Come on, everyone, chant it with me.
Pee! Pee! Pee that pebble!
Pee! Pee! Pee that pebble!
Pee! Pee! Pee that boulder!
I have to say, I'm just about all funned out with the kidney thing.
October 28, 2006
October 26, 2006
Rock star
So last night I got this massive pain in my left kidney, like I had been kicked hard, and just this once, I was smart enough not to ignore it. I had Julie take me to the hospital, and sure enough, it was a kidney stone.
In addition, however, I apparently have gall stones and a stone in my appendix, something I'd never heard of before. I am full of rocks!
A few hours before, I'd hooked up with my friend Jill to give her a copy of Part One of Schuyler's Monster, which she is going to read for me. We met for Japanese bubble tea, or "boba", which, if you've never had it, can be a little weird. There's no appetizing way to put this, but it is basically tea with balls of tapioca in it. Sarah Vowell refers to it as "tea and dumplings", and while it sounds revolting, it's actually quite tasty. Meeting for boba has become something of a ritual for Jill and me.
When the doctor got a look at my CT scan, he saw, in addition to my belly full of pebbles, the undigested pudding balls in my stomach. He came into the room with a puzzled look on his face.
"Um, did you eat a necklace?"
Before the night was up, all the nurses and doctors in the ER were talking about my CT scan. I was the Freak of the Night. I rather enjoyed the attention.
So I'm home now. They elected not to do any surgery just yet, and sent me home with a script for Vicodin, which I have been taking all day like a good little stoner. As of about 11:00 tonight, my kidney has still not relinquished its prize. I have to say that even with the drugs (and don't let me sell Vicodin short as a drug that will fuck you up and good), this sucks.
The doctor at the ER said that for a man, this is about as close to labor pains as I'm ever going to feel. This made Julie snicker.
"Yeah, at least you got a prize at the end," I said.
As for that prize, Schuyler had to go with us, and we were concerned that she would be traumatized by the hospital. Keep in mind that the last time she was there, she was getting blood drawn for genetic testing, and before that she was being operated on for a bad staph infection, and before THAT was the MRI that was such an awful experience. Schuyler had gotten to the point where she would panic any time we went to a doctor's office of any kind, and I can't say I could really blame her.
Well, I'm happy to report that not only did she not freak out at all, but she seemed to have the time of her life. My nurse was a good-looking guy who flirted with her and gave her stickers and cookies, and she liked looking at photos of boba balls in my belly, along with the rest of the hospital staff.
Well, I'm glad someone had fun.
In addition, however, I apparently have gall stones and a stone in my appendix, something I'd never heard of before. I am full of rocks!
A few hours before, I'd hooked up with my friend Jill to give her a copy of Part One of Schuyler's Monster, which she is going to read for me. We met for Japanese bubble tea, or "boba", which, if you've never had it, can be a little weird. There's no appetizing way to put this, but it is basically tea with balls of tapioca in it. Sarah Vowell refers to it as "tea and dumplings", and while it sounds revolting, it's actually quite tasty. Meeting for boba has become something of a ritual for Jill and me.
When the doctor got a look at my CT scan, he saw, in addition to my belly full of pebbles, the undigested pudding balls in my stomach. He came into the room with a puzzled look on his face.
"Um, did you eat a necklace?"
Before the night was up, all the nurses and doctors in the ER were talking about my CT scan. I was the Freak of the Night. I rather enjoyed the attention.
So I'm home now. They elected not to do any surgery just yet, and sent me home with a script for Vicodin, which I have been taking all day like a good little stoner. As of about 11:00 tonight, my kidney has still not relinquished its prize. I have to say that even with the drugs (and don't let me sell Vicodin short as a drug that will fuck you up and good), this sucks.
The doctor at the ER said that for a man, this is about as close to labor pains as I'm ever going to feel. This made Julie snicker.
"Yeah, at least you got a prize at the end," I said.
As for that prize, Schuyler had to go with us, and we were concerned that she would be traumatized by the hospital. Keep in mind that the last time she was there, she was getting blood drawn for genetic testing, and before that she was being operated on for a bad staph infection, and before THAT was the MRI that was such an awful experience. Schuyler had gotten to the point where she would panic any time we went to a doctor's office of any kind, and I can't say I could really blame her.
Well, I'm happy to report that not only did she not freak out at all, but she seemed to have the time of her life. My nurse was a good-looking guy who flirted with her and gave her stickers and cookies, and she liked looking at photos of boba balls in my belly, along with the rest of the hospital staff.
Well, I'm glad someone had fun.
October 21, 2006
Stalking for Dummies
Just wanted to take a moment to let everyone know that I will be crawling out of my little writing cave for two public events in the coming month or two.
On November 2, I will be present for the opening of an art exhibit in Austin called Celebrated Skin. The topic of the exhibit is tattoo art, and my contribution will be my right arm, which I presume will be up on the wall. (A photo of my arm, rather; I love art, but I'm not game for an amputation just yet.) Stop by and watch me pretend to know what the hell I'm talking about.
On December 11 (and a day or two after, I imagine), I will be in New York City for a Media Bistro panel. I don't have any details right now, although I don't think it's going to be an "open to the public" thing, but I'll let you know when I have more information. If nothing else, it might be fun to put together some kind of small gathering while I'm in town.
Stalkers, sharpen your knives and make your plans.
On November 2, I will be present for the opening of an art exhibit in Austin called Celebrated Skin. The topic of the exhibit is tattoo art, and my contribution will be my right arm, which I presume will be up on the wall. (A photo of my arm, rather; I love art, but I'm not game for an amputation just yet.) Stop by and watch me pretend to know what the hell I'm talking about.
On December 11 (and a day or two after, I imagine), I will be in New York City for a Media Bistro panel. I don't have any details right now, although I don't think it's going to be an "open to the public" thing, but I'll let you know when I have more information. If nothing else, it might be fun to put together some kind of small gathering while I'm in town.
Stalkers, sharpen your knives and make your plans.
October 16, 2006
Getting schooled, and good
I just finished the chapter describing Schuyler's condition (the beginning paragraphs of which inspired my last entry), and in the process, I learned a few things. Part of that came from research I did, both online and with the help of Dana, who remains one of my best friends even from Connecticut. I also wrote to the two top experts on Schuyler's disorder: Dr. William Dobyns, who saw Schuyler in Chicago back in January 2005, and the Christopher Walsh Laboratory at Harvard. They both wrote me back with a ton of information, much of which appears to be in English but is clearly written for someone smarter than myself.
I have to admit that it had been a while since I'd done any serious reading on the subject, so in just the past week I've learned some interesting things about CBPS, the most obvious being that it is apparently no longer called CBPS. I'm not sure why the name has changed, although I suspect it is to bring it inline with the naming scheme for all the other forms of polymicrogyria. So goodbye, Congenital Bilateral Perisylvian Syndrome, and not so nice to meet you, Bilateral Perisylvian Polymicrogyria.
When Schuyler was first diagnosed, CBPS (BPP, I have to make myself use that now) was believed to be genetic in cause, which was the reason we made the sad decision not to have any more kids. Now it is believed to have a number of causes, including poor blood supply during early pregnancy and also the mis-development of blood vessels. Interestingly, one of the polymicrogyria genes appears to be a dyslexia gene as well.
I'm sure there's more that I haven't gotten to yet; the hefty texts that Dr. Dobyns and Dr. Walsh's lab sent would be daunting enough on size alone, even if they weren't written in Martian. I'll share anything else that jumps out.
This past Saturday, while having what was eventually to become one of the very worst days I have ever had, I very accidentally stumbled across something that sounded interesting and of possible interest to Schuyler: a therapy process called Interactive Metronome. And when I say I found it accidentally, I'm not kidding. The company was having a conference in the room next door to a wedding reception I was shooting, and I walked into it by mistake.
Which just goes to show you that 1) possibilities are everywhere if you just open your eyes to them, and 2) you can learn important things on even the worst days of your life. Which I suppose was pretty fucking true anyway.
I have to admit that it had been a while since I'd done any serious reading on the subject, so in just the past week I've learned some interesting things about CBPS, the most obvious being that it is apparently no longer called CBPS. I'm not sure why the name has changed, although I suspect it is to bring it inline with the naming scheme for all the other forms of polymicrogyria. So goodbye, Congenital Bilateral Perisylvian Syndrome, and not so nice to meet you, Bilateral Perisylvian Polymicrogyria.
When Schuyler was first diagnosed, CBPS (BPP, I have to make myself use that now) was believed to be genetic in cause, which was the reason we made the sad decision not to have any more kids. Now it is believed to have a number of causes, including poor blood supply during early pregnancy and also the mis-development of blood vessels. Interestingly, one of the polymicrogyria genes appears to be a dyslexia gene as well.
I'm sure there's more that I haven't gotten to yet; the hefty texts that Dr. Dobyns and Dr. Walsh's lab sent would be daunting enough on size alone, even if they weren't written in Martian. I'll share anything else that jumps out.
This past Saturday, while having what was eventually to become one of the very worst days I have ever had, I very accidentally stumbled across something that sounded interesting and of possible interest to Schuyler: a therapy process called Interactive Metronome. And when I say I found it accidentally, I'm not kidding. The company was having a conference in the room next door to a wedding reception I was shooting, and I walked into it by mistake.
Which just goes to show you that 1) possibilities are everywhere if you just open your eyes to them, and 2) you can learn important things on even the worst days of your life. Which I suppose was pretty fucking true anyway.
October 9, 2006
Found Wisdom
Schuyler
Originally uploaded by Citizen Rob.
I ran across this while researching something for my book, and it resonated so strongly with me that I wanted to share it.
I don't always think people understand why Schuyler's situation makes me so sad sometimes. I'm not always sure I understand it myself.
-----
Parents attach to children through core-level dreams, fantasies, illusions, and projections into the future. Disability dashes these cherished dreams. The impairment, not the child, irreversibly spoils a parent's fundamental, heart-felt yearning. Disability shatters the dreams, fantasies, illusions, and projections into the future that parents generate as part of their struggle to accomplish basic life missions. Parents of impaired children grieve for the loss of dreams that are key to the meaning of their existence, to their sense of being. Recovering from such a loss depends on one's ability to separate from the lost dream, and to generate new, more attainable, dreams.
As disability bluntly shatters the dreams, parents face a complicated, draining, challenging, frightening, and consuming task. They must raise the child they have, while letting go of the child they dreamed of. They must go on with their lives, cope with their child as he or she is now, let go of the lost dreams, and generate new dreams. To do all this, the parent must experience the process of grieving.
-- The Impact of Childhood Disability: The Parent's Struggle, by Ken Moses, Ph.D.
October 6, 2006
Where she lives
Ballerina artist
Originally uploaded by Citizen Rob.
Typically, when I write a blog entry, I start with the topic and go from there. When I'm done writing, I'll go find a photo that will go with it, or I'll take one if I need one. Or perhaps I'll steal one from someone else's page, maybe yours! The point is, usually the photo comes last, as an accompaniment to the writing.
This morning as I was leaving for work, Schuyler was drawing with her big markers, wearing her little ballerina outfit that she inexplicably puts on when she's playing around the apartment. I have no idea what the appeal might be, particularly since she doesn't really dance around much when she wears it. Anyway, she was drawing quietly with her markers, and I thought it was cute so I took a few photos on my way out the door.
It wasn't until later, after I loaded the photos into my computer, that I saw what I had captured, and knew that I wanted to write about it.
Anyone who has ever met Schuyler and spent any time with her knows how sociable she is. She is outgoing and friendly and not one bit shy. It's almost scary sometimes, how warm and happy and turned-up-to-eleven she can be.
But Schuyler lives most of her life inside her head. It's not so pervasive as it was when she was younger. She can make herself more clearly understood now, she has options she didn't have before. But she only makes those connections when it suits her, and much of the time, it doesn't.
Strangely, this is a side of Schuyler that I understand completely. When she disappears inside her own head like she's doing in that photo, I get it. It's not because of her monster, not entirely. I think she retreats there because it's a place where she makes sense. Schuyler is a social creature, but she is also a very internal one, a person who can be totally alone in a crowded room. I watch her withdraw, not out of sadness or anger or stress, but simply because that's where she lives, inside herself. And I get it, because it's where I live, too.
Tomorrow, she and I will spend the day at home together, and I know that like on most days we have, we'll spend part of it just sitting together. She'll draw or play with her dolls, making them speak to each other in her strange moonman language (she never uses her device to make them talk; she tried that early on, making her dinosaurs say "I love you" to each other, but that didn't last) while I write. We'll do that for hours, and we'll never say a word, and it'll be perfect.
I guess I like that shot because I take a lot of photos of Schuyler that show the vibrant part of her personality, but I feel like a real photographer when I take one that shows her where she lives, inside that strange and broken and beautiful head.
October 4, 2006
The end of days are nigh. Maybe. Nighish.
For those of you who might be religious in nature, I have two things to report that may nor may not signal the coming Apocalypse.
Julie is thinking of getting a PC laptop. And I think we're getting cell phones today.
Before you start frog-proofing your rain gutters, there are good reasons for both. The phone was a long time coming, but getting stuck on the interstate behind a traffic accident for three hours with Schuyler in the car and being unable to call anyone to tell them that we were running late sort of sealed the deal.
I wrote about this more over at my book blog, but the other reason for getting a phone is that it looks like Julie is going to help with publicity for my book, at the very least augmenting whatever publicist I might get assigned by St. Martin's Press. SMP publishes and promotes about 700 titles a year; I'll be trying to sell just one book.
Julie's got experience; it's what she does for a living, after all. Also, she's got a vested interest in the success of my book. And I assume her rates are affordable. Aside from the laptop.
So unless Cingular comes to their financial senses before they deliver our phones, it looks like I'll be joining the rest of you in this Twenty-first century, already in progress.
Schuyler has been on what they call "Fall Break", a free week that I never had when I was in school. She had something of a rough weekend, including a three and a half hour drive that turned into almost eight hours thanks to Dallas traffic and Austin road work and a bout with food poisoning. The fewer details shared about that experience, the better.
But through it all, she stayed mostly happy. Even after getting horribly sick, she would simply wash her face, brush her teeth and be back to her normal self. Her resilience never fails to amaze me. I wish I had her ability to spring back from disappointment. In the words of the Eels song, "I'm tired of the old shit. Let the new shit begin."
Julie is thinking of getting a PC laptop. And I think we're getting cell phones today.
Before you start frog-proofing your rain gutters, there are good reasons for both. The phone was a long time coming, but getting stuck on the interstate behind a traffic accident for three hours with Schuyler in the car and being unable to call anyone to tell them that we were running late sort of sealed the deal.
I wrote about this more over at my book blog, but the other reason for getting a phone is that it looks like Julie is going to help with publicity for my book, at the very least augmenting whatever publicist I might get assigned by St. Martin's Press. SMP publishes and promotes about 700 titles a year; I'll be trying to sell just one book.
Julie's got experience; it's what she does for a living, after all. Also, she's got a vested interest in the success of my book. And I assume her rates are affordable. Aside from the laptop.
So unless Cingular comes to their financial senses before they deliver our phones, it looks like I'll be joining the rest of you in this Twenty-first century, already in progress.
Schuyler has been on what they call "Fall Break", a free week that I never had when I was in school. She had something of a rough weekend, including a three and a half hour drive that turned into almost eight hours thanks to Dallas traffic and Austin road work and a bout with food poisoning. The fewer details shared about that experience, the better.
But through it all, she stayed mostly happy. Even after getting horribly sick, she would simply wash her face, brush her teeth and be back to her normal self. Her resilience never fails to amaze me. I wish I had her ability to spring back from disappointment. In the words of the Eels song, "I'm tired of the old shit. Let the new shit begin."
September 26, 2006
Best line: "A monkey posing as a newscaster..."
I've been staying away from politics for a while, mostly out of depression over the failure of the Democratic Party and the mainstream media to hold the Bush Administration accountable for its actions both before and since 9/11. But after watching Bill Clinton's spirited interview with Fox "News" talking head Chris Wallace, I felt something I hadn't felt in a while. I felt proud of a Democrat. Figures it would be one who's been out of office for five very long years.
I guess I'm not the only one who felt that way:
Keith Olbermann:
Finally tonight, a special comment about President Clinton's interview. The headlines about it are, of course, entirely wrong. It is not essential that a past President, bullied and sandbagged by a monkey posing as a newscaster, finally lashed back.
It is not important that the current President's portable public chorus has described his predecessor's tone as "crazed."
Our tone should be crazed. The nation's freedoms are under assault by an administration whose policies can do us as much damage as Al-Qaeda; the nation's marketplace of ideas is being poisoned, by a propaganda company so blatant that Tokyo Rose would've quit.
Nonetheless, the headline is this: Bill Clinton did what almost none of us have done, in five years. He has spoken the truth about 9/11, and the current presidential administration.
I guess I'm not the only one who felt that way:
Keith Olbermann:
Finally tonight, a special comment about President Clinton's interview. The headlines about it are, of course, entirely wrong. It is not essential that a past President, bullied and sandbagged by a monkey posing as a newscaster, finally lashed back.
It is not important that the current President's portable public chorus has described his predecessor's tone as "crazed."
Our tone should be crazed. The nation's freedoms are under assault by an administration whose policies can do us as much damage as Al-Qaeda; the nation's marketplace of ideas is being poisoned, by a propaganda company so blatant that Tokyo Rose would've quit.
Nonetheless, the headline is this: Bill Clinton did what almost none of us have done, in five years. He has spoken the truth about 9/11, and the current presidential administration.
September 25, 2006
Happy birthday, dead guy.
I would be a bad bad Prophet of Dmitri if I didn't take note of the 100th Anniversary of the birth of my favorite composer, Dmitri Shostakovich.
There's not another artistic figure who has had as great an impact on my musical life as Shostakovich, but that's not the whole story. He is also a personal hero of mine, someone who lived in the most oppressive society in human history and managed to not only survive but also to create a body of work that expresses the reality of life in Stalinist Russia with an emotional honesty and clarity that would have been impossible in any other artistic genre.
When Schuyler was a baby, I promised her I'd take her to Russia in the summer of 2006 to celebrate this anniversary with her. Obviously, it ultimately turned out to be undoable. I would feel uncomfortable traveling in Russia with a non-verbal child, and I'd feel uncomfortable traveling anywhere in the world thanks to our non-sentient president. But I'll be listening to Shostakovich's music today, and reflecting on his life.
So there you go. Some artsy fartsy music jabber for you.
There's not another artistic figure who has had as great an impact on my musical life as Shostakovich, but that's not the whole story. He is also a personal hero of mine, someone who lived in the most oppressive society in human history and managed to not only survive but also to create a body of work that expresses the reality of life in Stalinist Russia with an emotional honesty and clarity that would have been impossible in any other artistic genre.
When Schuyler was a baby, I promised her I'd take her to Russia in the summer of 2006 to celebrate this anniversary with her. Obviously, it ultimately turned out to be undoable. I would feel uncomfortable traveling in Russia with a non-verbal child, and I'd feel uncomfortable traveling anywhere in the world thanks to our non-sentient president. But I'll be listening to Shostakovich's music today, and reflecting on his life.
So there you go. Some artsy fartsy music jabber for you.
I didn't see THAT coming.
Thanks to the very nice people at Publishers Weekly, I now have several copies of the September 11, 2006 edition, for free even. I called them a few days ago to confirm that I was actually in it before buying a few copies from their archive department, and she said, "Oh, give me your address and I'll just send you a couple of copies." She ended up sending five.
This was super cool since I was pretty sure the notice was there, but I hadn't actually seen it yet. It's always nice to be able to hold something like this in hand and be able to actually see the other articles so I can feel all legitimate and flip the pages until I get to the Deals section and see HOLY CRAP, THAT'S MY PHOTO.
Well. That'll wake you up in the morning.
This was super cool since I was pretty sure the notice was there, but I hadn't actually seen it yet. It's always nice to be able to hold something like this in hand and be able to actually see the other articles so I can feel all legitimate and flip the pages until I get to the Deals section and see HOLY CRAP, THAT'S MY PHOTO.
Well. That'll wake you up in the morning.
September 20, 2006
Boring McWriterson
I know it's been a week since I've updated, and honestly, this isn't going to be much of an entry, not compared to the one I'd like to write. The hour is late, and I'm working on the book pretty much most of the time now anyway, including like ten minutes ago and about five minutes from now. But there are two things I wanted to tell you.
1) A comment was left on my last entry letting me know that there was a blurb about me (apparently generated by the Publishers Weekly article) in the Sunday Free Press in Winnipeg, a city that, for those of you who are a product of the American public schools like me, is in Canada. How cool is that? I'm NEWS, baby. Canadian news, no less.
2) In order to keep from cluttering up this fine fine blog with news and jabber about the book, I've created a book site over at SchuylersMonster.com. I keep reading how authors are expected to take up more and more of the promotional duties for their work, and I'm getting an early jump on it. I've been looking at different author sites, and I think this is pretty well in line with what's out there.
Just so you know, it's not all sassy and chaotic like this blog. I do not believe I shall be dropping the F-bomb over there with such Lebowskiesque abandon, for example. It's a professional endeavor, after all, with the single purpose of promoting the book. St. Martin's Press is taking a risk on a new writer like me, and I'm certainly going to do everything I can to make sure their investment pays off.
Am I a sell-out? Well, I don't know. It's my book, after all. It would be pretty stupid of me not to start doing everything I can to make it a success starting now. Besides, you know the reason I never sold out before? No one was buying.
Anyway, if you're interested in following the progress of the book, I'll be doing most of that talk over there. There's even a blog. I'm fancy!
1) A comment was left on my last entry letting me know that there was a blurb about me (apparently generated by the Publishers Weekly article) in the Sunday Free Press in Winnipeg, a city that, for those of you who are a product of the American public schools like me, is in Canada. How cool is that? I'm NEWS, baby. Canadian news, no less.
2) In order to keep from cluttering up this fine fine blog with news and jabber about the book, I've created a book site over at SchuylersMonster.com. I keep reading how authors are expected to take up more and more of the promotional duties for their work, and I'm getting an early jump on it. I've been looking at different author sites, and I think this is pretty well in line with what's out there.
Just so you know, it's not all sassy and chaotic like this blog. I do not believe I shall be dropping the F-bomb over there with such Lebowskiesque abandon, for example. It's a professional endeavor, after all, with the single purpose of promoting the book. St. Martin's Press is taking a risk on a new writer like me, and I'm certainly going to do everything I can to make sure their investment pays off.
Am I a sell-out? Well, I don't know. It's my book, after all. It would be pretty stupid of me not to start doing everything I can to make it a success starting now. Besides, you know the reason I never sold out before? No one was buying.
Anyway, if you're interested in following the progress of the book, I'll be doing most of that talk over there. There's even a blog. I'm fancy!
September 13, 2006
Howl
Schuyler's upset tonight, as she has been all day, and we're not entirely sure why.
It's hard for her, I know. She doesn't express frustration with her situation very often, but sometimes she just can't say what needs to be said, even when she goes to the BBoW, and that's when she gets angry at her monster.
When she got off the bus at school, her teacher said, she was in a bad mood already. Something was wrong, that much was clear, but she wasn't able to tell them exactly what. She was able to tell them that she didn't feel well, but she was struggling to tell them exactly why.
Finally, they figured out that she had a headache. They figured it out because she told the school nurse, in her own way.
She had the nurse put a band-aid on her head.
Well, there you go. Communication.
I've seen it so many times, I've watched her work her way around communications obstacles in different ways, sometimes imaginative and sometimes crude but always effective. It's a wonder to watch, fascinating to see how her brain works.
The last story in my book takes place a couple of months ago, when we were escaping the heat at one of those little play areas at the mall. Schuyler was confronted by a mean little girl who insisted on bullying her and the other kids by constantly occupying the same space that they were trying to play in. Julie and I very intentionally stayed back to let her figure it out by herself.
The mean girl had two sisters in on the fun with her, but she did most of the bullying, calling other kids names and pushing them around. Schuyler refused to budge, however. At first she tried to just ignore the mean girls, but that only enraged them.
Two things happened that convinced us that even if it wasn't how we'd choose for her confrontations to go down, we nevertheless could see that Schuyler was going to be okay.
The first thing was the worst, and happened before we could intervene. The mean girl hit Schuyler hard, on the shoulder. Before we could stand up and go over to them or even say a word, in no more time than it took for the windup, in fact, Schuyler quite simply hit the girl right in the middle of her face. And that was it. She dispensed what she saw as justice, and that was that.
The mean girl was so surprised that for a moment she didn't say anything. Then she started yelling in Schuyler's face.
"You can't talk! You're crazy! You're STUPID!"
Schuyler looked at her for just a moment, weighed her options (which were few, particularly without her BBoW), then leaned into the girl's face, her fists balled at her side, opened her mouth and howled like an animal. The girl was so shocked that she just walked away.
I'd like it to be different. I'd love for things to be any way other than this. But I suppose Schuyler doesn't have time for sentimentality or best practices or whatever. She's a sweet kid and the most loving human being I have ever known, in a world where frankly, love is almost always suspect.
But when she has to be, she's also the best pragmatist I know. Sometimes, all you get is a howl. I see that and I rage against the injustice. Schuyler sees it, and she howls, without hesitation. I'm proud of her for that.
-----
One quick note, while I'm jabbering away.
Because I am generally agreeable to being thought of as swell, I thought I'd share something an old friend of mine wrote about me. It's actually been a few years since I've spoken to Sari. She disappeared for a long time and so I assumed she'd joined some radical lesbian terrorist group. (I'm not sure whether I'm glad or sorry that she didn't.) She's one of those friends with whom the bonds are there and just waiting to be picked back up like no time at all has passed. I'm glad she's back.
Anyway, thank you, Sari. I like that she calls me "the last of the true gentlemen on earth". It almost makes up for that photo. Look how fat I was back then. Man.
It's hard for her, I know. She doesn't express frustration with her situation very often, but sometimes she just can't say what needs to be said, even when she goes to the BBoW, and that's when she gets angry at her monster.
When she got off the bus at school, her teacher said, she was in a bad mood already. Something was wrong, that much was clear, but she wasn't able to tell them exactly what. She was able to tell them that she didn't feel well, but she was struggling to tell them exactly why.
Finally, they figured out that she had a headache. They figured it out because she told the school nurse, in her own way.
She had the nurse put a band-aid on her head.
Well, there you go. Communication.
I've seen it so many times, I've watched her work her way around communications obstacles in different ways, sometimes imaginative and sometimes crude but always effective. It's a wonder to watch, fascinating to see how her brain works.
The last story in my book takes place a couple of months ago, when we were escaping the heat at one of those little play areas at the mall. Schuyler was confronted by a mean little girl who insisted on bullying her and the other kids by constantly occupying the same space that they were trying to play in. Julie and I very intentionally stayed back to let her figure it out by herself.
The mean girl had two sisters in on the fun with her, but she did most of the bullying, calling other kids names and pushing them around. Schuyler refused to budge, however. At first she tried to just ignore the mean girls, but that only enraged them.
Two things happened that convinced us that even if it wasn't how we'd choose for her confrontations to go down, we nevertheless could see that Schuyler was going to be okay.
The first thing was the worst, and happened before we could intervene. The mean girl hit Schuyler hard, on the shoulder. Before we could stand up and go over to them or even say a word, in no more time than it took for the windup, in fact, Schuyler quite simply hit the girl right in the middle of her face. And that was it. She dispensed what she saw as justice, and that was that.
The mean girl was so surprised that for a moment she didn't say anything. Then she started yelling in Schuyler's face.
"You can't talk! You're crazy! You're STUPID!"
Schuyler looked at her for just a moment, weighed her options (which were few, particularly without her BBoW), then leaned into the girl's face, her fists balled at her side, opened her mouth and howled like an animal. The girl was so shocked that she just walked away.
I'd like it to be different. I'd love for things to be any way other than this. But I suppose Schuyler doesn't have time for sentimentality or best practices or whatever. She's a sweet kid and the most loving human being I have ever known, in a world where frankly, love is almost always suspect.
But when she has to be, she's also the best pragmatist I know. Sometimes, all you get is a howl. I see that and I rage against the injustice. Schuyler sees it, and she howls, without hesitation. I'm proud of her for that.
-----
One quick note, while I'm jabbering away.
Because I am generally agreeable to being thought of as swell, I thought I'd share something an old friend of mine wrote about me. It's actually been a few years since I've spoken to Sari. She disappeared for a long time and so I assumed she'd joined some radical lesbian terrorist group. (I'm not sure whether I'm glad or sorry that she didn't.) She's one of those friends with whom the bonds are there and just waiting to be picked back up like no time at all has passed. I'm glad she's back.
Anyway, thank you, Sari. I like that she calls me "the last of the true gentlemen on earth". It almost makes up for that photo. Look how fat I was back then. Man.
September 12, 2006
Am I serious? No one knows, not even me.
(Taking a writing break, and a non-alcoholic one at that.)
The very first thing I plan to do when I get my advance for the book is buy Klops for Schuyler.
Well, come on. Go look at their other creations and tell me they aren't MADE for Schuyler. Look at Klong, and the Yeti. Her little mind might actually explode.
I just wrote to them to ask if they do commissions. I was thinking just one, for Schuyler, but who knows? I could have the industry's first special needs parenting book with a plush doll tie-in. The possibilities boggle the mind.
Schuyler's monster, indeed.
(Okay, back to work...)
The very first thing I plan to do when I get my advance for the book is buy Klops for Schuyler.
Well, come on. Go look at their other creations and tell me they aren't MADE for Schuyler. Look at Klong, and the Yeti. Her little mind might actually explode.
I just wrote to them to ask if they do commissions. I was thinking just one, for Schuyler, but who knows? I could have the industry's first special needs parenting book with a plush doll tie-in. The possibilities boggle the mind.
Schuyler's monster, indeed.
(Okay, back to work...)
September 11, 2006
Someone tell my mom, please.
"Schuyler's Monster"
Originally uploaded by Citizen Rob.
Well, okay. I guess I can go public now.
(from Publishers Weekly, 9/11/2006 - Deals)Blog to Book
Blogger Robert Rummel-Hudson's life was transformed when his daughter, Schuyler, was diagnosed with an extremely rare neurological disorder called Congenital Bilateral Perisylvian Syndrome (only several hundred cases have been identified worldwide). He began writing about his experiences in an online journal (belovedmonsterandme.blogspot.com) and will now publish his memoir, Schuyler's Monster, with St. Martin's Press; Sheila Curry Oakes acquired world rights from agent Sarah Jane Freymann. Schuyler, now seven, is nonverbal but communicates with the assistance of an electronic device. Rummel-Hudson will ruminate on the struggle with a child's disability while touching on larger issues of family, love and fatherhood. St. Martin's plans a winter 2008 publication.
September 4, 2006
Spelling for Monsters
Schuyler had a spelling test on Friday, like she does every Friday. (I'd like to point out that the idea of little Baby Schuyler taking a first grade spelling test makes me feel like the oldest old fart in Oldfartopia.) This might seem like the most boring thing in the world to share with you, but I want you to stop for just a moment and ponder the metaphorical canyon that one is required to leap across in order to learn to spell when you are incapable of speech.
Imagine learning your letters. Imagine having to learn the sounds that they make, sounds they make for everyone but you. Imagine then having to take those sounds, alien to you in any real, meaningful way, and put them together into words. THEN imagine having to take those words and deconstruct them in your head into the sounds that you can only hear and never make, and use the letters that you have learned to construct those words. Imagine having a teacher say a word to you, sounding it out, and you sitting in a class surrounded by other, neurotypical kids your age who can then put all these pieces together in such a way that it makes perfect sense to them, but will never be able to make sense in a tangible way to you.
Spelling has been challenging for Schuyler. We work with her on it every night, taking the list of words for that week's test and drilling it. We sound it out for her and she types it out, not on her device but on a computer keyboard, because that's what they use in her mainstream first grade class. It's hard for her to write; in addition to stealing her consonants and rendering her non-verbal, her monster fumbles her clumsy little hands, too. So she uses a computer keyboard, and I think that's fine. She's getting quick on her device, but she needs to be able to use the tools of the speaking world, too.
It's frustrating. She tries so hard, and when she can't grasp it because the sounds are hard for her to distinguish, it's easy to lose hope. This has been one of the few times that her condition has caused her real anxiety, and it's heartbreaking. She tries, and when she fails, she loses her focus. I have been telling her that she has to try harder than everyone else in her class. I don't tell her why, because how do you tell a six year-old that she's broken?
Besides, she already knows. She may not care very often, and she's certainly more positive about it than anyone around her, but she knows. Better than anyone, I suspect.
After a couple of weeks with dismal test scores, and after a week of hard drills with her that didn't seem to go anywhere but frustration, we were happily surprised to learn on Friday that she had scored seven out of ten correctly on her test, including the harder words.
I think she simply got tired of the frustration. In her head, I believe she said "Oh, screw this," knocked her monster out of the way and figured it out. It's too early to say whether or not she's really got this down or if she just had a good day, but I think it would be hard for her to "accidentally" spell words correctly. I'm hopeful.
Schuyler clearly has a learning disorder, that's a no shitter. Put a strip of duct tape over your own mouth and leave it there until the day you die, and see how well you grasp the mechanics of language. One unknown issue was always whether or not CBPS was going to take the same bite out of her that it does other CBPS kids.
Schuyler's monster has two ugly stepsisters that loom over our thoughts and fears: seizures and intellectual disability. Seizures we won't know about until (and if) they arrive. I think it is becoming clear, however, that although Schuyler may never be one of the world's great thinkers, she is not hugely mentally impaired. She's clever, she's determined, and most of all she's tenacious. She doesn't like to be told what to do, a trait that I encourage in her every chance I get, so she has to decide she wants to do something first. And then? She just fucking DOES it.
That's Schuyler's nature, and she comes by it honestly. I have no idea how smart she really is, not yet, but I also don't think it matters. I'm not all that smart, either, and I'm doing okay. She's going to do okay, too.
Imagine learning your letters. Imagine having to learn the sounds that they make, sounds they make for everyone but you. Imagine then having to take those sounds, alien to you in any real, meaningful way, and put them together into words. THEN imagine having to take those words and deconstruct them in your head into the sounds that you can only hear and never make, and use the letters that you have learned to construct those words. Imagine having a teacher say a word to you, sounding it out, and you sitting in a class surrounded by other, neurotypical kids your age who can then put all these pieces together in such a way that it makes perfect sense to them, but will never be able to make sense in a tangible way to you.
Spelling has been challenging for Schuyler. We work with her on it every night, taking the list of words for that week's test and drilling it. We sound it out for her and she types it out, not on her device but on a computer keyboard, because that's what they use in her mainstream first grade class. It's hard for her to write; in addition to stealing her consonants and rendering her non-verbal, her monster fumbles her clumsy little hands, too. So she uses a computer keyboard, and I think that's fine. She's getting quick on her device, but she needs to be able to use the tools of the speaking world, too.
It's frustrating. She tries so hard, and when she can't grasp it because the sounds are hard for her to distinguish, it's easy to lose hope. This has been one of the few times that her condition has caused her real anxiety, and it's heartbreaking. She tries, and when she fails, she loses her focus. I have been telling her that she has to try harder than everyone else in her class. I don't tell her why, because how do you tell a six year-old that she's broken?
Besides, she already knows. She may not care very often, and she's certainly more positive about it than anyone around her, but she knows. Better than anyone, I suspect.
After a couple of weeks with dismal test scores, and after a week of hard drills with her that didn't seem to go anywhere but frustration, we were happily surprised to learn on Friday that she had scored seven out of ten correctly on her test, including the harder words.
I think she simply got tired of the frustration. In her head, I believe she said "Oh, screw this," knocked her monster out of the way and figured it out. It's too early to say whether or not she's really got this down or if she just had a good day, but I think it would be hard for her to "accidentally" spell words correctly. I'm hopeful.
Schuyler clearly has a learning disorder, that's a no shitter. Put a strip of duct tape over your own mouth and leave it there until the day you die, and see how well you grasp the mechanics of language. One unknown issue was always whether or not CBPS was going to take the same bite out of her that it does other CBPS kids.
Schuyler's monster has two ugly stepsisters that loom over our thoughts and fears: seizures and intellectual disability. Seizures we won't know about until (and if) they arrive. I think it is becoming clear, however, that although Schuyler may never be one of the world's great thinkers, she is not hugely mentally impaired. She's clever, she's determined, and most of all she's tenacious. She doesn't like to be told what to do, a trait that I encourage in her every chance I get, so she has to decide she wants to do something first. And then? She just fucking DOES it.
That's Schuyler's nature, and she comes by it honestly. I have no idea how smart she really is, not yet, but I also don't think it matters. I'm not all that smart, either, and I'm doing okay. She's going to do okay, too.
August 31, 2006
Potholes in Memory Lane
As I dig into the writing of this book, I'm finding that the hard part isn't necessarily revisiting the hard times. I'm doing a major re-write of the earliest chapters, so I'm back in New Haven of 2000, with a weird job in a mental hospital and a new baby. I'm revisiting those days in my old journal, and the fact that I had no idea what the future held for us all is surprisingly poignant to me.
It's funny the things I was afraid of as a new parent. None of them came to pass, and yet the monster was there, already in place and fully formed. It would be July of 20001 before Schuyler's pediatrician would ask about Schuyler's speech for the first time, and another two years after that before we ever heard the words "Congenital Bilateral Perisylvian Syndrome".
In 2000, I thought our parenting future was just like everyone else's. I thought things were going to be okay.
Between now and the end of the year, I'm going to be revisiting the slow descent into the very worst of those days, all the uncertainty and the wondering if Schuyler was deaf and hearing the idiotic term "Pervasive Developmental Disorder - Not Otherwise Specified" for the first time. I'll get to hit rock bottom in the summer of 2003 when we finally met the monster, and a few weeks later, I'll get to plummet back down to a year and a half later when we went to Chicago to look for hope and instead found out that as bad as we thought it was, Schuyler's monster was even uglier than we'd been told.
If I progress on schedule, sometime in November I'll be back in Austin circa spring of 2004 learning about the Big Box of Words and fundraising for Schuyler's shot at having a voice. December will bring the fight, and the hope, and by the end of the year, I should be done.
Where Schuyler is concerned, I sometimes get so caught up in trying to prepare for the future that I sometimes forget that the past was no picnic, either. If I could go back in time and talk to the me of 2000, I'm not exactly sure what I'd tell him.
"Brace yourself, man."
It's funny the things I was afraid of as a new parent. None of them came to pass, and yet the monster was there, already in place and fully formed. It would be July of 20001 before Schuyler's pediatrician would ask about Schuyler's speech for the first time, and another two years after that before we ever heard the words "Congenital Bilateral Perisylvian Syndrome".
In 2000, I thought our parenting future was just like everyone else's. I thought things were going to be okay.
Between now and the end of the year, I'm going to be revisiting the slow descent into the very worst of those days, all the uncertainty and the wondering if Schuyler was deaf and hearing the idiotic term "Pervasive Developmental Disorder - Not Otherwise Specified" for the first time. I'll get to hit rock bottom in the summer of 2003 when we finally met the monster, and a few weeks later, I'll get to plummet back down to a year and a half later when we went to Chicago to look for hope and instead found out that as bad as we thought it was, Schuyler's monster was even uglier than we'd been told.
If I progress on schedule, sometime in November I'll be back in Austin circa spring of 2004 learning about the Big Box of Words and fundraising for Schuyler's shot at having a voice. December will bring the fight, and the hope, and by the end of the year, I should be done.
Where Schuyler is concerned, I sometimes get so caught up in trying to prepare for the future that I sometimes forget that the past was no picnic, either. If I could go back in time and talk to the me of 2000, I'm not exactly sure what I'd tell him.
"Brace yourself, man."
August 28, 2006
I know smart people.
There are some people that, when they get published, you secretly wonder down in your (my?) cold, jealous heart how they got the Golden Ticket while you're still stuck writing for your company newsletter and accumulating the "thanks but no thanks" letters.
And then there are the ones for whom there is no doubt whatsoever why they are meeting with success.
Congratulations, Campbell Award-winner John Scalzi! Keep on keepin' on.
And then there are the ones for whom there is no doubt whatsoever why they are meeting with success.
Congratulations, Campbell Award-winner John Scalzi! Keep on keepin' on.
August 26, 2006
Monkey Paw
First of all, an announcement. The Last Samurai is on tv right now, and it's on the scene where the samurai are attacked by assassin ninjas. Schuyler has just informed us that she is a ninja. She is showing us her ninja moves right now.
Just so you know. She really is my pretty ninja. She'll mess you up, bitches.
As you can imagine, it's been a crazy week. I never really thought the whole hypothetical experience through, what it would be like to get a book deal. I guess if I imagined it at all, my fantasy scene would have been similar to winning the Publisher's Clearing House Sweepstakes, like I'd get a knock on the door and guys in suits and giant toothy smiles would say, "Robert Rummel-Hudson! We're buying your book! Sign here and you can have this big fancy check and a spot on Jon Stewart and all the hot undergrad English majors you can handle!"
The reality is that after a week of emails and phone calls and questions about deadlines and percentages and marketing and publishing terms that I had to look up online (before answering the same thing every time: "Sounds great!"), the process is still, well, in process. (Yeah, that was an eloquent turn of phrase from the fancy pants writer.) I suspect the next few days will bring some closure, and with it perhaps the giant check and the hot young chickies.
And then I have to finish this thing. I have until the end of January to turn in a finished manuscript, and I've mapped out the amount of time I need to complete it before the end of the year, giving me a few weeks to pretty up the mess when I'm done. It works out to about a chapter a week. As a fun little online component of the process, I'll list the name of the chapter I'm currently working on over in the sidebar. If you don't see it change once a week or so, you have my permission to send me an email that says "What the fuck, Chuck?"
Through it all, life continues. Schuyler continues.
I have to admit, this has been a slightly bittersweet experience. For as long as I can remember, I've wanted to be a published writer. It's been a consistent dream of mine, but now that it's coming true, it feels a little bit like a monkey paw story. (For those of you with a clicking allergy, the reference is to a 1902 story by W. W. Jacobs, in which a dead monkey paw grants wishes but with an ugly price.) I've been in such a celebratory mood all week, but when I sit down to work on the book, the reality of this story blows through my mood like smoke.
I'm thrilled that this book is going to be published. Well, of course I am. Part of that thrill is the weird rush of a life's dream coming to pass, like the first drop of a roller coaster. Part of it feels like a small measure of justice for Schuyler, as if God can do this to her and I'm powerless to stop him, but at the very least I'm going to let the world know what a bully he is. And part of it has the whiff of evangelism, bringing her story to people who might have some kind of monster in their own lives. Schuyler's an inspiring kid, she never loses her spirit even when we do. And make no mistake, we do, a lot.
In the end, as much as I'd like to play the part of Talented Author Type, the reality is that this book is getting published because of Schuyler. She's writing her own story, she's going to make her own way and knock down whomever she has to in order to do so.
Me? I'm just writing it down.
Just so you know. She really is my pretty ninja. She'll mess you up, bitches.
As you can imagine, it's been a crazy week. I never really thought the whole hypothetical experience through, what it would be like to get a book deal. I guess if I imagined it at all, my fantasy scene would have been similar to winning the Publisher's Clearing House Sweepstakes, like I'd get a knock on the door and guys in suits and giant toothy smiles would say, "Robert Rummel-Hudson! We're buying your book! Sign here and you can have this big fancy check and a spot on Jon Stewart and all the hot undergrad English majors you can handle!"
The reality is that after a week of emails and phone calls and questions about deadlines and percentages and marketing and publishing terms that I had to look up online (before answering the same thing every time: "Sounds great!"), the process is still, well, in process. (Yeah, that was an eloquent turn of phrase from the fancy pants writer.) I suspect the next few days will bring some closure, and with it perhaps the giant check and the hot young chickies.
And then I have to finish this thing. I have until the end of January to turn in a finished manuscript, and I've mapped out the amount of time I need to complete it before the end of the year, giving me a few weeks to pretty up the mess when I'm done. It works out to about a chapter a week. As a fun little online component of the process, I'll list the name of the chapter I'm currently working on over in the sidebar. If you don't see it change once a week or so, you have my permission to send me an email that says "What the fuck, Chuck?"
Through it all, life continues. Schuyler continues.
I have to admit, this has been a slightly bittersweet experience. For as long as I can remember, I've wanted to be a published writer. It's been a consistent dream of mine, but now that it's coming true, it feels a little bit like a monkey paw story. (For those of you with a clicking allergy, the reference is to a 1902 story by W. W. Jacobs, in which a dead monkey paw grants wishes but with an ugly price.) I've been in such a celebratory mood all week, but when I sit down to work on the book, the reality of this story blows through my mood like smoke.
I'm thrilled that this book is going to be published. Well, of course I am. Part of that thrill is the weird rush of a life's dream coming to pass, like the first drop of a roller coaster. Part of it feels like a small measure of justice for Schuyler, as if God can do this to her and I'm powerless to stop him, but at the very least I'm going to let the world know what a bully he is. And part of it has the whiff of evangelism, bringing her story to people who might have some kind of monster in their own lives. Schuyler's an inspiring kid, she never loses her spirit even when we do. And make no mistake, we do, a lot.
In the end, as much as I'd like to play the part of Talented Author Type, the reality is that this book is getting published because of Schuyler. She's writing her own story, she's going to make her own way and knock down whomever she has to in order to do so.
Me? I'm just writing it down.
August 25, 2006
Technical Note
Quickly, if you are sending email to me at rhudson@digitalism.com, you are sending them into a black hole. It appears to be dead, and dead for good. Delete that address from your address books and coldly banish it from your hearts forever.
On the other hand, rob@darn-tootin.com and rhudsonphoto@gmail.com work splendidly.
Okay, back to what you were doing. More from me soon, after this adrenaline-fueled frenzy of book prep runs its course...
On the other hand, rob@darn-tootin.com and rhudsonphoto@gmail.com work splendidly.
Okay, back to what you were doing. More from me soon, after this adrenaline-fueled frenzy of book prep runs its course...
August 23, 2006
Announcement
Okay, so let's make this official. In a slightly vague sort of way.
Look for Schuyler's Monster with a target publication of Spring 2008 (with an eye towards Father's Day), most likely in hardcover, possibly with photographs.
And uh, that's it, actually. I've been getting schooled all day on the finer points of publishing contract speak, having to make decisions on things like First Serial Rights (for things like publishing excerpts in magazines, etc.), World Rights, and lord help us all, the audio edition. (Personally, I think James Earl Jones would sound very distinguished saying the word "assmonkey".)
I'll obviously be rattling on about this more as things become settled, but there it is. A lot of things I'd been planning, such as the podcast, might be on hold for a bit until I get this thing finished (with a likely deadline of the end of January), but I'll no doubt have lots to share here during the process, for those who are interested.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have a "So, how do you like me NOW?" email to compose for ex-girlfriends, my high school guidance counselor, and at least one former employer.
That was a joke, by the way.
Look for Schuyler's Monster with a target publication of Spring 2008 (with an eye towards Father's Day), most likely in hardcover, possibly with photographs.
And uh, that's it, actually. I've been getting schooled all day on the finer points of publishing contract speak, having to make decisions on things like First Serial Rights (for things like publishing excerpts in magazines, etc.), World Rights, and lord help us all, the audio edition. (Personally, I think James Earl Jones would sound very distinguished saying the word "assmonkey".)
I'll obviously be rattling on about this more as things become settled, but there it is. A lot of things I'd been planning, such as the podcast, might be on hold for a bit until I get this thing finished (with a likely deadline of the end of January), but I'll no doubt have lots to share here during the process, for those who are interested.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have a "So, how do you like me NOW?" email to compose for ex-girlfriends, my high school guidance counselor, and at least one former employer.
That was a joke, by the way.
August 21, 2006
Waiting is a special hell.
So yeah. Waiting for the phone call.
Waiting.
I keep looking at the phone, trying to coax a ring out of it. Nothing. Maybe if I wiggle my eyebrows. No? How about if I bug my eyes out? Nothing? I could try a Samuel Jackson on it.
"I want this motherfucking phone to motherfucking RING!"
No? Too last week?
Maybe it's not working. What if my phone is broken and they try to call?
"Wow, his phone doesn't work. How rude! Screw this guy."
What if I pick it up to check, and that's the moment they call? What if they get my voice mail and say, "Wow, he's busy. He's not going to have the time to devote to us. Let's call Dan Brown and see if he's got lunch plans."
Okay, I checked. Dial tone.
I wonder if they tried to call just now when I did that?
Yeah. I'm a little nervous.
Waiting.
I keep looking at the phone, trying to coax a ring out of it. Nothing. Maybe if I wiggle my eyebrows. No? How about if I bug my eyes out? Nothing? I could try a Samuel Jackson on it.
"I want this motherfucking phone to motherfucking RING!"
No? Too last week?
Maybe it's not working. What if my phone is broken and they try to call?
"Wow, his phone doesn't work. How rude! Screw this guy."
What if I pick it up to check, and that's the moment they call? What if they get my voice mail and say, "Wow, he's busy. He's not going to have the time to devote to us. Let's call Dan Brown and see if he's got lunch plans."
Okay, I checked. Dial tone.
I wonder if they tried to call just now when I did that?
Yeah. I'm a little nervous.
August 18, 2006
So far, this weekend's looking a hell of a lot better than last weekend.
So let me ask you something. What is the most annoying kind of blog entry that I could subject you to? Besides diabetes or the goopy toe? How about the one where I say I have big news, but I can't tell you what it is? That one's a pain in the ass, isn't it?
I have big news, but I can't tell you what it is. Not just yet.
Call me superstitious. When everything's signed and legally binding, you'll be the first to know.
(Like you can't figure it out on your own.)
I have big news, but I can't tell you what it is. Not just yet.
Call me superstitious. When everything's signed and legally binding, you'll be the first to know.
(Like you can't figure it out on your own.)
August 16, 2006
"Space Boy, Fly Girl, living in the Underworld..."
I'm sort of a bad person, because when I have to attend meetings for parents at Schuyler's school, I last about ten minutes before I start twitching and spazzing and fucking off. I'm that one person who can't sit still and who sighs dramatically when other parents ask questions like, "So on the days when it gets up past 100 degrees, do you take the kids outside at recess?"
I wish I were making that up.
So when we went to the big First Grade Parent/Teacher End-All Hootenanny of Hootenannies, Julie paid attention and actually learned some stuff while Schuyler and I mocked the principal's presentation by making the little "blah blah blah" talking hands at each other. (Imagine David Byrne in his big suit in the "Once in a Lifetime" video; "You may ask yourself...")
So yeah, we were a bad little scene, but I'm not sure what to tell you. Schuyler and I are the same in so many of our personality quirks, and our impatience with time wasting is one of them. I can't speak for Mister "Stupid Hot Day Question" Dad, but I don't actually require, when handed a handbook for parents, to then have all the teachers take turns showing it, page by page, in a PowerPoint presentation while READING it aloud to me. I thought we did pretty well, considering I'll one day be lying in bed, old-man-stinky and dying, and one of the last things I'll wheeze out in a raspy voice will be, "Goddamn it, I wish I had that hour back right now..."
I think Schuyler's going to fare pretty well this year. As always, she wasn't the slightest bit apprehensive about going back to school. Schuyler feeds on the new, and she loves meeting new people. Some kids don't handle change very well, but Schuyler is almost the opposite, like me. She gets bored with routine, and when she senses me getting bored, too, well, it's time to break out the David Byrne hands. The nice part is that when the other parents stare at her, which a surprising number of them were doing, the chances are at least even that it's not just her enthusiastic but non-sensical Schuylerese they are reacting to. It could be her pink punkass hair or her father-induced squirrelly behavior. Not everyone knows what to do with a beautiful freak.
Finally, after sitting through the meeting for about seven hours (internal measurement; one actual hour), we left the school and went our separate ways, Julie to go to the store and Schuyler and I to go home. In the car, Schuyler and I sung and danced around to our current favorite "Father/daughter funk track", which coincidentally, is a song by David Byrne, "U.B. Jesus". If you're not a David Byrne fan, I don't know what to tell you. You might just be dead to me now.
We always save our most enthusiastic jumping around (and get the most stares from the No-longer-quite-so-young Republicans and MILF-wannabes in the cars around us) for the part where the song kicks into overdrive.
Jump Back, Jump Back
Givin' me a heart attack
Fall down, Fall down
Sweeter than a cherry bomb
Sweet Thing, Sweet Thing
Steppin' on your violin
Space Boy, Fly Girl
Living in the underworld
When I sang that last part to her, she clapped and laughed her little head off.
"Who's Space Boy?" I asked her. She pointed at me.
"And who's Fly Girl?" She pointed to herself in triumph and started dancing some more.
So there you go. Same as it ever was.
I wish I were making that up.
So when we went to the big First Grade Parent/Teacher End-All Hootenanny of Hootenannies, Julie paid attention and actually learned some stuff while Schuyler and I mocked the principal's presentation by making the little "blah blah blah" talking hands at each other. (Imagine David Byrne in his big suit in the "Once in a Lifetime" video; "You may ask yourself...")
So yeah, we were a bad little scene, but I'm not sure what to tell you. Schuyler and I are the same in so many of our personality quirks, and our impatience with time wasting is one of them. I can't speak for Mister "Stupid Hot Day Question" Dad, but I don't actually require, when handed a handbook for parents, to then have all the teachers take turns showing it, page by page, in a PowerPoint presentation while READING it aloud to me. I thought we did pretty well, considering I'll one day be lying in bed, old-man-stinky and dying, and one of the last things I'll wheeze out in a raspy voice will be, "Goddamn it, I wish I had that hour back right now..."
I think Schuyler's going to fare pretty well this year. As always, she wasn't the slightest bit apprehensive about going back to school. Schuyler feeds on the new, and she loves meeting new people. Some kids don't handle change very well, but Schuyler is almost the opposite, like me. She gets bored with routine, and when she senses me getting bored, too, well, it's time to break out the David Byrne hands. The nice part is that when the other parents stare at her, which a surprising number of them were doing, the chances are at least even that it's not just her enthusiastic but non-sensical Schuylerese they are reacting to. It could be her pink punkass hair or her father-induced squirrelly behavior. Not everyone knows what to do with a beautiful freak.
Finally, after sitting through the meeting for about seven hours (internal measurement; one actual hour), we left the school and went our separate ways, Julie to go to the store and Schuyler and I to go home. In the car, Schuyler and I sung and danced around to our current favorite "Father/daughter funk track", which coincidentally, is a song by David Byrne, "U.B. Jesus". If you're not a David Byrne fan, I don't know what to tell you. You might just be dead to me now.
We always save our most enthusiastic jumping around (and get the most stares from the No-longer-quite-so-young Republicans and MILF-wannabes in the cars around us) for the part where the song kicks into overdrive.
Jump Back, Jump Back
Givin' me a heart attack
Fall down, Fall down
Sweeter than a cherry bomb
Sweet Thing, Sweet Thing
Steppin' on your violin
Space Boy, Fly Girl
Living in the underworld
When I sang that last part to her, she clapped and laughed her little head off.
"Who's Space Boy?" I asked her. She pointed at me.
"And who's Fly Girl?" She pointed to herself in triumph and started dancing some more.
So there you go. Same as it ever was.
August 10, 2006
Queen of Butterflies
Sometimes cool stuff happens because I have a blog.
Such as this very cool art created for Schuyler by my friend Beth at DarnLucky.com. She was inspired by my recent entry about taking Schuyler to Mexico to see the butterfly sanctuaries (a trip that I am now more determined than ever to take her on one day).
I already ordered a print of it and am going to have it framed when it gets here. Then I am going to give it to Schuyler and watch her tiny head explode with joy.
Celebrating Schuyler is something I will never do half-heartedly. She is the reason I do anything in this world, she is the person who never disappoints me and never looks at me with disdain or anything less than total love. At the end of my days, she's the one who'll be standing beside me, and when I am gone, she's the one who'll remember that I was here and that I loved, too much and imperfectly sometimes, but never with anything less than my whole heart.
Anyway, thank you, Beth. Very very cool.
Such as this very cool art created for Schuyler by my friend Beth at DarnLucky.com. She was inspired by my recent entry about taking Schuyler to Mexico to see the butterfly sanctuaries (a trip that I am now more determined than ever to take her on one day).
I already ordered a print of it and am going to have it framed when it gets here. Then I am going to give it to Schuyler and watch her tiny head explode with joy.
Celebrating Schuyler is something I will never do half-heartedly. She is the reason I do anything in this world, she is the person who never disappoints me and never looks at me with disdain or anything less than total love. At the end of my days, she's the one who'll be standing beside me, and when I am gone, she's the one who'll remember that I was here and that I loved, too much and imperfectly sometimes, but never with anything less than my whole heart.
Anyway, thank you, Beth. Very very cool.
I feel like the oldest old man in Old Man Town.
Yesterday was Schuyler's first day back in school. For those of you who have been reading for a while and would like to feel the tread of Father Time's birkenstocks as he walks over your face, she is entering the first grade.
My first thought was, "That's weird. When did they start accepting babies into the first grade?"
So yeah, I'm clearly in denial.
It was a strange day for Schuyler. This was her first day in the new school uniform, which looks sharp on her if I do say so myself, and I do. It was also mostly an orientation day, and not the only one. Her box class wont actually begin until next week, so she's spending these first few days as a mainstream student. I'm both nervous and curious to see how that works out.
A boring story, I know, but it has a dramatic conclusion. The bus that was supposed to bring her home after school was running late, so Julie called me to tell me and then called the transportation office.
And that's how she discovered that Schuyler had been dropped off at THE WROOOONG FUH-KING LOCAAAATION.
The drama was short-lived. Julie quickly discovered that Schuyler had been taken to the YMCA (her after school provider last year) by mistake, thanks (I think, although it's not clear at this point) to her school using a list from last year. Schuyler got intercepted by some staff who remembered her, and she was wearing her gimp tag, so it wasn't like she was standing at the side of the road somewhere, silently thumbing a ride.
Still, she was at a location where no one was legally responsible for her safety and where, since she wasn't on the YMCA's list, she could theoretically have been taken away by child molesters or cannibals or the Jane Book Club and no one would have necessarily stopped them. So it was a big deal. Julie and I were still twitchy hours later.
Perhaps not coincidentally, I think I have two spots at my temples that appear to be going grey. I noticed them this morning.
My first thought was, "That's weird. When did they start accepting babies into the first grade?"
So yeah, I'm clearly in denial.
It was a strange day for Schuyler. This was her first day in the new school uniform, which looks sharp on her if I do say so myself, and I do. It was also mostly an orientation day, and not the only one. Her box class wont actually begin until next week, so she's spending these first few days as a mainstream student. I'm both nervous and curious to see how that works out.
A boring story, I know, but it has a dramatic conclusion. The bus that was supposed to bring her home after school was running late, so Julie called me to tell me and then called the transportation office.
And that's how she discovered that Schuyler had been dropped off at THE WROOOONG FUH-KING LOCAAAATION.
The drama was short-lived. Julie quickly discovered that Schuyler had been taken to the YMCA (her after school provider last year) by mistake, thanks (I think, although it's not clear at this point) to her school using a list from last year. Schuyler got intercepted by some staff who remembered her, and she was wearing her gimp tag, so it wasn't like she was standing at the side of the road somewhere, silently thumbing a ride.
Still, she was at a location where no one was legally responsible for her safety and where, since she wasn't on the YMCA's list, she could theoretically have been taken away by child molesters or cannibals or the Jane Book Club and no one would have necessarily stopped them. So it was a big deal. Julie and I were still twitchy hours later.
Perhaps not coincidentally, I think I have two spots at my temples that appear to be going grey. I noticed them this morning.
August 8, 2006
Wings
Note: I'm posting limited comments for this entry.
-----
"We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it's forever." -- Carl Sagan
If you are an old friend of mine, you've heard about this before, so sorry. But it occurred to me recently that I don't think I've written about this in any recent version of my online jabber. It's an important Rob Fact.
About twenty years ago, I was sitting around watching television sort of aimlessly (some behaviors are eternal, I suppose) when a program came on about Monarch butterflies. By the time it was over, something had changed in me.
It told how every fourth or fifth generation or so, Monarchs cross North America by the millions, flying south from as far north as Canada at a rate of about 80 miles a day, braving birds and weather and the destructive human stain on the world, until they reach a cool mountain pass in the volcanic highlands of Mexico. Scientists have no idea how they manage it. The butterflies that actually make the journey have never done it before; they are the great, great grandchildren of the previous travellers.
When they get there, the Monarchs congregate in groups so huge that the branches of the trees bend and touch the ground from the weight of them. They meet and they have sex and lay their eggs, and then they die. Their children fly north and start the whole thing over again.
I knew then, even as a stupid teenager, that I wanted to go to Mexicao and experience it one day. For twenty years, it has remained the only dream of mine that has never wavered.
It's funny how many times I've shared this dream, with wives and ex-wives and lovers and friends. And despite the fact that a number of people over the years have expressed an interest in going with me, I think I always felt deep down that when I do eventually go, it would be one of two ways.
Alone, or carried by someone who loves me, in an urn.
I have no idea how it'll happen. I'm in better shape than I've been since high school; I'm actually closing in on weighing the same as I did when I first learned about the Monarchs. I'm healthier now than ever in some ways, and sicker than ever in others. It's a weird sensation, being thinner and fitter and yet waking up some days feeling old and worn down.
But if I stay healthy enough for a bit longer, there may come a day when I limp into the cool shade of a quiet Mexican mountain pass and hear the unimaginable sound of millions of tiny flapping wings. And if I'm lucky, I'll have company, perhaps the company I was destined to have all along and never even knew it. She won't be much of a conversationalist, but she'll sign "butterfly" because she loves them, too. She'll share the experience that I've dreamed of since I was young and the future stretched in front of me, a future full of promise and still empty of monsters.
If not, I hope that one day she'll go there for me, my ashes in her backpack next to her Big Box of Words, and be the last person to say goodbye to me.
-----
"We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it's forever." -- Carl Sagan
If you are an old friend of mine, you've heard about this before, so sorry. But it occurred to me recently that I don't think I've written about this in any recent version of my online jabber. It's an important Rob Fact.
About twenty years ago, I was sitting around watching television sort of aimlessly (some behaviors are eternal, I suppose) when a program came on about Monarch butterflies. By the time it was over, something had changed in me.
It told how every fourth or fifth generation or so, Monarchs cross North America by the millions, flying south from as far north as Canada at a rate of about 80 miles a day, braving birds and weather and the destructive human stain on the world, until they reach a cool mountain pass in the volcanic highlands of Mexico. Scientists have no idea how they manage it. The butterflies that actually make the journey have never done it before; they are the great, great grandchildren of the previous travellers.
When they get there, the Monarchs congregate in groups so huge that the branches of the trees bend and touch the ground from the weight of them. They meet and they have sex and lay their eggs, and then they die. Their children fly north and start the whole thing over again.
I knew then, even as a stupid teenager, that I wanted to go to Mexicao and experience it one day. For twenty years, it has remained the only dream of mine that has never wavered.
It's funny how many times I've shared this dream, with wives and ex-wives and lovers and friends. And despite the fact that a number of people over the years have expressed an interest in going with me, I think I always felt deep down that when I do eventually go, it would be one of two ways.
Alone, or carried by someone who loves me, in an urn.
I have no idea how it'll happen. I'm in better shape than I've been since high school; I'm actually closing in on weighing the same as I did when I first learned about the Monarchs. I'm healthier now than ever in some ways, and sicker than ever in others. It's a weird sensation, being thinner and fitter and yet waking up some days feeling old and worn down.
But if I stay healthy enough for a bit longer, there may come a day when I limp into the cool shade of a quiet Mexican mountain pass and hear the unimaginable sound of millions of tiny flapping wings. And if I'm lucky, I'll have company, perhaps the company I was destined to have all along and never even knew it. She won't be much of a conversationalist, but she'll sign "butterfly" because she loves them, too. She'll share the experience that I've dreamed of since I was young and the future stretched in front of me, a future full of promise and still empty of monsters.
If not, I hope that one day she'll go there for me, my ashes in her backpack next to her Big Box of Words, and be the last person to say goodbye to me.
August 6, 2006
Beautiful freak
Hiding from the sun.
Originally uploaded by Citizen Rob.
You're such a beautiful freak
I wish there were more just like you
Youre not like all of the others
And that is why I love you
Beautiful freak, beautiful freak
That is why I love you
Beautiful freak, beautiful freak
Some people think you have a problem
But that problem lies only with them
Just cause you are not like the others
But that is why I love you
Beautiful freak, beautiful freak
Yeah that is why I love you
Beautiful freak, beautiful freak
Too good for this world
But I hope you will stay
And Ill be here to see that you dont fade away
Youre such a beautiful freak
I bet you are flying inside
Dart down and then go for cover
And know that I
I love you
Beautiful freak,
You know that I
I love you
Beautiful freak, beautiful freak
-- Eels, "Beautiful Freak"
August 4, 2006
A blast from the past
I found a disk full of archived material from like five years ago, and while going though some old emails, I just found a message I sent to my old notify list. And while I could try to put it in some sort of context for you, I actually think it reads better without it. Enjoy...
---
To: Book of Rob Notify List
From: Rob Rummel-Hudson
Subject: Apology of sorts, and an explanation of sorts
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001
Hi, all.
Okay, so if you read my new entry before noon today, you probably saw a link to an interview with me. You might have even seen it soon enough to actually read the interview.
But chances are pretty good that at some point, the people who clicked on that link stopped going to an interview with me and were instead getting a page with a big penis on it.
And while there are many of you out there who no doubt find that both appropriate and just that a supposed interview with me would actually contain instead a big penis photo, there are doubtless many more of you who did not in fact expect or desire to see a big penis on your screen when you trusted me and clicked that link. And I suspect some of you were at work at the time. "Can you step into my office? We need to discuss the big penis on your PC..."
I just wanted to apologize to anyone who was offended by that big penis. I had no idea that between the time I posted that link and today, the site would, out of nowhere, disappear and be replaced with a big penis. I was not informed that the interview to which I had linked would in fact be replaced by a big penis.
I was only informed of the presence of the big penis at the other end of the link -- a link that my in-laws would follow (confession: that idea cracked me up a little), a link that my MOTHER would eventually click and say "Why, that is not an interview with my son, that is in fact a big hairy cock!" -- I was only told of it when my friend Joe (who, remember, likes to watch) wrote to tell me about the big penis.
I am annoyed. It was embarrassing and a little humiliating, fodder for jokes from all the chattering little assmonkeys who watch me and wait for me to stumble so they can go back to their unreadable little sites and write with stuttering glee about Rob and the Giant Penis. (That's a Dahl story, I believe.)
So my apologies to anyone who got an unexpected big penis on your screen. I'm not any happier about it than you.
It was not an attractive big penis, either.
-- rob
---
To: Book of Rob Notify List
From: Rob Rummel-Hudson
Subject: Apology of sorts, and an explanation of sorts
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001
Hi, all.
Okay, so if you read my new entry before noon today, you probably saw a link to an interview with me. You might have even seen it soon enough to actually read the interview.
But chances are pretty good that at some point, the people who clicked on that link stopped going to an interview with me and were instead getting a page with a big penis on it.
And while there are many of you out there who no doubt find that both appropriate and just that a supposed interview with me would actually contain instead a big penis photo, there are doubtless many more of you who did not in fact expect or desire to see a big penis on your screen when you trusted me and clicked that link. And I suspect some of you were at work at the time. "Can you step into my office? We need to discuss the big penis on your PC..."
I just wanted to apologize to anyone who was offended by that big penis. I had no idea that between the time I posted that link and today, the site would, out of nowhere, disappear and be replaced with a big penis. I was not informed that the interview to which I had linked would in fact be replaced by a big penis.
I was only informed of the presence of the big penis at the other end of the link -- a link that my in-laws would follow (confession: that idea cracked me up a little), a link that my MOTHER would eventually click and say "Why, that is not an interview with my son, that is in fact a big hairy cock!" -- I was only told of it when my friend Joe (who, remember, likes to watch) wrote to tell me about the big penis.
I am annoyed. It was embarrassing and a little humiliating, fodder for jokes from all the chattering little assmonkeys who watch me and wait for me to stumble so they can go back to their unreadable little sites and write with stuttering glee about Rob and the Giant Penis. (That's a Dahl story, I believe.)
So my apologies to anyone who got an unexpected big penis on your screen. I'm not any happier about it than you.
It was not an attractive big penis, either.
-- rob
August 2, 2006
Holy Crap, Revisited
To everyone out there who is shocked, SHOCKED, at the revelation that Mel Gibson...
...might just be a gigantic anti-Semite after all, I really don't have a lot to say to you, other than this.
Told you so.
"Fucking Jews... The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world."
...might just be a gigantic anti-Semite after all, I really don't have a lot to say to you, other than this.
Told you so.
July 31, 2006
I am the Bug Whisperer.
Dragonfly
Originally uploaded by Citizen Rob.
You know, I don't really have much to say today. The girls are still gone and I am sitting at work far later than usual because, well, it's nice to use a computer that actually functions.
(I got repair estimates today on the iBook (now retamed "iTard" after its latest meltdown), and it's not pretty. Mac users, listen to me. Listen closely. Get AppleCare. Is it a ripoff? Perhaps, but when your logic board fails, you will cry like a little girl. Pay it. It's like mafia protection. You have to pay up, doesn't matter if the thing the mob is protecting you from is the mob.)
The weekend was spent taking LOTS of cool photos. The most unexpected came when I went with a photographer I occasionally work for to the Zilker Park Botanical Gardens in Austin to assist in two engagement shoots. During the time that she was actually taking photos of the happy couples, I was poking around the place, taking more photos of pretty flowers (the names of which I neither know nor particularly care about).
And that's when I discovered that I am beloved amongst dragonflies. I've taken a lot of nature photos, but these might just be my favorites so far.
Although I dig the vultures, too. How creepy is THAT?
July 28, 2006
Leaving on a jet plane...
Fall colors are here early.
Originally uploaded by Citizen Rob.
Is it pink or is it purple?
Either way, Homeland Security is going to stop her in the airport for sure now. She's the world's shortest anarchist.
-----
Update: They got there okay. I'm going to start breathing again, if that's okay with you.
Throw my iBook into the light...
...because I think it is ready for the next world. I keep reporting its death and then manage to reanimate its stinking corpse for a few more weeks, but this time I think it might have shed its Lazarethesque rebound capabilities for good.
And I'm leaving for three days tomorrow, with neither the time nor the resources to devote to squeezing a bit more life out of it. So you know what? Screw this, I'll deal with it later.
I'll try to get on periodically and approve comments from time to time. If you need to write me, it's probably best to do so at rhudsonphoto@gmail.com for the time being.
Have a nice weekend, by golly.
And I'm leaving for three days tomorrow, with neither the time nor the resources to devote to squeezing a bit more life out of it. So you know what? Screw this, I'll deal with it later.
I'll try to get on periodically and approve comments from time to time. If you need to write me, it's probably best to do so at rhudsonphoto@gmail.com for the time being.
Have a nice weekend, by golly.
July 27, 2006
Pre-fret fret
Julie and Schuyler are going away for five days, off to Michigan to visit her family. They leave tomorrow.
It's not going to be as bad as it sounds for me, since I am also going to be gone as well, shooting a wedding out of town. Still, five days is a long time. Also, they'll be flying, just the two of them, and I watch too many air disaster shows on the National Geographic Channel to love that idea too much.
(Although I have to confess, Air Emergency is my secret shameful TV addiction. Well, not so secret anymore, I guess.)
So this weekend, it is their job to have a good time, and my job to worry. Apparently I'm starting early.
It's not going to be as bad as it sounds for me, since I am also going to be gone as well, shooting a wedding out of town. Still, five days is a long time. Also, they'll be flying, just the two of them, and I watch too many air disaster shows on the National Geographic Channel to love that idea too much.
(Although I have to confess, Air Emergency is my secret shameful TV addiction. Well, not so secret anymore, I guess.)
So this weekend, it is their job to have a good time, and my job to worry. Apparently I'm starting early.
July 24, 2006
"I just want to go with you."
I was shooting an event over the weekend when I first noticed this little girl, maybe two years old. I can try to describe why she caught my eye and never let go of my attention, but I'm not sure if it would make sense. She was pretty, with impossibly big eyes and a serious expression. She didn't play with the other kids, but she played, lost in an internal world as she danced and ran happily but alone, in a room full of people. When she wasn't in that realm of her own making, she watched, carefully studying the actions of everyone around her. There was nothing wrong with her, nothing broken or amiss. And yet, she was different from any kid in that room, but not from any kid I'd ever seen, which was why I couldn't stop watching her.
She reminded me of Schuyler. Not Schuyler now so much, but Schuyler a few years ago, before we knew her monster's name or nature, but after she had already embarked on her life's path, a path that she would travel alone.
I pointed her out to the photographer with whom I was working. I didn't know exactly how to describe what I was seeing, but when I opened my mouth, I suddenly knew exactly how to say it. "Whatever planet Schuyler comes from, that little girl comes from there, too."
Which, as it turns out, is exactly how her own father described her. A visitor from another world.
I feel a little self-indulgent in telling you all this, but I suspect my own behavior isn't all that different from that of any other parent of a child who is different. I'm not just talking about kids with broken bodies or broken brains or broken spirits. I'm talking about any parent who knows, for whatever reason, that their child is going to have a life full of obstacles that other kids don't have.
I'm talking about any parent who gets overwhelmed in a way that ninety-nine out of a hundred other parents around them won't ever get.
So yeah, I feel weird talking about what happened next, but maybe a hundred of you will read this and one of you will say "God, me too."
The thing that happened next was that as I watched this little girl run and play and walk through this world without ever leaving her own, and watched how some people reached out protectively as she passed, I realized that in watching someone else's ethereal kid, I was seeing how the rest of the world must see Schuyler.
I'd never seen that before. Not really. And it was more than I could deal with.
I'm not going to get all maudlin or dramatic about this. I simply took the first opportunity I had to step out of the venue and go outside past the reach of the lights, and then I lost my shit for a few minutes. That's all. Sometimes the way broken parents of broken children get through it all is to step into the dark and lose their fucking minds, to cry hard and insult God as the bully that he undeniably is, and just stop being the brave little soldier for a while.
That's how it happens. You exhaust yourself of the frustration and the unfairness of it. You empty out that part of you, the little pit in the center of you that stores away the fear and the anger and the protective fire that you can use against child molesters and internet bullies and mean bitey dogs but not against God and Fate and a child's brain.
And then you wait for it to slowly fill again, I guess.
When I returned to the event, I bumped into the little girl and her father outside, and I took her picture. I told her, and her father, how much she reminded me of my own little girl, and while I don't think the dad noticed how emotional I was, she did. She opened up to me and followed me around for a while.
Later, she danced with her father, who looked at her with the same intensity that I find myself watching Schuyler, the one that shows that we have a visitor's pass to their world. As father and daughter moved past me, she caught sight of me over his shoulder. As I raised my camera and took my favorite photo of the evening, she smiled her mysterious little smile and reached out as if to touch me.
I don't know if this entry makes any sense. I'm not certain this world makes any sense, either.
She reminded me of Schuyler. Not Schuyler now so much, but Schuyler a few years ago, before we knew her monster's name or nature, but after she had already embarked on her life's path, a path that she would travel alone.
I pointed her out to the photographer with whom I was working. I didn't know exactly how to describe what I was seeing, but when I opened my mouth, I suddenly knew exactly how to say it. "Whatever planet Schuyler comes from, that little girl comes from there, too."
Which, as it turns out, is exactly how her own father described her. A visitor from another world.
I feel a little self-indulgent in telling you all this, but I suspect my own behavior isn't all that different from that of any other parent of a child who is different. I'm not just talking about kids with broken bodies or broken brains or broken spirits. I'm talking about any parent who knows, for whatever reason, that their child is going to have a life full of obstacles that other kids don't have.
I'm talking about any parent who gets overwhelmed in a way that ninety-nine out of a hundred other parents around them won't ever get.
So yeah, I feel weird talking about what happened next, but maybe a hundred of you will read this and one of you will say "God, me too."
The thing that happened next was that as I watched this little girl run and play and walk through this world without ever leaving her own, and watched how some people reached out protectively as she passed, I realized that in watching someone else's ethereal kid, I was seeing how the rest of the world must see Schuyler.
I'd never seen that before. Not really. And it was more than I could deal with.
I'm not going to get all maudlin or dramatic about this. I simply took the first opportunity I had to step out of the venue and go outside past the reach of the lights, and then I lost my shit for a few minutes. That's all. Sometimes the way broken parents of broken children get through it all is to step into the dark and lose their fucking minds, to cry hard and insult God as the bully that he undeniably is, and just stop being the brave little soldier for a while.
That's how it happens. You exhaust yourself of the frustration and the unfairness of it. You empty out that part of you, the little pit in the center of you that stores away the fear and the anger and the protective fire that you can use against child molesters and internet bullies and mean bitey dogs but not against God and Fate and a child's brain.
And then you wait for it to slowly fill again, I guess.
When I returned to the event, I bumped into the little girl and her father outside, and I took her picture. I told her, and her father, how much she reminded me of my own little girl, and while I don't think the dad noticed how emotional I was, she did. She opened up to me and followed me around for a while.
Later, she danced with her father, who looked at her with the same intensity that I find myself watching Schuyler, the one that shows that we have a visitor's pass to their world. As father and daughter moved past me, she caught sight of me over his shoulder. As I raised my camera and took my favorite photo of the evening, she smiled her mysterious little smile and reached out as if to touch me.
I don't know if this entry makes any sense. I'm not certain this world makes any sense, either.
July 21, 2006
FOMB
That's what I told a friend of mine yesterday that I must have been suffering from. Fat Old Man Belly.
Feeling much better today. Must have been that 24-hour appendicitis.
Thanks to everyone who send me their learned opinions and their fucked up little activities. You people are freaks.
Feeling much better today. Must have been that 24-hour appendicitis.
Thanks to everyone who send me their learned opinions and their fucked up little activities. You people are freaks.
July 20, 2006
So...
What does appendicitis feel like, anyway?
Yeah, this isn't how I wanted to start the day. Well, it also feels like gas, so we'll see. Perhaps I just need to, you know, play a little pants tuba.
I'll let you know. Without a lot of detail, because I love love love you all.
Ow.
Yeah, this isn't how I wanted to start the day. Well, it also feels like gas, so we'll see. Perhaps I just need to, you know, play a little pants tuba.
I'll let you know. Without a lot of detail, because I love love love you all.
Ow.
July 18, 2006
My new favorite writer
I just received an email from the regional consultant for the Prentke Romich Company, makers of the Big Box of Words. Schuyler is now featured on part of their website, the section concerning Language. It's actually a really good primer for learning about the BBoW, if you're interested. Also, a couple of her friends from the Box Class are there, including her girl crush, Sara.
If you want to skip straight to Schuyler, her moment in the spotlight (including a fairly relaxed attitude towards the spelling of her name, but they got closer than most people do) is under Putting Symbols Together. Even better, some of her writing samples are featured. She reflects on the transient nature of childhood experience, and she lays out a little earth science as well.
If you want to skip straight to Schuyler, her moment in the spotlight (including a fairly relaxed attitude towards the spelling of her name, but they got closer than most people do) is under Putting Symbols Together. Even better, some of her writing samples are featured. She reflects on the transient nature of childhood experience, and she lays out a little earth science as well.
Email of the Week
From: cool Dutch name deleted
Date: July 18, 2006
To: rhudson@digitalism.com
Subject: Hello from The Netherlands
Hello Rob,
On your website about your pragnent wife Julie, I saw that she had put a headphone on her belly. Is that relaxing for the baby, when you put on soft music? Because a week ago I saw on a website that another women had a headphone on her pregnant belly, and that gave me an idea to innovate this. By making a belt with earplugs on it with a standard jack, so you can put it in your mp3/stereo.
Kind Regards,
cool Dutch name deleted
My favorite part is where he asks me if it's relaxing for the baby. I'm so stupid, I totally forgot to ask Schuyler when she was born...
Date: July 18, 2006
To: rhudson@digitalism.com
Subject: Hello from The Netherlands
Hello Rob,
On your website about your pragnent wife Julie, I saw that she had put a headphone on her belly. Is that relaxing for the baby, when you put on soft music? Because a week ago I saw on a website that another women had a headphone on her pregnant belly, and that gave me an idea to innovate this. By making a belt with earplugs on it with a standard jack, so you can put it in your mp3/stereo.
Kind Regards,
cool Dutch name deleted
My favorite part is where he asks me if it's relaxing for the baby. I'm so stupid, I totally forgot to ask Schuyler when she was born...
July 16, 2006
Knowing Schuyler
It is obviously an understatement to say that I frequently write about Schuyler.
Before she was born, I was a pretty selfish person. It made my writing fun, I suppose, but not in a way that was going to enrich anyone's life. I wrote about me, and how the world affected me, and what the world owed me, and occasionally I might wander off topic briefly, only to suddenly realize that we weren't talking about me anymore.
After we found out that Schuyler was coming, I was still writing about me, but suddenly it was about this baby and how she was growing and how scared I was and how I didn't have a clue what to do and how, yes, I was afraid of all the things that could go wrong with her, never guessing that the thing that would become her bane had already formed and was simply going to sit there for almost four years waiting to be noticed.
After she was born, I wrote about her a lot, in the way you write about babies. They don't do much worth writing about. They shit and cry and scare you and occasionally do something vaguely human-like. So in writing about her, I was still writing about me.
And then she turned into a little girl, and then a little girl who didn't talk, and then a little girl being tested by big Yale medical brains, and finally she was a little girl with a monster living in her head, its invisible hand clapped firmly and immovably over her mouth.
And at some point, she became the thing I wrote about most of all. In February, realizing this and wanting to say more in less time, I gave up all pretenses of being independently interesting myself, and I moved my writing to a blog, and named it after Schuyler and me. And here we are.
So yes. I write about Schuyler. And yet, I'm not sure how well I do, because different people have different ideas of who she is, based on my words. Some people get it right, and some people get it wildly wrong. Schuyler's hard to describe. I'll spend the rest of my life trying.
We watched her at play in one of those big indoor playgrounds today. One reason, as I wrote last time, that I will never hit her (as if I need a list) is that Schuyler is a courageous girl, and I don't want the first thing she learns to fear to be me. Her fearlessness is astounding, and one of the things of which I am the most proud of. We went to see a movie today, and we had our misgivings about how scary it might be for her. Once again, she loved the movie and embraced its monsters as her own.
(I'm not in love with hearing everyone's criticism of the movies we take her to, but I'll simply say that in her usual "everyone gets a role in the movie" way, she has now determined that she is the Captain, complete with bold swagger and a hearty "Arrr!", I am Davy Jones (with little fingers miming the tentacles on my face), and poor Julie is none other than the Kraken. She's less than thrilled by that, but honestly, I'm jealous. Who wouldn't want to be the Kraken?)
It's hard to describe Schuyler's fearlessness, or her bursting optimism, her almost constant good mood and her complete and total lack of shyness. I can't think of a person I know with more cause to wake up in a shitty mood than Schuyler, no one who has a better reason to go outside and shake her angry fists at the sky, cursing God unintelligibly. And yet, she never does. She gets frustrated, she occasionally throws up her hands in exasperation, but she moves on. And I wish you could know her, every one of you, even those of you who say unkind things about her and about me, because I can't win you over (and I don't always want to), but she could. She would.
I was thinking about this earlier, and I decided to add a few links to the sidebar, links to things that other people who know Schuyler have written about her. They were written by our friends, and hers. I don't tell them often enough how much I love them, but I do. These entries mostly revolve around the time when Schuyler was diagnosed, or after we went to Chicago to meet with Dr. Dobyns and instead of hope, we got handed the full measure of her monster.
I hope you'll go read them.
Schuyler's hair has almost faded back to its original color, and since she's swimming in a chlorinated pool every day at camp, we've held off on coloring it again. But she's asking. She watches her favorite characters on kid shows like The Doodlebops and the ever-weird LazyTown, and if you're bold enough to follow those links, you'll see what those characters have in common. And you'll probably be able to figure out what Schuyler's been asking for.
You should know by now that our answer is probably going to be yes.
Before she was born, I was a pretty selfish person. It made my writing fun, I suppose, but not in a way that was going to enrich anyone's life. I wrote about me, and how the world affected me, and what the world owed me, and occasionally I might wander off topic briefly, only to suddenly realize that we weren't talking about me anymore.
After we found out that Schuyler was coming, I was still writing about me, but suddenly it was about this baby and how she was growing and how scared I was and how I didn't have a clue what to do and how, yes, I was afraid of all the things that could go wrong with her, never guessing that the thing that would become her bane had already formed and was simply going to sit there for almost four years waiting to be noticed.
After she was born, I wrote about her a lot, in the way you write about babies. They don't do much worth writing about. They shit and cry and scare you and occasionally do something vaguely human-like. So in writing about her, I was still writing about me.
And then she turned into a little girl, and then a little girl who didn't talk, and then a little girl being tested by big Yale medical brains, and finally she was a little girl with a monster living in her head, its invisible hand clapped firmly and immovably over her mouth.
And at some point, she became the thing I wrote about most of all. In February, realizing this and wanting to say more in less time, I gave up all pretenses of being independently interesting myself, and I moved my writing to a blog, and named it after Schuyler and me. And here we are.
So yes. I write about Schuyler. And yet, I'm not sure how well I do, because different people have different ideas of who she is, based on my words. Some people get it right, and some people get it wildly wrong. Schuyler's hard to describe. I'll spend the rest of my life trying.
We watched her at play in one of those big indoor playgrounds today. One reason, as I wrote last time, that I will never hit her (as if I need a list) is that Schuyler is a courageous girl, and I don't want the first thing she learns to fear to be me. Her fearlessness is astounding, and one of the things of which I am the most proud of. We went to see a movie today, and we had our misgivings about how scary it might be for her. Once again, she loved the movie and embraced its monsters as her own.
(I'm not in love with hearing everyone's criticism of the movies we take her to, but I'll simply say that in her usual "everyone gets a role in the movie" way, she has now determined that she is the Captain, complete with bold swagger and a hearty "Arrr!", I am Davy Jones (with little fingers miming the tentacles on my face), and poor Julie is none other than the Kraken. She's less than thrilled by that, but honestly, I'm jealous. Who wouldn't want to be the Kraken?)
It's hard to describe Schuyler's fearlessness, or her bursting optimism, her almost constant good mood and her complete and total lack of shyness. I can't think of a person I know with more cause to wake up in a shitty mood than Schuyler, no one who has a better reason to go outside and shake her angry fists at the sky, cursing God unintelligibly. And yet, she never does. She gets frustrated, she occasionally throws up her hands in exasperation, but she moves on. And I wish you could know her, every one of you, even those of you who say unkind things about her and about me, because I can't win you over (and I don't always want to), but she could. She would.
I was thinking about this earlier, and I decided to add a few links to the sidebar, links to things that other people who know Schuyler have written about her. They were written by our friends, and hers. I don't tell them often enough how much I love them, but I do. These entries mostly revolve around the time when Schuyler was diagnosed, or after we went to Chicago to meet with Dr. Dobyns and instead of hope, we got handed the full measure of her monster.
I hope you'll go read them.
Schuyler's hair has almost faded back to its original color, and since she's swimming in a chlorinated pool every day at camp, we've held off on coloring it again. But she's asking. She watches her favorite characters on kid shows like The Doodlebops and the ever-weird LazyTown, and if you're bold enough to follow those links, you'll see what those characters have in common. And you'll probably be able to figure out what Schuyler's been asking for.
You should know by now that our answer is probably going to be yes.
July 13, 2006
Spare the child.
(I can't remember the last time I felt like I needed to open an entry with a disclaimer, unless it was when I was going to show a photo of a goopy toe. But this entry is probably going to anger some good people, and for that, I am legitimately sorry. Sometimes, though, you really do just have to spill what's in your head.)
Well, someone finally said it. I've been waiting for a month for someone to come right out and say it, and with yesterday's email, I finally got an honest soul who wasn't afraid to use the words.
After all the thinly veiled remarks I have gotten from a particular group of people about how Schuyler is a horrible little brat and it's my fault for not disciplining her properly, someone finally figured out what's wrong with her.
I don't hit her. I don't beat Schuyler.
(I can only assume that by "what's wrong with her", they mean the fact that she is apparently an out-of-control barbarian and not her mutism. No one has suggested that she simply needs to have the words beaten out of her. Not yet, anyway.)
No one ever puts it in those terms, of course. People hide behind words like "spank" and "swat" and "discipline" and "corporal punishment" and, as my Agnostic Maybe-God is my witness, "Spanking With Love". (URL updated; the old one is now a porn site, chicka-pow-pow!) That site uses as its logo a heart formed by a pair of upturned buttocks. I kid you not.
(The "Spanking With Love" site is a real peach, by the way. In addition to some fun "how to" sections, there is also a page for kids who WANT to be spanked and how to get their parents to do so. I wonder how many spanking parents really want to think that their kids might be getting aroused by it? Believe me when I say that I'm all for spanking your girlfriend, that dirty little whore/French maid/Catholic schoolgirl/sexy veterinarian/whatever. Your own kids? Not so much.)
There are, in fact, a lot of ways to describe the act of physically striking a small child in order to cause pain with the intent of imposing your will on them. You can use any number of words and never even get around to "beat", "bully", "violence" or "abuse". It is one of the many attributes that make the English language so powerful, its ability to elegantly mask the true meaning behind concepts and behaviors.
So there it is. I threw some words out there, and it is from those words that you can, if you haven't figured it out already, discern my feelings towards physically punishing my child. That's my kid. You are free to beat your own kid. You are free to use violence against your own son or daughter. You are free, inasmuch as the law will allow, to ABUSE your own child.
Just don't expect me to use your terminology.
I've heard the arguments, and I'm sure I'm about to hear them again. And because I have written on occasion about isolated incidents where Schuyler felt compelled to act out aggressively, the Loving Spankers will no doubt say that I have raised an unruly child.
That's fine. Her school doesn't agree, and neither do any of her other caregivers. She has never been cited as unusually aggressive, either as a non-verbal child or otherwise, and her behavior, while troubling to me on those occasions when I have written about it, has always been described by her teachers as normal for a child her age. (Although I must say that if she had been cited, I would be even less likely to hurt her.)
But what do that bunch of liberal, permissive, crunchy granola educator hippies know about raising a child? Do they have children? And this brings us to another argument. "People who oppose spanking children simply do not understand the what it is like trying to raise a child." Okay, fair enough. So why do you spank? To teach your child a constructive lesson or to relieve your own anger?
The American Academy of Pediatrics thinks it knows the answer.
It thinks it knows the result of beating your kids, too.
And in a 2002 study looking back at sixty years of research on corporal punishment, Elizabeth Gershoff, Ph. D., found that the only positive result of spanking was immediate compliance; long-term compliance was actually diminished as a result of corporal punishment. Spanking was also directly linked to increased rates of aggression, delinquency, mental health disorders, problems in relationships with parents, and the likelihood of those children being physically abused and, eventually, abusing their own children.
So. It doesn't work, and it fucks up your kids. Seems pretty straightforward to me. But you, in the back? You had something to say?
"You know, I was spanked as a child, and I grew up to be perfectly healthy and have raised my kids just fine."
Did you? You think? You were, as a small child, routinely subjected to violence by someone probably five times your size so that you would be subject to their demands? As a result, you grew up, had some small children of your own, and then proceeded to beat them into submission as well?
We have a different definition of "perfectly healthy", you and I. We have a wildly different idea of what it means for an innocent child to be "just fine".
You may think that I believe that if you as a parent spank your children, I automatically believe that you are a bad parent. I don't, not necessarily and not without knowing what kind of parent you are as a whole. Nor do I think your children are necessarily going to grow up to be damaged.
But I do think you are wrong. And as much as you might feel sorry for my kid for having me as a father, I guarantee I feel more sorry for yours.
Well, someone finally said it. I've been waiting for a month for someone to come right out and say it, and with yesterday's email, I finally got an honest soul who wasn't afraid to use the words.
After all the thinly veiled remarks I have gotten from a particular group of people about how Schuyler is a horrible little brat and it's my fault for not disciplining her properly, someone finally figured out what's wrong with her.
I don't hit her. I don't beat Schuyler.
(I can only assume that by "what's wrong with her", they mean the fact that she is apparently an out-of-control barbarian and not her mutism. No one has suggested that she simply needs to have the words beaten out of her. Not yet, anyway.)
No one ever puts it in those terms, of course. People hide behind words like "spank" and "swat" and "discipline" and "corporal punishment" and, as my Agnostic Maybe-God is my witness, "Spanking With Love". (URL updated; the old one is now a porn site, chicka-pow-pow!) That site uses as its logo a heart formed by a pair of upturned buttocks. I kid you not.
(The "Spanking With Love" site is a real peach, by the way. In addition to some fun "how to" sections, there is also a page for kids who WANT to be spanked and how to get their parents to do so. I wonder how many spanking parents really want to think that their kids might be getting aroused by it? Believe me when I say that I'm all for spanking your girlfriend, that dirty little whore/French maid/Catholic schoolgirl/sexy veterinarian/whatever. Your own kids? Not so much.)
There are, in fact, a lot of ways to describe the act of physically striking a small child in order to cause pain with the intent of imposing your will on them. You can use any number of words and never even get around to "beat", "bully", "violence" or "abuse". It is one of the many attributes that make the English language so powerful, its ability to elegantly mask the true meaning behind concepts and behaviors.
So there it is. I threw some words out there, and it is from those words that you can, if you haven't figured it out already, discern my feelings towards physically punishing my child. That's my kid. You are free to beat your own kid. You are free to use violence against your own son or daughter. You are free, inasmuch as the law will allow, to ABUSE your own child.
Just don't expect me to use your terminology.
I've heard the arguments, and I'm sure I'm about to hear them again. And because I have written on occasion about isolated incidents where Schuyler felt compelled to act out aggressively, the Loving Spankers will no doubt say that I have raised an unruly child.
That's fine. Her school doesn't agree, and neither do any of her other caregivers. She has never been cited as unusually aggressive, either as a non-verbal child or otherwise, and her behavior, while troubling to me on those occasions when I have written about it, has always been described by her teachers as normal for a child her age. (Although I must say that if she had been cited, I would be even less likely to hurt her.)
But what do that bunch of liberal, permissive, crunchy granola educator hippies know about raising a child? Do they have children? And this brings us to another argument. "People who oppose spanking children simply do not understand the what it is like trying to raise a child." Okay, fair enough. So why do you spank? To teach your child a constructive lesson or to relieve your own anger?
The American Academy of Pediatrics thinks it knows the answer.
Corporal punishment is of limited effectiveness and has potentially deleterious side effects. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that parents be encouraged and assisted in the development of methods other than spanking for managing undesired behavior.
It thinks it knows the result of beating your kids, too.
The more children are spanked, the more anger they report as adults, the more likely they are to spank their own children, the more likely they are to approve of hitting a spouse, and the more marital conflict they experience as adults. Spanking has been associated with higher rates of physical aggression, more substance abuse, and increased risk of crime and violence when used with older children and adolescents.
And in a 2002 study looking back at sixty years of research on corporal punishment, Elizabeth Gershoff, Ph. D., found that the only positive result of spanking was immediate compliance; long-term compliance was actually diminished as a result of corporal punishment. Spanking was also directly linked to increased rates of aggression, delinquency, mental health disorders, problems in relationships with parents, and the likelihood of those children being physically abused and, eventually, abusing their own children.
So. It doesn't work, and it fucks up your kids. Seems pretty straightforward to me. But you, in the back? You had something to say?
"You know, I was spanked as a child, and I grew up to be perfectly healthy and have raised my kids just fine."
Did you? You think? You were, as a small child, routinely subjected to violence by someone probably five times your size so that you would be subject to their demands? As a result, you grew up, had some small children of your own, and then proceeded to beat them into submission as well?
We have a different definition of "perfectly healthy", you and I. We have a wildly different idea of what it means for an innocent child to be "just fine".
You may think that I believe that if you as a parent spank your children, I automatically believe that you are a bad parent. I don't, not necessarily and not without knowing what kind of parent you are as a whole. Nor do I think your children are necessarily going to grow up to be damaged.
But I do think you are wrong. And as much as you might feel sorry for my kid for having me as a father, I guarantee I feel more sorry for yours.
July 10, 2006
Why I was late for work.
I'm not a morning person. (And if you are, it doesn't mean I won't be your friend. I'm just unlikely to be your friend before 10am.) But some mornings are tolerable. More than tolerable, actually.
Take today, for example. We started off the day getting ready for summer camp the same way we always do, singing the Village People. Don't start with me. I don't put on assless chaps when we sing it, freaks. It's topical. Don't look at me like I'm a monster.
Anyway, our version just has the refrain over and over, with appropriate variations on her day camp theme. Today went like this:
Me: "We're gonna' play at the..."
Schuyler: "Eye-eh-ee-ay!" (YMCA, with the moves. Well, of course.)
Me: "We're gonna swim at the..."
Schuyler: "Eye-eh-ee-ay!"
Me: "And have some fun at the..."
Schuyler: "Eye-eh-ee-ay!"
Me: "And eat a bug at the..."
Schuyler: "Eye... Nooooooo!"
And then she laughed and signed Mommy, because as she makes clear to anyone who asks, Julie is the bug eater in our home.
When we were leaving, Schuyler opened the front door and stepped out first. I heard her gasp in amazement and say "Ah-ee!" (Daddy) When I looked out the door, I saw her standing in the grass as a flock of baby ducks mobbed her. They ran up to her, peeping excitedly and then lining up in front of her as if for inspection. They settled in for a while and relaxed with her. They weren't even a tiny bit afraid of her. She talked to them in her strange moonman language, and they peeped back at her as if she was making all the sense in the world.
That's how it is with Schuyler. She talks and you don't get it, but you want to. As we drove to camp, she was so happy about the ducklings that she sang the whole way. Unless I am horribly out of the loop regarding songs known by six year-olds, she wasn't singing anything she'd been taught in school. She makes up songs and lyrics, and I could listen to her sing them all day. Her songs make up the best part of any day, and also the saddest. They are songs that will be forever lost to the world, with meanings known only to her.
Anyway, that's why I was late to work. You can't blow off baby ducks.
Take today, for example. We started off the day getting ready for summer camp the same way we always do, singing the Village People. Don't start with me. I don't put on assless chaps when we sing it, freaks. It's topical. Don't look at me like I'm a monster.
Anyway, our version just has the refrain over and over, with appropriate variations on her day camp theme. Today went like this:
Me: "We're gonna' play at the..."
Schuyler: "Eye-eh-ee-ay!" (YMCA, with the moves. Well, of course.)
Me: "We're gonna swim at the..."
Schuyler: "Eye-eh-ee-ay!"
Me: "And have some fun at the..."
Schuyler: "Eye-eh-ee-ay!"
Me: "And eat a bug at the..."
Schuyler: "Eye... Nooooooo!"
And then she laughed and signed Mommy, because as she makes clear to anyone who asks, Julie is the bug eater in our home.
When we were leaving, Schuyler opened the front door and stepped out first. I heard her gasp in amazement and say "Ah-ee!" (Daddy) When I looked out the door, I saw her standing in the grass as a flock of baby ducks mobbed her. They ran up to her, peeping excitedly and then lining up in front of her as if for inspection. They settled in for a while and relaxed with her. They weren't even a tiny bit afraid of her. She talked to them in her strange moonman language, and they peeped back at her as if she was making all the sense in the world.
That's how it is with Schuyler. She talks and you don't get it, but you want to. As we drove to camp, she was so happy about the ducklings that she sang the whole way. Unless I am horribly out of the loop regarding songs known by six year-olds, she wasn't singing anything she'd been taught in school. She makes up songs and lyrics, and I could listen to her sing them all day. Her songs make up the best part of any day, and also the saddest. They are songs that will be forever lost to the world, with meanings known only to her.
Anyway, that's why I was late to work. You can't blow off baby ducks.
July 6, 2006
Well, yeah
(Cross posted from Diabetes Notes becaause it's more amusing than anything I am likely to write here today).
In a development sure to be covered in more detail in the next issue of The Journal of Duh, a study of overweight type 2 diabetics has found that increasing the amount of walking they do every day will result in significant improvements in heart and respiratory fitness. The study examined the exercise routine of eight subjects who were already walking more than the recommended 10,000 steps a day.
“The program used simple tools (pedometer and stopwatch) and a simple message to pick up the pace,” said Steven T. Johnson of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, along with colleagues in the journal Diabetes Care.
The “Pick Up the Pace” program measured the number of steps that test subjects were typically taking and increased them by ten percent. This increase led to improvements in heart rate response to exercise, as well as a decrease in blood sugar levels.
In an earlier study, Johnson and his colleagues found that type 2 diabetics typically walk at a speed that is slower than that necessary to derive health benefits, even when the number of steps taken daily were increased.
There’s no word on whether or not they uncovered any mysterious connection between slow walking and painful feet, but I can only hope that in the near future, these researchers can unlock the secrets of how not smoking or eating donuts can also increase the health of diabetics. Well played, Mister Science!
In a development sure to be covered in more detail in the next issue of The Journal of Duh, a study of overweight type 2 diabetics has found that increasing the amount of walking they do every day will result in significant improvements in heart and respiratory fitness. The study examined the exercise routine of eight subjects who were already walking more than the recommended 10,000 steps a day.
“The program used simple tools (pedometer and stopwatch) and a simple message to pick up the pace,” said Steven T. Johnson of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, along with colleagues in the journal Diabetes Care.
The “Pick Up the Pace” program measured the number of steps that test subjects were typically taking and increased them by ten percent. This increase led to improvements in heart rate response to exercise, as well as a decrease in blood sugar levels.
In an earlier study, Johnson and his colleagues found that type 2 diabetics typically walk at a speed that is slower than that necessary to derive health benefits, even when the number of steps taken daily were increased.
There’s no word on whether or not they uncovered any mysterious connection between slow walking and painful feet, but I can only hope that in the near future, these researchers can unlock the secrets of how not smoking or eating donuts can also increase the health of diabetics. Well played, Mister Science!
July 2, 2006
Schuyler's New Monster
When I get paid every month, our usual practice involves taking Schuyler out and rewarding her generally swell behavior with a trip to the toy store. She's not a terribly materialistic person, so it's not like she acts better or worse depending on how much stuff she gets. It's mostly just an excuse to go hang out in a toy store with Schuyler. Toys stores and pet stores are irresistible place to visit with her.
Tonight, Schuyler's choice came down to one of two things. One was a blue-haired Barbie with fairy wings, and believe me when I say that I am about sick to death of Barbie in her countless permutations. I don't care if she's a princess or a mermaid or a business woman or a crackwhore, her dead eyes and weird zero-gravity boobs give me the creeps. But when little girls find Barbie, and they always do, you have to decide whether to fight that losing battle or just raise your kid right and love her and hope that her self-esteem is high enough that she doesn't think that she has to grow up to be seven feet tall with giant dirigible tits to be happy.
But I digress.
The other toy she fixated on tonight was a dinosaur, from the same Fisher Price line as her others, but much cooler. No longer content to have one moving part and a single recorded snarl, this guy had glowing red eyes, a whole vocabulary of nasty sounds and a body that twisted menacingly, throwing his head back to roar when you pushed one of his scales.
It might only be a small surprise to learn that she picked the dinosaur.
I've written at length about her affinity for King Kong and dinosaurs and big scary beasts that scare most kids. Schuyler faces her own monster without flinching, and I truly believe that in her imaginary world, she goes into battle against that monster with her sword drawn and pink hair flying out Valkyrie-like from under her viking helmet, and she does so with a small army of her own monsters at her back.
As we left Toys-R-Us, she played with her new monster, watching him writhe and roar with a look of phony fear and rapt amazement. She held him up so he could see the lightning flashing in the distance and threatened other drivers with his big teeth and nasty disposition. Then she hugged him and kissed him and put him on the seat beside her, insisting that we buckle him in. Nothing staves off extinction like good common safety sense.
Now, as I write this, he is laying on the couch, covered by the blanket that she brought for him and tucked him under. I swear, he looks almost happy.
Tonight, Schuyler's choice came down to one of two things. One was a blue-haired Barbie with fairy wings, and believe me when I say that I am about sick to death of Barbie in her countless permutations. I don't care if she's a princess or a mermaid or a business woman or a crackwhore, her dead eyes and weird zero-gravity boobs give me the creeps. But when little girls find Barbie, and they always do, you have to decide whether to fight that losing battle or just raise your kid right and love her and hope that her self-esteem is high enough that she doesn't think that she has to grow up to be seven feet tall with giant dirigible tits to be happy.
But I digress.
The other toy she fixated on tonight was a dinosaur, from the same Fisher Price line as her others, but much cooler. No longer content to have one moving part and a single recorded snarl, this guy had glowing red eyes, a whole vocabulary of nasty sounds and a body that twisted menacingly, throwing his head back to roar when you pushed one of his scales.
It might only be a small surprise to learn that she picked the dinosaur.
I've written at length about her affinity for King Kong and dinosaurs and big scary beasts that scare most kids. Schuyler faces her own monster without flinching, and I truly believe that in her imaginary world, she goes into battle against that monster with her sword drawn and pink hair flying out Valkyrie-like from under her viking helmet, and she does so with a small army of her own monsters at her back.
As we left Toys-R-Us, she played with her new monster, watching him writhe and roar with a look of phony fear and rapt amazement. She held him up so he could see the lightning flashing in the distance and threatened other drivers with his big teeth and nasty disposition. Then she hugged him and kissed him and put him on the seat beside her, insisting that we buckle him in. Nothing staves off extinction like good common safety sense.
Now, as I write this, he is laying on the couch, covered by the blanket that she brought for him and tucked him under. I swear, he looks almost happy.
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