Family

Adventures on the Way to Church

By / July 16, 2012 / 1 Comment

It turns out that going to church near a national forest can be more adventuresome than one might expect. We knew we were going to have to drive forty minutes to get there. We also knew that the congregation itself is a seasonal one, run by locals and attended by people like us who were vacationing in the area. The kids were quite enamored of the fact that many folks attend in blue jeans and camp clothes rather than the usual Sunday clothing. So we set off with some verbal instructions, half expecting to get a little lost on the way.

We did not expect the stowaway Chipmunk.

Kiki saw him first and gasped. The rest of us tried to figure out what was wrong with her and all she could do was point out the windshield. Then we all saw him. He popped out of the crack between the hood and the windshield. He ran across the top of the hood. He dove back into the crack, obviously trying to find a way off of this crazy fast-moving contraption. My brother-in-law, who was driving, did a marvelous job of not crashing the car while distracted by chipmunk.

The little guy must have climbed into the engine while the car was parked outside the cabin. Then when the engine heated up, he emerged where we could see him. We found a safe place to stop on the little mountain road. There was some debate over whether it was possible to return him home, but trying to catch a chipmunk in a car engine seemed likely doomed to failure. He hid the moment we opened the hood.

Then he scampered down into the engine. Moments later we saw him dashing for the trees at the side of the road. Hopefully he likes his new home.

But that was not all. There were also sheep.

We sat for a good five minutes while a huge flock was herded around us and off down the road. It was fascinating. When we opened the windows for a better look, several of the sheep stopped and stared at us as if they expected food to materialize from the open windows. The kids were delighted to discover that sheep would baa back if they made the sound first.

We did eventually get to church and the meeting was lovely. For the rest of the weekend we were on the watch for stowaway chipmunks, but he was the only one. Which is probably best as we didn’t really sign up to be a chipmunk relocation service.

Family Reunion in Full Swing

By / July 13, 2012

The cabin is filled with voices, song, clanking of toys, beeps of electronic games, and the shouts associated with a group game. Family reunion is in full swing. I was in charge this time. I assigned out meals and spend time quietly making sure that things are going smoothly. I did not create a schedule of activities. The only fixed points are meal times because people get cranky if not fed on a regular schedule. The point is to put us all in close proximity with lots of options for activities. It is fascinating to see how the cousins will sort themselves one way for a set of activities and then a different way later. In general they group themselves by age, but not always. I was quite charmed to see Link bracketed by Nephew9 and Nephew5 as they snuggled close to watch him play a game on a handheld computer. Link paused to talk about the game when they had questions. Gleek spent hours leading a game among the trees for eight younger cousins. When she was getting frustrated I called her over, not to scold her for yelling, but to compliment her for doing so well at a task which is inherently difficult. Kiki has spent hours doing a puzzle with my Aunt, playing Uno, and then going on various errands with aunts and uncles. Connections and memories are being made. In the process we define ourselves as a family. It is good.

I retreat from it sometimes. I stepped outside and spent twenty minutes in the company of a squirrel who was determined to eat all the sunflower seeds in the feeder. She was a very good photography subject. I got my camera mere inches from her nose, and still she kept on eating. Other folks joined me on the deck and the squirrel chewed away. She only left when Nephew15 shouted to deliberately frighten her. Then she levitated straight up, spun in the air, and I swear she did that cartoon move where she ran in the air for several leg rotations before vanishing down the tree trunk.

We have two more days. All is going well. And I have decided that retreating into blogging or internet reading is as valid a way for me to recharge as spending time with a greedy squirrel. I sort my day into words. Then I’m ready to collect more stories to tell.

Night at the Cabin

By / July 13, 2012 / 1 Comment

The land of Cabin Without Internet has been invaded by a wifi hotspot provided by my father. For which I am quite grateful at 4 am when sleep eludes me. The room around me is dark and all the beds are filled with sleeping people. The only company I have is a ticking clock and a lonesome moth who thinks to be friends with my glowing screen.

Insomnia is a newer plague in my life. It travels with anxiety, and the past few weeks have been filled with needless anxiety. I have all this worry floating free in my head, just waiting for thoughts to which it can attach. This is one of the reasons that I organize, plan, and am so very good at my job. Knowing I’ve done all that I can do makes the ambient anxiety subside a little. On nights when I lay awake for hours–fretting over things that I know don’t need the attention–I ponder lifestyle and medication. Because one solution would be to restructure my life to eliminate anxiety triggers. The other would be to decide that for whatever reason my biology has deviated far enough from the norm that medication is required for me to be able to support a normal life. Then of course I can spend a long time pondering normal.

Mostly what I truly need is to get out of the dark hours of the night and into the next day when things are invariably better. For tonight this means emptying my brain of a few things by writing them down.

***
I looked at the map of where I was to go. It was a wiggly line right through a green patch of national forest. The much straighter road was closed due to fire and landslide. Google maps gave me two different sets of instructions neither of which matched the verbal instructions offered by my aunt. But we drove anyway, trusting that where there were roads we could at least find our way back. Driving an unfamiliar route makes me a little nervous. Canyon roads with steep drop offs require focused attention, not only to keep the car on the road, but also to keep my imagination from supplying imagery of what would happen if I drove carelessly just there. Throw in an intermittent torrential rain, and the last hour of my drive was quite interesting. But we found the cabin and all is well.

***
“You have to come see this Aunt Sandra!” Three sets of eyes were focused on me. Gleek, Niece7, and Niece7A all were quite intent upon showing me their fairy circle. I was given a tour through the enchanted grove, the fairy circle, the boundary, and led to the place where a deer died some years ago leaving only bones behind. The girls were solemn as they showed me the bones. They informed me that the rain was because the sky was crying over the deer. Then they dashed back through the trees to their fairy circle. For them the trees around the cabin are a magical realm. They become fae, fairies, and mermaids. I shall be quite interested to see the game involve to include additional cousins as they arrive. Gleek shapes the game, names the places, makes declarations. The younger girls are quite happy to be led and add their own embellishments. They are going to have a magical weekend. I watch the three of them together. Gleek is a head taller than the other two. She is eleven and it is quite possible that this summer is her last one as a child. Some girls still play pretend at twelve, but for this summer I am glad to see that Gleek can still imagine a whole realm into existence. I wish I could photograph the woods as she imagines them to be.

***

I rather like the quiet and the dark now that I am being awake in it instead of fruitlessly attempting to sleep. It is almost like I can absorb the solitude into my skin like a balm. I feel it soak in, and something coiled tight begins to unwind. For this hour I am free of expectation. I do not disappoint anyone, not even myself. It is strange that this freedom is so tangible even when I know that most of the weight I feel from expectation is things I put on myself. I am the only one who expects me to get everything right all the time. Perhaps the insomnia is my inner self rebelling against all the things I assign myself. It seeks the quiet dark which is timeless and alone. Dark is not required. I find some of the same feeling when I sit on my front porch in the evening or my hammock swings at any time of day. It is probable that a good portion of my summer stress is merely introvert starved of solitude.

***

My thoughts unwind and slow. Perhaps sleep will come to me now that I’ve slowed down enough for it to catch up.

The Space Between Keeping Secrets and Telling All

By / July 11, 2012 / 2 Comments

This year Howard and I will celebrate our 19th wedding anniversary. Of course by celebrate I mean that we’ll probably remember to tell each other that we’re glad about it, but only probably. Sometimes we forget the anniversary because we’re too busy getting on with being married. Whenever Howard and I are asked for advice on being married, we share something we learned early. Don’t keep secrets. Anything you’re afraid to tell your spouse must be discussed as soon as you can arrange a quiet and uninterrupted time. Short term surprises are fine, long term secrets will fester and poison everything else. Lately I’ve found a corollary to that advise. Don’t tell everything. This advise seems to contradict the first advice, but it doesn’t.

A few months ago we opened the pre-orders on Sharp End of the Stick. The particular blend of stresses involved in the pre-order process always trigger fun blends of anxiety in both of us. I was trying to maintain a very zen approach to the whole thing, not checking on numbers. Howard was watching numbers, doing calculations, and making contingency plans. He was really stressed, so he came to me and spilled all of his fears in detail. At bedtime. I then fretted all night. The next couple of days Howard felt much better and went about his normal things, while I checked numbers, did math, and made contingency plans based on worst case scenarios. Then I came to Howard and spilled all of my anxiety and fear in detail. At bedtime. Then Howard had a turn to fret all night. I think we repeated that cycle one more time before recognizing that we were playing a horrible game of anxiety-and-depression hot potato. Fortunately pre-orders only throw us off balance for awhile. We managed to extend the experience by throwing each other off balance, but things got better. Sometimes the telling of something does more harm than help.

Yesterday was not an emotionally good day for me. I don’t really know why, because nothing is actually wrong. In fact, I can point to a dozen things which are going really well. Yet I was feeling like it was all futile and doomed to failure. This was true no matter what you substituted for “it” in the sentence. My writing was pointless. The finances were constantly returning to ebb points. The kids needed stuff which they would just need again later. The laundry. I really wanted to corner Howard and explain all of this in detail. Surely as Husband it was his job to listen and make it all better. Except that I knew some of the things in my head would definitely punch Howard’s anxiety and/or depression buttons. A round of anxiety hot potato was guaranteed to make the entire week miserable. I needed to not tell him, yet I needed to not keep secrets.

I found Howard and gave him an extremely sketchy outline of how I was feeling. It was enough to let him know “hey, I’m struggling today and need extra hugs.” He supplied the hugs and the support, then we went our separate ways. Howard headed off to draw comics, because completed work reduces our stress levels. I watched kids, assembled bundles, and stared at the huge pile of ripe apricots that I had no desire to make into jam. More important, I assigned my oldest kids to watch their young cousins, then I got out of the house for an hour.

By evening my mood was better and Howard had not been distracted from his important creative work. The concept is applicable in other situations as well. Some things have to be talked through in completely honest detail. Other things don’t need to be said.

Kitty is Dismayed

By / July 10, 2012 / 3 Comments

Niece7 and Nephew5 arrived the other evening, the influx of little voices caused our cat to bolt upstairs and ask to go out. She knows that little voices are accompanied by little hands. Fortunately for her the problem of small people interested in cats is a familiar one. Gleek is not so little, but frequently wants to love our cat more than our cat would prefer. We’ve set up designated safe zones, places where the cat is to be left alone: Howard’s office, her basket, the chair in my office. Many times I’ve seen her dash to one of these places and hunker in them very deliberately, rather like a child reaching home base in a game of hide and seek.


“See. I’m in the safe place. No touching.”

From her safe places, our cat likes people. She watches or just hangs out nearby. She particularly likes sleep next to people who are working quietly on computers. That way people are readily available for petting, should she want some, or door duty, should she desire to go out. Normally our house is the perfect haven for her. Summer is a bit harder with her increased exposure to bored children who have ideas about snuggling. This new influx of extra small people has her dismayed. last night the door to Howard’s office was closed, she batted at it with a paw until I opened it for her. She’s also identified Howard, Kiki, and I as people who will make the small ones give her space. She hovers near one of us whenever she is indoors. As a system, it works. Soon the extra small people will end their visit and our kitty will not spend so much time being dismayed. Until then, she’ll be in my office hiding on her favorite chair.

Some Days I Really Rock the Parent Gig. Or Not.

By / July 9, 2012 / 1 Comment

Forty minutes after Patch’s Lego Brick Camp ended, I got a phone call from the teacher.
“So, um, are you going to come pick up your child?”
At which point I apologized profusely, promised it would never happen again, and barely took time to hang up before grabbing purse and keys to drive very fast. The place is only five minutes from my house. All the way there I berated myself, felt horrible, and worried that Patch would be distraught at being forgotten.

I arrived and Patch was happily helping clean up bricks and put away chairs.
“Some other parents were late too,” The teacher said as I apologized yet again. “Then I got talking with them until I realized you weren’t here yet, so I called. It was no trouble.”
“I told him you’re late sometimes.” Patch volunteered.

I’m late sometimes. A part of me dies inside that my son knows and believes this about me. Surely part of being a mother is being reliable. My other kids would have panicked if I’d been forty minutes late. I wasn’t late for them. Patch has a different mother than they did at his age. Patch’s mother works. He’s learned that sometimes I’m late and the world doesn’t end if that happens. which is actually a good thing in some ways. Patch is more self reliant and confident than my other kids were.

Yet I don’t have “flaky about afternoon appointments” in my self image. In my head I’m reliable. Mostly. I’ve been memorably late twice in the past year. Both times I was focused on a computer task and was too far away from my cell phone to hear the alarms I set for myself. I set those alarms on purpose…because if I don’t, I’ll forget. So, yes, I’m flaky. I’ve developed systems to handle the flakiness. Most of the time they work and no one can tell. Then I can pretend to myself that I’m completely reliable, when actually I’m human and prone to make mistakes.

Patch and I made a joke out of my lateness all the way home. We laughed together about it, which is probably a healthier way to approach things than for me to plunge into guilt-driven despair. However both Patch and Howard independently arrived at the conclusion that my contrition for being so late ought to extend far enough to spring for Wendy’s. So I did, and all was well again. I’ve also set more alarms for tomorrow and made them much louder. Once can be funny, more than once is bad.

Taylers at the Water Park

By / July 6, 2012

We left the water park when I realized that the best time to leave was an hour ago, before the crowds got so bad and the kids were cranky. I suspect this is a typical departure time. This was my first venture into a water park in ten years or more. I gave them up when I realized that taking young children into such places was signing up for five hours of Where’s Waldo when Waldo might drown if you can’t spot him quickly enough. Today was nothing like that. My children have reached the age where I can say “We need to stay together” and they do. I say “sure, swim ahead of me in the lazy river, but wait for me at the exit” and they will. Or even “I’ll wait here, once the waves in the pool stop, come back” and they arrive right on schedule. It was lovely all morning. By afternoon everyone was a bit tired, but not admitting it, and the crowds had increased to the point that they interfered with everything. So the negotiations for One More Thing were a bit heated, but compromise was found. The kids are full of plans for how things should go next time. Since we have summer passes, having a next time is probable. More importantly, I can picture a trip to the water park as something fun instead of hours of exhaustion, frustration, and tantrums. I like parenting for older kids.

For now I will pay attention to the parts of my skin that are screaming at me. 5 hours of direct sun does a really good job of showing me my sun screen blind spots.

And We’re All Safe at Home Now

By / June 19, 2012

I walked into the house and the children flocked to me to give me hugs. Their faces were variously browned and sunburned. I could tell they’d been having lots of fun outdoors with their cousins. I could also see a slight inner tension unwind a little because I was there. The outward manifestation of that inner tension was that they all felt free to be more cranky. It was a high level psychological juggling act to get all four of them to pack up the car and be seated without a major battle erupting. We actually did have a “Don’t Make Me Stop This Car” level conflict about halfway home, during which I did pull off the highway long enough to resolve the issue that yes Gleek’s bag of stuffed animals did have to be moved so that Link could fully recline his seat. However that one flare up dispelled the cranky because the drive afterward was full of cheerful retellings of the trip where as the ride before was pent up quiet.

We all arrived home cheerful and my people have scattered to rediscover all the things they’ve been missing for a week. Life is good. Now I just need to relax for the rest of the evening so that I can put on my business hat again first thing tomorrow.

Testing the Summer Schedule

By / May 28, 2012 / 1 Comment

I declared today a test run on my planned summer schedule even though it is Memorial day and thus a holiday. I set my alarm to go off at 6:30 and dragged myself out of bed at 7 after only three snoozes. I have discovered that summer days are really long when I do not sleep through a third of them. I’ve made good progress on my to do list for the day.

The first item of business was to tackle the over-abundance of clothing. All of my kids have enough clothes to fill their laundry baskets and still have things slopping out of the dresser drawers. So I declared that every single item of clothing would be examined for size, whether the person likes it, and if it fits. I now have four dressers neatly full of clothes and four garbage bags full of things to give to a thrift store. Link’s dresser is the one exception. He assured me that everything in it fit just fine. I’m pretty certain that he just crammed everything in without folding, but since he does his own laundry and the drawers are neatly closed, I’m just going to take his word. Kiki did her own sorting too. Mostly I had to help the younger pair and then apply the same standards to myself. One of the most important things I can have in my house is extra space. The space lets me see what I need and how to arrange it.

Next I forced myself to sit down and make a meal plan for the week. I don’t like meal planning, having one is great, making one uses up creative energy that I would rather spend on other things. Meal planning is particularly hard on the change-over from spring to summer; Suddenly lots of my fall-back meal options become forbidden because using the oven mid-summer makes the house hot and drives up the bill for AC. I have to dredge my memories to remember what we used to make last summer. Somehow switching from summer to winter feels like it opens up cooking options even though it just changes them. Adding to the difficulty, I’m trying to change my default meals. Chips and chili is easy, but it is not particularly healthy nor cheap. Step one on our push toward frugality and healthy eating is to eliminate ready-made things like chicken nuggets and chimichangas. The meal plan is made. The shopping is done. Hopefully I can just follow the instructions for the rest of the week.

As part of my newly-remodeled office, I set up a desk space for Kiki. It is a little studio space for her to store her supplies and to work on projects. I spent some time helping her see how to use things we already had to make the space usable. It is still not finished, but no studio space is ever “finished.” At least now she can see her supplies and use them to inspire her to make art. Once the space was set up, Kiki trekked down to the local art store for some new brushes. She discovered that the store is closed on Mondays, but that they have a Help Wanted sign in their window. Now she has big plans to dash down there first thing tomorrow and apply for a job.

With all of that completed, I looked at the clock. It was only 2 pm. I wandered outdoors to pull some weeds, plant some flowers. When I came back in it was 3:30. In just a little while I’ll need to follow my dinner instructions. Then I have to get kids to bed on time, because it is not quite summer yet. We still have three days of school. They’re mostly goof off days, dance festivals, and field days, but the kids need to be there.

A Long Day

By / May 22, 2012 / 3 Comments

“Are you okay mom?” Gleek asked, and I realized that I had just made a large sigh while surveying the contents of our pantry. The lack of enticing food had been some sort of sigh trigger.
“I’m all right.” I answered, “Just tired. It has been a long day.”
“Aren’t all days the same length?” asked Patch. “They all have the same hours.”
I turned to look at him, his blue eyes wide. “Yes, but some days seem long. Today felt really long to me.”
Gleek and Patch continued to munch on their cereal, which was my simple-as-possible bedtime snack effort for the evening. It was all I could muster after having to scold Gleek for ignoring me and turning the scolding into a lecture on how she should respond when I say “stop” in a commanding voice. Perhaps the scolding and lecture will make tomorrow’s conflicts a fraction easier, no guarantees. Before snack and the scolding had been the mediation over whether Gleek could play her music in the kitchen even though Kiki had been there first. That had been preceded by a cub scout pack meeting full of running and shouting children. Then ever-so-long-ago at the beginning of the day had been the ninety minute long meeting with Link, two of Link’s teachers, an administrator, and the school psychologist in which we hammered out his Individual Education Plan (IEP) for next year. Nothing said in the meeting was news. I’d already seen all the results, knew what we were going to say. But it all needed to be said out loud so that everyone could hear all the words. Most of all so that Link could hear. Half the information was new to him. He needed to assimilate it. It also needed to be written down on paper so that next fall when we’re all attempting to settle into a new year we can just read our instructions to ourselves.

I asked Link later, how he felt about me blogging about his diagnoses. (Yes, plural).
“That would be good.” he said. “It could help people.”
I agree. I began planning out a big, beautiful post which would clarify everything and put it all into an emotional context. I stopped writing notes halfway through, because I’d run out of emotional energy. It is just possible that 14 years of worry is a bit much to try to pull into a single blog post. Maybe I’ll write that post later, or a different one.

The short version is this: Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The ADHD we’ve been treating for years. The APD…I’ve also known for years. I just forgot that I knew it because treating the ADHD made such a huge difference. I guessed APD back when Link was in Kindergarten because it was the only thing I could find which explained the patterns of development I was seeing. I keep thinking that perhaps I should feel guilty that it took us this long to diagnose the APD. I ought to feel guilty, but I don’t, and I feel vague guilt about not feeling guilty. The truth is that we’ve all been doing the best that we can. Link just needed this comprehension now so we tested and found it. Link’s ears work fine, but his brain scrambles words, so that Link has to work hard to comprehend what is said. Combine that with the working memory and processing speed challenges which are common with ADHD, and you begin to understand that Link has to be brilliant in other areas or else we would have found this long ago. He’s like a deaf person no one knows is deaf because he reads lips so well. Link has distinct areas of brilliance. I’ve got test data showing that too.

So none of it is new, but all of it is now official in the school paperwork. Making it official is exhausting, as if writing it down makes it more real. This I think is why many parents shy away from diagnosing their kids. I think it is why I did. As long as it is only a suspicion it could be wrong, everything could be fine. Knowing the auditory processing diagnosis shifted things in my head. It shook up my thoughts and they settled in ways that will be much more beneficial to Link. Now when I slow down and simplify my sentences for Link I know that it is because he physically needs that, not because he can’t comprehend complex concepts. I knew that before too, but this knowledge has also become more real and that is a good thing.

Or so I tell myself. I’m finding it oddly difficult to click “publish” on this post, as if that too is a line to cross, making things more real.

It has been a long day, and it is time for bed now.