Time is flying, I can’t believe I’ve been away for a week.  The writing frenzy yielded three new chapters to Julianne’s Wheels of Fire, a short story in the horror genre for a contest and the script for the upcoming Pottery Festival’s Queen’s pageant.  I even managed to squeeze in some gardening time and grandkids.  I am still flumoxed about how I managed to fit a day job into my life.   But all of that has nothing to do with what drove me to the blog today. 

I heard on the news recently about a school system that is permitting parents to log onto their teenager’s school and follow their every move.  Attendance, assignments, test grades all in real time.  At first glance, this seems like excellent, involved parenting doesn’t it?  But I must disagree.  To me, this is the equivalent of taking up the desk next to your kid for all 12 years of their early schooling, stealing from them the skills and habits necessary to be responsible adults.  Growth as a human being comes from messing up, taking responsibility, organizing ones own schedule. 

 The best parent I’ve met to date once told me that great parents do not do for their children anything they can do for themselves beginning in infancy.  What do you think?

Just when you might have thought I’ve abandoned my goofy nature with all these posts on recycling and traumatized children…I can’t resist a new dog picture: Exhausted dog after spending a warm spring day with all five of my grandchildren.    Back in a few days…currently in a writing frenzy…

When Pap and I took custody of the oldest two grandgirls over a year ago, removing them from the nightmare our oldest daughter had created through alcohol, drugs and men who treat her like a punching bag…I commented to him that I was concerned that the girls were not exhibiting the anger, fear, frustration, or angst I thought they should considering what they’d been through.  They settled into my house with very little problem.  They laughed and giggled all the time, had good grades at school and really enjoyed their visits with their mother as she got her life back on track.  When Children’s Services cleared my daughter’s case and the girls moved back in with her, they were excited to reunite their family.  Happy to be back with Mom.   Most of the family thought we’d dodged a bullet…call me pessimistic, but I knew the gavel would eventually fall.  Nobody goes through what they did without getting totally and royally pissed.

My daughter is finding out that nobody exists in a vacuum.  Everything we do or say affects somebody else and results in repercussions.  If you’re sending out good - that’s what bounces back.  If not - you get the ten year old daughter from Hell.  Now that the pressure is off and life at her house looks like it did at my house, Jazz is thoroughly and completely furious at her mother.  From screaming tantrums to name calling to open rebellion on chores and curfews…she’s giving it back.  But the worst part of this ugly scenario, is Jazz doesn’t know why she’s angry, she’s just mad all the time and usually out of proportion to the situation at hand.  What’s saddest to me is seeing the light seeping out of this child that occupies such a piece of my heart.  Counseling is forthcoming, and my hope is that the psychiatrist is successful, because too many of these pictures keep showing up on my camera. 

Of all the things we relocated or gave away in order to scale down our lives, Pap and I miss the dogs and cats the most.  Well, we miss the kids too, but they haven’t tossed a ball or snuggled in for a hug with us in many years.  This little guy needed a new home so when the call came in, how could we say no?  His name is Wimper (I just adopt ‘em, I don’t name ‘em) and he looks so much like our last Shih-Tzu, after just one day I feel like I’ve known him forever.  He’s one, the same age as my youngest two grandgirls, likes vanilla ice cream and believes his new chew bear belongs on my bed.  Ought to be an interesting ride with this guy.

Have you seen that commercial that says something like, once you’ve made one change to help the planet, it changes your thinking forever? That ad got me thinking about my own journey into noticing that there were steps my family needed to take that would be better for us and better for the planet we inhabit.

It started in the garden, of course. I love working in the garden and it’s always been important to me to provide pesticide and hormone free fruits and vegetables to my kids. Around here, the only sure way to do that is grow it yourself. But, the expense and work of turning clay into plantable earth was beating me down. Then I found this book: Lasagna Gardening.   My battle with the weed infested flower beds here at my new house reminded me that this is THE ONLY way to garden. 

The process is really simple, rather than digging into the ground, you build on top, using all the waste materials from your yard that you once sent to the landfill. It starts with several inches of newspaper, add your grass clippings, dump the leaves, add more grass clippings and the weird lettuce leafs, peelings and misc. shells from your kitchen, add more tree leafs. Once you have several layers - brown, green, brown, green…you can plant right in it. No weeds, no bugs and the most beautiful flowers and vegetables you’ve ever seen. All my gardens at the old house were lasagna gardens and that got me thinking….

With five kids we could haul out ten or twelve bags of trash every week. Do you have any idea how many sheets of paper five kids throw into the trash? How many aluminum cans? It was costing us a fortune. So we set up a simple system to collect these kinds of things along with the plastic milk jugs for recycling. That got me thinking….

Energy efficient light bulbs are not that much more expensive than regular ones, and it is proven fact that they’re better for the planet. We had a small windfall a couple of years ago and decided to spend it replacing all the light bulbs in our house. Yesterday I replaced the light bulb in my favorite reading light. I can’t remember having to do that since we put the new, environmentally friendly bulbs in. That got me thinking…

Plastic bags and bottles will lay in the landfill for 100 years or more. There are chemicals in plastic I don’t want to think much about. I know what kinds of chemicals they treat my tap water with and it’s scary. There are ingredients listed on my cleaning supplies that I can’t even pronounce… I think this will be my new set of problems to resolve in an environmentally friendly way.

Now that we’re settled into our new little jewel box of a home, a few truths have emerged:

• It grows larger any time you have to mop the floor.
• One thing out of place makes the entire house look trashed.
• Spiders that invade a small house are just as big as spiders that invade a large house.

After two days of breaking my back trying to get the garden in shape at this new house, I was very happy to see rain on Saturday.  This town was built on clay, you might think you have top soil, but it’s no more substantial than foundation and blush on a ladies face.  I had forgotten this fact after working on the gardens of my old house for 15 years.  Luckily, we had this early great weather, I’m nowhere near planting anything. 

Progress on my new book continues with the exception of my main character’s sidekick who has gone totally rogue.  I keep telling him I’m going to write him out and replace him with a girl if he doesn’t knock it off, but he’s not listening.  Lest you think I’ve gone totally insane, remember the story acts itself out in my head and I just record the action.  Despite this technique, I do have a plan and a rough outline for where I want the story to go…then something like this happens.  Punkin’ headed supporting character keeps pushing his way to the forefront. 

The sun is shining and I have a new flower bed filled with dandelions.  Back on Monday!

Last night was the monthly meeting of my writing group.  Of all the committees and groups I’ve ever belonged to, this is my favorite.  There’s much debate in the writing world about the benefits of a writing group.  By its very nature, writing is a solitary pursuit.  But not all writers can continue to be productive without the stimulus of time spent with other writers.  I’m one of those writers.

Our writing group was formed in 2004 with the following purpose:  To provide a safe and inspirational place for local writers to assemble for motivation, inspiration, instruction, guidance and the resources needed to complete their work. We’ve stayed true to that purpose and while we have yet seen a member get something published traditionally, our group is as fresh and vibrant as it was the first day we met.  To a member, everyone is writing.   What started as a hand full of townies, has grown to a full page of names and e-mail addresses and includes members from towns as much as forty miles away.  Our membership includes fiction writers, journalists, playwrites, poets and historians.  We range in age from 17-73.

As I looked around the room last night I couldn’t help thinking we’re onto something.  We’re doing something right.  Some of our people have come from other groups that failed, but nobody has ever been able to clearly tell me what led to that failure.  I’d like to know, so that those mistakes don’t creep into our program.

Do you belong to a writers group?  Have you in the past?  Tell me about it.

American Sign Language is the third most used language in the world according to my research.  Research necessitated by my need to keep up with this little bundle of a grandgirl.  Her parents are both teachers and they weren’t satisfied with taking care of her needs the old fashioned way.  You remember: the baby is crying so you change her diaper. Still crying, rock and jiggle.  Still crying, try a bottle.  Still crying, fetch the favorite blanket, doll, or pacifier.  This inability to communicate was as frustrating for the kids as it was for us parents.  Pap and I saw some legendary melt downs by our kids when they wanted the blue teddy bear not the purple frog and we just could not understand them.

Some of today’s parents, like my daughter, are getting past this communication block by teaching their babies ASL.  When I first heard about this, I thought she was nuts.  But now that I’ve seen it in action, all I can say is:  how totally cool.  Better, how pleasant to spend time with your kid without all the fussing, sobbing and tantrums (not to mention whatever the kids chosen melt down action is).

I can’t help thinking that this second language will serve these children well throughout their lives.  I can think of dozens of situations in which one of my kids needed something and speaking out loud just wasn’t an option.

Blogging wasn’t the only thing I neglected while I was moving. Since Pap managed to come down with the flu right after we settled the boxes into the house and I ended up with a cold a few days after that, I haven’t seen much of the grandgirls until this weekend. I should know better than to leave their mothers unsupervised for more than a day or two. The minute my back was turned, they replaced my grandchildren with some kind of alien version. I suspect high technology is involved because this one’s voice track keeps getting stuck: “up-up-up! mine-mine-mine! no-no-no!”. She used to be so sweet and cuddly.  In her human form, she sleeps.  This new version?  Let’s just put it this way…at 10:00 p.m. it was kind of cute that she was still running around yelling “Nana, me ook!”  By midnight it was getting annoying.  At 1:00 I started worrying about how I was going to function on Sunday with no sleep.   She finally fell asleep at 3:30 and my internal alarm demanded I get up at 5:30…I admit, it was a struggle not shake this little false child awake so she would at least be as tired as I was.  But that would have been silly.  Much more effective to demand that her mother reset her kid’s sleep program when she comes to my house.  Insert that memory card that shuts kid down by 10:30 tops…. I know its Monday, but I’m still tired.

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