Post-Turkey Reflection

On the principle that I should not have to medicate myself to get through a holiday, we opted out of hosting or attending a family gathering this year. The most pleasant Thanksgivings I remember have been ones where we have enjoyed the holiday in some alternative fashion - turkey sandwiches and a bonfire, going to an amusement park, etc. We chose the amusement park option this year and had a pretty good time. My older daughter, who had to work and so stayed home, reported that my family members showed up at our house anyway, ate the turkey we had cooked for lunch, badmouthed us for a while, and left, but hey - at least Rosie and her dad and I weren't there.

I love the hypocrisy. It's OK, apparently, for my family members to opt out of attending stressful large family gatherings, but it's not OK for me to opt out of hosting a smaller, though equally stressful one.

Rosie rode the kiddie rollercoasters over and over, until I noticed she was toewalking and looking a little wild in the eye, and figured we needed to decelerate a bit. She had a good time.

Cranky and Reclusive is Just Fine

Well, Rosie was in a state of nervous exhaustion after the Scouting and art show events, and the poor kid kept crying out and shouting in her sleep. We let her retreat into her room for the morning and early afternoon the next day, and then, after that, she was fine. She popped out cheerful and interested in the world and ready to talk and play and learn. Contrast that with how it would have been if she had to get up early the next morning and meet the demands of six hours in the public school environment. A meltdown or two, a fight, a trip to the principal's office, a wasted day, more negative reinforcement regarding school, and another day or two or three of nerves and shouting - that would have been the minimum. You tell me what's more natural and healthy.

Anyway.

I'm in a bit of an irritable mood myself, after listening to my aunt rant about how my father and her other sister are "wierd" for avoiding family gatherings and refusing to share every detail of their lives with family. The most maddening part is that she thinks there's 'something wrong' with her siblings for being reclusive, yet there's 'nothing wrong' with her and her daughters (all medicated for anxiety disorders), two of her grandsons (medicated for unspecific "psychosis"), three other grandkids (medicated for ADHD), and two great-grandkids (3 years old and not talking yet). What. The. Hell.

There are obviously a range of traits in this particular family, and combined with other traits from other families, they manifest in different ways, some of them disruptive, some pathological, and some not. This is not different than millions of families - from any human group.

I'm just infuriated. Where does anyone get off thinking that they can pick any set of characteristics - someone else's, not their own - and decide they're maladaptive? That goes equally for a school system which decides that a kid can't take a break from interacting with people in an overstimulating environment as a matter of course, and for an aunt who can't accept that another family member might not want to interact with people under a similar set of overstimulating circumstances.

I am not playing Thanksgiving this year, damn it. I WON'T.

Night and Day

Today, a very busy day, did a complete flip from my perspective. This morning, my head was really bad. I haven't been able to organize my way out of a paper bag all week, and levels of anxiety (everything!) have just been escalating by the hour. As I dashed around trying to put together last-minute critical supplies for a Scouting event, I wasn't sure what direction I'd take: scream? faint? cry? throw something? run in circles and smash on the wall? have a stroke?

No. All of those options seemed counterproductive and actually my head was thudding in such a way that I was actually a bit worried about that last possibility. .25 mg of xanax seemed in order.

An hour later, the Scouting event was still hectic and the noise level made tears come to my eyes, but it was manageable - no, more than manageable, it was very enjoyable. But a tad hectic, definitely. Imagine six girls and their siblings, with about two-thirds of the kids somewhere on the spectrum, desperately excited over an important Scouting event. That means three kids screaming either in excitement or distress or both, two kids under the table holding their hands over their ears, another two handflapping so hard I thought they might levitate, one totally checked out, humming to herself and spinning something (mine), and an older sister, theoretically neurotypical, quietly eating her little sister's floral bouquet in the corner (also mine). At that point we had also lost my husband; after two months of a gluten-reduced and nearly dairy-free diet, he was in the bathroom throwing up after eating a slice of pizza. That'll teach us to be the only family in the group who blew off dietary restrictions. Everyone else brought food from home. Fortunately, we had gotten through most of the ceremony before this was the scenario-at-a-glance.

I can't say that I was 100% at the Scouting ceremony; I started the proceedings, got the girls through the GS Promise, began to talk about why we were gathered... and promptly derailed the whole conversation into mathematics. I am still laughing. I don't know how it happened, exactly. I asked the girls how many badges they all had earned, and it turned out to be four each, which they all started to add up for a total, and suddenly the talk took this extreme left turn into multiplication, then factors of four, and then ... then there was shouting, and I was sitting there thinking, "Wow, I have really lost control of this situation," and then a couple of the other moms yelled "Time for the candles!" and got that going. Saved. Whew.

In the evening, there was an art exhibit and event. Rosie had wanted to look for her entry on the wall, do some crafts, listen to some music. But she was too wiped out from the earlier event to want to go at first. Eventually, she decided that she didn't want to miss out on music, and the two of us dragged ourselves there. It was a complete zoo, a total madhouse. About a thousand people crammed in a small space. She had a couple of mini-meltdowns, but we also enjoyed trying out new art techniques, and were able to leave with a tolerably good feeling.

Though we were both exhausted, Rosie and I wanted to eat some healthier food than the leftover pizza waiting at home. So, since Rose was having a craving for laad naa, we went to a Thai place we hadn't tried before. And this is where the evening smoothed out into the crown on a lovely day, as Rosie put it. The restaurant was quiet, with only murmuring conversations, the splash of a fishtank, and the tinkle of soothing music in the air. The seating was comfortable, the lights were low... we had each our favorite comfort food (laad naa for Rosie, tom kha khai for me) followed by luscious khao neeo mamuang. "I don't want to leave," said Rosie. "This is just so nice!" We just felt terrific ("A new me!" said Rosie.), and figured that the healthy food helped, but that the soft music was the best thing.

Ahhh. In any case, evening definitely 180 degrees from morning for me.

And Peaceful Days Too

A pleasant weekend day, at least. Model trains, a walk on the pier. The ocean was very soothing, even with the excitement of a fisherman managing to hook a thresher shark. The crowd's behavior was interesting; everyone trying to catch everyone else's eye and say something about the event. Everyone followed the fisherman up and down the pier as he worked on getting the shark in.

We were enjoying the excitement when a girl about twelve years old came up to us and said to us "It's a long tail!" There was a family pause, where I know we were all thinking something like Long tail? She sounds like a character in a movie about the Stone Age. "Thresher shark," Rosie's dad and I both blurted out. "The thresher shark has a caudal fin as long as its body," Rosie observed. The girl blinked at us for a moment and turned away.

Naturally.

I'm sure if one of us had known the scientific name for the thresher shark, he or she would have blurted that out, too. Sigh.

Girls & Asperger's

Posting while listening to Rosie and her grandmother have their morning argument. Very unpeaceful. It's always something. They're about equally pigheaded each in her own way.

Anyway. A quick post, since I'm out of time this morning.

A friend sent me a link to a Newsweek article "Why Girls with Asperger's Might Not Be Diagnosed." http://www.newsweek.com/id/168868/page/1 I'm glad to be seeing much more attention being given to the differences in thought.

And, I finally did get Attwood's book Asperger's and Girls, though writing about it will have to wait a bit. I had about the confusing reaction I expected - sometimes upset, sometimes grateful. There are a lot of things I'm going to need to remember to tell Rosie as she gets older, and I'm very glad to have some input there.

First Day of Holiday Wigging

Well, gosh, I'm on time. I tend to start to freak out about my least favorite holiday right around two weeks prior, so I'm right on track for a total meltdown around Thanksgiving.

Yay.

Last year, I Xanaxed my way through it and sharpened my teeth some (this was before I got my mouthguard to prevent my grinding all my teeth down in my sleep). I couldn't get my crap in one sack quickly enough to figure a way out of Having A Lovely Family Thanksgiving, so I capitulated and wasn't that nice. This year the sense of tension and obligation is already racked up pretty high for various reasons, and I figured unless I wanted to find myself freaking right the eff out, bolting out of the house, and finding myself in Alaska or even Siberia before I slowed down, I'd better make a plan.

So, escape plan in place, things have calmed a bit, but I still feel pretty jumpy. Rosie and I spent a quiet evening playing card games. One round of SET and two rounds of another game, Lie Detector. She can play through a round of SET now, but it still gets on her nerves a bit. Lie Detector is actually far more complex in its way, but she has a special interest in detection and mysteries, so... there you are. Rosie commented (for maybe the hundredth time) that she thought she might like to go into law enforcement when she grows up.

I could see her doing that. Detective work! Anything that requires analysis, really. I remember Easter several years ago, when she gathered evidence quietly for a week or two, then presented it to us in a verbal bullet-point style to prove definitively that her dad and I had to be the Easter Bunny. She detailed each item with chopping motions of her hands.

1. She saw a box of Peeps through the doubled plastic of a bag I brought home a day or two before Easter. The Peeps didn't show up later, but there were Peeps in her basket.
2. Her dad and I were acting funny.
3. The Easter Bunny left a toy for her cousin, but it was in a package, which meant it had been purchased.
4. The Bunny left a green pawprint on a napkin, but she spied a white spot in the pawprint she thought should not be there.

Put that all together, and it pointed to: my parents are possessed by the spirit of the Easter Bunny.

We've worked on logical conclusions since then, of course.