01/22/2008

You will find me at my new blog home here.

www.standingstillforonce.blogspot.com/

Just in case you were, like, looking for me.

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01/11/2008

I hate it when I'm looking for something on the store shelf and I can't find it. I know the carton is blue with bright green letters, and it's about this big, and I use it all the time and it's always here ... so why can't I find it?

After looking and looking and looking, and asking a 16-year old stock boy where it is and he doesn't know but, he'll ask his manager, I finally see it.

The package is in just about the same place, but not quite. And, it's a bright green box and the letters are blue. Not the same, but not entirely different, either.

This. Throws. Me. Every. Time.

standing still has changed it's packaging. Just the box, tho'. Same great blend of vitamins and minerals and fiber that you've loved for years.

But, it's on a different shelf.

Mark it. Or, come back here and use this as your map. Either way, I know you'll find it.

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01/09/2008, i know, the photo is disturbing in so many ways ... actual incision length is 8"

It was a big, big day for chez standing still. Child. Left. The. House. We all left the house. We went to visit our neighborhood radioloigist, orthopedic surgeon and physical therapist.

I didn't realize until after the appointment that I was very anxious about seeing if / what progress the bone was making as it healed. I don't know from broken bones. We've never had one in our trio before.

The good news is that new bone is being made ... there are basically "spot welds" where the bones are knitting together (imagine, if you will, a shattered egg that regenerates itself ... that's basically how Child's femer is mending).

Child's mobility restrictions have changed. He can sit up at 90-degrees. He is doing quadracept strengthening exercises. We don't have to do bed-chair transfers with him flat on his back. He can support his body while sitting using his arms and his "good" leg. We're flexing his "bad leg" knee in order to strengthen it and get it to a 90-degree bend.

He's still not able to stand, so he's in bed or in a wheelchair, probably for at least another month ... As soon as he has good muscle strength, complete bone healing and no pain. We're going back on Feb. 1 for another x-ray.

We are not doing any hip rotation or aduction. If we did that, everything that has healed would break, and then he'd get an extra long plate in his leg and a body cast.

Yea. We're really not doing that.

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01/08/2008

Little by little, everything is fitting back into its right and reasonable place.

Pottery making supplies that were transplanted temporarily to the mudroom have been carried to the studio downstairs. The studio needs work, but it is a room of its own, a room of my own. Whenever I can get some time to go in there (between the homeschooling and cooking and laundry and caring for the boy who is, yes, still in the bed in the living room) I have my supplies and a new box of clay. When will the magical day that I spend in my studio happen? Har har har, that's a good one.

Which has left the mudroom empty feeling. The floor vacuumed and scrubbed for the first time in a painfully, disgustingly long time. Shoes lined up (all but one pair, MechanicalMan's). The closet door actually closed. The room isn't exactly empty, but the sound echos more now than it did earlier, and that tells me something. It's a helluva lot more empty than when it had an extra table and bags of clay and tools and wooden bats and a banding wheel sitting around.

The table you ask? What happened to the table ... The vintage porcelain topped kitchen / utility table that I snagged from Great Aunt Betsy's house lo these many years ago, painted green, and used as a folding table in the old basement? Which became, for a time, the handbuilding table in the mudroom.

Yea. Listed that on Craig's list about 2 p.m. Sold it for $75 within an hour.

Most profitable cleaning I've ever done in one afternoon.

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01/06/2008

Child, as you know from the recent posts about his fracture, isn't able to take a shower, a bath or even get to the sink to brush his teeth. Yea, our house isn't ADA compliant. Sorry.

Last night was bath night. This involves, but is not limited to, two large garbage bags, a beach towel, several bath towels, Dial for Men body wash, an IKEA baby bathtub, toenail clippers, and an Olay Facial Wash cloth. It's done while he's prone. In bed. Without getting the living room soaked. I rock, just a little.

The whole process, beginning to end, took a little more than one hour and 15 minutes. For his body. Not his hair. That is a project for today.

At one point he was very pissed off at me. I would be too, if I was almost 13-years old and my 44-year old Mom was washing my naked bod.

He looked at me and said, "You are such a doofus."

Because I am me and I have walked a hell of a long journey with this child, since the days of prematurity and speech and OT and asperger's diagnosis and IEP meetings and hernia surgery and rsv and now this ... I was non-plussed.

I just looked at him. Proud, actually, that he is standing up for his naked self in this humiliating situation he's subjected to. Way to go, kiddo.

A little later when he was patted dry and snuggled under a big beach towel and his leg was airing out from that foam cast and he smelled like a teenager ready for his first date, he said, "I'm sorry about the doofus thing."

I know you are, buddy. I know.

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01/03/2008

Tonight, dear friends, I went to Target. This constitutes a full-fledged party-licious evening of rolicking fun in my world of late.

M called at about 5 p.m. and asked if I had 5 minutes to go to Starbucks tonight. Her husband was taking their 2nd grader to swimming class, so for once she had time to herself, it being holiday break and all. "He's following me around the house, I tell you. I'm so ready for school to start."

I broke it to her gently.

Okay, I'm lying. I didn't break it gently. I came right out and said it because indeed, when the party mood strikes it cannot be slowed. "Sorry. Can't possibly do Starbucks tonight. I'm going to Target. Want to meet me there?"

A date was set ("I'll call you from my cell phone when I'm headed there ... you call me on your cell phone when you get to Target and we'll find each other."

I am sure that the youth of today do all of this on their using clever e-vites or Facebook accounts or with their iPhones and IM, but we actually used our layrnxes. So passe, but much easier than getting out the owners manual and trying to do something different just to be hip and cool and we were already going to Target, so why make it more exciting? Why indeed.

And, let me tell you, I had quite a list. A foam matress topper for the Child's hospital bed. Whole wheat flour. Hair products. Ketchup. Organic ketchup ... not the regular kind.

Are you tingling yet? It. Gets. Better.

We ran into someone we know. C, a fellow who runs the autism support group with me. It was a reinactment of Joan Fontaine, Mia Farrow Sinatra and Truman Capote all chatting with martinis in hand at the Black and White Ball. Just subsitute the swishy gowns and fabulous tuxes with down coats and fleece hats. We really outdid ourselves, it being Thursday and all.

My life should be on the cover of People. I don't know where the paparazzi were, but they missed their opportunity tonight.

Comments [6]

01/02/2008

Getting out of the house is over rated.

After spending the past 3+months immersed in the remodeling chaos, being forced to stay at home while Child's leg mends isn't such a big deal. So many people have asked me "How ARE you?" as if I'm clawing at the window screens, panting for someone to let me go free.

I'm actually quite liking being home with absolutely nothing except boring domestic goddess and mother-doctor stuff to do.

Today, for instance.

Child needed his hair washed. So we did that. He, of course, is prone in bed, but that doesn't keep us from getting it done. It's a clever technique involving a large plastic bag, an IKEA baby bathtub, a hospital basin and a large plastic beer cup ... not your typical shower, but it works. And, it uses up a good 1/2 hour from start to finish.

Then Child discovered the joy of what happens to one's skin when it is under a foam immobilizer for 3 weeks. He called it shedding his 2007 skin. I called it, "What I wouldn't give for a good sugar scrub." But, his skin is too tender, so we just used warm water and a baby washcloth ... over and over and over.

Another 45 minutes down the drain. So to speak.

The project that I've been avoiding since the dust literally settled was cleaning out the kitchen cupboards. I don't have doors on most of my kitchen cupboards. I'm quirky that way. No doors. I would only leave them open and bang my head on them. So, we remodeled and I put them in the attic and moved on.

Everything needed to be removed from the cupboards, washed or wiped down, then the shelf liner and the shelves needed to be washed and dried.

Yup, did most of those today, too. Just have one cupboard ... the dishes ... to do. I may be purging a little pottery tomorrow along with the cleaning. It's beginning to look like a display of "not your best work" in there.

Tonight I was going to head to Target or Kohls just to get out of the house. However, the thermometer is reading 2-god awful cold - degrees F just now, so I bagged that idea.

Not stir crazy and not crazy enough to go outside and freeze.

Comments [2]

01/01/2008

It is the height of navel gazing to update one's blog decor and then blog about it. It also means that one has absolutely nothing better to do in the real world than to play fast and loose with a can of paint on a computer screen.

Jesus Mary and Martha Ann. I am one of those people.

standing still for once has been around in pretty much the same iteration since the summer of 2005. The header photo was slightly altered at one point, but the color scheme has been the same. So, I took about 37 minutes to make this change via the LightBlog theme & colors page.

It is most evident that I am not a graphic artist. I don't do photoshop or illustrator. I make art of out mud for heaven's sake.

So, this is what we're getting for The New Year. Simple. Basic. Different.

It matches the decor in my newly remodeled laundry room. Probably something that award winning graphic designers do not say about their fancy schmancy blogs.

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