Processing

I’ve been really flustered lately. And now I’m up at 4:30 in the morning, because I was having a weird dream – I rarely remember dreams unless I wake up in the middle of them – and then I needed to use the bathroom. Now my thoughts are spinning, but not in the usual negative loops. It’s just been a weird and busy few days so far, and I seem to have a lot to process. So instead of lying awake in bed running through all of it randomly over and over again, I’m going to give a shot at typing it out in order to process it all a bit and see how that goes.

My kids are on a week-long break from school, and that’s always a bit of a challenge for me. We started out the break with a visit from my parents who live about four hours away. My dad and I both have birthdays this month – mine was on Saturday – so that and my parents’ anniversary last month were excuses to celebrate with ice cream cake and a dinner out as a family. We fit in some euchre and board games, my dad and Hubby fixed a couple bothersome things in the house, I baked some bread and some brownies, and my husband grilled out in the middle of a blizzard.

That last bit probably requires some explanation. There was a big shift in the weather for the weekend after Hubby had already bought these little steaks he was all geeked about, and Theodore had a Cub Scout requirement about helping to prepare (not actually doing the cooking part) a meal cooked ( not necessarily eaten) outdoors. It was humorous enough for me to call various family members over to see at different points, but sad enough that I didn’t take any pictures or videotape, because I felt sorry for miserable snow-covered Hubby.

Back to my winter break. So, nothing momentous happened over the past few days, but a lot of things have just felt weird and have been accumulating. I turned 43 on Saturday. (I had actually been getting a kick out of 42, because it’s supposed to be the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything :).) My three boys have been absolutely bouncing off the walls and each other, which stresses me out even when my parents aren’t around to watch. I’m having a very hormonally challenging week, too – probably TMI, but that’s been having an unusually large effect on me in the past few years. And there was a full moon on Saturday. Hubby keeps bringing the car home almost out of gas. Hubby also had to go in to work three different times during the weekend. My own car keeps needing to be jumpstarted. Water has had to be shut off in different parts of the house to accommodate the repairs Hubby and my dad were doing. The weather got lovely and warm for a couple days, and then we had enough snow the morning my folks were leaving that we had the whole family out taking turns with our two shovels, the brushes/scrapers for the cars, and the rock salt before they could get on the road. Theodore had his eight-year-old twin friends over to visit for about four hours yesterday. And Simon has been particularly out of sorts lately for a variety of reasons.

I appear to have actually been successful at pushing Simon to get all of his winter break homework done at the beginning of the break, when he still remembered what assignments to do and how to do them. And he made plans on his own for a friend to come over, which almost never happens. Good things, but not the usual for us. On the negative side, he made a complete fuss over a missing Nintendo DS stylus that he likely misplaced himself and for which we have several replacements. He also got too overwhelmed to make it to the last several meetings of the robotics club. And he got completely stuck when asked to make a birthday card for me – a task he does for various people several times a year with no problem, and that he managed for his grandpa just fine.

I had to obtain a replacement stylus before Simon would budge for our family meal out, which made me a cranky dinner companion. I also pretty much told him what to put on my birthday card, just so he could fulfill his dad’s requirement three days after the fact. I talked him through options for handling his friend’s request for sharing something on a videogame that was making him uncomfortable to share. He got to bail on the robotics thing even though he really didn’t have anything else to do. And I let him pretty much avoid everyone for the four hours the twins were here.

It all sounds pretty wishy-washy on my part, but it just felt on an instinctive level like he was in a bad place and needed some accommodations. Alongside the accommodations I’ve been insisting he still do his morning jobs and keep up with his typing practice and that he get a modicum of exercise. I’ve also been having him make a fair amount of his own food. I asked him to ride home with his friend who had been over to visit on Monday and to talk on the phone (eek) when another friend called to make plans to get together. Yesterday I took him to the store to buy Yugioh cards when he made a request, but then I asked him to go look for them on his own while I shopped for groceries. He looked and sounded ready to balk at that part. Apparently he had wanted to go with me to avoid being asked by his dad to do things like this on his own, and I was messing up his plan.

I didn’t insist, but I started a conversation about where he wants to be a few years from now and what small steps we can take in a positive direction. I’m not sure if he changed his mind or just wanted to get out of the conversation, but he headed off toward the trading cards on his own. I was just texting him to see how things were going when he showed up behind me with his mission accomplished and looking pleased with himself. He then helped with the checking out and offered to push the cart, and at home I asked him to bring in the recycling containers and make our salad for dinner.

While Simon and I were out shopping, Alvin and Theodore actually played Legos together for an extended period without fussing or fighting with each other. I honestly can’t remember the last time that happened. They built a Lego town of their own design and both seemed very pleased with it. Alvin was also a big help earlier in the day keeping an eye on Theo and his little friends who were visiting and heading off signs of trouble before anything could turn into a big problem. It was definitely an unusual day.

Later last evening Simon started a conversation with me that rambled all over the place from what were the first signs I had noticed that he had autism to why he isn’t yet feeling interested in dating. He asked lots of questions. He even started reading a part of Tony Attwood’s book on Asperger’s that I handed to him partway through the conversation. It was strange, but very cool.

So now it’s 6:30AM, and my family will be up in a bit. My own car is almost out of gas and will likely need a jumpstart. I have no idea what we’re going to have for dinner, and Theodore needs a present for a birthday party he’s attending today. Alvin will need a ride home from his sleepover at a friend’s house. I think I’ve cleared my head enough that I may be ready for a nap. As for the rest, I guess I’ll find out when it happens. 

Coming back into focus

I get overwhelmed a lot.  By events, personalities, sensory input, illness and injury, too many responsibilities, too little time  – even sometimes by a single thought that goes round and round in my head.  Mostly it’s the thinking that gets me.  When my head is in a good place, I cope with the other stuff. 

I’ve  tried to start several different posts since my husband’s truck accident.  I can’t seem to get my thoughts organized around any one topic.   We’re both functioning fine and grateful for how things turned out, but we’re also still processing some things, and for me that takes the form of having trouble concentrating.   That’s not a new experience for me, but trying to write and stay in touch with people when I’m feeling that way is new.  Isolating myself has always been much more my style.

Here’s a picture we took at the junkyard the day after the accident, btw :

The force of the impact was all on that driver’s side door.  Amazingly enough, my husband made it out of this with just a sore foot and one scratch on his head, neither of which is bothering him now.   And the other driver was fine and didn’t require a trip to the hospital, which is also a great blessing.

It could have been so much worse.  We got through the crisis of the day, and now we continue to manage any difficulties that arise as a result.  We continue to add little bits to the pile of stressors that’s been built up over the past few years, and we keep moving forward.  There’s a lot of stuff in that pile.  Deaths in the family, business difficulties, financial worries, his experience with cancer a couple years back (he’s all clear now), and all the stuff that falls under the heading of spectrum-related issues.  Some things are mostly difficult for a while, and some are always with us.  And every time it feels like it’s a bit too much to manage, something new gets piled on top.

I spent so much time early on in our marriage weathering problems big and small and waiting for things to get better.  I kept thinking we would get to some point where there would be a big light at the end of the tunnel, and we could breathe a sigh of relief.  I really thought we were there for a while when Simon was in kindergarten, verbal and bright and functioning reasonably well in the safe little world that existed there.  He had overcome so much.  Then came the next tunnel – first grade – which was much longer and darker than anything we had experienced before.  We’ve come through that, too.  And on to the next, and the one after that …

I had to switch metaphors somewhere along the line.  Now to me it’s more like riding waves.  When things are good, I enjoy the ride thoroughly and for as long as I can, because I know it’s only temporary.  The bad stuff is only temporary, too, which makes it easier to tolerate.   I think what maybe constitues my own version of a mid-life crisis is that somewhere in these past couple years I let go of that idea that someday everything will get better, and I think I’m still grieving a bit over that.  I’m not devastated, but it makes me sad.  Some things will get better.  Some will get worse.  It will all keep changing, and the only thing we can do is choose how we respond to each thing as it comes.   My parents are in their seventies and have a good life, but it isn’t anything you’d call better – it’s just different.  The problems are different, and the enjoyments are, too.  For better or for worse, I think I finally feel like a grown up. 

OK, that was kind of a depressing thought.  But now that it’s out there (instead of rattling around in my head), I don’t really feel terribly depressed.  I’ve been to this place in my mental processes before.  This is the point I have to reach just before I finally decide to take charge of my thinking.  Once I can see what’s going on, I get to choose where I go next, and that’s empowering. 

There’s some kind of story my mom got from her Alanon experience that I’m probably not going to get exactly right here, but I think it’s still worth sharing.  (I realize this is yet another metaphor, but that’s how my brain works, so please bare with me.)  It’ something along the lines of a person walking down a path and falling into a pit.  Eventually somebody comes by and helps them out.  I’ve heard different variations of the story.  Sometimes the person who falls in repeats the experience enough times that eventually they learn how to find their way back out on their own.  Sometimes the one who comes to help jumps down into the pit, too, which turns out to be OK, because that person has been there before and knows how to get back out.  Sometimes the person walking down the path has fallen down enough times that they remember and learn to avoid the pit altogether. 

(If I was being at all unclear here, the pit is supposed to be a metaphor for a negative behavior or way of thinking. 🙂 )

I’m not so good at avoiding the pit, although it happens every once in a while.   Mostly I’m better than I used to be at climbing back out on my own once I realize where I am, but that can sometimes take a long while, and the effort can be exhausting.   It just seems to work a whole lot better when there are people around to remind me that I don’t have to stay where I am if that’s not working for me.  It’s hard to reconcile that knowledge with my lifelong instinct to run and hide within myself whenever I feel stress, so I’m trying  a different approach. 

I’ve been catching up on reading some other blogs over the past couple days, and I’ve started Rudy Simone’s Aspergirls book, too.  Reading other’s thoughts and experiences helps me to remember that I’m not alone in mine.  And whether this post makes any sense to anyone else or not, writing this and other things I’ve shared with family and other friends over the past couple days is helping to bring things into focus for me.  Thanks for listening.  

 Aspie boy just finished his midterm exams and came home early, so he and I are enjoying some peace and quiet while we have the opportunity.   The kids are all off school tomorrow for a “records day”.  I finally feel clearer and ready to move forward instead of staying stuck.  That’s not a bad way to start into a long weekend .  🙂