Finally some answers!

Son went to the speech therapist today. We had waited 5 months for this appointment. His preschool teacher had asked us to have him referred, back in the fall, because he had a relatively large speech impediment....his speech was mostly limited to vowels, with nearly every word starting with M or N, whether it needed one or not. He was frustrated, we were frustrated, his teachers were frustrated, and the other kids wanted nothing to do with him, because nobody could understand him. I could, mostly, but even I had a hard time sometimes, and it led to a lot of crying and temper tantrums. I can only imagine how hard it must be to try so hard to get your thoughts across, and have nobody understand, to have people look at you and go "Oh, that's nice", in that "I don't understand you, so I'll smile and nod" sort of way.
He had his hearing tested last week, and he has perfect hearing, which was a relief....after all those ear infections in his first 8 months, before they did the surgery to put the tubes in, there was the fear that he would have some hearing loss.
Anyway, as I said, we went today, and met with the nice lady, who had him playing with toys and helping her read a story, so she could listen to his speech. First of all, she was extremely impressed with his huge vocabulary and sentence structures (he's 3 1/2)...but she noticed he could not say any of the back-of-the-mouth sounds like hard C and G, and that when he tried to say any of those words, he was compensating by scrunching up his nose really tight, in an effort to keep the air from coming out his nose. She looked at his split uvula and wrote her notes.
He got a V-tech computer for Christmas, which made a HUGE difference for him, as there is this little monkey that talks on it, and one of the activities is dealing with the sound of letters...."The S makes the sound SSSSSSS"....that sort of thing, so of course we have had nearly 2 months of him announcing to us what sound each letter makes....which has increased his letter sound capacity drastically....all but those hard C and G and that area of the mouth type sounds.
The answer we got was this....she suspects he has what is called a sub-mucal cleft...essentially a cleft of the muscles in the soft palate, as far as I can figure. This would make perfect sense, based on the fact that Husband was born with a cleft palate which required surgery at age 1 or 2. He will see one of the experts somewhere in the next 2 months who will check and confirm this. If he does indeed have this, they can do surgery which will correct it, and allow him (obviously with therapy) to talk properly and make those pesky, elusive sounds. In the meantime, he will go back to the therapist about once a week to play games which will help him to work on those sounds, in the event that it is not a sub-mucal cleft, so that maybe he will learn techniques to help himself say those needed sounds.
Finally some definite answers, some definite solutions, and we are officially in the system, so everything will get done without waiting so long now. It's been a good day.

Stacking dolls

You know the kind I mean....they used to have a little clip on Sesame Street even, where these dolls undid, danced around, then went together again. One big doll opens, a smaller one is inside. Open that one, a smaller one yet inside, and so on until one teeny one emerges.
That would be the experience I had today when my new computer arrived. After the catastrophic death of my old PC, where it took all my files with it, thanks to a short in the system that made the backup blank, we ended up ordering a Mac Mini. It arrived today in a box about the size of a Vancouver phone book. So we opened it.....to find....A BOX! So we opened it to find.....A BOX! I was laughing by that point. So we opened the box....and inside was a bunch of packaging material, and my new, itty bitty computer. It's really cute...not much bigger than a small, square lunchbox that would only hold a sandwich with a tiny bit of room to spare (as in, no drink or anything else).
The fact that I am writing this is evidence that it works (yay)...and hopefully nothing will go wrong, because, after all, I was super, extra lucky that my novel-in-progress was also on Writing.com, not just on my hard drive, and I'd hate to have to go retrieve it from there again and again, plus all my bookmarks and other stuff.....it's bad enough all my other files are gone.
We had a bunch of snow the other day, which I got shoveled off the driveway and walk....just in time for it to snow again today. That should make papers fun tomorrow....heavy papers and a pile of unshoveled walks. Oh joy. But at least this should hopefully be my last winter of doing this. Now off to bed.

Dreams and Such

I am sick again. A cold now. The kind that makes you sniffle and snuffle, cough and blow, and sucks every molecule of energy out of your body. But that's okay. I called in sick to work this morning, because I just couldn't muster the energy or willpower to haul those heavy bundles around for 2 1/2 hours in -51C windchill. I got up, I got dressed, I drove over there....but just couldn't do it, I was out of energy, feeling like dirt, and very cold. So I read my bundle toppers at each drop to make sure I had all the info, and called in sick (and yes, I did tell them that I was up and out and had changed my mind).
So why is it so okay that I am sick? Mainly because I am less stressed than I have been recently about my house. Thanks to a one-year tv ban that we as a family have decided to embark on, replacing satellite with passes to the local rec centres, there is more time, less distraction....for everybody. I have been getting a bit more help around the house, and thanks to my f-i-l, I also have a new vacuum that really sucks (in the good sense), and have managed to get the upstairs fairly clean (though it's not as sparkly today, with me being sick and only spot cleaning instead of scrubbing bathtubs and such like yesterday and the day before), and a lot of the laundry done, which is a huge accomplishment after everyone getting the stomach flu one day after each other, creating a giant pile of sheets and towels and bedding and clothes that got puked or pooped on, in addition to the usual Mount Washmore.
So I was able to crawl feebly back into bed and dream for awhile this morning....which leads to the dreams part.
Some people say dreams mean stuff, and I really have to wonder what this dream means. For some reason, lately, I have been dreaming about someone....a reunion in this particular dream. It's odd, because I really don't think I have been pondering on this person much....they live a very long way away, and quite honestly have not talked to me or made contact in any way over the past few years. I have not even SEEN this person for....probably about 10 years now, give or take.
In this dream, I am in some strange place, a shelter, maybe? But it's a comfortable place. That much I know. There are a lot of people there, who I seem to know, but am not sure if actually exist in real life, because I don't remember who else was in the dream. Anyway....in this dream, this person is suddenly where I am. They have come back from the far off place, and they see me. This person is very surprised to see me, and in fact pleased to see me, and incredibly impressed with who I am now, I guess both physically and maturity-wise. In my dream I am very happy about this, and very surprised by his pleased surprise, and his sudden higher regard for me....and for some reason I am slightly taller than him, and that impresses him. Weird.
But in my dream, I am still married. I still have my children. It is not a romantic type dream, more of a searching dream, kind of a this-is-who-I am, who-are-you now? sort of thing. I am very pleased he has come, and very pleased at his reactions. I am somewhat....at a loss, I suppose, as to how to react to this person in my dream, a happy yet sad reunion. I want to appear my best for this person, but am not sure why. In my dream I am not sure what he wants from me, or why he is so pleased by who I am, but it was a very good dream that I really wish I could have finished, like a good book....I want to know the ending, the answers to why, what happened, maybe a bit more as to who this person became (in my dream).
And now that I am awake, I find myself seriously wondering what the real person has become now, what he looks like now, how his life is going (beyond what he does for a job....that I know....and where)....and what he really WOULD think of me if we met again, now. What would I think of him? And wondering why it matters, and where the dream and wonderings came from. I have to think about this some more. It just seems somewhat....important, somehow.

News of the Stupid

Due to illness and "stuff", it's been a bit since I last posted, but I have three items to blog about, that seem to fit well under my chosen title.
You really have to wonder about some people, you really do.
"AND YOU ARE MAD *WHY*???"
Here is the story about a young man. This young man decided it would be a good idea to try to beat a train. The guard rail had already come down, and the train was essentially to the crossing. This young man was riding his bike, and thought he could make it, I guess. He plowed up to the guard rail on his bike, and luckily for him, said guard rail bumped him off the bike. Bike ends up under the train. Man does not. Train engineer, of course, has to stop the train, back it up, out of the crossing, so as not to tie up traffic while he writes out his incident in triplicate and so on. The grateful young man's way of showing how happy he is not to be a grease spot on the tracks? He flips off the poor, I'm sure extremely shaken, train engineer. Hellloooooo idiot! The engineer didn't tell you to try beating his train, he did not try to run over your bike that you so idiotically tried to ride across the tracks. You should be hanging your head in shame and kissing the ground you walk on for the guard rail that saved your sorry life.
"ALCOHOL MAY HAVE BEEN A FACTOR"
I'm sure all, or at least most of you, have heard about this one. Man in his 20's is taken to hospital in the wee hours of the morning with severe frostbite and hypothermia, poorly dressed for the -51C windchill we had this past week. 8 hours later, he asks about his children, who, up to this point, nobody knew were missing or even existed. They are eventually found frozen to death. Alcohol was a factor. These poor babies (1 and 3) were only dressed in t-shirts and diapers. How much pain did they have to be in before they died? How long did they suffer before the cold mercifully put them into unconsciousness and ultimately death? What person takes their children outside, dressed like that, in winter, no matter WHAT the temperature? I saw that there are those who are asking for him to have a light sentence because of the emotional trauma he must be going through. I disagree. That may make me heartless, but I'm sorry....you killed your own kids out of your own sheer stupidity and drunkenness. "I was drunk" is not an excuse in my book. Ever. For anything. You do the crime, you do the crime. How must that poor mother feel? She lost both her babies, that she carried inside her, BOTH of them, all at once. She never even got to say goodbye. And due to the drunkenness of her husband. That's got to be a hard reality to face for her. And for him. This story had me in tears, as I delivered it as front page news on the newspapers. It had and has me sad, and furious, and in a certain state of disbelief. And just think of the poor RCMP officers whose job it was to find, and remove, those poor, tiny, frozen bodies from the snow. I couldn't do it. Not in my wildest dreams, or in this case, nightmares, could I ever do that job.
"WE WILL BE CHECKING UP ON YOU"
This is an extremely personal story, and as such, will come across as pretty much a vent. We have a Dog. Dog loves us and we love dog. She is our baby, and we spoil her rotten.
The other night, Daughter and I had to go out. Husband was sick, and stayed at home with Son. I put Dog out around 6PM, thinking she would scratch at the door a few minutes later, as she always did, so Husband could let her in. But she didn't.
7:30 comes. Daughter and I are preparing to head home when Husband calls, practically in tears. He cannot find Dog anywhere. Poor sick guy had even bundled up and searched the backyard, neighbour's backyard, under the deck where Dog likes to hide, and up the street. Daughter and i drive the neighbourhood, looking for a black dog at night. No luck. I send Daughter inside, go up and down the street yelling for Dog. A few minutes later, Dog shows up in backyard, magically. I realize Dog had been in next door's house because she is all toasty warm and reeking of cigarettes. We are extremely relieved, as we had thought she'd somehow escaped, run off, and would freeze to death in the -51C windchill. They had fed her something while she was there, and whatever it was gave her diarrhea so bad, it looked like she was peeing hot chocolate out her butt.
I typed up a nice note the next morning (because they work odd shifts and I didn't want to wake anyone by knocking on the door) to say I was thankful they had taken her in, explaining the situation (Husband was sick, I had let Dog out thinking she'd scratch, etc, Husband thought she was inside since she didn't scratch....), and that I would fix the hole in the fence (how she got there in the first place) right away, and if it happened again, please let us know right away and to please not feed her anything anymore because it had made her sick and messed with her feeding schedule, and thanks again.
Next thing I know, that afternoon, Animal Control shows up at our door, saying there had been a complaint that we were constantly leaving our dog out for long periods of time, unattended, in very cold weather, and that she was malnourished! They drove up to our house in their marked van, wearing their huge letter emblazoned jackets, and demanded to see our dog and our backyard. We complied, as I tried to explain to them that we do NOT leave our dog out for long periods of time, ESPECIALLY in weather like this. They, of course, didn't believe me. They told me her doghouse was insufficient because it wasn't insulated. (She's an indoor dog who doesn't really use one anyway) The guy felt her side and said he could sense ribs and so we had to fatten her up. The amount they told us to feed her was unbelievable! We were told to feed her 6 cups of kibble PLUS potatoes and rice and bacon grease each DAY! According to our dog food bag, that would be about what you would feed a dog of about 150-200 pounds. She is 60 pounds. For her breed and size, she is supposed to be 55-70 pounds. Her breed is the type where you are SUPPOSED to sense ribs if you feel along the side. Not see them, but feel them. She is shiny, she is happy, her trainer says she's an excellent size with good, strong muscles, her vet at her last visit said she was a good size....we bought the new, insulated doghouse. That is a fight we will not win, and if having it in our yard will make them happy, so be it....but the dog is afraid to go in it. And she stays outside all of MAYBE 20 minutes maximum each time. But whatever. As to the fattening her up part, that we are going to fight. Anyone who really knows what they are talking about in terms of dog size and weight will back us up, we will go get documentation from the vet, if that is what it will take. And we want them to close the file. We don't need them driving past, peeking into the backyard at regular intervals to see if we have left her out to freeze or whatever stupid fiction our neighbours have come up with. We do not neglect our dog. When it's cold, we even try to convince her NOT to go outside! She eats like a pig, and just happens to be high energy, and built for speed. It's just the type of dog she is!
My theory on why they did this? When we got Dog, their two dogs barked nearly incessantly through the fence at her. She does not bark back, only barking when someone goes by on the hill behind our beck fence. I think someone complained on their dogs (no, it wasn't us), because they bark at anyone and everything that moves. One board in our fence got broken. I think it was one of their dogs trying to get through to our dog, but I can't prove it. Our dog just wants to stick her nose through the gaps, wag her tail, and squeak at them, or run up and down along the fence, as if they were playing tag with no contact. In any case, I've seen their dogs in our yard, and now our dog got into theirs. I boarded that sucker up with heavy pine so nothing is getting through. And that is the end of good relations with the neighbours. Anyone who won't come and knock on my door if they have an honest concern about my dog and who deems it necessary to automatically call in someone who has the power to strip my dog away from her stable, loving home, is certainly NOT someone I want to have anything to do with. You have a problem with something I'm doing? You come TALK to me about it! Or write me a nice note.
For the record, my canine baby loves popcorn, playing tug-of-war, chewing bones, sleeping on the couch while being petted, licking everyone who stays still long enough, and eating pretty much anything, anywhere, anytime. She's a soppy thing, and we love her with everything we've got....so much so that we're willing and ready to fight tooth and nail over this horrible, and false, accusation. We would never, ever, under any circumstances, abuse, neglect, or otherwise hurt our baby....I mean Dog!