Do You Realize?

Photo Hunt Saturday--Red

Early. Again. I'm on a roll.

This week's theme is: Red. And I have a photo of... a bird! Surprise, surprise, huh?

I took this photo in Hawaii in September 2005. It is a Red-Crested Cardinal (Paroaria cucullata); they migrated to Hawaii from Brazil. I think they are so full of character.

Family Therapy is FUN!

Well, at least it's interesting.

So, one of the recommendations from the Seay Behavioral Health Center (where youngest spent eleven days) was that adolescents in sticky family/mental health situations tend to benefit from family therapy a lot in addition (or, in some cases, in lieu of) regular individual counseling. The reason being that oftentimes family dynamics for these kids are greatly skewed.

After research on the Internet, I trusted my gut and chose, made an appointment, and we saw our new family therapist last Saturday, then again last night. She does a lot of hands-on "play therapy;" and yes, it works for adolescents, too. I was completely fascinated with our activities & the results.

On Saturday, we were instructed to pick ONE color of crayon per person; once we did that, she sent us to a large mural paper & told us to draw a scene or picture on it together. The catch was that we could not talk or communicate in any way. It was quite an interesting picture, let me tell you, but that's not what surprised me. Her assessment of the photo really made me think she's bugged our house.

Looking at the different colors each person chose, within the picture drawn, we could see mostly red (my hubby). Next, as far as amount of color seen, was Youngest and me, about equal, with Youngest with the slight edge. Lastly, with only a few additions to the picture, were Middle and Eldest. She then told us to look at that picture and imagine it as our family. Huh? Well, okay, there it was.

Hubby is the BMOC, the Main Man, Large and In Charge, Head of Household. He has the most presence in the house, and in the picture. A lot of his drawings were either leading the drawing or adding something to someone else's drawing (adding a hat or a tie or something). He tends to be somewhat of a control freak. Good virgo, he is.

My color (brown) was very present, but it was mainly in "helper" or "reactive" roles. I added things I thought the photo needed to be complete, bark on the tree, whiskers on the cat... I tend to react to a situation and help finish it, not always a good thing, when the kids need to learn to navigate these relationships themselves.

Youngest (blue) had easily as much, if not more, presence than I did, and all of his drawing was in the very center of the picture. Taking the metaphor to its accurate conclusion, she guessed that he takes up a lot of emotional room in the family and always seems to be in the center of every situation.

The two who had the least presence in the picture were Middle and Eldest (purple and black). Just as in the picture, Eldest tends to do her thing and then drop back, while Middle just gets lost in the shuffle.

Last night, we got to draw another picture, except this time we were allowed to talk. We were all surprised (but probably shouldn't have been) to discover that this was more difficult for us to do than the one where we couldn't talk. This one mainly gave her an idea of how we communicated as a family.

Our homework this week is interesting. Each one of us has one day in which all of the family's attention will be focused on that one person. It will be interesting to see how difficult it is for: (a) Youngest to relinquish all the attention he normally commands, (b) Middle to actually feel attention on him and accept it, and (c) me to not try to compensate for the other two as the attention is focused on only one child. I'm so excited to try this out (not to mention having a day for just me, too!) and see where it goes.

Sunday Scribblings

I found this challenge blog one week a month or two ago at the site of one of my fellow Photo Hunters. I thought it was great, but I didn't want to add another challenge to my plate. There is a weekly topic, just like Photo Hunters, but participants use it as a writing prompt.

And if ever there was a topic that was near to my own experiences, it is this week's Sunday Scribblings topic: Misspent Youth.

As  a child, I was terrifically smart; I taught myself to read at the age of four, and by first grade, I was being separated from the rest of my class because I was doing sixth grade-level reading. They had to separate me; I couldn't just switch classrooms to a higher grade for reading, because it was elementary school, where fifth grade was the highest grade. (By the time I was in eighth grade, there were three of us that needed advanced math, so we were transported to the high school & back.) This separation left in me an impression that if I were too smart, it separated me from my peers. All through elementary school, I was separated at some point in the day for some academic reason.

By the time sixth grade rolled around and we were moving to a new school, I knew what was in store for me: separation. Soon I developed a plan to purposely let my grades slip down to average. I was finally allowed a spot in my own classroom, but I was still separated, even if it wasn't physical any longer. I was still the smart kid, the kid off of whom everyone expected to cheat; I was still different. I tried my hardest to let my grades slip even further, and it worked. And I made some friends, ones that weren't interested in cheating off my papers, but in me.

By tenth grade, I wanted not just friends, but cool friends. And letting my grades slide wasn't the path to cool friends any more; grades were no longer any status indicator. So I quit band, colored my hair, and devised another plan. I got a boyfriend at a different school, one who was like me; B. hung out with the popular crowd, but he was not really a part of them. We dated for more than a year; we lost our sexual and alcoholic virginity together. After that relationship ended, with B. cheating on me in the back of his truck with one of my "friends"), I kind of felt like there was nothing else to lose. And so began two years of hell for my parents.

I had friends from four or five different schools in town, some popular, some not so much. Some had family money, some were poor. I did not discriminate; if they wanted to party, they were my friend.

In the course of those two years, I chased love and acceptance through promiscuity and alcohol. I never found it, but I tried. Many a night I would drive home drunk; it's truly fortunate that I never was involved in an accident. My parents had no idea how to control me, and so they sort of treated it as a "phase" I would grow out of. That ended up being the truth, but it took an incredibly long, painful fall to get there.

I was seventeen. I had met a really hot guy, C.,  from the wrong side of the tracks. (His grandmother had run a brothel "back in the day," and his father had eventually gone to prison, tried as a "career criminal" after attempting to arrange a hit on the DA. His uncle ended up dead, I believe, and not naturally so. I found all this out a year later, but it probably would have only made his appeal that much greater.) I had a job and had just bought my first car. C. would come to work & pick up my car to wash it every day. I had that car twelve days.

One Friday night, a friend and I went cruising in my car, staying out well past my curfew. Suspecting I was pregnant, but not having told anyone, I had not drank any alcohol that night. But it was very late. At about 1 a.m. I fell asleep at the wheel of my car, headed down an embankment, hit a culvert, and flipped my car end over end five times, landing on the roof. It happened on the highway in front of the house of my mother's best friend, who was an EMT. A truck driver saw the accident & stopped to pull my friend and me from the car. I never got to meet him.

I did, however, eventually meet the fetus that was two weeks settled in my uterus that night. She's now a beautiful, intelligent, independent, honest senior in high school. She's the reason that, although I consider myself mostly Democratic and liberal, I don't believe in abortions as birth control, or simply for poor judgment. She's my only daughter.

Photo Hunt Saturday--Hot

Okay, I've been late with my photos for a month or so now. So I'm being proactive, and I'm setting this up on Thursday, to auto-post on Friday. Early. Me. Yeah.

This week's theme is: Hot. I took this photo in October 2005 at a Wilderness Medicine Conference that my husband & I attended. We learned to make fire. And it is really freaking hard.

Giving Thanks

Only in the last couple of days or weeks have I started really thinking about this whole Thanksgiving holiday. Like most traditional holidays, we celebrate it and honor its traditions of giving thanks for our blessings. However, who are we really thanking for all this? My husband is a heathen Athiest scientist doctor, and I am currently mad at God for playing games with us "little people." Are we thanking him/her?

Is it possible to be thankful FOR something but not TO anyone in particular? I'd like to think so. Because I AM thankful for a lot of things. Did GOD grant these things to me? Fate? Chance? I don't know. But this I DO know. I am thankful for:

• My wonderful heathen, Athiest scientist doctor husband
• My three fantastic, diverse, and annoying children
• My bazillion bizarre and crazy pets
• My mother's new healthy liver and the donor who was kind enough to give it
• My friends far and near
• My health
• Good movies
• Good food
• Good booze
• My MacBook Pro 17"
• Our Nikon D2x
• My Prius and all the goodness it entails
• The fact that I am too smart to join the hordes of dumbasses elbowing each other for "good deals" at 4 a.m. on Black Friday

Happy Turkey Day, all! Gobble, gobble! (Except we're eating free-range local chicken...)

Photo Hunt Saturday--I Love ___________

This week's theme presents me with both a dilemma and an opportunity. The dilemma? I don't usually like to present more than one or two photos for a theme. The opportunity? To share some of my favorite photos of things that I love. As many as I want. Right now.

But, I will restrain myself to just two, taken during the same trip.

1. This man. We've been together for eleven years, married for eight. Still happy. This was taken last year on our anniversary. We were several days into a "no shower" adventure in Utah.

2. My lovely, wacky, dysFUNctional family. We are a merry band of polar opposites.

Science(ish) Friday (and where I've been)

Sometimes (okay, most of the time) all I want is for life just to slow down a little (or a lot). This past week or so has been no exception. This week:

*My mom suffered a bout of acute rejection. Not unusual for a liver transplant patient, but not a good thing, either. After four (five?) days of intense prednisone and anti-rejection drug therapy, her biopsy yesterday finally came back to say the rejection had reversed. Whew!

*We found out Youngest has to have mastoid surgery for a cholesteotoma this Tuesday. He has had to be hospitalized for mastoiditis once before, so it's not a complete surprise. Before a lot of antibiotics were discovered, mastoiditis was pretty common, and death was an unfortunate side effect.

*My precious babykitty Gilda has to have yet another ultrasound to determine whether she has some sort of intestinal cancer or not.

*We found out Eldest's boyfriend (who went away to college this year) has been lying to her (and us) about his partying and drinking for months now.

*I found my first major scratch on Pru.

Now that I have all that off my chest, let me tell you about one of the coolest things I've seen in a long time: National Geographic's Genographic Project.

For $100.00, you can get a kit to send in a buccal swab. National Geographic will test your mitochondrial DNA (or, if you're male, you could also choose to have your Y-chromosome DNA tested instead). They will trace your DNA to its origins in Africa and provide you with a map of the migratory patterns that your ancestors took, which landed you where you are today. Quite a fascinating concept, in my opinion. (My friend RedMolly does this science thing a whole heckuva lot better than I do, but I did want to make a mention of it.)

I'm dreaming of a green Christmas...

What? You mean you're not ready for Christmas? There's (an)other American holiday(s) to celebrate after Independence besides Christmas? Oh, yeah... little, (consumer) insignificant ones... Labor Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving. But let's get to the real moneymaker: Christmas!

Every year since my husband & I were married, we've participated in the most ridiculous ritual with his brothers and their wives, and once or twice with my family as well. We draw names for gift-giving purposes, then proceed to ask the spouse of the person's name we drew what to buy for them for Christmas. (I told you it was a little ridiculous.)

This year, at the risk of being: (a) ridiculed, (b) persecuted, and/or (c) excommunicated for being an environmental, left-wing wacko, I'm going to make a radical, environmental, left-wing wacko suggestion. I'm going to suggest that, instead of gifts that we told our spouses to tell our name recipients to buy for us, we donate money to a charity that we tell our spouses to tell our name recipients that we support. Crazy, huh?

The two I will suggest for my name recipient are:

Kiva. This is a fantastic organization who lend money to specific entrepreneurs in the developing world to help them overcome poverty and in turn contribute to the economy. On the website, you can see see photos of the entrepreneur, often at their business they started, and it provides detailed descriptions of who they are, where they live, why they want to start this business, how much money they need, how much they’ve raised so far, and you can even see who else has donated. You donate in increments of $25.00, and as the debt is paid off, eventually you get your money returned to you, hopefully to re-invest in another entrepreneur.

Heifer International. The first two years we received their catalog in the mail, my husband and I scoffed. This could not be legit. You mean you can buy a goat or three rabbits or a llama for a family to help them produce milk to sell, weave yarn, fertilize small crops, increase their family's protein intake, or carry water? Since then, though, I've discovered that not only are they legit, they are supported by many notable figures, including Jimmy Carter, Ed Harris, and Susan Sarandon, among many others. If you are vegan or vegetarian, you can also choose to purchase a honeybee hive for families or to plant trees.

If anyone insists on purchasing an actual gift, I will be asking for sustainable gifts, like a bag from Alchemy Goods (hubby, are you reading?), a pair of Simple Shoes or a pair from MooShoes, more reusable tote bags, or gift certificates to Blue Canoe. These are all gifts that I can really get excited about receiving!

Whether you're giving or receiving this holiday season, I highly encourage you to steal all my gift ideas. I stole a couple of them myself.

Photo Hunt Saturday--Classic

In honor of my mommy, who just got her new liver. These photos were taken in July 2006 with our doggies. They are classic examples of my mom's loving nature; no one deserves a new lease on life as much as she does!

For those who don't know, or who want more details, my mom has (had?) an auto-immune disorder called Primary Biliary Cirrhosis (a misleading name, as cirrhosis is the final stage of the disease and comprises only a tiny portion of the complications). Her body was literally attacking and killing her own liver. She was diagnosed in 1991. She recently spent 15 days at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, having a myriad of tests to finally be put on the Organ Transplant List. She was put at the top of the list due to a newly developed pulmonary problem, but they still expected a wait of 2-6 months. After only 12 days on the actual list, her liver came. That is an amazingly fast procurement! Her transplant lasted about 5 hours, and she is doing very well; the surgeon said he couldn't have ordered a better-matched liver.

So, sign those Organ Donor cards, and tell your family; it really does make the difference between life or death for someone else out there! Here's to you, Mom!

Organ Donors Are Better Livers

... and a new liver is exactly what we're getting! Less than two weeks after being put on the Organ Transplant List (and less than an hour after my sister's flight landed here in Dallas), my mom got "The Call" at 3:40 this afternoon. That was SO fast! My sister handed the phone to me & said, "See if she's serious. I can't tell." LOL!

So, she and my dad are at the hospital right now. Surgery is in about 30 minutes. It can take anywhere from 3-12 hours. So, we wait some more. And do a happy dance.

Keep us in your thoughts!