Woulda Coulda Shoulda

More should be more

by Mir on May 4, 2010 in It's not a regret, it's an "experience", What do I do all day?

I am a slow learner (to my detriment). And while some people live by the credo that less is more, my personal internal monologue runs in the “if some is good, more would be MORE AWESOMER” direction.

Even though it’s not true. Even though the OPPOSITE is usually true.

Like… take food, for example. A normal person enjoys, say, buffalo chicken wings, and eats some and says, “Yum, that was delicious.” Me, I’m like a puppy. If I like a food, I will eat until it’s GONE regardless of whether I’m still hungry or any sort of other common sense. So I am not allowed to partake of things like buffalo wings (which, in my old age, will indeed make me sick if I overindulge) unless the available food matches a reasonable portion size. And that’s not even getting into the Murphy’s Law corollary that applies to family food.

What, you don’t know what I mean? C’mon, anyone with kids knows this great truth of cooking: (more…)

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Monkey at the bat

by Mir on May 3, 2010 in Offspring: ecstasy and agony

Monkey has a friend.

Now, this is not exactly a first; Monkey has always had friends. When he’s having good days, he is charming and gregarious and has no trouble ingratiating himself to others. The problems come in on the not-so-good days when he is easily frustrated and quick to anger. On those days, the not-quite-friends decide to play elsewhere, and the few select kids who’ve chosen to hang out with him anyway give him wide berth for the day. And maybe the next day, too. “He never wants to play with me anymore,” Monkey lamented of one longtime friend, the other day. “We like to do different things, I guess. Also I guess I get mad a lot.” (The kid in question is a saint for still being friendly to him at all, quite frankly.)

But now Monkey has a friend like him. I’ve been hearing about him all year but only in the last couple of months have I seen this pair in action, and it’s something to observe. They GET each other. They laugh and play for hours on end. They chatter endlessly and never tire of each other. Monkey and Lemur: dynamic Aspie duo. (more…)

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Me, me, me

by Mir on April 30, 2010 in Haven't been hit by lightning yet!, What do I do all day?

My navel is FASCINATING. Excuse me while I stare at it some more.

[That's a total lie. My navel is horrifying. I used to have a belly ring, you know, back when I was convinced I'd never be able to get pregnant so I might as well ENJOY THAT FLAT BELLY and show it off, and I reasoned that a belly ring was less permanent than a tattoo. I was right, but I was short-sighted---I have a big scar where the ring used to be, because I waited until I was a hundred months and fifty pounds pregnant to remove it. Whoops.]

Anyway, to get the full breadth of my navel-gazing, feel free to head over to Five Full Plates, where today I am realizing that my own damn self is out of my comfort zone, and I’m pretty sure the metaphysics of that little gem caused a rift in the space-time continuum. Sorry ’bout that.

And then, if you’re tired of me (which, really, who could blame you?), perhaps you’d like to read my interview with Ruth Wells Fischer on BlogHer, the last in our series of posts for Autism Awareness Month. Ruth is a smart and lovely lady who has kindly held my hand from afar through a lot of this Asperger’s stuff, and I’m thrilled to share her wisdom with the community at large.

Interesting side note, to interpret as you will: BlogHer is currently running a little Meet These Autism Bloggers spot, and when I saw my picture in that post I had a moment of utter confusion. Because I’m not an autism blogg— oh. I guess I am. Writer, know thyself (dumbass).

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Err on the side of love

by Mir on April 29, 2010 in Growing, Offspring: ecstasy and agony

Last year when I started my garden, I had no idea what I was doing. This year I at least have some idea of how little I know, so I consider that progress.

Last year I started almost everything as a plant, with a few seeds sown directly into my planter boxes and grown outside. About a month (maybe even more) after I began the garden, though, I decided to try starting some tomatoes from seed, and so I did that, inside, until they were big enough to transplant. I then moved them to their designated planting spots, where they promptly turned white and tried to die. If you’re a seasoned gardener, you know this is because I knew nothing about hardening them and my poor little tomato seedlings went into shock. They didn’t die, but it was touch and go for a while, there.

This year I’ve been taking my seedlings out to the deck and arranging and rearranging them, trying to help them acclimate, trying to make sure they’re truly ready for full days of Georgia sun before I let them take root in the ground.

And so yesterday when Monkey came home from school, head hanging, despondent over a bad day, I made him come out on the porch with me and sit and talk while I fiddled with the plants. (more…)

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Punch Buggy Blues

by Mir on April 28, 2010 in Offspring: ecstasy and agony, Ottomatic For the People

When Chickadee gets her license, she would like to buy a red VW Beetle with yellow lightning bolts down the sides. She has been telling us this for YEARS, which of course means that for years we have been telling her that 1) it’s good to have dreams and 2) she should feel free to get a job at any time.

When that elicits whining and complaining, Otto always points out that he’s perfectly willing to gift her his car once she’s driving. As his car is already 20 years old, for some reason this doesn’t thrill her. Go figure.

Given her lifelong obsession with Beetles, you’d think that playing Punch Buggy would’ve been part of our standard family repertoire for years, but somehow we only started playing it about a month ago. This has been terribly amusing for a number of reasons, but unfortunately it has also increased my driving anxiety by about a hundredfold.

I’m sure that’s totally safe, right? (more…)

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Paging Dr. Freud

by Mir on April 27, 2010 in It's not a regret, it's an "experience", Offspring: ecstasy and agony

I would certainly never tell him about this while he is a child, and maybe I’ll never tell him, but the fact of the matter is that I have recurring nightmares about Monkey dying. And it’s just as awful as it sounds.

Sometimes I go for months and months without it happening. In the past I’ve even gone a year or more. But they always come back.

The only time I’ve ever dreamed about Chickadee dying was after our car accident, and they faded away after a few months. On the other hand, my nightmares about losing Monkey started when I was pregnant with him. That means I’m coming up on a dozen years of waking up in a panic, convinced my youngest has succumbed to dangers from which I failed to protect him.

Why it happens, why it’s just him… well, I have a few theories. Some are more “woo-woo” than others, and I don’t suppose it really matters. But last night was the worst yet. (more…)

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Awkward

by Mir on April 26, 2010 in Offspring: ecstasy and agony, Ottomatic For the People

Friday morning was one of those days where we’re aaaaaalmost done with the week, and everyone is tired and grumpy, and we’re running late and wishing it was already Saturday. So when Chickadee dragged her way through her shower and came downstairs late and then was fussing with a necklace instead of eating her breakfast or feeding the dog, I may have been a little impatient. There may have been some yelling. She may have flounced out the door without even saying goodbye, and I may have been righteously indignant that SHE was mad at ME when I wasn’t the one dragging ass.

When the phone rang and the school came up on the caller ID, a couple of hours later, I figured she was calling to apologize and/or make sure I wasn’t mad. That’s kind of her way. And so I was very surprised when I picked up the phone and she asked me if I could come get her.

Turns out, it’s kind of hard to get ready on time when you have a fever of 102. (I totally had to buy her a pony to make up for what a jerk I was earlier that morning.) She was really a very good sport for someone who probably felt like dog poop, but as she proceeded to be sick all weekend we had to find some low-key ways to keep her entertained. (more…)

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So, about that meeting

by Mir on April 23, 2010 in It's not a regret, it's an "experience"

We had “one last IEP meeting” before taking our precious snowflake and vowing never to return to elementary school (um, next year, I mean… we’re not ditching the last month of school this year), except that things didn’t go quite the way we’d planned. And now, of course, I have to come up with a new plan, except that I’ve been dared to make peace with no plan for a little while.

As you might expect, this is making me completely mental. I mean, moreso than usual, even.

You can hear the gorey details today in my post over at Five Full Plates. I’ll just be over here, with no plan. Just being.

And maybe twitching ever so slightly.

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Love takes a break

by Mir on April 22, 2010 in Health is overrated, Offspring: ecstasy and agony

I have guilt. I have guilt over lots of things, but right now I’m talking about the guilt I feel whenever one of you pretty people feels compelled to comment “You’re such a good mom!” or something similar, because I know the truth, you see.

And the truth is not some sort of hipster self-deprecating “Oh no I’m not” thing where I just feel that it’s not edgy enough to cop to being a decent parent, either. I mean, I am a decent parent. Sometimes I’m a GREAT parent. But most of the time I’m a decent parent. And occasionally? I am a terrible parent.

The “you’re so awesome” accolades invariably seem to come within a day of me doing something cringeworthy and then I think to myself, “Lord, if only they knew.” But most of you do know, I suppose, because most of you are parents as well. And that means knowing that sometimes you say or do things of which you’re not proud, and often hoping that your children’s memories are short and their resilience is endless.

Right now our family is stressed out on several fronts, and that means I am not always the parent I want to be. (more…)

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A snapshot

by Mir on April 20, 2010 in Offspring: ecstasy and agony

I am rather (emotionally, intellectually) wrapped up in my kids at the moment. There will be a time for telling more, but right now I’m only going to say that we have one last IEP meeting today, and tomorrow we head into Atlanta to see the long-awaited specialist about Chickadee’s mystery skin condition. In short: my Mama Bear heart is heavy with anger and fear, respectively, and that makes it hard to say much that’s worth sharing.

Recently it seems like I’ve had to explain to a lot of people “what it’s like” with a kid like Monkey, and I never know where to start, because sometimes it’s wonderful, and sometimes it’s pull-your-hair-out maddening, and sometimes it makes me cry and sometimes it makes me laugh UNTIL I cry.

So here’s a snippet from this morning: He asked me to pull out a shirt for him to wear, and I happened to grab one bearing the name of his old school. He looked at it and frowned, and said, “Will people find it offensive if I wear that?”

You know, because it’s spirit for a different school. A fair and considerate question, I guess, until you consider that it comes from the same kid who sees nothing wrong with calling classmates “stupid idiots” when they get the wrong answer, because, you know, “it’s true, so what’s the problem?”

So in case you’re wondering, it’s like that.

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