bountifulplate

I've mentioned briefly in a previous post that I was bullied when I was in high school.  I graduated over 30 years ago, so I've had time to sit back and reflect about those times.  There is always something in the news about bullying.  It think it's a 1000 times worse now, because of the social media.  Bullying can take the forms of physical and verbal, both of which I think are equally terrible.  Two bullying  incidents in particular stand out the most in my mind from my high school days.  I remember sitting in the bleachers during gym.  One of the girls that was out on the gym floor thought I was laughing at her.  No matter how much I told her I hadn't been laughing at her, she started saying stuff like, "I'm going to beat you up later" and other things along those lines.  Some other girls observed what was going on and they said, "don't worry about her, we'll take care of it for you."  I didn't even know those other girls, but th...

One of my first thoughts when I woke up this morning was that it  is exactly two months until Christmas and about a month until Thanksgiving.   It seems that the holiday season keeps getting earlier and earlier each year.  I understand that stores make a lot of their profit during that particular time of the year, but seeing a fully lit Christmas tree in one of the stores that I frequent  in the middle of September seemed a bit much.  I couldn't believe  the store had several aisles of Christmas merchandise, trees, lights and other items already out.  Back to school shopping had barely finished!!   A few years ago I remember I went to a store looking for a few items to help supplement my daughter's Halloween costume.  I was in the store on Halloween (surprisingly those aisles of the store were almost empty).  The employees were actually taking apart the displays! I felt like saying, "excuse me, but could you wait until at least the next ...

When my beloved mother-in-law (who I affectionately called "Momma")  passed in January we had to clean out her room at the assisted living facility where she had lived for about 4 years.  My mother-in-law was always a stylish woman, she wore perfume and lipstick all the way up to the few days before she passed.  She had  tons of clothes in her closet.  When we moved her here from Cleveland, I started washing her clothes for her about once a week.  Whenever I would go over to visit her,  she always made a HUGE production out of me washing her clothes.  The caregivers and I had worked out a system so I knew which clothes were dirty and which were clean.  They would leave the buttons or snaps undone on the clothes hanging on their hangers in the closet,  so I could pull them right out of the closet and toss them into a bag to take home and wash.  There would also be a few articles of clothing in the dirty clothes basket too, but all of...

Having a child with Autism and ADHD has been quite an interesting journey so far.  As I've mentioned before,  my little man was diagnosed with Autism at about  2 1/2 and then diagnosed with ADHD at about age 3.  Kind of a double "whammy!"  Before he talked, which was about age 3, he made very little eye contact and very much preferred his own company.  A specific incident stands out  and will probably be forever etched in my mind.  I have tried very hard to involve my son in a lot of my baking and cooking. It has taught him how to count among other skills.   One of his favorite things he likes to do (and still does)  is to  pull up a chair from the kitchen table and put it against the counter so he can watch me more closely.  On this particular day which was before he was talking, I was unpacking our dishwasher.  I had turned around to put something in the sink or to put something away, my back was turned to him for litera...

I had to leave my own family this week  to help my mom recover from some surgery.  This is the third time this year that I have had to leave the hubby in charge of running the household in my absence.  I am so detailed oriented that I spent  almost 2 hours typing up a single spaced 2-page  "itinerary" for him to follow before I left.  When I was typing it up before I left he was like, "we don't need that, we'll be fine!"   I have an incredible support system of friends that help take care of my husband and kids when I'm gone and make it possible for me to be able to leave.  One of my friends is making my family a meal to enjoy, another mom said, "I've got your back."  Other friends have sent e-mails, letting me know that they are thinking of me.  I've always been this person that when people have offered to help  I would always say, "no, that's okay, I have it covered."  As I've reached the ripe old age of 48, I've...

I am certainly not what you would call a "frequent flyer."   I have been a passenger on planes, ships and trains, but my preferred mode of transportation is definitely a car.  This year I have been on  a plane twice so far.   I always find it kind of interesting to "people watch" in an airport.  You see just about  one of everything.  Families, businessmen, businesswomen, kids, babies, senior citizens, teens, entire sports teams, etc.  Traveling by plane always seems to take such a long time, especially if you are crossing over time zones or have layovers.  Earlier this year I was flying back from the East Coast by myself and ended up at a busy Midwest airport.  I was there waiting to catch the last leg of my flight back home and the airline decided to cancel my flight completely because the weather was really bad.  After that happened , I had to wait in a huge line to get a voucher  to use towards the cost of a hotel...

Finding just the right "mom" purse has been a challenge for me for years.  Some were too small, some too big, but none were just the right size.   I kind of sound a lot like Goldilocks!!   Guys are lucky, they can just carry around their wallets in their back pockets.  When you're a new mom pretty much everything goes into the diaper bag.  As your kids get a little older, they don't require so many items, but do require snacks, etc.  So, you can get away with  them carrying a small backpack for their stuff, but there again you still need a purse.  When they get even older they still require things, "hey mom,  got a tissue in your purse?",  or "how about something to eat?"  Given that my  kids are now 15 and 7, I can't really carry around a diaper bag anymore and the only time my kids cart around backpacks on a regular basis  are for school.   So, I went on the hunt for a purse, still not knowing what exact size would ...

When I met my hubby almost 21 years ago, he brought a very special "gift" to our relationship, my stepson.  I met him for the first time when he was right around 7 years old (the age my little man is now).  I knew that he and I would get along well when we both thought something was absolutely hilarious at the zoo during one of our very first outings together. He was in our wedding when I married his father.  I hear more negative things said about stepchildren than positive and that kind of  bugs me!  A relationship of that type takes time, communication, patience and lots of love.  When he was younger,  he and I would play endless board games together.  I'm the one who taught him how to ride his bike. Now that he has gotten older,  the topics of conversation are different, but one thing I have always told him is that I support him 100% in anything that he does.  I make sure that I always have his "back."   I think I can count on on...

Since both of my kids have been trick or treating, I have been the one that stays home and hands out the candy, while the hubby takes them out.  Since my daughter is now 15,  I am left wondering,  how old is too "old" to trick or treat?  I get such a kick out of the kids that come to our door - some can barely talk and get the words out and some older ones  just stick their hand out without even saying those magic words, "trick or treat."  My feeling is,  if they're old enough to be making the effort, they deserve at least one piece of candy.  I think the funniest  costume(s) I saw were a few years ago  when  a bunch of teens jumped out of our bushes with a flash camera aimed at me and told me they were the "paparazzi."  I felt like I was a "star!"  Pretty original idea!!  I'm now on the hunt for a costume for my 7 year old.  With the different sensory issues he has, it has been challenging since he doesn't reall...

I grew up with a dog, hamsters and gerbils, so I love animals just as much as anybody, but nobody told me when we moved into our house that it would become the neighborhood "zoo."  When we first moved in, we had squirrels that sounded like they were running laps around our family room rafters.  Once we managed to get them to "move out" then one day when we had our garage door open a bat decided to fly in.  My husband was chasing him/her around our house with a shoe until it flew out our front door.  Then, one day when my daughter was much younger, she was like, "mom, come down here we have snakes."  Sure enough, there were two snakes slithering around on the basement floor.  Since then, we have had field mice, a  baby frog, and most recently a family of raccoons that decided our fireplace was their new home.  Living in our front bushes we have a nest with a family of birds and in the back of our house we have a few woodpeckers having a contest to ...