The Old Man is Snoring

If when it rains, it pour- then get ready for a blizzard.

That is just how it is feeling tonight.

-Just over a week a go- My little 3 year old girl got pneumonia, ended up in ER with 104.5 temp and wheezing.

+luckily the antibiotics took care of that and she was running around the next day.

-Last month my fridge broke. We were living out of coolers for 3 days.

+but we didn't have to replace it, it just needed a small part to keep it defrosted.

- We lost our PCAs at the end of August, took us all of September to qualify again- under a different program because we now in a different financial bracket.

-My washer broke this week. Claimed it lost communications with it's control computer. That looked like a $400 part to repair it.

+got fixed in just over 30 hours.....it turned out the wires to the control center had their insulation rubbed off by the drum. It is working again!

-My Iphone completely died a week or more ago. I don't need an Iphone. I lived just fine without it. Any plain cell phone would work... but no, it was on a company plan and we had to get approval through the CEO and that was easy, but I didn't realize I would be paying for it. They wouldn't accept my first or last born for payment either. And it just happen to die right after the brand new Iphone 4 made it's debut.

-Our car completely died on us while we were in shopping in Brainerd tonight. Car repairs are never cheap.

+luckily, and many great kudos to my Sister and BIL as they loaned us their van so we could at least take our family home.

Better make sure you have snowboots and hats and mitts out. Umbrellas aren't needed when it's snowing!

Warmth through Sonlight

My father is an environmental engineer. He carefully designed a house for us that has a green house facing directly south to make the most use of the pale winter sunlight. In fact, it often works too well. When it is -40 outside, it can be 95 in the greenhouse. The advantage is that we can open the doors between the house and the greenhouse and heat our house with this captured sunlight.

Sometimes it just feels good to sit in the sun in the green house. It warms up chilly bones like a warm hug from God.

Likewise, when we walk in God's light, his love can warm our hearts and defrost our frozen feelings.

May we take opportunities to face the Son, and bask in his light, so we can warm our homes and all who enter there.

yesterday

Yesterday was a beautiful day!

All week we have lived in a steam oven. ... yesterday was technically the hottest, but the humidity was down at only 50% (vs the 98% we've had for a week). And the sky was blue and clear the the lake water so warm and there was a wonderful breeze, so we cooked hotdogs over a campfire for dinner, and the mix of baked beans, saurkraut and onions was so tasty, I had to make it 3 times. And the marshmallows where so golden brown and complete goo all the way through. It was awesome.!

And I slept hard last night, it was so nice and cool, and then slept hard all morning.

New allergies, new fun

I seem to have developed some food allergies recently. Most noticeably to dairy- any and all traces of dairy. So much as a kid who had eaten buttered popcorn to touch my arm will cause a burning rash, and butter powder on chips will cause my lips to burn all day.

Fun..... since dairy parts and proteins are hidden across a wide swath of food products.

I am currently on an elimination diet- to eliminate many potential allergens.... which means I can eat some fruits, veggies and a few weirdish grains. After looking high and low for foods I can eat... home seems to be about the only place they are served. Since I am currently off of wheat, soy, corn, potatoes, tomato, citrus and peanuts, pork, beef, shell fish, mushrooms, peppers and refined sugars of all sorts. Plus dairy.

This diet is to continue for about 2 weeks until my body behaves all happy like- then I can try 1 potential allergen at a time- for about 3 days. If I have no reactions then I can include it in my diet. I have been debating what I want to try first- wheat, corn or soy? Those are definitely the first to try to include again to gain any sort of normal eating patterns.

Why am I doing this?

Well- for about the last month I have endured constant gas- bloating, farting, burping - up to 60 times per hour (or more). And a rash started developing on my upper arms. After doing research on gas and rashes I realized that symptoms I have been having, including constant runs, heartburn and other stuff all seemed to point to hidden food allergies. So I am now teasing out what those are... after I keep a record of everything I eat and how I react... I plan to get allergy tested and see of the 2 correlate at all- but digestive allergies don't always show accurately on typical allergy tests. There are often false negatives and false positives.

Civilization takes civilaized behavior

I read this article today: http://www.businessinsider.com/18-signs-the-collapse-of-society-is-accelerating-2011-6#

And it does point out some trends I have been seeing this week.... now I understand what was talked about in General Conference as we were admonished to be kinder, more helpful, and really watch our behavior to be/stay an example of Christ.

And indeed I have found more times this past week were I have had to censor my own language or thoughts. And I was wondering what makes the swearing seem normal? Of course, all I had to do was look around at the media, mass and semi private to see it. It is way more common and way more accepted. But that does not mean that we need to allow ourselves to follow the trend towards less civilized behaviors.

Stand up for goodness, stand out due to polite behavior.

Just and average day around here

Shanny got picked up by the police, before anybody here even knew she was missing. She went to see Grandma, while I was in Brainerd to buy more medicine for Ian, because she had poured all of Ian's meds down the drain and Ian's belly was growing larger, more distended that is, with out his meds to help him poo. I had Roo with me in Brainerd, which means that....

Getting away from home unnoticed was a pretty good feat for a toddler in a house where there are more adults then children.

That is because all the adults were focused on trying to get Galen through his schooling before the year ends. After lots and lots of detailed coaching he did finally get his math test finished. Yeah!

On to his science project!

Its a good thing we are putting up a fence.

Neuro-typical syndrom

Happy Mothers Day!

And today I thank my kids for curing me of neuro-typical syndrome quite thoroughly.

Neuro- typical (think normal brained) people have strong imitation synapses. That means when they see somebody do something they typically want to imitate them. This is advantageous in learning how to hunt or what nuts and berries to eat, but so often this imitation often morphs into us wanting to have what others have and be just like everyone else. Of course none of us are just like everybody else, so we start pretending we are something we are not and make a facade of perfection. This "Facade of perfection" is neuro-typical syndrome.

As you may or may not know, in the autistic brain theses imitation synapses are very weak, these children don't just naturally pick all those unwritten rules of social engagement and usually are fairly clueless of what other people think of them. Of course these challenges reflect in the family functioning and pretty soon as a parent you have to give up and trying to be like everybody else- it just ain't going to happen.

Then we see that modern society is built upon an unsustainable systems and realize there are more then mental health reasons to exit the rat race.

Autistics are more likely to start a trend then to follow one.