Barnmaven

I don't even know where to start

I've been sick since a week ago Saturday and there seems to be no end in sight.  I don't know if its a cold or flu virus or just allergies working overtime and making my lungs and throat all nasty.  I think I have to go to the doctor if it continues much longer.  In the meantime, I've got a voice that's a combination between Brenda Vaccaro and a three-pack-a-day smoker.

Nothing terribly remarkable happened through most of last week, but then we got to Thursday and it got all lively around here.

The fun began when my adorable, darling son got a two day suspension from school for hitting someone.

Race Car man is the wunderkind of deciding what he wants to have happen and then doing whatever is necessary to achieve his goals.  He had a substitute teacher on Thursday, and although this sub has had reasonable success with him in the past, he decided he'd rather be at Grandma's playing with toys.  He started acting out in class, and whenever he was redirected he just upped the ante, to the point he had to be removed from the classroom.  After ending up in the office hecontinued to escalate.  The school is well aware that his preferred consequence is to get to go home from school, so we work together on keeping that as the DFL* option. When he realized he wasn't achieving his goal, he got physical.  Not only did he hit an adult, he stomped on her foot for good measure. 

Wish granted.  Off to Grandma's you go, son, do not pass GO and do not collect your two hundred bucks.

Its not exactly fun being the parent of the kid who's bullying and hitting others. 

I make a point of apologizing and I make sure I let the school know that I support their efforts to maintain order and discipline and to keep students and teachers safe.  I communicate to them the consequences I will be applying so that they know the behavior will be addressed.  I find that its important to reassure teachers and administrators that this child has active and involved parents and that this isn't a problem they are flying solo in dealing with.

And then I knuckle down and institute consequences for my kid.  Which means NO Skylanders, NO computer, NO TV.    He has to earn them back by making good choices with his behavior at home and at school. 

His mind doesn't yet process human interactions in a way that helps him understand that hitting is wrong.  He can grasp that its something we don't want him to do, but in his brain its only because we want to prevent him from getting his way.

It has been hard to watch his hysterical sobbing over losing his Skylanders.  But I need him to learn this lesson.  He can't be a successful adult if he just hauls off and clocks people who piss him off at work.  I want him to know that we all feel like doing that at times, but that just because we are frustrated doesn't mean we can hurt others. 

So Thursday was a definite low, with my Rocky wannabe and the associated not-fun of imposing consequences.  I tell you, though, sometimes its like the universe wants to make it up to you when things suck, because Saturday and Sunday were amazeballs.

Michelle and I went to a clinic with a new trainer we had heard about, and holy crap, you guys, what a great day it was.  I've found as I get older that I don't have as much confidence on my horse as when I was young.  I'm less inclined to push him hard and I'm far more cognizant of not wanting to get hurt.  If you want to improve at anything, though, you need to push past your comfort zone.  The right trainer is the one who wants to see you and your horse succeed, who can judge your skill level accurately and assess your deficiencies, then find ways to teach you what you need to know and ways to get you to do the things you're capable of but scared to try.  Tim is all of that and more, and it was such a blast to learn from him.  Totally worth the money and he probably should be charging more.  I will be going back to learn more as soon as possible.

Sunday, though, was the best day EVER.  Why, you ask?

MY HUSBAND CAME HOME.

If you hate the mushy junk, TURN YOUR EYES AWAY.  My house is full of the mushy junk.  The hugging, the hand holding, the smooching, the can't-get-enough-of-you, you smell just like I remembered and I thought I'd die missing the feel of your hand on the small of my back just like you're doing right now.  

The dogs are happy, the kids are happy, and I am over the moon.

He's home.

 

 

*dead fucking last

Quick question: What else did Kelly Preston's boobs do besides the nursing of her baby that I mentioned in my post a while back? Because I seem to be getting a lot of page hits from people Googling Kelly Preston and her mammary appendages. Did I miss something?

War? or Distraction? Part 2

This is a continuation of my post from yesterday.  Read that first, if you hadn't already, then come back here.  I'll wait.

Caught up?

OK.

Now. Let's talk for a minute about this godawful mess.

Its pretty straightforward, really.  TIME's circulation numbers are declining.  The sensationalizing of a mother nursing a toddler was about nothing more than selling magazines by using a racy cover and getting women all fired up about attachment parenting and breastfeeding.  Breastfeeding's a hot topic, we all know that.  How better to stop the heavy bleeding than to boost your popularity with a Mommy War? 

Not to be out-wankered by TIME, Dell gave IT professionals in Copenhagen a remarkably transparent view of its company's disregard for women.  Christiane Vejlo's article in Elektronista provides a compelling narrative of a professional event where the invited speaker provided delightful entertainment with such cutting-edge statements as, "The IT business is one of the last frontiers that manages to keep women out. The quota of women to men in your business is sound and healthy” and "We can thank women for the rolling pin."  He closed his speech by encouraging the men in the room to go home and employ the phrase "shut up bitch."

(Not that I'd buy a crappy Dell or that I was even thinking about buying a crappy Dell, but any potential prospect of me purchasing a Dell product has now dwindled from "improbable" to "over my dead, menstruating body.")

Why Dell would consider having Mads Christensen, a so-called "inspirational speaker" who is apparently infamous for his misogynistic views on women a) give a keynote at a conference sure to be attended by both men and women and b) not have any potential keynote address vetted for suitability? If they were trying to lend credibility to the notion that Dell is s corporation without a clue.  Or perhaps they're hoping to pick up some sales from US Senators and employees at TIME?

Two of these recent stories illustrate rather well how women continue to be marginalized and disregarded by our government, by corporations and by society in general.  I don't believe for one second, though, that we are in immediate danger of being shoved back into the kitchen with bare feet, at least unwillingly.  Maybe in our current economic situation we don't have as much choice about our careers and our families as we would like to, but in contrast with women who lived in a world where they were considered to be the property of men, our choices are vast and endless.  What's important is that we don't allow ourselves to be distracted from our long and diligent assault on the barriers that patriarchal and religious leaders have erected to prevent us from taking power. 

But the other two stories, these stories and the aftermath of them represent an enormous problem. 

Women, what the hell is wrong with us?  We are smarter than this and yet we are still allowing ourselves to be pulled into competition with other women over which of our choices as women and mothers are the right choices.

Why are we so eager to criticize and judge each others parenting choices?  Why do we even for one moment buy in to the notion that the Mommy Wars must exist?   Are we so defensive about our individual parenting choices that we must react every time the media attempts to tell us we're "not good enough?"

We are letting ridiculous conversations about how long we should be nursing our babies to drown out the conversation we should be having about how we make sure that our choices as women and as mothers are respected and upheld in society.  We should be talking about how over 50% of the middle managers in corporate America are women and how great it is that corporate America finally figured out what families have known forever, that women are terrific at herding cats.  (Kids, cats, administrative assistants, what's the difference?)  We should be talking about how we support families and children in this economy, when the line between eating and starving is growing wafer-thin.  We should be talking about how to ensure that our children are healthy and educated, in an environment where our politicians are taking money away from schools and children's services.  We should be talking about how to make sure our young men and women have an opportunity to have an affordable college or trade school opportunity.

If you look at the media these days, we're not having any of these conversations.  We're standing on either side of dividing lines that, relative to the actual problems we have, don't really mean anything.

Does it hurt you if Jamie Grumet nurses her three year old?

Does it hurt you if one mom goes to work and one mom doesn't?

No.

Change has been happening for a long time when it comes to respecting and acknowledging the rights of women and the contributions that women make in our world.  Not all change comes fast, and sometimes we see the archaic remnants of old and irrelevant attitudes tottering around and trying to get people to believe they're still in the game.  They're not. 

Unless we let them, which is exactly what happens when we  allow ourselves to mindlessly engage in finger pointing at other women because of invented controversies crafted by in increasingly irresponsible media.

If you really want to waste your precious time being mad about something, be mad at the media that manipulates us with their garbage.  Because being mad at other women just because they aren't being the women you think they should be is about as useful as an umbrella to a duck.

War or distraction, Part I.

First it was the national conversation around birth control, which brought us the absurd photographs of a mostly male, mostly white group of senators debating contraception was a necessary part of insurance coverage.  Next it was the Ann Romney/working moms vs stay at home moms debate.

 

 

This week we've got the gratuitously sensational TIME cover of Jamie Lynne Grumet breastfeeding the largest three year old I've ever seen, and an outcry over Dell's choice of Mads Christensen, a notoriously misogynist "inspirational" speaker to give a speech at a partner event in Copenhagen.

It seems no matter where you look these days, we are being drawn into a discussion about women's choices, women's work, women's parenting, women's competence. 

What's difficult to discern, though, is whether we are looking at an escalating war on women or whether we are looking at some major confluence of interests attempting to distract us from the very real problems facing us as the international financial crisis deepens and governments, corporations and families find themselves in a desperate struggle to pay the bills.

I made a new friend this last week.  She just moved here from Arizona.  She remarked today how nice it was to talk to people here in the Tri-Cities because so many people were bottom-line happier than people in Arizona.  "People up here have jobs.  They have income.  They're not, as a whole, struggling the way people down in Arizona are doing.  Its horrible down there, and everybody is depressed and miserable.  Its so bad you don't even want to talk to anyone there."

Is there a conspiracy to sidetrack us from some of the most important national conversations we will have in the last thirty years in this country or are we really so on the rails about women and their roles as parents and workers that we feel compelled to engage in this type of debate?  Are these conversations about women being started by women?  Because they are certainly being carried on by women.

Lets start with birth control.  The real debate isn't over whether women should have access to birth control, because let's face it, we really DO want to live in a world where families do better economically, and statistically they do when women have easy and affordable ways to manage their fertility.  The real debate, the one that the contraception issue effectively distracted us from, is over how health care should be managed in this country.

I want everyone to have access to affordable health services and to affordable insurance, if that's what they want.  But what we've ended up doing is giving even more power to the big insurance agencies, requiring everyone to carry health coverage on plans that are broad-based rather than a la carte, and the only people who are going to profit from this are the insurers.  Health care reform should have begun with removing insurance conglomerates and their power over our health care choices from the playing field entirely.  Medical services cost far more than they ought to for a variety of reasons having to do with liability coverage and mandates from insurers. 

Patients ought to have the ability ot choose medical coverage that provides benefits for the services they need, and basic preventive health care should be so affordable that people don't need to have an insurance plan to obtain it.  

Drug prices should be based on what the competitive market will sustain, not what prescription drug plans will cover.  The price of birth control pills, particularly generics, would decline pretty immediately in such a market, as would the cost of other methods of controlling fertility, such as IUD's and implants.

I don't even feel like I should have to discuss whether its better to be a mom who has a job outside the home or a mom who manages her home and family or has a job that she can perform from her home.  Most women don't have a choice in this regard, and most families who make the decision to have one parent stay at home make great sacrifices financially to do so.  The majority of families don't have the easy luxury of having one parent not work.  Even so, a man or woman who spends their days managing a household isn't separated from the economics of the real world and real business. 

A mother homeschooling her children and performing most of the tedious chores involved in keeping a house running is a busy woman.  She is engaged, she is productive, she has to manage her family's time and finances.  A mother who is working a job outside the home also has to manage time and finances.  Lets not even get into the plight of single parents, shall we?   Because single parenting is its own special hell at times.

Yes, some people have a greater income and therefore a real choice about whether or not one spouse becomes a full-time household manager.  And?  Life's not fair.  I'm not going to waste time worrying about what my reality is not, and I'm not going to waste time debating with you on who is a better mother or what you think a stay-at-home mom does or doesn't have to add to debate on the national debt.  WE ALL LIVE HERE, PEOPLE.  This problem belongs to all of us, and if this economy fails, we are all going to suffer.  It won't help much to be a billionaire if your billion dollars will buy you nothing more than a six-pack and a pack of hamburger buns when the dollar has imploded.

To be continued.

 

 

 

 

One of millions of gratuitious Mother's Day blog posts.

 

Its a struggle to write about Mother's Day any year.  It seems such a narcissistic, "look at me" thing to do, writing paeans of praise to my Mother - although she absolutely deserves them - and posting blissful thanks for the amazing sweet love of my own children.  Regardless, I'm compelled to write.  You don't ignore Mother's Day.

The array of emotions that this greeting card holiday manages to yank out of my psyche is as wide as an ocean.

Maybe it sounds glib to say how abundantly blessed I've been when it comes to family.  It is nonetheless true.   I'm priviliged to have parents who take the "womb to tomb" mantra quite literally, and I'm fortunate to have healthy, loving children.  Maybe as blog topics go, these are the low-hanging fruit.  Easy to write about, unless you want to try and express these thoughts in words that haven't already been said a million times by other, more gifted writers.

I could pull on your heartstrings and talk about adoption loss, about the ageless conflict between the child who was given away and the child who was accepted as family.  I could tell you how hard it is for me to grasp the idea that after nearly fifty years of parenting my mother will face her first Mother's Day with only one living child.   These might be interpreted as navel-gazing attempts to elicit sympathy or attention.  But they are our realities this year, and every year.

On Sunday my family will celebrate Mother's Day in our standard fashion:  I will attempt to scrub my offspring into an acceptably clean state, attempt to dress them in reasonably suitable clothes.  We will go to my parents' house whereupon my mother will take a washcloth to my son's face and suggest my daughter brush her hair. Then she and the kids will disappear into another room so she can help them prepare the gifts she has gotten for them to give to me.  I'll pretend I have no idea what's going on so that my children will be pleased that their subterfuge has been successful and that they could "surprise" me.  I'll give my mother some lovely flowers and a card that barely manages to express the complex depth of feeling I have for her.  We will have lunch during which my dad will complain because my children are picky eaters and as a child of the Depression he has no patience for people who don't appreciate food.  My mother will attempt to teach my children the table manners I have been to lazy to enforce.  We'll enjoy ourselves despite ourselves, then I'll help Mom clear the table and put the dishes in the dishwasher.  The kids will play upstairs and fight while my folks and I enjoy each other's company for a bit.

The less joyous realities of a missing son & sibling will be ever present, and I'll more than likely have a passing thought or two about the contrast between the mother I could have ended up with and the mother I so fortunately got.  I'll try not to wander down the rabbit hole of either of these things, instead countering them with tangible reminders of the joys of being a mother and a daughter.  I'll try to live in the moment, foregoing the need to dwell on the past or influence the future.  (I did say "Try."  Success is not a given)

Greeting card holiday or not, Mother's Day pulls on my heartstrings.  My Mom is as much a part of my DNA as my children; how I arrived into this world is simply a technicality. I don't mean to make light of adoption or the importance of honoring our biological ties, but my feelings about the woman who gave birth to me are complicated and generally not pleasant.  My mother, on the other hand, is the one person in this world who accepts me unreservedly, who knows me about as well as it is possible to know another person and loves me anyway.  She's the mother I should have been born to but was lucky enough to get anyway. 

My daughter wrote this in school (when she was supposed to be doing something else) and couldn't stand to wait until Mother's Day to give it to me:

I'm the best mom she has, even if it is by default.  I suppose that's true for all of us, just not nearly so positive a truth for too many of us. 

Mother/child relationships are the first and most important relationships of our lives.  When children are safe and loved, they generally bloom in the ways they are meant to.  As I did.

Happy Mother's Day to MY mom.  Happy Mother's Day to all the other moms I know, all the moms by default and the moms by choice, the moms by accident and the moms by careful planning.  Happy Mother's Day to the moms who are moms even though their children are no longer with them.   And to  anyone for whom this day is painful, for whatever reason, know that I don't disregard your pain or your loss or your struggles.    You have my deepest regards.

 

 

When I'm sleeping I don't remember things

The alarm goes off and I hit snooze.  In the five minutes before it starts again, I dream about my my friend Jaimee and my brother, all in the same room. Some social event, someone's house.  I don't know.  We're holding big cups of beer.  He's sort of ignoring me, I can't get his attention.  Jaimee stands next to me like she's my spirit animal or something, protective and guarding.  When the rooster in my alarm starts crowing I jerk awake so quickly the cat jumps off my pillow.    I'm disoriented and I hit the snooze again.    I don't remember what I dreamed - if I dreamed anything - in the next five-minute increment.  Finally I have to get moving or I'll be even later than normal.

As is usual lately, I don't remember at first when I wake up that you're not here.  Not like I did the first week.  Its not until I push the button on the coffee grinder and it grinds out enough for twelve cups of coffee and I think to myself "I should reset that thing."

I eat, I surf the web, I wake the kids and the chaos distracts me for a while.

And then I go into the bathroom to shower and after I stand at the mirror with my wet hair and I look at the counter where the can of your shaving cream sits and then I look at my reflection and the tears come.

I'm here.

You're not.

It feels like I've done something wrong, somehow, like punishment.  Except I don't know what it was that I did and I know there's nothing I can undo.  I just have to outlast the slow tick of the clock.

Its not personal, of course its not.  We have to do what we have to do.  But the awful loneliness in me, it feels intensely personal.  How could it not?

 

With or against the current

I noticed a post while idly cruising Blogher written last week by Emily Kingsley, an autism mom who blogs at Our Holland.  Blogher featured one of her posts, a reaction in writing to an encounter with a woman who doesn't believe children with autism should be mainstreamed.  At all.  Because she believes its "not fair" to the normal kids.

The post itself had my hackles up, but reading some of the comments has got me feeling indignant as well.  Of course there were a majority of commenters who expressed their outrage at such outright ignorance.  But there were a few commenters, especially one in particular from the Facebook stream, who also believe children with autism or other disabilities don't belong  in the mainstream classroom.  "They're a distraction," said one.  "Its not fair to the other kids," said another.

I simply do not accept that these parents' children have more of a right to an appropriate learning experience than my son does simply because he has autism and they don't.

I believe that my son benefits when he is in his autism classroom AND when he is in the mainstream classroom for academics.  I also believe that the time he spends in the mainstream classroom benefits his neurotypical peers.  My belief is somewhat instinctual, but it is also an informed belief based on results and research.

Someday my son will be an independent adult.  He will need to function in a world where the majority of his coworkers and peers are neurotypical.  His time in the classroom and on the playground with his mainstream peers gives him many opportunities to learn the behaviors that make his interactions with others less frustrating and more rewarding.  The time he spends learning how to interpret social cues and how to interact appropriately with other people his age enhances his ability to succeed not just now, in school, but later in life as well.  This has been our experience, but various studies over the years on inclusion programs statistically support inclusion.  Children with autism who regularly interact in a mainstream environment (with appropriate controls and support) show marked improvements in their social skills and peer-to-peer interactions.

At the same time, spending time with other children who share many of his differences provides him an environment where he fits in.  In his other classroom he is less likely to be bullied for his autism.  He has the benefit of learning under the direction and care of teachers and other professionals who know how to help him gain better control over his behaviors.  He isn't the 'weird' kid in the class, he's one of the crowd, just another kid with autism.

I don't think my son needs to "act normal."  His autism doesn't need to be "cured," it is a part of who he is, it contributes to the many qualities that make him a wonderful and unique person.  The goal of mainstreaming him is rather to help him become adept at surviving in a world where the majority of people he encounters do not share his non-neurotypical traits.  For him to have the best chance of success in the workplace, he needs to have as much time as possible learning how to read social cues, how to regulate his behavior and emotions, how to navigate change and disruption.  These are the same skills all children, normal or differently abled, need to learn in order to be successful adults, really.

I have a firm opinion that children - all people, really - benefit greatly by learning to have compassion and empathy for others.  Very often people fear what is unfamiliar, and fear and ignorance create division and hostility.  We are not so many generations removed from a society that segregated the different and the disabled to an extreme.  Fortunately many parents, educators, medical providers and opinionated and outspoken people who are differently abled have made huge strides in gaining access to education, to the workplace and to the public consciousness.

When children have the opportunity to interact regularly with other children who are differently abled, the perception of difference diminishes.  A wheelchair becomes not something strange to stare at, its just the way your friend with CP gets around.  A text-to-speech device becomes the normal way your friend with apraxia of speech talks to you.  Kids can learn early that people's behaviors are sometimes a direct result of the way their brain processes information, and that kids who have difficulty in social situations aren't just being naughty or mean, they are having a hard time managing their reactions to stimuli or unable to understand social cues.  Kids with Tourette's aren't saying things to get attention or be disruptive, their brains are sending them signals they may not be able to control.

I'm a mom.  I love my kids and I want the best for them.  I want them to be happy and healthy people who have strong, loving relationships and who do work that satisfies them emotionally.  I want them to be productive, contributing members of our society.

Segregating children with differences only serves to create adults who don't function as well in society, who are more likely to have difficulty interacting with their coworkers or the guy who sells them groceries or the lady who collects their rent.  I don't want to see my child's potential diminished to suit the attitudes of another parent who doesn't have the first clue about what it is like to walk a mile in my son's shoes.

Just as my son ought to learn how to navigate a world that doesn't function the way his brain thinks it should, so does that other parent's child need to learn to navigate a world where not all of the poeple he interacts with will be just like him. 

 

Dog + Bone = Me

As much as I throw it out there that letting go of things is a healthy way to exist, I'm not always so good at being a person who lets go of things.  I have a tendency to perseverate.  My husband and I will have a disagreement over something, and days later I am still stuck on a particular thing he said that I thought was wrong, and having repeated conversations with myself where in I roleplay both of us and stick my point to him over and over until he falls over from the sheer brilliance of my superior mind. 

Or some drama on the internet will settle hooks into my gray matter and no matter how useless it may be, I find myself idly drawn to hunting down more tidbits of information or opinion.  Sometimes its not even an issue I particularly take sides in, but part of me just can't help but watch it unfold.  I pick up nuance and opinion and data and start playing them on an endless background loop. 

My shrink said that I do this in order to distract myself from my deeper feelings of fear and loss, of self-loathing and shame.  I would counter that as I age I find less to loathe about myself, but I can't help but admit that I still struggle with all of those things.

If life were fair and if life unfolded according to my plan...probably we'd all fall off the surface of the planet because I would have forgotten to make sure we always had gravity turned on.

So then you'll agree its probably best I'm not in charge of this whole shebang.

I'm struggling lately with feelings of loneliness and fear.  By the time my husband comes home from this job he will have been gone...a lot.  Putting numbers on it doesn't really do anything but make it seem worse.  Lets just say gone more than he's been home.  And I'm selfish.  Even when I know that he, as a capital-M Man has the same drive that I have to shoot the biggest mammoth I can in order to provide for my family, I still at the bottom most layer of it just really want him to not be gone.  I want someone besides the Betta Fish on my kitchen counter to talk to in evenings when the kids are at their dads.  I want to go out to breakfast with SG, not alone and certainly not with the kids.  I want to come home to my husband's arms and his being glad to see me at the end of the day.   

And I find myself being childish and petulant about it. 

I think of my son, upset because he can't play his beloved game.  He makes it into a Supreme Court Case.  "If you really loved me you'd let me play."   "My life is ruined right now and nothing will make it better."  "I hate you."  "Global warming will end if you just let me play my game."  (No, he didn't really say that.  I made it up.  But how cool would it be if he DID say that? How utterly cool?)

I catch myself being dramatic even in my thoughts. 

I'm always alone.

No one will ever really love me.

We're all going to die in a fiery explosion because I have to be celibate for three months.

IF HE REALLY LOVED ME HE'D GIVE UP EVERYTHING JUST TO BE WITH ME.

You know, stuff along those lines.  Real sane, level-headed, purposeful CLEAR thinking.  Ha, I crack myself up.

And I'm not really sure how to make that thought cycle stop. 

Help.

I'll take mine with an extra helping of Spock

I got my fill of dirt time this weekend.  I spent a couple of hours both days getting my back yard borders weed-free. I look at all the bare spots and I think about something hardy and not attention-requiring that I could plant that would make the place look prettier, but I was never all that good about plants and planting and so I just concentrate on keeping the weeds out.  The last couple of years the yard really got away from me, but this year I've gotten off on the right foot and hope to stay there. 

Its a bonus weekend when you get a lot done AND have time to ride, and I did so I'm chalking this one into the "win" column.

The kids came back from their father's yesterday.  The transitions affect them differently.  Amazon Girl tends to be a little quiet the first part of the day. Emotionally she continues to resist living in two households with two different rules.  Her dad doesn't like her to share any information about his life, and so she rides herd on her brother, shutting him down quickly if he starts to talk about what they did or who they did it with.  Its hard to know how to react sometimes.  It bothers me a great deal that they are being expected to police themselves inthis way.  Its technically not "keeping secrets," but I think they're being asked to do something that puts them in conflict with both parents.  And yet its not my place to tell my ex how to parent.  I tell them that they don't have to share anything at all with me, that I love them and I care that they are happy and safe with their dad and beyond that nothing matters.  I hope this is the right response.

Racecar Man is usually a little off the hook the first day back.  He has never handled transitions well.  His normal oppositional behavior is often worse the first two days, and this weekend was no exception.  Last nights' refusals to get ready for bedtime lost him the right to have Skylanders time this morning.  I had to be really careful with my facial expressions, as watching him sob hysterically while he was brushing his teeth was simultaneously heartbreaking and hilarious.  That kid knows how to turn on the drama.

I expected him to resume the protest this morning, but as he is capable of doing, he resolved himself to the situation and decided to approach things from the angle of "what can I have" rather than "what I don't have."

I'm folding laundry while I wait for the coffee pot to finish.  He uncharacteristically wakes himself and  comes to find me.  "Do I get to play Skylanders this morning?" he asks, and I'm glad I'm folding the laundry so that I can pretend to be very occupied with it.  "No, I'm sorry, you cannot," I say, as politely as possible.  I steel myself for the waterworks.

"Can I watch TV?" 

"Ummm....Okay."

"Can I watch something on Netflix?"

"I don't see why not."

"Will you help me find something to watch?"

I think most 7 year old boys would ask me to look for Sponge Bob episodes to watch, but not this kiddo.  We sit down at the laptop and the first thing he wants me to search for is anything that tells how dams are built.  Last night I sang "Roll on Columbia" at bedtime, and it seems he remembers us talking about the many hydroelectric dams along our big river. 

We don't find anything on dams, but as I scroll through the historical documentaries, he points at the screen and his exclamations of "That one, Mommy!" and "Oooh, cool!  I can't wait to see it!"  make me smile.  His picks?    Air Force One, Submarines, the history of aviation, and the Hubble Telescope repair mission. 

I find his preference for technical information to be one of the more intriguing aspects of his autism.  His sister and I are alike in our love for fiction and fantasy; my son is wired differently.  He watches the story about the astronauts repairing the Hubble Telescope raptly while he eats his breakfast and protests mightily when it is time for school. 

Like many adults in my generation, I grew up watching the original Star Trek series.  While Captain Kirk certainly was good looking, my crush was always on Spock.  Perhaps that was God's way of preparing me to be easily able to identify ways of outweighing our challenges with positives. 

Spock:  I'm raising him.  WIN.

So, it wasn't ghosts

For months now we've been having problems with our electricity.  Weird problems.  The lights will flicker dramatically for a few seconds and then half the house will lose power.  It will stay off anywhere from 10 minutes to several hours, and then pop back on like nothing ever happened.

None of the circuit breakers trip when these power losses occur.  Flipping the breakers on and off does nothing to make the power come back on.  Occasionally, like yesterday, it will come on if you flip on a single light -- the light comes on and so does everything else.

But the parts of the house that go out are not all on the same side.  The TV in the corner of the living room goes and the entry way light - but not the table lamps on the other side of the room.  The hood light on the stove goes out - but not the stove.  My bedroom lights and my bathroom lights go, as does my bedroom TV and the hall light, but the kids' bathroom right next to mine and the kids' rooms all work fine. 

This is annoying enough for obvious reasons - blow-drying your hair in the morning when there is no power anywhere near your mirror is a seriously inconvenient thing to cope with.  Many a morning I've had to stand in the kitchen with my little round magnifying mirror.  Not being able to watch a show when the kids have everything else tied up - or even worse, having the bedroom DVR shut off in the middle of recording this week's episode of Game of Thrones -- that's seriously impacting my world.  But the worst, the absolute worst part of it is how it impacts the kids.

My son's classroom is designed around helping children with autism learn social and behavioral skills.  Everything is based on positive discipline.  The kids have several tools to earn prizes.  Sticker books for a toy out of the classroom toybox, a penny board for bigger rewards at the end of a day if enough pennies are earned.  Race Car Man's challenge has been to earn the letters K-I-N-D-L-E every day.  If he displays an expected behavior - complying with a request, transitioning from a task, being kind to another student, working on the task at hand -- he earns a letter.  If he earns all of the letters, that evening at home he can do his favorite thing -- play Roblox on the computer, or Skylanders on the Wii.  It started off as earning Kindle back when I first got the Fire and he wanted to play on it all the time.  Currently he is obsessed with gaming, and it is enormously motivated to earn the privilege of playing. 

Imagine a day when he has been great -- TERRIFIC in fact, and he comes home excited to continue the level he had to stop in the middle of on his Skylanders game last night because it was bedtime.  He turns on the Wii, turns on the TV, powers up the Portal of Power, and puts the chosen Skylander on it.  He starts playing, and he's having a great time.  "Mommy!" he'll call out.  "Look what I got for Gill Grunt in my upgrade!"  If I don't come running, he'll pester me until I look.  He's enjoying his reward, rightfully earned.  Suddenly and without warning, the power goes out and his game cuts off. 

This would be hard enough for a neurotypical child.  For a child with autism, it is akin to the end of the universe.  You can imagine the screaming.

If we were lucky, the power would come right back on.  If we were not, it would be out for hours and my son would be nearly inconsolable.  If he and his sister were playing the game together I 'd have two upset children howling at the same time.  You probably don't want to check my store receipts to see how much the consumption of wine and comfort food increased since this started happening.

We had some very miserable nights the last few months.

Our first assumption was that it was spikes or lags from the utility district.  We've had a lot of new construction in our area the last few years.  A 5 acre field that used to have grapevines on it was turned into a small development for about 12 big houses, and there are similar developments popping up everywhere.  After all, the additional users has had a huge impact on our internet service.  Five o'clock rolls around and the internet slows to a damn crawl anymore.  (Hel-loooooo Charter?  Upgrade your lines already!)

I called the PUD and they sent a guy the same day.  He looked at the power pole in the pasture and the transformer on the street, took some readings at the box on the house, and told me he could find nothing wrong.  He determined the problem must be in the house.

I called an electrician.  They dispatched a technician to diagnose the problem.  He couldn't really find anything but made a couple of recommendations.  When I had the money to implement, I scheduled the work.  The guy came out yesterday and did his thing.  I paid him and he went on his merry way.

I left shortly after that to pick the kids up from school and came home 15 minutes later to find half the house was dark and unresponsive.  SHIT.  I flipped a few breakers, went to my bedroom and turned the light on - and everything came back.  OK.  Hopefully this was just a fluke because someone was working on the box?  Of course not.  We went to Race Car Man's therapy appointment and came back again to a house without half its power.  My son had earned his reward in school and been very good for his therapy appointment, and he was itching to play Skylanders, so you can imagine the level of meltdown.  I called the electrician back.  He said he would come as soon as he could.  The power didn't come on for a couple of hours, but managed to resurrect itself ten minutes before he arrived.

Figures.

He still couldn't find the problem, but while he was looking, it went out again.  He tested the incoming power to the breaker panel and guess what?  We were getting almost nothing in on the left side of the panel from the lines to the house. 

After a rather terse conversation with the PUD, two very nice gentlmen arrived and worked on overtime hours to fix what turned out to be corroded and loose wires at the transformer.

Somehow I don't think they're going to reimburse me the $500 I paid to the electrician for something I didn't really need, but I'll forgive them since all I really wanted was for the screaming to stop.