bountifulplate

I was born in Washington, DC and grew up in Maryland.  I always thought that I would live on the East Coast. The thought never crossed my mind that I would live anywhere else until the hubby accepted a job offer in the Midwest. I remember very distinctly how the job was offered.  My daughter and I had just gotten back from the local  K-Mart and there was a message on the answering machine.  The message said, "you have been offered a job and have 24 hours to make your decision."  My daughter who was 5 at the time started crying saying, "I don't want to move!"  I called the hubby at work and he didn't believe me.  The job  was too good to pass up, so he decided to accept the offer.   Things went into overdrive once we decided to move.  We had to put our house on the market and look for a new house.  My husband and I hopped on a plane and flew out to look for a house the weekend of Veterans Day 2001.  We went around with a re...

A few weeks ago my daughter got a pamphlet in the mail for a summer camp at an Ivy League college.  It was almost $5,400 for a 3-week camp.  Good grief!  If it costs that much for a camp how much would it cost to send her there???  The hubby and I helped my stepson through undergraduate and graduate school, so we have some idea how much it costs to send a kid to college.  My daughter will be going into her junior year of high school in the Fall of 2012.  She is in the process now of picking her classes.  I have heard from more than one person that the junior year is the hardest year of high school.   Decisions, decisions.  She has been getting e-mails from colleges for months wanting her to sign up for tours.  Wasn't it just yesterday I was changing her diapers??   I was reading an article in the Wall Street Journal recently that listed the five most expensive colleges in the United States.  The most expensive one was over $59,...

It has been about two months since I found out I have a heart condition. I have spent that time reflecting on what that means.  What I realized is that a few things in my life needed to be changed. One of the major changes I have made is restricting my level of sodium.  I really don't put salt on my food, I'm more of a pepper gal.  I wasn't fully aware of how much sodium I ate on a regular basis. I would look at the sides of the packages or cans of food I was eating, but not really paying too much attention to the numbers.  So many of my favorite foods have added sodium, like canned clam chowder.  It has almost 900 milligrams!! Yikes - my cardiologist has put me on a low salt diet where my recommended level for an entire day is 2400 milligrams!! Another major change I have made is that I can't continue to worry about everyone and everything at the same time.  Easy to say, but hard to do!!  My grandmother who lived to the ripe old age of 101...

I conducted a little experiment over the holidays. My daughter and I were at a ballet performance and were sitting at the very end of a row.  For people to get to their seats, they had to go past us.  I was silently counting in my head how many people said "excuse me" to my daughter or I as they made their way in and out of their seats.  Let's just say I could count on one hand. I wonder sometimes if being polite are manners some people need to relearn.  One thing I have taught my kids from a very young age is to say please and thank you.  I don't have too many pet peeves, but one of them is when I hold the door open for someone and they kind of blow past me without a nod of the head, a smile or a thank you!  I'm so tempted to say, "you're welcome!" and at times I have. I don't hold open doors because I'm requiring a thank you, but it would be nice to at least be acknowledged.  At my local library a few months ago, I held the doo...

For close to a year after my son's Autism diagnosis,  I would use the fact that he had Autism as an "excuse" for his behavior.  Whenever I would be out in public, if he acted up, I would say, "oh, it's because he has Autism."  I felt like I had to tell every person I met whether they wanted to hear it or not.  I came to the conclusion after that year, that the best thing I could do for my son (and everyone else) was to set limits and get him into some kind of routine.  I think all kids crave routine, but kids with Autism especially like their routines!!  They like things that are predictable such as riding the bus every day to school, eating the same kinds of foods, going to bed at the same time every night (a big one for my son!!)  and reading a favorite book, just to name a few.  My son used to have a really hard time transitioning from one activity to another.  Between the great teachers he has had at school and us working with him, he has...

I am a "trash" picker and proud of it.  How does that saying go?  What is one man's trash is another man's treasure?  I'd like to change that to, what is one woman's trash is another woman's treasure.  I am astounded at the amount of usable stuff people put out to be picked up on trash day in my neighborhood.  You would not believe what I have "picked" over the years.  I love plants.  I rescued a plant that somebody was throwing away and it has sat in the corner of our living room for probably close to 5 years.  It is taller than my son now.  I have found Little Tyke toys that I have cleaned up and either donated to my son's class at school or given to Volunteers of America or other charities.  I took a journey into my daughter's closet over the holidays and found clothes she had either outgrown or didn't want.  I found about 100 hangers kicking around in there.  No wonder she couldn't fit any more clothes in her closet!  ...

I am a maker of "lists."  I make grocery lists, lists of books I want to get from the library, a list of ingredients for a favorite recipe (my lists go on and on).   I like that feeling of being able to check things off I've done.  I always seem to have at least one "to-do" list going at all times.  Two of the things that have been at the top of that list for a while were setting up a dentist appointment for my son and making an eye appointment for myself.  Both were long overdue.  We have attempted to take my son to our dentist that the rest of us use every six months since he started getting teeth.  They have never been able to get inside that mouth of his for longer than about 30 seconds.  The first "special needs"  dentist I tried a while back didn't work out too well.  I have an appointment for him coming up with another "special needs" dentist that two different friends of mine have recommended. I have great hopes that he will do b...

Sometimes I feel like I'm standing still and the latest technology is passing me by.  I am starting to feel a bit more confident texting, but I still prefer e-mail or Facebook as my electronic form of communicating.  When my daughter was about 2, she started using the computer.  Her little brother has followed in her footsteps. He can turn on our laptop computer, put in our password and start using it.  He can maneuver around the keyboard and knows the website addresses of his favorite websites - he's 7!! I can remember when I was growing up our family saving up for a computer I think called the, "Commodore 64."  Does anybody out there remember that one??  After some research, we decided to get an iPad 2 as a family gift to ourselves for Christmas.  My daughter had that thing up and running within about 10 minutes, it took me several minutes just to figure out how to turn it on!  Just like texting, my daughter was offering me  "lessons" on ho...