this and that

Arron, hard at coloring, and about to get a hair cut.
Amelia, at some girl-shin-dig, before she got her hair cut

Sunday morning. I actually took yesterday off. two whole days of not working - WOO-HOO! slept most of yesterday, after having worked pretty much straight for a couple of weeks. Just finished a couple of bright work(varnish) refinishing jobs on a 47 foot and a fifty three foot yacht. and then there was the rush coast guard boat fiberglass and gel coat job( about which nothing went right or easily from the word go)

Ah, the joys of self employment, in this the best of all possible worlds.

I've been updating my library thing and music play list this a.m. Intuitive search engines - my butt. I don't need a list of 342, 645 songs that contain 100,000 or so entries of the same song. I want one listing of each and every song by the artist. this is the 21st century...and WHERE'S MY FLYING CAR?! Computers - a blessing and a curse. That for which my linguistically advanced daughter coined the phrase "the perversity of the inanimate".

This afternoon My son and I will go get our hairs cut. Always an adventure. At four, it still takes three people to hold him down and cut his hair, but at least now he's not screaming the whole time(OR DIDN'T THE LAST TIME)

We are still in the evaluation process of the whole Is he high functioning autistic spectrum disordered, and if so(which seems likely) how to best deal with that for him.

a good Autism resource link: http://www.autismspeaks.org/

Tomorrow, My parents will celebrate their fifty-first wedding anniversary back in Kansas. Quite a milestone, which all of us in the family will be thankful for with them, if even at great distance.


more later.......

the coast gaurd boat

I work on boats. Currently I'm deep in the throws of "The Coast Guard wants their boat by when?!" Doing repairs to fiberglass and gel coat on a twenty foot Zodiac owned and operated by the local Coast Guard. Yesterday, Sunday(which I try not to work on) I spent a very frustrating nine hours straight sanding and filling fiberglass and sanding and masking and spraying gel coat on the boat. I am very tired. It's the price I guess for those days when my work doesn't have to be completed by any particular day or time. Even then, fast is an issue.

I'm not good at fast. I used to be fast, but that was literally decades ago. At fifty years of age, I'm just not fast any more, and especially not at the more finesse type aspects of boat repair and maintenance. Our society tends to demand fast. "time is money" NO, Time is Time. Money is money. I long for and hope for a personal future in which fast is not as much of an issue as it is now.

another dad, another story

Reading Blogs about Moms & kids, and Dads and kids. Is it a meme, or just a universal theme? Different lives, in different locales, across the country, around the world(at least the English speaking/writing world - I remain, despite a couple semesters of college Spanish, woefully uni-lingual). What follows is just part of the continuing saga of one dad, one child.

My son, now four, and always small for his age, was recently seen by a very nice, very professional and yet warmly reassuring couple of child development people from the local school district. One a child psychologist, the other a speech pathologist.

After talking with my wife and I and our boy A. for a couple of hours the verdict was in: "Yes our child has speech/language development issues, as well as some social skills issues, that plainly and definitely qualify him the local early development special ed program". This came as a great relief to us. That may seem odd. We have known for some time that he has these issues. It took our state funded child medical providers a couple of years to come to the conclusion that, yes this child has some issues that need to be addressed.

What we somewhat knew, in the backs of our minds, but were less prepared to hear was that he shows a number of "red flag" traits our new specialists relate to high-functioning Autistic Spectrum Disorder.

Our son is very bright, but has problems knowing how to relate or deal with others in social groups. He absolutely will look you in the eye, and has a sense of humor, and initiates warm contact sort of stuff, and, and, and ...doesn't seem at all like what t.v. and movies portray as the severely affected Autistic stereotype.

But,....He does, sometimes, get kind of compulsive obsessive about stuff. He lines up toy cars by type and color. He freaks out if his banana or granola bar gets broken. he's a wizard a jig-saw puzzles, and builds fairly remarkable stuff out of Lego's and tinker toys, he sees spatial relationships and puts together things you never thought would go together in ways that make perfect sense when you see what he's done with them.....he...... he ........Lord...save my child. It will all be OK, but, you know, as a parent we tend to want our children to be all those things that we think will ensure and enable them to deal and survive and thrive out there in the "real" world as they grow up, and later after we're no longer able to shelter and take care of them. Hearing the A word in relation to one's small child is kind of like going to the doctor and hearing the C word. Ultimately deal able with (usually) but causing that momentary catch in the chest - the shift into crisis/survival/protection mode-which of course will give way to more reasonable, more calm well considered thought patterns, realizing it's not quite the end of the world we first felt down deep that it might be.

He is excited about going to school tomorow. The little yellow school bus will pick him up at the sitter's a couple of mornings a week, to a local elementary school, for his early special ed classes/sessions and drop him back off after. After this school year they will re-evaluate him to see where he's at then. Ginny has taken him to the school and introduced him to whoever was around, shown him the place and space, and generally let him getcomfortable with it. It will be OK.

Mathematic co-inky-dinks

1977, somewhere just outside of Coffeyville, Kansas, Driving down a dirt road in a 1969 Volkswagon beatle. It was February 22nd(2/22) I watched the odometer roll over 222 miles. I looked at my watch - the time was 2:22.

2008, somewhere in Portland, Oregon, driving down a street in a 2000 Subaru Outback. the display on my stereo said the station was 92.5. I watched the trip meter come up to 92.5 miles. the clock on my dash said 9:25.

Hmmmmmmm...........

Smokey Passed On(the death of our house cat)

Our cat, a grey Himalayan named smokey passed away in the wee hours of the night last night. He was a good cat, probably the mellowest, most passive cat in the world. He put up with rowdy toddlers and cranky adults with equal aplomb. My wife, Ginny couldn't sleep and went down and laid on the sofa with Smokey about midnight. About one she came and got me. She said that he kind of coughed about once and went limp. Ginny took him to Dove-Lewis Pet emergency, while I stayed home with our sleeping four year old son. Although his heart was still beating when I put him in the car, I could tell he was probably done. We think his heart was the issue. I've had a lot of pets throughout my life. I'm used to them dieing by now. Still, I will miss him. He was a sweet, if sometimes cat-loony little guy. Now we get to explain to a four year old about pets and death and how it's all o.k., even though he won't think so now. I'm one of those who hope that after we pass we'll meet up with not only human loved ones, but animal loved ones as well. So, Goodbye for now Smokey, and see you on the other side.

The company I keep

I work along the Columbia and Willamette Rivers around Portland, Oregon.

So, the other day I was down at one of the local marinas washing a boat. As I was leaving, the Great Blue Heron that had been hanging around close by all day let me get within about ten feet to take a couple of photos

I was reminded of a quote attributed to the famous burlesque queen Gipsy Rose Lee (back in the 1930's or 40s) - "You will always be known by the company you keep". I sometimes keep company with Great Blue Herons.

Great Blue Herons are smarter than geese. They have to be, they don't reproduce in as great of numbers. In the spring, down on the river, one will often see whole strings of very vulnerable baby geese swimming along in a line behind the parents(much like a river predator's buffet line) There are big fish, ospreys and the occasional eagle around. Many baby geese disappear before they get big enough to fend for themselves. Conversely, I have never seen any baby herons. I know there are some because there are always herons around the river - but you never see the young. They're not out & about being exposed to whatever dangers beset baby geese. That's why I think Heron's are smarter than geese.

More later,

John Ross

Half century & counting

Just had my 5oth birthday recently. Was surprised by a reasonably(for me) large turnout at a truly surprising surprise party. Although I'm not normally one who enjoys such surprises, this was o.k. Better than OK, it was a good day all around. As you might suspect, there has been much stock taking of my life around and since that day. I'm now 50. I don't own a house. I have no medical insurance. I have virtually no retirement setup. It's o.k. I will continue to strive for some degree of financial success a/o security, while bearing in mind that such things are, at best, tenuous things. It's more important to me to strive for spiritual, emotional and material balance in my life. In most things, I find balance to be the key. I know this to be true, as much as I know anything to be true. That doesn't make the achievement of balance any simpler or easier a thing to accomplish.

My life is o.k. I have family who love me and who are not intolerably crazy(most of the time). I have reasonably OK work to do that I believe I do reasonably well. I have sufficient, if not the desired housing. I have my own car to go where/when I want or need. I live in a beautiful city(as cities go) in a beautiful part of the country(pacific north west). I am in generally good health(for my age and otherwise). My kids are all in good health, as are their kids.

Rambling and babbling here, but it's how I process. or is it progress?

Politicians continue to vie and lie(I trust none of them), gas prices, groceries and most other necessities continue to rise, entropy increases, and yet, life goes on and life is basically good. Balance will be achieved, come, as they say, Hell or High Water.

Love this life, and Onward, through the fog.

more later.