PonderEthereal

I wake up in the morning, do my morning routine and leave for work. At the end of my block, my phone tells me that it’s turning on bluetooth and gps for me. And it does.

I get within a half mile of work in the morning and my phone tells me to have a great day and that it’s turning down the ringer and turning off gps. But if I go to the office off-hours, it doesn’t bother because there is no one else there that the ringer could bother. I like it that way.

If I go to court, my phone tells me it’s going into silent mode, and it does.

When I open maps or navigation, my gps turns on and when I close them, my gps turns off. GPS is a battery hog so that works out well.

When I come home, my phone tells me that it’s turning all…

When lightning rends the daytime sky and thunder fills the air. That’s where magick goes.

I wrote before about using paypal and usps in conjunction with selling on etsy. However, I also use paypal for my day to day business transactions too, which are mostly services. Today, I needed to run reports on paypal for a profit and loss statement and I had the information I needed so quickly and painlessly that I felt the need to sing paypal’s praises once again.

I run a small, service oriented business. I teach classes, offer alternative healing services and write. Small businesses take lots of effort and a small business owner wears lots of hats, including accountant. I’m not an accountant. So, in an effort to achieve effortless financial management, I’ve been through three banks, Wamu, Chase and Navy Federal, all which failed miserably and I used two banks with a former business, neither of which were all that great either. And through it all, paypal stood quietly by functioning effortlessly,…

This morning, I woke the boy up and then went back into my room to finish getting ready, just like most mornings. While I’m busy convincing myself that it’s worth it to keep my eyes open, he usually gets up, puts some clothes on, does some sort of magic that makes it look like he’s always been this awake, brushes his teeth, takes his vitamins (mostly) and waits impatiently by the door for me to finish whatever I’ve forgotten at the last minute before he finally grabs my keys and goes to the car to wait.

This morning, however, was different. I rolled my eyes at myself in the mirror, flipped the light off and left my bedroom. I meandered towards the kitchen in that way I have in the morning where any given stimulus between the bedroom and the kitchen could convince me to turn tail and RUN back…

Ethan : Somebody told me that you have a boyfriend who looks like a girlfriend…
Me : …that I had in February of last year.
Ethan : *amazed look* Morning, mom.
Me : Morning, babe.
——————–
Ethan : You left your cup out!
Me : Mine was in my bedroom.
Ethan : That’s no fair - there is nowhere I can leave mine out.
Me : In the sink.
Ethan: But that’s impossible!
—————————
Ethan: The depressed kids are the popular ones.
Me: Oh?
Ethan : Yeah… have you ever seen the kids with the hood pulled down and their hands in their pockets?
Me : Yeah..
Ethan : Those are the cool ones.
(Hm.)
———————
Me : They say when someone is going to die, their life flashes before their eyes.
Ethan : Well that doesnt make sense. Because if you’re 10 and your life flashes before your eyes, it would take 10 more years and you’d be 20 before you died.

…

Being a single parent means that all of the job stuff, all of the household stuff and all of the parenting stuff gets done by one person - me. And sure, kids are great for slave labor around the house but I can only beat him so much before he cries uncle - and the tub STILL isn’t really “clean”. And were I to delegate meal planning or cooking, we’d have Ramen every night with mac and cheese once in a while for good measure. And maybe some fruit loops.

I’m not a very good cook. I mean.. I AM when I try - but for me, it’s SO MUCH EFFORT and time. It’s not something I enjoy. When I am very organized, I use my gtd friendly meal planning system :
1) I have a list of all of the meals that my family likes. If we try something new…

We’ve had some really amazing progress in the last six months. And now, there are new developments again! Ethan has always been a really loving kid. But true to aspie form, aside from following scripts, he’s never been a huge fan of physical affection

He always liked to cuddle… but without hands. So, when he cuddled, he didn’t hug or put his arms around the person and often didn’t like to be actually touched with hands while cuddling (no stroking his arm or anything). You essentially became the human pillow.

Outside of a few select instances - like roughhousing, he never really ENJOYED physical touch though. When we had to hold hands to cross a street, we’d cross the street, and he’d pull away immediately. It was necessity, not desire. He’s never really liked impromptu hugging and kissing. He’d tolerate it (a lot of aspie kids won’t - I hated…

Once upon a time, I kept a nice neat folder (or 5) with product documentation and warranty receipts in it. The booklet for each purchase we made that required documentation or had a warranty was stashed in the folder. Once every couple of years, I’d go through it and pull out anything we didn’t have or didn’t need anymore.

These days though, most manufacturers offer the product documentation online now. If you’re reading ‘getting things done’ tips on the internet, you are probably pretty computer based so it makes sense to go with the electronic version for sanity’s sake.

• Create a folder on your computer for user manuals or product documentation. Mine is : \My Documents\household\products
• When you make a purchase that would have required a user manual or documentation, go to the website (that day, before you forget) and download the manual.
• Rename the manual file to the name of the item…

I sipped my coffee. Ethan whirled into the room, giggling, followed in seconds by a playful dog and out the other side they whirled again.

It was still drizzling outside. Every now and then the wind would whip through the tree tops and the chimes outside the window would sound. I shivered and wrapped my hands closer around the hot mug, glancing at the stove. The muffins were almost done. My stomach growled in response.

And then I saw her. I wasn’t quite sure what I saw at first. I reached forward across the table, with my sweater pulled over my hand and wiped at the fog on the window. Yes… there she was. Dark hair, mussed, draped in shabby clothing that looked gray with dust. But despite the dust or the drizzle outside, she held herself as thought she were taking a stroll in the sunshine down m tree lined street.…