Special Ed gets on the short bus!

yesterday was MonkeyBeef's third birthday. he got a blue's clues cake, a blue's clues toy mailbox with some home-made laminated blue's clues letters, some fat blue's clues crayons... and a blue's clues backpack.

because today, the boy is officially old enough for special ed preschool, courtesy of the taxpayers of the great state of iowa. he's made decent progress in his weekly language therapy with a speech pathologist at the university hospital - about 5-6 months worth of progress in the last 4 months. not awesome, but good enough, i think... we've spent the 9 months since he got his tubes placed wondering if the deafness was all that was wrong with him or not. some days, it seemed like there was something else going on; other days, there were sudden esplosions of progress. over christmas, for example, he was suddenly speaking in near-sentences, like "turn key open door please!" (referring to the sun porch where some of his favorite toys are stored) and "don't throw baby!" (referring to his baby cousin, whom it seems he'd really like to throw, at least when he's occupying my lap.)

at this point, we've pretty much decided that his language skills - which now stand at the skills expected for a child of one year and nine months of age - are the result of 1) catching up after not being able to hear from about 9 months of age to about 27 months of age, 2) missing a critical window of learning how important it is to use language to get shit done; he instead developed other, nonverbal strategies that he now has to unlearn and replace, and 3) the fact that he's an incredibly stubborn butthead who doesn't give a flying fuck at a rolling donut about your goddamned expectations, thank you very much.

so. today was his first day of school! he got into an absolutely awesome special-ed classroom that has 2 teachers that specialize in speech and language difficulties, a max of 7 students (currently just 4 students,) it meets 5 days a week from 8:30 to 11:45, AND is the only special ed classroom in a really nice community daycre center, so for two hours of his 3-hour school-day, each of the 3-year-old special-ed kids gets paired up with a normal 4-year-old "buddy" to talk and play with. awesome, right?

the unfortunate part of all this is that his three older brothers also start school at 8:30. my choices are a) drive MB to school while his brothers walk to school alone, or b) continue to walk his brothers to school, and have MB ride the special-ed bus. if my 4th-grader just had one 1st-grader to walk to school, i'd let them do it. but two? uphill, two blocks, in the snow? some days, i could just about throttle them for screwing around and dragging their feet. and i've watched other big/little sibling pairs walking to and from school... and it's not always pretty. the little girl who dragged her feet - so her big brother dragged her by the scarf... the 5th grade boy who, charged with walking his 1st-grade brother and 3rd-grade sister home, managed to piss them both off so badly that his sister ran back inside the building, wriggling out of her backpack and slamming the door in his face as he failed to tackle her; and as he ran in after her, the youngest brother watched for a moment, then shrugged and walked home by himself after they failed to return after five minutes... the 4th grader who forget his brother in kindergarten and had to turn around and go back for him 20 minutes later...

it's not that any of them are bad kids... every one of those kids is actually a really GREAT kid: nice, smart, good. but. they're just kids. and when you put kids in charge of even smaller kids, hilarity ensues! so, yeah. i'm not even going to try that one out, because i have a pretty good idea of where that's headed. a 55-pound EvilGremlin in charge of 90 pounds worth of brothers is not a fair contest. so, the short bus it is!

of course, i can only do so much to explain all of this to a kid who can barely talk. so he knew i was talking about school, and he knew i was talking about a bus, and he knew his new backpack was awesome. so here's the little man with hot fudge sundae pop tart still crusted around his mouth, and no idea of what's about to happen:


and here he is wondering why the hell EvilGremlin is trying to put his backpack on his back (where he can't even SEE it! i mean, come ON!):


and here comes the short bus:


he was cool with walking outside. he was cool with the bus. then he realized i was putting him on the bus and not coming with him, and he was definitely NOT FUCKING COOL.

so. he cried the entire bus ride. but, having cried himself out, he apparently was almost all smiles for the first two hours of school. he laughed. he painted. he played with his new friends. he scooped rice in cups at the "rice table" and thought that was the shit. he was tired by 11 AM, and occasionally started to tear up and suck his thumb... and when he came around the front of the building at 11:45 and saw me, he was laughing and crying at the same time and just about lost his shit, because hey... that was the first that he knew that i wasn't getting rid of his ass permanently!

so! so far so good! he's in school. he may not be that impressed with the fact that he's expected to do it again tomorrow, but it's looking like he'll get the hang of it pretty quickly. also? we're now going on 3 hours of nap and counting. whee!

anatomy of a "Type 2" snow day

"Type 2" = PositiveRoleModel is not only not home during the day, but won't be getting home until after midnight because he's on call. notice there are no pictures to go with this post? yeah.

8:00 AM: make coffee.

11:00 AM: wonder why the hell you haven't gotten a chance to pour a cup of coffee yet.

2:00 PM: wonder why the hell your not-quite-three-year-old would choose today to not nap.

4:00 PM: open your second red bull.

5:00 PM: wonder where the hell your second red bull went, since you're pretty sure you didn't drink much of it.

5:15 PM: wonder why the hell your not-quite-three-year old is naked, soaking wet, and reeks of red bull.

6:00 PM: put in a movie to try to buy yourself enough time to go poop.

6:01 PM: have the following conversation with your 6-year-old shouting up the stairs at you (and your maybe-won't-live-to-see-three-year-old happily parroting him in the background)...

DQ: MOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
MB: MAAAAHHHHMMMuh!
me: what?
DQ: THERE'S SOMETHING WRONG WITH THE SINK!
MB: AIR SUH-SING WONG HIH HUH SEEEEEEENGK!
me: WHAT'S wrong with the sink?
*pause, filled with the sound of lots and lots of running water*
DQ: ummmmmmm...
MB: UMMMMMMMM!!
DQ: HE DID IT!
MB: HEE DIH YIT!
DQ: OW!
MB: OW! NO-NO! DON'T DO DAT FOOWICK!
DQ: OOOOOWWWWWWW!
MB: GODDANNIT FOOWICK NO! HEEHEE!

6:02 PM: arrive downstairs to find your going-the-fuck-to-bed-early toddler standing on a kitchen chair which he has jammed into the guest bathroom, apparently for the sole purpose of hulking out on the faucet, the handle of which he has ripped off and is now using to beat away the brothers who are trying to get him the hell out of the bathroom so they can attempt to stop the water gushing out of the broken bathroom sink.

6:30 PM get your oldest to read bedtime stories to your youngest while you repair the plumbing.

9:00 PM: throw out the pot of coffee.

anatomy of a "Type 1" snow day

we've had a lot of snow days over the last couple of weeks. "Type 1" = PRM took a sick day, so all six of us were home all day. he was actually sick, and spent most of it on the couch or in bed. even at that, his presence made a huge difference. we'll get to the anatomy of a "Type 2" snow day a little later.

8:00 AM: watch blue's clues, or practice your japanese at the kitchen table.


9:00 AM: build forts with the 240 square feet of foam tiles you got for christmas.


9:30 AM: destroy the forts with nerf guns.

10:00 AM: build totally sweet nerf-proof armor.


10:30 AM: build a single, massive fort out of every single square foot of foam tile.

10:45 AM: depending on your age, either attempt to destroy the massive fort, abandon your brother to build the massive fort by himself, or bitch about your brothers not appreciating your efforts to build a massive fort.

11:00 AM: use the rest of the aluminum foil to build totally sweet replicas of kidneys, liver, spleen, intestines, stomach, heart, pancreas, and several made-up internal organs.


11:30 AM: bitch about how there's never enough aluminum foil in the house, no matter how many times you helpfully write it on the shopping list.

12:00 PM: depending on your age, take a nap or help mom shovel the driveway and sidewalks.

1:00 PM: play in the snow.


3:00-6:00 PM: bitch about the mess of japanese books on the kitchen table. grumble about how you always have to clean the kitchen table. sit at the kitchen table and read chemistry books, discuss radioactive elements, surf www.webelements.com to absorb every atomic radius, melting point, and other insignificant property of every element on the periodic table. teach yourself how to use adobe illustrator to make scale models of every element, print them out, cut them out, and build molecular models of every organic compound you know the name of. make up new ones. scientifically defend your case for why they would probably be explosive. pepper your parents with questions about chemistry and nuclear physics. have a drug-free mind-expanding trip courtesy of the heisenberg uncertainty principle. accuse your mother of making up the heisenberg uncertainty principle just to fuck with you. ridicule your mother for being unable to recall what the hell an sp3 orbital looks like.

6 PM: eat dinner.

7 PM: read, practice instruments, take baths, and fight over whose turn it is to take "The Periodic Table" to bed to read tonight.

8 PM: go to bed and pray for more snow tomorrow if you're under 5 feet tall, or clear skies if you're over 5 feet tall.

in a market crowded with shit, this turd stands out as the stinkiest

there are some bad fencing books out there. in fact, most fencing books are bad. however, "modern saber fencing: techniques, tactics, training, research" by zbigniew borysiuk is the biggest piece of shit i have ever had the misfortune of spending $25 on. i've been disappointed by other fencing books; this one, though, left me genuinely pissed. maybe it was just that i got my hopes up for this one, since it was marketed with the following: "It's been over 50 years since the last English-language book devoted to saber... Saber has been revolutionized ... And this book teaches the new saber! The world of saber has changed, and it needs this book!"

no. no, it really doesn't. it actually needs its $25 and 2 hours much, MUCH more than it needs this book.

my disclaimer: i understand that this dude is a really, really, really good saberist. i get that. i'm sure he could beat my ass 5-0 in about 17 seconds. while blindfolded. and standing on his hands, wielding the saber with his foot. his LEFT foot.

that doesn't mean that he wrote a good book. he didn't. he wrote a mostly bad book that is sort of about some random aspects of fencing.

let me break it down:

PAGES 1-47: FLUFF
the author's opinion of his book. the author's opinion of himself. the author's colleague's opinion of the author and the author's eminent qualifications to write the book. the obligatory history sections (summary: "in the beginning, there was a planet. then it got people on it who beat the shit out of each other in various creative ways, like fencing. polish fencers were better at it than all y'all other motherfuckers, by the way. then they got this electronic scoring thing going, and fencing sped up. it was cool.")

PAGES 48-89: THE PART OF THE BOOK THAT IS ACTUALLY WORTH HALF A SQUIRT OF PISS
these slim 42 pages comprise chapter 4: modern saber technique. for just under 18 percent of this otherwise shitty 235 page book, the author at least makes a one-cheeked attempt to offer some instruction in how to fight with a saber. (you know, like the title says.) it's not even close to a comprehensive list of techniques, and the techniques that are presented are treated with varying levels of detail, ranging from "cursory" to "almost adequate." but compared to the rest of the book, it was gold.

PAGES 90-115: THE PART WHERE THE AUTHOR SPENT THE LAST OF HIS ADVANCE ON HEROIN AND REALLY STOPPED GIVING A SHIT ABOUT QUALITY (ie, "the turnaround")
this is chapter 5: modern saber training. as you may have already guessed from the fact that it's all of 26 pages long, it's not exactly a complete training program. nor is it a cohesive training philosophy. it's probably best described as "some random thoughts about a partial list of certain aspects of training, plus a handful of skeleton outlines of sample training sessions."

PAGES 116-235: AN EXTENDED SESSION OF VERBAL MASTURBATION THAT MAKES ME WANT TO PUT DOWN MY SABER AND PUNCH THE AUTHOR IN THE FACE, THROAT AND BALLS UNTIL HE GIVES ME MY $25 BACK, EVEN THOUGH IT'S NOT NICE TO PUNCH PEOPLE ON THE AUTISM SPECTRUM SINCE THEY CAN'T HELP BEING PERPETUALLY UNAWARE OF WHAT DOES AND DOES NOT CONSTITUTE APPROPRIATE SHARING OF INFORMATION.
there's 10 pages on nutrition, followed by a whopping 49 pages devoted entirely to the topic of "how to predict who's going to be a champion fencer before they get any training at all." this section is divided into three chapters for no reason whatsoever. the author got a P-h-fucking-D by doing "scientific" research on this burning issue, and by god, he is going to tell you all the FUCK about it, right down to entire pages of cartoons of people sitting in front of boxes with buttons on them to see how fast they can push them.

and no, i'm not just ridiculing this section because his brilliant research is over my head. i understood every word of it. heck, i've done scientific research, too. the difference between me and this stroker, though, is that if i were to write a book about the results of the research i did on diabetes, and then market that book to diabetics in general, with the title "modern diabetes management: treatments, regimens, patient education, research" ...i would just tell them that exercise was good for them. i might even spend a sentence or three on the study that led to that conclusion. what i wouldn't do is spend 49 everfucking pages on the details of running rats on treadmills, cleaning their poop off the shock grid that kept them motivated to run, performing surgeries to induce diabetes and test nerve and muscle function (complete with a cartoon!), throwing the dead rat in a blender, and testing the poop-scented milkshake to see what the little fucker's fat/muscle ratio was. not that that isn't interesting as all-git-out; it's just that that's not what the fucking book was supposed to be about. i'm just sayin'. but maybe that's just me!

the whole science-as-crystal-ball-of-fencing-championship meme is especially tiresome since - as the author even admits himself - these abstract qualities tested in simplistic laboratory setting have exactly zero-point-shit to do with whether or not a fencer will turn into a champion.

in the final section, again inexplicably divided into more than one chapter, the author basically spends 38 pages throwing science-themed word-salad at a flowchart of stimuli -> identification -> decision-making -> action. perhaps a grand total of a paragraph or two are on the topic of practical applications in fencing training. the rest is verbiage straight out of shitty articles in 5th-rate non-peer-reviewed journals. and while i'm sure the article he had accepted by the Uzbeki Journal of Sports Medicine, Sexual Deviance, Acupuncture and Farm Animal Psychiatry is gripping reading, there's a reason i don't subscribe to that journal, so i don't need the entire article and then some taking up space in this book i just gave that asshole $25 for.

PAGES 236-359: TACTICS
that's just a guess. i don't really know for sure, since my copy of the book stops at page 235.

IN CONCLUSION:
there isn't a single demographic on the face of the goddamned planet for which this book would be even marginally useful. consider:
novice fencers? it's too vague to be of any help.
advanced, competitive fencers? it's too basic.
coaches? the sample lessons are skeletal, and are not presented within the framework of any kind of synthesis or "big picture." a few ideas from the author's "scientific" reasearch may be interesting, but the discussion of the ideas doesn't even approach the realm of application.
creepy eastern european coaches who want to snatch babies from their cribs, test them for optimal fencing characteristics with electrical equipment, and keep the ones that have physiological responses several nanoseconds quicker than their peers so they can pump them full of black-market horse steroids and train them for the olympics 17 hours a day in their basements.?
okay. that demographic might love this book. all seven of them.

did i mention i want my $25 back? fuck.

busted.

so, while reviewing several months worth of the nonsense caught on video around here, i came across several "hiragana lessons." the first few were actually of reasonable quality. then SpazMonkey had one of his cornholio episodes. you know, the kind that make me check under his mattress for a secret red bull stash.



when he asks why he's not allowed to use the camera, i'll be referring him to the video.

dammit! no! next time i'll remember NO is the only right answer!

...when the question is "mom, can we do some chemistry?"

let me give you a quick tour of my kitchen. the entrance:


the floor:


to fully appreciate what you're looking at, here's the full-size picture.

that particular mess was the result of the "let's extract iron from cereal flakes" experiment, preceded by yet another iteration of the "what kind of crazy shit can we add to the baking-soda-and-vinegar volcano to really fuck it up?" experiment. the answers to that question, by the way, include cornstarch (big, persistent bubbles), detergent (about the same, but black-light active), and gelatin (holy shit.)

of course, we brought this on ourselves.





now, not all science is messy. like dry ice! cheap thrills, no mess:







sometimes baking is messy. when baking with kids who consider it a science experiment, baking is HELLA messy. however, if you direct the action appropriately, and confine the action to an easy-bake oven, the consolation prize is some good-ass noms:



also? you CAN set shit on fire with an easy-bake oven. that's solid fact.

"I THINK I'M TURNING JAPANESE!"

that's an actual quote from DramaQueen. no shit. i can't promise he's never heard the song, but i think he came up with that on his own. either way, i'm putting that mp3 on their playlist.

anyway, the boys continue to actually STUDY japanese. i found a random box of japanese flash cards at goodwill - i have no idea what they say; they just look like they're intended for japanese grade schoolers to learn something about writing. and a monkey that occasionally chases a schoolboy around town. they're starting on some "learn to speak japanese" programs i tracked down for them at the library. they may not come out of it speaking japanese, but it does replace their other favorite things to do on my laptop, like "blinging the holy hell out of a fishtank at fishville until it looks like the front lawn of a meth lab after the entepreneur's baby mama wanted to 'give them babies a nice christmas for once, you asshole' by spending the entire week's profits in the 75%-off christmas lawn ornaments aisle at walmart," and "searching for youtube videos of building demolitions, anchors puking during live newscasts, other little kids playing rockband, and stupid pet tricks."

they are also interested in japanese food. which is great, since we have an awesome sushi restaurant right around the corner. PRM and i treat ourselves to sushi on those weekends when we can't find a babysitter and go out. last weekend, in fact, we ordered sushi twice, and since we order enough for at least two meals, this means we ate sushi for about 5 meals straight.

MonkeyBeef loves him some noodles. or rice. or soup! he REALLY digs the miso soup (minus the chunks of seaweed, which are green and thus obviously not edible.) even picky-ass EvilGremlin will eat plain rice (which "isn't good, but isn't bad because it doesn't taste like anything") and they'll all eat tempura chicken.

the twits even like sushi! except for the nori. and the fish. and the vegetables. so, when they ask for sushi, they mean rice. i make them rice balls of sushi and brown rice, sprinkled with seasoned rice vinegar and rolled in sesame seeds, which they then dip in soy sauce with "cheater" chopsticks. we call it "sushi for pussies."




they're also fascinated by bento box lunches. i had bought them bento boxes when they started kindergarten, since it would save them the trouble of opening wrappers and bags. then they started packing their own lunches in them, and after a few rounds of "smashed tostitos on a bed of grapes," they suddenly decided school food was the bomb. a year later the bentos are back... and this time they want chopsticks! i'm thinking these might be in order... coolest chopsticks ever.