It’s Raining Dead Trees and Whine

Decades ago, when I was still a child, I remember listening to adults discuss the move to a paperless world. In seventh grade, my computer teacher told us that in the future no more trees would die for paper, and we would do all our work on computers.

Why is it, then, that I am drowning in more paperwork now than my mother ever had?

The biggest culprit is the schools. Even discounting the reams of paperwork generated by the schools for two children on Individualized Education Programs, the amount of school paperwork I have to manage is ridiculous. Yesterday, I received the following pieces of paper that require some sort of response from me:

Nick’s Spring Picture Order Form. When I was in school, we took pictures once a year, not twice.

Jack’s Preschool Spring Conference Sign-up Form. This is 3.5 sheets of paper, printed front and back. I’m supposed to pick three time slots and rank them in order of preference, as well as write what I want to talk about with the teacher, and return all sheets to the school. With better formatting, the whole thing could be front and back, one sheet.

Permission Form for Preschool Animal Visits. Jack’s preschool class is inviting the students to bring their pets to school for show-and-tell in May, but for obvious reasons, parents need to give permission for their children to participate.

Kindergarten Weekly Newsletter. Every week, Jack’s kindergarten teacher sends a newsletter in a cheery but hard-to-read font telling parents what their children are doing that week in school. Attached to it was…

Weekly Kindergarten Homework. I don’t remember doing homework in kindergarten, but Jack has homework every week. It’s usually math, but this week Jack has to write sentences about what he did during spring break. It will take us all week to accomplish this because getting Jack to write sentences is a bit like teaching a cat to walk on a leash. Neither Jack nor the cat quite understands the point of the exercise and therefore neither can understand why the universe is torturing him in such a horrible way.

In addition to these papers that I have to do something about, I also received 30 pieces of school work, including one “cup” cut from an egg carton covered in glitter, a kite with paper-folded tail and more glitter, and 27 sheets of 8.5x11 paper (mostly worksheets, a “book” written and illustrated by Jack and thus largely blank, and a sheet covered in colored dots probably used for some sort of counting exercise).

The thirtieth piece of school work is a brown paper cut-out that looked like a peanut with eyes to me and a potato with eyes to George. I asked Jack what it was. He said, as if speaking to a complete idiot, “It’s my botato.” Well, duh.

That makes a grand total of thirty-four paper-based items brought home from school all in one day. I wish this were unusual, but it’s pretty standard. We’re drowning a deluge of school paper here, which leaves me wondering how my friend Karen manages to keep her head above the sea of dead trees because she has four children in school. God help her.

Another big culprit is junk mail. Yesterday’s mail was entirely junk…eight separate pieces of it. Today, we did slightly better, with only five separate pieces. NOT ONE IMPORTANT OR FRIENDLY ITEM of mail came yesterday or today. But I had to touch and evaluate each one of them.

And what about the mail that isn’t junk? No one will every hear me complain about the two Easter cards, one thank you card, and two scrapbook magazines I found while going through a big stack of mail delivered after our vacation. Yahoo! Happy Mail!!! But the bills, bank statements, insurance statements, subscription renewals, and PIN notification that were also in the stack took me over an hour to sort through and attend to.

Yes, I ended a sentence with a preposition. It’s just that sort of day.

Then there are the taxes. We owed the federal government this year for the first time in 18 years. (The previous sentence is totally irrelevant to the current essay, but while I’m being whiny, I thought I’d throw that in for added sympathy.) George used TurboTax for the federal and state taxes but couldn’t get the local online filing to work. No matter. We still had to print everything out (twenty-four pages) and add them to the rest of the contents of the 2008 tax file (more than thirty items).

I can do nothing about all this paperwork and typically try hard not to complain about things I can’t fix or that are necessary for living a law-abiding, responsible life. But not today. Today, I’m a big bundle of complaints, and I’m not sure why because I don’t have PMS. Perhaps it’s the weather: gray and drippy for three days straight. Perhaps it’s the fact that seven people I know and love right now are suffering much more than a deluge of paperwork and have real, painful problems I can do nothing about.

I have faith in tomorrow, though. This bad mood will pass, I will regain a sense of perspective and laugh at the fantasy of a paperless world, I will send chocolate and a good book to a suffering friend, and I will take delight in seeing the tulips in my neighbor’s yard. God’s time is not my time, and it all works out in the end.

Note: The morning after writing this, my friend Susan gave me a hug, which was the beginning of the end of my bad mood. Bless you, Susan!

"Peace be with you."

We often say these words in church as a rote greeting or part of the liturgy, sometimes without really thinking about them or what they mean.

"Peace be with you." Jesus said this when He appeared to the disciples after the resurrection, at a time when they needed all the peace and comfort they could get. They were probably also freaking out since He was, after all, dead, yet standing before them. "Peace be with you," He said, and then He charged them to share that peace with the world.

As we celebrate Easter today, please remember His blessing in its fullest meaning and not just as rote phrasing. By His death and resurrection, He blessed us all with a peace that passes understanding.

Peace be with you.

Fearless

Note: If you don’t know about the Word of the Year Project, check the links at the top of the sidebar.

My word for 2009 is Fearless, and so far it is working for me. I’m writing more—though not as much as I would have hoped—so I need to focus on increasing my output, especially for my book on autism. The best success of my Fearless project has been the launch of my stamping blog, an enterprise that scared the heck out of me because I truly feel my cards are okay but not exactly special enough to support a blog.

My attitude toward crafting is shockingly democratic. I believe that crafts, in contrast to fine arts, give us ordinary folks who lack artistic genius the opportunity to express ourselves creatively. What we make can be as kitschy as a crocheted toilet paper cover or as gorgeous as a perfectly turned piece of pottery. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that we feel a sense of satisfaction in the act of creating, like a kindergartner who makes an Easter bunny out of a paper plate and cotton balls. That elemental creative pleasure is all a crafter needs to make the time and effort spent entirely worthwhile.

Over the past few years, my hobby of choice—rubber stamping—has grown in popularity, and like other hobbies that become popular, it has become increasingly trendy, complicated, and professionalized. What was once a fun and accessible hobby that “anyone can do” has developed into an intimidating activity that seems to require actual talent as well as extensive knowledge of a huge variety of products.

I frequent an online stamping community called Splitcoaststampers, or SCS for short. The gallery at SCS contains hundreds of thousands of handmade cards to inspire and motivate other stampers. The stamp-related forums are friendly places where perfect strangers will take time to help you figure out how to pierce a straight line of dots or choose the best ink for clear stamps.

The trend toward more embellished cards came to my attention gradually through the Favorites of the Week thread, started every Sunday morning in SCS’s general stamping forum. Anyone can post links to their favorite cards for the week. When I first started looking at this thread several years ago, the styles of favorite cards were quite diverse, with everything from very simple to very ornate represented.

Gradually, however, as the embellished style became more popular and product choices expanded, fewer simple cards were posted. Seeing as I have precious little artistic talent, my forays into the gallery at SCS in general and into the Favorites thread in particular became increasingly intimidating. All those beautiful cards with ten layers of cardstock embossed and distressed and embellished into little works of art are beautiful, no doubt about it, and I admire the talent and time put into creating them. My personal style, however, is cleaner, simpler. If I were a graphic design artist, I’d want to design print ads for the Gap. Anything with lots of restful, empty space attracts my attention.

I had quit visiting the Favorites thread until January, when I decided to see what styles were getting posted. Trends change, after all, and I knew the pendulum would swing back to cleaner, simpler cards eventually.

The pendulum hasn’t swung back yet. I clicked on about 40 cards and every one was like the first: eight or more layers of cardstock, multiple embellishments, time-consuming techniques, embossing, outline stamp images artistically colored with Copic markers, and so on. Every single one was stunningly beautiful. By the time I reached the end of the thread, I felt like a total loser: that kid in junior high who suddenly realizes her project for the science fair looks like it was made by a five year old, while all her classmates’ projects look like graduate students made them. I felt embarrassed I’d ever posted a card at all, much less over 300 of them. I wanted to delete my whole gallery and slink into oblivion.

Those of you who know me personally know that I do not have low self-esteem. Years ago, I overcame my tendency to beat myself up for not being perfect. Yet there I sat, staring glumly at my computer, feeling totally beaten up and humiliated because my cards didn’t look like the cool kids’ cards.

This is what happens when you compare yourself to other people, and forget who you are and why you’re doing something. The results of such comparisons are never, ever good.

Then I remembered Julie Ebersole. Julie makes “clean and simple” into high art. When I’m thumbing through a stamping magazine, I can pick out her cards without looking at the credits. I want to be her when I grow up. I thought about Krystie Lee Hersch, who credits Julie as her major source of inspiration and makes gorgeous cards I adore, often with a single piece of cardstock and some ink. I thought about Nichole Heady, whose success with clean and simple designs led her to start up one of my favorite stamp companies, the enormously successful Papertrey Ink.

These women taught me a valuable lesson: celebrate who you are, and create what you love. I love clean and simple cards, and there’s nothing wrong with that, even if it’s not exactly trendy at the moment. These positive thoughts began to ease my humiliation, and it occurred to me that if I, with my, um, comfortable self-esteem, could feel intimidated and humiliated, there must be others who felt the same way…or worse. I brainstormed ways to celebrate the clean and simple style. The most obvious and easiest thing to do was to start a thread at SCS titled “Post your Clean and Simple Cards Here,” and here’s what I wrote:

“Okay, just checked out the favorites of the week thread and my ego has been battered to a pulp. Ouch! I've stayed away from that thread for months and months for just this reason. Those Totally Awesome Stampers ROCK!

”But for those of us who don't do techniques that require anything like ‘talent’ or ‘skill,’ who don't layer our cards into inch-thick confections of pure gorgeousness, who don't have all the latest nesties or copics, who don't have coloring skills above kindergarten level, and who do love to make clean and simple and, most of all, EASY cards...please post your favorites from your own gallery, the ones that make you happy as long as you don't compare them to what the Totally Awesome Stampers are making…. Rather than feel sorry for our simple, easy, and basic cards, let's celebrate them...because they really do deserve to be celebrated!”

Putting my neuroses out there for the whole world to see made me nervous, but something amazing happened. People admitted to feeling the same way I did. Many said they had always felt too intimidated to start a gallery themselves, but after seeing all the clean and simple cards linked to that thread, they felt energized and eager to share their work. Some people even sent me private messages thanking me for being so courageous in standing up for clean and simple stamping.

Courageous? Me? Huh? I hadn’t thought of it like that, and I guess from a certain point of view it was rather fearless of me to buck a trend. The truth, however, is that talented clean-and-simple stampers like Julie, Krystie, and Nichole have been bucking the trend all along, fearlessly doing what they love. They are the leaders, and I’m just a devoted follower who knows how to make a little noise.

You just never know what the consequences of your actions might be. Because several people suggested it might be a good idea, I started a regular Clean and Simple Favorites of the Week thread, which has turned out to be quite popular. Then, a wonderful stamper named Jen started the Clean and Simple Weekly Challenge on SCS. I’m on the first Design Team for it and post a card each week to inspire others in the challenge.

You have no idea how truly strange this feels to me…being an inspiration to others. Heck, I just wanted to feel better about my creative vision, and now lots of other people feel better about their vision, too. I’m giddy with joy over this beautiful example of my karma working for good in the universe. Too often, karma is biting me on the butt.

During this clean and simple love-fest, lots of people (well, more than five, but I’m easily influenced on things like this) asked me to start a stamping blog. I’m a first-born pleaser, so of course I had to do it. Simplicity by LateBlossom is the result. I still don’t feel that my cards are “blog worthy,” but you know what? It doesn’t matter whether they are or aren’t worthy. What matters is that I’m having fun posting them and at least a few people are having fun seeing them.

Best of all, the gallery at SCS now has many more clean-and-simple cards posted every day. Those cards inspire me and put a very silly grin on my face every time I visit the gallery now. Long live Clean and Simple!

So far, living my word Fearless hasn’t gotten me published, but I’ve made new stamping friends and once again feel like a kindergartner with an amazing work of paper-plate-and-cotton-ball art to show my mommy. Knowing that I helped others feel the same elemental joy of creating something beautiful for themselves motivates me to create more, stamp more, share more. If there’s a downside to this situation, I’ll be darned if I can find it.

Now it’s time for me to get to work “creating” that book about autism. I feel pretty Fearless about that.

So please do tell, how’s your word working for you?

"You People"

When I was in high school and someone asked me what my college major would be, I said chemistry. Or maybe biochemistry. Marine biology? Well, something in the sciences, but not physics.

Physics is boring.

Then I took organic chemistry my first semester in college and was given (yes, given) a B- by a very kind professor who made me promise never to take another chemistry class or any course that required organic chemistry as a prerequisite. His kindness kept my GPA reasonably intact and sent me scurrying to the English Department, where, word-nerd that I am, I made myself happily at home.

My love for science didn’t die, however, and I subscribed to both Discover Magazine and Scientific American shortly after graduation so I could get a monthly fix of science news. After a few issues, I realized that both magazines basically reported the same stories but for different audiences. Scientific American’s writers assumed that their readers already knew something about science and used more technical language. Discover Magazine’s writers, in contrast, assumed their readers had an eighth-grade education and chose their words accordingly. For a while, I appreciated getting both magazines but preferred Scientific American because reading it made me feel smarter, cooler, geekier, more in-the-know.

Even with that regular science fix, my valuable brain synapses dedicated to Heisenburg’s Uncertainty Principle and Boyle’s Law and the difference between meiosis and mitosis gradually atrophied from disuse. I formed new synapses to hold information on deconstructionism, zeugma, Old English verb conjugations, and James Joyce’s Ulysses. As a result, I had to let the subscription for Scientific American lapse. It no longer made me feel smart; it made me feel stupid with its big, technical words.

For the past 18 years, I have kept my Discover subscription going because it continued to make me feel like the geeky Renaissance Woman I perceive myself to be, even if this particular Renaissance Woman is only in eighth grade.

Aren’t we all deeply appreciative of the little things that keep our delusions alive?

A few years ago, I started getting harassing phone calls from telemarketers trying to bully me into extending my Discover subscription to six years: “You don’t want to miss out on this great opportunity! News stand prices are going up! You’re too smart to pay more, aren’t you?!”

I have written a lot of advertising copy in my life and am therefore immune to this sort of panicky, “act now!” tactic. My response to telemarketing rhetoric is as intelligent as the rhetoric itself: “Bite me.” Okay, so I really said, politely at first, “Take me off your call list.” But I thought, “Bite me.”

Unfortunately, the telemarketers were persistent. They kept calling, more and more frequently, in fact. I sent a complaint to Discover’s customer service department, but the calls didn’t stop. Finally, when the calls were coming about once every two weeks, I snapped. The polite veneer of manners lovingly glued onto me by my mother peeled away, and I got snippy: “If YOU PEOPLE call me ONE MORE TIME, I will CANCEL my subscription!”

“YOU PEOPLE” is a very satisfying phrase when you’re upset, isn’t it? It is the rhetorical equivalent of the pointed finger, yet even more insulting because the phrase makes the recipient a nameless member of a namelessly offensive group, the human equivalent of slime molds. “YOU PEOPLE!” Indeed.

The next day, George brought me the phone while I was blow-drying my hair. He looked suspicious. “It’s some guy named Bob,” he said, handing the receiver to me. I had no idea why some guy named Bob would call me at nine o’clock on a Saturday morning. My imaginary Latin lover’s name is Juan, as George well knows, and Juan knows better than to call me at home. Between George and my imaginary Latin lover Juan, I don’t have time for “some guy named Bob.”

Anyway, Bob immediately launched into his script: “Hi, Susan, I’m calling from Discover Magazine with a great offer for you….”

I interrupted Bob. Loudly. “I can’t believe YOU PEOPLE! I told the guy who called YESTERDAY I was canceling my subscription if YOU PEOPLE called me ONE MORE TIME! And now you’re calling me, pestering me about this ONE MORE TIME! I’m DONE with YOU PEOPLE….”

Sometime during my yelling, Bob hung up on me.

I finished blow-drying my hair and got on the computer. I wish I could find the email I sent to Discover. It was a rhetorical tour de force of outrage. Sadly, you’ll miss out on the entertainment value of the contempt that dripped from the rapier of my wit. I suspect you’ll get over the disappointment, but seriously, you would have loved it because I know each and every one of you reading this has been as mad at “YOU PEOPLE” as I was and you have all wanted to skewer “YOU PEOPLE” with your own rapier.

Come on. Admit it. You can be honest here.

That day, I received a subscription offer from Scientific American in the mail. I saw this as a sign from God and signed up immediately.

A week or so later, the phone rang. George answered, and when the person on the line asked for me, he asked, “Who may I say is calling?” I heard a pause, and then George started laughing. When he got himself under control, I heard him say, “I can’t believe YOU PEOPLE are still calling her! She cancelled her subscription because YOU PEOPLE wouldn’t stop calling.”

I now have three issues of Scientific American in my possession. I’ve had a lot of years to get stupider about science, so reading Scientific American is, not surprisingly, hard work. For example, the March issue contains an article titled “A Quantum Threat to Special Relativity.” The article is labeled "Physics," so it’s bound to be boring, right? Wrong. Doing physics is boring. Reading about it can be fascinating and even intelligible if you’re reading Discover for Dummies Magazine. When you read Scientific American, however, you find passages like this one:

“Quantum mechanics…embraces action at a distance with the property called entanglement, in which two particles behave synchronously with no intermediary; it is nonlocal. This nonlocal effect is not merely counterintuitive; it presents a serious problem to Einstein’s special theory of relativity, thus shaking the foundations of physics.”

Hmmm. Sounds serious. I know what all the words mean, but the authors seem to be using some of them in, shall we say, nonstandard ways. Take “entanglement,” for instance. I don’t think it means what I think it means, if you know what I mean. And “nonlocal” doesn’t mean “foreign” here. I don’t know what it does mean, but it doesn’t mean “foreign.”

Later in the same issue, the article “Saving New Brain Cells” places the final nail in the coffin of a long-held belief that adult brains don’t make new cells. Adult brains, it turns out, make new cells all the time, which really is a relief to me given how many brain cells George killed with alcohol on Friday nights at McConnell AFB in the mid-1990s.* The article states that our new brain cells “ultimately help with learning complex tasks—and the more they are challenged, the more they flourish.”

It’s good to know that my righteous indignation over Discover’s persistent telemarketing will ultimately give some of my new brain cells a fighting chance to flourish because my Scientific American subscription is certainly challenging them. On the other hand, I may need to thumb through a newsstand issue of Discover each month so I can see the Cliff’s Notes version of the science news and figure out what “entanglement” and “nonlocality” really mean.

That’s not cheating, is it?


*Yes, I promise to tell delightful stories of those drunken adventures eventually. Stay tuned.

Strange Adventures with the United States Air Force, Part 2

For Part 1 in this series, click here.

Making Friends

When you’re married to the military, you form friendships that last forever, no matter how much time or distance separates you from these friends. In our very surreal year at Mather AFB in Sacramento, California, we met Chris, the first of many good friends we made in the military. Chris was the quintessential dignified southern gentleman, a bit formal in manner and reserved (most of the time) in speech. He was also a bit older than most of the guys at Undergraduate Navigator Training and infinitely more mature.

We spent a lot of time with Chris because he was so much fun and so not a part of the JOC-Night ethos of navigator training I found so uncomfortable. George and I sat at the table a few weeks ago and reminisced about good times spent with Chris. Most of the stories and snippets of memory involved a healthy dose of laughter. Chris had a wonderfully self-deprecating and dry sense of humor that snuck out at odd moments. For instance, we were all watching television one night when a commercial for Rogaine came on. Chris, who was prematurely balding, muttered, completely deadpan, “Doesn’t work.”

He could also spin a funny story with himself as the butt of the joke. Our favorite—the one that always pops to mind whenever we’re discussing Chris—is the xylophone story.

Chris grew up in a very musical family, so when he went to high school, he realized the cool kids who played instruments played in the marching band. Being far too dignified to want to dance around with a trombone or saxophone, he quickly noticed that the percussionists spent practice sitting under a tree while everyone else rehearsed dorky dance moves in the blazing Georgia sun. Being a smart young man, Chris wanted to be with the drummers hanging out in the shade. The only percussion instrument not already taken, however, was the xylophone.

The xylophone had to be firmly strapped onto him and didn’t come off easily. So when he had the luxury to sit in the shade while the rest of the band practiced dance moves, Chris had to kneel with the xylophone resting on his lap, hunching over to take the strain off his shoulders.

Yeah, that really impressed the girls.

Then, there was the day trip to San Francisco, during which Chris almost got us shot at the Army’s beautiful Presidio Officers’ Club by asking, loudly, “How do the grunts rate this?” Well-mannered southern gentlemen simply don’t say things like that, and the incongruity still makes me giggle. But not in front of Army officers.

George and I had the same favorite day in 1988. We went with Chris to Lassen National Park to hike. It was a gorgeous California day, sunny and not too hot. We had backpacks loaded with water and sunscreen, and were wearing comfortable walking shoes. We took our time enjoying the scenery as we climbed Mt. Lassen and poked around the volcano’s caldera, with whiffs of brimstone adding spice to the adventure. We also made condescending comments about a group of sunburned Mennonites who had hiked the mountain without water and wearing terrible shoes.

Never, ever make condescending comments about Mennonites. They may not believe in karma, but karma believes in them.

We’d drunk all the water we brought by the time we got down from Mt. Lassen and should have headed home, but a friend had recommended the Bumpass Hell trail, which was supposed to be fairly short so we did it without water. Bumpass Hell has bubbling mud pots and a much stronger odor of brimstone than the caldera, and the hike was longer than anticipated. Much longer. The three of us death marched out of Bumpass Hell feeling parched and hot.

Karma really is a bitch.

Then we got lost trying to drive out of the park. Remember, there were no Tom-Toms in 1988, and I was with two navigators-in-training. Combine these two facts with our dose of bad karma, and we were destined to get lost. All we wanted was a restaurant to drink gallons of water and eat something that didn’t make us feel sick, but the one place we found in the park was, of course, closed. I don’t remember the meal we eventually found, but I do remember the time in the car because Chris proposed a game in which one person starts a story and passes it off to another person who adds to the story and then passes it on. This was an excellent distraction from our dehydration headaches and general frustration.

Our first oral-tradition epic included a mystery that took our detective to Big Al’s Nudist Colony and Farm Cooperative. It would have been a best-seller if we’d written it down, but now, 21 years later, all I remember is Big Al’s Nudist Colony and Farm Cooperative, which Chris cleverly contributed to the story line. Our second oral epic devolved into a bad episode of Miami Vice, but it carried us, exhausted, all the way home. Genius needed its sleep.

When we compared notes the next day over lunch, however, it turned out none of the three of us got any sleep because we all had horrible sunburns on our necks and ears and the backs of our legs. Lying on a pillow with blisters forming on your neck hurts. A lot. Sunscreen doesn’t work well when it stays in the backpack all day and never touches your skin.

Isn’t it amazing how three smart, college-educated young adults can be so unprepared and plain ol’ stupid? Honestly, it’s moments like this that remind me how incredibly lucky we are to have survived as a species.

You might be wondering why George and I both remember this day so fondly, given the extreme discomfort of dehydration headaches and sunburns, but when you go through a day like that with a good friend, the memory of companionship definitely trumps the discomfort.

Today, Chris runs his own cockpit resource management company and is happily married to Ruth, who teaches English as a second language and keeps everyone laughing with her own delightfully warm sense of humor. They have two talented daughters who were kind enough to dress my elder son in a medieval gown to sing karaoke while I snapped pictures during a visit to their home in 2005. These pictures will be extremely useful when Nick is a teenager.

Old friends come in handy for the darnedest things, don’t they?

Newsflash

Because having two blogs just isn't enough, I've started a third blog on STAMPING! So if you're interested in rubber stamping, check it out!

Simpicity by LateBlossom

September Can't Come Soon Enough

Our six-year-old son Jack has atypical autism. Three years ago, he could communicate wants and needs fairly well, but most of his intelligible speech consisted of Blue’s Clues dialogue, “I love you, Mommy,” and “I want chocolate milk.” While his speech is definitely not developing typically, he has made enormous progress. He does not babble anymore, still says “I love you, Mommy,” and (Praise God!) uses more and more spontaneous speech every day. As you read these examples of Jack-Speak, you’ll see how incredibly blessed we are and how hard it is not to laugh all the time.



Jack: I miss Thomas. Mommy, after it’s September, can we go see Thomas?
Me: Yes, Jack.

Jack: Mommy, Thomas is a steam engine, and he’s gots blue paint, and a black funnel, and blue paint, and he’s gots a number 1, and I want to see Thomas just like this Thomas [holds up little blue Thomas engine]. I’m going to see him in September. Mommy, do I go see Thomas in September? I miss Thomas. He’s a steam engine, and he’s gots blue paint, and a black funnel, and axles, and wheels, and he has the number 1 on him. [Note: A real train that looks like Thomas visits our area each September.]

Jack [getting off the bus one day in January]: Mommy, it’s trying to get warm outside!

Jack: Mommy, what are those pipes for?
Me: The sewer.
Jack: What’s that?
Me: When you flush the potty, what’s in the toilet goes into the sewer pipes.
Jack: But what time is it?
Me: Eleven o’clock.
Jack: Why is it eleven o’clock?
Me: It just is.
Jack: I’m going to miss Thomas.
Me: I know.

Jack: Mommy, are we going to Target?
Me: Not today.
Jack: Mommy, I want a Ben Ten watch just like Jacob.
Me: Not today, honey.
Jack: My name is Jack. Mommy, I want a Ben Ten watch just like Jacob.
Me: Not today, Jack.
Jack: But I thought you loved me!

Jack: I miss Thomas. Mommy, after it’s September, can we go see Thomas?
Me: Yes, Jack.

George: Jack, are you eating toothpaste?
Jack: No.
Nick [tattle-tale voice]: I saw you!
Jack [happy voice]: Sorr-eeee!

Jack: Mommy, can I just be naked in my room?
Me: Sure, Jack.

George [in a stern voice]: You don't hit me or speak to me that way. Period.
Jack: Don't call me Period.

Jack: I miss Thomas. Mommy, after it’s September, can we go see Thomas?
Me: Yes, Jack.

Kindergarten Aide: Jack, come to the table. It’s time to write your story.
Jack: Bossy Boots.

Me: I want to steal your nose. [I try to pinch his nose between my knuckles.]
Jack: No, no! I don’t want you to steal my nose!
Me: Really? Well, can I kiss it?
Jack: Okay.
Me [after kissing his nose]: Your nose is so cute!
Jack: And my face is, too.

Jack: Can I have a juice full of a box?

Jack [yelling]: Mommy, come watch me!
Me: Okay. [I walk to top of basement stairs, look down, and see Jack, in his underwear and socks, jumping on the little trampoline.] Jack, why are you naked?!? Put your clothes on!
George: [uncontrollable and unhelpful laughter from kitchen]
Jack: But Mommy…[smiling]
Me: Put your clothes on, naked boy!

Jack: I miss Thomas. Mommy, after it’s September, can we go see Thomas?
Me: Yes, Jack.

Jack: Mommy, can I put on my pajamas?
Me: No, it’s not seven o’clock yet.
Jack: But I thought you loved me!

Jack: I’m so disappointed in you, Mommy.
Me: Why?
Jack: Because I want to see Thomas.

Me: Come here, Jack. I need some lap time with my baby.
Jack: I’m not a baby, Mommy. I’m just a big boy.
Me: How big are you?
Jack: I’m just bigger than an ant.
Me: Bigger than an ant?
Jack: Yeah.

Jack [to George as he leaves for work]: You be careful with your new car, okay, Daddy. Don’t die, okay.

Jack: I miss Thomas. Mommy, after it’s September, can we go see Thomas?
Me: Yes, Jack.

Me: It’s time to brush your teeth and go to bed.
Jack [walking up the stairs, very sad]: I was just thinking about Thomas.
Me [to George]: Oh, the tragedy of it all.
Jack: Mommy, I was not traveling. I was just thinking about Thomas.

Jack: Mommy, can I have M&Ms for breakfast?
Me: No. You may have a banana or cereal.
Jack: But I thought you loved me!

I ask Jack to let Hoover out, and he starts to do so but decides he needs to pee instead, so he runs to the bathroom. I ask Nick to let Hoover out (because this is why I had children in the first place…to let the dog out), and Jack yells from the bathroom, “Remember, Hoooover!!! Safety firrrrrst!”

Jack: Daddy, my tummy wants a juice box.

Jack comes inside rubbing his knee.
Me: What happened?
Jack: The blood started to bleed me.

Jack: I miss Thomas. Mommy, after it’s September, can we go see Thomas?
Me: Yes.

Jack [in trouble and not allowed to watch movies, comes to me carrying his Stitch stuffed toy]: Mommy, Stitch wants to watch Winnie the Pooh.

Jack: Mommy, does you have your pajamas on?
Me: Yes, I do.
Jack: Oh, Mommy! [throws arms around me] I’m so proud of you! You are my best friend!

Me [in silly voice reserved for the dog]: Hoover, my brother, come here and give me kisses.
Jack [walks over from across the room, very serious]: Mommy, look at me. I have something to say to you.
Me: What is it, Jack?
Jack: Mommy, Hoover is not your brother. He is a dog, okay?
Me: Oh, okay Jack.
Jack: Nick is my brother. Okay?

Jack: I miss Thomas. Mommy, after it’s September, can we go see Thomas?
Me: I’ve already answered that question. What do you think?
Jack: Yes.

On a fish-shaped piece of art, Jack has written, “Penguins like fish with sprinkles.”

Jack: Mommy, you are my best lady. I love you.

Jack: I miss Thomas. Mommy, after it’s September, can we go see Thomas?
Me: Yes, Jack.


Note: If you want more information on Jack's language development and autism, please visit my Questioning Autism blog.