As I sit typing this in Big Spring, TX, I’m on Day 5 of Petey’s Big Adventure, aka the #SixtyCitiesinSixtyDays Nationwide RV Book Tour. Petey’s chomping an angry bird toy with a silent squeaker — hello! perfect for a one-eyed Boston terrier in a 24-foot RV — and Liz is sleeping in. We have 700 successful RV miles under our belt, and we’ve knocked out two TV shows (here’s the link to Mom’s Everyday in Waco), four radio interviews, and a print interview. We’ve held four events in four cities. We’ve conquered after-dark RV hookups like a boss. We’ve endured Petey’s early rising, and I’ve kept up my schedule of short Petey jogs each morning.
A few highlights:
On day one, we left only after attending the miraculous high school graduation of our ADHD WonderKid, Clark Kent himself. And this after his school counselor called to tell us three days before that he probably would not graduate. His English teacher took his late paper, gave it a 97, and wrote that it showed “creative insight” and “deep thinking.” THAT BOY!
Our 1st night in the RV we arrived to discover Petey’s leash had gone missing, and that Pamela cannot operate a simple flashlight. Oh, and that deer in the pitch dark by the light of a phone look shockingly like rabid alien wolves. Or something.
On day two back in Houston, Susanne got her drivers license. One hour later she backed out of our driveway into a moving UPS truck. I guess she meant it when she said, “#watchout.”
Our 2nd night in the RV Google Maps failed us and we only found the park thanks to a friendly resident of La Grange who obviously gives the same directions 36 times a day.
On our 4th night in the RV, we stayed in a great RV park in Big Spring which, in the current oil & gas boom in West Texas, has turned into a giant Man Camp, the roughneck capital of Texas, for sure. We were careful not to leave a red light on, and even at that we’ve never had so many offers of assistance in our lives.
It’s amazing how many times I can forget which side of the RV to line up for gas and hookups. I’ve racked up 100 of our 700 miles circling gas pumps.
Despite a beautiful kennel that takes up 100% of the leg space under our table, Petey only allows us to sleep if he’s in bed with me. This is not good. Instead of Petey’s Great Adventure, we should call this Petey’s Great Spoiling. Liz keeps calling him a piggy and telling him he’s fat, but that hasn’t stopped her from slipping him potato chips
Hastings Entertainment has the nicest employees ever, and they give authors and their staff free drinks from the Hardback Coffee Bars. I’d do this tour just for the sugar free non fat iced caramel macchiatos!
Liz is such a great travel companion and hard worker that I don’t want to give her up in a week, but she has to get on the road to California as she has transferred to a Los Angeles-area school and will continue to swim there. I love getting the time to talk to her and just be with her. She’s a wonderful, wonderful young woman.
I’ve connected with friends I haven’t seen in 20-25 years already! I’ve made new ones too.
We’re giving out advance review copies of Leaving Annalise in June WHILE THEY LAST to the nice folks who come out to meet us and whisper CODE WORD PETEY. This was Eric’s brain child, and people love it. So, come see me and give it a try. They’re going fast, though.
I can’t believe we’re really doing this. Eric worked so hard to anticipate every problem I could possibly have, and things are going great as a result. I have the world’s sweetest husband, for sure.
A week before we left, my father sent me the nicest email:
Looks like you have taken to heart what I always told you as a kid — girls can do anything they dream to do, if they are willing to work for it.
I believed him then, and I believe him now.
Another person sent me a note about my “courage,” which I think is code for “what the hell are you thinking???”
Good strategy makes you a soothsayer. It can capture profit when margins are slim. It’s sleek, it’s stylish, it’s sexy. So let’s get sexy together.
When it comes to indie publishing, your three main, sexy strategy choices are around 1) what format to publish your book in, 2) where to publish it, and 3) how to price it. Think of this as what you’ll be wearing, where you’ll be shaking it, and whether you’re the kind of date that needs dinner and a movie first.
Pamela Fagan Hutchins is an employment attorney and workplace investigator by day who writes award-winning and bestselling mysterious women’s fiction (Saving Grace) and relationship humor (How to Screw Up Your Kids) by night. She is passionate about great writing and smart author-preneurship. She also leaps medium-tall buildings in a single bound, if she gets a good running start.
Leaving Annalise comes out July 1st, but already Amazon is promoting it. A friend forwarded me an email she received from them last night, which is so cool for a bazillion reasons, see below.
What do y’all think of my new portrait? It was a selfie I took for Eric at a Seattle airport Starbucks, until digital goddess Heidi Dorey got hold of it!!!
Holy cow, only 4 days until I leave for my 68 day book tour. Our goal is 60 cities, and right now we have booked 44 store events in 44 cities, with 7 more yeses pending written confirmation. Yee ha! This is amazing, given that the stores don’t like to book more than 5 weeks in advance.
Our daughter Marie is doing a fantastic job. She’s booked 1 TV interview, 1 print interview, and 3 radio interviews in the first week alone. Some TV and radio is already booked as far ahead as July, thanks to proactive store community relation managers who arranged it on our behalf (knock me over with a feather). We are reaching out to contacts in a myriad of ways, one event at a time, putting up announcements on community calendars (thanks to my dear friend Stephanie for pinch hitting on this, fabulously), and contacting a multitude of groups, like book clubs, writers , Texas Aggie Former Students, Texas Longhorn alums, attorneys, triathletes, runners, special need parents, libraries, and stepparents. We’ve recruited people to put up posters around town for our events in each city. I’ve created Facebook and Goodreads events. I can’t think of anything else to do to make this a success. Whew!
We are putting the Bookmobile through its last few repairs/checks. I’m packing and staging. Petey got his booster shots. We put together a work list for my kids/employees. I bought a few new inexpensive outfits on ideeli.com. We’re booking our RV campsites, and Google Mapping our routes. Ugh — we’ve got some all-nighter drives, so luckily we have the ability to trade off driving and sleep.
One hitch: I’m driver/assistant/companionless from July 9th in Atlanta through July 12th in Raleigh. Anyone want to join me?????? I can’t begin to convey how hard this will be to pull off by myself, even for just four events/cities. UPDATE: Position booked
I think this is really going to happen!!!
You know what the coolest thing is? I’ve had so many of you reach out and offer to let us park the Bookmobile at your homes. Some can’t b/c of their homeowner or zoning restrictions, which I totally get. But I am getting to hang out at Nan’s (http://lbddiaries.com/blog/). I’m parking at my bro and sis-in-law’s new home outside Chattanooga. We’ll park at old friends Danny Johnson in San Fran and Melissa Balaban in LA. How awesome is that?
Now, for the really good news. I’ve sent emails out to all my subscribers and contacts offering free books for those that bring in a printed copy of the email,even one forwarded to them by a friend. So forward those emails to friends and family. There is no purchase required. Our goal is to MOVE BOOKS, not sell books, and to attract happy crowds at each event. Don’t forget to check out the event dates and places here: http://pamelahutchins.com/signings-events/.
For those of you that are keeping track of my ADHD/Aspie son Clark Kent’s rocky path toward high school graduation this year, I wanted to let you know that the ceremony is June 9th. Clark Kent will participate. The question is whether he will get a signed diploma, an issue which used to bother me a lot, and lately stresses me out less and less.
The latest bombshell Clark dropped on us was that he had completed only 2 of his 3 online make-up courses. “I thought this one was two credits, the whole year of physical science. Turns out, there’s a separate course for the second semester,” he said.
You’d think this obstacle would have been almost insurmountable.
To read the rest, visit the original post on {a mom’s view of ADHD}.
My ADHD/Aspie son Clark Kent earned his nickname honestly, and continues to prove it fits, even at the age of 17: he believes he has super-human powers, while in reality he is the affably bumbling Clark Kent. As a senior in high school, he announced he was done with medication, that he didn’t need it. After we picked our jaws up off the floor, we caucused. We couldn’t let him go cold turkey, not and still allow him to drive his Tahoe, not and expect him to graduate from high school. We circled back with him and laid out the terms of our cooperation: supplements, diet change, sleep and non-gaming commitments, aerobic exercise, and a supplement regiment. He agreed, and at first it went shockingly well. Then he quit the supplements while taking antibiotics. With that spoke of the wheel broken, he quickly crashed.
We did our best to help him back up, but things went from bad to worse. His good grades plummeted. His hygiene stunk, literally. He snuck in gaming hours, got up after we all went to bed, and wouldn’t rise in the mornings even when I stood over his bed and yelled in his ear. He racked up tardies and unexcused missed assignments. He didn’t participate in debate or government affairs, his passions and the activities most closely tied to his dream of becoming an attorney and maybe someday a diplomat. He only spoke to argue, and he spouted nonsense. He was 200 pounds of out-of-control rebel about to torpedo his future.
Many writers will tell you about their writing “practice,” and the regular schedule they keep to stay on track with their novels. Schedule? Not me. Regular? Only if I eat prunes. On track? That’s what all-nighters are for. Don’t get me wrong. I write every day, a lot, but never on what I’m supposed to. Woopsie.
I am my editor’s worst nightmare. I am the writer that decides to tackle a complete rewrite 30 days before a novel is due. Meghan cringes when I post on Facebook that I wrote 10,000 words — roughly 40 pages — in one day.
My phone rings. “Take your time,” she says, in a tremulous whisper. What she’s thinking, though, is “Holy hell, that woman is going to dump a steaming pile of poo on me in 27 days, and it’s my job to dig through it.”
To read the rest of “A Day in the Life,” visit author Darcia Helle’s website, A Word, Please. While you’re there, check out her fantastic books. I’m currently reading Into the Light.
1. Big-time review, woot! Check out the review of Saving Grace on Kirkus Reviews. And color me happy.
2. Handed back Leaving Annalise to my editor. It ain’t done, but it’s getting ever-closer.
3. We’ve rescheduled our schedule. As we get smarter at SkipJack Publishing, we realized the timeline we need to appropriately launch a novel is lengthier. Thus, we will release Leaving Annalise one year after Saving Grace. That means you’ll be able to put it in your hot little hands in August 2013. Missing Harmony will come out in 2014.
4. Watch for a blitzkrieg of publicity for Saving Grace starting in January. It will be a lot of fun: interviews with characters, reviews, and articles about the book and me.
5. Yesterday I gave an interview to the Houston Chronicle. I’ll post the article when it comes out.
Petey has his very own Christmas tree this year, y’all. Seriously. Just ask him.
Originally, we bought it for the whole family. Silly, I know, because what’s Petey’s is Petey’s, and what’s ours is Petey’s. A beautiful 10-foot tree that will barely fit in our house is a no-brainer: Petey’s.
Once we got it home, we decorated it for him with his chew toys, those things more commonly known as ornaments. He loved them. He especially loved the tiny nest of Christmas Cardinals, Eric’s favorite ornament and his favorite birds.
We filled it with water, so that when his wittle mouth gets dry from pulverizing and eviscerating ornaments he can take a cool, refreshing drink.
We even laid a luscious velvet tree skirt under it. Petey likes nothing better than a spontaneous nap when he’s all tuckered out from ornament munching. Its position is appropriate, since, duh, it’s his tree and he needs to stay close to guard it.
My parents took their kids and their kids’ kids to Jamaica over Christmas. Don’t worry, I’m not about to spin you an SAT math question about how old the 3rd cousin of my brother’s mother-in-law is. This is not that kind of post.
This is a post about love.
Mom and Dad got us all together in Jamaica because they love us, and they want us all to love each other. They should be quite pleased, then, because we do. And we had a wonderful time.
This isn’t a post about that kind of love.
Thirteen years ago I saw a laser-eyed, dark-haired stranger across a room, a face I immediately realized I had always known. Last month, I watched him chat with my father, tease my mother, bicker with my son, counsel his daughter, and talk baby-talk with our niece.
In the thirteen years I’ve known this man, there has been better and there has been worse. A whole lot of each.
But mostly there has been love.
So as I celebrated a love-filled Thanksgiving with a family for whom I am wholeheartedly grateful, I couldn’t help but realize that once upon a time, many years ago, I hated family vacations. All that togetherness traumatized me, made me claustrophobic. I longed for aloneness. I craved to be apart. It wasn’t that I didn’t love my family, I just didn’t want to love them all at once in the same time and place.
The one thing that has changed, the one crucial thing, is that I found peace, happiness, and, yes — here’s that word again — love, with my husband. A peace that allows me to contentedly occupy the same zip code as my entire family
Which is totally cool.
And the way that we commemorate that love around our house is with the purchase of completely meaningless hoohas and tschotckes. We’ve followed this practice since our wedding, where we picked up a bejeweled wire gecko on St John. It has carried on though a wooden grizzly from Montana, a tin armadillo from Brenham, a black on white oil painting from New Orleans, and a purple pig from Schulenberg.
That is why, on the island of Jamaica, the one memento Eric and I came away with is this giraffe carving. We are completely aware that there is no living, breathing giraffe on the island of Jamaica. Not even in a zoo.
Of course, we had many other objects of whimsy from which to choose, very tropical objects. Jamaican objects. Non-African objects.
We chose the lip-locked giraffes. Because nothing spells love like g-i-r-a-f-f-e.
After 10 months off, I got in the water today. And swam (poorly and for only 20 minutes). I also rode my bicycle (poorly and for only 45 minutes).
Eric and I each write every night in a fantastic “I Like” book given to us by my brother and his wife. Tonight, Eric wrote, “To see you in a swim suit.”
Please note he did not write, “How you look in a swim suit.” I am, ahem, closing in on 46 years old, and did I mention I haven’t swam in 10 months?
But my husband has Ironman training in his eyes, for both of us. It’s awfully hard to get us both to the finish line if I never swim again. So I did it. And now I am supposed to do it three times a week for the next 18 months.
78 weeks x 3 swims/week = 234 swims
1 down, 233 to go . . . hold me, please hold me . . .
(Look at the picture below if you dare — wet hair, the smell of chlorine, and a big smile on my face)
But I do love that man, and this does make him very happy, and I will be so proud of myself, and this does enable me to quadruple my food intake over time. So, for better or worse, 78 weeks started TODAY.
Because he is, in essence, making me do this (not literally, but you know what I mean), I shall pay him back by posting this picture of him, getting fitted for progressive lenses.
Love you, honey.
***
In other more newsy news, Saving Grace reached 1,000 paid Kindle downloads on Amazon for November earlier today. We are so proud of our baby girl. She has 49 reviews now with an average of nearly 4.9 stars out of 5.0. It’s fun to read all these reviews from readers all over the world, who are meeting Katie and me for the first time.
We have focused on marketing the Kindle because it is cheaper for our readers. However, I want to assure you that paperbacks are also available online at Amazon, Hastings, and Barnes & Noble, and at many fine bookstores. You can even get a signed version if you order it through http://SkipJackPublishing.com. IMHO, they make great gifts.
Don’t forget, if you downloaded during the free Amazon Kindle promo in October, you owe me an HONEST review (if you hate it, state it), here, and I’d appreciate it if you click the orange like button as well. I’ll be grateful beyond your imagination if you also copy and paste that review onto Goodreads, here.
Have you read Puppalicous and Beyond, my collection of essays about all the pets I’ve loved before? If so, I’m looking for you! I need three more HONEST reviews (if you hate it, state it) on Amazon, here, in order to qualify for free promotion for a free Kindle giveaway. I had 15, but Amazon has a nasty habit of pulling down reviews for no reason, and with no recourse for the author and/or publisher, so I lost some. All bow to the omnipotent Amazon (it’s a big love/hate thing for me).
Speaking of all the pets I’ve loved, that’s Petey the one-eyed wonder, above, surrounded by his guilty conscience. Look at his good eye gleam.
OK, y’all, I love me some little furry creatures. Live ones, that is. Dead ones, or the making dead of them, not so much. The only time I’ve ever hunted, I was nine years old. My father took me with him. He let me take a shot at a prong-horned antelope with his hunting rifle. I hit it, but didn’t kill it. Dr. Dad finished it off for me. At least that’s how I remember it. It was a fascinating learning experience, and I am proud to say that my family ate all of the meat.
Anddddddddddd, I never want to do it again. It horrified me. I can still picture every sound, smell, and detail of the scene. Things whimper and gush. A clothespin for the nose is advisable. A hunter I am not.
But, you may recall, I now own a pink shotgun. Why, besides my support of our 2nd amendment right to bear arms, would I own a gun? Well, when you live in the country, sometimes shotguns are real handy. Like to kill rattlesnakes, or to scare off 500-pound wild boars. Even to scare off intruders of the two-legged variety, if it comes down to it, when my husband is someplace inconvenient, like India or Abu Dhabi.
Some people in my life enjoy hunting (not my husband). And so it came to pass that recently we took our youngest, Susanne, and her best friend and her boyfriend for a day jaunt to Nowheresville. The aim of the trip was for the boyfriend — let’s call him Matt — to teach the rest of us to use the new shotgun, and for the friend — Lauren — to drive our spiffy new tractor. {Note that we’re calling Matt Susanne’s boyfriend due to this photographic evidence, despite her terror of claiming him on Facebook (it’s hard when you’re possibly Tim Tebow’s fiancee).} Matt is 16, but he seems to have spent about 90% of his growing up years either holding a baseball or a shotgun, and I’d be hard pressed to say which one he loves best.
Shotgun lessons and a walk through the woods turned into a shooting carnival with an ebullient young man bringing dinner down out of the sky and the branches of trees. Our “animal sanctuary” became a “kill zone” in less time than it takes to load three shells in the pink camo chamber of my gun. Eric and I were a little traumatized, but in an amused way. Hey, if the kid could handle a gun like that and was smitten with our daughter, he had potential as Nowheresville “day labor.” Plus he was kinda cute with a squirrel hooked by its tail through his belt loop, seeing as we live in Texas and all.
Susanne played with the dogs while Matt skinned his “game.” But, teenagers will be teenagers, and they decided to run off into the woods to shoot more stuff and left the furless critter on a cutting board, bloody knife beside it, on top of a load of building supplies trailered at our barn site. The builders were due back Monday morning to erect the structure (yippeeeee). Technically, the structure was supposed to have been a fully functioning barn back in August and here we were three months later with only a slab and a trailer of panels, but we’re in the country, so who’s counting? (uh, me)
By the time the younguns returned, Eric had grilled ribeyes, and we ate dinner in the dark, then retired to our lovely air conditioned Quacker to watch some college football. At halftime we packed up in the pitch black, a countryside pitch black with no artificial light to be had except from the meager beam of our flashlights. We couldn’t see the ends of our fingers, much less do a visual survey of the grounds. Then we took off for Houston.
Left behind for the builders: an accidental pagan offering of hideless rodent. It had 48 hours in the sun by then, so possibly it was already close to squirrel jerky. Those good old country boys will just think we left them a snack.
***
This week there are some wonderfully informative new reviews online, and the reviewers would be so pleased if you took a moment to check out their hard work:
It humbles me that people take the time out of their lives to read my words, and even more so when they add a thoughtful personal review like these two women. I hope you’ll comment, share, and follow them.
Saving Grace’s promotional launch lands her at number ONE on Amazon downloads for free Kindle books and number ONE on Kindle’s best free books list, with 33,000 downloads!!!!
In order for this post to be of interest to you, you have to first read In the blink of one blue eye. That will bring you up to speed on the battle to figure out how to prevent our 15-year old daughter Susanne from having a recurrence of a life-threatening food-allergy-triggered anaphylaxis. Then, I will tell you about our testing, diagnosis, and treatment plan. I hope this is not only mildly interesting, but that it helps someone else out there, because this is scary stuff. Anaphylxis is a total game-changer.
As you may recall, we suspected two top culprits: nitrates (a chemical in processed meat) and cashews. But we knew we didn’t know, and meanwhile she developed hives as soon as her steroid course ended. We started to remember hives and stomach aches in the last two months, minor complaints easily dealt with and quickly dismissed. Now, though, we saw them for what they were: a pattern. Of what, we weren’t sure.
I took Susanne in to see Dr. S at Hotze Health & Wellness Center. One of their specialities is common sense approaches for severe and “unsolveable” allergies, fixing that which no one else can fix. What we didn’t want was a doctor to allergy test her and then say, “hmmm, I don’t know, try an eliminiation diet and this prescription drug. Next!” We also didn’t want to have her tested in a way that could trigger a reaction. I already knew that patients were valued guests at Hotze, with time and energy invested in their wellness over the longterm. Also at Hotze, all testing is done of blood samples that are sent offsite to specialty labs.
We don’t have Susanne’s food and airborne allergy test results yet, but already we have a path forward and a zen sense of purpose in how we approach keeping our daughter safe. And we do have some answers . Let’s call them learned guesses that, coincidentally, match the path Dr. Dad’s brain had already gone down (and he was the one who suggested we start with Hotze, after all), and that make so much sense that it scares me. Because it points to all the signs we missed that something was wrong. That it had possibly always been wrong.
First, Susanne has asthma. We always thought she suffered from it on the back end of colds.
“Not likely,” Dr. S said. “Asthma is itself an anaphylactic reaction, albeit usually non-life threatening. And anaphylaxis is an allergic reaction, a sensitivity. If she’s suffered under seasonal airborne allergies all these years, they weaken her immune system. We need to get her antibodies going.”
Shit. Missed that one for 15 years.
Next, Susanne has had stomach aches for the last few months, escalating in the last two months. We thought she just had reflux like her father.
“Reflux is a symptom, not a cause. Something in her diet — either what she eats or under what conditions or timing — does not agree with her stomach. Not only does this mean that she needs a diet change, and that the substances irritating her stomach may be the same ones she is sensitive to, but it also means her gut is inflamed, which creates a situation in which it absorbs molecules it would normally reject as waste. So the stomach ache creates more optimal conditions for food allergy anaphylaxis to occur.”
SHIT. Missed that one for the last year.
Next, Susanne occasionally gets what looks like pimples on her chest and neck. I had something like them, yet unlike them, at her age. The doctor looked at them and shook his head.
“See how they look like mosquito bites? They’re an allergic reaction, a hive. Something is bothering her. And right now she’s hiving on the heels of anaphylaxis. She’s still reacting. Luckily its just hives. Some people have secondary or rebound anaphylaxis. She still might. Don’t let her go anywhere without that epi-pen and benadryl.”
SHIT SHIT SHIT. My little hypohondriac had something to tell us, but we sloughed it off.
“So we have a body telling us it’s taking in things it doesn’t like in someone with a history of mild anaphylaxis in the form of asthma with a compromised immune system and a “leaky” gut that lets bad molecules absorb. Now, what did she eat in the eight hours before the event?”
I listed everything. It was a long list. Mojo Sweet and Salty Bar, cashews, macaroni and cheese, milk, green chile cream cheese corn, thai chicken with coconut, corn, and waterchestnuts, and chorizo with veggie-cheese and eggs.
“Cashews can lead to a secondary reaction six to eight hours later. Can’t be ruled out. And for dinner, she had shoveled in four of the most common food allergens: corn, coconut, egg, and dairy. On top of that a new food was introduced, a food with nitrate, which is linked to severe anaphylaxis, especially when combined with other chemicals.”
“Yes,” I said, and swallowed. A neon “Bad Mom” sign flashed over my head.
“I have no idea what she reacted to. We can’t test for nitrate sensitivity. But I know we can fix her gut and her antibodies. The food allergy testing will tell you the foods she reacts to, and at what severity. You can eliminate them, and you can eliminate the nitrate. I’d eliminate as many preservatives and chemicals as possible. But it’s a lot of work, and all on her.”
He turned to Susanne and told her horror stories of people that died — with food in their mouths still unchewed — from anaphylaxis so severe it arrested their breath and killed them almost instantly, the same people who had never had a major event before. He stressed to her that the reactions get worse not better, that she could die, that there were no do-overs. He explained her treatment plan to her then quizzed her on it thoroughly. She took him seriously, listened like I’d never seen her listen before (certainly not to me). He broke up the tension by joking with her and laughing with her. But he did not sugar coat her issue.
To treat her gut, she will be on a yeast-free diet and taking nystatin, fluconazole, and probiotics. The diet is extremely restrictive, especially in the first five weeks. She has to stay on it for a minimum of three months. Not only that, but all the foods she consumed on D-Day are added to the restrictions, until they are ruled back in by allergy testing results that deem them nonreactive for her. This for a girl who thinks the four food groups are macaroni, cheese, chocolate chip cookies, and oreos.
This will be hard. So hard, in fact, that Eric and I will do it with her. Her brother is onboard, too, for every other week. She will move in with us fulltime until we have the diet lined out, as this is too hard to do when she is bouncing between the two houses of her dad and us like she normally does.
Next, she will take sublingual allergy drops three times a day to stimulate her antibodies by exposing her to the airborne allergens she reacts to.
In addition, she has a daunting regimen of mandatory supplements and bioidentical hormones. She has pill cases for morning, midday, and night. She will, at the peak of the next four months, take 26 pills a day. She has never voluntarily swallowed pills in her life. But she swears she is on board.
She and I sat together this morning and created spreadsheets to chart her pills. We researched sugar-free, dairy-free, soy-free, gluten-free, everything-free barbecue sauce and ranch dressing recipes, and we made our shopping list. We laughed. We hugged.
“Are you sick of us all loving the stuffing out of you, yet?” I asked her.
“She’s SPOILED now,” Clark Kent yelled from the other room.
Spoiled? Yes. Definitely. I am the mother who drove an extra hour yesterday when she forgot to bring her epi-pen to her swim meet. But I don’t mind doing that kind of spoiling. Not one bit. Especially not since she has already reacted to a food we thought was safe just a few days ago, something we now faithfully record in a diary as we eliminate more and more foods, hopefully temporarily.
“So, Susanne? Are you tired of us yet?”
Susanne just ducked her head and tried to hide her smile.
Pamelot
p.s. We remodeled our playroom into a gymnasium-sized bedroom for her: pink, electric blue, shocking green, and black. But, I swear, the spoiling stops here.
My son, the ADHD/Asperger’s WonderKid we affectionately call Clark Kent, recently switched out his Concerta for a natural health and wellness approach to ADHD symptom management. We had a rocky start, but after a few months, we patted each other’s backs and called it a success. Clark started his senior year in high school with his usual high expectations and with pride that he had made it off the meds, a goal of his. After four weeks of school, he printed off his progress reports: zero missed assignments. And he and his partner won his first cross-examination debate tournament of the year. Holy cow! Was it possible that he could post senior year grades worthy of attention from his “A” list schools, the ones that loved his SAT scores but not his class rank? We allowed ourselves to hope, just a tiny bit.
Ah, hope. You fickle beast.
One day he came home from school with some troubling pain in an unmentionable area (or, at least, unmentionable if I want to remain in the good graces of my son) that spurred a trip to the emergency room.
I guess she meant it when she said, “#watchout.”
