Spring is sprunging

What can one say about Spring that hasn’t already been said? Aside from "new life" bursting out all over, the noise level has picked up some -- even before the sun starts to come up the hills are alive with the sound of “music.”(but I already wrote about this didn't I?) The migrants are returning, the Towhee has come back, the Killdeer is staking out a territory along the state right of way (they build their nests in the oddest places – maybe I’ll write about that sometime). Unfortunately, the habitat here has changed so much that the woodcock no longer shows up. For many years we were entertained by the males’ strange whirring courtship flight and their bizarre “song” which sounds something like “bzeep” (thanks RTP for that). And interesting things are going on here at night. Two raccoons were perched on the bird feeder in the wee hours of the morning last week twittering at the cat, who was sitting in front of the window (on my scanner) watching them. And last night when I went to retrieve the suet cakes for the birds (to keep the raccoons from eating them) I heard foxes barking in the brush a stone's throw from the back door (wonder what THEY were up too???) I've never seen the bobcat that the highway workers told us about but I heard it scream once -- at least I think it was bobcat. Well, here is William Wordsworth’s take on Spring for anyone who missed it in high school English:

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils,
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced, but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee;
A poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company.
I gazed, and gazed, but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
***
Happy Easter!
The Lord is risen! He is risen indeed!!!

Fixin’ it up

There it sits in all its splendor. A bowl of steaming hot gray glop. Oatmeal. A healthy, nutritious breakfast that is about as appetizing as wallpaper paste. So, how to make this palatable? Well, let’s add a couple of tablespoons of crunchy peanut butter. Hummmm. These raisins look good, throw them in too. Let’s see. A little brown sugar. You know what would really taste good? Some chocolate chips. And a little milk. And guess what? It’s peanut butter oatmeal cookie dough! Yummy.

A Map of the World

As noted in an earlier post, we are almost certain our 28-year-old son has Asperger Syndrome. We first became aware of AS when we heard a report about it on NPR as we were driving home from California several years ago. The longer we listened, the more we began to realize that this was a perfect description of our son. At one point we sort of simultaneously looked at each other said “That's him!!" The Internet has a number of helpful Websites on AS; one has a nice list of typical AS behaviors (only now I can't find the URL) . When I looked this list, I saw that he exhibits all of the behaviors except #4, which was an interest in maps, charts, routes, that sort of thing. “Well,” I thought to myself, “at least he doesn't do all of the things on the list.” I took some small comfort in this. Then, a couple of days ago he says to me "Mom, did I ever show you what I got at this clearance sale at the mall. It only cost $50." And then he emerges from his bedroom with two framed reproductions of very old maps of the world that attempted (and failed, in my opinion) to replicate the beautiful illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Age. And then he rambles on about how he wants to find a reproduction of one of those "flat earth" maps. Very big sigh...

Doorbell from hell

This morning a Jehovah’s Witness woman came to the door. I think it was just a fluke that her presence at the back door coincided with the doorbell beginning to ring and ring and ring and ring (it did not stop). She left, thinking nobody was home, and by the time I got to the door she was already headed for the car. After she had trudged halfway back up the driveway, I politely told her to go away and then yelled for R to “do something” about the berserk doorbell. He turned it off. Then about 5 minutes later, the doorbell in his office began to ring and ring and ring and would not stop. We assume this must be connected with the construction crew on the other side of the highway laying pipe. They are probably using CBs or some other type of radio to talk to each other as they work. I believe both doorbells are now turned off -- permanently I hope. We were thinking about rigging up a doorbell and training our cat to use it so we could let her in instead of her clawing on the screen door. R says, do you really want the cat ringing a bell every time she thinks she wants in? Oooh. No. I don’t. This is the cat that goes out the front door, runs around to the back to be let in and then within a minute or two is heading for the front door again to be let out (in other words, she wants to be where she isn’t). I think we will just retire the doorbells for now.

Ladybug ladybug, fly away home

Even though it will not officially be Spring for what, another 20 days or so, the daffodils have begun to bloom and the birds have started to sing, as have peepers who have come out of the mud out at the pond in the lower field (I guess frogs don't really sing, but it's a sweet sound). And hundreds and hundreds of ladybugs that congregated on the warm south-facing walls of our house on bright fall days getting ready to hibernate for the winter in the cracks and crevices of our house have emerged inside the house and are everywhere. Falling in our food, crawling in our clothes. I’ve given up trying to get rid of them. It’s the same at everybody’s house. Oh yeah, the ants are back as well.

Someone’s ringin’ the bell.

Well, not actually. When it became obvious that we could no longer hear delivery people when they drove up the driveway (dog went deaf, the new construction blocked the sound) we installed a wireless, battery-operated doorbell. And it worked fine. Delivery people pressed the button and the bell went “ding dong” and we were happy. But then we noticed that the bell would ring when nobody was there. Ghosts? Nope. The CB radios from truckers on the highway are activating the doorbell says someone who knows these things. You can open it up and reset the frequency, says he. Well, R never got around to doing that and eventually the battery wore out on the bell so it no longer rings if the delivery person presses the button. But it still rings when the truckers go by – sometimes at 3 in the morning.

Normal? What is normal?

He has now worked for a week at the sawmill. He didn’t get fired. He didn’t quit. Having him gone between 6 a.m. and 4:45 has helped a great deal to restore a sense of normalcy. And it has given us a break from the unrelenting oddness of his behavior. I think -- as long as he continues to work -- I think I can manage fairly well having him living here. But, on the other hand, today I found an empty bottle of 400-U Vitamin E gelcaps. There had been 120 in the bottle and he'd taken them all in less than 2 weeks, popping them like candy. You do the math. I don't have time to look on the Internet for the symptoms of Vitamin E overdose. I just hope it didn't do any damage. Oh Lord, have mercy. Every day that he keeps the job is $50 more that can be used to begin to reduce his debt. We have suggested he see a credit counselor. No. He wants to solve this mess himself. And maybe he can. And maybe he can move out in 6 months. Can we last 6 months without going nuts ourselves? Here comes that hope again….

And in response to a promotion for wrestling I saw the other day, that for some reason infuriated me:

The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox
In 4 parts without commercial interruptions.
The revolution will not be televised....

The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.
The revolution will not make you look five pounds thinner,
because the revolution will not be televised…

The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.
The revolution will put you in the driver's seat.

The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live.

That's just part of a much longer song. I heard it a lot "back then" on the FM dial in Los Angeles, when many black's were full of rage and doing things about it. I had to laugh when I saw a picture of Angela Davis at a party with "important people" in a People magazine a few years ago with a caption identifying her as a "social activitst." Now I'm wondering if there's going to be a revolution in this country in another 4 years when the full impact of the Bush Administration's campaign to bankrupt the country by running up a crushing debt (and let's hope and pray the US doesn't need to bring freedom to any more countries!) begins to have its effect on the middle class and the poor.

A hard day…

Can I just bypass February 12? We acknowledged our son’s 28 birthday yesterday. As an interesting (to me) aside, at his first birthday, I was 28 times older. Last year I was exactly twice as old and this year, a little less than twice his age. Sort of an interesting mathematical conundrum, I think. He has been living with us now for a week and is miserable and unhappy – there literally is nothing to do here in this small town compared with St. Louis, plus he gave up his apartment, his furniture, his fish, his “life”. But, it was either come back home or go to a homeless shelter. Tomorrow he starts work at a sawmill, so perhaps that will help. He’ll have something to do and will start earning some money, but even with the job and living at home, he may have to declare bankruptcy. There is a grief associated with being the parent of child who isn’t quite “normal.” I have no way of knowing how it compares to the grief of having a child die. I had a dear friend who was 88 years old and had buried three children. She still remembered the day her 3-year-old died some 65 years earlier. But I do know that this other kind grief is also intense and long-term. Hope always tries to spring eternal, but in our case it just keeps getting slapped down. And now that the Republicans are in power in this state, their first order of business (according to the State of the State speech) will be to dismantle the social services programs for poor people (Medicaid, in particular). So I don’t know what kind of mental health help we can get for him. And just what no one needs is yet another sappy, tear-jerker “best dead dog in the world” story, but here it is: Two years ago on Feb 12 we had to put Little Dog to sleep and it was all our fault that this happened because we neglected to have his teeth cleaned. He was a wonderful companion for 14 years, and I miss him terribly. And then there’s the guilt on top of that. It was easy to forget when Big Kitty died – I have no clue at all except that it was probably in the Spring. The unfortunate coincidence of Little Dog needing to be put down on the same day that our son was born means I will always be able to remember. RIP Little Dog.

Let’s go this way…no, that way…no, the other way

Yesterday as I was driving down the frontage road to the state highway to go to town, I noticed a large skein of geese in a semi-V formation, flying sort of parallel to the direction I was headed. They slightly veered more in my direction so that by the time I reached the highway, they were overhead. Then they suddenly seemed to forgot where they were going and how to get there, and they began to rapidly shift directions, veering left, veering right, then finally just milling around in a semi-circular formation, all the time honking at each other. I sat there at the stop sign watching them for a while until they finally got it together and headed off again. Why do I feel like I could be one of those geese right at the moment? Hint: he will be 28-years-old on Saturday.

A Series of Unfortunate Events

My sister, who is an elementary school librarian, told me about the Lemony Snickett books and how interesting and clever they were. So I started reading them, and yes, they were indeed very clever and amusing—at first. But by the time I had finished book 4, the cleverness had worn off, and they were mostly just depressing. Our son, who will be 28 years old next week, is now reaping the consequences of a many bad decisions (especially the one that got him fired) and he has now become a victim of a series of unfortunate events. Tomorrow R will go to pick up as much of his stuff as can be crammed into the back of our small pickup (N’s ailing car may or may not make the 180 mile trip) and he will be moving back home with us. We would really prefer that he remain independent, but we can’t afford the $2,500 to fix his car plus the $1,000 a month to keep him in St Louis until he can find another job, plus pay off his bills. So, he has lost “everything”, will likely have to file for bankruptcy (except he has no money to file for bankruptcy!), and is understandably very depressed. We are also depressed because the “empty-nest life” which we have come to enjoy quite a bit in the 7 years he has been gone will be turned upside down as well. However, the alternative for him would be homeless on the street and we won’t let that happen. We love him, but he is a very difficult person. We’ll just have to muddle through this as best we can and trust God will see us through. And that he is able to find a job and move out ASAP!!!