Today is fun. @bonenado and I have accidentally sabotaged each other so many times already today that nothing is making sense any more, but as always, I loomed and plugged my Borg Queen control in and brought order to chaos.
It started last night. He didn't tell me he started a mega download for a new Tom-Tom so he could avoid my crabbiness at having my game server rug pulled out from under my stress load. Yes, he didn't say a word while I spent 20 minutes trying to execute a single command after game load and relog over and over after kick off and finally gave up. His computer was on all night long, monitor off so I wouldn't be the wiser, and power button blocked so I wouldn't see it glowing in the dark. No biggie, right? So I got up first this morning, wrangled for about 30 minutes trying to get on server, finally just pushed the router reset... Yes, it completely killed that download less than an hour to completion, never to recover.
Couple hours later all the info finally came together as super fail facepalm set in all around. I'm feeling extraordinarily vengeful but staying cool and collected while everything else keeps going wrong all morning, like Bunny abruptly throwing her little ADHD body into a gymnastic contortion and kicking a little cup of snotty cold medicine all over the bedding and my fresh clean clothes in a fine sticky syrupy spray. Like such a tiny amount of that stuff instantly stickified everything in a 2 foot radius, including, somehow, the bottom of my sock. Fun, had to strip the bed and change clothes and she'd barely been up 10 minutes.
Between her snotty cold and her meds, @bonenado's shingles, oncoming snotty cold (thanx, Bunny) and his meds, and my continual monitoring of 5 things happening all at once without rhyme or reason, and retracking #allthethings into one thing after another, like linear time should be, on top of my own stuff (I can feel that snotty cold virus starting up in my left cheekbone, ug), my left eye is twitching like I've been locked in a sanitarium dungeon with spiders on me.
Example. After 20 minutes of Bunny and Papa playing on her scooter and her falling splat into a dead lizard on the road and coming into to wash up, I got her focused onto a Halloween card (colors, stickers) while I set up to make apple pie, which she could help with, because Papa really needed a break. Poor Papa didn't get a clue and tried to divert her from me to a TV show so I can catch a break while I 'work', and during a 5 minute pie assembly Bunny diverted into 3 different things while I was trying to keep her focused on pie, and finally the Borg Queen stomped Papa flat with DO NOT TELL HER TO BRUSH HER TEETH RIGHT NOW. I mean, how did that even come up???
I've said before that I married into a family that reminds me of being thronged by little yappy dogs. Everything is spontaneously moment to moment, often without any thread of visible logic, and every day is a delightful detangling and reordering. But I'm really good at it, and sometimes it's just plain funny, and then there is pie. Pie fixes everything.
The P is for Papa, and Bunny picked the Halloween sprinkles. My house smells lovely like apples and cinnamon, so it's ok if the pie looks weird.
We are screaming down the holiday slide, and I won't be a bit surprised if I find myself flipped off to the side in a daze while the rest of the holidays sling around me in a colorful blur. I'm going to stay home and destress on the game server while Papa goes with Bunny and Mama to a punkin farm this afternoon. I'll chop virtual punkins and rake in more dough (currenly over $2M) while they go get a real punkin and do a corn maze and a bouncy house and stuff.
click to get lost in the strangest pinterest cross-stream search ever
bcuz google said this pic goes to that pic for some reason
So the other day someone publicly reminded me that they are a big fan of mine and to have a great new year. Since that particular person was a key pivot in how I interact publicly, and then a later reminder why I've stopped tit for tat support for it's own polite sake, I didn't respond at all. Call me rude, but being prodded like a work horse on demand without so much as a shared link back or even a personal click to see what my own deal is during interaction crisis (from my point of view, probably completely missed and at least ignored from the other point of view), how could this aspienado conceivably keep up any kind of polite face? For someone claiming some sort of savvy in the writing and publishing world, I'm not sure what I'm seeing on that account is much different from actor obsession and possibly internal challenges not that much different from mine but never acknowledged.
It's one thing to miss being polite about help with several hours of tech support and no recompense, it's another to be praised with odd nicknames and the kind of intimacy that misleads others and still doesn't really share my part of the work back. (Several people noticed and asked me privately what was going on, it was so obvious. The fact that *I didn't shred this person in a live feed* means humongous personal growth.) If treating me like a butler and then a cousin is how we define this 'friendship' (using that word as loosely as possible without dropping it), then I'd love to submit my resignation and never be tagged again. It could have been part of a bigger beautiful mutual support network I'm building, but I think bigger picture gets pretty lost on some people.
Aspienado wrangles relationship meaning like a cat, which also leaves me wondering how this person could possibly not get it, with all those cat pix... I am NOT- have never been and will never be- Pinkapalooza or Pinkmeister or any of the other nicks that don't seem to stop with this person. That rankles me like someone jamming a pointy stick up my nose.
So this is a challenge. Part of being public (along with having my facebook identity copied) is being projected upon. People will see me the way they see me, and I have no control over that. I must allow others to be themselves and see the world the way they see it, even if it means they jovially nickname me and prod me to interact. Doesn't mean I have to respond, it just means I need to let it go and stop allowing that kind of stuff to turn my head. I'm too easily distracted over things that don't have near the depth of meaning I lend to it (dump on it, smother it in...), and part of my aspienado challenge is to stop turning aside for that kind of stuff. It's just part of the process, and actually a good part, so instead of ruining it with darker colors and venom because I'm a weirdo, I'm going to do what I can this year to say THANK YOU. I don't exactly mimic elegant delicacy, but it doesn't mean I can't aspire to it.
Back to here and now. We have Bunny one more day. She's almost clear to go back to daycare, yay! I'm so worn out from this really long 'vacation' (started in mid December) that I'm losing control over 'zoning'. Yesterday Papa wasn't even back out the door with her yet and I was already globbing all my words up and suddenly just spacing out at distant walls in mid sentence. I needed down time so badly last night that I was in bed by 6, and I'm still not sure how I'm going to get through today. Lalaloopsy and 'puppy show' are ruining me. My thinkability plummets into 3-year-old land and Bunny is thrilled to find herself smarter than Meemaw. I have nothing but praise for people who are able to work with small children all day. My own sploit was a very quiet child because autism spectrum, and didn't start the talking a lot stuff until nearly 4 years old, so, besides helping out with Bunny's mama during chicken pox and stuff, this is my first real venture into all-day ADHD nonstop 3-year-old broadcasting. I find Bunny very enjoyable and extremely pleasant for her age, but there just isn't break time at all for hours and hours. Thankfully I've got years of her mama under my belt, but the full time stuff started at 5 years old, so I'm an aspienado meemaw teetering on a the brink of zone fail as opposed to going full zone. I'm remembering my Jedi training, as it were.
For now, I'm holding my days down to fighting with W10 xbox minecraft beta controls. I discovered yesterday I don't have colored glass in my inventory and I can't make any manually, so grrrr.
"My idea of the perfect hell is for the person you are now to meet the person you could have been."
This pic clicks to a user profile on a game site. I was looking for something else and ran into it.
Pink and blue together is a big deal. It seems to exquisitely depict emotional clash. Once you become aware of it, you see it used a lot in all kinds of artwork that way.
Pink and blue together is also very peaceful and mysterious, especially when you see it in photographs or artwork of the sky and space.
I guess it's statistically my turn for crap delivery, last 2 packages delivered (one UPS, one USPS) from two different national warehouses arrived not just damaged but one shattered like it fell off a high rise building and the other snapped in half like it had been run over in someone's driveway. Since a pair of fashion sunglasses made it here all the way from Shanghai in great shape without any extra special protection, I guess I'm getting my package abuse quota out of the way, which means holidays will be awesome this year. Last Christmas, a box I sent out got delivered to the wrong house and wasn't recovered until that family got back from holiday vacation. I'm actually ok with the damages, because the Soap DVDs inside the completely broken case are somehow just fine, and I had no idea that cool seashell toilet seat (scroll way down) would break that easily, and we've got a 3 year old showing up around here slamming the lids around. If that had happened instead of in transit, I wouldn't have been able to go after a refund.
For someone who spiked a 102 temp over the weekend and broke out into blisters (doctor verified hand-foot-mouth), Bunny was a nonstop pistol yesterday, so it was like being back on any kind of service job on a super busy day where you skip breaks and even lunch for 6 hours straight, and then Papa came home half a day and they went outside for an hour and came in worn out, and then sudden blissful silence when a nap finally took her hostage. Most of my day was like this.
No idea yet if daycare will be a thing today, so I can't help being up early just in case. My brain actually woke me up around 2 asking to be brined in coffee and I told it to shut up and tried to go back to sleep, but the *bing* was strong and now here we are at 3, letting coffee do magical things.
This is the first time something I've submitted has been officially scheduled.
Post #6257 "thank goodness there is an Autisable!" was scheduled ... It will be published on August 21, 2016 at 12:05 pm This action was taken on August 13, 2016 at 12:11 pm America/New_York
Originally published 5-22-09, linked back to it from twitter 12 days ago when Autisable finally went live again after server move and then host migration, and now to be officially vetted and republished on an (inter)nationally networked nonprofit community of thousands that has received 100K hits, if I'm remembering a tweet or FB status correctly. From their LinkedIn description-
Connecting the Autism Community, providing a place where people learn and discuss all issues surrounding the Autism Spectrum. Autism effects 1 in 54 people worldwide. Xanga.com launched Autisable.com in May of 2009. Autisable, LLC took over the site in July of 2016. If you are a writer and are syndicated on Autisable, feel free to add yourself as an Employee. However, please also include your syndicated blog on your account as a reference.
Don't think I'll be adding myself as an 'employee', but hopefully I'll get a couple more things submitted this year.
omg, sudden #coffeefail. I may hafta go lay back down for a few minutes. I need to be dressed and ready to head out around 5:30 if Bunny wakes up with a fever again, so I don't have much time to close my eyes. This song has been in my head the last 24 hours because Bunny. I've come to really appreciate the sparkle of high energy people since this is the second one now I'm helping get through tiny childhood.
The closer I tunnel to 0,0, the faster and more horribly I suddenly die, and every time has been lava. I'm a seasoned lava pro now, how is this even happening? I was on an empty ledge, working downward very slowly, super careful, collecting coal, and suddenly- what? I couldn't tell if I I fell or what, but suddenly everything was gone, the world was black, I was on fire, and I couldn't even see a direction to try jumping out of the flames. It was like the void opened up and swallowed the whole game.
So, naturally, that means it's time to get a cup of coffee and plan my next move. I'll need to dig out my amulet now and summon my flying horse, and it'll take 2 minecraft days to fly back to where I last went back down underground. I didn't dare try to /back after respawn. I did that about 500 blocks back, someone had a portal tucked into a niche partway up a ladder out of a tunnel, and I got sucked into hell so fast, actually tumbled down a hill and got beaten to death immediately by a gang of flame horse thugs, and I was stupid enough to /back and do it all over again.
How's your Memorial Day weekend going? lol
Batman is really liking pre-K so far (he just turned 3), which is wonderfully surprising. He's spent several months preparing with integrative therapies. I wish they had all this when I was a kid, or when my sploit (Batman's mama) was a kid. My brother was more into the rocking thing than I was, but my 2 sisters seemed to be more interactive and compliant and got along a little bit better, although I remember my youngest sister having kind of a hard time at first. Since we were no different from how my dad grew up and the kids he'd seen in his family growing up, no one was really concerned (except when my brother 'refused' to read for awhile, no one knew I simply couldn't read at all until 2nd grade, and my daughter refused to make any letters except Os so she spelled her name OOOOO for awhile when she started school). Pretty much all of us snapped into program right around 2nd grade and suddenly started reading and handling school better, but for me, kindergarten and first grade were nightmares.
Bunny is still the circus kid gogogo just like her mama before her and her Papa before that and her great granny before that. They're just as genetically wired as my family, but differently. They're super integrative socially and catch on quickly to new things, but they're also so creative and innovative and easily bored that school is too slow for them, having to go slow and absorb is challenging.
It's been very interesting see opposite ends of the neuro spectrum coming together as a family, and the coolest thing that's ever happened to us as a group structure. I think what a lot of people don't realize raising kids on either end like that is that they've got high IQ people on their hands, and there is no real difference in the smarts, just the life approaches. One way is methodical, the other way is practical application, and when you put the two ends together, you get a LOT of problem solving done if you know what you're doing. The key is being familiar with the concept of neurodiversity in the first place.
I've been on UK time all weekend, so I've been up ridiculously early 3 or 4 days in a row now. Since 4 a.m. is my usual time, you can imagine what I mean by ridiculously early. Some of my night owl tweeps were just going to bed when I got up.
This is a continuation from the nuts before Christmas- part 1, part 2, and part 3. I ran my data plan out and couldn't get this really long HD vid loaded until it rolled over again, router refused to handle it.
If this is your first jump in, my family is ASD, and @bonenado's family is ADHD, so it was really interesting getting Bunny and Batman together in one house for the first time. Parts 1 and 2 were watching the kids acclimate by running around, part 3 was watching Bunny experiment on my dad (super young ADHD + super old ASD). Part 4 here is Batman retreating into the laundry room, which makes a really good cave for kids and pets who come into our house, and Bunny adjusting back down from the wild activity when he disappeared.
I've noticed with Bunny being super social (I'm not, I've had to adapt) that keeping a running dialogue with her works really well, and apparently Batman picked up on that and even adapted to it himself. Bunny has a much bigger vocabulary and was speaking in complete sentences by the time she turned 2 like her mama did (they're both 2 1/2 here), but Batman is more inward like his mama was at that age, and I don't remember her talking a lot with me until 3-4 years old, and anyone could tell when she didn't pay attention on purpose because she preferred being in her own little bubble. Bunny kind of walked in all over Batman's bubble because she wanted him to come back out and run with her again, and I got a kick out of how their communication signals crossed and then started smoothing out. I think this would be a great intro vid for child social psyche students. I felt kind of like a brain interface for awhile, but it's something I've become used to. I'm saying that last bit because the simplistic narration I use in the beginning actually annoys me silly (ASD), but it really does work when one can be patient enough to handle 20 minutes of interface adjustment, like I was doing here. My opinion is that neither barking orders nor interfering work well with neuro collisions, and that patience and narrative are key to same-paging, essentially lining up our brains. I can imagine teachers and daycare workers not having the time to apply this on more personal level, so I applaud programs that help begin integrating neuro atypicals together before they slam through the culture shock of suddenly going to school. I'm pro neurodiversity, and I believe all of us have talents and skills that we can find niches for.
The first two posts were about the kids. Now let's take a look at ASD from the old days, before it was even a thing.
This is my dad. He grew up with simplistic little kid interaction and thoughts because the ASD range was common enough around him growing up that it was normal, but remember that ASD kids sometimes super plug into acedemics later. By the time he graduated the 8th grade in a one room rural school house, he was acing tests about government structure and economics that they don't give kids today until they're in college. One of the first things I learned from him was how to count, because numbers are behind everything that goes on in the world. He doesn't know Bunny already counts to 20 (at 2 1/2) and is just watching to see why he's even acting like that. Bunny's ADHD is going full blast in her head right now, super focused on studying how to socially interact with this guy. An ASD kid would have just ignored him unless he/she were interested in actually doing something.
Bunny has got my dad figured out, and without any words at all (funny to us because she's normally a nonstop talker), spends a little time manipulating him without him even knowing it. When I first met Bunny's mama (at that age), I was nearly still as rigid as my dad in the way I saw the world and what I thought of things and how they should work. I think Bunny wanted to see how complex my dad could get because he'd been doing the same simple thing over and over trying to get her to repeat it.
On the other hand, my dad knew what to do with Batman and actually got positive response. This behavior in a 2 year old wasn't at all considered deviant or abnormal with him, this is just what 2 year olds are like and they click in later and get real smart.
One of the reasons I got a sociology degree was because I craved to know what I still didn't understand about how humans work. Group interaction and individual acceptance is a really big deal everywhere you go, especially on jobs and in families. A person who doesn't feel accepted in a group can become despondent (depressed) or despotic (bossy), both of which can have sad and bad consequences, or inspire them to leave to find another group, but not everyone is strong enough to leave a group on their own and seek a better fit.
Being different from one another wasn't acceptable when I was growing up. We all had to think the same way, behave the same way, even have fun the same way. I was unable to fit in with people everywhere I went. I found a few here or there that I could kind of be part of, but never quite fit all the way with. I think it's human nature to want to fit in as oneself, to be useful and cherished as unique. Sometimes it's difficult to find that when the world around us is very rigid about who we should be and how we should act. When the world is like that, it loses great opportunities for creative problem solving skills.
'My people', as I generically and fondly call people whose heads work like mine, are everywhere. When you travel from city to city and find comfort in familiarity in a franchise, that was probably one of my people. When you zip into a store for something and rely on super organization for easy and quick shopping, that was probably one of my people. Every time you use your phone, some of my people helped make that possible. The rest of us don't have to worry about satellites in orbit relaying signals and the obsessive number crunching that goes into maintaining the information and entertainment tech that services, thank goodness, but if you do ever wonder about it, well, that's my people.
I come from a people with a very long history. They go back to the Anglo-Saxon days like the King Arthur myths. They go back to the Goths and Frisian. When Hitler was scourging the earth, he praised the Prussian Mennonites. ('My people' in that article wound up routing through Russia, thanks to Catherine, and then on to America.) It was my good fortune to have a Mennonite college professor (author page) who remembers being 12 during the time of Hitler and questioning his father over why they supported him. That boy wound up becoming a secret envoy to China, helping bring out the historical traditions and stories to a world that still didn't know much at all about what was really going on in China. (book) He knew my family name and asked me in front of the whole class (World Religions) if I knew so and so on the Navajo reservation, and it turned out I did, I'm related to him. My people are all over the world, and some of them keep track where all the rest of us are.
When regular people think of Mennonites, they assume tight knit communities on farmland. They have no idea we are floating like cream to the tops of everything around them, in industry, medicine, education, government, even the entertainment industry. I have some profoundly astonishingly amazingly intelligent cousins, and you would be surprised what all they do.
My dad is a little more close minded. He is very suspicious of government and was convinced college would brainwash me. He wouldn't allow me to see a psychiatrist as a child because psychiatry was invented by government (think old Germany) to brainwash citizens. If you can survive talking to my dad long enough, you find out he knew everything about Illuminati as a child growing up in a wheat field long before they became a whisper and then a conspiracy theory and now a hushed reality. I won't go into that right now, but some of you have seen my dabbling in that sort of information gathering. I have a sociology degree steeped in world religions and political science, and I quietly research at home for my own amusement.
My point is that ASD isn't a scary thing. Our modern society is no longer supportive of functional ASD. In the old days, there was no time table for social and personality development, and kids developed naturally in their own time. Sooner or later, most ASD kids find their niches, and they immerse themselves in the glory of problem solving. They love complexity and patterns and winning the game. They may not be cute little dollies as tiny children, and they may not be very cooperative for awhile- remember, I started out a screamer, and I never hugged my mom or told her I loved her or went to her for comfort, and here I am coaching people with anxiety and depression on social media.
I am writing a book about BEING an ASD child, what it was like from my point of view, the things I thought, the feelings I had, and how I finally figured out how life works. It's taking awhile because I'm not closing myself off from the world and just doing it, because I'm making myself available to the public, and I'm told privately by several that this has been very encouraging.
Survival is key. Mental health wasn't a thing back in the old days, but now we know how important feeling secure and accepted in groups is nowadays. We have broken away from our natural daily survival busy-ness and problem solving to live our separate lives not really plugging in to society around us any more (it's ok, I don't trust my neighbors, either), and kids wind up with their heads in gaming consoles or getting into trubbas. Childhood depression is a real thing, and parental support is out there. My mom didn't have the support when I was growing up, and I watched it devastate her in ways other people didn't really notice, because back then admitting depression was extremely taboo and she never let people know how bad it was for her, even when she tried to communicate it. Your ASD children are like recording devices, and if you give them enough time (took me 3-4 decades), they will remember all your words and feelings and turn them around into a sweet empathy that will sweep you off your feet. Your job is to live long enough to see that happen. I've already lost my mom, she missed most of it, but she knew it was there. She never stopped believing she could find a way to push me into seeing the bigger picture, although I frustrated her all my life.
ENJOY YOUR CHILD. Just love your child. Be there and don't worry. When it all boils down, our last thoughts before death are about our relationships. Learning to love is why we are here, and ASD kids have a long and winding road learning it. I was not born with natural empathy and rarely cared about anyone for a very long time.
Because of my experiences, I very much enjoy people in my home nowadays. My home is my sanctuary, and the people who come into my home are in my sanctuary.
Yes, there is very definitely a part 4 coming. My internet has been glitchy for several days and my data plan is critically low, so loading HD vids is slow going. The best and very cutest part of the Bunny-Batman ADHD-ASD collision is yet to come.
Bunny has an inviting way, being a super social kid, and Batman loved hanging out with her. His mom told me he's already really into football, gets him very excited.
The stairs are the coolest part of the house. We find out here what the mysterious 'ow, ow' was in the background in a video from part 1. It was really cool seeing how quickly Batman would follow leads and be part of a group. I'm told his daddy can build a computer from scratch, and that Batman is already trying to take things apart and see how they work. Keep this in mind when we get to part 3.
Twink is trained for ASD kids and worked in both a school system and a big hospital daycare before she certified for massage therapist and then moved into medical billing, so she's our specialist in the house. I was a super klutz as a child, always the one getting torn up and bloody or throwing up from sensory overload and very rarely got an empathetic couple of minutes from the adults around me during holidays, so this is radically different and wonderful for me to watch. I am so proud of my kids, I can't even tell ya. (I remember being introduced as 'the screamer', to polite laughs, and since I failed to disappoint, I had a reputation for years. Back then, people didn't know how to integrate ASD kids into social situations.) Interestingly, Twink was diagnosed super ADHD by third grade, and was an extremely socially aware child all her life, as is Bunny. These neuro traits seem like opposites, but @bonenado (ADHD) and I (ASD) have been married 23 years, which I think says a lot about atypical relationship combos. We make a really good team. (Or, you can stick with Leo goes well with Scorpio, whatever floats your romance boat.)
Believe it or not, ASD is actually normal for some groups of really smart people. We'll meet my dad in the next post. Four generations of ASD in one house with hyper yappy ADHD going on all around us. To be continued....
Christmas asploded at my house 4 days ago, full on ADHD/ASD collision, but I loved it. We realized years ago that our different neuro personalities are complimentary- one taunting, the other killing with glee, the first surviving because indestructible, the other planning strategies and vengeance, and in the end, what boils down to wild nerf gun fights with lots of munchies and chaos and the house pretty much being torn to pieces. I'm the biggest instigator in the house, so it's all cool. Well, @bonenado was already grimly going over offense with 5 a.m. coffee by the second day, but Santa was going to bring that boy some coal in his brownies and he knew it, so he tucked the nerf gun under his shirt. But he's still the best and the sweetest and I'll keep him forever. Every bit of this is as metaphorical as you want to take it, but accurate.
In the meantime, if you don't have a racket going on, you're not doing it right. Those of you with ASD kids will appreciate how quickly Batman adapted to a new house full of strangers.
Bunny had a LOT to do with Batman coming out. It also helped that us adults instinctively knew to stand back and be still while he acclimated.
Would've loved to get whatever this collision was about on camera.
A girl Flash. Take that, comic book and TV show people.
Skip a buncha stuff to later since I loaded this one first. We're not horrible people at all....
Loading more. All this new tech, you'd think @bonenado would go Hey, let's uprade our high speed plan, but noooo, 3 minute HD vids still snail along for 3 hours because he doesn't get that HD is a broadband hog. He spent a couple thousand on top of the line phone and laptop tech, but $25 more a month for our carrier to handle it doesn't make sense to someone from the stone age whose biggest requirement is fantasy football, and we share a 6 gig data plan, so I'm creeping on the router while vids load, nerf gun tucked into my back belt.
Batman trivia- his pediatrician says he'll likely get over 6 feet tall, but all 3 of my older nieces married into the 6-7 foot range, so I guess we're trending into the future. Batman and Bunny are only 2 months apart. Bunny's mama was like her, running all her calories off when she was tiny, but wound up taller than me and taking out regional volleyball and varsity basketball, so I just keep pumping that Bunny full of snacky stuff and don't worry about it.
Our Christmas is over, but we've got Bunny today while mama works and daycare is off for Christmas, so more rowdy starts in a couple of hours. I sort of have my brain back enough to keep vids loading in the background, so this is to be continued....
A couple of days ago I mentioned a big hard day out with Bunny, and then on twitter yesterday I said pix coming, and here we go, after I say a couple things again.
I got a little lecture-y in that mention post about tears for a commercial. That commercial was a concocted fictional story designed to yank your chains so you'd spend money (with a nice cover agenda), and apparently it was a wild success. I've already done my crying, thank you. After going through being DPOA for my own parent in a nursing home for 5 years, I think that ad sucks because a little wave from a very long distance without a single word or touch is still pretty lame. An aging population not being 'visited' by family probably means there are some pretty full plates out there, and thank goodness there are programs and facilities in place to help us care for our aging parents.
What I'm about to show you is real life, and in the mention post I said I shut off my feels so I could handle the hard. Before we get started you need to understand why I said that. We have lots of experience in our family. My sister's oldest daughter grew up in and out of hospitals and finally died in one, and then she nearly lost her only other child several years later after a car hit her in a crosswalk and they reconstructed her leg (nearly lost it) and got her through some pretty sucky head trauma. Our Bunny's mama had a very terrible experience herself in a hospital and had to be transported across the state after a surgery accident, and she and @bonenado were there through Christmas with Sploit and I not knowing if they'd both make it home, so that was a sucky holiday for sure. I've visited the Cystic Fibrosis wing in a research/college hospital a couple of times, full of kids who get dropped off by parents for routine yearly 2-week 'maintenance' or more imminent needs and testing. For someone who's never actually been admitted to a hospital despite having heart surgery (outpatient, believe it or not) and the plethora of miseries I've suffered (including a really bad car accident), I'm very familiar and even comfortable in them because I visit them so much. I even say in Explaining Depression- "If I had the stamina, I'd be volunteering at one of the hospitals, because I love hospitals and feel safe there. I've spent so much time in hospitals hanging out with other people that they feel like home to me, even though I've never been hospitalized myself." By the way, I don't watch hospital shows on TV. My fave part to hate on in hospital room scenes is the character ripping or taking the IV out without any blood spurting around or even applying pressure or covering up that spot, and then just walking right out. I once accidentally tore an IV out and blood so thoroughly shot all over the room and everything in it that I felt like I was the star in a horror film. What is the point of realistic filming if IV scenes are so blown off, yea verily.
Just a quickie for people still feeling teary-eyed or even guilty over the 'man on the moon' ad- take a book, take your knitting or ipad, pack nibblies in a lunchbox, pack activities for kids, and plan on hanging out for awhile when you go visit old people in their home or care facility. You don't have to talk and make eye contact that whole time (it's hard for some older people to talk anyway), you don't have to 'do stuff' for them, just show up and hang around, take a break and walk around, eat in the cafeteria with them (or by their bedside), and when you say goodbye, just say you'll try to come back soon. Very simple, no pressure. If you think you'll have a hard time, take xanax or something before you go. I had a very hard time with it. I actually fled the building a few times feeling very sick. Make yourself psychologically comfortable with a little help (don't go in drunk, guys), and just be yourself hanging out. My mom's care facility had a resident cat that creeped the hallways and visited all the rooms, and a bird cage, and a fenced 'back yard' with a bench and a big tree, and even a small lending library with books and magazines (another idea for charity- donate books and magazines to nursing homes!!!), and a giant fish tank. If you're stuck for a charity idea this year, go poke around a local nursing home. And take socks.
Ok, back to Bunny. I haven't been saying much, but we've been watching a little problem for several months, and now we're going through steps making sure other bigger problems aren't going on. She's ok. Not out of the woods yet, but passed one of the bigger tests with flying colors.
Things are so different nowadays. When I was a kid, medical tests in a hospital were way more traumatic. Kids were treated very differently, barked at to behave, and then parents were frowned on if the kids were nervous or afraid. I was a screamer (#aspienado), but I also had a very controlling parent, so when I had a barium enema at around 5 or 6 years old, I did what I was told but the trauma was almost inexcusable, and I certainly wasn't reassured in any form before, during, or after. (Bunny had a different test, but still invasive.)
having a toy to bite on while waiting is good
Bunny's experience was very different. She was allowed to be a real person, spoken to like a real person, given time to process and understand requests, and was handled by empathetic adults all around. The tech told Bunny's mama she was the quietest 2 year old they'd ever had (as in not screamy) and I believe the reason is because she trusts her mama so completely. Circus baby (yowza, that post looks like it's been invaded with viral ads or something) is one example of a full blown ADHD person raising a full blown ADHD baby. We are strong advocates for neurodiversity (I have Aspergers) and it shows in how well Bunny behaves in new and sometimes scary situations.
As scary as medical stuff is (I have outstanding anxiety around MRIs and stuff), nowadays we are surrounded, for the most part, by people who are much more empathetic and very well trained, and all the stuff we go through is to make sure we can be as healthy as possible, no matter what is going on with us.
The waiting room is hard, too. I brought stuff to do, but I got a little silly. If I hadn't been on the very edge of my phone plan, I probably would've been tweeting. I was surprised how quickly they got done, and next thing you know, there's a Bunny telling me c'mon, let's go.
She even got a little baby to take with her. No one ever gave me a little baby after stuff like that when I was a kid.
The best part about hospitals nowadays is gift shops and coffee shops and places to hang out that feel more like a mall or something. I know it's hard for some parents to allow a child to feel like they have some control in public situations, especially if you're not sure what they'll do, but I've become very comfortable with 'busy' little people. You just hafta get in busy gear along with them and keep up. Once they own their space, they get over stuff real fast.
Grampa couldn't be there, but we knew he'd have picked out this penguin. He really likes penguins.
Second breakfast, like a Hobbit. I heard she ate 2 pancakes before I picked them up, and now look at her go! (Even during a tooth coming in, wow.) Big stuff makes a person hungry. Hospital cafeterias rock, I don't care what anyone says. I've eaten many meals in 'canteen'.
And then it all catches up and we get tired.
That penguin looks like a second child.
The older doctor who ordered this test was very kind, like a grampa doctor, but he had ordered sedation for this test, which would have required driving to the university hospital in Columbia. @bonenado and I were all for this plan after the traumas we've been through as kids during medical testing and stuff. However, Bunny's mama talked to a nurse who does this test all day on kids and she advised against sedation for several reasons (sedation complications outweighing trauma problems), and after being told she'd be allowed in, went ahead and scheduled for local, which would be much less stressful for her because work and other things. After listening to her research and knowing she'd be there where Bunny could see her and know her mama would see what she's going through (since a child that young can't verbalize and communicate fear later when memories come up), I was ok with it, too, and tagged along for support. I really and truly believe the worst things adults do to children is tell them to shut up or be still during fear and nerves, and then not walk them through the emotional process. I touched base a little about how shut down I was as a child and what I'm still working on with a psychologist in hybrid- how robots go on. I think a lot of adults around my age range are having midlife crises because of traumas they never effectively or successfully processed as children, and that leads to feeling helpless and powerless as adults and consequently making bigger emotional demands on other adults, leading to divorces and all kinds of other things. We are all broken.
I am very proud of my Twink (Bunny's mama) for being so patient with her kiddo and making the world better for her. It actually turned out to be a good day. This is me taking them to the back side of the parking lot because I got the closer spot.
After that we split up, and now I have other pix.
Despite going through one of the most brilliant and longest lasting autumns we've had in years, I've gotten very few pictures, after years of being obsessed with photographing autumn. So I grabbed a shot while I was driving, lol. Now I don't feel like I missed autumn. I made a much bigger deal about it last year.
A guy @bonenado works with makes wine, and this is made from my sister's blueberry field.
I really miss being able to tweet pix from my phone, I used to do that a lot. @bonenado and I got a rare day out yesterday, went to town super early and hung out piddling and running errands for a few hours. He's a big Hot Wheels collector, so I wind up looking through them, too, and I can't get over how silly the licensing has gotten. Really? Can you imagine Lexx Hot Wheels? I mean, at this point, I'd love to see anything merched with Lexx on it, it would mean something's actually happening with the property. Oh, well.
Then we wandered around several Christmas shops in the stores we visited. This one would be perfect for #latenightmovie gang.
And this is just cute.
No, we didn't buy any new ornaments. EXCEPT. We found a matching robot, so now we have a @bonenado robot to go with Pinky robot that we found a few years ago.
I know some of you really hate early Christmas music. After YEARS of refusing to even listen to Christmas music, I'm finally in a little bit of a mood again. Still twisted, but it's kinda back.
A million things pop into my head when I see stuff like this, both pro and con, but foremost is my brain doing a Homer Simpson-esque screech to a halt and drool thing.
Even if I could do wheat, this would definitely put me into a hospital if I ate it and my glucose spiked up to a thousand.
But let's talk ~FUN~, shall we?
We have agreed to keep a kiddo overnight on Valentine's Day in exchange for two 30 minute massages (mama is a certified massage therapist). So I'm going to be pinking things up and having a gurl party, yay!
I bet grampa wouldn't mind having pink cheesecake or something.
I think we've outgrown the burrito moniker, so I've been tossing around other nicks- elfnado, peachnado, pinknado, but none of them really stick in my mind. Would Bunny be dumb?
I used to tell her mama that all her bunnies were bouncing out of the box (super ADHD) (we don't believe in medicating, although we have tried it, takes a lot of patience and energy), and this one is definitely a busy bunny. Gotta catch that bunny, she's zooming off with one of our phones again... Seriously, she has reprogrammed our phones, took @bonenado several days to figure out how to switch stuff back the way he likes his settings. Caught her about to reprogram the Vizio one day, that could have gotten very interesting. She's the fastest bunny I've ever seen, those little thumbs get going like a blur and never stop while she's running away and sneaking peeks to see if we're following her.
Let's just hope she doesn't grow up to be an evil bunny.
