A Mother's Incompetence

We have five minutes.
Get in the car—time for school.
Tires squeal on the street.

Wait! What do I see?
Kids in costumes stroll along.
I forgot costumes!

I do a U-turn
Screech to a stop at the house
Look for something fast.

Fireman hat and coat
I stuff Ethan into it.
Happy Halloween!


For more haikus, click here.

Want to learn more about me? Katydid and Kid, a wonderful blog full of eco-friendly tips and crafts, has picked my blog for her Friday feature—thanks so much!

A Drawer Full Of Pens

I love discovering companies that are finding ways to recycle currently hard-to-recycle products. My latest find isn't a company, but a person, The Pen Guy, who uses disposable pens to make works of art.
It's great someone is putting used pens to good use because there are a lot of them out there. According to Wikipedia, Bic, the France-based manufacturer of ball-point pens, announced in 2005 it sold its 100 billionth disposable pen.
As you can see, I have more pens than I need. Many of them are so old, they don't write anymore. So my Thrifty Green Thursday tip of the week is mail your old pens to:

The Pen Guy
2425 Mendocino Ave.
Santa Rosa, CA 95403

Click here for more tips.

A Minor Miracle

Two Thanksgivings ago, my mom asked Ethan what kind of pie he wanted with his Turkey Day dinner. "I don't wany any pie made with fruits or vegetables," he said. So that Thanksgiving, we ate pumpkin pie while he tucked into a Hostess chocolate cupcake.

It's fairly common for kids on the autism spectrum to have an aversion to some type of food, mainly because they don't like its texture. Some kids don't like meat, others don't like bread. For Ethan, it was fruits and vegetables. And I'm talking every kind of fruit or vegetable you could think of--even raisins, which are so sweet, they hardly count as a fruit.

For a while, I tried every trick in the book to get some fruits and vegetables into Ethan's diet. I made cookies with shredded carrots, raisins and loads of chocolate chips. He would take one bite and spit out every shred of carrot and raisin in the cookie. People advised me to make smoothies, but I knew that was a no go because along with Ethan's aversion to fruits and vegetables, he also hated foods mixed up together. Every food--chicken nuggets, rice, a token vegetable--had a separate place on his plate.

So over the past two years, we've used a lot vitamin supplements to keep Ethan's health up while we chipped away at his hatred toward fruits and vegetables. Unfortunately we would have to reward Ethan for eating a slice of apple or lettuce leaf with sugar, his hands-down favorite food group. At least it got him to eat those vile foods.

But the real turning point occured when Ethan turned 5 years old. Suddenly, he had an appetite, so eating yucky foods became more appealing than feeling hungry. The more fruits and vegetables he ate, the braver I got, to the point where I plunked down this in front of him.

It's lasagna, the ultimate casserole. It's got noodles and cheese, which he loves, but those goodies are covered in tomato sauce, which is iffy. I held my breath when I put the plate in front of Ethan. He looked suspiciously at it, but his hunger got the best of him, and he took a bite. The next thing I knew, the plate was clean. I was estatic. Maybe I won't have to cook two meals for dinner anymore.

A Method To My Movie Madness

I'm a film fanatic, and read the movie review section of newspapers or magazines before any other. But back in the pre-Internet days, those movie reviews didn't do me much good because the minute I was inundated with shelf after shelf of films at Blockbuster, the titles of movies I wanted to rent would just fly out of my head.
Well, thanks to Netflix, I never have to rely on my seive-like mind again. We became a Netflix subscriber over a year ago. I immediately fell in love "the queue" feature, in which you create a list of movies you want to watch. But my favorite part of the queue is the "save" section, in which you can add movies to your queue that haven't come out on DVD.
So now I've developed a somewhat time-consuming system that prevents me from ever missing a movie I want see. On most Friday mornings, I open my email of New York Times movie reviews. I also log onto Netflix. When I read a review of a movie I think I like, I type its title into Netflix's search engine, and the movie pops up. I then click "save," and it's added to my queue.
I can't begin to describe the satisfaction I feel seeing that movie title appear safe and sound in my queue. This is especially true because, with more than 200 titles, it will probably take years before I get around to watching it.

Blind As A Bat

Last Tuesday was a first: I went to a doctor appointment with no kids because both were in school!! How cool is that?
I felt particularly high over this because it would have been extremely brutal to bring my rambunctious boys to this appointment--my annual visit to the optomologist to get a year's worth of contact lenses. As anyone with bad eye sight knows, visits to the optomologists are tedious--lots of waiting while I try my best to read an eye chart, not to mention more waiting for my eyes to dialate so the doctor can test for glaucoma. I can safely say is not a suitable environment for children under 6 years old.
Not having to worry about my boys tearing up the waiting room helped make this rather stressful appointment a little more enjoyable. I've worn glasses since I was 7 years old, so, as you may guess, my eyesight is horrible. If it wasn't for the cutting-edge plastics used to make eye glass lenses, my glasses would make "Coke-bottle" lenses look flattering. I'm sure that I am legally blind. It's amazing that my optomlogist hasn't gotten me arrested for trying to drive home from the office in my contact lenses.
Anyway, I digress. So I settle in the waiting room, hoping to read the latest Newsweek until the nurse calls me, but bam! he calls me in right away. I scurry into the doctor's dark office and sink into the chair behind my torture device, the ominous robot-looking machine that determines how blind I am. I take out my contact lenses and take a deep breath for the nail-biting test that has plagued me since childhood--faking 20/20 eyesight.
I cover my left eye and read the letters--"A O Y K E."
"Good job!" says the assistant, as he flashes up even smaller letters for me to read. "Y ... O ... D ... E ... K," I say.
"Great!" he says. "Can you read this?"
As I expected, the third line of letters are smaller and blurrier. Now it's time to get creative. The first letter can be either a Y or a K, but since the last line I read started with K, I choose Y. "Y ..... O .... D .... E ..... P????"
"Great!" he said, sounding truly impressed. "Now cover up your right eye."
I go through the same routine for my right eye, and then the assistant puts stinging drops in my eyes to dialate them. "You can wait in the lobby until the drops take effect," he says.
Darn! I have my contacts out, but only have my prescription sunglasses with me--I'd rather not sit in the lobby with those on. Plus, I brought my knitting, and feel rather foolish trying to knit with my sunglasses on the waiting room.
But, so be it. With no kids in tow, I am so trying to multitask. I'm never able to knit with them running up to me every five minutes needing me to turn on the DVD player, refill their sippy cups, or cut up an apple. Here I am, completely alone for the first time in weeks, and I am going to make the most of it.
So I pull out my knitting and start to rip out stitches from a botched fingerless glove I'm trying to knit. I'm glad that's all I am trying to do, because once the drops take effect, my eyesight blurs and I might as well have my eyes closed.
I do this for about 10 minutes, and hope the doctor calls me because this Cinderella's clock is going to strike midnight very soon. Translation: I need to pick up Ethan from school in 30 minutes.
Thankfully, the doctor calls me into his office and goes over my eye test results. "Your eyes look great!" he says. "You're seeing 20/20 in your contacts!"
After having my eyesight diminish year after year, I feel the weight of his words. I would love to celebrate my stable eyesight with a Starbucks latte, but duty calls. Ethan is waiting.
I hurry to the car, and am thankful that traffic is light because the dialation has not worn off, and things are still blurry. I feel a bit nervous about driving, but, hey, it's a straight shot from the doctor's office to Ethan's school, it's not like I have to read street signs or, God forbid, merge onto the highway.
I manage to pick Ethan up in one piece, and then it's off to get James from preschool. I stop at home and put on my regular glasses before I get James. I didn't realize what a mistake this was until I'm at the door of James' preschool and another mom gives me a second look. Oh, shoot--I look high, don't I? I want to explain the situation, but hold my tongue. Fact is, between successfully driving around town with dialated pupils, plus the good news I won't be needing a cane any time soon, plus being kid-free for almost three hours, feeling high isn't quite off the mark.

What Credit Can Buy

I spent, spent and spent
On things I kind of needed
J Crew, I hate you.

Now it’s payback time
No returns on sale items
Should I cut the card?

There is one bright spot
5,000 points buys Starbucks.

It’s latte heaven.

Click here for more haikus.

Lessons Learned About Packaging

Being a green shopper these days means more than buying organic food or biodegradable household products. You also need to take account the type of packaging the item comes in. With landfills overflowing, and many materials not easily recycable, it's important to buy items with the least amount of packaging possible.

Take these three differently packaged versions of Philadelphia brand Cream Cheese. My boys suddenly love bagels with cream cheese for breakfast, so I wanted to buy it in bulk at Costco.
I would have loved to buy the convienent, single-serve pouches--I wouldn't have to dirty up a knife every morning--but look at all that plastic and foil that will be thrown in my garbage. Pictures of overflowing landfills would haunt me every morning if I bought that.Then I considered the 3-lb plastic tub and the 3-lb slab of cream cheese packaged in foil and cardboard. I weighed the pros and cons of the tub--the cream cheese will stay fresher in the tub than in the foil. After a few uses, the foil gets all mucky with dried out cream cheese. But plastic tub isn't easy to recycle--you may be able to recycle the bottom part of the tub, but not the lid. Plus I no longer want to keep plastic containers for food storage, since it degrades over time in the dish washer.

So after standing in front of the cream cheese display for at least five minutes, it hit me. I'll get the cardboard packaged cream cheese, and divide it up into pint-size mason jars. That way I can put two of the jars in the freezer and pull them out when needed. I have to say, the system has worked well. Freezing the cream cheese makes it a little crumbly once it's defrosted, but it tastes fine. The only packaging I'm throwing away is a piece of metal foil, since the card board can be recycled.

So my Thrifty Green Thursday tip is to try to buy items that have as little packaging as possible. For more tips, click here.

Wordless Wednesday: This Caught My Eye

So is this a porn site? No, it's a rather boring web site to help women small business owners. But it did get me to look. For more Wordless Wednesday, click here.

There Is No Schmautism About Autism

My son Ethan has autism, but it's not obvious to people who don't know much about the disorder. I inwardly cringe when I try to explain to folks how autism makes my son have a difficult time staying focused on a task, become hyperactive, and, when he is in social situations, act super silly. Those traits make him sound more like a brat than someone with a disability.

When I read this excerpt from comedian Denis Leary's upcoming book, Why We Suck, all my worst fears about people's perceptions of Ethan were confirmed. Here is the excerpt, from a chapter in the book titled "Autism-Schautism":

"There is a huge boom in autism right now because inattentive mothers and competitive dads want an explanation for why their dumb-ass kids can't compete academically, so they throw money into the happy laps of shrinks . . . To get back diagnoses that help explain away the deficiencies of their junior morons. I don't give a [bleep] what these crackerjack whack jobs tell you - yer kid is NOT autistic. He's just stupid. Or lazy. Or both."

All I can say is, I wish it were that simple, Denis. I would give anything for Ethan's lifelong disability to be a figment of my imagination.

The fact that Leary devoted a whole chapter in his book to autism shows how this disorder has confused and scared so many people. One reason for the confusion is that autism has gone from a specific disorder to a "spectrum" disorder. When my brother was diagnosed with autism in the 1970's, it was a fairly rare disability. Only about one in 1,500 kids were diagnosed with autism then, and those kids usually ended up in a mental hospital for the rest of their lives. That's what happened to my 33-year-old brother: he can't speak, he needs 24/7 supervision, and spends his days in an adult day care facility.

Then by the 1990's the rate of kids being diagnosed with autism skyrocketed to 1 in 150 kids.
That's a pretty scary leap in statistics. How do you explain it? Obviously, autism runs in my family, so I can confidently say genetics plays a role.

Another reason for the increased rate is that doctors began to expand the definition of autism to include kids that are "higher functioning." These kids have normal intelligence and a fairly good command of language, but still have the core deficits that make up autism, which are impaired reciprocal social interaction, impaired communication, and restricted, repetitive behaviors, interests and activities.

I didn't buy the spectrum argument when Ethan was first diagnosed. I went to the evaluation thinking he wouldn't be diagnosed because he didn't remind me of my brother. I was shocked to hear that yes, in fact, Ethan and my brother do have the same disability, but they are on different points of the spectrum. I didn't want autism to be a "spectrum" disorder because I did not want that label for my son.

Now I'm very grateful that doctors have expanded the definition of autism because it has provided Ethan with access to services--speech therapy, occupational therapy, behavioral therapy--that he otherwise probably wouldn't have gotten. These services have helped Ethan flourish. When he first started occupational therapy, he didn't have the fine motor skills to hold a pencil. Now he draws and colors pictures of dinosaurs, his special interest.

More importantly, these services have boosted Ethan's confidence. When a children's book author and illustrator visited Ethan's school last week, Ethan introduced himself as a "fellow artist," and asked him about certain drawing techniques. If I had taken Denis Leary's parenting advice, Ethan wouldn't have any self-esteem and would probably end up a school troublemaker instead of a budding artist.

As disgusting as it is that Leary is trying to make a buck by ridiculing disabled children, it is giving the autism community an opportunity to speak up and educate folks about this complicated disorder. Better understanding will only make it easier for kids with autism to thrive and become productive members of society. Isn't that what all parents, including Leary, want?

Scrapbooking Getaway

Paper, scissors, glue.
Used to nail down memories.
This is such hard work.

No, really, it’s true.
I must have two days alone.
No kids are allowed.

Scrapbooking retreats
What a wonderful excuse
For mommy downtime.




Have a wonderful weekend, everyone! For more haikus, click here.

Recycle Wine Corks

Here is green option for all you wine enthusiasts: you no longer have to throw your natural or synthetic corks in the trash. Instead, mail them to Trenton, NJ-based TerraCycle Inc., which turns them into new products. I learned about this company via the blog, 365 Days of Trash.

The company tells you how many stamps are needed to mail corks: for up to 10 corks use two stamps; up to 30 corks use four stamps. Address your mailing bag or envelope to: TerraCycle Cork Brigade, 121 New York Ave., Trenton, NJ 08638.

TerraCycle has agreements with companies to recycle other types of packaging, such as yogurt cups, energy bar wrappers and drink pouches. Learn more about the company's efforts here. And click here to read more Thrifty Green Thursday tips.

I Wish My Stylist And I Were BFF

I love/hate to get my hair cut. I love going into a salon, all shaggy, and coming out sleek and shiny. But I don't like the actual hair cutting process because I feel like a spotlight is on me. Well, maybe not an actual spotlight, but sitting in front of a mirror for 30 minutes, watching a stranger cut my hair, comes pretty close in my book.

Maybe the awkwardness of the experience is why people chat non-stop with their stylists. Conversation does make time fly. I wish I could pratter away with my stylist, but I only get my hair cut every two months, so I'm just not around her enough to develop a real relationship. Plus, I'm pretty shy.

Believe me, I try to make conversation. But when I need to make small talk, I compensate for my shyness by asking a lot of questions. It works pretty well in most situations, but not when I get my hair cut. I don't think stylists want to talk about themselves to a customer they don't know. They get paid to cut your hair and listen to you talk about yourself.

So after I've made my pathetic stabs at conversation--can you believe the change in the weather?--I accept my fate and start eavesdropping on other customers' conversations. Getting a glimpse into others' lives is such a guilty pleasure. The last time I got my hair cut, the woman next to me talked about redoing her living room. Then she moved on to how a relative made up with the family and they all went to Hawaii together.

Hmmm ... Hawaii .... Then she jolted me out of my daydream when she said her relative's boyfriend is Persian. "Which country are Persians from?" asked her stylist. "Eye-raq," she responded. I so wanted to correct her--Persians are from EE-ran, not Eye-raq. But then it would be obvious that I'm eavesdropping, so I kept my mouth shut, and racked my brain for another topic of conversation to try out with my stylist.

By that time, thank goodness, she started blowing my hair dry, so I didn't have to worry about conversing any more--at least not for another two months.

Way To Burst My Bubble

Hind sight is 20/20. As a parent, I really don't want my boys to make the same mistakes I did. A biggie for me is college--I want them to go there with an actual plan, and not just cross their fingers and hope it works out. I mean, I spent how much money to get a degree in English??

Needless to say, I take Ethan's interests almost as seriously as he does, hoping that one of them will eventually turn into a "career." Right now, Ethan is consumed with dinosaurs. He has a vast collection of plastic dinosaurs that he uses to reinact bloody encounters between meat eaters and plant eaters. He also has a small library of dinosaur books, from which he has memorized vital statistics. Did you know, for example, that a T Rex is 40-ft.-long from nose to tail and has two claws on each hand?

When Ethan and I watched the Denver Museum of Nature and Science's latest Imax movie, "Dinosaurs Alive," I was curious to see if the film would push Ethan's interest in dinosaurs beyond just playing with plastic ones. The movie mixed computer simulations of dinosaurs attacking each other with footage of paleontologists working in the Gobi Desert and New Mexico. All the scientists interviewed in the film got into dinosaurs when they were 6 years old. Plus, according to the movie, paleontology is a burgeoning field--only 2% of dinosaurs that lived have been discovered. That bit of information really got the wheels turning in my head, because it's always good to get on the ground floor of a growing field.

I was happy to see Ethan enraptured throughout the film. When the lights came up in the theater, I asked Ethan if he liked it. "Yes!!" he said. I tried to tamp down the hope in my voice when I asked, "Do you think you'd like to be paleontologist?"

"NO!!" he said.

His emphatic answer made the whirring contraption my head come tumbling down. "Well, why not?" I asked.

"They work too hard," he said. "They have to sit in a car for a long, long time. Then they have to sit in the dirt, in the hot sun, looking for bones."

I have to admit, he's got a point.

The Keys To My Sanity

Preschool is waiting.
It’s time to get in the car.
Get in the car now.

The boys are buckled.
Wait—oh no—where are my keys?
Don’t move—I must look.

I go in the house
And search my usual spots.
Shelf, no. Kitchen, no.

I so want to cry.
Then I check Ethan’s coat sleeve.
The keys poke out it.

How did this happen?
No matter—time for school boys.
Sanity is saved.


Read more haikus here.

Make Your Own Dish Scrubber

When you use your last onion or garlic bulb, don't throw away the plastic netted bag it comes in. The material makes a perfect dish scrubber. Just take the bag, roll it into a ball and secure it with fishing wire.

My Thrifty Green Thursday Tip of the week is never buy a dish scrubber again--just make your own! For more tips, click here.

My Current Snapshot

I was tagged by Honey Mommy to divulge seven random facts about myself. Thanks, Honey Mommy--I needed a mid-week post! So, here it goes:

1. I miss my pre-kid road trips. Before we had Ethan, my husband and I would drive eight hours straight from Chicago to Kentucky to visit his family, which gave us plenty of time to talk and drink lots of bad gas station coffee. Now our family road trips are too filled with whining and interruptions to replicate that.

2. I've developed obsessive-compulsive disorder from blogging. I can't complete any household chore without checking my e-mail for comments first.

3. I dyed my hair with henna and cloves a couple of weeks ago, and it still smells like cloves when it gets wet.

4. Ethan wants to be a dinosaur for Halloween, and James wants to be "The Creeper" from Scooby-Doo. I have no idea how I'm going to make that happen.

5. Based on the number of uncompleted craft projects I have lying around the house, I think I have attention deficit disorder along with OCD.

6. Ethan cares more about our fish than I do. The other day he told me to "clean the fish tank--it's filthy!!"

7. I followed through on the promise I made in yesterday's post, and had a fun time with Ethan at the pool while James took his swim lesson. The best part was just hanging out in the shallow end and watching the sunlight reflect on the water.

Now I want to hear seven random facts from The Soapdish, The Circus, Rainbow Mummy , and The Wayfaring Wanderer.

From The Mouths Of Rock Stars

I had been moping a bit around the house yesterday. With the Weezer concert over with, life here feels a bit like the day after Christmas. You know, that feeling of magic evaporated because there's nothing left to look foward to except the daily grind. And frankly, reality at the Bowen household hasn't been too fun, lately. Ethan's autism has made first grade a difficult adjustment. Going from a three-hour day of kindergarten to a full day of school has been stressful for him. He's got the social pressure of trying to interact appropriately with his peers, as well as academic stresses of learning to read and write. Every evening we have to coax him to do 40 minutes worth of homework--not a fun task.
My anxiety from dealing with these issues has pushed me to the point where I don't enjoy being with Ethan lately. I know that sounds awful, but it's true. I've been looking forward to my time away from him, like at this Weezer concert, where I can leave mommyhood behind and just be for a while.
I never expected Weezer to make me confront my parenting problems. But in the middle of the concert, Rivers Cuomo, the lead singer, talked to the audience about how he and his family spent their day off from the tour at a water park in the middle-of-nowhere Nebraska. He mentioned how his 17-month-old daughter loved playing in the kiddie pool, and how much fun he had trying out the water slides. How ironic--every week I take my kids to a pool with water slides. What's mundane for me is pure novelty for this rock star.
The next day, the image of the Cuomo family having a great time at some Nebraskan water park still haunted me. It made me think of when we took Ethan to a pool when he was a baby, and the joyous look on his face as he splashed around in the water. Those moments of sheer happiness between a parent and child are so fleeting you don't realize how precious they are until they are gone.
After all these years, Ethan still loves swimming. So this afternoon, when we do our weekly visit to the pool, I'm going to put all other worries aside and try to treat this fun time together as the gift it really is.

Weezer, Baby

Yes, this much blogged about event has come and gone. And did it live up to all the hyperbole in my head? I have to say it did. As you know, I don't get out on the music scene much, so I really don't feel qualified to write a critique of the show. Rivers Cuomo, the lead singer, had a head cold, which I'm sure affected the band's energy level.
Maybe my standards are low because it's been so long since I've seen a rock concert, but River's hoarse voice didn't deter from my overall concert experience. Like that "OMG--there they are!!" moment when the band you really, really like walks out on stage for the first time and starts to play. And belting out the words to all your favorite songs along with fellow giddy fans.

That beats singing along to a Weezer CD while you're chauffering your kids around town any day.

He Did It!

Other kids zoom by
As he walks down the sidewalk.
I can’t ride a bike.

We know you can ride.
How long will it take to learn?
You just got to try.

He tries many times.
Then a wobbly start smooths out
He proved himself wrong!

We're so proud of Ethan for not giving up. Want to read more haikus? Click here.

Misadventures In Eating

Dining out is supposed to be a form of escape. Having someone else make the food and clean up the mess helps get your mind off of all of life's little problems.

The last thing I want when I'm at a restaurant is to be smacked in the head with life's major problems, like poverty. That happened to me once during my Chicago college days, when I tagged along with my friend and her boyfriend to have lunch on the city's South Side. They were in search of authentic "soul food," and thought the predominantly black neighborhood just blocks from the University of Chicago would be just the place to find it.

It seemed like a fun way to spend the afternoon. I had never been the Chicago's South Side before. I was up for an adventure.

Well, "adventure" is probably the only positive spin I can put on this foolish outing. The neighborhood wasn't some hidden gem filled with tasty restaurants and interesting boutiques, it was a ghetto. I watched a 10-year-old boy set fire to a pile of wood on the sidewalk as we parked our car. Every shop had bars over the windows, and gang-symbol graffitti covered most of the buildings' walls.

I reluctantly got out of the car and followed my friends into a dingy storefront. All heads turned as we walked through the door. We were the only white people in the place--we were probably the only white people in the entire neighborhood. We were a walking target.

The restaurant was small, with just three or four booths. Nothing adorned the walls. We walked up to the counter to order food. "We want to try some soul food," said my friend's boyfriend. I wanted to crawl under a table. "Oookaayy," said the woman behind the counter, and handed us a menu. The look on her face confirmed what I was thinking, "What the hell are we doing here???"

Risking our lives by patroning this restaurant may have been worth if the food was good, but it wasn't. The ingredients were probably the best that could be bought with a welfare check. I could barely choke down the lard-cooked, flavorless pork chop I ordered. I lost total respect for my friend's boyfriend as I watched him happily tuck into a plate of what looked like Spaghettio's and deep-fried fish. I left the place with indigestion mixed with a bad case of the blues due to all poverty I witnessed.

I learned my lesson from that outing and from then on avoided restaurants in bad parts of town. So imagine my surprise when I'm smacked in the head with another one of life's problems--old age--while dining in Greenwood Village, one of Denver's wealthiest suburbs?

My husband and I got a long-overdue night out, and decided to try a seafood place. The restaurant got a great rating from Westword. We were giddy with anticipation until we walked through the door into a sea of white hair. It was like eating in the cafeteria of a nursing home. The man at the table next us had an oxygen tank propped against the chair and could barely hold his fork in his shaking hand.

I ended up ordering the ultimate senior citizen dinner--wall-eye with rice pilaf and steamed carrots and green beans. The meal's lack of salt may have been good for my blood pressure, but bad for my taste buds.

Like my experience on Chicago's South Side, I was transported to a place I didn't want to go. But at least this time, I had some good white wine with the meal to take the edge off.