Posts Tagged by rural life

The boy insisted on pulling the heavy 20 kg bag of sand to the box hmself.. he did a great job! heavy sensory therapy work DIY style.

He’s been in the sand box ever since. The sand has always been one of his most favourite things to do. I can currently hear him humming to himself under the cherry tree playing with cars in the sand.

Because being poor and not creative would really be hell!

a lot of the stuff we have, are things we recycle, build fix.

This week I rescued an old dresser that is all busted up and was set to burn in a garbage pile at the dump. I saved it, and am currently re purposing it, into a garden arrangement. I’m painting it white, adding chicken wire to the top dressers on the front, filling it with dirt and going to grow flowers and herb out of it.

It’s going in my tea garden on the front of the house.

Also, today I salvaged a skid/pallet “shed” from the local hardware store. i think it had come with garden center supplies on it, and the local hotdog wagon vendor guy had put a roof on it to hold his supplies, and then dumped it off in the “free wood” pile near the store.

The kids saw it yesterday and mentioned it would make a cool clubhouse.

So today when I went into town, I took the trailer and grabbed it. it was HEAVY, and awkward to move around but I did it. it is now in the back yard waiting for some reinforcements, paint, and fixing up with other scrap wood, singles and windows etc, I have salvaged, or will in the near future.

Rural life was meant for me…this is ME, I am in my element when I’m doing this stuff

I’m pretty sure “rustic” as a decor, was invented by people with ADHD

I can’t wait to post pictures of the dresser, and show the ongoing progress of the clubhouse

I just took a sponge bath…so,I challenge you to take a sponge bath this week. using only 8 cups of hot water.

Why?

We have run out of propane to heat the hot water heater, so we are “roughing it” until the propane gets filled in a few days.

though, I’d hardly call no hot water right out of the tap roughing it, for where I come from. But I am sure there are some people in the world who have never even thought of where their hot water comes from.

I used to have to sponge bath when I was a kid. Not “often”, but enough to be familiar with the concept, and the ability to wash my whole body, my hair, and rinse off with 8 cups of hot water, mixed half and half in the tub with cold water, using nothing but a cloth and a cup.

now I am all clean and and feeling fresh after a grubby day of yard work

I enjoyed it…could live like this all the time if I had to and would not blink an eye, or mind all that much. I’m

It is amazing to me how much we are users and wasters in our daily lives.

*I* should know better…I had a nephew from my first marriage die from fatigue driving 3 months before our wedding. He was supposed to be our groomsmen. Driving home after a long shift at work, and visiting his girlfriend, at 5 am, he fell alseep. Just like that… Gone.

*I* SHOULD know better…In our rural area, last year a well respected, well known  business man, driving in the wee hours of the morning along a straight stretch, getting close to home, fell asleep, and hit a tree.  Just like that…Gone.

I have family who are long haul truckers, who have to follow rules to stop and rest….I’ve driven from Nova Scotia to Ontario straight through MANY times, sharing shifts at the wheel when we each got tired…so  if anybody should….*I* SHOULD KNOW BETTER.

I would never dream of drinking and driving…but when you’re tired…eh, who’s NOT tired this day and age right?

It’s been 3 busy days for me…during a very hot spell this summer, and I’ve had a terrible time going to sleep, and getting terrible sleep at best of the 6 to 7 hours I’ve gotten the last 2 nights. I could give you all the reasons WHY I’m tired, but we all have them. I’m on my period, so I’m more scatter brained, the joys of ADD to add to the whole situation.

But, even when you are tired you do what you need to do, and we needed bread,milk and eggs,some other essentials, and a new door for our house that we need to install before winter.

Home Depot had a door on sale, and we new it was ‘now or never” purchase opportunity. I was tired before we left around supper time. I was cranky, and hot…the kids were driving me nuts all day, being tired and cranky and hot too.

The city is about 35 minute drive from where we live. Due to my husband’s illness,  I’m the driver in our family. Shopping under the stress of tired whiny kids, while I am tired just wears me out more. But this is usual, and we knew this ahead of time, but we went, because we had to. We did what we needed to do hopping at 4 different stores over a 4 hour time period or so. On the way out of the city we grabbed some fast food to eat on the way home.

We sat in the van to eat it, and then I started our 35 or so minute drive home on dark two lane rural roads on a Friday night after 11 pm

My husband mentions to me that he hates driving home at this hour because you never know what kind of idiot is out trying to drive home drunk. This is a fact I’d considered based on the fact that the drive into the city during  daylight hours didn’t inspire any confidence by the way the oncoming traffic was being reckless trying to pass in badly chosen places, tail gating and speeding etc.

Traffic is not heavy, but for a Friday night in a rural/tourist area, it is steady enough with oncoming cars.

Some people are forgetting to turn off their high beams at the right time and are practically blinding me, making my already exhausted brain need to concentrate more to not be drawn to their lights like a moth to a flame. That really aggravates me, too, it’ is not like they don’t know I’m coming.

So, I pay attention to the corner of the pavement I’m driving on in my lane to avoid looking right at the headlights, to ensure I pass safely. I’m aware than I move a little to the right each time an oncoming car passes me. I’m trying to be safe.

I drive half way home sipping warm coke from a can, eating sweets and talking to my husband, shifting positions, doing what I need to to stay alert and awake. He hardly drives these days due to his disability, and he’s in a lot of pain today. I don’t want to ask him to drive. He’s tweeting on his Black Berry to a friend and telling me about the conversation to keep me alert.

We were not far from our destination. which is  “just going home from grocery and home repair supply shopping”. He’s tweeting on his cell phone. Just another shopping trip. I’m always tired anyway.

He mentions I’m swerving a bit on the road. I say “I’m fine hon, just a bit tired”. It’s a reminder for me to pay closer attention. He says, its starting to freak him out a bit.

I decide half way home to stop & try to jar some adrenaline into my system, even though adrenalin is short lived, it’s worked before, and we are closer to home. I did jumping jacks, breathed fresh air, stretched, jogged a bit back and forth, drank more caffeine…just like countless other times that always work.

I get back in the van, and it’s ok, though I still am needing to concentrate more then I usually need to.

We make it to the little town just a few more minutes from where we live rurally, and I tell myself, it’s not far now…I think my brain starts to let it’s guard down now due to this knowledge.

We drive through the one main street of our town, checking out the lack of action going on in our little town at almost midnight.

I don’t even realize I’m having a micro dose until i “wake” from one. It feels like I’m not even really ever NOT aware of what’s going on, and no one else notices. A little more adrenaline makes my heart pump a bit, and makes me more alert, and I drive past the Tim Horton’s.

When I dozed this time Just a few feet up the street, my husband screamed my name and grabbed the wheel to jerk the wheel to the left miss a parked car in front of the flower shop I just about plowed into going 50 KLM, with no ability to brake for impact because I don;t see it coming.

He tells me to pull over now.

I do.

I’m in such a mental state of shock that I dozed that long or bad, that my heart is not even pounding. I notice my state of tired, and wonder how it got to that point.

I apologize, and we take a moment for HIM to slow his heart rate. I’m grateful he’s not freaking out on me. I mean we just avoided an accident. a very serious accident.What if he had been asleep like sometimes he does on the way home. What if that had of happened while we were on the road doing 70 to 80 KLM with oncoming traffic!

I’m too tired to even have adrenaline over that jar and have my heart pound so hard I can hear my heart beat in my head.

We switch and he drives home the last 10 klm. I’m grateful he does, I’m so exhausted I doze on and off on the way home, now suddenly jarring awake here and there worrying about HIM being awake enough to drive home. He’s fine, not sleepy, just in pain from his illness. I feel out of my element in the passenger side of our van, where I rarely sit but am releived to be right then.

When we get home, I bring in everything that we bought, door included, the kids go to bed and then crash…I have sleep to catch up on and I suck much! and don’t tell me I don’t.

When I woke up this morning, the slider door on the van was open, because I’d forgotten and left i open when taking our sleeping son up to bed.

The sobering effects of this event have not Left me, and I won’t allow them to.

And I wrote this, so hopefully YOU won’t either.

Stop depriving yourself of sleep. And Don’t Drive if you are feeling that tired.

To Husband and the kids…I’m sorry.

To my husband… thankyou.

Some fatigue Driving facts

A report produced by the Highway Safety Roundtable, compiles some of the latest available research on the consequences of driver fatigue. It linked to the deaths of some 400 Canadians every year to driver fatigue.

“The message is very clear that a lot more Canadians are driving tired on our roads than anyone has ever thought before, or ever wanted to admit before, and it is a very serious road safety issue. We really have to be a lot more aware of the dangers of fatigue than we have been up until now.”

-Mark Yakabuski, president of the Insurance Bureau of Canada.

Research based on Ontario traffic data suggests a long day at work could be triggering collisions, since most accidents involving fatigue occur between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. and on Fridays.

The most fatal fatigue-related crashes occur between 1 a.m. and 7 a.m.

“Fatigue is likely being under-reported, because police don’t have a good way to determine when it is a factor in a crash – unless drivers admit they were fatigued” – Yoassry Elzohairy, senior safety research adviser for the Ontario Ministry of Transportation.

A 2005 study also found one in five drivers admitted to falling asleep behind the wheel during the previous 12 months.

Yes, you read that right, and let me be the first to admit that I let my kids play with dangerous things.

OMGZ!! I’m a terrible mother! But wait! Why not read the rest before you go calling the appropriate authorities on me. I let them do it for their own good. If you are still worried when I’ve said my peice, I’ll give you the “evidence” you need to know just how terrible a mother I really am!

Looking back, I think sometimes that people didn’t see my learning disabilities/ADHD and audio processing issues as a kid because I was outside a lot playing, doing the things of my own accord, just being a kid.

You know, doing the things, that we as parents now with kids with these same kinds of issues pay people who call themselves occupational therapists a LOT of money to schedule into their daily routine as therapy.

We pay them to first figure out what kind of PLAY will best help our kids issues, and then we pay them more to get our kids to play on padded mats in rooms with trained spotters and safety equipment, and guess what…our kids usually HATE it, because it is associated with their “issues that need to be fixed”

It is sad, that it has come to us paying to practically force our kids to finger paint and stick their hands in beans, tumble and roll, and jump and climb up plastic fake rock walls and listen to music.

When I was a kid that was free, how moms just knew what to do to keep kids busy and something I WANTED to do even if my mom DIDN’T want me to.

We live rural and we somehow manage to survive on a pretty low disability income due to my husband’s health. Affording occupational therapy for my kids numerous  sensory issues is out of our financial reach and not covered by our government, as well as too far away physically to even afford to GET to, never mind pay for.

So, I do what worked for me when I was a kid. I just let my kids be kids.

Our back yard is our therapy room. I’m working on recreating a space in our workshop for the winter months when outdoors are too cold for daily events.

When my son starts spinning in the kitchen for vestibular stimulation, or stands on the furniture and sits on the rocking chair upside down to watch TV because his “brain can’t make him stop” I send him outside to jump and play, and be a kid. OR if i can’t send him outside,I have what I didn’t have as a kid to help him, a round of Wii Fit jogging, on the Wii.

I’m not a lisenced occupational therapist, but it is not rocket science folks. I’ve read dozens or more books on this stuff, I have two active kids with sensory issues, and my own issues to be my case studies. I have read dozens of websites on therapy related products and what they “accomplish” when used on kids with my kids sensory issues and can figure out for myself what I can do at home to accomplish the same thing for free or cheaper.

Being an occupational therapist means figuring out what things a person needs help with, and giving them exercises to benefit them and help them improve or maintain ability. I call it being an “Ability Growth Coach™” , and it is pretty simple.

As my kids Ability Coach, I let them play with rocks, and sticks. They take mud and cake it together with leaves and make pies. I let them play in the backyard with wood and rope, and build a teeter totter.

They swing on rope swings I’ve made them for nothing for sensory stimulation that calms their nervous systems and slows the hyperactivity down, and I even let them figure out gravity for themselves when they stand and balance on an old bike rim and topple off.

I let them climb trees without being duct taped in bubble wrap for protection. I even let them play on an old rusty metal play set at our local drive-in.

All in the name of Therapy… ahh who am I kidding, I let them do it because they love it, and it is fun, and it is what they want to do.

Kids generally know their limits and will safely test their limitations out…they won’t climb higher in the tree than they feel comfortable with. If they do, they’ll fear it for a bit, puzzle it out, and usually eventually figure out a way to get down on their own.

I’m tired of our society limiting my choices available to me as a parent by banning and/or by creating new laws and standards everyday we must adhere to, or fear the dreadful knock on the door from CAS/CPS because some busy body neighbor thinks we are allowing our kid to play unsafely or “unsupervised” (i.e. not having one eyeball glued to the kids butt)

I’m tired of our governments thinking we need to save us from ourselves. But I guess when you cannot ban stupidity or carelessness in humans, the next best thing is to protect them from themselves.

Yes, over the last 25 years since I was my own occupational therapist as a kid, other kids have been hurt badly or killed by things we no longer allow. I have my own battle scars and stories for each one of my own injuries.

Sure, it was likely unecessary for them to have been hurt/killed.I’m sure you probably know someone personally who was. I’m not heartless. It is sad when someone dies or gets hurtfor any reason. But, if I took the time to break them down for you here (I have done it before) the stats on such things is miniscule. The number of incidents are so minimal when you average out the population number in total, and the numbers hurt by any one thing, you’d have better chances of being killed on the way home tonight from work. So, why are we not banning cars?

My kids love  to play. Ya, maybe they get a scrape or a bruise here or there,  splinter, a thumb hammered accidently,but they are learning and they are not in real danger. They are also learning when they get a splinter, how NOT to do that again, and how to get out a splinter and treat the wound without running off to the ER like they’ve severed a limb.

IT amazes me how my kids fall down and bump themselves, check with me, get some hugs and a “you’re ok” first aid when I assess they are ok, and  they pick up and keep going when some other kids cry for a half hour and the parent is off to the ER concerned about a concussion, while blaming the equipment the kid was on for being unsafe.

The equipment isn’t “unsafe”. It’s  always a “risk” like everything in life. Their assessment of the situation, and handeling of the outcome just sucks. THOSE kinds of parents are who got merry go rounds, and slides that are “too high and dangerous” outlawed. Those are the kind of people that got baby walkers banned in Canada.

GROAN!

So, I’ll get off my soapbox now, but here’s the evidence if you want to call the local authorities on me…this is my kids this afternoon playing, I mean doing their therapy. Not ONLY did they do that, but it was a homeschooling lesson as well in math, physics, engineering, constructing/industrial arts, phys-ed, Leadership skills, team work skills, and they don’t even know it!

What they don’t realize they are doing will do them a lifetime of good.

I always said that when I was a mother I’d never lack the patience my mother had with me. But that was before I had children, before I was Dxed with ADD, and before I knew my kids would be so…diverse as well.

Now, as the mother of an ADHD child, I know what my mother must have endured with me, since she too, is the mother of an Add child now an ADDult And we are pretty sure she has it herself, along with LD’s like dyslexia etc. ( she once circled the island I live on twice trying to find our house and the next time I had to give very straight forward simple, step by step instructions that included visual point markers so she’s know they were on the right path.)

Anyway…The awareness on that level that my mother and I have of each other TODAY is uncanny, but as an ADDmother then ( her ) trying to parent an ADD child ( me) she didn’t have what I have…Knowing I have ADD while raising my ADD kids. We just didn’t understand the issues with inattentiveness and distractedness. It was a tough time. The older I got the harder it was to relate. The best years for me were before I was about 11 or 12.before it got too complicated.

I’m lucky that I know what ADD is, and that I’m medicating for it for myself ( cause otherwise I’d be a bumbling idiot, literally). It helps me have more patience then she did for mothering kids who both have pretty big adhd traits.

I also, as an ADDer, for some reason, have this very close link to childhood/teenhood…so I relate to kids very well. But I relate to ADD kids better it seems. I can be more sympathetic then their non ADD parents.

So I often probably tend to let the kids “get away” with more then The Mundane One does. I “understand” where they are coming from, and why they do some of the stuff they do. It’s a constant struggle. I go from being a “crabby mom” trying to give them more stability to see improvements in their behavior, and then waffle back to the more organic lifestyle that is simpler on the brain for me ( and them) My poor husband though, who once thrived on a “bit” of organization lives in our chaos now, since he is surrounded by it.

Between me, and the kids he hardly ever gets a word in edgewise. I can’t blame him for being upset, someone is always interrupting, but what do we do…this IS what it is.

It drives me nuts cause I have social anxiety all the time, worrying about what I said, how I said it, did I say to much. etc etc. and now living in a small hamlet… I think it is getting worse. And then I have anxiety cause I feel like I am always getting upset with the kids, and the neighbors must think that I’m a terrible mother. Or if I talk to them, I talk too much, and the kids yammer on, and I need to keep them ”
in check”

Sigh….this is just some of the thoughts going through my mind tonight. I don’t like being a crabby mommy…I need to let  it go… butit is so hard.

My son checking out the tadpoles on an evening jaunt on a back country road

So, right off the bat, before I go offending someone who has an ADHD child, in the city, who attends school. I’m not saying rural living and/or homeschooling is a “cure” or that you should pack up and move to the country and start homeschooling your child. Rural life is not for everyone. I can understand that.

But having grown up in the country all my life, and having tried the fast pace of the city, the rushed lifestyle, the  schedules  ” and all that jazz”…Out here in the country, I just “fit ” better. My kids just “fit” better.  ADHD just doesn’t exist especially when your ADHD kids classroom is outdoors catching snakes, sitting in the  ditch yelling into culverts studying echoes and how sound travels, finding out where tadpoles come from, naming plants, and getting your feet dirty while picking rocks for a campfire pit.

I’m not trying to paint a rosy picture of rural living…my kids are not medicated for their neurodiversities, and they do drive me crazy some days, when they grate on each other’s last nerve and need a break from each other, and I’m about ready to lose my mind from my Concerta running out at about 5 pm, and I get scatterbrained myself, and there is still supper and bedtimes to be done.

Some days it sucks when we have to go to town or the day to run errands for the month, and we’re out stuck in a vehicle most of the day and they are about ready to climb the inside of the van walls. But if I had to parent my kids, in the city, sending them to school on a schedule, for THEM and my OWN ADD, and they were unmedicated. I’d probably be in a rubber room at the nearest city hospital!

Got ADHD? Rural life is the Rx Its just more laid back, and everyone is a bit more forgiving.

Oh look…Cows!

Here a wreath I made for my friend that just celebrated her 1 year on Twitter. It was kind of a silly thing we ended up doing for each other, cause we noticed that our one year “twitterversary” was approaching. She made me a cute card with a bird on it from scrapbooking supplies, cause she is into scrapping, and so when her’s came up, I took one of the wreaths I had made from the grapevines growing on my back fence, and decorated it up.

She really liked it alot, and has it hanging in her kitchen. Which kind of shocked me, casue I just threw it together, being the ADDcrafter I am. The bird is felt, and the blanket stitch is the fastest sticth there is. The vine is twisted  sticks, and the bows are ripped fabric, cause I couldn’t find my sissors 

Not that I’m underminding it, cause I’m actually proud of how it turned out myself too. But I really do love that the rustic country feel for things suits my ADD traits so much…it makes me wonder how many people really had ADD way back then when these things were first done, and are now considered a “style”.. call it rustic/country/shabby chic/redneck/or ADDStyle..it’s me.

On the way home from town from my4 year old son’s swim class, we stopped for a moment to allow this family of canadian geese safely pass over to the millpond from the creek. I love that life gives us so many opportunities to homeschool. The spring is such a busy time. between these guys, and the barn swallows, the  back yard downy woodpecker and the like. the kids are learning a lot about wildlife and life cycles.

We are clearing off the back fence of grapevines that are causing the fence to actually be pulled down. So Instead of burning them all, I decided to make wreaths and baskets of them. IT’s a great ADDCraft because you don’t need to worry about attention to detail. the more messy and half thrown together they look the better they are I hope to post a basket picture soon, but right now the wreaths are only getting a small amount of my attention. I have been falling behind and I need to break ground on the garden before the strawberry plants die! The basket in the workshop, almost finished. I’m thinking I’m going to tag them and put them at the end of the driveway with a sale sign and see what happens. People are starting to go on those slow  Sunday drives in the county now that it is Spring.