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Friday, January 16, 2009

Friday Random

Random Personality Test of the Week: Go look at your movie collection... what kind of movies do you watch? Glancing at mine the other day I realized I have a very eclectic selection. Anytime your movie night choices are a toss up between Pride and Prejudice and Bourne Identity - and you're the only one watching - you have to admit to a certain dichotomy on your lifestyle.

What I really want is P&P done in space with explosions. I'd be so happy.

Random Reality Check of the Week:
The hardest lesson for a mother to learn is that their child is an individual. Babies are so full of promise. You lie there, holding this cuddly bundle of joy, and from the moment they first blink those big brown eyes at you, you can picture everything. Their first word, their first day of school, prom night, college, your child curing cancer and running for president. And then they learn to crawl and you realize the little bundle of joy may have other plans, like planning the world's largest bank heist or becoming a rock star.

My Eldest is 6, she's in first grade, and I adore her. I'm a reader and a writer, so naturally it follows that my daughter would be just like me. She'll love reading! She'll be at the top of her class! It will be wonderful. We'll co-author something when she's in her teens and it will be a sensation!

But for the past two years Eldest has struggled with reading and verbal skills. Her math skills are off the charts (I'm frightened, I hated math), but the English language is a mystery to her. This week she was diagnosed with an Audio Processing Disorder, almost verbal dyslexia. What you say, and what her brain processes, are not the same thing.

As nice as it is to know why we've had these problems I'm upset that my baby has to go through this challenge. She's such a sweet girl, and I pictured such a flawless future for her. Struggling with her native language was not something I wanted for her.

Reality is that we can't make our children's lives perfect. Having money won't make their lives better. Being a devoted parent won't keep them from getting colds or having fights with friends. No amount of work or wishing can keep our children from hitting bumps in the road.

I'm pretty sure this applies to our books too. We send the proverbial "baby" out only to have the novel rejected, or critiques slam it, or it gets placed on the shelf only to collect dust. The bumps and low points are part of life. For us. For our children. For our work. When you hit one, you just have to keep going.

Random Progress of the Week: I have almost 8k added to my current WIP. I'm dragging through chapter three, as always, but I'm really excited. This is a very solid novel. It has depth and dimension that some of my earlier works lack. It isn't fluffy. And by chapter three the body count is still zero. That's a first for me.


So........What's your random?

7 comments:

  1. Many hugs from me to Eldest. She will succeed, I know it. She'll also have many stories to tell when she's older to other kids who have Audio Processing Disorder and to their parents (you will too).

    re:personality test-
    I have Harry Potter, LotR, Die Hard, Rush Hour, The DaVinci Code, Mamma Mia the movie, Pride and Prejudice, 13 Going on 30, Star Wars, Lost in Space... well, I have a combo of pretty much lots of genres. I read lots of different genres too.

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  2. Great post! Love Random stuff.

    Yes, my movie collection contain Austen (many, many of them, and lots of versions of each), but it also contains Bourne and Shakespeare and Pixar and Disney, and the ultimate fave - Hitchiker's. We have lots of different tastes.

    Have you finished Skippy yet???

    And do your children have brown eyes when they're born? I thought they all had blue. Jut a random question.

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  3. My girls were both born with pitch back eyes. Small and Pink's have lightened considerably, Eldest still has black/brown eyes.

    But Small and Pink also has reddish-blond-brown hair and very fair skin while eldest has a permanent tan, olive skin tone, and dark brown hair. I can show you the punt square and explain exactly why that happened, but really it just shows the families genetic mix. :o) We're an official "mutt" breed.

    Which Hitchhikers do you have? I love the old BBC version but we have the new one... just ouch all over the place.

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  4. Well since I have a wife that spends as much time watching Lifetime Movie Network as I do Sportscenter our house DVD collection goes from every Sandra Bullock movie ever made to thinks like Jackass and Rambo.

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  5. Movies? Heh, we have a random selection--superhero/comics movies (Spidey, Batman, Hellboy, etc), comedies (like Baby's Day Out, Three Stooges movies and collections), dramas (several versions of Jane Eyre, horse movies like The Man From Snowy River, etc), horror (The Crawling Eye, becuase I love campy horror movies, Van Helsing, the Mummy movies, a collection of 100 horror flicks :P, Frankenstein), SF (Star Wars, Babylon 5, The Forbidden Planet, The Day the Earth Stood Still, etc), fantasy (LOTR, old cheesy Hercules movies), historicals (Ben-Hur, 10 Commandmants, Spartacus, 300 Spartans, etc), romance (scary, I know-only one I can think of off hand is Borrowed Hearts), and a LOT of animated movies, including Disney and Pixar and TV series like Beast Wars, Gargoyles, TMNT, Tale Spin, etc.

    We have, uh, quite the collection. :P (And this was all listed off the top of my head. Dunno if that's sad or not...)

    Um. Sorry, long list, I'm sure I bored y'all to tears with that. :P I'll watch anything, really, but whether I'll get through it or not is another story...

    *hugs* on Eldest. It'll work out, I'm sure it will. :)

    And good work on the wc. I've, hmm, don't probably nothing WC wise this week. :S

    *sigh*

    I'm randomly in the mood for apple pie though.

    ~Merc

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  6. Um... we have the new one and I like it. But I haven't read the books. *hides face in shame*

    I didn't know there was another one. Must discover this...

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  7. Our movies run the whole gamut! Like Glam I'm a fan of all the Austen ones multiple version modern and old, twisted and straight. We also have sci-fi, adventures, disney, drama, comedy, BBC, and suspense. We're lacking in Horror though.

    Our son also has APD. We had his hearing checked so many times before someone finally thought to check for it. Math is his favorite subject too.

    Congrats on the +8K.

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