Current Needs!

First off, let me thank each and everyone of you for the comments left on my last post about my introductory column. Although I am planning to write at least one more piece prior to submitting my intro piece - to have on hand in case the editor doesn't like my submission or some thing like that - but I did get a piece composed the other night. Well, I wrote two versions of it actually - the first one weighed in at a word count of 924 words so yeah, it was going to need some serious editing to trip it even close to the limitations the editor gave me -300-700 words, remember? The second piece, using the same theme, finished out at 567 words which was astonishing to me and also to one of my friends here -name shall be omitted till after publication of said piece -who was in a state of shock that I'd managed to come in midstream there with the word count restrictions! LOL I will post it here - the intro piece - after it is published. But I will tell you this much, it deals with sort of a dual theme - autumn and family trees.

Now, on to the business at hand. Time to rant a bit. Don't run and hide now, I'm not going to discuss politics in this rant. Heaven knows, my attitude about politics right now would take me all day to try to write about what ticks me off there! And, in doing that, I'd probably tick a whole hell of a lot of my readers off too and I don't wanna do that either.

The past almost 24-hour span has been one of a lot of issues. No nothing earth-shattering, just nitty-gritty, sometimes goofy little issues. Yeah, you know what I mean there don't 'cha? The day-to-day crap that life flings at us sometimes.

First -I think I'll lead off with this one -Maya's been developing some really bad, quite undesirable habits in an almost four-year-old of late and that is in addition to the meltdown behavior autistic kids are often noted for, she's been adding in to that her own little "I want my way or else" tantrums. Her main thing of late is if she is asked to do something, or wants sometime we don't want her to have or to do or whatever, upon being denied, she has a fit and if there is something in her hand -or within reach -it is most likely going to end up being throw! She's also been having little fits too about picking up her toys - after she has littered the majority of the living room floor with Barbies, Bratz, their clothes, along with books, coloring books, videos - you get the picture there too I'm sure. When she has all these things thrown all over and I try to get her to pick up the stuff, to help clean up the floor, I've made it a rule that if I have to pick up the stuff for her after being asked upteen times to pick up a bit, then whatever I pick up gets put up out of reach. The same goes for anything that she decides to use as a flying object too.

As a rule of that rule now, the china cupboard it filled on the tippy-top shelf to overflowing. So is the top of the bookcase and the mantle over the fireplace. Just about any area that is out of her range to reach is now in use -holding upteen toys of upteen varieties.

Last evening, she was bugging me to get her some of her Barbies or Bratz down and I told her flatly, NO -because she was throwing stuff. Therefore, no Barbies, no Bratz. Well, that ticked her off royally and she reached to find something to throw but there was nothing available, so instead, she grabbed the side of the playpen in which her brother was sleeping ever so nicely and began to shake it. Not a gentle shake either, I might add! For a four-year-old, she is remarkably strong too! Well, needless to say, after that episode, the baby was no longer enjoying his nap. Nope! He was standing in the middle of the playpen, wailing away, with a throughly confused look on his face too -that "Wha' happened?" look, ya know. And I did something I don't like to do but every now and again, there aren't appropriate aversives to use to try to discipline her so, as a result, Miss Maya got a little bit of a spanking! No, not the kind that actually hurt her physically, but just enough feeling through the mega padding of the pullups to hurt her pride. Her older sister here, Kate, made the comment that it looks like we may need to enroll Maya in an anger management class of some type and I'm almost inclined to agree with her there. Do they have them for four-year-olds?

Fast forward now to this morning. The son-in-law came and woke me up about 9:00 a.m. or so to tell me he was leaving to go to his physical therapy appointment and that Maya was up, in the living room, drinking a cup of milk then and the baby was still asleep. Ok, fine. I got up, got my eye-opener (or so I hoped it would be) cup of coffee and sat down to read my e-mails, my favorite blogs, the CDT newspaper online - all my lovely little morning rituals. I noticed though a while later there was a very potent odor about the room - all of it seeming to be coming from the vicinity of the playpen where the little guy was still sleeping away. And I decided I wasn't going to wake him up and make him upset and angry to start his day just for the sake of my olefactory glands pleasure.

The son-in-law returned from his therapy appointment, noticed the odor too and decided he was going to remove the blankets, bear and bunny furry pillow things the little guy has in there and wash them because the boy has a tendency at times to shake his bottle enough so that some of the milk splashes out on these items and that contributes a bit to the odor - nice sour milk smell ya know. Eventually the little guy woke up and I had the dubious honor of cleaning up his bottom that was covered in technicolor substance. Yeah -you get my drift there too, don't 'cha? I decided too that his mother had best not be purchasing anymore of the "Pasta Primavera" baby food he'd had for a meal recently because it has baby kernals of corn in it and I really don't want to see anymore of it the way it was today!

Then, the son-in-law decided -after he took Maya in to the bathroom to change her and get her dressed, that the cats were being way too generous in sharing their wonderful accumulation of fleas. He claimed that when he went to comb Maya's hair, the fleas were just circling her head, like a halo. Knowing him and his penchant for exaggeration, I would say that probably translates to he found a flea! Ok, so now the plan of attack on his part was that he was going to bathe both cats - Nina, the kitten and Grace, the mean old dowager cat who will shortly be 16 years old.

After that was done, he announced that Nina, the kitten either needs to be declawed or depawed! Seems she had managed to scratch him while he was bathing her. Yes, no doubt about it - the kitten needs to be declawed - also needs to have a cat hysterectomy too so that will eliminate any potential for MORE cats in the house in the future too! But that also requires that he not be on unemployment as vets like to be paid a lot more than can currently be squeezed in to an already overloaded budget! He also decided after completely the cat bath routine that he had scrubbed so many fleas off these two felines that he was shocked it didn't plug the drain when he pulled the plug in the tub. I mentioned to him that I didn't really think, as small as fleas are, that there was any risk of the drain getting plugged from that but his response was "Well, when there are millions of fleas, like these two had, I'm not so sure it wouldn't plug up the drain."

And then, he left to go work on a car he's repairing for someone to purchase!

Five minutes after he left, I detected odor emanating -again- from the playpen, picked the little guy up only to discover this time, he had the substance smearing out around the edges of his pamper, squishing clear up his back, on his feet - you name it, all over! Wonderful!

Much as I am happy his plumbing works as well as it does, I really wasn't enjoying this clean-up job again less than 2 hours after the earlier clean-up had taken place. And to add to that, I no more than plunked the boy down on the changing table and was up to my elbow - well almost anyway - in cleaning him up but the darned phone begins to ring -and ring - and ring! Since it had died earlier and was upstairs on the charger, even if I had been able to get up there to pick it up, I can't move fast enough to maneuver the stairs to do that and especially not when I've got a 16-month-old semi-naked baby covered in crap too! Talk about impeccable timing, huh?

And for me - well now I just want a huge container of calgon to use to take a nice soothing, calming bath in it! Ah yes - the lines from the old ad for Calgon - "Calgon - take me away!" are echoing in my mind about now.

Either that or a winning lottery ticket so I can buy a plane ticket and plot my escape for a couple of days!

And there you have it now - my current needs, for sure!