Book Giveaway!

My friend Autumn is giving away some books at her reading blog:

http://fromthetbrpile.blogspot.com/2010/10/giveaway-time.html

There's that old saying....

That everyone has a novel in them. Well, I'm going to find that out. I had a flash of inspiration, for the first time, and I've decided to see if I have what it takes. I'm not going to post much about it for a while, since I'm still working out the details of the world it's set in (urban fantasy, but very Dresden Files-ish). Suffice it to say that Rainer is having a ball helping me come up with some ideas. :)

Perhaps I've done it to myself.

I don't know.

All my life, I've felt like I've been on the outskirts of groups. If I were to explore it with a therapist, we might trace it back to when my godmother (my Aunt) and my godfather (my Uncle) abandoned our side of the family; not a big deal, you say, but when your sister has godparents (not actually related) who are constantly telling her how great she is, and you hear crickets, it can get to you.

This continued into school. It was not helped by the fact that I had, perhaps, the un-coolest clothes of anyone, EVER. I look back now, and I cringe, but even then, I knew that I was not destined for the pages of Seventeen. I don't know why I wasn't more savvy about clothes or hair, but in high school I was more like an elementary schooler than a teenager. I hung on the edges of the AP crowd, since I was in the classes, and they were used to me; and for some reason, the most popular girl in school, the one with the killer hair, most fashionable clothes, and who had been dating a senior when she was 13 was a good friend (which probably saved me socially). I was in the band, and felt more at home there than anywhere else, but even there I never felt like I was really "in". I was looking at my yearbook last night with my son, and it really hit home, how lonely I was, and how few real connections I had.

Fast forward to college. And the SCA. The same. Someone posted some old pics, from 15 or so years ago, and I'm not in a single one. Even though I belonged to a large, friendly household, I wasn't included. I think that perhaps this was because I was, and still am, extremely shy, and it's hard for me to reach out and ASK to be included. This, of course, is a vicious circle; if I don't show that I want to be part of it, I won't be asked, and if I'm not asked, I won't show it.....

I talk a good game now, but I still feel it. I'm stuck home more often than not, since I don't get phone calls saying, "Hey! Let's get together!" very often; I'm the one who calls and asks to make plans. I don't have a best friend, and for some reason, that really, really hurts. Should it? Does everyone else have a best friend? The one person they can call anytime, talk to every day, and is the first person they think of to tell news?

I don't want Rainer to feel the same crushing loneliness that I have all my life. I can be in a crowd of people I've known for years and still feel by myself. How do I keep him from being this way???

Small steps....

On Monday, Rainer and I drove down to Point Pleasant Beach with the Sabatinos: Doreen and her kids, Jilian and Joshua. It's become an annual summer event for us; in the past, we've also taker her day care kids, but she doesn't do that any more, so it was a much more relaxed outing. We went to Jenkinson's Boardwalk ( http://www.jenkinsons.com/ ), which is a wonderful place. Clean and family friendly, it has rides for younger and older children, an aquarium, mini golf, a fun house, loads of games and food, and a lovely beach.

The main reason we go there is for the aquarium. It's very small, but it has loads of stuff in a tiny space. Downstairs, there are several large tanks, including the Atlantic and Pacific shark tanks, and many smaller ones with reptiles, frogs, and smaller fish. There is also the model of the Bounty that was used in the Marlon Brando "Mutiny on the Bounty" flick, and Rainer of course LOVES that.

The African penguins are always popular, and Jilian and I tried to ID them all by the beads around their flippers.

Upstairs, we saw the harbour seals, including Rainer's buddy LuSeal, being fed, saw the other exhibits... but my favorite part of the day was something that most people would probably have shrugged their shoulders over. I have, for years, been trying to get Rainer to touch the animals in the touch tank. However, he has issues with texture and surfaces; that's one of his Aspie things. He can't stand certain textures, and having dirty or sticky hands makes him agitated. I mentioned once that maybe he should try it, but I didn't push, and didn't expect him to, and he said that he would pass. He saw a younger boy doing it, though, and suddenly marched off to the sinks to do the required hand washing, then came back, and tentatively put his hand in the water in the stingray tank.

You have to understand that these stingrays BEG to be petted: they follow you around, and stick their heads up out of the water, trying to get attention. I think that's what finally got him; they were being cute. So Rainer touched one on the "nose", and a smile spread across his face. They weren't slimy at all; they were soft on their heads, and the wings were kind of leathery! He petted them both several times, and then became their champion, encouraging younger kids to give it a try, becoming the "little professor".


After the aquarium, we played the pirate-themed mini-golf, the boys and Doreen braved the funhouse, and we had some very nice ice cream. We wandered the boardwalk, enjoying the people-watching opportunities, too. A very, very nice day, with some very, very good friends.

Been a bad, bad girl.

I need to get back into posting. I keep thinking, "Oh, that's something I'd like to ponder on my blog," but it never happens. So my new goal is to post at least once a week, whether it's about stitching, polish, the kid, my non-existent love life, current events.... whatever. :)

I'm so excited!

Facebook is a great thing.

More than a year ago, I got a message on FB, asking if I was the Eileen who went to Rutgers Newark and played sax in the band. I looked at the name, and my jaw dropped. Andy! Holy cow, Andy the sax player who sat next to me; he was a year behind me, and MAN did I have a crush on him. Very, very cute. :) He said some lovely things, like me being the one thing he has remembered fondly from college all these years.

I immediately wrote back, and we have been in touch ever since. He's married, living in Texas, and is an architect. We chat, and when he told me they'd be out east for a reunion this month, I was happy. We're going to get together, talk, visit a museum, and he and Rainer will discuss being an architect, which is Rainer's ambition. I can hardly wait!

Getting busy.

Well, they say that if you want something done, go to someone who is busy to do it.

I met with the person who will be my advisor briefly the other night, and I will be going to see her for a one-on-one appointment, probably next week. I'll be getting my K-5 teaching certificate simultaneously with my Master's degree as a Teacher of Students with Disabilities. Keep your fingers crossed that I get an assistantship, which would waive my tuition and fees (and they are substantial), and get me a part time job with a stipend.

Plus, I just told my friend Gabrielle that I would rejoin the Friends of the Boonton Holmes Library to work on fundraising for the repairs and renovations the building needs.

I'm gathering up stuff that I would have put on Freecycle to help the Boonton Rescue Squad, which might be losing their Kiwanis funding, to help run a garage sale to raise money.

I've just started working on refinancing the house, via the HARP, to lower my mortgage; that's going to take a little time, too.

And I've been running all over creation singing funerals and weddings to make some money.

I'd rather be busy than not, though.

Jodi Picoult - House Rules. A review and disagreement.

When I saw it at Costco last week, I bought it. In hardcover. I wouldn't normally do that, but the jacket said the main character was an Aspie teen. How could I not??? I'd only read one other of her books, My Sister's Keeper, and enjoyed it, so I started right in.

Oh, Jodi, jumping on the autism/Asperger's bandwagon with not enough research. Or at least not enough in the real world.

Just a couple of pages into the book, it was obvious to me that Jodi had little actual experience with children in the spectrum, and what constitutes Asperger's. Her protagonist had withdrawn and gone non-verbal around age two, and it took many specialists working with him, a drastic change in diet, more supplements than even my ex takes (and that's a LOT), and constant monitoring by his mom to get him functional. His is mainstreamed, but has a sensory break room at the school with weighted blankets, special lamps, oh, you name it. His routines are too many to enumerate, and a break with one gets him stimming and panicking until a full fledged tantrum, complete with head-banging, ensues. His mother calls him high-functioning; I suppose he is, but this is a person who will never be able to live on his own. He will need someone to stand between him and the world for the rest of his life, which his younger brother talks about in one chapter.

Jacob is full-blown autistic. If any of you have read the books of Temple Grandin (or seen the movie), he is further along the spectrum, and less able to handle himself than she. A parent who has just received a diagnosis of Asperger's for their child who reads this will fall into despair at what lies ahead--with no good reason. I know quite a number of Aspies, some of them in my own family, who do not have behaviors that anywhere approach Jacob's.

Oh, and she talks about vaccines causing it. That article has been debunked. And while there may still be some debate on the massing of vaccines for an infant, it is not the definitive cause.

The plot itself was rather thin, which added to my un-enjoyment of the book, but I had to keep reading, hoping she was going to pull it all together in a satisfying manner. Nope. She tried to tie in Jacob's biggest obsession with the overall happening of the book, but it felt contrived, and left me confused as to why it happened at all.

I don't think I'll be reading anything else by Jodi Picoult. If all her other books are as heavy-handed, preachy, and poorly researched, they wouldn't be worth it.

Star Trekkin' across the universe.....

I finally saw the new JJ Abrams Star Trek movie the other night. Man, was I disappointed.

The movie itself was fun. I enjoyed seeing Kirk evolve (he kinda did, anyway), and it was gratifying seeing the characters appear here and there. I thought Karl Urban had mad skillz as McCoy; he obviously took the time to assimilate (heheheh) DeForest Kelley's mannerisms. He was my favorite part of the movie.

However, there were gaps and holes all over the place. Spock and Uhura? Really? Chekhov was already an officer when Kirk was a cadet? (He came across as the Wesley of the movie.) Red matter? What the heck is it, and why, when they needed a tiny bit, was Spock transporting that huge glob of it around? The physics of a supernova and of black holes don't operate the way they were shown in the movie, either. And of course, the changes to the canon: Kirk's dad and Amanda dying, and VULCAN GETTING BLOWN UP.

I had heard it was a reboot, and it was, in the manner of a comic book reboot of a favorite hero: new backstory, new reasons for the characters acting the way they do. I just didn't like the retooling.

Absolutely Alice.

My book group read Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, in honor of the new Tim Burton movie that has just come out. Incredibly (to me), several of our members had never read them. Seriously, how could anyone make it through childhood without reading them? Personally, they were amongst my favorite books in my younger years (the rest are for another post).

I had a boxed set of 33 1/3 rpm records of the great Cyril Ritchard reading AAiW, which had a hardcover copy of the book with Sir John Tenniel's illustrations. I knew that I listened to it a lot as a kid; but I had no idea how much, really, until I pulled them out about ten years ago to transfer them to CD, only to discover that I had literally worn them out with listening. I recently bought the mp3 from iTunes, and decided that it was time to introduce Rainer to Alice. So one day recently, while we were painting Lord of the Rings minis, we listened. I was thrilled when Rainer started chuckling, then cackling. We listened to the whole thing in one sitting. And I discovered that I remembered every musical cue, every rise and fall of his voice, every change in timbre. I loved it all over again. (I am determined to find his recording of Through the Looking Glass on mp3, too....)

Anyway. I was truly surprised when several of the folks in our group said that they disliked the book. I suppose I shouldn't have been, since everyone's taste is different; but since it was such a large part of my childhood, and so universal, it truly took me aback to hear their criticisms.

The most universal one was that they couldn't connect to Alice as a character; that they didn't care about her, she didn't develop. My answer to that was that the books were written as stories told to a small child as we would tell bedtime stories: what happens *to* them, not about them. That didn't cut it. The other complaint, which I answered with the same argument, was that there was no discernible plot. Heck, that just never bothered me. :)

I hear some not-so-good things about the new movie. I will go anyway, though, partially to vet it for Rainer who is concerned that it might be too intense for him, and partially for me, simply because it's Alice.

I'm lucky.

Writing about June's gift got me looking around at the other embroideries on my walls. Pics this afternoon. :)

Edited to finally add pics. I found my camera!

This is the first piece I started when the divorce began. It was therapy for me, a project I'd wanted to do for ages: The Drawn Thread's Lily of the Valley. Linen and silk, don't you know. :) I loved working all the different stitches.

'Kay. I'm trying to add more pictures, and Blogger is laughing at me....













Jenny made this for us as a wedding gift. The Ace of Cups, she adapted it herself. I kept it, cos, well, I just did. I was the only one who appreciated it. And I still do! :)
















I had started this for a few reasons. One, Rainer loves ships. :) Two, it was kinda going to be a 5 year anniversary present for Tom. But, well, things change, and I liked it way to much to let it go away. I'm trying to remember the designer, but it's escaping me. The only thing I changed was to use Needle Necessities overdyed floss in Spruce for the sea, instead of solid DMC.







This is June's gift: Elemental Cosmos by Witches' Stitches. (They've gone out of business. I'm sad.) I was truly surprised when she told me she'd made it for me, and when she gave it to me at DexCon last year, I made sure everyone saw it. :)









Medieval Mermaid, by yet another company whose name has escaped me. :) I just liked this one, and it made a very good travel project, since it was one color of floss (Caron Waterlilies Polar Ice) and whole stitches. I also swapped the fabric (which was supposed to be a sand color - ick!) for Silkweaver Expressions Desert Sky. I'm very happy with the results.












Rainer's birth announcement. It's a Sue Hillis design that had a cutsie verse at the bottom, so I substituted his birth stats instead. There's a counting mistake in it that I can still see all these years later.... :)

A new silliness.

So. I love color. That's why my living room is a deep, jewel-tone purple. That's why I love illumination and embroidery; so many to choose from! Color was not part of my life for a while; the ex didn't like me wearing makeup, and he chose all the paints and stuff for the house. All muted.

Which explains, I think, my recent nuttiness. I now have about two dozens nail polishes, maybe more, in every color of the rainbow, every level of shimmer and glitter (okay, maybe not the *really* outrageous ones). And since they're relatively inexpensive (the ones I got today averaged $2), it's a solution for my need for color that I can just about afford. So when I start posting about the fab shade on my nails, please just smile indulgently and move on to the part you really want to read. :) Seeing bright colors just makes me SMILE.

Which is why, when I look at the cross-stitch that June gave me, it makes me so happy. I'll post pics of it later; it's Witches Stitches Elemental Cosmos, and no one has ever done something that big for me before. I almost cried. It was in my stash, and I planned to do it someday, but now it's hanging on my wall, looking glorious. And the purple walls make a great backdrop.

Starting over....

Those of you who know me know that for a while I had a blog on LiveJournal. Unfortunately, my ex-husband found it, and got one of his friends (I never did find out which of the few he has) to go trolling. It was disappointing and hurtful, but there you go.

So, a couple of years later, I'm jumping here, hoping to start afresh and be left alone, except by those who actually *like* me. :)

I want to ruminate on all the things that are part of my life: embroidery, calligraphy, the SCA, books, music, current events, science, things like perfume, and of course, my wonderful boy. I don't know if I'll actually get anyone to read this, but it's not important; it's really for me, a chance to think out loud. I generally solve my problems better that way.

And so it begins....