t’s 7:30 in the morning, and thanks to the charming little cold I’ve picked up, I can’t sleep. I was actually dead to the world up until about an hour ago, but I woke up just enough for small things to begin to settle in. My back ached a little. My nose was a little stuffy. I had to pee. I was kind of hungry. My feet were a bit cold. Nothing big or serious, just a handful of vaguely annoying little things that, combined, kept me awake.
     And then my husband came to bed and promptly began sawing logs, and that was pretty much the tipping point. So here I sit, with a hot cup of liquid coma, also known as chamomile tea, waiting for the effects to kick in so I can go back to sleep. Don’t tattle on me — I’m also smoking in the house. Hey, it’s frickin’ cold out there, okay?
     So, in the meantime, I figured I’d check out the news and make a post and whatnot.
     The big news at Casa Del Java is that the good Doctor came for a visit this weekend. We went and retrieved him from Caro on Thursday. He gamed with us Thursday night, which, considering that I’m currently running a zombie apocalypse scenario, was vast amounts of entertainment for me. Instant paranoia, just add Doc Celestine. Friday, we watched Transformers, which was just excellent. It was actually my second time watching it. I borrowed the DVD from my boss and watched it with much glee last week. It was a bit cheesy and goofy, but so much fun. The fights were amazing, and the story was perfectly acceptable. Of course, there was Optimus Prime, with the original voice, which, for those of us who grew up with the cartoon, was just fantastic. I pretty much clapped and giggled and glee’d through the whole movie. So, since the Doc hadn’t seen it, we watched it again on Friday. Yesterday I had to work. *sighs* Such a boring night. It was boring even though I had double clean-ups to keep me busy (short-handed, waitress called out). There was just no business. There was a lot going on in town, but the biggest part of the blame goes to the Michigan/State football game. Whichever team it is that Art likes won. Don’t ask me which that is — I can’t be bothered to keep track of sports.
     The biggest news is that it’s November, which means that it’s NaNoWriMo time. I’m not going to bother with it much this year. I never have any luck with it, and some BS or another is always going on in November . . . So this year, I decided that instead of setting word goals and pissing around with NaNo guilt and so forth, I was just going to keep track of what I did write, and be happy with the fact that I was writing anything at all.
     Fortunately, about a week ago, MrJames sent out an email asking if anyone was interested in writing for the Carnival again. He then proceeded to bust out about four truly excellent and inspiring posts in the Carnival, and that, paired with the Doc turning up again, led me to post as well. The Carnival was a round-robin writing community that Doc started back in the day — about five years ago — that was a tremendous amount of fun, and that caused us to write some really excellent material. It’s nice to see it up and running again. I don’t know how long we’ll stick with it, but it should be a good ride.
     Man. That liquid coma is starting to kick in. Did I mention that it wasn’t just plain old chamomile tea, but Celestial Seasonings’ Sleepytime Extra tea? Among other things, it has chamomile, spearmint, and extra elephant tranquilizers or something like that in it.
     Before I pass the hell out at the keyboard, I just wanted to point out this article: The Autism Epidemic.

     A few decades ago, people probably would have said kids like Ryan Massey and Eddie Scheuplein were just odd. Or difficult.
     Both boys are bright. But Ryan, 11, is hyper and prone to angry outbursts, sometimes trying to strangle another kid in his class who annoys him. Eddie, 7, has a strange habit of sticking his shirt in his mouth and sucking on it.
     Both were diagnosed with a form of autism. And it’s partly because of children like them that autism appears to be skyrocketing: In the latest estimate, as many as one in 150 children has some form of this disorder. Groups advocating more research money call autism ”the fastest-growing developmental disability in the United States.”

     It’s not the “mercury” in the vaccines, folks. See? I wasn’t making crap up. It’s that they changed the definitions of Autism about ten years ago.

     (Photo credit: Tea.)

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This entry was posted on Sunday, November 4th, 2007 at 8:17 am and is filed under Controversies, Medicine, Real Life, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.