Of Birthdays and Holidays by Konnie Enos

 

Recently I saw a post where someone asked us to “imagine having a birthday within 2 weeks of Christmas.” Just think about having a birthday anywhere from December 11^th to January 8^th.

Well, that got me thinking.

I know a lot of people with birthdays in that period. I even know some people with birthdays in the first half of December who had complained about having their birthdays overshadowed by Christmas. The most common complaints were getting birthday gifts in Christmas-themed wrapping paper and or receiving just one gift to represent both events. This was particularly bad when it was relatives who gave their siblings two gifts a year, one for each event.

When I learned the due date for my fourth child (oldest son, Tony) all the information I had about December birthdays came back to me. But I had one as yet untapped resource, My cousin was born three days after Christmas, hence the same week my baby was due.

I had an enlightening conversation with my favorite aunt (said cousin’s mother).

She mentioned not only the two complaints mentioned above but also some family and friends who completely ignored that my cousin had a birthday. Yes, he experienced this, and yes, he noticed.

I took note. I even put my foot down. I told my family members they had to treat all my kids equally. Either they gave all of them both a birthday and Christmas gift or gave them one or none. But they could not give my other kids gifts and not my December baby. I wasn’t going to tolerate them overlooking one kid’s birthday just because it was close to Christmas.

I also told them I preferred that birthday gift not be in Christmas-themed wrapping paper. This meant that I could not use Christmas wrapping paper for birthday gifts. Now, as a rule, I could not afford a lot of wrapping paper so I wrapped most of my children’s birthday gifts in groceries bags.

However, one year I did find some birthday-themed wrapping paper and started using that. I ran out just before I needed to wrap my December child’s gift. I kid you not. Even the store where I’d found it before only had Christmas-themed paper in December.

I believe I resorted to using some plain red Christmas wrapping paper. He does like the color red. Now I plan to make sure I still have some birthday-themed wrapping paper when it’s time to wrap birthday presents for my December baby, and also for those people I give birthday gifts to who have birthdays in the above-mentioned period.

And yes, I have more than just that one cousin or my son, Tony, with a birthday so close to Christmas. Looking at my calendar I also have two nieces, another cousin, my son-in-law, my husband, and a sister-in-law and her late husband with birthdays between December 11^th and January 8^th. And those are just the ones I know about.

Then again, I also thought of all the people who have birthdays on, or extremely near, major holidays. Imagine people overlooking your birthday because it is within days of Thanksgiving, Easter, New Year’s, Labor Day, or national independence days (like July 4^th).

Try planning a birthday party on or near your birthday when it happens to be on or near a major holiday. All your friends ended up declining the invitation because their parents said, “that’s family time.”

Growing up, Bonnie and I had the best attendance at our birthday parties when we planned them for at least a week after the actual event. I think our biggest birthday party was when our big day was on a Monday, though just the one year, which happened to be 1976. With the fourth on Sunday, our town had a huge celebration on Monday. So it felt like the whole town was celebrating with us.

There are also our two youngest brothers. One was born on Labor day and the other on the last Friday of November. I’m not sure Labor Day had as much of an effect on my baby brother, but my other brother felt it. Far too often his friends weren’t available to celebrate with him because they were celebrating Thanksgiving with extended family.

So, as the Christmas season quickly approaches, I think not only about those numerous family members who deal with birthdays far too close to the event but also everyone whose birthday gets overshadowed by a major holiday.

As the holidays approach, think about the people you know who have birthdays on or near that major event. They want others to recognize their birthday the same way they do everybody else’s.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

Bad Days and Me by Bonnie Le Hamilton

 I hate bad days; a bad week is worse!

First, my car overheated to the point of alarms going off and I had to pull into a parking lot and turn it off for several minutes before I could return home, but it was to the point of the alarms going off again before I returned home. And I hadn’t gone that far!

I was about halfway home from a trip to Walmart when it went off, so from that parking lot to my place was half the distance, a couple of minutes' drive. Not good. I called a friend whose husband and even sons are known to work on cars all the time at their house. I had witnessed it myself on several occasions.

I was waiting for her to call me back when her husband just showed up. All good.

He also tried to fix it, but it turns out the issue is something not in his ability to repair. For one, I have a newer car than he is used to working on, and for another the part he thinks needs replaced would require a lift to get at it. So, my car, while drivable, can’t go very far until I can get the issue fixed. I’m broke.

Grand. This may be a while before I can get it fixed. So, I’m limiting how often I drive, and where I go, it’s too risky otherwise.

But that isn’t the only issue. I mean why would it be? Doesn’t trouble come in threes? And I hope not, because that means it isn’t over yet!

Anyway, my fridge went on the fritz. In fact, I first noticed a problem before my friend’s husband showed up to fix my car. The thing is, it didn’t seem that big of a deal until turning the thing up didn’t work.

Worse still, I didn’t realize how bad it was until my milk spoiled only days after I mixed it up.

And the big worry was my insulin, which has to be kept in the fridge.

My landlord promised to replace it on Tuesday, and I was late to work waiting for him to come, but guess what, the replacement isn’t working! I still have no working fridge.

This means I’m going to be late for work again, waiting for the landlord.

And that is on top of being sick last week for two of the four days I do work. Missing hours I can’t afford to miss especially when I have a car to get fixed.

But that isn’t even all of it!

Late Sunday night/early Monday morning I was woken up by my good ankle throbbing. I had to get pain meds, and when that didn’t work, I had to get an ice pack. Thankfully, I do have a freezer separate from the defunct fridge.

And I did wake up Monday morning feeling fine, so I went to work as usual and nothing seemed amiss, right up until I dozed off while I was typing! Yeah, I wasn’t getting much work done that way. I went home early.

So, to be clear, I went home early on Monday and arrived at work late on Tuesday, today is Wednesday and it looks like another late day while I wait for my landlord again.

On top of that, I woke up this morning with my arthritis acting is up in my left pointer finger, so typing is painful today. I’m a data entry clerk, let alone a writer.

Okay, maybe I am past the trouble in three’s situation. At least my ankle isn’t throbbing anymore, though I also don’t know what caused that, and it was my good ankle! It’s the other one I injured severely decades ago and then broke a few years back. That’s the one that usually gives me trouble.

And let's not forget that I have a “trick” knee for which I keep forgetting I can’t stand and turn at the same time. Two Sundays in a row I ended up in bed waiting for the pain to go down from that thing yet again going out because of a stupid move I made. EDS is no fun, and I don’t have it as bad as other members of my family.

Anyway, it hasn’t been a fun week.

Though I might add while I wasn’t feeling well, it sure was nice to be able to read through Konnie’s sci-fi manuscript again. She’d sent it to me because she thought she was done editing the first book of that series. She’s done a great job, by the way, just needed a few more tweaks, but the file she sent me had all five books and I kept reading mostly because she sent a newer version than what I already read.

Anyway, happy writing everyone!

Of Quiet Muses and Low Blood Sugar by Konnie Enos

Okay, it’s Wednesday morning again, and my turn to post something. What am I doing? Staring at a blank page wondering what to write about. Any ideas that I have produced aren’t sufficient to write more than a handful of lines. So I’m stuck again.

I’ve even attempted to work on my stories.

As a rule, all I manage is to read through what I have without any ideas to finish the unfinished ones or improve the ones that are all but finished. Though I suppose my fantasy is ready for some critics, and beta reads. And I have made some improvements to my sci-fi, which I am still tweaking.

Everything else, I can read them but can’t seem to figure out how to finish them. Similar to what I’m experiencing with writing my posts. I have some rough ideas but I have no idea how to flesh them out.

If I do manage to start typing something, someone will come along and talk to me and say or do something to distract me from what I’m attempting to do. Every time this happens and I go back to my screen only to find I’ve completely lost my train of thought.

This leaves me wishing I could type uninterrupted but that never happens.

If I type during daylight hours, my kids will come up with some reason to distract me. If I type at either end of the day, first thing in the morning or at the end of the day, Jerry is bound to find some reason to talk to me about something. Like this morning when he asked me where his clean clothes were.

How am I supposed to know that? The last time I saw his clothes were when I put them in the washer two days ago. I even told him if they were still there then they needed to be rewashed.

Fortunately for him, he’d remembered to get them in the dryer and turn it on but had forgotten to retrieve them, and amazingly no one else had tried to do laundry since then.

If you’re wondering why I hadn’t put them in the dryer, the answer is I can’t.

When we went and bought our new machine I’d focused on getting a large capacity one to accommodate the loads our boys tend to have. The issue we’ve discovered with it is that I cannot reach anything in the bottom of the washer unless you want me to climb on my stool and dive head first into it.

So while I can sort laundry and put loads into the machine, I cannot switch the loads without help. Since the last load I’d put in was Jerry’s, I’d simply told him to transfer it to the dryer when the washing machine finished.

I’d even done multiple loads on Monday and Royce grumbled when he had to switch them for me. I reminded him that he did not want to see me head first in the machine trying to get them out myself.

And of course, I’m distracted again and end up just staring at the screen without any ideas on what to write about now.

Then disaster struck. Not only did the dogs need to be fed, and Jerry wasn’t home to do it, but my blood sugar tanked. I had to not only feed three dogs but find me something to eat and fast. Which, of course, left me with no time remaining to finish writing a post. Though the blood sugar issues may explain why I couldn’t think.

So here is my poor attempt at writing. Sorry, it’s shorter than usual.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

 

Autism and Me part two by Bonnie Le Hamilton

The other day I was talking to an acquaintance of mine and the subject of Autism came up. I was honest and forthright about being on the spectrum, and she asked me for some symptoms or signs that someone is on the spectrum.

And of course, the not making eye contact issue did come up.

Now, I see this lady almost every Friday because I relieve her as the volunteer receptionist at the Pocatello Visitor’s Center on Fridays. And she always stops to visit with me for a few minutes before she leaves.

In other words, I have chatted with her often, and she said that I do make eye contact. She in fact said I was looking her in the eyes right then.

I wasn’t. I rarely do. I was focusing on her mouth. I’ve done it for as long as I can remember. I even remember once, way back in sixth grade sitting there listening to my mother explain to my new teacher and the principal that I read lips and why I do it.

For most of my life, my family has claimed I read lips to explain away my focusing on lips not eyes. They always had a good explanation. Hearing issues are common in my family and on top of that I spent most of the year between the ages of seven and eight with cotton stuffed in my ears to keep the medicine in them that was there to break up the hard wax buildup in there, which was blocking my hearing.

And I remember my mother mentioning that fact in her explanation of why I focus on the lips.

The problem with that excuse is that I don’t read lips. I can not tell what people are saying if I don’t hear the words, period. Though it only dawned on me in the last few years, after I learned I was on the spectrum, that I can’t read lips. I have never been able to read lips.

I do however focus on the lips. I do try to make eye contact but most often I find it too difficult, and I end up focusing on the mouth, or even the nose, or ears. I sometimes focus on a distant object.

My mother and professionals also explained away my speech delay with our family history of hearing problems and the fact that I’m a twin (Konnie and I did use Twin Speak for a time contributing to our speech delay).

Of course, way back then Autism only affected white boys, or so they thought.

Another obvious sign I had back in my childhood was I tend to wring my hands and rock back and forth when I’m not feeling well. This is often the first sign that I am sick. I still do it. And it is a sign of Autism. But back then they just brushed it off that I wasn’t feeling, well, I wasn’t feeling well. What else could it be? After all, I am not a non-verbal white boy.

There is also my playing with my hair when I was reading or studying. That is another stimming motion and one my stepmother complained about a lot. Though she also praised my attention to detail. (Both are signs of Autism.)

Another issue I still have is that I don’t get jokes, and I don’t usually get them because I take everything so literally. My father always made fun of this little trait of mine. I was often the butt of his jokes and pranks because of it.

The point is, when I was growing up, all the signs were there, but not once did even the professionals consider I might be on the spectrum because I do not fit in the perfect little square, they’d build to define who were Autistic.

 Luckily, my grandnieces won’t have that problem, now that the medical professionals know better. And I am not saying any of them are on the spectrum, I’m just saying, if they exhibit any of the signs professionals today would recognize it, eventually.

Now all I have to do is figure out some way to put such a character in one of my novels. Clearly, I do know what it’s like, and we’re supposed to write what we know. Just have to consider it a little longer.

On another note, an online writing group I’m in is having a first chapter contest, the deadline is October 1^st, and I submitted my chapter last night. Wish me luck!

If they hadn’t limited each contestant to one entry, I might have entered the first chapter of my sci-fi too (even though that novel isn’t complete, then again, the rules said nothing about it being a complete novel.)

Anyway, happy writing everyone!

Of Desperation and Inspiration by Konnie Enos

This past week or so I’ve had several ideas I could use for a blog post. Having learned that those ideas will flee if I don’t at least attempt to write them down, I made the effort to open a word document and start typing.

The first time I was typing away and got about four hundred words. Then I decided it wasn’t making much sense or wasn’t expressing what I thought it should and wanted to start over, but no ideas came. I let it be figuring I’d figure it out in plenty of time.

A day or so later, I produced another idea. I didn’t even get two hundred words before the entire thought petered out. That one was a complete wash.

Finally, it was time for me to get something written for my post and I’d had a couple of funny events so I thought I’d start there. This time it’s late and I’m tired. I got two unrelated events written down, but I was too tired to mesh them into a cohesive post.

So try again.

Now it’s Wednesday morning and I have to get something written, then what happens?

Jerry is awake and attempting to work with Google Calendar. We are trying to use this technology to keep the family aware of when someone needs the car. But the fact that I’m awake at this hour, as opposed to still asleep, means he feels he can ask me how to do what he is attempting to do.

All fine and good, but he’s doing it on his phone and the controls are different than on the computer, or even on my phone. So he asks me, “how do I do (insert issue)?” and all I can come up with is, “I don’t know.” Not because I don’t know how to do it, but because I have no clue how to do it on his phone.

Now, this issue, for me, might be an age thing or it simply could be because cell phones in general do not seem to have any universal or standard ways to navigate them.

Both Royce and Jerry will hand me their phones trying to show me something and I’ll inevitably touch something or hit some button that messes up or completely changes the screen I’m supposed to be looking at.

It has happened so often that Royce has given up handing his phone to me. He just puts it in a position where I can see it. Which is fine. He has at least figured out what position and angle is easiest for me to see.

Now that might seem like a fairly normal thing to understand but I’m the only member of my household who wears bifocals. In our over thirty years of marriage, Jerry still has not figured out the best position and angle for me to be able to see anything. He holds things at the best angle for distance, but within the best area for reading. So, of course, I can’t see it.

This is an issue I’ve had for decades, even before I met my husband.

Before the advent of technology, and the availability of books on them, whenever I was at church and trying to sing a song I’d find myself with the issue of sharing a hymnal with whoever was sitting beside me. I always found it difficult to do so.

Why?

Two reasons. My bifocals and the height difference.

Whoever I was sharing with ended up being enough taller than me that they needed the book held high enough to see that the book wasn’t even close to the right position for me to use my reading lenses. But they are also too close for me to use my distance ones. The solution was I never shared. To avoid being rude, I carried my personally owned hymnal with me to church each week.

Now one hymnal isn’t that heavy, but when you add scriptures, and Sunday School manuals, I had at least three books, if not four or five, in my bag each week. It got to the point that my children were carrying my bags for me because it was too much for me.

Thankfully, we now have an application that holds all the books, scriptures, manuals, and hymnals I could need at church. One tablet is a lot lighter than even one book. All I have to do is make sure it’s fully charged before church each week.

Now, I’m to the point I have to have something up and what do you know, I’ve written an entire post inspired by my desperation. The lesson this week is desperation will inspire some inspiration if you give it the chance.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

 

Online Quizzes and Me by Bonnie Le Hamilton

 

I like to scroll through Pinterest for ideas, but occasionally I come across some quiz or other. Now, these sometimes don’t catch my interest, mostly because they have to do with some movie or TV series I don’t watch, but they do have a few trivia quizzes with attention-catching headlines, “No one gets this without cheating,” or, “You have to have an IQ over 150 to pass this!”

Okay, I’ll bite. It is usually quite fun. (I’ve been known to laugh at the results.)

I’ve taken quizzes on history, vocabulary, grammar, and even medical knowledge (just for fun).

I, of course, aced the vocabulary and grammar quizzes, but I took them to see what the quiz would say about my performance. Generally speaking, they insist I must have a Ph.D. in the subject. College drop-out here.

But that isn’t even as funny as the one I took which insisted I would have to be an RN to pass. Really? It was so easy; I didn’t have to dig into my long-ago memory of quizzing my stepmom for her RN exams. Every single question on there I either learned from shows like Emergency and MASH or just listening to my stepmom. There was nothing tricky or involved, it was just trivia. I aced it, and the quiz the makers decided I must be a doctor. Hardly.

Another fun one for me is history quizzes or American history quizzes.

For those of you that don’t know, my husband was a history buff. After so many years of living with him, I picked up on a few things. Again, they were pure trivia and multiple choice, so not hard at all, especially when most of the time I could eliminate two of the three choices because those two events happened in my lifetime! My opinion is, that you’d have to be randomly picking any answer without reading to flunk this quiz.

But then, I can say the same for those vocabulary ones. You only have three to four choices, and believe me, it was easy to eliminate all but one of the few I wasn’t sure of.

And in everyone, I’m supposedly a master of the English language and love to read the dictionary. Folks, the lexicologist in my life would be the big sister Konnie and I often refer to as Dictionary. I never cracked a dictionary open until I was in eighth grade, and I only did that to prove I was right, and never to do my vocabulary classwork. Never needed it.

But the really laughable one which claimed you had to have an IQ over 150 to pass. Really? Then make the quiz harder. My IQ isn’t that high (I know, I’ve been tested) and I aced your simple trivia quiz.

But then I’ve gotten some interesting outcomes on the personality or heritage quizzes, like the one which insisted that I must be of Asian decent because of my focus on family. Family comes first with some Christian faiths; you know like Catholics and well, our Church. You don’t have to be Asian to value family.

I took one quiz that said, “no one born in the US can answer these tough questions.” Okay, that one would be considered tough by anyone who didn’t live for decades with a historian and hadn’t studied pre-law in college. That isn’t me though.

For your information, the quiz is the one people have to take to become naturized citizens. And honestly, there are many native citizens who don’t know, or ignore, some of this stuff, but, again, I’m not one of them!

Though the one I took the other day was all about common phrases from other countries. Out of curiosity, I took it.

Fun quiz. Most of these common phrases were either Latin or a language based on Latin. Folks, I took French in college. Not fluent but I can at least introduce myself in the language and ask if they speak English. I also took a course on studying the root, or history, of words. Which means learning some Latin. Ergo, any language based on Latin I can usually figure out.

Of the few that didn’t fall into that category was one from Japan, which I learned eons ago from a fellow lady at church whose family had just returned to the states after years of her husband being stationed in Japan.

The other one has been used in at least one movie, enough so I’ve heard it in that movie’s ads. And, according to the quiz makers, I must be multilingual. LOL!

A semester each of sign language and studying the roots of words, plus two semesters of French, all decades ago make me fluent in only my Native tongue, period.

Happy writing everyone!

Of Blackholes and Interrupted Habits by Konnie Enos

I am not one of those people that panics when major issues prop up, like the stove catching on fire. However, when seemingly little things happen, I will go into a complete meltdown. One of the little things is being unable to locate my brush.

Why is this?

Probably because I brush my hair every single day. Part of this is because I can feel the tangles and it irritates me. The rest is just habit. I’ve brushed my hair every day for, well, for as long as I can remember.

Why am I thinking about this?

Last Friday night I went to brush my hair as usual, but I could not see my brush.

I started searching for it.

My overbed table has slowly become full of stuff to the point there isn’t even any room for my laptop, which is the entire reason I bought the table, but that’s not the point here. I move everything around trying to see my brush, but it doesn’t appear.

Next, I empty my purse, well at least the pocket my brush would fit in. It’s not there either. I start looking through my nightstand. I even check my garbage can. (You do not know how often things fall into it that I’m not throwing away.)

No luck. And now I’m panicking.

I ask Jerry to help even knowing that he’s useless at such things. The man just glances at all the places I’ve already looked and complains about having to get down on the floor to look under our bed.

Well obviously, a child would be more helpful but it’s well after 10 p.m. at this point so I’m limited on who I can ask. Fortunately, Royce was awake. Unfortunately, he searched in the same areas as Jerry did. I know I’d be better off with Melinda searching but she’s fast asleep.

This also leads me to my other issue. There isn’t another brush in the house for me to borrow. Even if Melinda was awake, she doesn’t have a brush. She has a wide-toothed comb she uses.

So now I’m all but to the point of tears and very upset because I cannot brush my hair before going to bed. I know need to get the tangles out before I attempt to go to sleep, or I won’t be able to sleep. I’ll find myself finger combing my hair half the night and pulling a bunch of it out.

Yes, I have done this before.

At this point, I’m tired and just want to sleep, but the tangles are already starting to irritate me, and my only option is a rattail comb I have. I only use the rattail to help remove hair from my brush. This night I attempt to comb my hair to get the tangles out.

Now, my issue with combs has always been their shortcomings. The most important one being they cannot get through all the layers of my hair. This requires me to comb it in small sections. The problem with this is I’d get one section combed out, but it would re-tangle the minute I started working on another section.

So, instead of a few good strokes with my brush and being done with it, I spent about half an hour, in tears because I was tired and frustrated, trying to get the snarls out and my hair off my neck so I could be comfortable enough to sleep.

I will admit it worked, but a comb is only a temporary solution. The next day, when Melinda was available, I told her about my missing brush. But she was no more able to locate it than anyone else had been.

My only remaining solution was getting a new brush because while a comb could do the job, it couldn’t do it as efficiently as a brush. For one thing, a brush can get through all the layers in one stroke, plus they can do larger sections. On top of that, they are much better at getting all my hair contained in a ponytail, so it isn’t on my neck.

Both Melinda and Royce told me that as soon as I got a replacement, my old one would show up. Of course, everyone knows if you replace something you’ve misplaced, it’ll show back up.

I got a new brush on Monday.

Yeah! I can brush my hair again.

As to the whereabouts of my old brush? We are assuming it found the black hole, which may well be under my bed. I am not eager to take my bed apart so I can clean up all the garbage that ends up under there, just to find a brush I’ve already replaced.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.