Jesus takes a car ride

Picking up my mom from the Greyhound "station" (quotes used because the station isn't really, but rather a taxi depot where a bus drops people off), I figured it wouldn't hurt to take Jesus with us. After all, driving through a less desirable part of the city demands taking extra precautions, including divine intervention.

Turns out GPS would have been a bit more helpful. I mean, Jesus is a master director, but even he doesn't he doesn't argue with Google Map Fails (Yes, for the first time, Google Maps gave me the WRONG directions, which I will never admit being operator error). That's why God invented postal workers-- even Jesus needs a little help sometimes.

We did get my mother and now we (Jesus, too) know exactly where the sad excuse for a Greyhound station is located. (I shouldn't complain because at least we didn't have to make a two or three hour drive to the train station or airport).

Twitter

I have a Twitter account with two followers officially. This dude is one of my followers:

Err, is this for reals? I'm really busy. If you are joking, please say in your profile that clearly you jest. I'm a little scared now. Or maybe I didn't pay enough attention to the profile. The scary part? A couple of years ago I would of have seen this dude as clearly satirical. These days with Tea Baggers, it's possible this dude is serious. And if he is serious, he didn't pay much attention my blog. Or maybe he did and that's cool. But I'm not feeling really sharp these days.

So if you read this, Handpicked By Jesus guy, you are either effing hilarious or really, really creepy. 

Three more days until surgery? Anyone who wants to do laundry is welcome to come over.

EDITING THIS POST for an update:

This is the coolest guy ever, well almost. You can't explain it:

All sugared up and nowhere to hide

I love my child to pieces, but every so often I count down the hours to bedtime. This used to be much easier when the kid was 7 years old because we'd convinced him that bedtime was at 7:30pm. Even if we parents went to bed at 9:30pm, we still had two whole hours to say "who the eff is Mommy?" or "whose your Daddy?".  Now that the child is 10, he's to smart to be fooled into a 7:30 bedtime. What's worse is that he has friends who can verify that 7:30 is not the normal bedtime for tweens. Crap.

Now we are stuck with a 9pm bedtime. By that time, parents are too tired to go do the whole tucking in thing. The joy of Aspergers means that stopping that ritual would be similar to dropping a nuclear bomb on Ohio. It just wouldn't be cool. So, our happy behinds are dragged up the stairs with all the bedtime accouterments to perform said ritual. As Murphy's Law would have it, the more exhausted us grown-ups are the more labor intensive the bedtime requests seem to be. When we head back down the stairs 30 minutes later, we say a prayer to encourage God to make our child fall asleep fast enough so we can watch a television show we've DVR'd in peace before we fall asleep in our livingroom.

Normally, God mocks us by bestowing an a sudden, ravenous appetite for Frosted Mini Wheats or something on our child.

The Lord sayeth "The young shall need their bowls filled with fibrous foods when the parents have discovered a plot twist on the newest episode of Bones. Thy young will call from the top of stairs until thy will is met. Mothers will have to rewind the funniest/most amazing dialogue of the entire show so that the bowl is filleth."  

I know God mocks us because the child takes 2 different medications to help him fall and stay asleep. I know the Melatonin knocks me out immediately, but its effects are no match for that power cord plugged into my kid's behind.

Then there are times like tonight. I decide that since I had zero child free time today, that I would stay up to enjoy some solitude since everyone is in bed. Except, I hear the child bouncing, the chandelier is shaking periodically and my child continues to check on me because I'm standing between him and the giant bag of Easter candy his Grand-mommy gave him. 

I don't know about other children, but something happens to mine when he ingests sugar. I cannot be totally sure his sugar intake wasn't responsible for the recent tornado outbreaks. I am sure that this sugar intake prevents him from being able to sit in a chair. I knew he sneaked candy today when he started falling out of his chair. Really. No exaggeration. Since Easter left us with about 20lbs of candy, it's still fresh on the child's mind and he thinks it all belongs to him. (Since Grand-mommy doled out the family candy to him, his Aspie mind is made up)

Next year, he's getting Doritos in his Easter basket. And sugar free gum. And some stronger sedatives because he already takes them, but his growing body will demand more next year. The meds now reduce his speed from 750 mph to 50 mph without candy, but are 70% less effective after a solid chocolate bunny. Or as his dad would put it: He's got an electric power cord plugged in his butt that is impossible to dislodge (because he moves to quickly and we can't catch him).

At that point, as parents, we need Xanax. I'm not stretching the truth here at all. My child's hyper-activity means, as a family, we require medication to cope. So, I'm putting 5 Hour Engery and Xanax in the parental Easter baskets. Maybe even liquor.

We've tried to go the sugar-free candy route, but turns out it contains sugar alcohol. You know what sugar alcohol does to your body in large quantities? Anal leakage. It has a laxative effect that is intensified for a child. I do make almost sugar free cookies with sugar free icing, but they aren't Easter candy and I don't make them all the time. I really need to start making more cookie treats with a low sugar content (I've gotten really good about making them taste sinful).

The Easter candy is officially living in my bedroom from now on. It will be doled out responsibly to the kid and hopefully to us parents. Maybe, just maybe the poor kid will be able to move through the world at a normal speed for awhile-- until the next confounded holiday or the next time another grown up in his life besides his parents thinking buying affection with a lollipop the size of head is a great idea.

I wish I had the energy to compose a really hilarious image of my child with said power cord in his bum, but alas, I have not the energy or time to do so. I'll just leave the visual to you, dear reader, and your vivid imagination. I will tell you that I think our Jesus action figure laughs at us... which may be cause to call the Vatican, except I don't want a crowd of Catholic miracle lovers surrounding my house when I'm trying to get more mommy time. Nevermind, Jesus wanted to pose:

 

The Easter Snaik

I never thought about religion much when I was a kid, save for my Irish Catholic BFF's mom, who thought I had the devil in me, God (and hell) talks. My mom was a Lutheran who thought that religion was done wrong in America. So, we weren't any particular religion at all and I got to explore faith any which way I liked. And because I think I screamed so much the few times my mom tried taking me church services and Sunday school that our family was asked to never return. Of course, Easter being what it is, I knew the story of the resurrection and such from my mom and from said BFF (and BFF's mom).

My dad is a funny guy who isn't particularly religious. Growing up, he loved Easter because he always got a box of Whitman's chocolates and tons of other sweets. He HATED dying Easter eggs (aka Spring Spheres), sorta. He really hated the part where young children with excited fingers grabbed at permanent die in our house. If it were up to him, it would have been an 'in the grass at the neighbor's house' activity. I think he died a little inside each Easter and there were times I was surprised he didn't stroke out (like when my nieces and nephew died eggs in their toddler years).

There were several rules when it came to egg dying. These rules were debated passionately by my parents and these debates sometimes ended in threats of divorce. Other times it would end in a snarky kid saying 'Cut it out! We are making eggs for Jesus!'. Why we were making eggs for Jesus, I have no idea. Two-thousands years of hard-boiled eggs has got to wear thin on a Messiah, but then again I suppose he could change them into little cupcakes or whatever trendy snack en vogue (Dear Jesus, I hear doughnuts are the next big thing!).

The first rule is that you must never use copper pans to boil your eggs. Or is it aluminum? This would start the parental debate as my mom would have to prove to my dad that her stock pot contained no offending element, even though she had the same pot for like ever.

The second rule was the Rule of Paas. Never, ever could anything but the ORIGINAL Paas Easter egg dye be used in our house. Period. No tye-dye eggs. No fancy colors. There are 12 (or was it 9?) colors acceptable and those colors were dictated by the Paas people. No Paas dye, no Easter. End of story. I still get a little apprehensive whenever my mother-in-law pulls out something other than the traditional Paas egg dying kit before Easter. We will not tell my dad that my son hasn't ALWAYS used Paas's original kit-- it might kill him.

The final rule was that you must use a white crayon to make the most important egg of them all: The Easter Snaik egg. And yes, its S-N-A-I-K. It was the only time a misspelled word was appropriate and your egg would be spared the infamous Library of Congress red pen (all our pens came from the Library of Congress-- heck, until I was 9, I thought everyone got their pens from the LoC). While my parents corrected my spelling until I was 32 years old, this special and holy spelling spelling of 'snaik' was a crucial part of our Easter tradition-- the Holy Grail of all our holiday celebrations.

So, my dad would draw this 'snaik' in white crayon on an egg and then write the words 'Easter Snaik' underneath (that)**. Yet, this is no ordinary snaik. This snaik has 4 legs with feet, 3 polka-dots and is always smiling, open mouthed with his forked snaik tongue sticking out.

It wasn't until I was much older that I realized the gross contradiction between Easter and the snaik. Later I learned that most of the religious traditions that our culture engages in are actually NOT Christian, but rather have deep pagan roots. Bunnies have nothing to do with Jesus. Eggs are for fertility, celebrated during the Spring Equinox. And as a parent living in a very judeo-christian world, where poking fun at Jesus and religion (or atheism?) isn't readily accepted (unless you are famous and a comedian), my dad found the most amusing ways to poke fun at the inherent contradiction between mono-theism and poly-theism.

This years Easter Snaik Egg

My dad made his point in a way that his children could marvel at (and shock her friends parents at the same time). He made it so we came to love the tradition for the simplest human and most godly reason-- the love of ones family. I have no doubt that God has a sense of humor and is decorating his own Easter Snaik egg with his own son.

 ** If you didn't get that aside, than you obviously don't read Cake Wrecks