Barnmaven

They are not ours

Having a friendly relationship with my ex makes it a lot easier for all of us.  The best part is that we have flexibility in our parenting time.  Because of projects at work, I've had to work on some of my weekend days and go in much earlier than normal.  Rather than send the kids to their grandparents I simply gave their dad a few extra days on his parenting rotation.  By midweek I was feeling lost without them and he had no problem letting me have them for after school and dinner.  

It helps soothe my heart to know that even though they're with their dad every other week, I can still see them whenever I need to.  They are growing so quickly that even just a week makes a difference.  

It nearly takes my breath away to watch them.  

My daughter is at that stage where the awkward angles of puberty and the gracefulness of a young woman co-exist in uneasy measure.  She is yet clear-eyed and innocent, despite intermittent episodes of what appears to require the exorcism of a  a snarling teenager demon.  I study her surreptitiously, trying to reconcile this tall young woman with the sturdy toddler I remember trying to keep up with.  

When I wake my son up in the mornings he automatically reaches his arms around my neck, even as he is trying to snuggle his face deeper into his pillow.  He wants me to pick him up and carry him out to the couch as I have always done, but this summer he gained 13 pounds and he is getting too heavy for me to lug around.  He's a skinny drink of water, my boy, all kneecaps and elbows.  He plays his games on the iPad or computer with remarkable intensity; it is a serious business, in his mind.  His wish lists include game manuals and mods.  

Walking in front of me are two human beings who are soon going to grow up and leave me behind.  That's how its supposed to work, we all know that.  But what happens if they make decisions I don't agree with?  What happens if the paths they choose are not safe for them?  We have babies because we want children to love; what probably never occurs to most of us is that they don't belong to us even a little bit.  

I have friends who were on their own the moment they turned 18 -- mom and dad expected that from then on they were no longer responsible for the well-being of their kids.  Others were on their own even before that, thanks to absent parents, neglect or abuse.  I find that heartbreaking, and I'm continually grateful for my own parents whose philosophy has always been that even though your children won't always need you to parent them, you are still their parents -- from "womb to tomb," as my mother says.  Sometimes this has meant helping out when finances were tight or nonexistent - buying groceries, making a payment for one of us, buying something as a "gift" for us that we really needed but could not afford.  My parents have been the people in my life I could always count on, even when they haven't been too happy with my choices.  They've stood up for me even when I haven't wanted to recognize or appreciate the things they've done to make my life better or easier.  They know who I am, the good things and the things that aren't quite so good, and they love me anyway.

That's not to say they have lived every moment of their lives waiting on their children to need them. Practically as soon as they dropped me off at my dorm freshman year of college they sold our old home and built a smaller house with a guest bedroom.  If I'd ever ended up homeless, of course they would have taken me in, but it was pretty clear that once the door closed behind the last child to leave home they did not believe it necessary to keep living in a larger house than they needed.  As soon as it was certain I was accepted at the UW and starting classes I think they breathed a huge sigh of relief and started booking trips to all the places they'd never been able to visit while honoring their responsibilities as parents.  

I learned some great lessons from my parents about being pragmatic rather than sentimental and about how it is possible to love and care for your children even when you don't care for the things they are doing or the company they keep.  They weren't perfect parents, of course (sorry Mom) but then again I haven't been a perfect daughter.  (Sorry again, Mom.)

I hope I will be handle my childrens' evolution into adulthood as well as my parents handled mine.  Its easy from this viewpoint to think that I will cope just fine; in reality I am sure SG will be called upon fairly frequently to dry my tears and there will be numerous discussions with my ex that begin with "CAN YOU BELIEVE WHAT YOUR SON/DAUGHTER JUST DID?"  We'll survive.  We'll still have parenting to do; the things we will deak with will have a higher difficulty rating. 

 

 

Emily Yoffe is pretty much right

Emily Yoffe's taking a lot of heat for an article she wrote for Slate online, titled College Women, Stop Getting Drunk.  Commenters are accusing her of victim shaming, of being a rape apologist, chastising her for not simultaneously offering solutions for correcting what many see as a rape culture on campuses.  

People react strongly to any discussion of rape.  No surprise, particularly for those most likely to become victims of the crime.  Hell, my hackles go up and I can get truly angry on this subject.  I've had plenty of (heated) discussions with my Libertarian husband about some of his favorite pundits and bloggers who dismiss statistics like "one in four" and who question whether most date rapes are actually "rape."  But Yoffe's article?  Simmer down, folks. 

The line between pragmatism and rape apology is neither fine nor indistinct.  

I am a mother to a boy and a girl.  None of the men most closely involved in their lives - father, stepfather, grandparents, uncles, cousins - are men who would ever treat women with anything but respect.  None of them are  men with a tendency to objectify women or who would ever dream of hurting a woman or initiating sex with her regardless of her lack of sobriety.  They all know that "no"  - or the lack of conscious capacity to provide consent - means NO.   (For the record, SG once asked me if I'd ever said "no" when I mean "yes".  He's lucky I wasn't close enough to give him a black eye.)

I agree that educating our boys is necessary and an important part of eradicating rape from our society.  I believe that any individual who commits rape ought to be prosecuted and punished severely for their crime.  I will raise my son to respect others and to never ever do anything to another person without their consent.

But  for the same reason I teach my children not to get in a stranger's car, I also will raise my daughter to know that there are things she can do to reduce her risk of being raped and I will not do so apologetically or quietly.

 

I can't be the only person who saw the Bloomberg article about the UN-funded study which found that one in four  men in Asia admitted to having committed rape.  Granted, we have a difference in culture, but still - ONE IN FOUR.  That's a horrifying statistic.  In my opinion its possibly even more horrifying than the oft-cited statistic that one in four women will be raped in her lifetime.  

I want my daughter to stay safe.  There are many areas of her life in which I already or soon will have serious discussions with her in regards to protecting herself from harm.  I don't want her drinking and driving, texting and driving, doing drugs, getting drunk, driving recklessly or putting herself needlessly in harm's way.  In my opinion, cautioning her against drinking too much in social situations is no different than insisting she wear a seatbelt when she's in a car or making her wear a helmet when she rides a horse.  

I don't blame any woman who has been raped for what happened to her.  No person should ever be raped, drunk or sober.  When a woman enters a bar and a man buys her a drink, then slips a drug into it when she's not looking, its in no way her fault.  When a girl goes to a high school kegger or a college frat party and overconsumes and then is raped, she is NOT to blame.  The man who rapes her is the person at fault.  Wishing she had avoided that situation is not the same as blaming her that it happened.

Until men like that no longer walk this planet, I will encourage my daughter to take steps to protect herself and her friends from violence, not because I think what could happen to her is OK, but because I love her and I want her to be safe.  I will tell her what I hope every parent tells their daughter -- to avoid becoming incapacitated by drugs or acohol; to never leave her drunk friend behind at a party; that she is statistically safer if she doesn't go to bars alone.  I will also teach her that she ought to defend herself, violently if necessary.  I believe that not teaching her these things would be terribly irresponsible on my part.

Do women have the right to be vulnerable without suffering harm?  Of course they do. Let us also be pragmatic and admit that the world we live in is unsafe, and that it is advisible for women - or any of us, for that matter - to take precautions that keep us safe from individuals who lack the conscience and civility to respect our rights.  As terribly wrong as rape is, I don't have the ability to make it magically cease to happen.  So I'll do what I can.  I will educate my son and all of the men I know NOT to rape.  And I will educate my daughter and any other woman that there are things she can do to protect herself.  And Emily Yoffe is not wrong when she states that not getting rip-roaring drunk at a campus party is one way to do that.  The fact that this is the only aspect of rape prevention that she chose to focus on in her article might be unfortunate, but it doesn't make her wrong.

Getting them unplugged

 

Saturday morning started out much like most every other Saturday morning when the kids are at my house.  By 6 am one or the other of them is at my bedroom door asking whose turn it is to get on the computer.  I randomly choose one of them and try to sleep for a few more minutes through the cacophony of disappointment and victory.  I drag myself out of bed, search for my eyeglasses and stub my toe walking down the hall to make coffee.

Fall has finally hit us here in the interior of Washington State, and this weekend had a forecast that called for staying home in ones' PJ's.  The arrival of fall also means that the available hours of daylight to get on my horse are dwindling.  So, despite the dire weather reports, I made plans to go to my friend's place.  She has a lovely covered arena and we decided that if it rained we could practice for the schooling show this weekend, and if it didn't rain, we could go out on the trails that lead from her place out along the Oregon side of the Columbia River.  SG and her partner get along quite well so we packed lunch items and some wine and decided to make a good half-day of it.

Getting horses fed and the trailer hooked up and loaded is always the easy part.  Getting my kids out of the house requires earplugs, a cattle prod and kevlar protective wear.

"I don't WANT to go!" my daughter cried, stamping her feet.  "I want to stay home and play Animal Jam!"  "NOOOOOOOO!" my son screams as I instruct him to end his Wii game. 

Their protests, though heartfelt, don't move me.  There are going to be plenty of inclement weather days this winter for them to turn into screen-watching slugs.  Bugs is already starting to grow his winter coat which leads me to believe we are in for a cold, icy November.  For now, I intend for my children to be outside as much as possible, even if I have to force them.

Once we got to Julie's, they forgot all about their games at home.  Ted had a burn pile going over by the pig pens and they couldn't get out of the truck fast enough.  They scrambled like puppies down to watch the flames, and for the next couple of hours I didn't hear one single whine, complaint or "I have nothing to DOOOOOOO".

They got to see the big 700 pound sow and her piglets and touch the noses of the weaner pigs.  They "helped" Ted do chores and played with the 6 year old son of the lovely young lady who trains horses at Julie's.  They got dirty and wet and generally had a wonderful time.  

SG got to hang out with Ted and make plans for butchering a pig next week (hel-LO Bacon!).  I not only got to ride my horse in the arena but on the trail as well when the rain gave us a nice intermission and we scurried out to the trailhead.  Just about the time we got back the wind started to pick up and big raindrops splattered my back. 

I guess we all got to unplug a little bit.  It was nice.

This week should end and quickly

This week has been a long one and I am hoping that by saying I am glad to see it be over that I am not also simultaneously cursing all of us and causing next week to be somehow worse.

The only place that seemed truly safe and sane was home, where it was just SG and me, the kids having been with their dad all week.

I don't really talk much about work here and that's not going to change.  Speaking in generalities, though, CRAZY WEEK.  So many metaphorical fires to put out!  

It was the second week back at school for the kids.  This is a big year for both of them; Amazon Girl started middle school.  For the first time in three years the kids are in separate schools.  I know this is simultaneously scary and tremendously freeing for both of them.  They love each other so much, even with all the fighting they do.  Race Car Man has always had his big sister there to depend on and now he's learning to be in the world on his own.  Amazon Girl has always felt the need to look out for her little brother.  This year she gets to worry about herself and I know that's a big weight off of her.

Both kids have had their challenges already, only two weeks into the school year.  

Race Car Man has had a combination of great/bad/OK/good/terrible days.  There's no pattern with that one.  It would be great if we could predict with any certainty what kind of challenges he is going to have; that way his teacher and classroom aides could at least have an idea of just how much wine they were going to need (or not) at the end of a given day! 

Last year at two of his IEP meetings I brought up the thought that he may need an aide who is primarily dedicated to helping him but who could assist his teachers when he was coping OK.  His teacher was for the idea but no one else seemed to want to pursue it.  

On the third day of school I ended up writing a letter to the district formally requesting an aide.  

I am very pleased that I received a phone call very quickly from the Director of Special Services and we have a meeting set up for Monday.  

Amazon Girl has had different challenges.  

To add some historical context:  In the third grade a boy in her class fixated on her for some reason.   His obsession expressed itself in constant teasing, poking, touching.  She finally complained to me about it and I brought it to the attention of her teacher and school administrators.  They observed, confirmed, and promised to keep an eye on things.  Eventually he escalated to pushing, yelling and finally hurting her.  The day he bent her hand back so hard we had to have her wrist x-rayed was the day I went a little ballistic with the school, and the other student was disciplined.  They put my daughter in a different classroom, which I was not happy with but they were separated.  Ultimately we ended up moving her to another school, not because of this boy but so that she and her brother would be at the same school after he was placed in his special ed classroom.

Fast forward to sixth grade.  The middle school she now attends has students from several elementary schools in the district, including her old school.  Guess who also happens to be at her new school?  He is not in her homeroom classes, but he ended up in the same rotation for the last class of the day -- Health/PE.  Apparently he started right back in with the verbal harassment, which I wasn't aware of.  But on Wednesday he crossed the line.  As she was walking out of her health class, he shoved her from behind, so hard that she slammed into the metal guardrail of the portable walkway.  Her stomach was still hurting the next morning.  She didn't tell any adults at school, but met her father in the parking lot and after telling him what happened, called me at work to let me know as well.

My ex and I went together to the school at 7 am the following morning and filed a complaint.  The complaint was taken seriously, the boy was interviewed.  Amazon Girl texted me later that she had met with the principal and told that the boy was being transferred to a different afternoon rotation so that she would not be in class with him.  

I am very hopeful that this is the end of the problem.  If he touches or harasses her further we will be contacting the police.  I suspect that there are things going on with this kid that I couldn't possibly know about, and I have sympathy for that, but he can't be allowed to hurt my child and cause her to be scared to go to school.  

I've told my daughter to find an adult right away if he comes near her or speaks to her.  But I've also told her that if she can't find any other help and can't get away from him that she should defend herself.  

Right now she's happy because she doesn't have to be in class with him; we can only hope that this is the end of it.  

It hasn't been a total wash, though.  My stepson Josh finished his Navy flight school testing and has been accepted to fly jets!  He's moving to Mississippi later this month.  Before he does that he gets to go to Texas to do this test where they put him on a centrifuge and spin him both with his pressure suit and without until he passes out.  I am told this is to measure his G-force tolerance.  Personally I just think the military gets its rocks off on making people incredibly dizzy.  After that he takes a short vacation in Hawaii and I am also told I am not allowed to hitch a ride in his suitcase.  On a very sincere note, his mom and dad and all of the rest of us are incredibly proud of his accomplishments.  Congratulations, Josh.  You are a terrific young man and I believe you really can do anything you set your intentions toward.

As for the rest of it, I would just like to know what it is that I could possibly say or do that for Pete's sake would convince the universe to let us have a whole lot of nothing happening the rest of the school year.  I'm open to suggestions.

 

I don't even know how to write this the right way

This is NOT humblebragging.  Not, not not.

It is a genuine outpouring of distress over the state of parenting in this world that anyone - ANYONE - would tell me, "Oh my gosh, you're such a hero!" because they found out I have a kid with autism.  Yet this weekend, while transacting some business with a local vendor, that's exactly what happened.  Its not the first time and I'm sure it won't be the last, but its damn awkward.  I have found that constantly saying "Oh, not, that's not true," just results in more fervent assertions regarding my possible elevation to sainthood, so as a general rule now I just redirect the conversation.  "Say, did you hear about the kid in Kyrgyzstan that got bubonic plague?"

Here's a little newsflash for you, folks:  Parenting a kid with autism doesn't make me a hero to anyone except perhaps my kid -- but only in the way that every parent is a hero to their kids.  My ex is their hero.  My husband is their hero.  We are the adults they look up to and depend on.  But that's really as far as the hero title goes. 

In the grand scheme of Things We May Have to Deal With in Life, Race Car Man's fairly-high-functioning autism falls way down there with ingrown toenails, years when I have to send a check in with my 1040 instead of checking the IRS site daily for my refund status and the inconvenience of needing to pick up after three dogs everytime we want to play in the yard.  It isn't what I planned, but it isn't really all that bad.  

What was really under my skin about the incident that prompted this post is that the person who was dishing all the praise was doing so because we were talking about school and I described the program my son attends and mentioned communicating with his teacher daily via a notebook that comes home.  He thought it was just amazing that I was actually engaged with my son's teacher.  

Amazing?

Hardly.  Its what parents DO - or at least, its one of the commonly accepted responsibilities of parenting.

And this is really why I am upset, and where I become really judgemental.

There are parents who do not care how their child is doing in school.  There are parents who do not attend parent-teacher conferences or back-to-school nights.  There are parents of children with special needs that drop their kids off at school in the morning and feel that everything that happens beyond that point is the school's job & problem.  

When my daughter started kindergarten she had already been evaluated for an IEP and thus was placed in a special program in our district - an intervention classroom, for kids who have behavioral issues.  Open house night arrives and my ex and I arrive fifteen minutes early, with bells on, excited to see where our precious girl is going to be attending school for the first time, eager to meet her teacher and classroom assistants, eager to be a part of the education of our child.

We walked into the door of the portable to find the teacher and her aide staring at us with shocked expressions.  "PARENTS!  We have PARENTS!" the teacher exclaimed.  

"You mean...we're first?"

"No, you're the first parents I can remember having in a long time."

Pause a moment and let that sink in.

A classroom for children with special needs.  And no parent interested enough in the well-being of their son or daughter to bother meeting the teacher, seeing the classroom, hearing about curriculum and what methods will be used to address behavioral issues.  

Not one.

Our being there didn't make us good parents.  It made us ordinary parents, with ordinary care and concern about our baby girl.  The parents who were not there, they are NOT, I hope, ordinary.   I hope they are the smallest percentage of a minute fringe...and I fear they are not.

When people speak of "heroic" parenting, my thoughts go to parents who have it far more difficult than I.  Parents of children who will never be able to care for themselves.  Parents who have lived through devastating illnesses, terrible losses.  Parents who have dealt with extremes I cannot imagine.  And I suspect that most of those parents would very firmly deny any sense of their own lives as being heroic.  

The thought that I inhabit a world where the simple act of caring for my children and placing importance on their needs constitutes anything other than the expected acts of a loving parent is more than disturbing.  It is heartbreaking.

 

 

What do you mean its halfway through June already?

Aside from being a great source of career satisfaction, my recent changes in job duties have also played whack-a-mole with my ability to meet deadlines and get things accomplished.  My normal duties didn't go away with the move to our business partner's offices, and so I where I used to work in shorter, intense spurts, now I find I have to increase the intensity and the amount of time involved in order to have any hope of getting even the minimum done needed to keep the hungry hordes at bay.  

By the time I get home I'm mentally wiped out, but with SG working the outage, I'm still flying a bit solo when it comes to laundry and kids and animals.  He's a huge help when he gets home in the mornings, covering those last details of getting the kids ready so I can leave for work.  Evenings when the kids are home are a chaotic, lovely jumble of feeding humans and animals and trying to skim at least the worst of the days' messes before I collapse in my chair with an ice pack on my sciatica.

Despite feeling tired and sore, I'm making more effort this year to ride as often as possible and engage in more social activities.  Last year when SG was out of town I had a tendency to hide when i was down or lonely (which was a lot) and I think that was not so good for me.  This year I'm committed to every other week dressage lessons and riding every single weekend.  I have plans for going out with friends and with SG (once the outage is over.  TWO MORE DAYS!)  Last weekend was the only weekend in months I didn't ride, but it was my 30th high school class reunion, so I have a good excuse.  I was too busy having fun and waxing nostalgic over days gone by, and after being out of town since last week I'm now paying the price at home and at work.  Not to mention I've been trying to get the pool put up for the last three weeks - not by actually doing anything but by continually reminding SG to call his nephew to help me do it.  Monday night I finally bit the bullet and started working on it.  Damn if I didn't get it half done when the skies started thundering and flashing lightning before dumping rain all over me.  Its rained every day since.  

The kids are on their second week of summer break.  I didn't get much scheduled for the month of June, but come July and August they've both got camps to go to.  Amazon Girl will take swimming lessons again and go to a horse camp and then two art camps and a music camp.   It was harder to find camps for Race Car Man.  There are some science camps locally but none with the appropriate staffing or resources to deal with his complex behaviors.  I was torn about signing him up for camps through a local disability resource center, but when I reviewed the curriculum I felt like it would be a lot more enriching for him than just having him at home or at daycare.  I've managed to set up a schedule for him that inludes several weeks at the ARC camp, a vacation bible school, some time at daycare and some time off with me and time at his dad's.  Overall I'm satisfied that both kids will have an enjoyable summer.  I'm avoiding adding up all the various costs for the camps because I'm pretty sure I don't want to look at the total.  Oh, its worth every penny of it.  But its a lot of pennies.  

The last week of school for the kids was a bit poignant for me.  The moving up ceremony for the fifth graders was on Wednesday.  I managed not to cry when Amazon Girl was handed her certificate for a Presidential Award for Academic Excellence.  Thursday was field day, and I spent the morning with Race Car Man.  He wanted very much to do two activities - the rope climb and the sack race.  He was not at all interested in trying anything else.  We talked about it for a little bit and eventually he agreed to try a few things.  When the 11:30 bell rang for his group to go back to class he'd thrown the football through a hoop, tried the frisbee toss, rolled a ball at a stack of cans and chucked a nerf ball as far as he could get it.  I was proud of him not only for making the effort to try new things as I was for his ability to change his mind about doing so.  It was a little bittersweet;  spending time with him in the comapny of other boys his age reminds me in a way I'm not used to just how different he is from neurotypicals.  At the same time, I recognize that those differences aren't necessarily bad.  Yes, he has what might be considered deficits, but he has an amazing number of positive attributes as well.  

Next fall Amazon Girl starts middle school.  It will be a big change for her -- for both of them, really.  Race Car Man has had his sister to lean on ever since kindergarten.  They ride the bus together, go to aftercare together.  In some respects its probably been as hard for them as anything.  They're typical siblings in the way that they both fight with and love one another fiercely.  Next year Race Car Man will have to learn to navigate alone, and as much as I think it will be a challenge I also think it will be really good for him.  Amazon Girl will finally have the chance to concentrate on herself and not need to worry about trying to keep her brother out of trouble.  It will be a most decidedly interesting year, for all of us.

I have a feeling it will be here sooner than I'm prepared for.

Not doing what I can't

I think I'm starting to get better at this grownup thing.  Perhaps, just maybe.

Race Car Man started a few weeks ago with a new therapist, this time one at a place whose clientele are people with autism (as opposed to a therapist who deals with autism among other things, which for us did not work so well).  I think its helping.  He's had more good days at school, he's starting to get homework again.  My ex had a schedule change at work that allows him to go to our son's classroom two days a week for a couple of hours which is fantastico.  If I could only find a way to make life outside of Minecraft even remotely palatable for this child all would be straight up and down.  You can't have it all. 

Amazon Girl also started with a therapist last week, as the doors of pubescent hormonal hell have apparently opened wide and beckoned her therein.  She's struggling emotionally and needs some support from an adult she can talk to about life, about her parents, about her brother -  which means a third party is required.  Fortunately the last therapist she saw, the one I really really liked, is still practicing and takes our insurance. 

Then on Wednesday nights I still have obedience school with TBone.  And Sundays there's church and then Amazon Girl has her riding lesson, and most Saturdays from here until the sun goes away in the late fall again, I have something to scheduled to do with my horses.  SG has guitar lessons every Tuesday and just got started with some group political thingamajig.  And so on.

Sometimes in between all of that we sit down for a few minutes and breathe and maybe fold a load of laundry.

Last week Race Car Man's therapist asked if we wanted to start him in her next social skills class.  "Sure, when does it start?" 

Next Tuesday. (Two days ago)

Its a class he needs, BUT - it starts at 3:45, just 5 minutes after he gets out of school, AND its a half hour ride away from his school.  And I work full time.  And my husband works full time.  And if I had some time to sit down and sketch out a plan it we can do it but Next Tuesday just does not work for me right now and I for ONCE in my goddamned adult life opened my mouth and said the magic words:

"I'm sorry but that doesn't work for our schedule right now."

I didn't even feel guilty about saying it.  I felt relieved.  I am doing all that I can do for my family and myself right now and I am not going to try and cram one more thing down our collective throats, not at this moment. 

There have been a lot of times in the last several years where I've felt almost all of my waking time was consumed with trying to frantically get everything done that I am supposed to do and failing miserably at it.  Its a horrible pattern - try to do more than you're capable of, fail, drop two or three of the balls you're juggling and then spend a month trying to dig out of the hole you've just created for yourself.  

Perfectionism just isn't going to happen for me right now.

There will be a point where our schedule will open enough to make the social skills class do-able for us.  It will happen.  Just not two days ago.  

Slow down. The tempo isn't as fast as you think it is.

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My mother likes to tell people stories about how, when I was small, it would take five adults to hold me down at the doctor's office if I was about to get a shot or a blood draw.   The fear still lingers, but I have learned to willingly submit, even when I know its going to make me feel nauseated, break out in a cold sweat, and probably fall over.  (This is why I'm more than six months late for my six month dental checkup, why I hate to see my doctor even though I love him and why I frequently turn pale when my father takes his blood sugar or gives himself an injection.  Urp.)

My children have inherited my fear of shots.  Amazon Girl outdid me by miles during her preschool years, though she's much better now.  At her most recent checkup she needed four vaccines.  I requested they give her two and have us come back for the others -- I don't like having that many done at a time.   She sat still for them, but she was super mad at me - I didn't realize when I made the appointment that she would need shots and therefore didn't warn her ahead of time.    After I bought her a treat to compensate for her suffering, the lightbulb in her pointy little head went off and now I'm bound by contract for a trip to the ice cream parlor when the next two shots are given.

Race Car Man, on the other hand, still requires far more than a bribe.  He came home early from school yesterday.  Rather, the school nurse called and said to send someone to come get him right away as he had appeared in her office with pinkeye.  Joy!  Cue the dark thunderclouds and Wagner, because any condition that requires the application of anything - particularly in something as sensitive as an eyeball - falls unti the category of Things That Are Traumatic.

The pinkeye doesn't look like its a raging case. so I opted not to bother the doctor and dug out the antibiotic drops from the last round of the dreaded eye crud. I showed him the little bottle and asked him to stop what he was doing so I could put some into his eye, which immediately resulted in screaming so loud you'd think I'd set the little bugger on fire.  I quickly decided that rather than engage in a wrestling match, I'd try again later.  'Later' turned out to be a text to his dad as he was on his way to pick the kids up:  I'm sending some drops for _____'s eye.  He wouldn't let me put any in."

Ex:  So he hasn't had any yet?

Me.  No.

If dead silence on the other end translates tone, I'm pretty sure he's plotting his revenge.  I deserve it.

I don't blame it entirely on the autism, but I will say that having a child with sensory issues makes certain things much more difficult.  Pills, for instance.  He can't swallow pills.  Or at least he thinks he can't swallow pills, which is pretty much the same thing.  Textures are another thing, but the absolute worst is anything that requires him to submit to something being done to him.  The dentist, the doctor, a sliver in the finger or a scrape needing to be washed out -- all of these things require the person attending him to have cat-like reflexes, the ability to lift and secure the equivalent of an 8 armed chimpanzee and the patience of Job.  I still recall the first time the nurse at the doctor's office wanted to take his blood pressure.  When we finally got his fingernails pried out of the ceiling tiles we gave up because it was a sure bet any reading we got at that point would be abnormally high.  Mine was, at any rate.

My good friend whose son not only has an autism diagnosis but also has a congenital heart defect deals with this but multiplied by an easy thousand.  I not only don't envy her, whenever her son has to go for tests or a procedure I want to give her a trophy and a bottle of vodka.  They make it through, and so through our small challenges do we.   

Its one of the harder aspects of parenting for me, that situation when I have to ask my child to tolerate something that hurts or causes them discomfort, especially if I'm asking them to deal with something I can barely deal with either.  Do you suppose that if we'd had an inling that parenting came with an honorary degree in greased pig wrestling we might have at least had a moment or two of doubt about the whole thing?

Girl things

My left shoulder hurts.  It has for years, but not like it has lately.  Lately whenever I try to put my arm up over my head, do pushups, carry hay or saddle my horse it really really hurts.  I went to see the shoulder guy at the Orthopaedic clinic, and he gave me a shot of steroids but that only worked for a little while, so I was back there this morning.  He wants to rule out a small tear in the rotator cuff before he puts me in physical therapy, so they're scheduling an MRI. 

I'm so excited.

I've never had an MRI.  And what if I have to have surgery?  Another scar to show off!  Cool!

Yes, I'm that person.

I'm the person who sees snow falling and I might pretend to be annoyed, because that's apparently what you're supposed to feel when it snows.  Inside, though, I can't wait for the adventure of driving in it.  There might even be an accident!  I might end up stranded in the wilderness and have to hike through the mountains and eat my companions to survive!

I'm the person who gets a scrape or a cut and the only reason I go looking for a bandage is so I can walk by my husband and kids and say "LOOK!  I'M BLEEDING!"  If the cut isn't bleeding enough I'll probably squeeze it a little to see if I can get more out of it.

I'm the person who hates needles and gets tattoos.  "How many hours did that one take?"  "Four two hour appointments."  "Didn't it hurt"  "Oh, yeah, it hurt like hell.  It was awesome."  And when I'm under the needle and the artist asks if  I need a break and I say that I'm fine and they respond with "Wow, most people would have had to take at least a couple of breaks by now," I'm all "FUCK YEAH."

I'm the woman who will smack a volleyball into the face of the guy on the other side of the net with barely concealed glee, run over the shortstop on my way to second base and barrel through the guy trying to set a pick on me when I'm guarding the guy who's driving the baseline.

I put on my coveralls and a baseball cap, put my truck up on ramps and change my oil, change my filters, refill my washer fluid and try to see if that pesky leak is just a loose bolt that I can fix myself.  I look like a greasemonkey, and I could care less.

And this may sound crazy, but at the same time I like that I can put on a fancy dress and get my hair and makeup all just so and knock my husband's socks off with my awesome female self.  I very much like my femininity and all that it entails.

I'm not alone in this.  So many women I know are just like me, strong and soft.  Tough and tender.  My daughter is one of them.

Pink, bright hot pink, is her favorite color.  She loves My Little Pony and Dragons, stuffed kitty toys and light sabers.  She wants to be a princess and a ninja. She has beautiful hair to her waist and she prefers jeans to dresses.  She came to me on Christmas day to talk about how upset she was when some relatives and friends gave her brother "boy" toys and gave her "girl" things like body wash and perfume.  She was upset to think anyone might think that she was a "girly girl." 

There is so much to love about being a woman.  While its a sure bet that my childhood in the late 60's/early 70's subjected my psyche to a great deal of gender role absolutes, I enjoy wearing makeup and dressing in clothes meant to showcase what I think is attractive about myself.  I care about how my hair looks, and I struggle like many women about the impossible-to-walk line between having fingernails that are neat and pretty or fingernails that allow you to do things like cinch a saddle, throw hay bales and repair fencing. 

In 1983, the year I graduated high school, 95 percent of autobody repair workers were male.  There must have been something brewing in us and the classes of women that followed.   As of a decade ago, the number of women in that industry tripled -- a 369% increase.  Other typically male-dominated industries have seen similar jumps in female workers - firefighting, millwork, engineering and law enforcement, to name a few. ¹  I've been a lot of things in my work life, but the bulk of it I've spent in transportation. 

I might have grown up watching Charlie's Angels, but I think I still understood at a very deep level that those women were still playing to male sexuality and that they represented very little that was real.  Anyone with half a brain knows that television and movies tell you lots of lies about how people look and what they say and do.

So when Amazon Girl complained about some of her gifts, I told my daughter that people weren't trying to be unkind if they bought her "girly girl" presents.  I told her even though she might not be a perfume and flowers kind of young lady that it wasn't demeaning for people to think of her as feminine.  Besides, isn't a gift is more of a reflection of the giver than of the receiver?.  But I get it, as might any woman who in the hormone hell of early puberty was mistaken more than once for a boy.  But I want her to know - to believe - that she doesn't have to be one or the other.  Both aspects of her exist together and there's nothing wrong with that.  There's nothing wrong about being a woman who can both take care of herself and look good doing it.

The dividing line between two worlds that were once very separate has become thin and transparent.  We may be very different physically, we may in large part have critically different ways of thinking and organizing our lives, but in so many ways we have broken free of the gender roles that at one time were used to contain and limit us.  I think thats a good thing for all of us, men included.

So hey, do you want to arm wrestle?

 

^{1.  Bureau of Labor Statistics 2005 Current Population Survey}

 

Thanks Blogher for featuring this post on Blogher.com!

 

 

I Need Some Wind for my Sails

Its the end of another week and I am so pathetically grateful to not have to get up tomorrow and put one foot in front of the other while pretending I have it all together I could cry. 

The stress of fending off the world seems to be cumulative, and yesterday I got the good/not so good news that SG might be staying longer on this Nebraska job.  Yay, because its more money into the pathetically empty coffers, but really, BOO because he won't be here for Thanksgiving and I'm so lonely and so tired of dealing with everything and not having my husband at home to sit down after a long day and talk to over a nice glass of wine.  I still have the glass of wine, but the dogs are less interested in hearing about my day than they are in having their dinner RIGHT NOW PLEASE.  If it wasn't for the evenings I get to stop at my parents and visit before I take the kids home I think I would give up the attempt to stay sane.

My struggles pale in comparison to what's happening over in New Jersey and the outside buroughs of New York City, so I should quit complaining.  No matter what's happening in my life, there's someone somewhere dealing with something a hell of a lot worse.  See?  Mindset changed.  Gratitude abounds.

Mr. Race Car Man had a good start to his school year, but has been struggling the last few weeks.  His good days still outnumber his bad days. Last year he had to earn the letters K-I-N-D-L-E by displaying expected behaviors.  If he earned all six letters, he got to either play on my Kindle Fire or play games on the Wii.  This year, since he's older and has gotten better with his skills, his teacher upped the ante and now he has to earn the letters P-L-A-Y G-A-M-E.   If he doesn't earn all eight letters he doesn't get Wii at my house or Playstation if he's at his dad's.  Since he's absolutely mad about gaming, this is a very big incentive for him to master his behaviors and his responses.  He earns his games more days than he does not, but the days he doesn't are really tough days, not just for him but for his teachers and classmates.  Monday morning he decided to run away rather than get on the bus, and my friend Debbie who watches them in the mornings, the aide from the bus and my daughter had to go on a merry chase around the neighborhood to catch him.  The upside of having a very tall and strong daughter is that she was able to nab the little turd and carry him on to the bus.  He then went on to have a very rotten day at school.  I hate those days, because he is so upset and fixated over over not getting to play his games.  Eventually he can be distracted, but he's got to go through his process of coping and folks, it ain't fun.  I feel bad for him, for his classmates, his teacher, and for those of us at home with him.

Fortunately we already had an appointment scheduled with our psychiatrist for Tuesday morning.  One thing I like about our psych is that he doesn't just ask me questions, he asks my child questions and carefully responds to him.  Throught a very calm and methodical interview, we were able to piece together some of the things that were going wrong for Race Car Man at school.  He is having great difficulty focusing in class.  He is very easily distracted by other students physical and verbal behavior.  This frustrates him greatly and makes him more likely to have difficulty controlling his behavior.

The psychiatrist made a med adjustment which we started immediately, and so far it seems to be helping.  Two fantastic days in a row doesn't mean as much as a couple of good weeks, so I'm not going to commit to saying "it worked!" -- but I'm encouraged. 

He can be such an engaging child.  A lot of adults we encounter who don't know he has autism, if he's having a good day, are usually charmed by the way he interacts with them.  He loves to explain things, and with his extremely detailed memory and his love of reading information books rather than fiction, he can actually converse about a lot of things.  Combined with his extensive and very precise vocabulary, he seems far beyond his years. 

I wish he'd eat, though.  We weighed and measured him at the doctor's office.  Since last school year he's grown three inches but gained no weight whatsoever.  I can't find pants to fit him that don't leave his ankles and half his shins exposed.

One of his favorite new activities is to brush his sister's hair.   Its almost to her waist now, and I found a special brush at the local beauty supply that lives up to its claims of being "ouchless."  He will sit behind her in the chair at my desk, and while she plays a game he brushes her hair.  Whenever they do this my heart just melts.

So things aren't as good as they could be and they aren't as bad as they could be.  I just feel drained right now and unable to cope with even the smallest setbacks.  Maybe Race Car Man isn't the only one who needs a medication change.