Awkward
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. read more…
So, about that meeting
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.
Love takes a break
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. read more…
A snapshot
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.
Stormy weather
The last few sleepover adventures left you crabby and snappish and generally impossible, so we lowered the boom last summer: No more sleepovers until you are 12. So of course as your birthday approached you began planning a grand sleepover party, and were astonished to realize that no, actually, we were not going to green-light ten friends sleeping over. Because WE SAID. And WE PROMISED! When you were 12! And you’re turning 12 now and THAT’S NOT FAIR and WE ARE MEAN!
We calmly explained that “when you are 12” meant “sometime after you are 12 we will resume letting you have a single friend spend the night,” not “and on your 12th birthday we shall lose our minds and agree to host a 16-hour-long screechfest.” I waited for the storm to pass. You stomped and grumbled and then set to the task of planning. By the time you were done, make-your-own tacos and a sundae bar and head-to-head Dance Dance Revolution were all on the agenda, and you were happy.
Invitations were made and some of your friends—caught up in their own tween dramas, no doubt—hemmed and hawed and didn’t RSVP, and soon you were sad again, convinced no one was coming, convinced you would never have another happy birthday in your entire life. I waited for the storm to pass. read more…
Not negative
Our next group challenge at Five Full Plates is the I Dare You challenge—stuff that legends are made of. If, of course, the legends involve us all clinging to our old comfort zones, and kicking and screaming our ways towards personal growth and exploration and all of that sort of thing. But the five of us are committed to TAKING THE DARE for the next month or so, and the results are already verrrry interesting.
First Lydia started a rock band (no fooling). Then Joshilyn, who prefers to believe that everyone is smooth like a Ken doll under their clothes, shared the gory details of her recent surgery (and probably had her toes in a permanent curl the entire time) in order to ask folks to please donate blood. Poor Gray, who is still struggling with her health, allowed those who need it a bit of “the dog ate my homework” pass until next week. And Kira, who is most excellent at taking care of everyone else, has committed to doing something absolutely, 100% just for herself, even though it’s scary.
And me? Well, I’ve decided to say yes. I’ve decided to EMBRACE yes. Go on over and read about it if you want to find out how our family is going to be making big changes this year.
Love laughs
I often feel like a lot of things leave you with no choice but to cry or to laugh, and laughing is a lot more fun.
Not that I always manage it, don’t get me wrong. I’ve done my share of crying. And sometimes I throw in some yelling and swearing, just for good measure (I’ve always been something of an overachiever, I know). But it’s also clear to me that laughter is an undervalued commodity when it comes to maintaining a healthy outlook on life. You know, one that’s more “It will all work out in the end” and less “I may just need to punch someone in the face.”
Fortunately for me, my family is an endless source of humor. Last night we had a particularly raucous dinner hour—I don’t know why, but man, it was LOUD—and afterward Otto pushed back in his chair and grinned at me.
“What are you smiling at?” I asked him.
“Nothing,” he said. “I just like how much fun we have at dinner.” read more…
They’re all too long
I’ve been thinking, lately, about putting a new category in here specifically to tag Asperger’s-related stuff. Of course—being me, and Monkey being Monkey—so far all of my category title ideas run to things like:
Planet Rigid and the Unbendable Rules of Doom
or
I Just Memorized This Entire Dictionary In Under An Hour And Don’t Understand Why You’re Upset That I Forgot To Put On Underwear Today
or
Everything is perfectly fine right up until it’s not
or
God either trusts me a whole bunch OR he has a wicked sense of humor
You see my dilemma. Maybe I’ll just go with Quirky is the new Black. Still thinking on this one.
In the meantime, we’re doing a series of interviews over at BlogHer as part of Autism Awareness Month. I had the extreme privilege of picking Sharon daVanport’s brain for today’s post about being an adult Aspie, and not only was she gracious and forthcoming, she was just so genuinely sweet and warm I wanted to braid her hair and ask her to be my new BFF. I know it might sound silly, but for the first time, talking to her, I could see Monkey as a happy, fulfilled adult in the future. She gave me an incredible gift there without even knowing it.
I hope you’ll check out the interview.
Read my face
So waayyyyyyyy back whenever it was that I figured out that actually, hey, I appear to have some sort of wheat allergy, I gave up wheat and my lifetime of acne cleared up and everybody cheered. (And here, by “everybody” I mostly mean “I.”)
Except that for the first few months, I would still cheat periodically. I’d reason that just one slice of pizza or one warm piece of bread right out of the oven certainly wasn’t going to KILL ME, or anything, so why not? I would savor whatever slice of wheaty, gluteny heaven I’d allowed myself, and the next day I would have a zit (or two or three) the size of a mini-marshmallow. ATTRACTIVE!
Eventually my need to NOT HATE MY FACE overrode my unquenchable desire for bread, and after a ceremonial outing to my favorite pizza place on New Year’s Eve (one last hurrah!), I have been wheat-free ever since.
And my skin has been amaaaaaaaazing, if I do say so myself. At least, it was right up until a few weeks ago. read more…
Dueling smart-alecs
We have been recording Life on the DVR and then watching it as a family on weekends, as time allows, and everyone has really been enjoying it. What’s not to like about slow-motion views of really long, slimy tongues shooting out to grab bugs, for example? Or watching a bullfrog dig a connective waterway so that the tadpoles stranded in a puddle can get back to the pond?
Much like Planet Earth, Life has stunning visuals, fascinating tidbits about the animal kingdom, and even gets a pass as being educational. Unlike Planet Earth, however, Life is narrated by Oprah Winfrey. Now, I can probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve watched Oprah, which—to me, anyway—makes the children’s pop-culture-by-osmosis comments even funnier.
So we’d just watched a pack (herd? flock?) of komodo dragons take down and devour a water buffalo, and Oprah solemnly intoned, “This is one family that’s absolutely single-minded,” or something like that.
“Next time, on Oprah!” Chickadee immediately chimed in, getting the coming-attractions inflection just right.
As Otto and I chuckled at her, Monkey threw his arms into the air.
“YOU’RE ALL WINNERS!” he exclaimed.
We lost it. Maybe it was just because he even knew that was the next logical follow-on, or maybe it was because we’d just watched a water buffalo being stripped to the bone and that didn’t seem, well, all that winner-ful. Either way, I feel comfortable declaring our viewings of Life pretty awesome entertainment.