Leslea Tash's Blog, page 42
June 13, 2013
I love a song that tells a story, and this is a good...
I love a song that tells a story, and this is a good one.
Emblem3 - Chloe (You’re The One I Want) (by Emblem3VEVO)
In the presence of the ODD monster
My son has oppositional defiant disorder. It is exactly what it sounds like. It is a disorder. It doesn’t exist within the boundaries of logic. There is no cure, no shot, no pill. He has been going to counseling, after two years of trying to find someone. The counseling has helped. He has been growing up a bit and that is a very positive thing for him. Kids with ODD are often described as “stuck” in a stage of development other children outgrow as the terrible twos come and go.
I do, as well, parent a two year old daughter. I deal with her meltdowns every day.
As my son has grown, I have grown less accustomed to his temper tantrums. He had one today, though. He had one, and then I had one.
There is nothing cute about Mommy’s meltdowns. Crying, reasoning, begging, praying…nothing does any good in the jaws of the beast. I am not a child abuser, so I have to ask myself why this particular boy and I can come so close to nasty, horrible things at times. Things that I fear would involve interventions. I know he doesn’t hate me. I know he loves me. He knows I love him. We have both come so far on our journey as parent and child. WHY does the beast still have to interfere in our life together?
He is singing in the bathtub, even as I type. He has no idea I am crying at the computer, wishing there were some magic solution that would undo every wrong thing I’ve ever done in my parenting, something that would bullet-proof my kids from harm at my own hands. I fear I haven’t always been the best parent I could possibly be. I fear that being human isn’t always good enough. I fear that even a SuperMom could not conquer the beast that is ODD. I fear that the beast may someday win. I don’t know what that would mean for my child, but I fear prison, I fear what choices he would make in his anger, especially as he grows into a man. If it is hard for me to control myself, how will he?
The other kids are playing in the backyard. Everyone is cooling off. We will all be okay here in a bit.
Until the monster attacks again.
June 12, 2013
theuniblog:
fragmentsofmysanity:
these are my kittens, yes...
these are my kittens, yes they meow weird, but they are mine. i found them all on my own. they are my ohana. back the fuck off camera.
Link (x) - Though they aren’t breastfeeding linke the link claims.
Writing/reading
On days when my work time is unexpectedly interrupted by circumstances that do not allow me to put actual thoughts into virtual paper, I still try to crack open a book and read. In this manner, I am always working.
June 11, 2013
giraffes for birds
Giraffes were my mother’s favorite animal, according to my mom. I gave her a giraffe once. She didn’t care for it, so in her mind she decided it was mine. She sent it home with my son once when he was a toddler. It’s here somewhere, among the other toys.
On a whim, I started giving her birds one year. It was actually a little set of colored song birds that sat on her mantel. I found it at Hallmark. They eventually gravitated to spots around her home. You never knew where those whimsical birds might turn up among her stolid bookshelves filled with religious/political tomes.
She actually preferred those little birds to giraffes. She got rid of virtually all the giraffes and little by little, her home filled with birds. There are only so many whimsical birds one can collect before they begin to look like a collection—something she would have abhorred. She made a stained glass decoration of chickadees and dogwoods near the end of her life. I wonder what happened to it. I wonder if it was any part of the box filled with broken glass that her son recently mailed to my ex in-laws.
I tended toward roosters for her kitchen, because she really did like them. I picked up roosters from art fairs, thrift shops, you name it. A copper form for the wall. A framed recipe for Coq Au Vin. Why did she like roosters? Personally I think that try as she might to be something other than the poor child who lived in a chicken coop during her early years, she was still, deep down, that impoverished child. She never got over everything that happened to her. She never put it behind her.
With all my heart, I don’t want want to be like that. They say birds of a feather flock together, and the older I get, the more I fight the bitterness in me that I always hated in her. There is grief, and there is grieving…there is faking it until you make it, and there is such a thing as just *too much put on*. I am tired of liking, even loving, people who can’t be troubled to respect me. I am tired of faking it until I make them love me. I don’t think that is the same thing as bitterness, but I look around me and see little birds who still chirp as if I’m not some horribly toxic person, and I wonder how much they would want to collect me if they saw inside this damaged heart.
And that is when I realize I do not really care anymore. That caring? That is a giraffe I think I like, but really, I do not like giraffes at all.
Thinking of all this because it is my mother’s birthday and as usual I am the only one who remembers. I would like to erase this date from my mind like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Goodbye, giraffes. Go back from where you came.
June 10, 2013
Dear Birdy, Princess Birdzilla von MuffinStuff, Keeper of...
Dear Birdy, Princess Birdzilla von MuffinStuff, Keeper of Dreams, Lover of our Fine Feathered Friends, queen of my life and light of my world, I hope this letter finds you well. If you are reading this then I am gone, and sweetheart, I am so sorry.
Chi-town professional Wren Riley is 25 and a rising star in the business world. She can eat a man alive and laugh about it to her girlfriends in seconds flat—and she does, on the regular. Behind the power suits and the flashing, flirty eyes, however, Wren has a secret, vulnerable side. Following a devastating loss and the discovery of a bird journal she and her father made together years before, Wren sets out to seek peace, closure, and something she just can’t name. Is that something tied to the little paper cranes she keeps finding along the way?
Laurence Byrd grew up a lanky Hoosier kid with the good/bad fortune of having the same name as the state’s perennial basketball legend. With a better affinity for dogs than sports or school, he ends up in the Army instead of the Chicago art school of his dreams. Still, his service to our country is something he can be proud of—until an argument with the girl who means the world to him results in a series of events that blows his life apart. With no one left to understand him, black sheep Laurie pours out his heart into letters and drawings he never intends to send—then he folds them into paper cranes that he leaves behind like messages in little winged bottles. He never dreams someone might be finding them.
God damn it, Sylvia, for a few moments I tricked myself into feeling really alive. I cut it off before anyone got hurt, but just for a moment or two, I really thought I might feel something again—something like trust. Something like love. Not the kind of love we had, but something new. Something like hope.
Spoiler alert: Wren and Laurie are going to meet. And when they do, their lives are never going to be the same.
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June 9, 2013
June 8, 2013
particularscarf:
thedreadpiratejames:
5walls:
Attic converted...
Attic converted to year round ‘camp’ indoors
So doing this
Can’t decide between “orgy” or “one person multiple times on each sofa”
