bibliomom

So, I’ve always love the auto-suggest function of search engines – they’re just soooo entertaining. But I think the King County Library System has now achieved my new favorite suggested search phrase.

I entered (quoting a book title I found on Amazon): “Homeschooling the Child with Asperger Syndrome”.

I received: “Did you mean homecoming the child with caperers?”

Okay, yah – you might want to talk to Google about search terms …

Time: 9:28 a.m., Sunday morning

Location: master bedroom

Situation: trying to get Bug’s hair bob’s straight before we hop in the time machine and actually make it to Church on-time for once.

Me: “Baby, please hold still – Mama can’t fix your hair if you’re upside down.”

Bug: “Ow! It hurts! Ow, ow!”

Me: “Fine! Go to church with dorky hair!”

Bug: “NOOOOOO! NOT DORKY HAIR! NOOOO!”

And she came back, wiggly but willing, for me to fix the hair bobs so she no longer looked liked she had horns.

Amazing.

And those of you with experience with spectrum kids know exactly what I’m talking about.

Every so often I go through these phases as the mom of a high-functioning spectrum kid: “Oh, look at me whine – she’s not that bad, I’m just undisciplined and messy. Look at X – now she has a real special needs kid. At least I have some real hope that my kids might move out and get jobs some day …”

That sort of thing Usually it’s after Bug’s been fairly well behaved and/or off at school half the day, and I’m just busy being depressed how how messy and disorganized I am.

And usually, she follows up by doing something spectacularly horrific that makes me want to bang my head against a wall till I pass out.

Over the hols, she’s was just more on a low-level reign of terror – hiding under the table and cutting up pads of paper, emptying her drawers onto the floor, arranging the entire stack of paper plates into crop circles on the kitchen floor – nothing spectacular. But now that she’s back in school and I’m finally over the plague, I’ve been more able to follow her around and pretend to be “good-mom”.

“Oh, here honey – let’s cut paper at the table. Oh, here baby – when you color on paper towels with markers, it goes through and stains Mommy’s carpet … like this. Let’s move to the counter and get real paper, okay?”

Which leads to me thinking, “Oh, she’s not that bad, I’m just a whiner.”

Which I am, but that’s not the point ;-P

The point is that DH came downstairs the other night, rolling his eyes and twitching.

“What is up with Bug? She just like a highly concentrated mass of destruction! She sat there, trying to listen to the story and couldn’t leave anything alone – she tore pillows out of cases, ripped tissues out of the box, pulled books off the shelf … man.”

And then I remember, “Oh, that’s right – she’s not an average, neuro-typical kid. She our Bug, and we love her.

As closely as possible.

Okay, so I’ve seen the kiddy temporary tattoos with spaces for contact info before, but my dear friend adoptingmama found some really awesome ones.

Mind you, they’ve been blogged before, I was just really impressed that they have autism specific ones, pre-printed food allergy models, and even special “non-verbal” and “non-verbal autism” editions.

How great is that?! I would have killed for these when we had Bug at Disneyland. Bug’s better than she used to be – she might actually give her name if she was asked – but back when she was still largely non-verbal, something like this would have been wonderful for the zoo, the fair, or pretty much anything else like that. And as silly as it sounds, I really appreciate the tactful graphics for the autism and non-verbal tats – it’s an emotional subject for both parents and children, and physically labeling your child with a big AUTISM tat can be a little stressful, for both kids and adults. It shows a lot of sensitivity, or at least I see it that way.

I really need to get off my hiney and order some and see how they go over, both in a “Are they Bug-proof?” and “Are they Bug-compatible?” way. Which is to say, will she let me put them on and will they stay there once I do.

So, UPS was definitely on everyone’s badlist this Christmas. (I think Santa’s going to bring them a big truck load of coal next winter.) Seattle area blogs and news articles were full of “Where’s My Package?!” and “Never Again!” as they sat on package for weeks after our epic multi-inch snowstorm.

I myself was rather put out when, after overnighting about a dozen packages from Amazon, I realized that while USPS and FedEx could make it to our house, UPS couldn’t. Well, the weather was kinda bad …

So Christmas came and went with far fewer packages than expected. Well, that’s okay – we stayed home for Christmas day and surely they’d deliver stuff the next few days, I mean it was overnighted, right?

A few more days pass. We drive up to visit the families with no packages at all. Strange, the roads are mostly clear …

Another day passes and Bothell actually gets around to plowing our cul-de-sac. But still no packages. But the roads are clear … maybe they’re still stuck in the mountains.

New Year’s week, packages start trickling in. I’m not thrilled, but I’m sure they were busy …

This Monday I get my one remaining package. Wow – two weeks for an overnighted package. Well, that’s a little annoying, but I’ll just save this present for a birthday. Maybe Amazon was late sending it out.

But now – now I’m mad. Monday morning, Monkey decided to spend his hard earned money on a video game and decided to spend an extra $4 to have Amazon overnight it. Two days later, there’s no package. It’s sitting at the warehouse in Redmond labeled “Possible delay in delivery due to extra carrier processing”. WTF? We haven’t had snow in weeks!

So I started poking around. Turns out all of my overnighted packages were *in* Redmond by the 23rd and UPS just squatted on them like a big, ugly toad. No wonder the blogs are full of irate people – not because of the weather, but because of UPS’ incompetent management. Seattle people are an independent lot – and yet people willing and able to pick up their own packages were turned away. We’re also a straightforward lot, so that whole “out for delivery” package that then goes missing? Not so hot.

The word is that UPS treats all packages the same once they’re in the warehouse, so that overnight package sitting at the bottom of the pile? It’s not going anywhere. Word also claims that UPS was trying to “work in” delayed packages amongst the new arrivals. Um, shouldn’t they be done by now? And if you’re not, why on earth am I paying you extra to let my overnighted package sit in a warehouse for days on end?

I’ve emailed UPS to rawr them. And I’ve emailed Amazon to see if they can kick UPS in the backside. Or at least get back some of my money. I think I’d prefer the kicking.

Which do Seattlites hate more: incompetence or cutting in line? Doesn’t really matter, I guess. UPS has managed to piss off everyone.

My son came to me last week, with a book full of story problems.

“M-om,” he whined, “I hate problems like this!”

Since I knew he’d woken up in CWM (Cranky Wookie Mode), I tried to be sympathetic.

“What kind of problems?”

“This kind! ‘If Tina has five doughnuts and Bob has ten doughnuts, and they go to the bakery and get fifteen cookies … ’ that kind of problem!”

Ah, I thought, the curse of the story problems, and went for humor.

“It’s like Mr. Bockel with the pretzels in The Number Devil, huh? Well, story problems aren’t that bad, you just have to find the information you need to solve the problem …”

Monkey howled in frustration.

“It’s not that, Mom! It’s just that there’s all that delicious sounding food, and I’m so hungry!”

Fall’s here (for the second or third round) and the fruit stands are flush with new crop apples. Know what that means? Caramel apple time!

Even since I first saw those giant caramel apples in the gourmet food magazines, I realized there was almost no limit to the stuff you can stick on the side of an apple.

My current favorite (and easy) caramel recipe is from honey.com:

Caramel Honey Apples

1 cup packed brown sugar

½ cup butter or margarine

½ cup honey

¼ cup heavy cream

¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon

⅓ cup chopped nuts

6 small apples with sticks

Combine all ingredients except apples and nuts in 2-quart saucepan. Cook over medium-high heat to 265°F; stir constantly. Remove from heat. Cool 5 minutes.

Holding apple by stick, roll in hot honey mixture to coat; roll bottom of apple in nuts if desired. Place on waxed paper squares to cool. Repeat with remaining apples.

Now it won’t make as many giant apples, but it’s not a bad amount of caramel. The cinnamon is best for just plain caramel – I leave it out when I roll my apples into toasted, chopped TJ’s pecans and my favorite Callebaut chocolate chips. You can also do the Rocky Road style by adding mini-marshmallows, or pretty much anything else you can think of – white chocolate, sprinkles, chopped up toffee bars, etc. Just remember that the caramel is hot, and the stuff you stick on it might melt a bit – I have to let the ones with chocolate on them sit for quite a while until the chocolate firms back up.

Hey – it’s fairly quick and easy, the kids love them and I get my gourmet apples for way less than $25 a piece.

Oh – and by the way – though the recipe says “wax paper squares”, I think they’re smoking something. Putting hot caramel anything onto waxed paper tends to lead to a permanent situation – and caramel flavored wax paper tastes nasty. Ask me how I know. Anyway, use parchment paper or a silpat – you’ll be much happier.

Really, some days it’s just the simplest things that bring me such happiness.

Like today – stuffy and achey, I just wandered into my kitchen looking for relief. And lo! There on the counter was my beloved Zojirushi thermos that I had filled with tea some six hours earlier today for our trip to the park.

And behold, there was tea. And it was still hot. And it was good.

Dulce de Leche Smoothie

2 cups milk

2/3 cup Dulce de Leche

1 medium rip banana

2 cups ice

Blend until smooth; serve immediately.

Now, this is what I get for having a can of La Lachera Dulce de Leche kicking around my kitchen in the first place. Really, how am I supposed to lose weight with that darn La Lachera girl smirking at me? Being me of course, I had to tamper with the recipe off the back of the can in order to justify it. I threw in a handful of raw oatmeal, a scoop of protein powder, used non-fat milk and pretended not to know how many calories are in 2/3 a cup of Dulce.

Having said that, so good! And so much! Wah! My blender’s really not big enough for that. So sad – I guess we’ll just have to drink the rest later ;-)

Really, I don’t have a whole lot to add to this. It was just something my daughter’s Evil Twin yelled out to her mom as she raced by.

“Ninja Happens.”

Really, it just explains so much …