What I've Been Up To

I've been working. I've been knitting, and biking, and trying to get The Cupcake to school on time (Kindergarten!), and homeschooling The Biscuit (unschooling actually, which turns out to take more time & effort on my part but scares people), and wiping noses and bottoms, and connecting with hilarious people and grumpy family on Facebook, meeting tons of Bikey Friends on Twitter, and doing dishes, and laundry. Oh, and I've been helping with the accounting side of a wonderful new magazine... which I don't have time to read myself. The guilt I feel when any one of these plates that I have spinning crashes to the floor is overwhelming and leaves me in a depressed place that does no good; the depression is not so huge I can't get moving after a bit of a wallow, but it still leads to more of those spinning plates falling. Here I am, trying now to catch them before they shatter because that’s all I can manage today.

And now you know why I haven't posted.

If I have more time this weekend I will add photos to this. Otherwise you can see some on my Flickr stream.

Dear President-Elect Obama,

Dear President-Elect Obama,
Originally uploaded by KYouell.
This is my contribution to the Message For Obama pool on Flickr. You can search for the tag "messageforobama" to see more.

Here is what the text says:

"She's 18 months old and typical. He's 3 years old, has Down syndrome and a heart defect that may require more medical intervention.

"I want her to be happy, healthy and independent. I want him to be happy, healthy and independent.

"I don't want her to have to take care of him when we are gone. To accomplish our goals we need *your* support.

"Please support Early Intervention Programs, Inclusion Programs, and help us get health care we can actually afford to use."

*****
Here is the rest of the message I wrote:

Some of us believe that abortion should not be illegal, yet we wouldn't dream of having one ourselves.

Some of us do the best we can, make a decent living and then get blindsided with medical bills and a situation that is hard to dig our way out of.

Even if I won the lottery and money was never an object for me ever again, I couldn't buy inclusion in our community for my son. That requires the participation of the community in welcoming him in.

Don't forget that some of the people that cannot (yet) speak for themselves are not babies that the anti-choice people are trying to speak for, but they are babies that are here, have loving families, and *still* need the help of society.

It's nice to finally feel good about the outcome of an election. Thank you for the hope you have kindled in my heart. Wednesday, 11/5/2008, felt like Christmas morning did when I was small. Magical!

Flickr contacts

I think I finally figured out how to use Flickr to keep my kids' photos away from the prying eyes of pedophiles and yet share them with people who are my blogging friends. I just need to make you Flickr contacts and then mark you as friends. So if you have a Flickr account, would like to see the photos of my kiddos, and are not freaky, then drop a comment here or send me an email with your Flickr screen name. Alternately, if you are way more with it than me, go over to Flickr and make me your contact already and I'll reciprocate. Either way!

Some random person I've never heard from before is not going to be made my contact though. So don't bother. :-P