was that I didn't have the time or energy to seek healing for my broken heart. We had to get Alex through the doctor appointments and behavioral evaluations and then Early Intervention and then preschool, all the while, Miranda had to finish growing inside of me. If I didn't have the energy to pray, I certainly didn't have the energy to heal.<br />
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The problem was, when we survived 2006 (we had buttons made and everything, "I Survived 2006"), 2007 wasn't that much easier, so the bandage that I'd wrapped around my emotional heart to stop the bleeding got thicker and thicker and, as time continued to pass, turned into a hard crust. I was under the delusion that if my heart was "hard" enough, it would protect me from future damage. It should have been easier when, in the spring of 2008, Miranda was also diagnosed with ASD. But it was still devastating. Familiar, but just as painful.<br />
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The new reality did nothing to change my behavior. I threw myself, once again, into Early Intervention, working with new therapists but the same case manager. And even though Miranda's speech started improving at a rapid rate, her behaviors got worse. I don't have a lot of good memories of the year she was 2. What I do remember is wrapping her in her blankets while she screamed and thrashed, and sitting with my legs over her to keep her from hurting either of us. It seemed to last for hours, but was rarely longer than 30 minutes. She would wear herself out and recover and then I would go get a handful of York Peppermint Patties, and, as my friend Robin says, "eat" my feelings. You would not be surprised that she was eventually diagnosed with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppositional_defiant_disorder">ODD</a> as well, but not until first or second grade.<br />
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[Sidebar: Both of my children have the diagnoses of ASD, AD/HD, and ODD. It is not unusual to find these syndromes as a part of a package deal; it's called comorbidity. But it is helpful medically to separate them out because treatment options are different for each diagnosis, and the school district treats them separately when allocating resources in your IEP. Also, the severity can fluctuate. Alex's AD/HD often gets in his way of being able to participate in therapy for his ASD. Miranda's ODD can block her classroom participation completely; she just gets stuck and often cannot reset without a change of scene. When your doctors and teachers know all of this, it really helps them to help you move forward.]<br />
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So, here I am, with a heart hardened by years worth of bandages. I had intended those bandages to protect my heart until it could heal on its own (didn't happen; not impossible, but didn't happen) or to prevent further damage (which also didn't happen). In the end, what I ended up was a heart hard enough to prevent healing but soft enough to keep bleeding. Lose-lose.<br />
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As I was writing this, I was reminded of a passage in Hebrews:<br />
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So, as the Holy Spirit says:</div>
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"Today, if you hear his voice,</div>
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do not harden your hearts</div>
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as you did in the rebellion,</div>
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during the time of testing in the wilderness,</div>
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where your ancestors tested and tried me,</div>
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though for forty years they saw what I did.</div>
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That is why I was angry with that generation;</div>
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I said, 'Their hearts are always going astray,</div>
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and they have not known my ways.'</div>
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So I declared on oath in my anger,</div>
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'They shall never enter rest.'"</div>
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See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away </div>
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from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called "Today," so that none</div>
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of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness. We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we </div>
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hold our original conviction firmly to the very end. As has just been said:</div>
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<br /></div>
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"Today, if you hear his voice,</div>
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do not harden your hearts</div>
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as you did in the rebellion." Hebrews 3: 7-15 (NIV)</div>
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Pretty hard stuff. Pretty serious words. A hardened heart not only damages you, it separates you from Christ and thus leads you into sin, and from there, it damages the community around you. It starts as a quick fix and then becomes a habit which leads to separation from God. This is a problem because only God can heal a damaged heart.<br />
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Go back to the top and read the verse from Ezekiel again; a new heart and a new spirit go together. When the Holy Spirit is within me, my heart is renewed, old wounds are healed, and I live in hope again.<br />
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So, in the end, my goal in writing these blog posts is "bleeding heart <u>healed</u>." Lord, may it be so.<br />
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<br />Sarah Boyle Webberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02926451548743350125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5938622503026216375.post-78383124418535383922017-05-20T22:47:00.000-04:002017-05-20T22:47:06.109-04:00Your Mother Is Always Right, or I Hate Change, Part 9<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
I am still on retreat with some of the ladies from my church, sharing a room with my mom and enjoying the time with her. And yes, I did just tell her the title of the blog post I was going back to our room to write and she had a good laugh. She asked if I meant her, as in my mother, or in general, everyone's mother, and I mean both. Let me explain.<br />
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As a part of our retreat, my mother set up a room where we could worship God through exploring our creativity. One activity was using clay to make holding crosses, which is just an object roughly shaped like a cross that fits nicely in your hand. I wasn't so keen on the activity when she mentioned it to me a few weeks ago, mostly because I'm not really a gifted crafter. I can do cross stitch and <a href="https://webwrench.smugmug.com/Art/Sarahs-Completed-Crossstitch/i-6tXJK9m">do it well</a>, but that's a very straightforward project that requires little imagination and has lots of very specific directions. I like structure. I like directions. This was not one of those kinds of projects.<br />
<br />
But I'm in the room with 19 other people and it would be impolite if I didn't participate, so I start working the clay and following her directions. (If you want to know more about our history with <a href="https://www.sculpey.com/super-sculpey/6-super-sculpey">Super Sculpey</a> and its adherents, go talk to her. It's a fun story with really cool handouts.) Yesterday, when I had "helped" her set up the room, I picked out a shell from my childhood (we still love you, <a href="http://www.campusbythesea.org/">CBS</a>!) to use in my own cross. And today I picked a dark blue to work into the beige and left it in streaks instead of mixing it all the way in. You can see in the picture above that it's a decent effort. But what I didn't expect was that after it's trip through the oven, how comfortable and comforting it feels in my hand. I don't think I put it down for two hours this afternoon, when we were laughing and sharing stories with several ladies in the craft room.<br />
<br />
You see, my mother was right. It was a good activity to do together, to allow ourselves to go in different creative directions (I will try to get a picture of the cross made by my friend Ally; it's beautiful), and I have something I really love to take home with me.<br />
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Where am I going with this? For a moment, let's go back to 2006 and Alex working with Melissa in Early Intervention. One of my biggest questions for her was whether or not the basic rules of politeness apply to special needs kids. Should I expect Alex to say please and thank you, hello and good-bye, and not make excuses for his bad behavior? Not surprisingly, she said yes. But, she did tell me, it's going to be a lot of work to get there.<br />
<br />
If you're not a special needs parent, you probably don't know what ABA therapy is. Take a moment and <a href="http://www.centerforautism.com/aba-therapy.aspx">glance here</a> and then come back. For the rest of us, we know more than we every really wanted to. In brief, it means breaking tasks down into small pieces that a developmentally disabled child can better understand, and then repeating all the steps 3 million times (<i>slight</i> exaggeration) until your child has grasped the task.<br />
<br />
Most parents understand that in order to teach their children new things, they will need to demonstrate and practice more than once for the child to learn and be able to replicate the task. I remember hearing one of the many therapists tell me that a neurotypical child will need 5-15 repetitions and a child will autism will need upwards of 100. Or more. It's a little daunting, let me tell you.<br />
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It isn't true of everything. Alex taught himself to read by age 4 and there are some things that we only show Miranda once (like where I hide the chocolate) that she picks up right away. My mother-in-law joked that we should never let her watch someone hot wire a car or we'd be in real trouble.<br />
<br />
In true ABA fashion, let's break down a task:<br />
"Alex, hang up your coat."<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Take off the coat.</li>
<li>Hold the coat in one hand.</li>
<li>Find a free hanger in the coat closet.</li>
<li>Grab the free hanger in the closet.</li>
<li>Hold it by the top.</li>
<li>Slide one sleeve onto the hanger. </li>
<li>Wrap the coat around and slip the other sleeve onto the hanger.</li>
<li>While holding the hanger with one hand, make room for the coat in the crowded coat closet.</li>
<li>Hang up the coat in the space you just made. </li>
</ul>
Done. Now, do this for everything in your life. Getting dressed, brushing your teeth, taking a shower (this is still problematic and sometimes I have to come back and review the steps with him again to keep him from washing his hair with Miranda's conditioner). And that's just the easy stuff. Let's not think about potty training; we can revisit that later. Maybe.<br /><br />
<br />
Now consider how much more complicated social interactions are.<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>"Alex, don't take the toy from your cousin. Say, 'May I play with the train please?'"</li>
<li>"Alex, don't interrupt when we are talking, Say, 'Excuse me please, Mom.'"</li>
<li>"Alex, don't scream at your sister. If she is bothering you, please tell me, 'Mom, Miranda is bothering me.'"</li>
<li>"Alex, just because your classmate says he hates <i>Star Wars</i> doesn't mean you can hit him. Not everyone has to like it."</li>
</ul>
<br />
It is never ending; some of these conversations I had with him just last week.<br />
<br />
Still, my mother was right when she taught me the rules of basic politeness and good conduct, to treat other people with respect, to love my neighbor like I loved myself. And Alex does need to learn all these things as well. His diagnoses do not excuse him from bad or disrespectful behavior. They might explain it but they never excuse it. When he poured all of Miranda's toothpaste down the toilet last week, he went to the store with me to buy her more and paid for it out of his own meager stash of coins.<br />
<br />
We are still, 11 years later, a work in progress. I know, I know, everyone is a work in progress. Whatever. But Alex's road, and ours along with him, is a lot longer and harder. With a lot more of life stuck on repeat.Sarah Boyle Webberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02926451548743350125noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5938622503026216375.post-42460588986135431502017-05-19T22:11:00.001-04:002017-05-19T22:11:18.247-04:00Did You Know That I Am An Introvert? Or, I Hate Change, Part 8<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
My friend Jen introduced me to <a href="https://smile.amazon.com/Introvert-Doodles-Illustrated-Extrovert-World/dp/1507200013/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1495242824&sr=8-1&keywords=introvert+doodles"><i>Introvert Doodles</i>.</a> I think I need my own copy of this book.<br />
<br />
So, on Monday (4 days ago) I started writing my story, my real story for the first time since 2006. It's not like I haven't spoken anything true about my life in the last 11 years, but I was mostly telling people what was happening instead of reflecting about what it meant or how I felt. Or how the experience had <i>changed</i> me. "Hey, Internet, here's my soul." Right this moment, I'm feeling kinda ... shy.<br />
<br />
People at church are talking to me about what I've written. I've seriously upset the usual chaos in the lives of my husband and my parents. Friends from childhood and high school who I haven't really connected with for years are sharing their hearts with me.<br />
<br />
It's weird.<br />
<br />
Since 2002, except for a maternity leave from 2006-2008 (thank you, Miranda), I have volunteered with the youth group (grades 6-12) at our church, <a href="http://www.meethope.org/">Hope UMC</a> in Voorhees, NJ. I'm on my third youth pastor. Seriously. For many years I was a (mediocre) small group leader for HS, then MS, then back to HS, but just the ladies. (For the last two years, I've transitioned into a position of prayer ministry, which fits me SO much better. Thank you, Dave.) Anyway, I used to tell the students, "I'm not an extrovert, but I play one on TV." I can put on the appearance for 3 hours on a Sunday night that I'm socially engaged and listening and actively praying for those in the building, and then I go home and collapse. Alone, because my husband's watching zombies. (I understand that <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1520211/?ref_=nv_sr_1">The Walking Dead</a></i> is an excellent television series but I need something a little more cheerful, thank you.)<br />
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The best thing I've learned in my years with other people's teenagers (the best kind) is that God honors your service, whatever it may be. All you really have to do is show up, and, truthfully, that's the hardest thing to do. Once I am out the door at 5 pm on Sunday night, in the car, on autopilot to church (we've been attending Hope since 2001 so I can pretty much drive there and back in my sleep), I am in my groove. But all Sunday afternoon I am dreading my departure. I tell myself, I can pray for these people from my house; why do I need to go to church? (While this is technically true, it's actually easier to do it there, especially when you're praying for specific things.) I whine and complain (to God) and count down the hours, but at 5 o'clock, barring illness or vomiting children, I walk out the door.<br />
<br />
I listen to John Michael Talbot's <i><a href="https://smile.amazon.com/Lords-Supper-John-Michael-Talbot/dp/B0018GV9QE/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1495244240&sr=8-11&keywords=john+michael+talbot">The Lord's Supper</a></i> which is a basic liturgy and also about 25 minutes long, which is the length of my commute. This helps me to put my brain in the right groove. Then in the parking lot, I read through Francis MacNutt's <a href="https://www.christianhealingmin.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=165&Itemid=388">Prayer for Protection</a> and head into the building. And I'm on duty until we turn out the lights about 8:30. I chat with the students and the other volunteer leaders. I usually participate in the large group session for the HS students, keeping my hand in, as it were. Then, after snack (and we have great snacks; we even have Snack Mommas and one Snack Dad), I walk up and down the hallways and around the worship space, praying. (If I just sat somewhere and prayed, I'd fall asleep. I usually need to be doing something to pray.) I pray for the students, for the staff, for my family, for friends who are ill or just had surgery, for hope. For help.<br />
<br />
At 8 o'clock, when the students go home, I meet with one of the small groups of leaders (HS ladies, HS guys, MS ladies, or MS guys) and check in with them. I ask them how I can pray for them and after they go around the circle and answer my question, I pray for them. And then we're done. I go back to the parking lot and read MacNutt's <a href="https://www.christianhealingmin.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=647&Itemid=389">Prayer to Be Set Free,</a> and then I go home.<br />
<br />
This is what I do. But what does it mean?<br />
<br />
I heard God's voice. Not all the time, but often. Hope Church is a sacred space, protected. God is easier to hear there. I hear that I am no longer the beggar woman but the older son, and after this week, I know that signifies that God's blessing never left me; my eyesight was simply obscured.<br />
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I am encouraged. Our youth pastor recruits a wide variety of people to serve the students. And praying directly for people is an intimate act. It builds ties between people that last. They care for me as I care for them.<br />
<br />
I acknowledge the discipline of prayer. The more you do it, the easier it is to step back into it, no matter how hard my week was. I have a set routine because, remember, I like routines. When my mind is distracted and I'm having difficulty focusing, pushing myself into the groove helps.<br />
<br />
I leave my home life at home. (Although, in another year, Miranda will be coming with me to YG. That will be interesting.) Since Miranda was 2, my husband has given me Sunday nights off. He does all the parenting and I don't worry about it. I can go to church and <i>be there</i>.<br />
<br />
When we don't have YG on Sunday nights (June - August because, well, summer and mission trips and things and Dave should really get a vacation sometime), my weeks feel out of balance. It's like my touch stone isn't there. I may not really register how important this time is until I experience it's absence. And it's disorienting. Sigh. I hate change.<br />
<br />
But if I measured my efforts of service versus the blessings I've gained through my service, God's scale far outweighs my meagre work. When you give, you are blessed. When you serve, you are blessed. This is what our pastor, Jeff, call's God's economy; you can't out give God.<br />
<br />
So, my introverted self is just going to have to cope. I can't stop writing. I wanted to go to bed an hour ago, but the compulsion to write overrode me. I'm on retreat, for heaven's sake. But I didn't bring the power cord for the laptop, so I better be efficient.Sarah Boyle Webberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02926451548743350125noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5938622503026216375.post-30866733210410452252017-05-19T10:18:00.002-04:002017-05-19T10:18:50.904-04:00Experimenting on You Children with Psychoactive Drugs, or I Hate Change, Part 7<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
So when you have a good doctor and two kids with a long line of letters after their names (ASD, AD/HD, and ODD), and you yourself have been taking antidepressants since the age of 19 (and really, if the drugs had been better then, should have started taking them at 12), you start to wonder if there are legal medicines that will help you out. The catch is, no medication is nor can it be officially tested on children. All of the responsibility is on you. Your doctor can run you through the options and describe possible outcomes, but you are taking the hit if it fails and things get worse. But, it might be better and it might be better enough to take the risk.<br />
<br />
Back to 2007. So, Alex is in the disabled preschool program at Springville Elementary. Of course, being borderline <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperlexia">hyperlexic</a>, he's teaching himself to read on the side. But he cannot, for the life of him, sit still for more than 30 seconds in a 12 hour day. At this point, his AD/HD is doing more damage than his ASD because if he cannot sit and work through his ASD, our situation is never going to improve. His pediatrician is not comfortable diagnosing and treating his AD/HD, so we go to our family doctor, who agrees to help, and Alex starts taking Ritalin, the oldest and cheapest amphetamine based stimulant on the market. And life improves dramatically. For a while.<br />
<br />
Growing children + amphetamines = a complicated life. Amphetamines suppress the appetite which suppresses growth which defeats the purpose of having a growing child. The child still needs to grow in order to be considered healthy. So you have to calculate the least amount of the medicine you can give them to reap the highest benefit. And then, when they grow and gain ten pounds and the efficacy of the medication starts to drop, you have to recalculate. And you do this again, and again, and again, and again.<br />
<br />
Alex has been seeing Dr. Jay every 1-2 months since 2007. (A serious, responsible doctor will hand you the prescription but will require frequent returns because they want to monitor the results.) This has probably made us a fixture in the loss column for whomever provides our health insurance, forever. Yes, we have excellent employer-based health insurance. But we use it up, every year.<br />
<br />
Honestly, in the ten years of medicating Alex, I don't remember all the different pills we tried. I remember that Ritalin worked for about two years and then we had to try a different stimulant. I remember we added an anti-depressant/mood stabilizer around first grade to help with his rollercoaster-like emotions. The summer before fourth grade, nothing was working, so we changed schools and went cold turkey on the meds, starting from scratch with new ones after he'd had about 6 weeks with nothing in his system. I think we added the tranq in fifth grade and changed to a different one last year.<br />
<br />
Many people blanch at the idea of giving a child so many medications every day, even other medical professionals. And the truth is, we are experimenting on our children with psychoactive drugs. We are trying a variety of medicines in search of better outcomes. We try to explain Alex's emotional state as being a person going through life without a top layer of skin. Without medication, he has no emotional buffer; he feels everything and falls apart. These legal chemicals provide a barrier between him and the world that enables him to manage his emotions better. And the AD/HD meds mean that his isn't literally bouncing off of the walls. (Seriously. Not Kidding.)<br />
<br />
Because Miranda is higher functioning on the ASD plane and less debilitated by her AD/HD, we didn't have to start her medications at age 3. We were able to wait until she was 7. In this world, estrogen is an advantage, even though we don't know why. So, for second grade, she started her own stimulant and then the following year we added an anti-psychotic which, for many kids on the spectrum, works as a terrific mood stabilizer. I still remember the lecture I got from a pharmacist last year about giving this medication to a little girl. She did fill the prescription, but she wasn't happy. We decided that this medicine helps Miranda tremendously, so we're going to keep giving it to her.<br />
<br />
There are always risks. Side effects are difficult to monitor when your children can't tell you how they feel. I am perpetually paranoid about their weight (I think Alex has been ten pounds overweight once in his entire existence; Miranda never has) and I used to monitor every bowel movement (looking for signs of constipation). For some reason, they don't want me to do that anymore. And none of these medications can be given on an empty stomach so I spend all those early hours before school forcing them to eat <i>something</i>.<br />
<br />
I have plenty of friends who have done what I've done, trying everything and, like me, ended up finding a cocktail that works. I have one friend who tried everything and ended up with only <b>one</b> drug that helps some. I have friends who have avoided chemicals entirely, trying therapeutic and naturopathic medicine instead. Every parent has to make a choice about what's best for their child.<br />
<br />
Medication is not a perfect solution; there are always drawbacks. We've decided we prefer this outcome to our other current options. We do wonder if cannabis oil would be something that helps Alex further along the road. But what we have now is working, and, "As I always say, if it's not baroque, don't fix it!"Sarah Boyle Webberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02926451548743350125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5938622503026216375.post-39157303431680144082017-05-19T09:13:00.000-04:002017-05-19T09:15:16.343-04:007 Things I Wish Parents of Neurotypical Kids Knew, or I Hate Change, Part 6<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Yes. It's a ridiculous title. But if I'm blogging anyway, I might as well rejoin the Friday 7 thingies group, right? If this is your first visit to my blog, you can read Parts 1-4, if it interests you, by clicking on the links to the right.<br />
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1. When I look at your children in longing, it doesn't mean I want your <i>children</i>. I love my children. But there are many times when I wish I had your <i>problems</i>. Neurotypical children do not regularly shred their clothes (either because "it's touching me!" or it's the closest thing to fiddle with and I've already chewed up my pencil), wear noise cancelling headphones every time we leave the house (sometimes I could live without the billboard over our heads screaming "AUTISM! AUTISM KID RIGHT HERE!" I mean, this blog <b>is</b> called <i>Passing for Normal</i>), or stamping around the backyard while reciting <i>Green Eggs and Ham</i> for the 3 trillionth time (I'm not even kidding about the 3 trillion and, thankfully, I have very kind neighbors).<br />
<br />
Miranda's issues are milder but still very specific: she just recently went into a clothes changing room for the first time in her life to actually try on clothes before buying them. Previously, I would go out and buy something and bring it home. It would sit on the floor for 3 days until I could beg her, while she was changing her clothes anyway, to try it on. And if it didn't fit, I would take it back. She didn't wear jeans until 3rd grade because she hated the way they felt against her skin. I haven't put tights on her since she was 18 months old and I'm kinda scared to try.<br />
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2. We don't really do playdates. Both kids get along with their cousins and other dear friends we consider extended family, but for Miranda to have a friend to the house means we have to explain about Alex (although she is now old enough to explain to her peers what autism is and what he is like) and prepare them for him to float in and out of their playing. I have left Miranda alone at a school friend's house 3 times in her life and she's ten years old. It's risky. She's impulsive and still has difficulties reading social cues. And sleepovers that are not at Grandma's house are out of the question until she can reliably take her own meds.<br />
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Alex doesn't have a lot of friends. One of the greatest things about Archway has been his development of a best friend. He realized several years ago that his classmates weren't actually his friends and he refused to call them that anymore, even though that had been accepted previously. But now he has a BFF; life is good. I've never met the boy's parents and have no idea where they live, but they are at school together and that's enough.<br />
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3. Going out to eat as a family is not going to happen, maybe ever. Miranda can now safely be taken to a diner or other casual dining facility because her father has trained her over the last 2 years about what the expected behavior is at such an establishment and she's decided she will eat certain things at restaurants, like the chocolate chip pancakes her mother refuses to make for her. Alex only eats 8 foods and the smells and sounds of most other foods upsets him (don't even try to eat an apple in front of him; he can't stand the crunch). We did manage to take him to a taco place in San Antonio in 2016 where he had tortilla chips for dinner but I think that was because he was so tired and hungry from hiking through underground caves and we were all together with our friends.<br />
<br />
In previous years, he did a summer program at school that planned activities for special needs kids "in the wild" on purpose to help familiarize them with the outside world. Several times, this included a restaurant. The teacher ordered pancakes for him, because they were something he usually ate, but he was irritated to be asked to eat "foreign" pancakes and so he took a bite and then purposefully vomited the bite back into her lap. She cleaned it up, scolded him and told him to eat the rest of his pancakes. Special education teachers are made of stern stuff; just think what the world would be like if they ran it?!<br />
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4. Miranda is convinced she is the only kid in her class who's never been to Disney (it's a big thing here in Jersey). I'm not sure that's true but it's probably closer to true than it was 3 years ago. When Alex was younger, we expected that if we waited long enough, he would mature enough to chance the massive expenditure (BTW, I grew up going to Disneyland so I am a lifelong fan). Now we're wondering if just taking Miranda would work better, but he understands what Disney is now (thank you, YouTube commercials, for that) so I think he would be disappointed. Although, I'm told that the Fast Pass thing might go a long way towards helping a kid who hates waiting in lines. (Not that there are kids who <i>like</i> waiting in lines, but some kids tolerate it better.) Still, it's not on the near horizon.<br />
<br />
5. My kids have never had a moment of seperation anxiety in their lives and "Stranger Danger" is completely preposterous to them. They truly believe that every person (child or adult) they encounter is already their friend, wants to talk to them and is perfectly safe. I'm sure part of this is because they are rather sheltered because we don't take them a lot of new places because, well, new things are hard. As you may already know, part of being on the autism spectrum means you have tremendous difficulty reading non verbal social cues and the adults responsible for you hardly ever leave you alone because, well, impulsivity is a thing. I'm not sure how Alex has never electrocuted himself by chewing on power cords; it's a miracle. Miranda managed to shock herself pretty well by putting my metal meat thermometer into a open light switch but also, miraculously, came away none the worse. This is when I worry about helicopter parenting, because if I'm not there, they might actually try to kill themself accidently by jumping off of a tower, walk off with a sex trafficker, or be perfectly fine.<br />
<br />
I still remember the first time Alex realized that the kids at the park didn't want to play with him. It was about 2 years ago and it absolutely broke my heart. They were not rude; they were just playing with <i>their</i> friends. Miranda is still able to make younger kids into her pets at the park, which is easier than playing with her peers, anyway. But now that he's 13, Alex is pretty much done with going to the park, except for occasional trips. Sigh. We have a lot of good parks here.<br />
<br />
6. Leaving my children with anyone else is complicated. They each have a specific schedule of medications, morning and night, prefer certain foods at certain times and morning routines need to be followed to the letter. But they can dress and shower themselves now, mostly. Bottles of shampoo still disappear mysteriously down the drain, and the guilty party could be either of them. A few weeks ago, Alex "washed" his hair with 3 handfulls of conditioner. I had to help rinse it out.<br />
<br />
We went away for a weekend in March and even though I was leaving them with my parents, I left them nearly 3 pages of instructions and when they had a babysitter for part of Saturday, I left her 2 pages as well. Most of the time, it's just easier to do it myself.<br />
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This is not to say we never go out (thank you, grandparents, because you are wonderful!) or we didn't have other babysitters when they were younger. We did. It just takes a lot of work to get everything ready. And it was years before I really felt comfortable leaving. Now, since my children love everyone and Alex thinks that every single person who comes through the front door is there for him personally, they have pushed us out the door for years. Mommy is reliable, but Mommy is boring. And she makes you clean your room. <br />
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7. My job is hard. Please do not pity me, but empathetic listening is always welcome. And, honestly, I am happy to talk to your sister/aunt/roommate/second cousin thrice removed if they have a child they suspect is on the spectrum. Give them my phone number or my email address. Truly.<br />
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There were many, many special needs parents that I didn't know but who knew my parents or my pastor or my friend who talked to me and helped me through some really, really tough times. And I don't care if it's a one and done conversation. You don't have to friend me on FB or call me with updates. If you need help right now or next week or next year, I'm right here.<br />
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And here's <a href="https://thisaintthelyceum.org/sqt-beach-trips-for-the-enthusiastic/">Kelly</a>.Sarah Boyle Webberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02926451548743350125noreply@blogger.com0