Monday: First Post-Op Mayhem & Foolishness

As some of you may or may not know, this past Monday I had surgery. It was a biggie. Three days in the hospital, took out my uterus and one ovary, I have more stitches than a doggone crazy quilt kind of surgery.

*I promise  not to get any more graphically descriptive than that.*

In fact, the surgery was a bit bigger than my surgeon and I had anticipated. We did the whole worst case scenario, if this then this song and dance before I went under the anesthesia. We were kinda sorta planning on having to do an abdominal incision, but figured we could get away with the bikini line type one like they give most cesarean section patients these days... Yeah, no. Everything was so wack-a-doodle it needed to be an up and down incision... oh darn. There I go with the descriptors.

*sorry*

So, that was the mayhem part, okay? The foolishness? Was that until the surgeon and his PA took out the four large grapefruit sized fibroids (only one of which I realized I had) I didn't realize how much pain I was in each and every day.

Pain can creep up on us, ease in millimeter by millimeter, and then before you know it you're acclimating, growing accustomed to never feeling quite as well as you should...

And that?

Is pure foolishness. I'm sore from the surgery, sure. I'm frustrated with the slowness of my steps, all the things I can't do right now... but I am immensely grateful to my surgeon, PA, and the OR staff who cared for me.

Thanks guys, for getting me back on the path to fully optimized health.

I'll be back at it in a jiffy, kicking *character* ass and taking *creating* names. Get ready. Strap yourselves in, babies. As soon as I finish healing up a bit I'm gonna do something I'd almost forgotten how to do. I'm pushing the red button and putting the afterburners on.

Heh.

Tuesday Newsday

I have a lot of news to share today, so let's get right to it, shall we?

Okay, first of all, I got the rights back to all my stories from Silver Publishing. What this means is that all those stories are currently seeking new homes. Which is fine, because they can definitely find them. I don't want any of you to worry though, if you were planning on buying one of the stories or wanted to get the next in the series... the great news, now that I have the rights back, is that I'll be continuing the Akanti series asap, as well as the series I'm co-writing with Vicktor Alexander, The Tonawanda Faery Tales. Sooooo, win/win.

I'm up to my ears in writing and editing this week, so my posts will be brief. Don't worry. I'm hard at work creating some delicious stories for you.

Next week I'm having fairly major surgery, so I may not be around on the interwebs for a week or three. We'll see how I feel. :)

Okay, that's it for now. My lovely and talented minion, Tracy, will keep you posted when I can't.

Muah!
Have a super day, babies.

Autism Blog Hop: Ch-ch-ch-changes

Topic: Difficulties with transition can lead to social isolation, mental health problems & continued dependence on parents Parents of young people with autism have described transition to adulthood like falling off a cliff-edge.

Point of interest... there is a prize/giveaway here. Just comment in the comments section about how this may or may not apply to your life, and if you know someone with autism. Or think you might. At the end of the month I'll pick one lucky winner to receive their choice of one book from my backlist, and another to receive a ten dollar gift card to either Amazon, or ARe.

Well. Imagine it like this. You go to help out a friend. She’s gotten mandated at work and won’t be home in time to get her kids ready for the bus. Not a big deal as you share a house. But one of her kids, a sweet little guy whom you secretly like best, freaks out when you try to help him put his tennis shoes on. Not a tantrum, there’s no I wanna get my way bull. No. His beautiful brown eyes are straining wide open, his breaths coming in gasps. He’s rocking in place and won’t answer when you try to ask what’s wrong. His twin is dressed, shoes on, waiting eagerly at the door for the big yellow bus to take him away to school.

Not this little guy. He’s keening low in his throat, and when you touch his arm to pat him the way that always soothes your daughter, he sort of shrieks and crawls into an impossibly small space under the end table.

What happened?

You offered him the right shoe first. They were the Nike’s and he only wears the Converse to school. You didn’t sing the cleanup song while you were putting the breakfast dishes in the sink, or maybe it’s just that he’s never practiced doing these things with you instead of his mom. He’s got ASD *autism spectrum disorder*, and you’ve just knocked him down the emotional equivalent of a steep flight of stairs.

Transition is hard for everyone on some levels, but for kids and adults with autism it can be debilitating. We all get that it would be wrong to ask a blind person to traverse a city block by themselves without preparing them first… well, imagine that the autistic person is blind too, but instead of being physically blind they suffer from a very specific type of emotional blindness. Asking them to make changes, big or small without adequate preparation—and the amount and type required will differ from person to person—is akin to tossing a blind person who has never been taught to use a guide dog or a cane out of your car at a random intersection in a foreign city and expecting them to be fine. The very thought is incomprehensible. It should be just as incomprehensible to fail to give those who deal daily with the challenges of ASD adequate preparation for changes.

You may work with, teach, go to school with, or even be the parent of someone with ASD. Educating yourself about ways to make your interactions easier for the person with ASD will benefit you both in the short and long term. Especially important for teachers, parents, and mentors is making sure you give yourself and your ASD child time enough to make the transition to adulthood as seamlessly as possible.

Here are some resources you can utilize to educate yourself and get started on your journey to successfully navigating the challenges you face:

http://www.autism.org.uk/living-with-autism/understanding-behaviour/change-preparing-a-person-with-an-autism-spectrum-disorder-for-change.aspx


http://www.autismconsortium.org/families/transitioning-to-adulthood

For a wealth of related blogs on Autism go to the website of the incomparable Rj Scott!

AUTISM AWARENESS BLOG HOP: hosted by Rj Scott

Fabulous Friday

Songs & videos that make me happy:

The Friendship Song by Carbon Leaf from the soundtrack for Curious George 2: Follow That Monkey (actually, kind of a cute movie & chock full of CL songs).

Mairi's Wedding by the High Kings -- not my favorite version of the song; I have a higher-energy version I like better, but still, a good song & the voices of these guys make up for it.

 Tell Me Ma by Gaelic Storm

ALB is a lovely lovely lady with some great stuff to say!

What makes you happy today?

The Arm-Chair Traveler

I’ve been busy trying to organize my documents and whatnot on my laptop here lately, and I’ve been rediscovering things I had forgotten – among them, the very first thing I ever did for Cherie. She was writing a story and needed to know how a person would go about getting from point A to point B in Rome, and what they would see along the way, how long it would take…that kind of thing.

But it set me thinking about bucket lists. How many of us have put travel, whether to a truly exotic location, or simply to places of interest in our home countries, on ours?

I know there are a TON of places I’d love to visit – natural wonders like the Grand Canyon or Hawaii or the Alps, the great art of the world, places where people I admire lived or wrote  or traveled – but the truth is I don’t want to actually GO to those places. I would have to deal with the confinement of travel (I’ve done East Coast to West Coast on a plane, pregnant, with a toddler and a preschooler, and then the reverse by car with 3 kids under 10, my husband, 2 cats, a large dog, and a U-Haul. UGH.) and I really really hate the idea of the seething masses of complete strangers I would have to put up with. I’ve read about the lines to get into some of the major art museums, thanks but no thanks.

And that’s the glory of the internet, isn’t it? We can see all those things we long to see, perhaps at one (or more) step of removal, but close enough for most of us. Many of us might manage to afford to actually make ONE of the trips we long to make (hubby and I want to go to England, mostly because there’s a tank museum), but all of them? I suppose that’s rather like reaching for the stars.

Isn’t there a saying about that? Something about reaching for the stars, but aiming for the moon? That seems apt, somehow.

Anyway, along with sorting through random bits and pieces on my computer, I’ve also been sorting through my ebooks (I suspect this will take For.Ev.Er.) and slowly trying to read them all & make teeny little reviews on Calibre (isn’t Calibre awesome? That they have a place you can do that, I mean, even besides the rating thing, which I don’t really use that much, but I’m trying to). And here lately, I seem to be accidentally reading a lot of travelers or expats or a combination of the two. It’s kind of making me want to go somewhere, but at the same time, many of the stories are all adventuresome, which, honestly? Kids and pets and hubby are MORE than enough adventure for me, along with the occasional trip to meet a friend for lunch somewhere, so that part is less than appealing.

What things are on your bucket list? And do you actually WANT to do all those things, deep in darkest recesses of your heart, or are they more a “reaching for the stars” kind of thing? What have you read that sparked a desire to explore a specific place, or fed that desire, or satiated it? Is it enough to read and maybe explore by computer, or do you need the actual physical presence?

Also, will we be seeing you in October in Chicago?