New Beginnings and Being On the Job

  Last year about this time I did the word resolution thing.  My word was discipline and I think I forgot about it about a week after the post.  This year I'm going to go back to having an actual list of goals.  I never get them all done, but I do get some of them done.  I think this will work better for me because when you are smack in the middle of the forest, as I always seem to be, you can only see the trees, not the forest.  I need the details (trees) of a list, versus the forest of a word. Plus, I like reviewing the list at the end of the year and realizing that I did get some goals done. I'm working on a list now.  


Are you doing a word, goals, or resolutions?  


The big thing going on right now is that my son and I are starting a business.  It's On the Job Janitorial and we just got our first job, a building in downtown Greenville.  We are both really stoked about this.  We start on Tuesday the 2nd. It's only a few hours a week.  We are responsible for the public areas, not the individual shops. After we get the routine down we hope to add a couple more office cleaning accounts.


Some of you who have read my blog for a long time will know that our son has Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).  He is high functioning--what many people call Aspergers. He's 19 now and has not been able to find employment. He's not interested in college, and with his dyslexia he'd have to be really motivated to succeed at a college or university.  I've been racking my brain for a job that would be a good fit for him.  I finally decided that working at a janitorial service would be good.  He doesn't do well around a lot of people, or if he's pressured to work fast.  I'm pleased that he likes this idea too, and is very motivated to do this work. 


I will have to get up earlier than I like, since most of the work will be done before the shops open in the building.  I'm not a morning person.  I'm thinking that the upside will be that since I'm up, I will just go work on jewelry after I finish with the janitorial duties. I'm hoping I'll get more done. And of course, the big upside which is employment for us both. 


It's odd that it took me this long to think of a janitorial service.  That's because I kind of did this before.  Years ago I helped a friend find employment cleaning houses and apartments.  I booked the jobs and she did the cleaning.  After a period of time she learned enough English to get a good job at a hospital in addition to the apartment cleaning.  


Now is the perfect time to have thought of it though, because a year ago our son wouldn't have been ready for it, and now he is. It's a blessing.


I hope everyone has had a wonderful holiday season. We had a great Christmas visiting with family. We spent Christmas eve at my parents and had Christmas dinner at my brother's place.  


Happy New Year!  May 2012 be a great year for us all. 
   

Best Laid Plans... Things Happen

Usually I try to keep things upbeat on the blog.  I can't always do this though, because sometimes the bumpy parts impact the parts I like to blog about. There were some bumps and potholes in the road of life this week. Things did not go quite as I had planned.


Wednesday I had to have my cat Maizie put to sleep.   She went into kidney failure. I knew it was coming but it is still excruciating.   I'm glad that she had a good long life--she was seventeen years old. Here's a photo of a younger Maizie checking out the water garden. She was hiding in the bushes by the bank's ATM when I found her 16 years ago.  When I drove up she stuck her head out and I knew she was waiting for me. I opened the car door and she jumped in.  






Thursday evening my husband helped me load the heavy things in the car.  We found this lady hanging out in the garage.

black widow spider

Note the nicely shaped hourglass.  She got a web going right away.  

black widow spider

This is a variety I had not seen before.  On her topside she had a row of red rectangles. If you click the photos you can go to Flickr and see the photos in more detail.  She has a little white with the red too. 


Since the things we were removing from the garage go into my car we gave everything a complete inspection after we found the spider.


Hubby took her to work and gave her to one of the insane intelligent guys he works with. 


A really big pothole was our son had his apartment burglarized on Friday. He has a lot of anxiety around this situation and we didn't feel like we should go out of town right then when he wasn't feeling safe.  It took a long while with the police report and getting the window fingerprinted and such. Plus by the time things wound down it was quite late on Friday. 


I didn't get to the show I had planned to do on Saturday.  I've never skipped a show before so I feel weird about that but I'm glad we stayed home. 

Wedding in Mumbai



Clockwise from top: Angela (the bride), her mother Mary, her sister Sarah, her friend Kellie, and her step-mother Cori.



I love this photo from my niece's wedding in Mumbai, India. I love it partly because the mehndi looks so fun, and the patterns are so interesting.  And I love it because it represents a celebration by these women of a cultural custom that none of these women where born into.

Mehndi is the application of henna in elaborate designs on the hands, and in the case of the bride, on the feet.  It is commonly done for weddings, but also for childbirth.  Some believe the deeper the red color the greater the love in the marriage, and the better the bond between the bride and her mother-in-law.  The bride also doesn't have to do housework until the mehndi fades, usually in two or three weeks.  Sometimes the groom's name or initials are hidden in the pattern and he is tasked with finding them.

Last year my niece, Angela, and her husband Suhail married in New York.  This spring they had a wedding in India.  I wasn't able to go but several of my family members went. 



Weddings in India take place over several days.  Suhail's family hired professionals to apply the mehndi.  Here is Angela getting started with her mehndi. The henna is in paste form, and looks very dark until the paste flakes off hours later.  Then the patterns are dark red in color.



Left: my sister-in-law Mary, and my niece Sarah on the right



Here is Angela with the finished design.  It is very dark because the paste is still on. She's so beautiful. And isn't her jewelry beautiful and interesting?  I want to find out more about the history of this jewelry.  It resembles in design the jewelry often shown on Kwan Yin.  I've been unsuccessful in my quest to find out about Kwan Yin's jewelry.



Suhail and Angela



Here's the bride and groom. You can get a peek at the mehndi on her feet in this photo.



My brother Lee, Angela's father.



My brother Lee and Angela were the only two blue eyed people at the wedding.  There was a lot of interest in their eye color.  This red dress is the wedding dress. I wish I had a better picture of the skirt.  It is very elaborate and gorgeous.  My brother is wearing traditional dress here.  All the members of my family wore traditional Indian dress during the wedding.



Family members.  My sister-in-law, Cori, second from left, took many of these photos.





The happy bride and groom--Suhail and Angela.

Here is the bride and groom on the wedding day. We're so happy to have Suhail in the family. 



I Won't Tell if You Won't and

Other Snippets from a Todd Family Christmas

My parents, my husband, our son, and I are all in the car headed to the family Christmas on Christmas Eve at my brother's.  I'm driving and we're in the driveway negotiating the cattle gate.

Me:  "Dad, did you check the mail?"
Dad:  "What?"
Me, loudly: "Did you check the mail?" 
Dad, louder: "What?"
Me:  "Never mind.  We should have checked it on our way in." They have a rural box some distance from the house. 
Hubby:  "You can check it now.  Drive up on my side."
Dad: "What?"
Me, very loudly: "The mailbox, Dad."
Mom:  "You can drive up to the mailbox from the gate because I had it put in the right place."
Me: "Good thinking, Mom."
Our son, who has his earphones in and hasn't heard a single word we've said now realizes I've shouted something.
Son:  "Do you have to argue?"
Me, as I drive to the mailbox:  "It's a Todd tradition.  We love to argue."

And we had a great Christmas at my brother's. I managed to take a lot of bad and not so great pictures, except the one above of Shaggy. All but my brother's oldest made it in for Christmas, although the youngest was at work Christmas Eve and we had to leave before she got home. 

There was no arguing.

There was this later after most of the presents had been opened....

I hand my Dad an envelope with our main present to them, which is money.  "Okay," Dad jokes. "If you don't tell Mom about this I won't tell her." We both laugh.

A while later I sit down next to Mom on the couch and see an unopened card addressed to "Mom and Dad."  I hand it to Mom and help her by reading it.  (Mom is blind.)

"It's from C and L (my brother and sister-in-law.)" I say. "There's money in it." Coincidentally, it is the exact same amount of money that we gave Mom and Dad.

I cannot resist. "Mom," I say.  "I won't tell Dad about this if you won't."  And both of us laugh. 

Summer Goodness

Here are a few photos from around the house and family this spring and summer.

Black swallowtails aren't nearly as shy as their tiger swallowtail cousins.



I did get some shots of a tiger swallowtail.

There were three family weddings this spring:

My niece Angela and Suhail married in New York.

My niece Sarah and Chris married in Cancun, Mexico.

And their mother Mary married Bobby in Texas after parachuting to the venue.



My nephew Daniel graduated from high school. Here my father helps him tie his tie.

I think Dad's wondering if someone who can't tie a tie is ready to graduate.




We had the nosebleed seats.



Here he is afterwards with my parents.



The grand finale to the graduation:



Back home the garden is doing better than ever.



The Virginia Creeper leaves have already turned.




That's all for today!

Happy Holidays & Thinking Ahead to Next Year

I'm back.  I hope everyone is having a merry Christmas, bright Yule, happy Hannukah, blessed Ashura, and joyous Kwanza. 

It's the day after Christmas and we're actually only partway through our Christmas celebration. 

It's been a weird season for me.  For one thing, I did a major amount of my shopping on the 23rd.  Usually I have it done much earlier.  Due to homeschooling this year I couldn't take off and go shopping as I did last year.  I've been feeling really unorganized and am just now beginning to feel relaxed. 

Stefan and I were out of town for a week and didn't get back until the 22nd.  Dad had some surgery and we went to my parents' to help out.  Dad's recovering quickly.

Christmas we went to my brother's for a get-together.  Five of his six kids made it, with the sixth coming later on (after we left). Luckily the snow on Christmas Eve melted at dawn or before.  We don't get much snow here.  Our relatives in Oklahoma City had 14 inches! Whoa!

We have a couple more day trips to make between now and the 1st so we can visit with family.

I've been thinking about my new year's resolutions and reviewing last year's.  I'm working on my list.  

 Thanks to The Graphics Fairy for the vintage illustration above.  Check out her awesome copyright free graphics.

Autism and Homeschooling

The past few months have brought a major change in our family.  About six weeks before the end of last school year I started homeschooling our son.  Then this summer I took him to a pediatric neurologist who diagnosed him with Autism Spectrum Disorder. 

Ironically, we took him to a different pediatric neurologist when he was three because my mother insisted that we get him checked for autism.  At that time he wouldn't make eye contact most of the time and did a lot of spinning. He would flinch and cover his ears when he heard a car engine starting.  And boy, was he obsessed with vacuum cleaners, just as long as you didn't turn them on.


Naturally he looked the doctor right in the eye and interacted quite well with him.  The doctor was also impressed that Stefan could ride a bicycle.  He thought he was okay, but did mention that he might have ADD.  

In the end, Grandma did know best. 

He was later diagnosed with ADD, Dyslexia, and anxiety.  Things didn't quite seem to fit and I took him to the neurologist because I felt we must be missing something. 

At first I was relieved to know what was going on.  All the little things that didn't fit his diagnosis before all fit with this one.  Then I was bummed for a while.  Stefan is still the same kid he has always been, he's high-functioning, and I've decided to quit being bummed. Things could be a lot worse.  I know people for whom things are a lot worse. 


Luckily we did a lot of things for Stefan when he was little that turned out to be the things we should have been doing if we'd known about the autism.  We read to him from birth, we took him to Kindermusic, mother's day out, pre-school, sports, scouts etc.  Starting in Kindergarten he had speech therapy through 7th grade.  We worked on writing in the summer because his fine motor skills needed improvement. 


I've quit subbing at the Middle School for a couple of years until  Stefan graduates.  He's in 11th grade this year.  His interest is in filming skateboarding, so hopefully he'll go to a college after high school to learn videography. 


I'm enjoying being at home with Stefan and teaching him.  So far it's working out well, although we never seem to get as much done as I want to do.  Part of that is because I don't have a handle on how long it takes to do things, part is technical (we are getting him a laptop for his birthday, which should rememdy a lot of the technical problems) and part is just because we don't always get everything done.  He is learning and the stress we had when he was in the local high school is gone.  Also gone are the hours and hours of homework after school. I'm also able to do life skills with him at home that he couldn't do in school.  


I've been reading a lot about autism.  One of the books I read is Homeschooling the Child with Autism by Patricia Schetter and Kandis Lighthall.  It's been very helpful.

Also at the Dallas Museum of Art (King Tut, Part 3)

I'm back! Life got a little busy and I took a break.

A while back we went to see the King Tut exhibit at the Dallas Museum of Art. While there, we also took in the Ancient America's exhibit. It was very enjoyable, and they let me take photos. Most of the photos were taken through the glass of the exhibit cases, so there's an odd reflection here and there. Click on the photos to go to my Flickr account where you can see larger, more detailed photos.

I was really impressed with some of the jewelry.





This set impressed me the most, in part for the excellent metal work, but also for the sheer size of some of the pieces. From top to bottom they are: headpiece, earspools, nose piece, large concave ear pendants, and a pectoral. The ear spools were probably about 2.75 inches in diameter and the large ear pendants must be five or so inches. I thought they were some sort of breast plate. They're the same size as the old fashioned breast plates I wore when I started fencing back in the 80's.

This set is all gold. The gold sheet appeared to be fairly thin, maybe about 24 gauge in places. Still, it's very difficult to imagine someone wearing those ear pendants.

There were some silver pieces, such as this one:



This is an outstanding piece:



Notice the mask face is "wearing" a smaller set of earspools.

Frogs seemed to be very popular, and there were several examples, ranging in size from some exquisite pieces about 3/8 of an inch to a couple of inches.



These are typical. The spiral at the frogs mouths represent bubbles.



There were also some figural jewelry pieces like this one:



This was Ralph's favorite piece:



This statue is about three feet high.





And lastly, here's a shot of me in the sculpture garden/courtyard.

King Tut, Part Two

The King Tut was very crowded. Very, very crowded. And they didn't let anyone photograph, even without flash, so I don't have any pictures from the actual exhibit.

The exhibit included many items from King Tut's tomb, some of which were very impressive. I think I was most impressed with the jewelry, and with the blue and gold coffinette. Click the link to see a picture of it. The coffinette was small, maybe 15 inches, and very ornate with fine workmanship. The Dallas Museum of Art has quite a few pictures and other info on their site here.

Here's a few photos I took before we went in.







Here's a beautiful example of Chihuly Glass (Dale Chihuly) in one of the restaurants.



I didn't see any sign or other info on this interactive art installation.



This is a tunnel of glorious color leading to a room where there is no color, only shades of white and gray. Going in was kind of the reverse of being born.

I did take quite a few pictures in the Ancient Americas Art exhibit of various jewelry and metal work. Stay tuned for part three...

King Tut, Part One

Recently we went to Dallas to see the King Tut exhibit at the Dallas Museum of Art. We enjoyed the exhibit (more on that later). It's going on until sometime in early May, so check it out if you can.

Here are a few photos I took during the trip. I'm going to break the trip into several posts because of the number of photos. My pictures all link to my Flickr account, where you can see them in better detail. Also Blogger cuts off the right hand side of some of them so you can click to see the entire picture.

This is the Trammel Crow Center which houses the Trammel Collection of Asian Art. It's a dramatic looking building. When you see it you immediately think, "They don't build them like that anymore." This building is right next door to the museum.




This is looking up the building. This is a famous building in Dallas and one of the tallest.



Ralph and Stefan outside the building.



The door "guardians":








There is some pretty awesome art around the grounds and I snapped a few shots.



This is a Rodin, Cybele, 1889.



I think this was a Rodin too.


This sculpture was at least ten feet tall, maybe more.



Bourdelle, Ponelupe, 1917



We didn't have time to look at all the art outside the building. I could spend days looking at interesting things and taking photos in downtown Dallas, particularly the Arts District. I've already put my husband on notice that he's to accompany me someday while I take photos.

Part of the Trammell Crow Center:



Detail:



Part Two coming soon...