Just throw them off!

Have you all seen the story about Southwest throwing a 2 year old and his mother off a plane yesterday because the toddler was shouting "Go, plane, go!" and "I want daddy?" I've tried to post a link, but it's not working. I'm sure if you google it, you'll find it easily.


I've read several versions of this story so far, and I don't know what makes me angrier about it: the fact that it happened, or the rude and ignorant comments readers have posted after the story (including, my favorite, "toss them off at 30,000 feet!")


One has to look no further than this story and its reader comments to realize what is wrong with this world. We have no compassion, no tolerance and no understanding for others anymore.


I know how this poor woman must have felt, because I had quite the flight last weekend to Minneapolis. Connor and I had sat on the runway for over an hour because our plane was delayed. He got a little upset toward the end and started crying. I was well on my way to calming him when the flight attendant FROM HELL approached me and started yelling at me to get my child under control. She also yelled at Connor to be quiet. I calmly told her Connor has autism and he was overstimulated (even showed her the letter from his doctor), and screaming at me and him did not help, but rather made it worse. Still, she kept on. It actually took another passenger to tell this flight attendant to back off for her to do so. But she harassed me the entire flight, even after Connor was calm, sitting in his seat and being well behaved while watching a movie. It was amazing.


The flight home was better, but thanks to that one flight attendant, I likely will not fly agian for a long time.


No one wants to hear a cranky child, but chances are, if people had offered some help and kindness, the whole outcome of this event could have been a lot different. What a sad, sad world we live in.

Halloween Party Fun

Connor's preschool had its Halloween Party today. The kids performed a bunch of songs they had learned this month, and got to put on a little parade in the costumes. They played some games, and also ate way too much candy. Connor had a good time and surprisingly, isn't too wound up after all that candy!

Minnesota zoo.......

On Sunday, during our last full day with Isaak, we decided to check out the Minnesota Zoo. We got in for free using our Pittsburgh Zoo membership, because they are a reciprocal zoo. It was pretty cool.

Their zoo was fabulous. It sits on roughly a quarter of a 500-acre reserve the zoo owns. They don't have as many animals as the Pittsburgh Zoo, but the ones they do have certainly have more room to roam. I like our zoo here, but have always felt sad that the animals are so crammed into their enclosures. In Minnesota, they had a lot of room to roam.

They had a monorail you could ride to see a portion of the zoo. We decided to do that, and it offered a great view. I got some of the best photos from the monorail.

The weekend is over and Connor and I are back home. But I do feel confident that if we make the move, we'll be happy there. Minnesota isn't Pennsylvania (where I was born and raised and have lived my entire life), but it is a pretty nice state, too. :)

Today, we went to the Minnesota Transportation Museum in St. Paul. It's our first full day here with Isaak. Connor, who is crazy about Thomas the Tank Engine, loved the museum. They had quite a few old engines and cabooses and passenger cars that you could board and explore. Some of them were over 100 years old. My favorite part was the sign in one of the passenger train's "necessities areas" which read: please do not flush toilet while train is still in station. Um, yeah. Yuck.

Connor got to ride on a caboose and we sat in the cuppola area, so we got a great view. This museum has the last operating roundtable in the U.S., and we got to see it in action. It was cool. Connor was fascinated with it, too, because that's one of his favorite parts of playing with his Thomas trains.

We also went to a local indoor play area, which was pretty cool. It was part of a large complex that also included the local library.

So far, I'm finding it to be a very nice area. Looking forward to more fun tomorrow!

Cautious optimism

So, it's been nearly a month now, and my two cats are starting to finally get along....somewhat. When I had Zorro to the vet last week for his

second round of shots, I bought something called
Feliway. It's a plug in thing that emits a friendly

cat scent (whatever the heck THAT means) and it's supposed to make cats calmer around each other. Well, it certainly has done that. However, Zorro is not quite sure he really trusts Gabe. Gabe is the fatty puss laying down in the right of this photo. So when Zorro thinks he's had enough, he hides under a large dresser in the bedroom. I am not quite sure how he manages to squeeze his body under the small opening (I'll post more photos of that later), but I keep hoping that while he's under there, he'll clean up the dust bunnies. Hey, a girl can dream, can't she?

Fun at gram's house!

Connor spent a few days with gram and pap, and they went to some indoor fun thing this morning at the Indiana Ice Skating Rink. As you can see, Connor had a blast, jumping, bouncing and climbing (three of his favorite activities)!

The Great Pumpkin Patch.....

Connor's preschool went to Harvest Valley Farms today for a field trip. It wasn't raining, which was nice. The kids got a lesson on all the fruits and veggies that are grown there, then a visit with the animals in the barn. Connor liked the baby chicks best. After that, they got to go to the pumpkin patch and pick their own pumpkin. Finally, they finished up with a sample of apple cider, which Connor thought was "really tasty."

Flying fur!

No, these are not my cats in this picture. But only because I've been too busy squirting them with a water gun to take a picture of them actually engaging in this behavior. But they have....several times.

Oddly, I expected Zorro (aka feral kitty) to be the aggressive one. Boy was I wrong. My indoor cat, Gabe, who is 7 years old, has been the aggressor. At first they were both fine with each other. Then, Gabe decided he didn't want to share his "mommy," and he started hissing and acting badly. Twice he's jumped poor Zorro, and twice I've had to squirt him with the water gun to get him to stop. This morning, at 4 a.m., he was clawing the carpet outside the room where Zorro is staying, trying to get in. I actually found myself giving him a cat time out in the other bathroom, because I was that annoyed with him.

Who would have thought I'd have to treat my 7 year old cat (who is technically MY ELDER if you consider his age in cat years) like a child? Ugh.

If anyone has any tips to help me get Gabe to accept Zorro, I'm all ears.

Who needs to stop anyway?

So this lovely illustration to the left here is how to perform what is known as a "hockey stop" when you're on ice skates. The idea is the same as if you were stopping while on skis, which oddly enough, I can do. So, you'd think I'd be able to do it on ice skates, too, right? WRONG. And this is very important, since I am going to be a volunteer coach for my son's hockey league (that's a story for another blog). I can skate well enough, but forget about stopping. I have been skating for 7 years now, and I still have not been able to master doing a quick stop (which I predict might be necessary when working with kids). So I had a lesson yesterday, working on the stopping. I was doing so well with stopping when I was going at a relatively slow speed that I got bold and tried to do a hockey stop at full speed. Um, not a good idea. If I had simply gone down, it might not have been so bad. But I twisted my right knee outward (imaging bending it the opposite way you would if you were sitting Indian style) and that was what I did - right down onto the ice. Now, those of you who know me know I have two bad knees from prior injuries, so this was not the best thing to do to myself. Oddly enough, the pain passed, and I skated for another 30 minutes. But now, I can barely walk. I can't bend it, can't move it, can't do anything without it hurting in ways I didn't know were possible. I've done heat and ice, put on my trusty knee brace for support and have taken more Advil than I probably should have in one 8 hour period. Hopefully this heals up quickly. But I think it's safe to say it'll be a loooooooooooong time before I try hockey stops again.