Family | Andrea's Buzzing About:

WE MUST CREATE CHANGE

9 January 2015 at 4:37 (Abuse, Accessibility, ADD/ADHD, Advocacy, Attribution Errors, Auditory Processing Disorder, Autism/Asperger's, College/University, Communication, Community, Deaf / Hard of Hearing, Developmental disabilities, Diversity, Epidemiology, Family, Inclusiveness, Injustice, Learning Disabilities, Love & Acceptance, Neurodiversity, Non-verbal communication, Social Justice, Teaching/Tutoring, Weather, Work / Employment)

I was going to call this my “Hope For 2015”, but that is so passive and useless. Anybody can – and lots of people do – post warm, fuzzy notes with Hopes for the New Year, and others click and share. Lovely.

But this is NOT all warm & fuzzy. It’s literally dead serious (with many murdered throughout the year), and quite often blunt, because I am blunt at times. It’s also a call to a change of perspective for some of you.

Deal. Think about it. I’m not a lone voice. Click and share.

MY CALL TO ACTION IS FOR YOU TO READ THIS THROUGH, THINK, AND SPEAK UP. ALL YEAR LONG.

And the next year and the next.

This isn’t about some stranger, or Those Other People, or “That Kind”.

Children with disabilities or other differences are not diseased or broken. The same is true for adults. Yes, those “poor, little disabled children” grow up into disabled adults. Gee, so where’s the concern now? It sure isn’t at work; in the U.S. general unemployment is at 5.3%, but for disabled adults it’s twice that at 10.8%.

Nor are autistic or ADHD children some kind of modern mystery; millions of such adults have been around for decades, just unrecognized for lack of diagnostics. Most of us are profoundly relieved to find out Why. We still have to deal with the details, but that’s easier when you know that not all your difficulties are from some kind of moral failing, or from a lack of trying (and trying, and trying).

WHAT, YOU NEVER HAD KIDS LIKE “THAT KIND” IN YOUR CLASSES? YOU KNOW WHY?

Some were kept at home, because until passage of the IDEA in 1975, US law did not require public schools to teach everyone.

Some were warehoused in institutions, badly treated, undiagnosed or misdiagnosed, and oft uneducated.

But many of us were there; how we struggled through school and life, without accommodations or understanding, and often the target of bullying by peers and even school officials.

Untold numbers of women and men just knew themselves inexplicably “a bit odd”, and did best they could; some succeeding, others not so well.

At worst are those who not only lacked resources, but were shunned by society’s classism, ableism, racism and sexism, and (if still alive) are found among the imprisoned, derelicts, addicts, abused and enslaved populations.

YOUR CHILDREN AND EVEN COLLEGE STUDENTS WILL LEARN DIFFERENTLY, SO YOU MUST ADJUST

We are neither inherently stupid nor incapable of learning. Learning differently means teaching differently. Find what works. Everyone has limits, but a consistent lack of success means you should use another method, as well as more time. Sometimes the learning is highly irregular in pace. Tie learning to interests to motivate your children and students.

Also, be aware that sometimes the “simple basics” may be entirely bypassed by some students who leap to master higher concepts, albeit often forever struggling with those seemingly “simple basics”. People are humans, not robots. Learning is not always linear.

COMMUNICATION IS NOT JUST SPEAKING

Never assume that just because someone is nonverbal they cannot communicate. If you’re not getting their messages, then *you* are doing something wrong. Nor should you assume that because someone is nonverbal that they cannot understand what people say (though the processing may sometimes be delayed). Nor assume that because someone has been nonverbal for years that they’ll never speak. And damn, will you get an earful.

INCONSISTENCY IN DAY-TO-DAY ABILITIES IS FRUSTRATING FOR ALL, AND NOT A CHOICE

Importantly, just because someone is able to speak or do a task one day, that does not guarantee consistent results. It’s the nature of disabilities — regardless whether considered mental or physical – all involve the brain. Brains are funny things, and many of us have a few buggy Beta-version programs in our wetware. It’s frustrating as hell for all involved.

But don’t assume the “could-then-can’t-now” is intentional. “Oh, he can hear me when he wants.” “Well, you could solve those equations just fine yesterday.” I can guarantee that after a lifetime of such, ridiculing people and punishing them for things they cannot help only increases performance stress.

While that stress might increase focus from sheer terror, it often squelches overall functioning. (Do you want me to listen to you, or try to recall yesterday’s process, or slowly figure it out on my own? I can only do one — if my stomach will stay down.)

TRAMPLE THE TROPES

Ignore the media tropes and centuries of religious hype: disabled people are neither inherently amoral, soulless and evil, nor are they infinitely happy, friendly and angelic. People are people. A few will be nasty bits, some will be profoundly good sorts, and the rest are just ordinary folks who get mad, sad and glad, who screw things up sometimes, and who will also serve others selflessly despite bearing more abuse than anyone should.

We are definitely not incomprehensible, incomplete, little autism-puzzle-pieces, unloving, unlovable, or uncaring.

We are whole people with all the same cares, needs and wants as all humans. Beware — disability happens to anyone at any time. We aren’t a Them, and YOU can be among the world’s 15% in just one day. We are all Us.

STOP “TEACHING TOLERANCE”

Because tolerance means putting up with something one doesn’t really like, or that doesn’t really belong. We want full-fledged ACCEPTANCE.

Nor should we only be acceptable if we can somehow “overcome” our differences enough to pass for Normal Real People. Trying to “pass” all the time is exhausting, and invariably breaks down, oft resulting in the [supposed] Normal Real People assuming that one is lazy, stupid, crazy, all the above, or worse.

Training children for hours a day how to artificially perform “acting normal” does not serve to help them learn how to function best in the world. Yes, of course teach good manners, social and work skills. But suppressing every twitch of one’s natural being adds to stress, making everything else yet more difficult. This is especially when performing like a “normal person” means not doing the harmless things that reduce stresses.

STOP THE BLAME

I must call out the terrifying, unaddressed assumption which underlies so much daily trauma: “The reason the disabled [children] are targeted by bullies is because they are perceived as being weird”. Despite the pervasiveness of this social theme in society, most people are functionally unaware of it, all the while instilling in their Normal People children the same message. Normal People children need to act normal, and not act like That Kind. After all, that’s how the Normal People know the others are That Kind, who’s Us and who’s Them.

But it’s the disabled and different who are taught, over-and-over-and-over that not only is it their fault for behaving or looking weird, BUT ALSO if they weren’t so weird, well then they wouldn’t be bullied. “Quit being so weird! Just say No! Just say Stop.”

Just say BULLSHIT. Because this is blaming the victim. The problem is not that everyone isn’t the same, the problem is that there are bullies.

Even worse, blaming the targets actually empowers the bullies, because the social story says it’s the victim is the one who is acting wrong, so it’s not really the bully who is to blame.

Let’s just top off all that existing anxiety and depression with the trauma of trying to seek justice, but being told again that, “Well it’s your fault, you know. Attracting attention by being weird, and bugging people. You need to quit making trouble now. You already take up too much of our time with all of your “special” needs. Quit whining and go deal with it. — But no fighting, because we’ll know it was you who started it.”

By the way, it’s not “just a kids at school” thing that everyone will “grown out of”. It continues on through college, and happens at work, too.

YOU CAN’T WALK IN THE LITTLE BOY’S SHOES;

THEY’RE FLOATING DOWN-RIVER

It is NEVER acceptable to murder disabled children. Nor should these repeated, horrifying events be considered “understandable” or “excusable”, with the murderers being pardoned just because their son or daughter had a disability.

Increasingly more prevalent in social media, the crime becomes insidiously deemed more and more acceptable. Murderers re-cast themselves as martyrs, acquiring champions to their cause. Throughout repeated blog posts and news stories, they bemoan how taking care of disabled children is just too unbearable, they had to take care of them every day of the week, there was never any relief or help. (Even though there was.) Cue the groupies’ hand-wringing and protests upon the villains’ behalf: “Oh but won’t you walk in their shoes, how they’ve given up their lives, this wasn’t at all what they wanted.”

For in true sociopathic fashion, the poor, long-suffering parents revel in the attention, announcing to the world – sometimes ahead of time — what they have done, and all the while describing themselves as the victims. The dead children (young or adult) are unwanted, and deemed unwantable, less than human just because they couldn’t speak, or needed medical treatments, or used a power chair, or didn’t play with their toys the “right way”, or wore adult diapers … No one would want to live like that; the thing’s better off dead. And what of the groupies? Well, where do you think people get such terrible ideas that it’s okay to kill one’s own children?

ENOUGH WITH THE “DISABILITY INSPIRATION PORN”.

Quit using those heart-tugging videos, walk-a-thons, telethons, and other grand-society functions to win your supposed Cosmic Brownie Points for giving us your pity. Please stop dumping upon us the largesse of your unwanted rags (so Victorian, so passé), or creating useless functions requiring us to serve as targets of unwanted helpful-helper-helpiness for your ego-boo.

Get disabled people out of “sheltered workshops”. Yes, people need work they are suited to. But the segregation and token sweatshop “wages” are an embarrassment and humiliation to all.

YES, CHILDREN GROW UP.

YEP, STILL DISABLED, BUT NOW ADULTS

Do not assume your children will remain permanently childish and incapable — they mature on their own timelines. Allow adults to be adults. Support their needs and interests, but neither dress them like children, nor expect them to live their lives in naïve pre-puberty stasis, without adult desires for socializing with adult peers, life-long learning, mastering skills for some kind of job (even if that job is “just socially productive work” rather than traditional work), and yes, having a love life, however that may be expressed.

YES, PEOPLE ALSO NEED ACCOMMODATIONS;

THAT DOESN’T MEAN “CURE”

Most disabled or different people are not looking for cures to magically change them into someone else, some kind of fantasy Normal Real person that their families wanted instead. Our differences may result from physical events, by random mutation, and / or genetics. Your genetics. We are family. I’m Me, and I like being Me. If you somehow changed all the differences in my brain, I wouldn’t be Me anymore, with all my quirks and abilities.

Of course it will be great to find a means for preventing migraines, epilepsy, fatal medical conditions, et cetera. But it’s also a sad fact that some people have been so convinced of their undesirability as disabled human beings that they can only see “cure” as a means to being an acceptable Normal Real Person. (Worst of all, some people commit suicide because they’ve been taught to hate themselves, as useless and unwanted.)

But what’s really alarming is all the fund-raising, talk, research, and work going on today to eliminate entire kinds of peoples. I’m talking about the thousands of selfish individuals and sociopaths who believe that anyone with neurological or morphological differences should not exist at all, because That Kind takes up too much time, money, and resources.

That’s not “looking for a cure” – that’s eugenics and euthanasia, the same ideas that led to the Nazi Aktion T4 program and other horrors. (In my youth, the state hospital was still in the regular habit of sterilizing people. Had I been institutionalized, I might well not have had my lovely children and grandchildren.)

Yes, we want assistance, we want things that help us achieve what we want in life. Getting the things one needs to learn effectively, to move about, attend to their own needs, to work, to play, to be a part of the community, to have lovers or families. These things should not be seen as extraordinary, special, absurd, or a waste of money, just because they aren’t the same kinds of things used by other people. 15% of the people in the world have disabilities. That is a lot of humanity, and many are uneducated, abused, neglected, avoided, or shut away, depriving the world of incredible amounts of untapped abilities and talents.

CALL OUT BULLSHIT. REQUIRE ACCOMMODATIONS. DEMAND ACCEPTANCE.

MAKE IT SO.

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Tastes Like Spring — A recipe for Scallion Pancakes

7 May 2013 at 3:16 (Family, Food, Gardening)

“What are they?” asked my son en passant. “Scallion pancakes; they’re a kind of fry bread.” “Can’t go wrong with fry bread!” he replied, and snatched one to eat before mowing.

Yes, Spring is here (again), and we’ve gone through our usual winter-spring-winter-summer-winter-spring nonsense. The daffodils are blooming, the grass needs mowing, and the scallions are up. Scallions are the same thing as green onions, meaning ordinary yellow or white onions harvested when young. I have some volunteer onions in the former vegetable patch (soon to be lawn again), and because they grew from rogue seeds last year, and as onions are biennials, this year they will in turn go to seed if not harvested before that point. I woke up the other morning thinking, “Boy, some Scallion Pancakes sound really good!” A dim sum from Shanghai, these fry breads are some of the simplest of the tea-house treats to make. If you don’t have any scallions on hand (or found them withered away in the back of the crisper drawer), you can use Chinese chives (AKA garlic chives or Chinese leeks).

PREPARING THE DOUGH AND SCALLIONS

In a large mixing bowl, blend together:

1 1/2 cups (150 g) all-purpose flour
1/2 cup (125 mL) hot water — plus a tablespoon more, if needed

Once the dough is rough and clumpy, liberally sprinkle flour on a clean counter, and knead the dough for a few minutes until it’s smooth and workable. Wrap the dough in a damp cloth or plastic bag and set it aside to rest for 30 minutes (set a timer). TIP: Set the mixing bowl in the sink, and fill with hot sudsy water to soak off the sticky bits. Then I go out to harvest my scallions. When pulling up scallions, knock off the extra soil from the roots, and also strip off the outermost leaf. When onions grow, each onion layer is formed from a leaf; stripping off the outermost leaf removes the thin, dried, dirty layer. In the kitchen, rinse off the scallions (including any soil hiding in-between the leaves), and trim off the roots and brown leaf tips. This recipe only calls for the green parts, so you can set aside the white stalks for a stir-fry or omelette. In a 2-cup (1/2 L) measure, blend together:

1 1/2 cups (325 mL) scallions, chopped small
1 teaspoon (5 g) sugar
1 teaspoon (5 g) salt

TIP: I wear safety / laboratory goggles when chopping onions, as they keep the fumes from my eyes. Yes, it looks doofy, but it’s the best method I have yet to find to prevent the watering-eyes problem.

A pair of safety goggles set atop a pile of scallions

The scallions need to macerate in the sugar and salt to get soft and tasty, so meanwhile we’re going to do some cleaning up. Remove any clumps of dough from the counter; I use the edge of my square-bladed metal spatula / turner, as I’m too cheap to spend money on an official dough scraper when something else works just fine. TIP: To remove gummy dough bits from the mixing bowl, pour out the suds and use a rubber spatula to scrape off the lumps. Wash the mixing bowl and rubber spatula, plus wash and dry your knife and cutting board, as you’ll need the latter again.

ASSEMBLING THE PANCAKES

Flour the counter, and cut the dough into two even lumps. Take one lump, and roll / squeeze it into a log 12 1/2″ (35 cm) long. Cut the log into five, 2 1/2″ (6.5 cm) long sections. Move four sections aside, and roll out the remaining piece very thin, into a rectangle 10″ x 4″ (25 x 10 cm).

(Yes, these conversions aren’t exact, and that’s okay as we’re going to be further mashing up the dough anyway.)

Cut log of dough into five evenly-sized sections.

TIP: It’s hard to use a rolling pin to stretch the dough by just rolling it. So after the initial bout of rolling the dough flat, I use the rolling pin to anchor one end and gently pull, then without lifting the rolling pin, lay down the stretched dough and roll the pin over the dough to secure the stretching and flatten it more. Then I roll the other direction to broaden the piece.

Hold down one end of the dough with a rolling pin and gently pull on the other end to stretch it out.

Now it’s time to fill that piece of dough! Take a tablespoon of scallions and distribute them along the center of the strip, but stop half an inch (1 cm) before each end. (Resist the urge to “supersize” your load; you’ll find out why.)

A very thin rectangle of dough with a line of chopped scallions going down the middle.

Fold over each of the short ends, and then fold over the top to cover the scallions, and the bottom to cover the top. I’ve never seen any recipe source mention folding in the short ends, but I have found from making burritos and such that tucking in the short end first helps prevent the filling from falling out. Take one end and fold the whole thing over lengthwise (doubled).

Filled dough showing one short end folded in first, and the bottom and top lengths folded over each other.

Lift from the counter and gently smuush it along its length to make it thinner and longer. Take the end with the original ends, and fold it over a bit.

An inch of the open end of the doubled, filled dough has been folded over to begin the coiling process.

Then coil up the roll, tucking the outside end between adjoining parts of the ring.

The filled roll coiled up, with the end tucked into the next loop.

TIP: Don’t even think of trying to use a rolling pin to flatten the coil into a pancake; even using your palm to flatten it onto the countertop doesn’t work well. Instead, dust it well with flour, and use your fingers to palpate the dough, pressing it as thin as possible, all over.

Pressing the coil thin between fingers to flatten it. In real life, I generally use two hands; here I was taking the picture with the other hand.

Note that some scallions wil pop out of the dough and create a juicy mess here and there. That always happens. Tuck them in, or just use them in the next pancake. Don’t worry your early pancakes aren’t terribly round; they will still taste good.

Repeat the rolling, filling, coiling and flattening process with the other pancakes.

You might ask, “Wouldn’t it just be easier to flatten and fill one of those two big lumps of dough, and then cut it into five pieces, instead of doing each piece separately?” Being an efficient sort, I wondered that myself, and tested my dough with both methods. The fill-then-cut pancakes ended up much messier, with scallions popping out everywhere. You can see the results here, with the fill-then-cut on the left, and the make-five-individually on the right:

Comparing two methods: five of the the messy fill-then-cut pancakes on the left, and five of the tidy make-five-individually on the right.

TIP: To easily remove the dough and scallion gunk off your hands, use warm running water and a rubber spatula to scrape off the dough; be sure any dough bits aren’t left stuck on the sink where they might harden.

Likewise, scrape off your counter, and put your utensils to soak in warm, soapy water. The washing up will be easy to do by the time you’ve cooked and eaten your scallion pancakes.

LAST STEPS: COOK AND ENJOY!

Get a large iron or non-stick skillet and heat up a thin layer of oil for frying your pancakes. (On my electric stove, the ideal setting is somewhere between Medium and Medium-hot, but stoves vary.) Do not crowd the pan with too many. The pancakes are ready to turn over for frying on the second side when lightly browned, and the dough looks mostly white instead of translucent. Once fried on both sides, remove to blotting paper.

TIP: I drape a couple of paper napkins over the pages of an old phone book; the napkins keep the ink off, and the phone book pages provide plenty of blotting ability. Once the cooking is over, I rip those pages from the book and toss them.

No sauce is needed for this dim sum; just let the Scallion Pancakes cool enough to eat!

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What Would Molly Ivins Say?

8 July 2012 at 5:28 (Abuse, Critical Thinking, Epidemiology, Family, Parenting, Politics, Pseudoscience, Science, Teaching/Tutoring, Vaccines)

Oh, boy howdy! This article by Laura Hibbard, “Texas Republican Party Calls For Abstinence Only Sex Ed, Corporal Punishment In Schools” nearly made me choke on my cuppa tea. She described just a few of the details the 2012 Republican Party of Texas wants for their state schools. (The article also includes a nicely scrollable copy of their entire Platform Report.)

You know me, I’m a science person, with keen interests in education and social justice. And I was flabbergasted. It’s like a car crash — you can’t help but gawp in horrified fascination. Well, I had the day off work, so after a house-painting break, scanned through most of the document. It’s one thing to hear soundbites on the radio or in video, but quite another to actually be able to read an entire position. For one thing, it gives a person the chance to notice internal inconsistencies, and look things up.

In addition to the aforementioned items listed in the title of Hibbard’s article, the Texas GOP’s document lists a lot more in their “Educating Our Children” section. For example, they also want to eliminate preschool and kindergarten, and require daily pledges of allegiance to the US & Texas flags (because that somehow makes one patriotic).

Ooh, get this:

“Classroom Expenditures for Staff – We support having 80% of school district payroll expenses of professional staff of a school district be full-time classroom teachers.”

You realize that means giving the ability to hire a number of part-time classroom teachers (and paraprofessionals if they opt to include some) who can be paid WAY less, which will keep a district’s budget way down. “Fiscal responsibility” as a loophole for loading up on part-time staff. Who of course often don’t get benefits — unfortunately, a common practice in education and other industries. (Yes, I’m calling education an industry.)

And of course, this next incredible ::head-desk:: concept that (for me) underpins a great deal of their platform:

“Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.”

Because you know, mastering the subject material and learning how to think critically will undermine the GOP’s fixed beliefs and enable challenging authority. Any challenges to authority will be dealt with accordingly:

“Classroom Discipline –We recommend that local school boards and classroom teachers be given more authority to deal with disciplinary problems. Corporal punishment is effective and legal in Texas.”

Under the “Promoting Individual Freedom and Personal Safety” section, this concept continues as, Read the rest of this entry »

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Writhe, Burn and Melt

25 February 2012 at 19:08 (ADD/ADHD, Family, Sleep)

My grandson, The Blur is beginning to start to get tired. I call him The Blur because he’s such an active lad, he can be hardly be photographed. He’s only 2 1/2, and little kids are generally bouncy, active beings, but he is especially so, and reminds his papa and I of when we were children*, which is alternately endearing, alarming, humorous, annoying, fun, and/or exhausting.

Especially the alarming and exhausting parts, because apparently he’s one of those kids who doesn’t need as much sleep. A few months ago he figured out how to pop off the child-proof doorknob cover to escape his room, and a few weeks later, had removed a couple of hinge pins to his bedroom door towards a similar escape attempt. (His parents just want to be sure of where he is when they are trying to sleep!)

Right now he’s squirming off and on and around his mum’s lap, and off and on the furniture, and off and on and around her lap again, and off and on and under me, and so on. His mum explained, “I call this the ‘Writhing’ stage.”

“Perfect term! He’s not ready for a siesta yet, is he?” I ask rhetorically. ‘Siesta’ = nap; we’re speaking in code over his head.

“No, next is the ‘Manic’ stage,” she sighed.

“Burnoff!” I confirmed, thinking of his evening hyperdrive mode, when he needs to burn off the last bit of energy.

“I know he’s ready when he gets to the ‘Melting’ stage.”

I’m imagining Dali’s watches flopped over tree limbs, and that’s pretty much what The Blur looks like when it’s time for reading books. And then after gathering a number of toys and bears and books, he “reads” to himself before possibly sleeping during naptime.

_______

* I’m not saying that he has ADHD like I do; he’s only 2 1/2. But we’re really conscious about channelling all that energy and nimble-fingered intelligence to positive stuff!

2 Comments

Set the Wayback Machine

28 December 2011 at 4:18 (Diversity, Family, Geeks, Hate groups, Parenting, Science, Social Justice)

to 1994. Just the ordinary sort of 1994, when my children were two and six years old.

We are watching X-Men during Saturday morning cartoons. My son is really into super-heroes, and in case you don’t know, the X-Men are mutant super-heroes.

My daughter asks me, “What’s a mutant?” I take a deep breath, trying to figure out how to explain genetic mutation to a six-year old. Thankfully, with my children this wasn’t too difficult.

“Remember the other week when I told you what DNA is? The instructions that tell the different parts of your body how to grow?” She remembers. “Sometimes the DNA changes, and that’s called a mutation. A Monoceratops changing into a Triceratops s a mutation.”* We watch some more of the cartoon.

She asks me, “Are all mutants weird like the X-Men, and have super powers?”

“No. That’s just the cartoon part. If you always have yellow flowers and suddenly get a red flower, that’s a mutation. In fact, everything in the world started out as a mutation, or else there would be nothing but itty-bitty plants floating in the ocean.”

She decides that would be boring.

“Why do those people hate the X-Men? The X-Men are good guys.”

“They hate them because they’re bigots. ‘Bigots’ means when people hate other people because of something like what church they go to, or where they’re from, or how they look. The people hate the X-Men because they look different, and can do different things, and they’re scared of them.”

“But that’s not fair,” she complains, “The X-Men are nice.”

“That’s right. Bigotry isn’t fair, and it isn’t nice.”

“I like Storm the best.”

Storm is a black woman with long white hair who can control the weather, and fly. “Me, too.” I answer.

“I want to be Storm for Halloween.”

“O.K.”

A few nights later, we are reading The Enormous Egg by Oliver Butterworth. This is one of my favorite stories from when I was growing up, a tall tale about a Triceratops dinosaur that somehow hatches from an egg laid by a chicken, and the consequences for the boy in the story. She has loved dinosaurs since she was a mere tot of two. We read two chapters into the book. She read a few paragraphs, sounding out new words, and then realised, “The chicken laid a mutant egg!”

This is why you should watch television with your children. In one Saturday morning cartoon, we have covered biology and bigotry, and made a tentative Halloween costume decision.

__________

* I know, I know, it’s more complex than that. All you evolutionary biologists out there will have to work with me on that. (-;

3 Comments

Singing teh Brain-Dead Workin-Hard Blues: Remodeling

7 July 2011 at 3:13 (ADD/ADHD, Arthritis, Doctors, Family, Gardening, Hypermobility, Migraine, Pain, Work / Employment)

Had a migraine this morning
Cancelled on my shrink.
Need to clean and organise
But I can’t even think.

Moved bedrooms three days ago
O where is my daily pill box?
Boxes and piles everywhere
O where are my clean socks?

I need to go out and garden
Weeds have eaten the side yard.
I need to finish planting
Heat’n’humidity too damn hard.

I need more hours at my job
Stocking groceries at the store;
717 pounds of charcoal
Added bruises to the score.

Need to hammer and hang things
But grandchildren are asleep.
Need to paint and put away stuff
Always more work and I just keep–

Charging for hardware I gotta buy
Like a frequent flier down at Lowe’s.
Wish everything was at the Restore*
Spending too much goodness knows.

Had a migraine this morning
Cancelled on my shrink.
Need to clean and organise
But I can’t even think.

Moved bedrooms three days ago
O where is my daily pill box?
Boxes and piles everywhere
O where are my clean socks?

* Restores are where Habitat for Humanity sells new/gently used building materials; they are a great way to reduce-reuse-recycle and save lots of money on building supplies! The hitch of course is that the items vary daily at stores.

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Sock It To Me

10 March 2011 at 1:28 (Clothing, Family)

How to dress the Blur:

First, gather all the garments you need for the child. At 20 months, the Blur has discovered the joy of pulling off his diaper and going nakee!, so overalls / dungarees are preferred.

Next, scoop up the Blur on his next round through local airspace. Incentive for dressing can often be instilled if he’s interested in Going Bye-bye. Aside from the usual parental gymnastics/wrestling pins normally required to clothe busy toddlers, this part isn’t too bad.

It was the socks that did in his mum. (In my self-important grandmotherly role, I like to think I would have figured out the problem sooner, but that’s probably just bias.)

As mum brilliantly deduced after a few days, the Blur was distressed by the order of operations. Mum does SOCK-shoe, SOCK-shoe. Blur wants to be dressed SOCK-SOCK, shoe-shoe. “Well of course,” I replied to her, “SOCK-SOCK, shoe-shoe is the right way to do it. It’s even.” Mum begged to differ; naturally, she does her own footwear SOCK-shoe, SOCK-shoe.

(Oy vey; you’d think we had opened up an unexpected argument as important as the one regarding whether the toilet paper should be put on the spindle to unroll over the top, or from the back.)

This week there was another issue. Apparently Blur was quite distressed because the sock seam was underneath his toes instead of on top. “When he gets bigger, you can buy seamless socks,” I mentioned. Alas, they cost a bit more, and are often tube socks, and some people can’t stand the way tube socks bunch on the front of the ankle, but Oh Well.

Toe seams bother me some, too. On the rare days I wear pantyhose, I have to make sure the seam is atop my toes. I also have one pair of heavy, slipper-like socks with pronounced seams, so I pad around the house with them inside-out.

~#~

Out of curiosity, I’ve questions for you all (accessory comments are encouraged):

1. Do you put on your footwear:

(a) SOCK-SOCK, shoe-shoe

(b) SOCK-shoe, SOCK-shoe

(d) I don’t usually wear socks and/or shoes

2. Are sock seams bothersome enough for you that you have to either avoid some socks, or put them on a particular way?

9 Comments

Have you asked Hoover?

26 February 2011 at 14:42 (Family, Vacuum cleaners)

“Lad, Dyson can’t play ball.”

My 20-month old grandson (AKA The Blur, because the active lad is “faster than a D-SLR” camera) loves vacuums. A great deal. The first time we ever saw him sit still for half an hour was when I first showed him some vacuum vids on You Tube. Any mess of crumbs on the floor is promptly declared a “Me’h!” and requires attention with his push-sweeper. (No, piles of toy pieces strewn across the floor do not merit such attention. This is a child, after all.)

A trip to Target should include 15 minutes at the end to browse their selection. “Vacuum! Vacuum! Vacuum!”

“You want to look at vacuums?”

“Pe’e? Pe’e? Vacuum! Vacuum! Vacuum!”

“Okay lad. Here, I’ll pick you up so you can see them better. This is a black Oreck, and that’s a red Dirt Devil, and a red Bissell. The Eureka upright is yellow. Here’s a grey Hoover canister, and an orange Dyson.” Hey, everything’s a teaching opportunity, right?

The shrimp toast at our favorite Chinese restaurant was great, and so was their vacuum. We haven’t gotten to the “must see the potty everywhere we go” stage; we’re still stuck at the “must see the vacuum everywhere we go” stage — too bad not every restaurant accommodates the kid’s fascination. Not even the guy at the local vacuum shop quite understands it, although he did mention there was another boy who wanted to have his birthday party there. Mum isn’t sure if the fact that there are You Tube vids of child vacuum collectors out there is reassuring or not. But taking a [clean, unused] vacuum attachment tool to crib with your teddy bear and blanket, well, that is odd.

Meanwhile:

“Lad, Dyson can’t play ball,” I tell my grandson. At which point the boy picked up the tennis-size rubber ball and bounced it off the “Dyson Sphere”* of our Dyson DC25, and went chasing after it, to fetch and bounce again.

Vacuums can too, play ball! I stand corrected. I bet Hoover the canister vac will play ball, too.

~#~

If you too, have a vacuum enthusiast in your life, here are some You Tube vids that are popular at our house:

WALL*E and the vacuum [animation]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpHDrNc-44U&feature=related

All Dysons Ever Made
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7aezOZCEuA&feature=fvwrel

Welcome to Vacuum Land, the site for the Vacuum Cleaner Collector’s Club www.vacuumland.org

19 month old Liisa vacuums
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ915JEgC74&feature=related

Inventing the Dyson ball
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pPlYR6Hql8

Vacuum collector 5 year old Aiden Atkins
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvk5eoz_PrE

Vacuum collector 10 year old Gregory Evans
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXnrXw1WvvA&feature=related

Vacuum collector 12 year old Kyle Krichbaum
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5wn7St3A14&feature=related

THERE’S A VACUUM CLEANER MUSEUM!

Vacuum Cleaner Museum – PART 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrH3JiugdYA

Vacuum Cleaner Museum – PART 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TDOuaG1jU8

Vacuum Cleaner Museum – First vacuum
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-WmsfI8HG0

* The Dyson has a central ball wheel that allows for easier steering. Have I mentioned that the lad’s papa is a big Star Trek fan? We’re a geeky bunch, for sure.

4 Comments

Kitchen HazMat: Allyl propyl disulphide

13 May 2010 at 3:51 (Family, Food, Geeks)

My daughter stopped and looked at me, puzzled.

“Safety goggles,” I explained. The elastic strap was losing its spring, so the limp tail ends hung down past my ears as I worked. “Because I couldn’t find my chem-lab goggles.”

I continued to trim the tops and tails off the onions and slice them up with the mandoline. “These are really loud onions,” I added.

She walked past me to the refrigerator and suddenly exclaimed, “Omigod, they just attacked my eyeballs!”

A few minutes later my son-in-law walked by the sofa, making a small snork noise at my incredibly nerdy appearance.

“I heard that!”

“I didn’t ‘say’ anything!”

“Hey, four pounds of onions is a lot of onions!” Apparently the pungent Allyl propyl disulphides had not yet diffused as far as the living room.

Later he came by to ladle up his French onion soup from the big stock pot, and found the pong to still be strong. I opened the kitchen window a crack, mumbling, “Just imagine what it was like when I was slicing them up fresh!”

I don’t care how the goggles look – they are excellent for making onion-slicing painless. (Well, at least for the cook.) They’re now sitting on a kitchen cabinet shelf, since I cut more onions than I do lumber.

1 Comment

Take with a grain of salt

28 April 2010 at 2:52 (Family, Food, WTF?!)

(I’m abed with a virus, but meanwhile–)

The pancakes smelled -at first whiff- yummy. But then, scorched. Kind of. Not the pan’s-too-hot-scorched, but overly browned. I nibbled on a corner of one left unfinished in a puddle of syrup.

“Did they seem kind of … salty?” I asked my daughter.

Yes.

Ah-ha. “You know, baking soda tastes salty, and aids in browning — that’s why pretzels are dipped in baking soda water before baking.”

“The recipe did say to add baking soda,” explained my son.

I read his scribbled index card, and snorted. “Next time, use one of our general cookbooks.”

“I’ve used that site before …” he protested, annoyed with his normally reliable resource.

“Don’t believe everything you read on the Internets — take it with a grain of salt. Not 3 1/2 TABLESPOONS of baking soda!”

1 Comment

4011 IF EAT THEN SIT

20 April 2010 at 2:50 (Family, Food, Geeks, Humor/ Fun Stuff)

My hungry 9-month old grandson is being a wiggle-worm. He wants his banana now, and like Prot, is trying to eat it whole, peel and all.

“Come on lad, let Grandma mash this up for you – no, we don’t eat the peel – here’s your high chair -”

Much squirming and complaining, “NANA NANA!” (I’m not sure if by “nana” he means banana or some pet name for grandma; I’m usually the one who brings home the bananas from the market, and the one who feeds him an evening snack of “happy smile fruits” — our code name for the nosh of choice, especially if we’ve run out.)

“Ow no let go of my glasses, Grandma can’t feed you until you’re in your chair-” This operation of Insert Boy B Into Chair C almost takes two women.

I revert back to child-training using simple commands. Given enough repetitions, it will sink in, just like “OPEN” [mouth], “NO BITING”, “TOUCH GENTLY” [flowers, cats], “STILL” [stay in place for diapering], “REACH UP” [un/dressing], and all those other thrilling conversations.

“IF eat, THEN sit!”

The lad was sufficiently startled by this novel command to pause a split-second, thus allowing us to plop his tuchis on the chair and snap on the tray. We’ll be using the IF-THEN logic construct for the next few years, along with FIRST-THEN. (There’s nothing like reinforcing order of operations, whether mathematical or procedural.)

Now I can finally start spooning mashed banana into the lad’s mouth, and he’s thumping his feet and smacking his hands on the tray with delight, exclaiming a pleased, “Nom-nom nom!” (Seriously.)

“That’s a good boy,” cooed his mum, “Listen to Grandma’s Boolean logic!”

Ah, the great moments of geeky family life – gotta love ’em!

P.S. 4011 refers to an imaginary line of programming code, and also to the grocer’s PLU number for bananas.

1 Comment

Bird of Prey

4 February 2010 at 5:11 (Family, Geeks, Home stuff, Wordless Wednesday)

baby bib made from starry sky print calico, with Klingon Bird of Prey ship outline embroidered in green floss

Uncloaked!

Pureed pea and carrot torpedos fired, the ship is more visible!

Comments Off on Bird of Prey

Schrödinger’s snack

26 December 2009 at 3:50 (Family, Food, Sleep)

It’s Christmas and of course we’ve been eating all day, but for some celebratory reason, we’re always hungry anyway. Come evening, my son-in-law stumbles blearily downstairs, through the living room, and into the kitchen.

“I thought you were taking a nap?” enquires my baby-bouncing daughter.

“I am. I can get something to eat, can’t I?”

Fridge door opens, shuts, man lurches back upstairs to bed.

I nodded to her, “You-know. It’s like the physics cat … he can either be asleep or awake, but you don’t know until you ask him.”

1 Comment

Music to Bounce By

6 December 2009 at 5:14 (ADD/ADHD, Family, Parenting, Sleep)

My five-month old grandson, AKA Tigger or Mr BoingBoing, has loved to bounce from the get-go. Even when he was in utero, my daugher remembers how the sonography technician ended up sighing when she visited, because the baby was so mobile that it was hard to get a measurement. Later on, the mom-to-be said that although the baby book bore the reminder to make sure that the baby moved each day, she never had to bother to check.

“I hope he learns how to sit for half an hour by the time school starts,” I mentioned, with ADHD concerns hanging unspoken in the air.

“He does have a great attention span. I just hope he starts sleeping better soon,” added the proud but perennially tired mom.

“There are some children that never do sleep much.”

“But I don’t want one of those …” The idea of spending the next decade or more taking turns sleeping was almost too much to contemplate.

“No one ever does!”

Thankfully, the lad loves his doorway bouncer. Not only has his bouncy seat just been retired because he can he roll over and out of it, he’s even started getting on his hands and knees.

In my familial role as Bouncy Lady, I put together an iTunes playlist of “Music to Bounce By” for bouncing him on our knees, as babies love music, it’s generally more entertaining for all, and slightly less tiring for the adult if they don’t have to sing. We want to expose him to a variety of music. Right now, “Wipe Out” by the Ventures is a favorite. (I’ve included links to a couple of pieces that are not well known, but are worth checking out.)

Good Vibrations The Beach Boys
Ticket To Ride The Beatles
Will It Go Round in Circles Billy Preston
That’l Be The Day Buddy Holly & The Crickets
Superstition Stevie Wonder
Working In The Coal Mine Devo
Satin Doll Duke Ellington and His Orchestra
Crocodile Rock Elton John
Think Aretha Franklin
Sing, Sing, Sing Benny Goodman
Mouse Jigs Flook
Barracuda Heart
Tijuana Taxi Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass
Immigrant Song Led Zeppelin
Dancing On The Ceiling Lionel Richie
Another One Bites The Dust Queen
Burning Down the House Talking Heads
Shake Your Tailfeather Ray Charles
Four Sticks Sones de Mexico Ensemble
Pride And Joy Stevie Ray Vaughan
Wipe Out The Ventures
Hawaii Five-O The Ventures
Linus And Lucy Vince Guaraldi

Every few songs we have something a bit less frenetic, to keep from getting too fatigued. And of course, we never get through the whole list in one pass; just a few songs at a time.

At least there’s one thing that he’ll sit still for: watching Star Trek! But that’s a story for another day …

2 Comments

What a great combo

30 October 2009 at 3:39 (ADD/ADHD, Family)

ADHD + fussy baby:

“See? There’s Bouncy Lady. We call her Grandma.”

1 Comment

Where P = 0

1 August 2009 at 23:05 (Family, inertia, Sleep, Work / Employment)

Where P is the momentum, and P = mv. v = velocity, naturally. But the m = inertial mass. As in, if something doesn’t act upon and force the m, then there is no v and no P, and certainly no W of work!

I’ve not been blogging much lately due to the Jobs, but even after the education-related Job #1 and Job #2 finished a couple weeks ago, I’m still finding it hard to get back into the blogging groove. I’m still working Job #3, which is only part-time, but grocery stocking is giving me the most inconsistent hours and days, ever. It’s getting to the point where I’m having trouble remembering what day of the week it is.

The Geekling has yet to sleep through the night; I’m not feeding him at nights, but apparently Grandma Ears are the same as Mom Ears, and hunger cries in another part of the house will still awaken me.

Furthermore, my watch battery died, so I can’t even tell when I am, aside from night and day.

But most of all, I have a bad case of Inertia. I have a bazillion things to do, but struggle to complete the most time-sensitive ones. I am working on some posts, but stringing thoughts together is like watching syrup ooze down the bottle.

What do you do to get over Inertia?

3 Comments

Hanging around the Web

4 July 2009 at 0:22 (Accessibility, ADD/ADHD, Architecture/Universal Design, Arthritis, Circus of the Spineless, Disability Blog Carnival, Family, Geeks, Home stuff, Humor/ Fun Stuff, Insects & Arachnids, Migraine, Ooh, shiny!, Pain, Sleep, w00t!)

A shiny robot spider hangs upside-down from a metal mesh

My son and I recently hauled a long dresser+mirror up two flights of stairs, and I cleaned up the master bedroom in preparation for the return of the new baby & parents from the hospital. The downside of course is that after a day of labor, I must spend a couple-three days recuperating. (In other words, I used up all my “spoons”, down to the last demitasse.)

I’m also on Day 2 of one of those low-grade-three-day migraines. Right now it’s manifesting as misreads, which when I catch myself is kind of entertaining:

a post on wheelchair “fails” [falls] at Wheelchair Dancer
“Disability Studs” instead of Disability Studies
“Autism Hug” instead of Autism Hub
“Crack Wicks” instead of Cake Wrecks

In light of all that, I thought I’d share some interesting reads/cool finds on the Web recently:

My sleep-deprived daughter would be envious of ant queens, who spend nine hours a day sleeping, while the workers must squeeze in micro-naps.

From the world of delightful architecture, an adult tree[less] house shaped like a bee skep, made of recycled lumber (wheelie adaptation not included).

The CitizenM hotels have the most amazing showers, which look like Star Trek transporter pads. To start the shower, you simply shut the door. I don’t know if they’re large enough for a wheelchair transfer to a shower seat, but with the zero-clearance there’s a chance of it (maybe Dave knows). Want! (Or at least the trés geek LED shower head that changes from blue to red when your water’s hot.)

Reimer Reason posted It’s a Family Reunion! for the most recent Disability Blog Carnival.

In further hexapod news: while I was distracted by our little geekling, Bug Girl has been faithfully covering Pollinator Week, including important information about CHOCOLATE. For more funs, Cheshire has teh latest Circus of the Spineless up.

And of course, what would a list of fun be without a LOLcat?

Six white kittens lined up and looking at the camera, while a seventh is distracted with a play ball. The photo caption reads, "PUZZLE PICTURE Find the kitten who has ADD."

5 Comments

Congratulations

1 July 2009 at 3:40 (Family, w00t!)

to my daughter and her honey, on the arrival of their little geekling. The boy is healthy and beautiful. We’re all so proud and excited!

11 Comments

712

3 June 2009 at 5:39 (Family, Geeks)

My daughter was finally moved back from school and doing the librarian thing, organising hers and her honey’s and everyone’s books all together. “We have too many books,” she complained, “Or at least, not enough bookcases.”

“Yeah well, what can I say …” At least she hadn’t had to sort out the ten shelves of my horticulture, entomology and reference texts.

She was next sitting on the floor sorting through picture books and pulling the board books for the nursery. “Okay, we have enough science books in the children’s section. Really, there are twenty books just on orcas!”

“Well, it was your brother’s special interest for several years. And how many books do we have on elephants and dinosaurs?”

“That’s different; every kid loves dinosaurs.”

“Uh-huh …”

“All of our science books have Pluto, and I will teach him ‘The Controversy’!” she grinned. “Hey, there’s not enough room for all this science fiction; how ’bout we keep it down in the basement?”

“Fine with me; you’re in charge. We can keep the boxes of comics on the wood table. Your brother will need to pick up his gaming cards and stuff first. And some day, I would like to get my train set back up.” Thinking of her baby, I paused a minute and asked, “What if the boy isn’t a geek?”

The odds, we decided, are vanishingly small. He’ll be a third-generation geek.

~#~

“I think I’m over the top,” said papa-to-be, M.

I looked up at him.

“For being a Star Trek geek. I have 712 images of the Enterprise.”

“What’s geekier, you think,” I asked my daughter, “having that many images, or counting them?”

“Counting them.” she decided.

5 Comments

Gone Bananas

23 April 2009 at 3:42 (Auditory Processing Disorder, Eye contact, Family, Food, Humor/ Fun Stuff, Prosopagnosia, Work / Employment)

A few weeks ago …

“4011 !” I exclaimed to my daughter.

She looked up from her Mac where she was composing her latest essay. “What?” she asked in confusion.

“They started me on cashiering today at the grocery. 4011 !”

And then we both broke out laughing.

“4011” of course being the PLU (Price Look Up) code for bananas.

shipping cartons full of bananas

When she started as a grocery cashier the other year, my daughter had commented in amazement at how many people came through with bananas. So many in fact, that she too had learned that number the first night, just from sheer force of repetition.

I would have thought that apples would be the most-commonly purchased fruit. But no, endless bunches of bananas came through.

Not only bunches of bananas, but also bunches of people with similar behavioral patterns, which I found to be rather interesting:

People with a large bunch of greenish bananas. (I wondered if they were feeding a lot of people, or simply don’t care about the stage of ripeness when eating them.)
Customers trying to balance their fruit bowl with a couple each of greenish and yellow bananas.
Parents herding several small children, with bunches of bananas that had the requisite number of stickers for each child to have one. These were difficult checking assignments — not because of the parents, but because as a cashier I was also trying to keep track of the assorted tots with regards to alerting their adult to their safety, or asking their adult if the candy or toy items coming down the conveyor belt were approved purchases.
People with bunches of the organically-grown bananas (PLU 94011; all the organic produce starts with a 9).
Tired working folks picking up a sandwich from the deli, a banana, and an energy drink for their meal.
Frazzled parents rushing through with bananas, applesauce and bread. ( = “BRAT diet”: bananas, rice, applesauce, toast, a menu for dealing with diarrhea via dietary intervention.)
Frequent shoppers with just a few yellow bananas — I heard a lot of apologetic explanations about not being able to plan ahead for weekly menus and shopping lists, and wondered why some people felt the need to explain their purchase choices, unbidden.
A few elderly shoppers who explained that they couldn’t carry many grocery bags, or used frequent shopping as a means of getting out of the house. After a while, I realised that such explanations were probably a curious form of chit-chat.

Although I began to develop my own “scripts” for appropriate cashier dialogs, I found that cashiering is a more challenging position than I had anticipated. This is because there are a number of different kinds of simultaneous cognitive demands, involving spatial handling, operational sequencing, data entry, calculations, communicating in a noisy environment despite my auditory processing issues, struggling to identify numerous coworkers despite faceblindness, and socialising with the appropriate amount of eye contact and proscribed chit-chat.

Cashiering doesn’t just mean scanning groceries and making change. I am not only trying to scan accurately and quickly, but also:

performing subtle security checks to make sure that no one is walking off with unchecked goods on the bottoms of their carts or pocketing the candy and other small goods near the register racks;
sorting the goods as I move it down towards the bagger courtesy clerk in whatever organisational method that person prefers;
querying the customer about coupons and whether they wanted the gallon milks bagged and if they want candy and greeting cards handed to them instead of bagged
explaining discounts and how gift cards work;
looking up endless PLU codes for the numerous types of untagged produce;
watching out for children’s safety;
greeting the next customer in line so they didn’t feel neglected during the wait;
trying to remember who the manager is that night for when I need to call them to void a mis-scan;
and of course, bagging while I check when the regular courtesy clerk has switched from my lane to another with greater need.

When bagging, bananas are a tricky item. I can put vulnerable loaves of bread atop the fragile egg cartons, but aside from soft packs of sugar, toilet paper or maxi-pads, there are few items that will co-exist happily with bananas when packed in limp plastic bags.

Given that bananas are nutritious, don’t require refrigeration or heating, and can be eaten quickly, they have recently filled my lunchbox, er, meals-box that carries both my lunch and third meal. I drive directly from one job to the next, with just 10-15 minutes for a snack to tide me over between 11 a.m. lunch and clocking out again at 8 p.m. (I usually have a fourth meal when I get home; call these breakfast-lunch-tea/supper-dinner or whatever, but the third meal is usually rather minimal.) So what’s the best way to transport a banana safely? I drop it into a tall plastic drink cup.

Thankfully, I spend most of my time at the garden center end, rather than endless hours of checking. But in this latest addition to my repertoir of work roles, I have literally gone bananas.

10 Comments

ADD-ing new perspectives

20 April 2009 at 11:51 (ADD/ADHD, Family, Inclusiveness, Parenting, Personal change)

My daughter is sailing rather gracefully through her pregnancy — well, as gracefully as one can when they have reached the “beached whale” stage that is the third trimester.

And yet, as with many pregnant women, she is experiencing some “third trimester brain rot”, that intermittent or semi-chronic reduction in frontal-lobe functioning. Meaning:

forgetting important things you meant to do
not packing things you meant to take with you somewhere
getting sidetracked and forgetting what you were doing a few minutes ago
moments of being adrift when you lose track of what you were about to do
dysnomic moments of losing words or names you normally have on the tip of your tongue
being spectacular at some higher cognitive facitilities (“Look at this great post-colonialist literary critique I just wrote!”) and then realising that you suddenly can’t remember how to do something really simple (“Why are my pants pockets wrong? Oh, my pants are on backwards.”)

I’ve yet to read why this happens, aside from sleep issues or “It’s The Hormones”, that generic disclaimer for all things annoying during pregnancy (or indeed, between menarche and menopause).

The good news is that the brain fog isn’t permanent. I reassured her that “third trimester brain rot” usually starts to go away after the baby sleeps through the night. She looked at me suspiciously; surely “third trimester brain rot” should go away after the baby is born? But then I reminded her about the chronic sleep deprivation that is nursing a baby every two hours. (Were it not a normal part of human development, such sleep deprivation would surely be outlawed under the Geneva Convention.)

Of course, it doesn’t help that she’s finishing up her college senior capstone project, and it would really be useful to get a solid night’s sleep, or to wake up from a long night’s sleep feeling more rested, or to be able to schlep all those literary refs around campus more easily, or to not spend 33.3% of her life preoccupied with peeing. But, there it is.

On the other hand, we have had some bonding moments that go beyond shared maternity. One day she was complaining about the general forgetfulness and fogginess, and I pointed out, “Hey, now you know what it’s like for someone with ADD.”

“Omigosh, I couldn’t stand it,” she replied, dismayed at the idea of being permanently stuck in such a state.

“But the thing is,” I explained (somewhat defensively) “when you have ADD or ADHD, that’s what it’s always been like. That’s what you’re used to.” The point being that one doesn’t feel the same sense of loss when it’s a life-long condition, compared to a late-onset disability.

And despite the obvious impairments, there are some positive aspects to AD/HD, due to the different functioning patterns of the brain. There’s the hyperfocus, abilities to make different associative and intuitive leaps, and often a visual thinking style that lends to a variety of design strengths.

Having done through a few re-iterations of this conversation, there seems to be less of an “Oh noes!” reaction, and more of an appreciation of the chronic difficulties that I and other people with ADD or ADHD face. Not only that, but I think the reasons for some of my demands for structure and routines that I developed as she and her brother were young, are becoming more apparent to her.

Maybe there are just some “mom-things” that one doesn’t appreciate in quite the same way until becoming a parent.

On the other hand, there are still a lot of things I do that bug her, and we must ever keep re-negotiating our relationship, especially as we continue to live in the same house, but with changing roles.

3 Comments

For the first time in 28 years

14 February 2009 at 19:07 (Advocacy, Attribution Errors, Counseling, Deaf / Hard of Hearing, Family, Invisible disabilities, Love & Acceptance, Personal change)

I have not bought a Valentine’s present for my husband. I am divorcing him.

Disabilities can change how the processes of falling in love, joining, living together, loving together, and separating happen.

For most disabled people, their disabilities affect how others perceive them as even being interested or capable to find love or sex. (WTF?!)

For many disabled people, their disabilities can even change whether or not others afford them even the opportunities to find love or sex. (Again, WTF?!)

Although my husband and I both have disabilities that have changed how we are employed, communicate with each other and others, parent our children, or even sleep together (literally and figuratively), the divorce had nothing to do with our disabilities. It’s just about the usual sorts of moral failings that can lead to divorce (even after the sensible year of counselling to assay changes).

Because in the end, love and sex do not happen because people are able or disabled. They happen because all people are people. And when love and sex quit, they happen because all people are people. Just people. Like everyone else.

This post is (slightly belated) part of Dave Hingsburger’s “Sexy Bloggers” blog carnival on disabilities and love/sexuality, over at his blog, Chewing the Fat.

10 Comments

Being remote / mis-emoting

2 February 2009 at 6:16 (Autism/Asperger's, Family, Non-verbal communication)

“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“No, tell me.”
“Nothing.”
“Seriously, what’s wrong?”
“NOTHING’S wrong; I’m just working on this article.”
“Well you don’t have to be so rude.”
“I wasn’t — I’m just trying to work already.”

Apparently I don’t always “emote” (physically express my emotional state) the way people expect me to. Apparently my “thinking” face looks like a scowl.

“Are you annoyed with me?”
“No. You’re fine. I’m just thinking.”

(But if you keep bugging about why I am/not annoyed, I will probably become annoyed…)

Maybe I should research Read the rest of this entry »

9 Comments

Family Traditions

27 January 2009 at 2:57 (Autism/Asperger's, Communication, Coping strategies, Family)

My daughter and son had a long conversation the other day. They knew what they were talking about, within this twin-like patois built upon years of shared jokes. It made sense to them, for all that anyone else would have found the banter of movie and TV quotes to be strings of non-sequitors.

“You know, the baby won’t learn how to talk if this is all it hears,” I jested, referring to my future grandchild. “The school will call and say, ‘We think your child is autistic; he just speaks in scripts’!”

I was mostly joking of course; conversing in “scripts” hasn’t prevented either of my kids from being able to speak. Like in many families, sometimes the scripts imply whole paragraphs of dialog familiar to members. They can serve as conversational shorthand or crutches to encode the meaningful transmission of information when someone is in a hurry, feeling ill, or just making a joke.

Like all the other forms of communication shorthand we use at home, it’s just one of those traditions that creates part of the family culture. (And what better way to hide things from mum than a secret kid argot?)

5 Comments