Barnmaven

Its got Excedrin written all over it

I'm trying to post more regularly here.  I haven't been at all content with the frequency or the quality of my writing lately.  The answer to that is to exercise the writing muscles, not let them sit on the couch spooning up mouthfuls of Ben & Jerry's Coffee Heath Bar Crunch  (which, might I say, is perfect for mining Heath Bar pieces of after it has been warmed in the microwave for exactly twenty seconds). 

Today has been a doozy, though, and I was so very tempted to bypass writing anything in favor of a hot bath and hiding my head under the covers.  I was up in the middle of the night last night with abdominal cramping.  When I made it to work today I was hit over the head immediately with a major and extremely inconvenient problem opportunity and a few minor and somewhat less problematic issues.   The cherry on top of this shit-sandwich of delight was the pounding in my head and the frequent feeling of needing to throw up. 

I took something for the headache and it sort of went away and then came back, but the intermittent nausea has continued and by about 3 pm I waved the white flag and went home.  I don't know what's wrong with me, I suspect a combination of tension and maybe not eating as well as I should be, but who knows.  My tummy has felt quite acidic of late and I wonder if I'm not developing heartburn as a way of coping.   Work is just tough right now, its one foot in front of the other with the finish line barely visible.  This part of the year is the busiest we get and I'm down staff.  We are all pitching in to fill the gap, and we are getting it done, but we are paying the price.  Today's hitch in my giddyup is possibly my body's way of asking me to please slow down more and to fret less.

The good news, of course, is that the finish line is quite reachable and we will get there, by hook or by crook.  Then we can enjoy a few months of breathing space and start girding our loins for the next challenges heading our way.

SG hasn't heard yet if the job he's on will go longer, but right now they are operating behind schedule so its likely.  I have been very purposefully not tying my heart to a specific return time and just reminding myself that we are more than halfway through this one either way and I will get to see him in fewer days than I last got to hug him.  Our first wedding anniversary is this Friday.  Yeah, we don't get to celebrate it together and that sucks more than a little.  We will celebrate it though, and it will be good to be in each others' company and have fun.   And on the up side, he's not stranded somewhere in the Northeastern part of the country where everyone's more than a little froggy after "Post-Tropical Storm" (my ass) Sandy hurled a billion gallons of rain and seawater at them. 

Yes, I'll take not-here over flooded, power-less and stranded.

Ugh.  Me and my headache are going to go have a lie-down.

Cats are for soaking up tears

The nights when the kids are at their dads are simultaneously awesome and terrible.  The house is so quiet.  Too quiet.  I shuffle around in my slippers, turning off lights, locking doors, talking to the animals as if they could understand and respond.  Crazy cat lady.

Back when I was newly separated I had gotten in the bad habit of letting the dogs sleep on the bed.  Three big dogs, nicely filling up the empty side of the bed and making me feel somewhat less alone.  Except there's a problem with dogs and beds.  Pretty soon they think they have a right to be there, and if for any reason you don't want them up there, they sit on the floor and whine incessantly.  Or they growl at you when you want to move them.  Or they take up so much space there's not much room for you any more.   Not a problem - so long as you don't ever get remarried.  It turns out that teaching your dogs to stay off the bed takes just about as long as it takes to teach your kid to sleep in his own bed:  three nights, and the occasional slide into bad habits.

Cats are a different story.  Cats do not take up an excess amount of space.  Cats, unlike small dogs, do not burrow under the covers and do their best to put their nose in your private parts.  Cats, if you are not allergic, are wonderful heat sources.

Juliet has slept with me most nights the last couple of years.  If she's not sleeping with me she's in my daughter's bed, but most often she's with me.  She will leap up next to me, knead the covers a bit, then plop herself down with her back pressed up against my stomach.  I pet her a little, and she purrs quietly, making soft snuffly noises.   At some point in the night I will roll over, and she will use this opportunity to crawl under the covers and rearrange herself in the curl of my belly or behind my knees.  We have a predictable and comfortable arrangement, she and I. 

There are times of late that my bed seems huge and empty, there are times when the fact that I am lonely hits me like a freight train.  There are times when I realize that my closest and dearest sleeping companion is a cat.  Then I start to feel a little bit sorry for myself and the tears flow.  Once Fortunately Juliet doesn't mind getting a little bit soggy. 

Comfort, thy name is Cat.

 

 

The Queen of Managing Everything

As crazy as my life can be structurally, in terms of schedule, it is highly organized.  It has to be.  There are a lot of things we can slide on, but my kids being where they are supposed to be and in the care of the right person at the right time, this is not negotiable.  I work 45 miles away from my home; two hours of my day is spent commuting.  Because my son rides the special needs bus, pickups and dropoffs have to be orchestrated through the school and schedule changes take up to five days to implement.  Knowing ahead of time what's going to be happening and when gives me an enormous (and highly illusionary) sense of control.

So you can imagine when, on a Tuesday, my husband announced he would be leaving over the weekend to go to Nebraska for six weeks, I put my head between my knees and hyperventilated just a little bit (well, maybe more than a little bit). 

I'd gotten pretty spoiled having a stay-home man all summer.  I didn't have to worry about schedules and buses and where to be and when - I just had to get up on time, get ready on time and show up to work. 

My husband was not impressed by my impending sense of doom.  "You'll figure it out," he said.  "You always do."  BUT THAT'S NOT THE POINT, DAMMIT.  DOESN'T ANYONE CARE THAT I'M PANICKING HERE?  And I did get it figured out, with the help of my friend Debbie and my mother.  BUT STILL NOT THE POINT.

So we're sailing along pretty splendidly here.  I get to see my parents at least four days a week when I stop after work to pick up the kids, who have completed most of their homework and been fed.  Four days a week Debbie comes over and makes sure they're out the door in time to get on the bus and then feeds and waters all the animals.  Did I mention I have some pretty awesome friends, not to mention parents?

It never pays to feel too much like you've got things under control.

Yesterday afternoon I discovered that my ex's schedule would be dramatically changing - ON MONDAY.   All of my arrangements for morning and after school care just got flushed down the commode. 

My husband had the bad luck to call me about five minutes after that.  I treated him to about thirty seconds of hyperventilating and exited the call.

He hasn't called me back since, and I'm not sure if he's avoiding me completely or just too busy.  I'm fairly sure its avoidance.  Hell, I'd avoid me right now if it were possible.

Its not that I can't manage it, of course I can manage it.  Its that I would just once in a while like some empathy for the fact that its not easy, that its stressful, not to mention lonely and thankless.  It would be nice if there were some kind of monetary compensation or fancy award for being the "Queen of Managing Everything."  Oh, yes, it would.

 

 

 

Partway there

This school year has been markedly different for both of the kids.  My daughter is coming along swimmingly in the personal hygiene department, and you busy moms out there will know what I mean when I say that its a quantum leap forward to have one kid who doesn't need your help in the shower.  Race Car Man is better too.  He now takes showers instead of baths, and his biggest accomplishment has been to teach himself to tolerate the water on his face so that I can wash AND rinse his hair without major histrionics. 

They've both gotten medication compliant, which is another huge relief.  They were pretty good for SG over the summer, but I noticed that if I was home when it was meds time, at least one of them would raise hell for no apparent reason.  I surmised, probably correctly, that the drama was simply for my benefit.  After all, don't most kids behave better with people who are not their parents?  With that assessment of the situation in mind, one of the things I was most dreading about SG being gone this fall was mornings.  I was completely prepared for the marathon mornings I remember so well from last year.  I spent quite a bit of time girding my loins, as it were, for the morning battle, only to find myself completely shocked (and about as delighted as a dog rolling in horse shit)  when no one actually wanted to engage in it.  I put together their meds and deliver them to my kids...and they take them. 

While you finish picking your jaw up off the floor, let me also say that Race Car Man has improved so much over last year with his efforts to manage his behavior that he actually got an award at the school assembly last week.

I KNOW, RIGHT????  I'm shocked the local paper didn't see this as a newsworthy event!

There are still struggles, of course.  Last year my son's nemesis was a bigger kid I'll call "Abel."  Abel is the same age as my Amazon Girl and he is on the spectrum, as are all of the 10 kids in Race Car Man's classroom.  For whatever reason, Abel was my son's kryptonite.  Everytime he made a noise or soothed himself with rocking or flapping, Race Car Man would lose his MIND.  He got suspended for three days because for no apparent reason whatsoever, he hauled off and hit poor Abel while the kid was doing nothing more than sitting on a bench and talking to himself.  We worked very hard at challenging these behaviors, removing desired activities and having many many discussions on making choices about behavior.  There were a few times I simply lost my temper and yelled at him, I'm not proud to say.   How long does it take to teach a kid with ASD that hitting people when you're a grownup doesn't just get you in trouble at school - it gets you fired, and possibly even arrested. 

I anticipated we would see continued problems with Abel, but since the universe frequently likes to remind me I'm not as smart as I think I am, Abel and Race Car Man are best pals this year. 

We are not free, however, of the joy of a mortal enemy.  Race Car Man's kryptonite presented itself this school year in the form of a boy I'll call "Sam."  Sam, like Abel, tends to make a lot of noise as he copes with the messges his brain is sending him.  He also - in my opinion - is kind of a little shit.  (And yes, my son is kind of a little shit too, sometimes, but he's MY little shit and therefore adorable).  Almost every day my son comes home in tears because Sam has called him names or made fun of him.  The day my son got in trouble for hitting Sam, it was (according to Race Car Man) because Sam called him a 'DUMBASS.'  I was so tempted not to punish him, because dammit, I think being called a Dumbass is pretty antagonizing even if you don't have autism.  BUT, I know we need to reinforce the hitting is a bad idea thing, so I made him write "I will not hit" twenty times before doing his homework.  Then I gave him ice cream.

Each week I get an average of three emails from his teacher, updating me on the latest thing my son has done to Sam.  Then the other night I was looking through some schoolwork he had brought home.  My son's class, which is a special program for children with autism, works on social skills and behavior management.  They do a lot of work on identifying emotions and interpreting facial expression.  In his folder was a sheaf of papers stapled together.  On the front of each page, he had colored in the face of a monkey making various facial expressions, and he had correctly identified the emotions the monkey was displaying - sad, mad, happy.  On the back of each sheet, he had written a series of sentences about his own experiences.  On the sheet for "sad," I read:

I feel sad when:

I get (sic) bullied.

The next day I sent an email to his teacher requesting more information on how these two boys are interacting.  I told her about the name calling incident and other things my son has told me Sam does to him, such as enlisting other classmates in making fun of Race Car Man or deliberately excluding him from activities.  I inquired as to which kid was instigating the conflicts.  I suggested we might need to meet to discuss ways to help my son cope with this other boy in a more positive way, but that from what I was hearing from my child, there may be more going on than two boys who just don't get along.

In her response she promised to investigate the name-calling and to pay closer attention to the dynamics between the two.   I trust her judgment - I know she will fairly evaluate each child's part in the conflict and report back to me,  and do everything she can to help them both make better choices.

When my son was enrolled into his current program, I was kind of in love with the idea that he would be with other kids just like him.  I had this picture in my head of some sort of Autism Utopia, where all the spectrum kids hung out together and were a big support group.  Because they all were coping with the same differences, they wouldn't seem...different.  At least not to each other.  And because they don't always share recesses with the other kids, they wouldn't have as many opportunities to get picked on by the neurotypical kids.  To find out that my son is being picked on by one of his own is enormously deflating.  I guess its not that crazy to assume that kids who struggle with their behavior would struggle with their behavior in regards to each other.

Still, I think we're making progress.

All its cracked up to be

Someday when I write my autobiography - or someday when I'm dead and someone has the notion to make a television sitcom about my life - the title should be "Six of one," except I'd be borrowing the title from Rita Mae Brown and it wouldn't be a fictional funny drama about one woman's coming out story.  It would be the story of the woman whose life story seems to consistently be pointing how life is this continual mishmash of good stuff and hard stuff - ALL THE TIME with the good stuff and the hard stuff.

I suppose that's my blog theme.  I wish I'd figured that out a few years ago.  Here all this time I thought I was writing about horses and special needs.  See what the wine does?

I hit the grocery store yesterday after dropping the kids off with their dad (hint:  if you take your kids halloween costume shopping do not finish the trip by dropping them off with their other parent.  Kids with new halloween costumes want to go home and put them on, not leave them with you and go to their other parent's house).  Since my Mom has been picking up the kids after school , she does their homework and feeds them dinner, which makes my grocery list rather sparse.  Unless there's someone to cook for, I don't cook.  What's the point?  Its cereal for breakfast and dinner is eggs or soup.  So I'm at the grocery store and putting my things on the moving belt at the checkstand and I realize that everyone in line behind me probably thinks I'm a middle-aged single woman with no kids and a house full of cats. I was half tempted to throw a True Confessions in with everything just to say "La la la, I don't care what you think!" but actually no one even has True Confessions on the shelf anymore and I at least just managed to establish the fact that I'm getting a bit long in the tooth.

Its a big silence to wrap my thoughts around, those first hours after the kids have gone.  With SG on the road everything is at the same time both more and less meaningful.  I put away the groceries, empty the dishwasher, wash the few dishes in the sink.  I have six more hours before I have to go to bed, and I can pick and choose how I want to spend the time.  I'm lonely and not lonely, all at the same time.  I do realize that with a house full of pushy cats and large, noisy dogs that I'm never really alone, but since I'm the only one who can actually talk, its a lot quieter.  Being alone with my thoughts is a really dicey proposition.  I'm one of those people who can go either way -- and sometimes its a matter of a few minutes between happy as a lark and sooooooo lonely and sad.

Is this just part of the human process, learning how to accept while still retaining the option to complain when we don't like what's happening?  There's a distinct line between "doormat" and "punch life in the face." 

Last night life gave me a 90 pound puppy who thinks she's a lap dog and a 22 year old horse who was on the verge of colicking, a chicken intent on sitting on eggs I do not wish her to hatch and a husband whose phone couldn't get a clear connection to give us a chance to connect for five damn minutes.  Life also gave me a nice bottle of wine, a friend on the other end of the phone to be a substitute shoulder, and a nice cold evening to make my dinner of soup ever so enjoyable.  So who am I to complain?

Six of one.  Half a dozen of the other.  It all balances out in the end.  Its all good.

Pick your cliche'.  Any one of 'em will do. 

 

Ten for ten

In ten days she’ll be eleven years old.  For the moment, she is ten, and quite content to be so.  No longer a baby, not yet a young woman.  Not a little girl, but a girl in every sense – long-legged, unrestrained, full of joy and life. 

When I get her out of her bed in the mornings she goes to my room and crawls into mine, watching TV and eating her cereal and talking to me as I shower, primp and dress.  She watches me choose my clothes, watches me put on my makeup and fix my hair.  She giggles at something on the television and then asks me how long it will take for her to need a bra like the one I am wearing.  “Forever” I say, hopefully, knowing that it will likely be far sooner than I am prepared to accept.

She tells me about a boy in her class who always seems to be staring at her.  She confesses that she likes him and that it makes her feel very nervous and distracted.  She’s old enough to wear a bra and young enough to still want stuffed animals for her birthday presents. 

She writes constantly.  She keeps three or four journals, and she writes her most honest thoughts in them, good and bad.  She wears her heart on her sleeve and she hasn’t yet learned how to put up a protective wall around it.  She is astute enough to recognize her parents’ faults and to love them anyway.  She is wisdom and innocence intertwined. 

She reminds me of all I once wanted to be. She makes me both hopeful for and afraid of the future.  She is my touchstone, my muse and the embodiment of the best aspects of her father and myself.   She is the reason I breathe and when I watch her move she takes my breath away. 

She gives the best hugs of anyone I know.   No little weeny squeezes from this one, not ever.  She hugs you like she means never to let you go.  When she hugs you, you have been HUGGED.

It is the nature of children to change right in front of your eyes, for the babies they once were to disappear and be replaced with older and ever more refined versions of the adults they will someday be.  I try to picture her in my head as the sturdy toddler, the unrestrained preschooler, the shy first grader, and though all of them are part of her, she is as far removed from them as the moon from the sun.  She is everything I ever hoped for in my daughter and a million things more.

She is ten for ten more days.  I will treasure each day as I have treasured each day since the day she was pulled, protesting at the top of her lungs from my womb.  I am blessed by every day I have been privileged to witness the becoming of her.  I pray I am privileged to witness many, many more.

 

Flying solo

Having a household to myself all weekend made for both a busy and an introspective few days.  As always, there is an endless to-do list, but even after hoof trims for two horses,  stacking the rest of the hay, routine housework and laundry, cleaning the feed room and preparing everyone's rations for the week, grocery shopping and putting a new bed in the guest room, there were still plenty of quiet corners and time to catch on True Blood episodes.

There are times I like being alone and there are times I can't stand it.  I miss my kids and my husband when they're not around, but it would be wrong of me to pretend I don't like being the captain of my own ship, pointing the bow in the direction I choose.  I can come and go as I please, make plans as I want to, eat breakfast at noon and skip dinner, fiddle around with the horses to my heart's content.  I don't have to deliver snacks or break up fights, I don't have to clean up someone else's mess, I don't have to think about things like what we should have for dinner.   The chores don't do themselves, but some of the chores are less work when there's only one person to do them for.  Feeding the animals becomes not something to get done quickly so I can get back inside for dinner or bathtime, it becomes an event in and of itself, don't consciously and with intent.

Its nice to have the time to think about who I am, where I am, what I am.  I still tend to see myself in the context of a much younger time, as someone who is still growing up.  I love that there is always something new to learn and to be challenged by; it gives me a sense of anticipation about the future to know that my learning curve is far from flatlined just because I'm no longer a twenty- or thirty-something.  I discover as I age that knowing "who I am" is an ever-evolving process.  I suspect that's the same for everyone, and if my own life is any barometer, the search for meaning and for a better sense of self becomes more important and much deeper the more years we are alive.

Before I know it, the weekend is mostly spent and it is time to collect my offspring from their father and get them scrubbed and squeaky clean for the school week ahead.  There is no time to see the motes of dust sparkle in the sunlight as I wander idly.  There is noise and there are things to be done and there are battles to negotiate, and then its time to start a new and different week, one in which my time belongs to everyone but myself.  I don't mean to say that this is worse than the alternative, just that it is a completely different kind of existence. 

Its a wonderfully taut balance, this life of mine.  In the patterns of my days, where the time is split into halves of alone and never alone, I appreciate how each segment holds within it the ability to both be appreciated for what it is and to help me appreciate what it is not.   I love that it is possible, within the confines of a single day, to be partner, mother, daughter, and to also find great pleasure in flying solo. 

My life may not be a lot of things very glamorous, but so far as lives go it is a pretty damn good one. 

 

 

Bounce

Sometime around 5:30 this morning I went to take the garbage bag from under the sink out to the bin.  It was still dark, and as I lifted the lid I lifted my face away from the stink and scanned the sky.

About two blocks away I could see an enormous billowing cloud of smoke, full of sparks and backlit by orange flames and street lamps.  "Oh, crap," I said.  Because, you know, I'm all eloquent and shit like that.

I grabbed my coffee cup (when your dad is a retired firefighter, fires are spectacles, not events), stuck my flip flops on my feet and moseyed up the street.  I don't really know the people who lived in the house, but their outbuildings were ablaze and they were frantically spraying water on their vehicles and their roof to keep their house safe.  Its an old farmhouse, and probably would have been in as bad shape as their garage and barn except right about then the first firetrucks arrived.

By the time I left for work, the fire was pretty well out.  I stopped and got out of the car to see if they needed anything.  They had an old skinny horse tied up to a tree, and I inquired if they needed a place to put him.  The two young guys that were there said the man who owned the horse was at work, and they didn't really know.  I checked him over - he was a little shocky, but more concerning he was clearly underweight and his feet looked like they hadn't seen a rasp in about 10 years.  He was very kind and patient and let me look in his mouth and pick up his feet without protest.  I suggested they get him some water and then I went back home and threw a bale of hay in the truck to give them.  He was eating and drinking water when I left, so I was encouraged.  By now I'm late for work, but its not every day you wake up to a fire in the neighborhood.

Yesterday SG left for Nebraska.  Oh, I know we thought he'd not have to go back on the road, but at some point the not-finding of the local work and the pile of bills (not to mention getting hay put in for an embarassing number of horses) dictated otherwise.  He'll be back mid-November.  If there was anyone as conflicted as this man about leaving for a job I've yet to meet them.  Granted, it was a short notice scramble as he got the call about this job on Wednesday for a Monday start.  The adrenaline rush gets you booked and packed before you've had a chance to really think about whether you really want to go to Nebraska of all places in October and November.

Still, it was three or four in the afternoon on Saturday, his flight was leaving at 10 am Sunday and he was still waffling on whether he was staying or going.  I finally threw my hands up in despair and headed out to the barn to escape the anxious pacing and the muttering.  

It shouldn't be THAT hard a decision to go to work or not, especially in a down economy.  You just don't question the gift of paying work - even if it DOES require packing your long underwear.  But then you think back to the last couple of outages which all went much shorter than they were supposed to, which meant the private contractors didn't make nearly as much bank as they were counting on, and you count weeks and paychecks and you think that maybe it won't pan out - but in the end its still a job, and so the decision gets made.

And so we kiss goodbye before his folks come to take him on the two hour drive to the airport and then later on that afternoon the kids' dad comes to get them and suddenly I'm alone, trying to decide if I'm happy about it or not.  On the one hand, there's all of the ALL that is our crazy little farm and that's challenging when there's two adults to handle it.  And there's the lonely part of things, especially on the nights when the only warm bodies you can find to cuddle with are furry and don't have opposable thumbs with which to rub your back.  But then you think about how nice it is to have a bathroom to yourself and how much less laundry there'll be, and dishes too, and then you wake up to see your neighbor's whole life going up in flames.

And then you read a post on Facebook from a friend you've known for years who just lost her husband.  And you realize pretty quickly how good you have it.

My man might not be home right now, but I still get to talk to him and hold him again in a few weeks' time.  My house might be a little quiet and empty, but it is standing.  My husband might not get as much work out of this as he wants, but it is still work. 

This is how you bounce back.