The Secret In the Sauce

I am so positively thrilled to have a guest post by Adrienne Ehlert Bashista, the editor of Easy to Love but Hard to Raise: Real Parents, Challenging Kids, True Stories . This book has become my new best friend, literally. I keep it on my bedside table to read each night and go to bed comforted in knowing that I'm not alone in my struggles of raising a child with a neuro-behavioral disability. Thanks to Adrienne in all of her efforts to build a community of support for parents and to provide that little bit of extra strength to help us all get through the day. Finding Strength by Adrienne Ehlert Bashista This past Sunday I moderated a panel discussion of the book , Easy to Love but Hard to Raise: Real Parents, Challenging Kids, True Stori es .   I co-edited and contributed to the book along with 32 other parent-writers. The panel was at a local bookstore and about 15 people showed up – friends and supporters of the writers, including my mom, and a handful...

I stopped by my sister-in-law's house last night where sickness was on the rampage. He little girl has had a fever of a 103 for a week and her son just started spiking a fever of the same degree. The clincher is the fact that she has a newborn too! Even though she is very much like me and dabbling in the homeopathic realm, I found myself going through everything she should be doing for the baby and the kids to help keep the bugs at bay. Now, I do have a medicine cabinet with dye-free Advil and Tylenol for the baby in dire emergencies, but I've found that I can manage surprisingly well with my natural remedies. What's the big deal you ask? Well, for one, all OTC medicines and drugs have side effects and I don't like not-knowing what is inadvertently going on inside my body. I sang my praises to Advil for many years using it to help with any manner of pain or inflammation. Three sinus surgeries later come to find out that something in Advil, Sudafed, Claritin and o...

I didn't get the 'memo' but it looks like people are doing a 22 days of gratitude type of deal in lieu of the Thanksgiving holiday. Despite it being a little cliche, there's never a really good reason to not jump on board a gratitude wagon. Aside from that, I was also inspired by the lesson in one of my church meetings yesterday, that was simply on kindness, to re-commit to a few very important goals. 1. I am grateful for all four of mine, his, and our children. Parenting and step-parenting has proven to be one of the greatest ongoing challenges of my life. Not one of my kids is like the other. They all have unique stuggles, quirks and personalities that make me want to sometimes either squeeze them like crazy with happiness or frustration. ;) They are constantly reminding me (unverbally) of what my priorities should be and they are constantly teaching me patience. If I can keep calm and carry on (thanks Mr. Churchill), I think I might actually be okay at this parenti...

So, I missed my post yesterday because I got over-involved in a kitchen re-organization. My kitchen isn't even that messy but I pulled out the vacuum and sucked up the crumbs in the drawers and re-located various items to make my kitchen time not only funner, but easier (and to make room for some new gadgets that I just got from Pampered Chef - which makes kitchen time SO much happier!). The really ridiculous part is that I love doing it - all the time. I've always had a very organized personality. I'm good with that. At any rate, I spent the day before, Halloween, making my famous chili and cornbread and spider cookies. I went to greater lengths this year as I hunted down natural licorice for the spider legs and a red hot replacement for the spider eyeballs. I used a natural cake mix which honestly, just isn't the same as the cake mix that uses those unstable and brain-altering partially hydrogenated oil molecules. Did you the know the half-life of partially hydrog...