Wednesday, November 30, 2011

SUPERXmas! Day 3: Sleep, actually.

Last night's original plan for SUPERXmas!



(TM.)

was to do a social story to get Mr Bunches and Mr F ready for seeing Santa later this week -- the twins have never visited Santa, although we tried once. I'm not even sure they really know who Santa is, although they have some idea because Mr Bunches once spent nearly a month watching the Spongebob Christmas episode over and over, and you can't watch Squidward make fun of Spongebob believing in Santa over 300 times without learning a little something, so who says TV isn't educational?

But that plan got derailed when Mr F got what looked to be Mr Bunches' dose of pink-eye, so I had to scrap plan A and go to Plan B, which was to take Mr F and Mr Bunches to the after-hours clinic so that Mr F could be examined to see if he really did have pink eye; both Sweetie and I were sure that he did, because, while we are not medical doctors, we are able to observe certain telltale clues such as these:

(a) his eye was really pink.

The doctor, though, wasn't so sure, although to be fair it might be hard to diagnose pink eye when the child you're trying to examine doesn't want to be examined and so is being held tightly in the lap of his dad while you try to examine him, but to be fair-er, that doctor could really have tried a little harder to be a little nicer: forewarned that Mr F is autistic and doesn't care for doctors, she treated him more or less like a piece of meat, ordering me to hold him on my lap and then manhandling poor Mr F into letting her look in his ears and his eyes and his chest before pronouncing that he maybe had pink eye.

Seriously: she didn't even try to be nice. I've seen calf-roping events that treated the calf nicer than she treated Mr F. Also, I haven't really seen calf-roping events, but I get the gist of them.

Anyway, Mr F doesn't quite have pink eye. He provisionally has pink-eye. He has pre-pink eye and so we have a prescription, ready to go, if he gets pink eye, which we will know (I was told, brusquely) because he'll get gunk in his eyes.

She used the word gunk.

So after that, I had to get some bread and cheese, about which more later, and drop those off at the office. And then I had to get the boys back home, where Sweetie awaited us, and where I finally, at 9:30 at night, got to do something SUPERXmas-y, and that SUPERXmas-y thing was:

Watch "Love, Actually."

That was one of the two Christmas movies we had DVRd, ready to go, the other being "Snow 2: Brain Freeze," which is described this way:

Santa is in a rush to get things right for the big day, but an accident with a magic mirror leaves him with amnesia and unable to remember who he is. It befalls his wife to put things right in time for Christmas, but a jealous rival sees a chance to exploit the situation to his advantage.

How could you not want to watch that? Even with the risk that you'll be a little lost because you didn't see "Snow 1", which actually was just called "Snow."

But I gave Sweetie the choice, and I watched "Love, Actually," which is a great movie, after all, and which I really like, and which left me with these burning questions:

1. Did Snape actually cheat on his wife? Sweetie says no. I'm not so sure, but I like to think he didn't because otherwise: sad.

2. Karl wasn't such a great guy, was he? I mean, Laura Linney explained to him about her brother and he's all just "Don't take his call?" So she wasted "two years, seven months, three days and, I suppose, an hour and thirty minutes," plus the time between that speech and the night she found out Karl was a jerk. And that scene where she gave him the scarf made me cry a little. I'm not afraid to admit it.

3. This isn't really a question, but it needs to be said: This being a basic-cable, ABC-Family version of Love, Actually, they cut out, entirely, the storyline about the porn-actor stand-ins, which I always thought was actually a pretty good story.

4. Was Mr Bean actually planning on flying? Or was he some kind of magical character intervening to give Qui-Gon's kid a good ending? And did anyone but me catch it the one time the kid actually called Qui-Gon "Dad?" I'm pretty sure he called him Dad.

Anyway: Mission Accomplished! And we'll keep you posted on the Holiday Pink-Eye plague. And also, I was up until midnight watching the movie and then got up at 5 today, so I'm SUPERTired.

*******************************************

The "Say Merry Christmas to Mateo and McHale Shaw Giveaway".

Here are Mateo and McHale Shaw:



They were born conjoined and have defied all odds and have gone on surviving and thriving through dozens of surgeries. Their parents, Ryan and Angie Shaw, not only are raising these two boys (and their little brother Maddux) but are great people in their own right.

I'm trying to get everyone who reads one of these SUPERXmas posts to go to the Shaws' website and wish McHale and Mateo a Merry Christmas, and to urge you on, I'm going to give away a a $20 Amazon Gift Card.

Here's the rules:

1. Visit Mateo and McHale Shaw's Caring Bridge site; you can get to it here. You'll have to sign in, but that's not so hard, right?

2. Leave them a comment in the guest book wishing them "Merry Christmas," (or happy holidays, or whatever nice greeting you want.)

3. Post on your blog a link to that site and tell people why you did it.

4. Leave a comment on this blog and tell me where to find your link.

Once I get that comment here and verify your link, I'll put your name in a drawing and on December 26, the winner will get named and will have a little post-Christmas reward to look forward to.


Day One is here.

Day Two is here.

3 comments:

PT Dilloway said...

In my mailbox there was an ad from Allstate saying if you get an insurance quote from them they'll donate $10 to Autism Speaks.

Michael Offutt, Phantom Reader said...

I got pink eye once and it indeed does make your eye leak gunk all over the place. It's quite a miserable experience. You will know when pink eye sets in.

A big cause of getting pink eye is sticking your fingers in poo or using public toilets or touching dirty things and then not washing your hands/rubbing the eyes.

Never do that. It's bad.

I wished the twins a Merry Christmas so you can get off my back now Mr. Pushy. :P

Andrew Leon said...

Yes, the stand-in story is quite sweet.
I do believe the boy does call him "dad," but it's been a year since we watched it, so I'm not quite remembering for sure.

My wife loves that movie.

Just want to say that if I do go over and wish a Merry Christmas, I won't be telling you. Trying to get something for doing a good deed kind of undermines the good deed in my mind. I'm okay with not winning the $20.

And, yes, pink eye does make gunk. That is the actual scientific term for it, so the doc wasn't wrong.
It's too bad docs don't have to have any kind of empathy training.