Names have been changed to protect the not so innocent.

When I was a teenager, I had my life planned out. I’d drive a sports car, be a vet, and own my own horse racing stable. I never planned to be a mother.

Mama thought differently. “Embrace motherhood,” she’d say, ‘it’s your destiny and it’s so rewarding.”

I disagreed. I didn’t believe waking up all hours of the night and wearing a permanent badge of spit-up made me a candidate for a Nobel Peace Prize. And I never saw game show contestants elated over a year’s supply of dirty diapers.

If given the choice, I’d have chosen a puppy over a kid any day. Dogs didn’t need to be burped after every meal (ever try to throw a Doberman over your shoulder?), dressed in fancy clothes (I tried that once and my Husky ran off wearing my undies), and could be put outside when they were unruly.

Children were just noisy small people who got their way by throwing fits in public. I tried that once when I was twenty-one and a posh, member’s only club denied me access. The only thing I gained by screaming and rolling around on the ground was dirty clothes and a brief stint in the back of a patrol car.

I married when I was twenty-two. One by one, my childhood dreams disappeared. I drove a Nissan Sentra, my job was at a local clothing store, and the closest thing I got to a racetrack was watching local children ride the plastic horses outside the Kroger supermarket.

After only a month of marriage, I felt empty and unsettled. There had to be more to life than scrubbing toilets and yelling at TV talk show hosts. I asked my husband Joe for a puppy, believing that would fill the void. Something must have been lost in translation because three months later I was pregnant and still dogless.

I didn’t radiate beauty like most soon to be mothers. Morning sickness left me feeling like road kill, and the toilet and I became best friends.

Month by month, I watched, horrified, as my size seven body began to resemble a cow’s. By the third trimester, I’d given up on ever seeing my feet again. For all I knew, they’d run away (in protest of the weight gain) and I was left to traipse around on two aching nubs.

Finally, the day arrived when our precious son, Travis was born. His arm wavering like an overcooked noodle, he reached out his tiny hand, touching my cheek and my heart. I blinked back tears as I stared at the bubble gum-pink colored bundle cradled in my arms. He looked like ET’s cousin, but I adored him. Kids weren’t so bad after all.

Eight years after Travis was born, I again felt unsettled and empty, and again I asked Joe for a puppy. Nine months later, I had my second son, Cameron.

Cameron is a preschooler now and some of his greatest joys are chasing cars and trying to eat kibble spilled on supermarket floors. At least this time I got a little closer to getting what I asked for.

This past weekend (Sunday) I competed in the bake-off at the Buda Country Fair (home to the Weiner Dog Races) and got this:

Now, the reason I’m doing a happy dance is because I baked two bundt cakes, a couple batches of cookies (that’s what won me second), and two loaves of bread in this, all the day before the contest. (Remember I said my oven was broken?)

And they say you can’t bake in a roaster oven. I guess desperation will make you do strange things. Bwahaha!!!

I knew what kind of day it would be when I opened my laundry room door one morning and found my cat doing the backstroke in two inches of water which covered the entire floor. Sloshing past sodden undies (escapees from the clean clothes basket) and plucking an angry kitty off my ankle (it’s true cats hate water) I found the source of the problem–the washing machine.

The day before, a plumber came to the house and poked into the mystery of why waste water was pooling on the ground directly above our sewer line. The man–obviously happy he could impress this little lady with his knowledge–puffed out his chest and barraged me with a string of technical terms. I smiled and nodded my head like a puppet on string, not caring what do-hickey do this or that. The only thing that mattered to me was that poop went down the drain when the toilet flushed. I’d been attacked by a flying turd many years ago in a toilet plunging incident, and I didn’t care for a repeat.

From what I gathered from the plumber, he was going to reroute the drain of my washing machine to the back yard. He reasoned that this would not only solve the pooling of grey water above ground, it’d also be a way to water the grass in the summer. Hey, recycling? I was all for that.

That night (several hours after the plumber had completed the job) I put a load of clothes in the washer, never thinking to check the man’s work before turning on the machine.

And now I had a sea in my laundry room. Turned out the darn hose had fallen out of the drain. An hour, several mop buckets and wet towels later, I had the room semi-dry. I felt like the undead as I stumbled back into the kitchen and reached for the phone. There’d been no time for coffee that morning; everything had to be cleaned up before the boys awoke.

The disappointment over the fact I hadn’t installed an indoor pool on the laundry room would’ve been great. There’d be no parties, lounging on piles of orphaned socks while friends floated by on rafts made of detergent bottles; my boys would try to have my June Cleaver club membership revoked.

Squinting, I dialed the plumber’s number. I felt my blood pressure rise as he–rather gleefully–told me that since I was calling before hours, he’d have to charge extra.

‘That’s robbery,” I hissed.

“That’s business.”

“Be grateful I don’t give you the business,” I said as I hung up.

As if the day wasn’t crappy enough, I made a batch of biscuits, turned on my three year old, self-cleaning, smooth-toped stove and…nothing . The preheat alert for the oven never came on. I stuck my hand inside and the racks were cool to the touch. The bottom element was broken. Wonderful. I had to cook the biscuits in my roaster oven, which took almost twice as long.

You’d think a flooded laundry room, a plumber on his way over to bilk me, and a non-working stove would be the end of my bad luck, right? Nope. The boys, smelling the biscuits, awakened and started for the kitchen, hungry wolves in children’s bodies. Unfortunate for Robert, he tripped over a toy car and fell face-first into the dresser.

I never noticed, as I consoled him and cleaned his bloody lip, that he’d grabbed my white shirt, leaving a bloody hand print near the bottom.

A few minutes later, the plumber arrived, his eyes widening at the sight of me. Not saying a word, he hasten to the laundry room, corrected his error and even mopped up a few stray patches of water. He left as quickly as he arrived, saying there wasn’t any charge for the trip.

It wasn’t until a little later when I glanced in the mirror and saw the stain. Funny how a little thing like a stain can change a person’s attitude, don’t you think? :o)

Geez…what you can find out by surfing the net. I tried to post at my old blog, only to discover the server Dakota Blogs is no longer with us. Needless to say. I was more than a little miffed. There was no warning from those juju-bean heads running the site. All my posts, notes, comments, and links are gone, lost somewhere in cyberspace The links in the blogrolls are ones I remembered off the top of my head. If you don’t see yours listed, please comment or send it to me via email.

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April is Worldwide Autism Awareness. Years ago, the possibilities of a child having Autism was 1 in 150.000–now it’s 150. Every twenty minutes a child (worldwide) is diagnosed. And how do I know all this?

I’d love to say I’m just aware of things in the media, but I can’t. I was introduced to Autism several years ago when my niece was diagnosed, and re-acquainted with it late last year when it appeared in my youngest son. He has borderline Autism

Autism is a brain disorder that primarily causes communication, social and sensory problems. It makes people seek or shun certain sounds, sights, touches and textures. It affects the way they interact with people or their environment. (Austin American Statesman 04/6/0

For the first three years of his life, Robert progressed on schedule, talking in complete sentences, saying his alphabet, counting past thirty. Then, like someone turning off a light, his personality changed. He spoke less, and became locked in his own little world, ignoring me when I called to him, preferring to do everything in solitude and showing little interest as to what others were doing.

Robert did receive the infamous series of five shots, but I can’t finger that as the cause of his Autism; too much is still unknown about the disorder. In fact, some speculate that it’s progressive, like Alzheimers’.

For weeks after we found out, I went over and over my pregnancy and Robert’s early years. Was it because of something I ate, something I did while I was carrying him? Was there early indicators I missed when he was a toddler? I felt I had failed my child. I thought I couldn’t tell anyone of Robert’s autism because they’d mark me as a horrible parent. I finally realized (after hours of talking to friends and family) that it wasn’t my fault, there wasn’t anything I’d done to cause this.

We (along with specialists) have been working with Robert for a few months, and already he’s showing signs of improvement.

There is hope. Educate yourself and everyone you know. If you suspect your child has Autism, seek help now. The sooner you get assistance, the better your child’s chances are for beating this devastating disorder.

Below are links on Autism.

LD online

Autism stats

Autism info

Anthem for Autism