So, I think we've decided against the house with chickens. I went and jinxed it. I KNEW it! We went back on Thursday to check some stuff out and bring the little dudes to show them where their rooms would be and make sure that the Big Man would be comfortable having the upper level loft all to himself. We also needed to measure some walls to make sure that our furniture would fit and check out some of the outside things like siding and maintenance, etc. Well, it didn't go so well. For us, not for the kids. The dudes LOVED the house. Big Man saw where his room would be and almost passed out from total excitement. They also went down in the basement and just ran and ran and ran and shrieked and screamed and shrieked some more. Herein is where our problems began. We could hear them. Loudly. From any corner of the house. I shut the basement door and went all the way into the master. Still.shrieking.drill bit in my ear, high-pitched, holy crap how can you possibly get your voice to that many decibels, shrieking. The house has carpet only in three small rooms. The rest is this beauuuuutiful tile, and then the master has a gorgeous wood floor. All of this plus the cathedral ceilings and you have your very own amphitheater for all shrieking all the time. It just echoed and amplified throughout the house, and then when they came upstairs and commenced to screaming....Lord, please give me the strength not to duct tape these childrens' mouths shut. Not that they were doing anything wrong, because they weren't. That was the purpose of bringing them to the house, to see if they would be excited or just kinda meh about the whole thing. The amphitheater was just a bonus. We also found that the taxes and utilities were insanely high, and also the cedar siding was very high-maintenance and only half painted on one side of the house. There's also an immense cookie-cutter neighborhood in the back yard, and there's only a very sparse tree line between us and the neighborhood with no fence. Those houses seriously eff up your view for your morning coffee.
As it is, the noise was the deal breaker. I'm not quite sure how to explain my feelings about noise. It's one of the most difficult aspects of being a parent with Asperger's. Children, as many of you know, are extremely loud beings. They have two volumes: 120 and sleeping. Most parents have anxiety or need a break when their little ones are crying or throwing a massive fit, and I get that that's normal. However, I tend to break down or meltdown myself with any sort of noise, even their happy sounds. The laughter and shrieking of fun play. I can't describe what it does to my head, not in words that really convey the feeling. It's physical pain, like a drill bit in my head. That's the best description I've found anyway. For a lot of autists, there are sensory disorder symptoms, and I am the same. I am unsure if sound, smell and taste are actually amplified for me or if I hear, sniff and taste the same as everyone else, and it just pushes different nerves or are connected to my emotions in some other way. As it is, my emotions are highly connected to my senses, much more than they are to actions. Taste stimulants, like cilantro, can cause something that can only be described as euphoria, but other such tastes or, I guess, more food textures, can cause actual rage. Macaroni in funny shapes for instance, or if I try to eat a few of my "staple" food items and they are not prepared exactly how I need them prepared. Sometimes the noises of hilarity and cuteitude in my house do the same thing. Rage. My training helped me combat it quite effectively with a few deep breathing exercises and some suggestions for sensory stimulants, which actually help a lot. My highest sense is my sense of smell. So, when we are home and the noise starts to get to me, I will light five or six candles and just breathe in scents that make me happy. That usually works. It's harder when we are in the car. Car rides amplify noise like you would not believe. He's on my siiiiiiiiiiiiideeeeee. Gimme that baaaaaaaaaaaack. Etc., etc., ad nauseum. I have to do the breathing exercises then, and they just plain don't work as well as the candles. Air fresheners tend to be too strong for me, though, and can cause a rage feeling. I just haven't found one that I like. Vanilla my patooty. Vanilla Ass Ass Baby, I say, as far as car air fresheners go. Then we have Little Man's fits....well, still working on that. I think I need to try prayer. Right now, how it usually goes is that I go into it calm and telling myself that I'm not going to let this normal 4-year-old behavior get to me, and by the end of it, I'm screaming and throwing a bigger fit than he is, and then we're both miserable for about an hour or so until we get over it. Next time he has one (tomorrow, likely, since we'll be home with his big brother, and he'll need to show off his defiance), I'm just gonna get down to his level and start praying quietly. He won't be able to hear me, since he'll be screaming his danged noodle off, but it should help calm me down. Better than just breathing in with the good air, out with the bad air. Perhaps he'll be curious as to what I'm saying long enough to stop screaming. Perhaps he'll not punch me in the face once I kneel down on the floor.
Anyway, so the house isn't going to work out. It's a bummer for another reason. The kids REALLY loved it. Big Man was more excited about that loft bedroom than I'd ever seen him before. It's going to be a big letdown for them. It also reminds me of something cruel I once said to my father when I was a teenager. I didn't think it was cruel at the time. I just didn't understand what I was saying. I was very unhappy in the school that I was attending at the time, and we had been several times to a model home to ask about building a house in a different school district. I remember being awed by all of the floorplans and pictures of models on the walls there and the promise of helping pick carpet colors and paint colors, etc. (My suggestions were not used, BTW, and good thing, they would have never been able to sell that house with my appalling interior decorating skills.) Anyway, because we went to see it so many times, I assumed that we were going to have this house built and that we were moving. One day, as we were leaving after my parents were asking the builder more questions, they told us that we would not be able to afford the house. Out of my mouth came the most ungrateful words ever uttered by me, "Well, you just set us up for disappointment with this one." Clearly I did not understand the amount of money, time, effort and planning that went into the purchase of a new home. All I knew was that we had seen this amazing place to live, and we weren't getting to live there. I know now, of course, how ungrateful and cruel it was. I think about it often and have over the last few years, and I regret it every time I think about it. I was just an ignorant teenager. Instead of my dad telling me off, though, as he was often quiet toward us, he found a way to buy that house. As I think about it as an adult, I am completely disgusted with myself. I bullied my father into giving me what I wanted by throwing a hissy fit, and what I wanted wasn't something stupid like 20 bucks to go to the movies. It was a major financial decision, and although I don't know what my parents' financial situation was at that time, I'm sure heavy sacrifices were made to purchase that house.
As it is, as awful as I feel about my awful remark as a teenager, I can't help but feel that we are going to let the Big Man down big time. I should have known better at age 15, but he is only 6. He is not yet past the stage where the world does not revolve around him. He loved that room, and now we are going to take it away from him. It feels kinda crappy. Almost like forcing my readers to go through 300 pages of my ramblings every time I decide to write a blog.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Monday, December 20, 2010
A house! With chickens!!
Ok, so I know I haven't posted about this before, but NOW IS THE TIME! I didn't want to jinx it, or whatever.
So, we have a lot going on over here in casa della Karen. School, kids, kids' schools, wedding, etc. Well, we also want to move. Yes. Move. While planning a wedding, taking care of two young kids and going to school and work full time.
We want a bigger house. We're all on top of one another here, and I have no space of my own, which is a definite problem for me. Sometimes, girlfriend needs a time out. Also, the kids share a room here, and they drive one another bananacakes. It's all the time with the fighting. We wake up around 7:15 EVERY morning to "NOOO!!! GIVE IT BAAAAAACK!!!" *shrriiiiiiieeeeeeeeeek* Plus, they have a hard time sleeping at night. Their little room with their brother plus a buttload of toys is just too tempting for them. They HAVE to get up and play or tease one another. We need a place where they each have their own room, plus a playroom for all of their toys. A playroom in the basement or at the opposite end of the house from my "quiet zone". Plus, Eric needs a home office, and we need a basement for food storage. We want to be mostly self-sustainable, which means we need land for gardening and space for canning/storage, etc. Plus, I require a large bathtub or a bathroom that can be remodeled to fit a large bathtub. And we need a garage.
So, it's a tall order. A large house, at least 4 BRs plus den/office/bonus room plus basement, with at least a 2-car garage, a large master bath that can fit a garden tub if'n it doesn't have one already, and acreage to farm enough for a family of four, partly wooded lot pretty necessary, and in seclusion for the most part. Good schools a plus, though I am willing to supplement education at home if need be.
We've been searching for a while, but with no real urgency. We want to make sure we buy exactly what we want. We plan on this new place being our permanent residence. Where we live now is a starter home bought by Eric and his first wife, and we are past the "starter" stage. As it is, a few weeks ago something happened that upped our urgency a bit. I have a hard time feeling secure here. I just plain don't like our neighborhood. There are always droves of teens wandering around at night, plus my car got broken into in the driveway a few months after Eric and I met. I don't like taking the kids to the playground because there's always nasty trash all over or awful graffiti that I don't want them reading. Anyway, we got a note in our mailbox from a neighbor saying that he'd been beaten in his own home as a gang initiation. Two young kids (he said between 13 and 15) rang his doorbell. He thought they were selling candy or something for charity. He answered the door, and they beat him senseless in his entry way while a gang of teenagers waited in a getaway car. They didn't rob him, just beat him and took off. This was in the court behind our house. I now feel very afraid in my own home and haven't slept well since. I check windows and doors over and over, and I keep getting up in the middle of the night and going out in the living room and just watching outside. The kids are on the opposite sides of the house than we are right now, and I have a recurring nightmare that we can't get to them in time if something happens, an intruder or a fire, etc. I want a house where their bedrooms are near ours.
We got our preapproval taken care of and have basically just been visiting homes online. The last two weeks, we actually got in touch with our realtor (Molly Hadley with FC Tucker, awesomesauce, highly recommend, etc. etc. ad nauseum). She's been very patient, seeing as we are on the far east side, and we are looking at homes on the far west/northwest sides of town. Driving us all over western Indiana to search for our dream home. I think we found it on Saturday. The place is on 2.8 acres and already has its own fenced-in garden and CHICKEN COOP! We get to have chickens! Fresh eggs!!! There's enough land that maybe I can get a goat, too. Fresh milk!! The land has loads of trees and is back off of the main road. There's 4 bedrooms, the master and Little Man's bedrooms are right next to one another, and the Big Man's is in a loft nearby, close enough to get to an intruder before an intruder gets to him. The fourth bedroom would be the playroom and is on the opposite end of the house than the master, for shrieky daytime activities, and it is big enough to put our older sectional sofa, plus a little table, plus their TV stand and DVD player/Nintendo, etc. and all of their toys, and the playroom has it's own attached bathroom. There's a gorgeous sunroom that would be our office with an amazing view of the trees and large back yard from behind our desks. The kitchen and laundry rooms are both enormous with TONS of storage and the exact appliances come with the house that we would have purchased. There's also a little courtyard in the middle of the house where Milo would be safe to go outside without getting lost or attacked since he is the clawless wonder (as an aside, he has his head in the toilet right now taking a nice thirst-quenching drink. Gross.) The place has a 2-car garage with a loft above it for storage, and the garage has a large workshop for our "projects" haha. It's heated and has air conditioning, too. Now, the really, really cool part, is the basement. These folks are ON IT. They are into food storage, too, and they have already done a ton of the basement leg work for us. They have built in shelves EVERYWHERE down there, AND there's a honest-to-goodness storm shelter.
So...PICTURES!
The back deck and back yard.
Front of the house. Those amazing windows are amazing.
Garage/workshop, garden, CHICKENS!!
The Little Man's room. Right next to ours in this pretty gray color.
Do I even need to say how amazing this kitchen is? Windows! Light!!
The Big Man's room! He'll be getting my queen-sized bed. Such a grown-up!
Sunroom/office. My desk would be where that table is, and Eric's in front of the other window so we can look at the beautiousness while working. Plus the wireless would reach onto the deck if we wanna work outside in the summer/spring. Behind the wall from which the photo is taken are French doors that lead to the master.
Playroom of awesomeness.
Great room with stairs to Big Man's room and huge fireplace, exposed beam ceiling.
Master bedroom retreat. Gooorgeous! Check out that view!
We're gonna go look at it one more time with kids in tow to see if they feel comfortable and to measure some walls, etc. to make sure our furniture will fit, and if it all works out, we'll make an offer! I'm so excited!!!!
So, we have a lot going on over here in casa della Karen. School, kids, kids' schools, wedding, etc. Well, we also want to move. Yes. Move. While planning a wedding, taking care of two young kids and going to school and work full time.
We want a bigger house. We're all on top of one another here, and I have no space of my own, which is a definite problem for me. Sometimes, girlfriend needs a time out. Also, the kids share a room here, and they drive one another bananacakes. It's all the time with the fighting. We wake up around 7:15 EVERY morning to "NOOO!!! GIVE IT BAAAAAACK!!!" *shrriiiiiiieeeeeeeeeek* Plus, they have a hard time sleeping at night. Their little room with their brother plus a buttload of toys is just too tempting for them. They HAVE to get up and play or tease one another. We need a place where they each have their own room, plus a playroom for all of their toys. A playroom in the basement or at the opposite end of the house from my "quiet zone". Plus, Eric needs a home office, and we need a basement for food storage. We want to be mostly self-sustainable, which means we need land for gardening and space for canning/storage, etc. Plus, I require a large bathtub or a bathroom that can be remodeled to fit a large bathtub. And we need a garage.
So, it's a tall order. A large house, at least 4 BRs plus den/office/bonus room plus basement, with at least a 2-car garage, a large master bath that can fit a garden tub if'n it doesn't have one already, and acreage to farm enough for a family of four, partly wooded lot pretty necessary, and in seclusion for the most part. Good schools a plus, though I am willing to supplement education at home if need be.
We've been searching for a while, but with no real urgency. We want to make sure we buy exactly what we want. We plan on this new place being our permanent residence. Where we live now is a starter home bought by Eric and his first wife, and we are past the "starter" stage. As it is, a few weeks ago something happened that upped our urgency a bit. I have a hard time feeling secure here. I just plain don't like our neighborhood. There are always droves of teens wandering around at night, plus my car got broken into in the driveway a few months after Eric and I met. I don't like taking the kids to the playground because there's always nasty trash all over or awful graffiti that I don't want them reading. Anyway, we got a note in our mailbox from a neighbor saying that he'd been beaten in his own home as a gang initiation. Two young kids (he said between 13 and 15) rang his doorbell. He thought they were selling candy or something for charity. He answered the door, and they beat him senseless in his entry way while a gang of teenagers waited in a getaway car. They didn't rob him, just beat him and took off. This was in the court behind our house. I now feel very afraid in my own home and haven't slept well since. I check windows and doors over and over, and I keep getting up in the middle of the night and going out in the living room and just watching outside. The kids are on the opposite sides of the house than we are right now, and I have a recurring nightmare that we can't get to them in time if something happens, an intruder or a fire, etc. I want a house where their bedrooms are near ours.
We got our preapproval taken care of and have basically just been visiting homes online. The last two weeks, we actually got in touch with our realtor (Molly Hadley with FC Tucker, awesomesauce, highly recommend, etc. etc. ad nauseum). She's been very patient, seeing as we are on the far east side, and we are looking at homes on the far west/northwest sides of town. Driving us all over western Indiana to search for our dream home. I think we found it on Saturday. The place is on 2.8 acres and already has its own fenced-in garden and CHICKEN COOP! We get to have chickens! Fresh eggs!!! There's enough land that maybe I can get a goat, too. Fresh milk!! The land has loads of trees and is back off of the main road. There's 4 bedrooms, the master and Little Man's bedrooms are right next to one another, and the Big Man's is in a loft nearby, close enough to get to an intruder before an intruder gets to him. The fourth bedroom would be the playroom and is on the opposite end of the house than the master, for shrieky daytime activities, and it is big enough to put our older sectional sofa, plus a little table, plus their TV stand and DVD player/Nintendo, etc. and all of their toys, and the playroom has it's own attached bathroom. There's a gorgeous sunroom that would be our office with an amazing view of the trees and large back yard from behind our desks. The kitchen and laundry rooms are both enormous with TONS of storage and the exact appliances come with the house that we would have purchased. There's also a little courtyard in the middle of the house where Milo would be safe to go outside without getting lost or attacked since he is the clawless wonder (as an aside, he has his head in the toilet right now taking a nice thirst-quenching drink. Gross.) The place has a 2-car garage with a loft above it for storage, and the garage has a large workshop for our "projects" haha. It's heated and has air conditioning, too. Now, the really, really cool part, is the basement. These folks are ON IT. They are into food storage, too, and they have already done a ton of the basement leg work for us. They have built in shelves EVERYWHERE down there, AND there's a honest-to-goodness storm shelter.
So...PICTURES!
Master bedroom retreat. Gooorgeous! Check out that view!
We're gonna go look at it one more time with kids in tow to see if they feel comfortable and to measure some walls, etc. to make sure our furniture will fit, and if it all works out, we'll make an offer! I'm so excited!!!!
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Fashiony McFashion
Look, I don't usually go all ga-ga for purses. I love other accessories, hats and shoes namely, but purses, I don't know. I can't see spending 500 bucks on a designer purse. Purses are DIRTY, y'all. They go on hooks in public bathrooms (never on the floor, have some dignity), nasty sinks, in restaurants, sat in the Diet Coke spilled in your car, etc. etc. ad nauseum. They are full of make up and snotty Kleenex and hair from your brush and just overall nastiness. Therefore, 500 bucks? No, thanks. Twenty at the local Kohls will be just fine.
That said, OMGDudes. Mizzzzz Donatella Versace just unveiled THIS little gem. (Thank you Tom and Lorenzo, once again, for my UTD fashion needs).
I totally love it to the max. Also, everything in Diane von Furstenberg's pre-fall 2011. Especially this.
These outfits themselves I'm not too keen on, but I really love the hats.
That said, OMGDudes. Mizzzzz Donatella Versace just unveiled THIS little gem. (Thank you Tom and Lorenzo, once again, for my UTD fashion needs).
I totally love it to the max. Also, everything in Diane von Furstenberg's pre-fall 2011. Especially this.
These outfits themselves I'm not too keen on, but I really love the hats.
Friday, December 10, 2010
It's 5 a.m. My past is full of nonsense.
Eric had some sort of coughing tantrum about an hour and a half ago, and I've been up since. The kids will be awake in T-minus 2.46 hours, and I'm sure the mood I'm going to be in could tame a wild bobcat. Or maybe I am the bobcat. As it is, I have things to do tomorrow, so being awake right now isn't the best idea, but even with the melatonin I took, I can't stop working my brain. I'm sure this blog will be scatterbrained. It's 5 a.m., people.
3:30 a.m. Hackey hack akimbo over there gets up to go to the bathroom and sneeze and cough at 539 decibels behind the bathroom door instead of the 537 dB that it was when he was in the bed. I suggested cough medicine. He went back to sleep instead. I began pondering the Chanel pre-fall collection that Tom and Lorenzo just posted. I am wondering how Chanel could put out a collection where I wouldn't wear a single piece. Tragedy on flight 3:30 a.m.
3:45 a.m. Chanel! I mean, it's not as shocking as say, Versace had done it, but still. It's close. I should definitely be sleeping instead of thinking about clothes.
4:00 a.m. Oh, dear, the stress of school has hit my noodle. There's no way in Hades I'm going back to sleep now. I have a project due on Tuesday that I'm just in the beginning research stages of. Six pages of paper and a 15-minute presentation. I just figured out my topic (women and tattoos) 2 days ago. I have 4 days to do this and do it properly. Arg! I wonder if 4 days is long enough to build myself a super-intelligent clone robot instead. What time is it?
4:05 a.m. While I'm asking other women about the significance of their tattoos, I begin to think of the significance of my own, which brings back all sorts of painful memories.
4:10 a.m. Five minutes of my past going through my head, and tears begin to fall. How could I have been so stupid? *Interjection at 5:17 a.m. A child has just awoken. Awesome.* Anyway, blubbing away about my past, trying not to sniffle and wake up pneumonia-McGee.
5:00 a.m. After an hour of suffering in bed, I think I better get up and write it out before my heart explodes onto the bed, and subsequently the cat. Guess who'd have to clean up THAT mess in the morning? My first tattoo was the cover of ICP's Carnival of Carnage CD on my lower back when I was barely 18 years old. It symbolizes the beginning of nearly a decade of extremely poor decision making that nearly destroyed my life. I'd been making poor decisions in regard to my choice of partners since I started dating at 15, but with the freedom that came with being an adult, those choices escalated to astronomically terrible proportions. With less than a handful of exceptions, it was abuse after abuse after abuse, and it was abuse I didn't even see. (Almost) no one was hitting me, so I wasn't living a Lifetime Original Movie, so I didn't classify it as abuse. There were three that did commit violence, and I walked away from those relationships immediately after one instance, thinking to myself, "Take that, Lifetime. I'm not stayin to be abused. I am a strong, intelligent woman. I KNOW what abuse is, and there's no excuse to throw a boot at my head and get away with it." All the while taking verbal and emotional abuse from man after man and not even recognizing what was happening. These men cheated, lied, stole from me, called me names that I hadn't earned, monitored my every move, listened to my phone calls, gave me the third degree if I was at the grocery store longer than they anticipated that I should be, threw away all of my makeup, took my money to pay their bills while I worked 2, 3 or even 4 jobs at a time as they did nothing, broke nearly all of my possessions, hacked into my e-mail and went through my text messages, and one threw a shot glass (missed me, sucker) hard enough to shatter through two panes of glass and destroy the sliding glass door to the balcony. That was one cold Philadelphia winter.
The longest term of these men was the worst. Four years on and off of abuse and accusations. I was making poor life decisions in other areas as well, working in an industry that no one should ever be subjected to, and because of those decisions, he had the ammunition to tear me down. At this time in my life, I truly believed that I deserved to be tracked like an animal, questioned by every move I made (You're wearing Chapstick! Who are you trying to impress? This isn't the bread you normally buy! Who were you with at the grocery store? You were clearly distracted!). Girlfriend, that bread was on SALE, and since I was the only one payin for food in that house...you can see where this is going. I had to pick up a third job so that I could afford the name brand items. Anyway, at the time, I felt my past (and present at that particular point) justified this treatment. The insults were deserved, and he was right, I wasn't ever going to find anyone better, no one else was going to want me, not with my past. Even when I tried to remedy them, he had me convinced that they would haunt me forever (and he may be right about that). He had me convinced that *I* was the problem in our relationship, and I needed therapy.
So, I went to therapy. They didn't pick up on the autism. They shoved antidepressants down my throat (how about advising me to leave this jackwagon?), and then anti-anxiety pills, and then sleep aids for the insomnia that the anti-whatsits caused. It wasn't long before I was addicted to the sleeping pills. Anything to get me away from the verbal and emotional barrage of insults that I was receiving whenever this man was in my presence. Soon I was mixing alcohol with Nyquil, Remeron, Lunesta, Unisom and anything the doc or the shelf at Kroger could throw at me.
As it is, I finally left this guy in Tennessee and moved back home to Indy. As I was deciding to come off all of the pills, I met and began dating a very nice and wonderful man (cheers, Matt), that I wasn't ready for. I didn't wanna mess up a good thing, so I dropped my pills cold turkey, and then proceeded to royally mess up a good thing. On our second or third date, we'd gone to see a movie and had a great time and gone back to his house to chat around the kitchen table. I began to experience withdrawals sitting there. I got very sick and very confused, and I didn't know where I was. He and his mother were coworkers of mine at a job I hadn't been at for very long, in an office full of chatty, gossipy women (save for Matt), and I was having a drug withdrawal meltdown in their kitchen. Matt, of course, had no idea what was going on, as my sleeping pill addiction wasn't exactly something that I was forthcoming about upon our meeting or our first date. To him, I'm sure it looked as though I was on some sort of hard substance. Sniffing glue or something. He had to drive me home. I tried to jump out of the moving vehicle on 465. I think I thought we had reached our destination. It was one of the single most embarrassing moments of my life. After a few days of hard withdrawal (that ain't pretty. I didn't even know that my insides could BE that color.) I explained the situation to Matt, and he actually still chose to date me. Good guy, what did I tell ya? I messed it up anyway. I was still too broken from my previous situation and had it in my head that I was inferior. This man was way too good for me, and he always would be, so I left him. And I went back to Tennessee to endure another year of emotional barrage from Douchebag Supreme.
There was a night, someone's birthday party. I wasn't invited because "My friends don't like you" (they had met me once, briefly, as I was coming in from one job to get ready to go to another as they were playing a game in our living room). Anyway, DB Supreme went out and got trashed enough that his friends had to call me to come get him on their way back from some club. He had them stop the car so he could vomit and refused to get back in. The police were there when I arrived (at 4 a.m. on a work day), as he was desecrating some property with several bodily fluids, and I assured them that I would take him home and put him to bed and he wouldn't be any more trouble. He made a liar out of me. At the entrance to the apartment building, as I was punching in the gate code, he jumped out of the car and ran into the bushes and laid down there and tried to sleep. I had to drag him back to the car (where he promptly vomited in my brand new Yaris). When we got home, I put him into bed, got him a bucket and some water, and was promptly kicked out of the room and forced to sleep on the couch because "you aren't allowed to see me like this." Eff you, too, buddy, so I went downstairs. One thing led to another, and it ended with him throwing a steel-toed boot at my head. His aim was bad, and he missed, but I was all (in my head) "OMG abuse! I'm being abused! Get out! Lifetime says I'm stupid if I stay! I don't wanna be stupid!"
I did leave, and I never looked back, and I'm glad the act of violence occurred. Had it not, I would likely still be there, not recognizing all of the other behavior as abusive and still feeling as though I deserved everything he was dishing out. I moved back home for good, and I'd like to say my problems ended there, but they didn't. I was, after all, still broken, and at this point, still undiagnosed with the REAL problem. That story, however, is for another day. There is a happy ending, clearly, as all of this nonsense ends with Hacky McHackerson in there, the love of my life.
6:08 a.m. I've been typing a long time. I don't think I can sleep, though, still. I think I'll go make the Big Man's lunch for the day and get my to-do list made. Perhaps outline that research paper before the kids get up.
3:30 a.m. Hackey hack akimbo over there gets up to go to the bathroom and sneeze and cough at 539 decibels behind the bathroom door instead of the 537 dB that it was when he was in the bed. I suggested cough medicine. He went back to sleep instead. I began pondering the Chanel pre-fall collection that Tom and Lorenzo just posted. I am wondering how Chanel could put out a collection where I wouldn't wear a single piece. Tragedy on flight 3:30 a.m.
3:45 a.m. Chanel! I mean, it's not as shocking as say, Versace had done it, but still. It's close. I should definitely be sleeping instead of thinking about clothes.
4:00 a.m. Oh, dear, the stress of school has hit my noodle. There's no way in Hades I'm going back to sleep now. I have a project due on Tuesday that I'm just in the beginning research stages of. Six pages of paper and a 15-minute presentation. I just figured out my topic (women and tattoos) 2 days ago. I have 4 days to do this and do it properly. Arg! I wonder if 4 days is long enough to build myself a super-intelligent clone robot instead. What time is it?
4:05 a.m. While I'm asking other women about the significance of their tattoos, I begin to think of the significance of my own, which brings back all sorts of painful memories.
4:10 a.m. Five minutes of my past going through my head, and tears begin to fall. How could I have been so stupid? *Interjection at 5:17 a.m. A child has just awoken. Awesome.* Anyway, blubbing away about my past, trying not to sniffle and wake up pneumonia-McGee.
5:00 a.m. After an hour of suffering in bed, I think I better get up and write it out before my heart explodes onto the bed, and subsequently the cat. Guess who'd have to clean up THAT mess in the morning? My first tattoo was the cover of ICP's Carnival of Carnage CD on my lower back when I was barely 18 years old. It symbolizes the beginning of nearly a decade of extremely poor decision making that nearly destroyed my life. I'd been making poor decisions in regard to my choice of partners since I started dating at 15, but with the freedom that came with being an adult, those choices escalated to astronomically terrible proportions. With less than a handful of exceptions, it was abuse after abuse after abuse, and it was abuse I didn't even see. (Almost) no one was hitting me, so I wasn't living a Lifetime Original Movie, so I didn't classify it as abuse. There were three that did commit violence, and I walked away from those relationships immediately after one instance, thinking to myself, "Take that, Lifetime. I'm not stayin to be abused. I am a strong, intelligent woman. I KNOW what abuse is, and there's no excuse to throw a boot at my head and get away with it." All the while taking verbal and emotional abuse from man after man and not even recognizing what was happening. These men cheated, lied, stole from me, called me names that I hadn't earned, monitored my every move, listened to my phone calls, gave me the third degree if I was at the grocery store longer than they anticipated that I should be, threw away all of my makeup, took my money to pay their bills while I worked 2, 3 or even 4 jobs at a time as they did nothing, broke nearly all of my possessions, hacked into my e-mail and went through my text messages, and one threw a shot glass (missed me, sucker) hard enough to shatter through two panes of glass and destroy the sliding glass door to the balcony. That was one cold Philadelphia winter.
The longest term of these men was the worst. Four years on and off of abuse and accusations. I was making poor life decisions in other areas as well, working in an industry that no one should ever be subjected to, and because of those decisions, he had the ammunition to tear me down. At this time in my life, I truly believed that I deserved to be tracked like an animal, questioned by every move I made (You're wearing Chapstick! Who are you trying to impress? This isn't the bread you normally buy! Who were you with at the grocery store? You were clearly distracted!). Girlfriend, that bread was on SALE, and since I was the only one payin for food in that house...you can see where this is going. I had to pick up a third job so that I could afford the name brand items. Anyway, at the time, I felt my past (and present at that particular point) justified this treatment. The insults were deserved, and he was right, I wasn't ever going to find anyone better, no one else was going to want me, not with my past. Even when I tried to remedy them, he had me convinced that they would haunt me forever (and he may be right about that). He had me convinced that *I* was the problem in our relationship, and I needed therapy.
So, I went to therapy. They didn't pick up on the autism. They shoved antidepressants down my throat (how about advising me to leave this jackwagon?), and then anti-anxiety pills, and then sleep aids for the insomnia that the anti-whatsits caused. It wasn't long before I was addicted to the sleeping pills. Anything to get me away from the verbal and emotional barrage of insults that I was receiving whenever this man was in my presence. Soon I was mixing alcohol with Nyquil, Remeron, Lunesta, Unisom and anything the doc or the shelf at Kroger could throw at me.
As it is, I finally left this guy in Tennessee and moved back home to Indy. As I was deciding to come off all of the pills, I met and began dating a very nice and wonderful man (cheers, Matt), that I wasn't ready for. I didn't wanna mess up a good thing, so I dropped my pills cold turkey, and then proceeded to royally mess up a good thing. On our second or third date, we'd gone to see a movie and had a great time and gone back to his house to chat around the kitchen table. I began to experience withdrawals sitting there. I got very sick and very confused, and I didn't know where I was. He and his mother were coworkers of mine at a job I hadn't been at for very long, in an office full of chatty, gossipy women (save for Matt), and I was having a drug withdrawal meltdown in their kitchen. Matt, of course, had no idea what was going on, as my sleeping pill addiction wasn't exactly something that I was forthcoming about upon our meeting or our first date. To him, I'm sure it looked as though I was on some sort of hard substance. Sniffing glue or something. He had to drive me home. I tried to jump out of the moving vehicle on 465. I think I thought we had reached our destination. It was one of the single most embarrassing moments of my life. After a few days of hard withdrawal (that ain't pretty. I didn't even know that my insides could BE that color.) I explained the situation to Matt, and he actually still chose to date me. Good guy, what did I tell ya? I messed it up anyway. I was still too broken from my previous situation and had it in my head that I was inferior. This man was way too good for me, and he always would be, so I left him. And I went back to Tennessee to endure another year of emotional barrage from Douchebag Supreme.
There was a night, someone's birthday party. I wasn't invited because "My friends don't like you" (they had met me once, briefly, as I was coming in from one job to get ready to go to another as they were playing a game in our living room). Anyway, DB Supreme went out and got trashed enough that his friends had to call me to come get him on their way back from some club. He had them stop the car so he could vomit and refused to get back in. The police were there when I arrived (at 4 a.m. on a work day), as he was desecrating some property with several bodily fluids, and I assured them that I would take him home and put him to bed and he wouldn't be any more trouble. He made a liar out of me. At the entrance to the apartment building, as I was punching in the gate code, he jumped out of the car and ran into the bushes and laid down there and tried to sleep. I had to drag him back to the car (where he promptly vomited in my brand new Yaris). When we got home, I put him into bed, got him a bucket and some water, and was promptly kicked out of the room and forced to sleep on the couch because "you aren't allowed to see me like this." Eff you, too, buddy, so I went downstairs. One thing led to another, and it ended with him throwing a steel-toed boot at my head. His aim was bad, and he missed, but I was all (in my head) "OMG abuse! I'm being abused! Get out! Lifetime says I'm stupid if I stay! I don't wanna be stupid!"
I did leave, and I never looked back, and I'm glad the act of violence occurred. Had it not, I would likely still be there, not recognizing all of the other behavior as abusive and still feeling as though I deserved everything he was dishing out. I moved back home for good, and I'd like to say my problems ended there, but they didn't. I was, after all, still broken, and at this point, still undiagnosed with the REAL problem. That story, however, is for another day. There is a happy ending, clearly, as all of this nonsense ends with Hacky McHackerson in there, the love of my life.
6:08 a.m. I've been typing a long time. I don't think I can sleep, though, still. I think I'll go make the Big Man's lunch for the day and get my to-do list made. Perhaps outline that research paper before the kids get up.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
NEW POSTY POST!!!! 5 MINUTES AFTER THE LAST!
This post is total spam. No lie. I am totally in love with SwagBucks and I need your referral bucks, dangit.
This is a story all about how
I paid for my honeymoon right about now
My girl Alisha put out a referral code for Swagbucks.com
Where I can earn free Southwest gift cards, somethin that rights with .com
Anyway, so I was all "yeah, right, done these get paid to read e-mail crap before and earned like 30 bucks a year, blah blah". But I clicked it anyway, and I am all excited because I have been using it for only like 5 days, for about an hour a day or something and have already earned enough Swagbucks to get prizes. I got 30 for signing up, and then someone did a referral for my little link, and I get the same number they get, and then I got like 53 for downloading the toolbar thing, and then 3 or 4 times a day, if I search for stuff on the internet using the toolbar, I earn some. They just pop up all exciting, and they're like YAY, HERE ARE 11 SWAGBUCKS FOR YOU BECAUSE YOU SEARCHED WITH OUR SEARCH ENGINE!
Also, you get one for doing a poll each day, and one for clicking through a no-obligation special offer thing, and then I got a bunch for clicking the special offer tab and downloading a useful weather app on my desktop, since I go to weather.com 389 times a day anyway, and then there are surveys that get you bucks, and then you can watch videos and get bucks. They are seriously adding up really fast, but they add up faster if you have referrals (who actually use it. I have a referral who has 0 bucks and earns me nothing, pffffff). Anyway, so here's my spammy mcspam spam post, and here's my referral link so that I can earn my honeymoon for free because Southwest flight gift cards are one of the prizes, and you can get 50 dollars off a flight for every 5200 Swagbucks. I've earned 1030 in five days, so I can earn about one gift card a month at my current rate, but our flight is 600 dollars, and if I have referrals that use the SwagBucks, then I think I can earn fast enough to get 2 or 3 a month, and then our honeymoon would be paid for and we wouldn't be so stressy (appeal to pity fallacy. Learned it in my logic class this semester.)
<a target="_top" href="http://swagbucks.com/refer/kbaum1608"><img alt="Search & Win" title="Search & Win" border="0" src="http://prodegebanners.sitegrip.com/images/swagbucks-173x63Alt5.jpg"></a>
I don't know if that will work, since I'm trying to post a banner. If it doesn't, then try clicking me.
This is a story all about how
I paid for my honeymoon right about now
My girl Alisha put out a referral code for Swagbucks.com
Where I can earn free Southwest gift cards, somethin that rights with .com
Anyway, so I was all "yeah, right, done these get paid to read e-mail crap before and earned like 30 bucks a year, blah blah". But I clicked it anyway, and I am all excited because I have been using it for only like 5 days, for about an hour a day or something and have already earned enough Swagbucks to get prizes. I got 30 for signing up, and then someone did a referral for my little link, and I get the same number they get, and then I got like 53 for downloading the toolbar thing, and then 3 or 4 times a day, if I search for stuff on the internet using the toolbar, I earn some. They just pop up all exciting, and they're like YAY, HERE ARE 11 SWAGBUCKS FOR YOU BECAUSE YOU SEARCHED WITH OUR SEARCH ENGINE!
Also, you get one for doing a poll each day, and one for clicking through a no-obligation special offer thing, and then I got a bunch for clicking the special offer tab and downloading a useful weather app on my desktop, since I go to weather.com 389 times a day anyway, and then there are surveys that get you bucks, and then you can watch videos and get bucks. They are seriously adding up really fast, but they add up faster if you have referrals (who actually use it. I have a referral who has 0 bucks and earns me nothing, pffffff). Anyway, so here's my spammy mcspam spam post, and here's my referral link so that I can earn my honeymoon for free because Southwest flight gift cards are one of the prizes, and you can get 50 dollars off a flight for every 5200 Swagbucks. I've earned 1030 in five days, so I can earn about one gift card a month at my current rate, but our flight is 600 dollars, and if I have referrals that use the SwagBucks, then I think I can earn fast enough to get 2 or 3 a month, and then our honeymoon would be paid for and we wouldn't be so stressy (appeal to pity fallacy. Learned it in my logic class this semester.)
<a target="_top" href="http://swagbucks.com/refer/kbaum1608"><img alt="Search & Win" title="Search & Win" border="0" src="http://prodegebanners.sitegrip.com/images/swagbucks-173x63Alt5.jpg"></a>
I don't know if that will work, since I'm trying to post a banner. If it doesn't, then try clicking me.
Suck it, Professor.
That's how I feel about my final project in Folklore. It's not really his fault that I'm uncomfortable giving a 15-minute presentation, however, so I'm projecting my anxiety onto someone else. I'm aware. I am a bit bummed that I spent nearly the entire semester being scared about the thing, and then I stopped being scared and figured out something that would make me comfortable presenting and......was told it wasn't relevant to the class. A week before it is due. Because I waited until the last minute to decide what I was doing for the project.
Start over, idiot. Back to the drawing board. Square one. Suck it.
Start over, idiot. Back to the drawing board. Square one. Suck it.
Superficialosity
Oscar de la Renta's new prefall 2011 collection was seen by yours truly today, and I want every single piece in the collection, but especially the coat here on the end.
That is all that this blog entails. Please to be going about your daily business.
That is all that this blog entails. Please to be going about your daily business.
Monday, December 6, 2010
Flying by the seat of that garment on my legs
Garment. What a deliciously fun word. GarmeNt, not garmit. Does not rhyme with varmit. I love language.
That's not what this blog is supposed to be about. I got beef with the system, yo. Ok, not really, just with my resources. It's real easy to find resources for stepparents. It's real easy to find resources for autism. It's dang hard to find resources for stepparents who are autistic (artistic, though, loads of hits). Most autistic parenting advice is for parents raising autistic children. Nothin out there about kids raising an autistic parent.
I want that T-mobile "My Touch" chick's dress. That pink and white one. It looks awesome.
Anyway, about them resources. They are slim pickins. I have no clue what I'm doin out here, folks. No clue. One day I feel like I'm fine, the next I'm a complete spaz. I'm not so sure what the point of this post is, just a complaint that no one like me is telling me what to do specifically (and I'm not up for the task, either). As mentioned in my previous post, I need specific direction in nearly everything that I do. I don't really have a solution.
Saturday, December 4, 2010
I hate my Asperger's. *string of expletives*
I'm a 31-year-old Aspie, which means, essentially, "perpetual child who needs to be chided and redirected in her behavior." Nothing fills me with seething rage quite like being told to shut my mouth. Yet, since I can't figure out what to say and what not to say in certain situations, it is the duty of those who love me to let me know when to shut it, due to the fact that what I say sometimes unintentionally hurts others or causes issues with my family or my professional life. So, yeah, people I love telling me to shut up is a necessary evil, for my own good, yet it makes me want to jump off a 30-story building with hatred for myself (for being a child) and rage at the person doing the shutting up (for treating me like a child). This has happened FOUR times now in the last week, and I'm so filled with anger that I'm about to move to Siberia and never interact with another human being again.
"Please don't do that, sweetie, it's dangerous and you could hurt someone." A phrase I utter to the little dudes 100 times a day, a way of redirection and chiding and getting them to stop doing something that they don't want to stop doing while using terms of endearment and a quiet tone to soften the blow of treating them like the children they are. People who know and love me redirect me in this way frequently, and it's effing infuriating. "Let's not talk about that right now, Karen." "This topic is best left for another time, Karen." "By the way, as an afterthought, let's leave this topic off the internet, Karen." What I hear is, "Shut up, Karen, you complete moron. You have no idea how to behave." Truth.
I learned all about this in my horrible, no-good, very bad social training. I had to make stupid lists of things I am allowed to talk about (green lighted), things I can only talk about with family and friends (yellow-lighted), and things I can only talk to my mom or Eric about (red lighted), and I KNOW it's necessary so that I'm not embarrassing myself and my family and can keep a job, but I effing hate it. It reminds me of this abusive d-bag I used to date who used to tell me when the conversation was over and I could stop talking. He gave me lists of conversations and matters that he considered closed and that I was never to bring up again. Arguments we'd had where I'd had no closure, people I used to know, talking about my past, etc. were big no-nos, and if I brought them up after he'd told me to banish them from my vocabulary, I'd be verbally abused for days or weeks at a time, all of my past (corrected) mistakes shoved in my face at all waking hours.
As it is, that is how my Asperger's training makes me feel. Silenced. I can't speak what's on my mind, because I can't put 2 and 2 together to figure out the effect of my actions. I can sit here and think about what I'm going to say, and go through and think to myself, "now how are my readers and/or listeners going to react to this?" and feel that what I am saying is fine, and then, somehow, some way, it isn't. Someone gets hurt or offended or blah-blah, and poof, suddenly everyone has to tell me what's appropriate.
I really should be sending these blogs to an editor for approval before posting them to make sure the content is appropriate, seeing that I'm all of 5 years old and everything.
Yeah, I'm bitter. FOD, Asperger's.
"Please don't do that, sweetie, it's dangerous and you could hurt someone." A phrase I utter to the little dudes 100 times a day, a way of redirection and chiding and getting them to stop doing something that they don't want to stop doing while using terms of endearment and a quiet tone to soften the blow of treating them like the children they are. People who know and love me redirect me in this way frequently, and it's effing infuriating. "Let's not talk about that right now, Karen." "This topic is best left for another time, Karen." "By the way, as an afterthought, let's leave this topic off the internet, Karen." What I hear is, "Shut up, Karen, you complete moron. You have no idea how to behave." Truth.
I learned all about this in my horrible, no-good, very bad social training. I had to make stupid lists of things I am allowed to talk about (green lighted), things I can only talk about with family and friends (yellow-lighted), and things I can only talk to my mom or Eric about (red lighted), and I KNOW it's necessary so that I'm not embarrassing myself and my family and can keep a job, but I effing hate it. It reminds me of this abusive d-bag I used to date who used to tell me when the conversation was over and I could stop talking. He gave me lists of conversations and matters that he considered closed and that I was never to bring up again. Arguments we'd had where I'd had no closure, people I used to know, talking about my past, etc. were big no-nos, and if I brought them up after he'd told me to banish them from my vocabulary, I'd be verbally abused for days or weeks at a time, all of my past (corrected) mistakes shoved in my face at all waking hours.
As it is, that is how my Asperger's training makes me feel. Silenced. I can't speak what's on my mind, because I can't put 2 and 2 together to figure out the effect of my actions. I can sit here and think about what I'm going to say, and go through and think to myself, "now how are my readers and/or listeners going to react to this?" and feel that what I am saying is fine, and then, somehow, some way, it isn't. Someone gets hurt or offended or blah-blah, and poof, suddenly everyone has to tell me what's appropriate.
I really should be sending these blogs to an editor for approval before posting them to make sure the content is appropriate, seeing that I'm all of 5 years old and everything.
Yeah, I'm bitter. FOD, Asperger's.
Friday, December 3, 2010
Stepmother's Bill of Rights
This is something that I snagged from other blogs, after reading Stepmonster by one Dr. Wednesday Martin, and deciding what kinda stepmother I'm gonna be (not a perfect one. Suck it, perfect parents.) I truly believe in this list. Every single point on it. I live my parenting life by it, and I won't budge a bit. So, here it is, the best advice the internets ever gave me.
- I will be part of the decision-making process in my marriage and family at all times.
- People outside the immediate family - including ex-wives, in-laws and adult children - cannot make plans that affect my life without my consent.
- I will not be responsible for the welfare of children for whom I can set no limits.
- I must be consulted about which children will live with us, when they can visit and how long they will stay.
- I will not be solely responsible for housework; chores will be distributed fairly.
- I will be consulted regarding all family financial matters.
- Others may not violate my private space at home, nor take or use my possessions without my permission.
- I will never be treated as an "outsider" in my own home.
- My husband and stepchildren must treat me with respect.
- Our marriage is our first priority, and we will address all issues together.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
So much to say...so little time
I've wanted to write a few times in the last couple of days, due to having loads to say and because I've not written in quite a while. However, I've just not had enough time to flesh out the topics that I really want to talk about. That paper from Hell, I finally finished it, and I wasn't that happy with it. It earned me a B-, barely. One point away from a C. C!!!!! I've never gotten that close to a C before. I'm not much of a happy camper about it. It ensures that I must get a perfect score on four more forum postings and my final essay exam in order to keep an A in that class, thus keeping my 4.0 GPA.
Speaking of the 4.0 and why I need it. This is one of the most difficult things about my Asperger syndrome. Finding/keeping a job. The interview does me in. I want to go to grad school. A GOOD grad school. Good grad schools require good GPAs and excellent GRE scores. They also generally require a personal interview for admittance. Fail. I will do horribly at any and all interviews. It's inevitable. Therefore, I am extremely picky about my scores on my GRE and my GPA. They have to carry me through my poor interviewing skills.
When I was in my social training, we worked hard on interviewing skills. I never realized that I had a problem interviewing. I'd never been denied a job that I interviewed for....until I tried to get a job that wasn't fast food, pizza delivery, retail, etc. Jobs that the interview doesn't really matter beyond, "Can you be here when we need you?" I began interviewing last year for professional administrative jobs at law firms and schools, trying to get out of my transcription job that I hated and into something to get my foot in the door at a law firm or a university for when I get my degree. I failed miserably at each and every one of them. I can't read what the interviewer wants from me. Facial expressions and body language are a complete mystery. Every interview is different, so even though I studied what I was supposed to say, inevitably the template in my head was all wrong for the interview I was doing. It is nearly impossible to have a successful interview when you can't read the nonverbal cues that the interviewer is giving you, believe you me.
Hence the anxiety that I will have spent 50 grand on my education only to not be able to get a job past the interview process. Not only that, dudes, I can't KEEP a job! I have been in the workforce for 16 years, since my first job at a dry cleaner at age 14. In those 16 years, I have worked at over 60 different establishments, by my last count. SIXTY! I tend to work 2 or 3 jobs at the same time, 2 when I'm in school, 3 when I'm not. I like working, and I'm a good worker. I always show up and hardly ever call out, and I do the job to the best of my ability. I work all holidays, and I come in whenever called. Generally, I'm good at what I do. Only two of my over 60 jobs lasted longer than a few months. Both of these jobs were transcription, working from home, where I never saw a single coworker and never interacted with anyone. Coincidentally, the interviews for those two jobs were either e-mail interviews or telephone interviews. I never met my boss, except on one occasion for my first transcription job, and I was fired a few weeks later with no explanation. The reasons I am fired so often make no sense to me. A lot of them have been bull. Excuses because the real reason is that I just plain can't get along with my coworkers. I'm odd, and they don't like me, so they don't want to work with me anymore. I've been accused of stealing from several employers. SEVERAL. I have never stolen anything in my life. I'm a diligent rule keeper, and I have supreme respect for the law. Furthermore, I have a very, very strong work ethic. I would never steal from anyone, let alone from an employer. At one job in Philly, we weren't allowed to keep our tips during our training period, but one girl let me have $10 of her tips anyway because I had helped her out so much during her shift, and she didn't need to do much training of me. She then told the boss that I'd stolen the 10 from her, and I was fired. After one week on the job. I worked housekeeping at a hotel once, and a woman told my boss that I'd tried to start a fight with her partner. I wasn't even allowed to deny the claim before I was sent packing. "She's worked here longer than you, so I'll believe anything she says over anything you say. Get out." In reality, I'd gone down to apologize and make peace with her partner, because her partner and I had gotten into an argument at school. My first dry cleaning job, when I was 14 years old, I was fired because I couldn't come in on my day off. I didn't have a ride.
I'm accused of things that I don't do all of the time, both big and small, and a lot of times I lose my job over it. I have no idea why I'm such an easy target for this. Half of the time, it doesn't even make sense logically for me to have done what they accuse me of doing. Once I wasn't even in the state, yet somehow I had come back from California, stolen from a coworker, and then gotten back out to California in a span of 8 hours to cover up my "crime". In all instances, I was fired. Small errors that I didn't make were pinned on me all of the time because I was the coworker that everyone liked least, so to blame it on me didn't make anyone feel bad. Even errors made on shifts I didn't work were somehow my fault. The mushrooms are bad? Oh, Karen must have left them out of the walk-in two days ago when she worked last.
All of this is because I don't fit in, and I never will, unfortunately. It's such a damn struggle all of the time, trying to fit in, and then I always do something to screw it up. Honesty isn't something that is valued in the workplace. I nearly lost my last transcription job a few times for being honest in a phone conference. At one point, my honesty even warranted a telephone call from the CEO to tell me to shut my mouth. I was fine as long as no one had to interact with me. As soon as we started having phone meetings, I was on thin ice. However, I have the hardest time knowing when it is okay to speak my mind and when it isn't.
The training was the hardest thing I've ever had to do, and keeping it in check on a daily basis is extremely difficult. Every time I mess up, I want to say "screw it. If they hate me, they hate me. I'm not changing for anyone." Then I remember that if I don't change, I can't keep a job, and then my whole family suffers. I'm destined to fail, though. It's exhausting to keep the "fake" me forward for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for the rest of my life.
Speaking of the 4.0 and why I need it. This is one of the most difficult things about my Asperger syndrome. Finding/keeping a job. The interview does me in. I want to go to grad school. A GOOD grad school. Good grad schools require good GPAs and excellent GRE scores. They also generally require a personal interview for admittance. Fail. I will do horribly at any and all interviews. It's inevitable. Therefore, I am extremely picky about my scores on my GRE and my GPA. They have to carry me through my poor interviewing skills.
When I was in my social training, we worked hard on interviewing skills. I never realized that I had a problem interviewing. I'd never been denied a job that I interviewed for....until I tried to get a job that wasn't fast food, pizza delivery, retail, etc. Jobs that the interview doesn't really matter beyond, "Can you be here when we need you?" I began interviewing last year for professional administrative jobs at law firms and schools, trying to get out of my transcription job that I hated and into something to get my foot in the door at a law firm or a university for when I get my degree. I failed miserably at each and every one of them. I can't read what the interviewer wants from me. Facial expressions and body language are a complete mystery. Every interview is different, so even though I studied what I was supposed to say, inevitably the template in my head was all wrong for the interview I was doing. It is nearly impossible to have a successful interview when you can't read the nonverbal cues that the interviewer is giving you, believe you me.
Hence the anxiety that I will have spent 50 grand on my education only to not be able to get a job past the interview process. Not only that, dudes, I can't KEEP a job! I have been in the workforce for 16 years, since my first job at a dry cleaner at age 14. In those 16 years, I have worked at over 60 different establishments, by my last count. SIXTY! I tend to work 2 or 3 jobs at the same time, 2 when I'm in school, 3 when I'm not. I like working, and I'm a good worker. I always show up and hardly ever call out, and I do the job to the best of my ability. I work all holidays, and I come in whenever called. Generally, I'm good at what I do. Only two of my over 60 jobs lasted longer than a few months. Both of these jobs were transcription, working from home, where I never saw a single coworker and never interacted with anyone. Coincidentally, the interviews for those two jobs were either e-mail interviews or telephone interviews. I never met my boss, except on one occasion for my first transcription job, and I was fired a few weeks later with no explanation. The reasons I am fired so often make no sense to me. A lot of them have been bull. Excuses because the real reason is that I just plain can't get along with my coworkers. I'm odd, and they don't like me, so they don't want to work with me anymore. I've been accused of stealing from several employers. SEVERAL. I have never stolen anything in my life. I'm a diligent rule keeper, and I have supreme respect for the law. Furthermore, I have a very, very strong work ethic. I would never steal from anyone, let alone from an employer. At one job in Philly, we weren't allowed to keep our tips during our training period, but one girl let me have $10 of her tips anyway because I had helped her out so much during her shift, and she didn't need to do much training of me. She then told the boss that I'd stolen the 10 from her, and I was fired. After one week on the job. I worked housekeeping at a hotel once, and a woman told my boss that I'd tried to start a fight with her partner. I wasn't even allowed to deny the claim before I was sent packing. "She's worked here longer than you, so I'll believe anything she says over anything you say. Get out." In reality, I'd gone down to apologize and make peace with her partner, because her partner and I had gotten into an argument at school. My first dry cleaning job, when I was 14 years old, I was fired because I couldn't come in on my day off. I didn't have a ride.
I'm accused of things that I don't do all of the time, both big and small, and a lot of times I lose my job over it. I have no idea why I'm such an easy target for this. Half of the time, it doesn't even make sense logically for me to have done what they accuse me of doing. Once I wasn't even in the state, yet somehow I had come back from California, stolen from a coworker, and then gotten back out to California in a span of 8 hours to cover up my "crime". In all instances, I was fired. Small errors that I didn't make were pinned on me all of the time because I was the coworker that everyone liked least, so to blame it on me didn't make anyone feel bad. Even errors made on shifts I didn't work were somehow my fault. The mushrooms are bad? Oh, Karen must have left them out of the walk-in two days ago when she worked last.
All of this is because I don't fit in, and I never will, unfortunately. It's such a damn struggle all of the time, trying to fit in, and then I always do something to screw it up. Honesty isn't something that is valued in the workplace. I nearly lost my last transcription job a few times for being honest in a phone conference. At one point, my honesty even warranted a telephone call from the CEO to tell me to shut my mouth. I was fine as long as no one had to interact with me. As soon as we started having phone meetings, I was on thin ice. However, I have the hardest time knowing when it is okay to speak my mind and when it isn't.
The training was the hardest thing I've ever had to do, and keeping it in check on a daily basis is extremely difficult. Every time I mess up, I want to say "screw it. If they hate me, they hate me. I'm not changing for anyone." Then I remember that if I don't change, I can't keep a job, and then my whole family suffers. I'm destined to fail, though. It's exhausting to keep the "fake" me forward for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for the rest of my life.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Poor Milo
The little dudes have been obsessed with pets for the last two days. Big Man asked for a hamster, after watching Bolt several times over the course of a week. Contemplating when he is 7. If he can take care of Milo, the cat, by himself for a while to prove responsibility.
Big Man usually feeds Milo in the morning. This morning, it was a fight. Little Man wanted to feed him. The dudes yelled at one another. I was loading the car while Eric handled the scuffle, so I don't know the outcome. Halfway to preschool, Little Man says, "Karen, I don't know why really, but it smells like cat food back here." There's cat food all over the floor of my car. Wonder how THAT happened?
As it is, 9 hours later, Milo is meowing at me as if he's hungry, so I decided to check to see that at least one of the dudes fed him this morning.
His bowl was full of Chex Mix.
Big Man usually feeds Milo in the morning. This morning, it was a fight. Little Man wanted to feed him. The dudes yelled at one another. I was loading the car while Eric handled the scuffle, so I don't know the outcome. Halfway to preschool, Little Man says, "Karen, I don't know why really, but it smells like cat food back here." There's cat food all over the floor of my car. Wonder how THAT happened?
As it is, 9 hours later, Milo is meowing at me as if he's hungry, so I decided to check to see that at least one of the dudes fed him this morning.
His bowl was full of Chex Mix.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Random Thoughts
Tid-bits, as it were. I figured out my wedding hair. This is it:
My mom is going to make my veil. I like the flower on top, but I think I'm going to try to find something sparkly instead. The veil will likely be one that tucks under the updo and comes down. I know I don't want a tiara or anything. I'm not really the princess type. (Stop laughing).
As I do tons of wedding prep today, and as Little Man vacuums four rooms of the house, even moving furniture, of his own accord!, I am reminded how lucky I am to be marrying Eric and how lucky I am to be in the stepparenting role I'm in. I love these kids, and they love me back. I met my little dudes when they were 1 and 3, so young enough to learn to trust me through their high developing phases. This family is the whole package, though. You marry your in-laws, and I really love my in-laws. Eric's sisters, their respective husbands (heck, even one of them's ex-husband) and all 7 of Eric's nieces and nephews are wonderful people. I'm proud to be changing my name and becoming a part of the family. Don't get me wrong, I'll miss my old name. Baum is a pretty rad name, as where Kachelmeyer is....uh.....not Baum. Seriously, who NEEDS so many damn letters?! Anyway, at least I'm not taking a last name of a family I'm not proud to be a part of. I'm lucky.
It's time to enroll in classes for school! YAY! Also, what a hassle. I need five classes next semester since I can't take two over the summer, as there's this little thing about a wedding next summer. I got my first four just fine, Intro to Human Geography, Psychology as a Biological Science, Intro to International Relations and Middle Eastern Politics. This fifth class is giving me HEADACHES. I had signed up for The Bible, and then read more about it, and it's not a good fit for me. It's a 100 level course with apparently several subjective papers, and every review on the professor is not good, and not just a couple of reviews, either, two dozen. All saying she grades harshly on papers, and that the papers have nothing to do with the material, blah blah, so I ruled that one out. I need another online class, due to the little dudes' school schedules. I can only go to campus two days a week, and as it is, I'll be in my International Relations class Tues and Thurs from 10:30 to 11:45 while Little Man is at preschool, so those days, I'll drive 45 minutes to Greenwood to drop him off, and then have to get downtown for class, and then back to Greenwood to pick him up and then back home, and on Thursdays, I'll have another class on campus at 6 p.m., so get home, get Big Man off the bus, get his homework done and a snack, get the kitchen cleaned up and head to school right as Eric gets home. Busy. So, online are my only options. I tried three different math classes and had trouble enrolling in all of them. Didn't have the prerequisites or the prereqs for the prereqs. Some stupid thing where I picked the wrong Algebra class FIRST semester of my freshman year. *sigh* I resigned myself to only having four classes and then having to wait an extra semester to graduate. Then, yesterday, a bunch of new online self-study classes added, and one of them works for me. So, I went to enroll and was told I need permission from so-and-so. I emailed for permission, and he just emailed me back that I need permission from my advisor, too, and I better hurry because there are only 4 spots left in the class. GAH! For serious?
Also, the wedding is going to be AWESOOOOOME. I'm putting together a flash mob for it. Flippin sweet, I tell you. Flash mobs make me happy. I could YouTube them all day, but then I'd be put in jail for neglect, as who knows what Little Man would be up to while I'm doing that.
My mom is going to make my veil. I like the flower on top, but I think I'm going to try to find something sparkly instead. The veil will likely be one that tucks under the updo and comes down. I know I don't want a tiara or anything. I'm not really the princess type. (Stop laughing).
As I do tons of wedding prep today, and as Little Man vacuums four rooms of the house, even moving furniture, of his own accord!, I am reminded how lucky I am to be marrying Eric and how lucky I am to be in the stepparenting role I'm in. I love these kids, and they love me back. I met my little dudes when they were 1 and 3, so young enough to learn to trust me through their high developing phases. This family is the whole package, though. You marry your in-laws, and I really love my in-laws. Eric's sisters, their respective husbands (heck, even one of them's ex-husband) and all 7 of Eric's nieces and nephews are wonderful people. I'm proud to be changing my name and becoming a part of the family. Don't get me wrong, I'll miss my old name. Baum is a pretty rad name, as where Kachelmeyer is....uh.....not Baum. Seriously, who NEEDS so many damn letters?! Anyway, at least I'm not taking a last name of a family I'm not proud to be a part of. I'm lucky.
It's time to enroll in classes for school! YAY! Also, what a hassle. I need five classes next semester since I can't take two over the summer, as there's this little thing about a wedding next summer. I got my first four just fine, Intro to Human Geography, Psychology as a Biological Science, Intro to International Relations and Middle Eastern Politics. This fifth class is giving me HEADACHES. I had signed up for The Bible, and then read more about it, and it's not a good fit for me. It's a 100 level course with apparently several subjective papers, and every review on the professor is not good, and not just a couple of reviews, either, two dozen. All saying she grades harshly on papers, and that the papers have nothing to do with the material, blah blah, so I ruled that one out. I need another online class, due to the little dudes' school schedules. I can only go to campus two days a week, and as it is, I'll be in my International Relations class Tues and Thurs from 10:30 to 11:45 while Little Man is at preschool, so those days, I'll drive 45 minutes to Greenwood to drop him off, and then have to get downtown for class, and then back to Greenwood to pick him up and then back home, and on Thursdays, I'll have another class on campus at 6 p.m., so get home, get Big Man off the bus, get his homework done and a snack, get the kitchen cleaned up and head to school right as Eric gets home. Busy. So, online are my only options. I tried three different math classes and had trouble enrolling in all of them. Didn't have the prerequisites or the prereqs for the prereqs. Some stupid thing where I picked the wrong Algebra class FIRST semester of my freshman year. *sigh* I resigned myself to only having four classes and then having to wait an extra semester to graduate. Then, yesterday, a bunch of new online self-study classes added, and one of them works for me. So, I went to enroll and was told I need permission from so-and-so. I emailed for permission, and he just emailed me back that I need permission from my advisor, too, and I better hurry because there are only 4 spots left in the class. GAH! For serious?
Also, the wedding is going to be AWESOOOOOME. I'm putting together a flash mob for it. Flippin sweet, I tell you. Flash mobs make me happy. I could YouTube them all day, but then I'd be put in jail for neglect, as who knows what Little Man would be up to while I'm doing that.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Do these pants make my butt look big?
No. They don't. It's my butt that makes my butt look big. I'm gaining weight. Rapidly. I've upped two jeans sizes in the last two months, and today, my bigger jeans were hard to button. I've gotta muffin top all around them, and they aren't even low-rise jeans. *sigh*
Here's the thing about my eating habits. They're bad, but they're not THAT bad. There are things that I eat a LOT, though. Macaroni and cheese, Kraft brand, powdered cheese only, no funny shapes. I eat this about twice a week, but dudes! I no longer eat the WHOLE box now that I have to share with two little dudes! Also, I eat a lot of A1 sauce. I don't know what that has to do with anything. I eat those Lipton butter noodles and then dump A1 sauce in them. I can't eat them any other way without developing a major 'tude. Eric tried to put some corn in there once to make it semi-healthy, and let me tell you, having one of the adults at the table crying through dinner is a real mood killer. I had to pick out every little piece of corn first before I could enjoy my noodles. It was a disastah!
Also, I will never say "disaster" properly again, now that I know how Beyonce says it. "Disastah". She is so cool.
As it is, I work out, and I do eat smaller portions than I used to, so why in the effin eff am I GAINING weight? Girlfriend rides ten miles on a bike two or three times a week! I have killer calves, though. They are not a disastah. But my poor butt and stomach. All I gotta say is that I'm glad Eric likes cottage cheese. I think this has something to do with aging. I really have changed my eating and exercise habits for the BETTER, not the worse, so I have no clue what is going on.
/Blog
Here's the thing about my eating habits. They're bad, but they're not THAT bad. There are things that I eat a LOT, though. Macaroni and cheese, Kraft brand, powdered cheese only, no funny shapes. I eat this about twice a week, but dudes! I no longer eat the WHOLE box now that I have to share with two little dudes! Also, I eat a lot of A1 sauce. I don't know what that has to do with anything. I eat those Lipton butter noodles and then dump A1 sauce in them. I can't eat them any other way without developing a major 'tude. Eric tried to put some corn in there once to make it semi-healthy, and let me tell you, having one of the adults at the table crying through dinner is a real mood killer. I had to pick out every little piece of corn first before I could enjoy my noodles. It was a disastah!
Also, I will never say "disaster" properly again, now that I know how Beyonce says it. "Disastah". She is so cool.
As it is, I work out, and I do eat smaller portions than I used to, so why in the effin eff am I GAINING weight? Girlfriend rides ten miles on a bike two or three times a week! I have killer calves, though. They are not a disastah. But my poor butt and stomach. All I gotta say is that I'm glad Eric likes cottage cheese. I think this has something to do with aging. I really have changed my eating and exercise habits for the BETTER, not the worse, so I have no clue what is going on.
/Blog
Thursday, November 11, 2010
The Paper from Hades
On Sunday, my Children's Literature instructor posted the directions for our second paper of the semester. Sounds simple, yes? Here's the original question.
Compare how another version of a book we have read could lead the reader to interpret the story differently. For example: How does the book version of The Wizard of Oz differ from the movie version, and how would a reader interpret the story differently?
This seems like a simple enough question. I then proceeded to make it much harder than it should be. The rest of my class is writing about the above Wizard of Oz book/movie comparison. I chose, instead, to compare the political implications of The Wizard of Oz with the political implications of Wicked.
It's not going well. I'm supposed to be focusing on a small set of differences that leads to a different interpretation. However, what I chose IS the different interpretation, NOT a version of the same story. There are so many differences that I am overwhelmed.
Yesterday, I had my required chat with three of my classmates to discuss our working theses and help one another out. I was having trouble with writing my initial thesis and decided to wait to see what my classmates had to say about it and if their insights could help me. I explained my thesis to this response. "We've never read Wicked." GAH! No help at all. I sat in silence for hours, finally writing something that I thought was brilliant. I posted it in my forums for my classmates to review. They gave me rave reviews on my interesting thesis and thoughts that they couldn't wait to read the paper. I started writing and got about halfway done with the paper.
My teacher graded my working thesis and told me it sucked. Start over. I'm on the wrong track. *sigh* Back to square one. I may go insane.
Compare how another version of a book we have read could lead the reader to interpret the story differently. For example: How does the book version of The Wizard of Oz differ from the movie version, and how would a reader interpret the story differently?
This seems like a simple enough question. I then proceeded to make it much harder than it should be. The rest of my class is writing about the above Wizard of Oz book/movie comparison. I chose, instead, to compare the political implications of The Wizard of Oz with the political implications of Wicked.
It's not going well. I'm supposed to be focusing on a small set of differences that leads to a different interpretation. However, what I chose IS the different interpretation, NOT a version of the same story. There are so many differences that I am overwhelmed.
Yesterday, I had my required chat with three of my classmates to discuss our working theses and help one another out. I was having trouble with writing my initial thesis and decided to wait to see what my classmates had to say about it and if their insights could help me. I explained my thesis to this response. "We've never read Wicked." GAH! No help at all. I sat in silence for hours, finally writing something that I thought was brilliant. I posted it in my forums for my classmates to review. They gave me rave reviews on my interesting thesis and thoughts that they couldn't wait to read the paper. I started writing and got about halfway done with the paper.
My teacher graded my working thesis and told me it sucked. Start over. I'm on the wrong track. *sigh* Back to square one. I may go insane.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Nebraska
They have this law in Nebraska, where you can take any child up to age 18 and just drop them off at a hospital or fire station and just drive away, no questions asked. I nearly took advantage of this law today, but I wouldn't have been able to stand the Little Man for that long of a drive.
There are days, like today, where I feel that I wasn't cut out for this. I'm inhumane, a monster, for the way I feel and the mean things I say in my head to this defenseless (HA!), innocent (HA! HA!) 4-year-old child. How a simple thing like "Please change your shirt, Little Man" can turn into a 3-1/2 hour ordeal that has him screaming, biting, pinching, scratching, punching, spitting and, yes, throwing shoes at my head while driving. "Please change your shirt" was uttered, by me, the supposed adult, at 7:50 this morning. LM was due at school at 9. He didn't make it. He was still shirtless and shoeless by the time I carried him like a sack of potatoes to the car (he refused to walk there and did that whole "I'm 4 and will FLING myself to the floor and scream instead of using my legs and walking, and you will want to throw me out of a window for it!" I didn't defenestrate him. I picked him up over my shoulder half-naked and put him in the car of my own accord, his shirt and shoes and jacket that I had been begging him to put on for the last hour, thrown in with him. He complained that he was cold. YA THINK?!
LM's time out schedule goes like this. "LM, I need you to sit in the chair and be quiet for 4 minutes." He'll then stare at you or fling himself to the ground or say "No!", so we start counting. Five minutes, 6 minutes, 7 minutes, until he gets in the chair. When he's quiet, his time starts. If he is quiet for 3 minutes and then screams, his time starts over, etc. He is in full control of how long he gets to sit in the time out chair. I got up to 10 minutes this morning and told him if I had to count any more minutes, he wasn't going to school. He made me count up, so he didn't go to school. Unfortunately, it was his turn with the snack bag, so I had to drive the 45 minutes to drop it off anyway, or the rest of the class wouldn't have snacks. He screamed and punched windows and spit all of the way there. Dudes...he was COLD. Apparently not cold enough to get dressed. We arrived in the YMCA car rider line with still a half-naked Little Man. As we are pulling up, he puts his shirt and shoes and socks on in record time.....seriously, 10 seconds for all 5 items was all he needed. After two hours of screaming "I CAN'T!!!!!!" at me all morning. He assumed that since he'd done what I asked him to do, that I would now allow him to go to school.
He assumed wrong.
We dropped off the snack bag, and LM had to tell his teacher he was grounded and not allowed at school today. I then pulled into the parking lot to plan the rest of my day (routine.shattered.) I had stuff to do. LM was screaming and punching things again. I told him he was on my time now, not his. I had stuff to do, and instead of playing with is friends at school, he'd be doing my stuff. He was not happy. He took his shoes off and threw one at my head. I removed his blankie from his possession. I planned my route on my phone, while he screamed that he wanted to go home NOW! Instead, we went to the glasses shop, where he went in in his socks. Complaining about freezing feet. I then had to go to the library. On the way there, LM hit me in the face with a sock. I told him when we got home, he had lost all toy privileges. He spit in my face. I pulled into Marsh, and walked him, barefoot, past tons of "you are a monster" glares from the perfect parents, while he purchased a baby spoon and a bottle of white vinegar, his punishment for spitting. I then fed him a teaspoon of vinegar in public. Oh, the GLARES, dudes....the glares. I do what I can to entertain the public, you know.
He didn't spit again.
We went to the library. He was again barefoot. I wasn't about to hand back to him his projectiles. He coulda killed us both throwing crap at me while driving.
On my way to my mom's, I smelled gasoline, and then fire. My car was on fire! My first thought "Get Little Man out. NOW! I am about to die, but get him OUT!"
My car wasn't on fire, someone else's was, nearby, though I never saw whose. It was, however, a relief to know that, no matter how angry I am at this tiny person, no matter what, I would die for him. Flat out. I'm not a monster. I'm a mother.
There are days, like today, where I feel that I wasn't cut out for this. I'm inhumane, a monster, for the way I feel and the mean things I say in my head to this defenseless (HA!), innocent (HA! HA!) 4-year-old child. How a simple thing like "Please change your shirt, Little Man" can turn into a 3-1/2 hour ordeal that has him screaming, biting, pinching, scratching, punching, spitting and, yes, throwing shoes at my head while driving. "Please change your shirt" was uttered, by me, the supposed adult, at 7:50 this morning. LM was due at school at 9. He didn't make it. He was still shirtless and shoeless by the time I carried him like a sack of potatoes to the car (he refused to walk there and did that whole "I'm 4 and will FLING myself to the floor and scream instead of using my legs and walking, and you will want to throw me out of a window for it!" I didn't defenestrate him. I picked him up over my shoulder half-naked and put him in the car of my own accord, his shirt and shoes and jacket that I had been begging him to put on for the last hour, thrown in with him. He complained that he was cold. YA THINK?!
LM's time out schedule goes like this. "LM, I need you to sit in the chair and be quiet for 4 minutes." He'll then stare at you or fling himself to the ground or say "No!", so we start counting. Five minutes, 6 minutes, 7 minutes, until he gets in the chair. When he's quiet, his time starts. If he is quiet for 3 minutes and then screams, his time starts over, etc. He is in full control of how long he gets to sit in the time out chair. I got up to 10 minutes this morning and told him if I had to count any more minutes, he wasn't going to school. He made me count up, so he didn't go to school. Unfortunately, it was his turn with the snack bag, so I had to drive the 45 minutes to drop it off anyway, or the rest of the class wouldn't have snacks. He screamed and punched windows and spit all of the way there. Dudes...he was COLD. Apparently not cold enough to get dressed. We arrived in the YMCA car rider line with still a half-naked Little Man. As we are pulling up, he puts his shirt and shoes and socks on in record time.....seriously, 10 seconds for all 5 items was all he needed. After two hours of screaming "I CAN'T!!!!!!" at me all morning. He assumed that since he'd done what I asked him to do, that I would now allow him to go to school.
He assumed wrong.
We dropped off the snack bag, and LM had to tell his teacher he was grounded and not allowed at school today. I then pulled into the parking lot to plan the rest of my day (routine.shattered.) I had stuff to do. LM was screaming and punching things again. I told him he was on my time now, not his. I had stuff to do, and instead of playing with is friends at school, he'd be doing my stuff. He was not happy. He took his shoes off and threw one at my head. I removed his blankie from his possession. I planned my route on my phone, while he screamed that he wanted to go home NOW! Instead, we went to the glasses shop, where he went in in his socks. Complaining about freezing feet. I then had to go to the library. On the way there, LM hit me in the face with a sock. I told him when we got home, he had lost all toy privileges. He spit in my face. I pulled into Marsh, and walked him, barefoot, past tons of "you are a monster" glares from the perfect parents, while he purchased a baby spoon and a bottle of white vinegar, his punishment for spitting. I then fed him a teaspoon of vinegar in public. Oh, the GLARES, dudes....the glares. I do what I can to entertain the public, you know.
He didn't spit again.
We went to the library. He was again barefoot. I wasn't about to hand back to him his projectiles. He coulda killed us both throwing crap at me while driving.
On my way to my mom's, I smelled gasoline, and then fire. My car was on fire! My first thought "Get Little Man out. NOW! I am about to die, but get him OUT!"
My car wasn't on fire, someone else's was, nearby, though I never saw whose. It was, however, a relief to know that, no matter how angry I am at this tiny person, no matter what, I would die for him. Flat out. I'm not a monster. I'm a mother.
Friday, November 5, 2010
Such An Aquitard
I think of all of these profound topics that I want to write about, and then the more I think about them, the more aquitarded they seem. Or, I think of the content such a blog would entail, and it seems inappropriate. This IS my personal blog, but it's not a PRIVATE blog, know what I mean? The Internet has gotten me in trouble before. I don't wanna go about embarrassing my future family.
Anyway, today's post is about the word "retarded". Just before my diagnosis, I was asking around a bit about personality traits that people see in me. Wondering what was wrong with me, basically. I asked a bunch of strangers and some not so strangers. During the course of this inquiry, someone I went to elementary school with piped up. We hadn't spoken in years, and I really don't have any idea why we are on one another's FB list after all this time. Half the people that friend requested me never even really spoke to me in school. Anyway, she told me that, pretty much, all of the kids in my elementary school thought I was retarded. I acted strangely. Very strangely. No one batted an eye because they thought I was mentally handicapped. I asked my mother about this later, and it turns out, no one even told her about my strange behavior at school. I guess they assumed she KNEW she had a retarded daughter. It was one of those things where the kids laughed at me behind my back and pretended to like me to my face because "it's just so sad" and the adults (teachers/administrators, etc.) allowed me to act like a fool in front of everyone because they felt it would be discriminatory to retarded people to stop me. My teachers weren't trained to deal with retarded kids.
If I was retarded, wouldn't I have been in the specials class? Is that what threw everyone off? I KNOW the kids in the specials class were redirected in their behaviors. I saw it happen. So, why wasn't I? My theory, because I didn't look like the kids in the specials class. I have no Downs features, no physical slowness to develop (until puberty, Lawd, I was a late bloomer). I had no speech delays or any intellectual issues. My mother told me she had me tested when I was 6. I don't remember why she said, but I think it had something to do with the school wanting me to skip first grade due to my reading ability. As it was, she said I tested into a freshman-level reading class. I didn't skip a grade. My social skills wouldn't have handled it.
In light of my diagnosis, though, the question has come up. Am I, or am I not, actually retarded? I've been called "retard" by people my entire life, people that meant to insult me, and of course I got offended. That was the purpose of using the word. But, I find that I feel a little twinge of pain when people use the word "retard" in general conversation. Not offense, exactly, but actual hurt. Even if the label isn't directed at me or is being self-deprecating. Last night, in Geology, we were learning about aquifers and aquitards, and during the group lab, we weren't doing so hot, and my team members kept saying, "We are being such aquitards." Funny, right? Little play on words in Geology. As it was, I felt hurt by it and more than a little embarrassed for being hurt by it.
Am I retarded? I don't know. I guess in a strict sense of the term, yes. My social development was, in fact, retarded.
I didn't go to therapy for this, I went to training. It felt like torture. I always left the sessions feeling worse than when I went in. Like I was trying to force myself to be something I'm not. I still am. Every time I want to say "screw it" I remember that no one that I interact with on a professional basis (or educational) can stand me. If I can't overcome this, to put it simply, I can't keep a job. That's the topic for another post. My 3 million jobs, none of which lasted very long (except for one, and I have a very good idea of why).
Anyway, today's post is about the word "retarded". Just before my diagnosis, I was asking around a bit about personality traits that people see in me. Wondering what was wrong with me, basically. I asked a bunch of strangers and some not so strangers. During the course of this inquiry, someone I went to elementary school with piped up. We hadn't spoken in years, and I really don't have any idea why we are on one another's FB list after all this time. Half the people that friend requested me never even really spoke to me in school. Anyway, she told me that, pretty much, all of the kids in my elementary school thought I was retarded. I acted strangely. Very strangely. No one batted an eye because they thought I was mentally handicapped. I asked my mother about this later, and it turns out, no one even told her about my strange behavior at school. I guess they assumed she KNEW she had a retarded daughter. It was one of those things where the kids laughed at me behind my back and pretended to like me to my face because "it's just so sad" and the adults (teachers/administrators, etc.) allowed me to act like a fool in front of everyone because they felt it would be discriminatory to retarded people to stop me. My teachers weren't trained to deal with retarded kids.
If I was retarded, wouldn't I have been in the specials class? Is that what threw everyone off? I KNOW the kids in the specials class were redirected in their behaviors. I saw it happen. So, why wasn't I? My theory, because I didn't look like the kids in the specials class. I have no Downs features, no physical slowness to develop (until puberty, Lawd, I was a late bloomer). I had no speech delays or any intellectual issues. My mother told me she had me tested when I was 6. I don't remember why she said, but I think it had something to do with the school wanting me to skip first grade due to my reading ability. As it was, she said I tested into a freshman-level reading class. I didn't skip a grade. My social skills wouldn't have handled it.
In light of my diagnosis, though, the question has come up. Am I, or am I not, actually retarded? I've been called "retard" by people my entire life, people that meant to insult me, and of course I got offended. That was the purpose of using the word. But, I find that I feel a little twinge of pain when people use the word "retard" in general conversation. Not offense, exactly, but actual hurt. Even if the label isn't directed at me or is being self-deprecating. Last night, in Geology, we were learning about aquifers and aquitards, and during the group lab, we weren't doing so hot, and my team members kept saying, "We are being such aquitards." Funny, right? Little play on words in Geology. As it was, I felt hurt by it and more than a little embarrassed for being hurt by it.
Am I retarded? I don't know. I guess in a strict sense of the term, yes. My social development was, in fact, retarded.
I didn't go to therapy for this, I went to training. It felt like torture. I always left the sessions feeling worse than when I went in. Like I was trying to force myself to be something I'm not. I still am. Every time I want to say "screw it" I remember that no one that I interact with on a professional basis (or educational) can stand me. If I can't overcome this, to put it simply, I can't keep a job. That's the topic for another post. My 3 million jobs, none of which lasted very long (except for one, and I have a very good idea of why).
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Downtown Stressland. One ticket, please, express line.
Today has been a FLURRY of homework and insanity. INSANITY!!! I had about 30 bazillion hilarious things to write about, but zero is how many I can recall. I've just spent about 3 hours of my life working on a single logic problem that I finally finished, but I'm not quite sure that it's right. I'll lose sleep over this, and I know it. Perhaps I should purchase my ticket to Tylenol PMville instead of Stressland.
As it is, the dreaded ROUTINE has been totally screwed for about, oh four weeks in a row now, and today, I decided I HAVE to get back to it. Have.to. I'm driving my family bananas with my whining and ridiculousness. I wake up in the morning angry with the kids because I haven't slept well in weeks because stuff went insane.
My schedule is supposed to go like this: Monday, I have off. The kids' mom takes the Little Man for the day while the Big Man is in school and Eric is at work, and I have 8 GLOOORIOUS hours to myself between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. This is the time I schedule all of my appointments, wander the local coffee shops, do all the nitty-gritty homework that I need absolute silence for and clean the house in my laundry-day underpants with Lady Gaga blaring from the speakers. Aaah, Monday. The best day of the week.
Tuesdays the Little Man goes to school about 45 minutes away at the YMCA for 4 hours. These days, I drop him off and stay to work out and shower. Their water pressure there is to.die. Then I sit in the quiet part at the Y, have my lunch and do homework until it's time to get him. It's pretty stress free, and I feel great after working out. Lately, though, the Big Man had two weeks of fall break off from school, so I had to figure stuff out to do with him instead. Routine shattered. Then, the Tuesday he went back to school, I was all excited to get back to it, but then car accident supreme happened. This is an amusing story. So, I backed my car into the garage door. Seriously. I gotta be some sorta flipping idiot. Anyway, one evening I was craving mimosas and action flicks, so I rushed outta the house to hit up the Meijer for some cheap champagne and some OJ. I opened the garage door, got in the car, started to back out, and BAM! The door was on its way back down! What the French, Toast?!?! Needless to say, I didn't get my mimosas. I stayed out there for a while, staring at the mess of a garage door, mouth agape wondering "Now, how in the heck am I gonna go inside to Eric and 'splain THIS?" "So, honey? darlin? gorgeous, GORGEOUS man? Well, we've lived here for a while now, and...uh...you remember the garage? How the door used to, like, look all nice and straight and, like, close and stuff? Well, it doesn't anymore..." Anyway, I took the car to the body shop to have the bumper repainted. I picked it up at 5 p.m. on a Monday. The first time I drove it was 8 a.m. the next morning when I took the Little Man to school at the YMCA, all happy to have my car back and my routine restored. So, we park, and this other dude parks next to me and proceeds to SLAM HIS DOOR INTO MY CAR AND WALK AWAY! I jumped out and checked, and, dudes, I kid you not, there is a 12 inch by 4 inch scratch of RED PAINT down my door. The DAY AFTER I picked it up from the body shop.
And seriously, this story gets so much better.
So, I chase the guy into the YMCA, yeah? He says, "Oh, I didn't realize I hit it." PFFFF. What he didn't REALIZE is that we were IN THE CAR when he hit it, so he got caught. Anyway, so he says he has this son-in-law, and he owns a body shop in Whiteland, so I just need to go down there, and he gives me directions and his insurance information and sends me on my way. I'm livid. ROUTINE, DUDE! ROUTINE!!!!!! So, I put Jim Bob's Whiteland Body Shop in my GPS and head on down 31 the way Duder McDuderson tells me to go. He says, "Go to the Whiteland stop light and turn left." I pull up to a light that looks like it's in Whiteland, and my GPS tells me to go RIGHT. WTF? So, I turn left anyway, like the guy says, and I look back at the street sign to make sure this is Main St. and look to the side to see if I see Jim's and BAM! Dudes.....I got in a car accident LOOKING for the body shop, the DAY AFTER I got it out of the body shop. Thank the good Lord I didn't hurt the lady in front of me, at least not physically. By the time we both got out of the car, I was in full-on Aspie meltdown mode, and she probably thought I was some sort of lunatic escaped from the local institution. No wonder she wanted to high-tail it out of there. I was crying and begging her not to be hurt. I swear to you, I hit her going about 7.5 miles an hour in my tiny Yaris. My fiberglass front bumper has a couple of holes in it, but her 1980's steel boat bumper didn't have a ding. Still, I was positive I had broken her neck with my carelessness and kept crying and squealing like an idiot. She just wanted to get her Hardee's on and split ASAP.
As it was, I pulled over to recheck my directions and calm down and throw my tantrum in the silence of my own car. I wasn't even on the right street. This was not Main St. at all. I decided old Silver Sneakers from the YMCA was wrong, and I'd follow my GPS. All the way to Bargersville (hint: NOT in Whiteland) during some freak October tornado storm. Who in the crap KNOWS where I ended up. Some Bargersville government building with the same street address (different town GOOGLE MAPS!) of Jim's Body Shop. I'm lost, and it's freakin storming like a mofo, tornado sirens are going off, and my routine is SO EFFED, dudes. I'm hysterical by this time. As it is, I found my way back to 31, and, oh, look....there's Main St. In Whiteland. I find my way to Jim's, and wouldn't you know it? Jim don't live there no mo'. The sign's upside down and the building's vacant. My fist nearly went through ole' Jim's front window.
I stopped by the Golden Chassis Body Shop in Greenwood on my way back to the Y after my THREE-HOUR adventure. They were able to wipe the red paint off with a little solvent, and you can't even tell anyone ever hit me with their door. Too bad I now have three gaping holes in my front bumper.
Man, is this blog a novel or what? It may turn into one. Like, a real one. I still haven't decided. As it is, Wednesday's routine involves making the shopping list and organizing all of my coupons for tomorrow's grocery run, so I'm gonna end the blog and do that.
As it is, the dreaded ROUTINE has been totally screwed for about, oh four weeks in a row now, and today, I decided I HAVE to get back to it. Have.to. I'm driving my family bananas with my whining and ridiculousness. I wake up in the morning angry with the kids because I haven't slept well in weeks because stuff went insane.
My schedule is supposed to go like this: Monday, I have off. The kids' mom takes the Little Man for the day while the Big Man is in school and Eric is at work, and I have 8 GLOOORIOUS hours to myself between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. This is the time I schedule all of my appointments, wander the local coffee shops, do all the nitty-gritty homework that I need absolute silence for and clean the house in my laundry-day underpants with Lady Gaga blaring from the speakers. Aaah, Monday. The best day of the week.
Tuesdays the Little Man goes to school about 45 minutes away at the YMCA for 4 hours. These days, I drop him off and stay to work out and shower. Their water pressure there is to.die. Then I sit in the quiet part at the Y, have my lunch and do homework until it's time to get him. It's pretty stress free, and I feel great after working out. Lately, though, the Big Man had two weeks of fall break off from school, so I had to figure stuff out to do with him instead. Routine shattered. Then, the Tuesday he went back to school, I was all excited to get back to it, but then car accident supreme happened. This is an amusing story. So, I backed my car into the garage door. Seriously. I gotta be some sorta flipping idiot. Anyway, one evening I was craving mimosas and action flicks, so I rushed outta the house to hit up the Meijer for some cheap champagne and some OJ. I opened the garage door, got in the car, started to back out, and BAM! The door was on its way back down! What the French, Toast?!?! Needless to say, I didn't get my mimosas. I stayed out there for a while, staring at the mess of a garage door, mouth agape wondering "Now, how in the heck am I gonna go inside to Eric and 'splain THIS?" "So, honey? darlin? gorgeous, GORGEOUS man? Well, we've lived here for a while now, and...uh...you remember the garage? How the door used to, like, look all nice and straight and, like, close and stuff? Well, it doesn't anymore..." Anyway, I took the car to the body shop to have the bumper repainted. I picked it up at 5 p.m. on a Monday. The first time I drove it was 8 a.m. the next morning when I took the Little Man to school at the YMCA, all happy to have my car back and my routine restored. So, we park, and this other dude parks next to me and proceeds to SLAM HIS DOOR INTO MY CAR AND WALK AWAY! I jumped out and checked, and, dudes, I kid you not, there is a 12 inch by 4 inch scratch of RED PAINT down my door. The DAY AFTER I picked it up from the body shop.
And seriously, this story gets so much better.
So, I chase the guy into the YMCA, yeah? He says, "Oh, I didn't realize I hit it." PFFFF. What he didn't REALIZE is that we were IN THE CAR when he hit it, so he got caught. Anyway, so he says he has this son-in-law, and he owns a body shop in Whiteland, so I just need to go down there, and he gives me directions and his insurance information and sends me on my way. I'm livid. ROUTINE, DUDE! ROUTINE!!!!!! So, I put Jim Bob's Whiteland Body Shop in my GPS and head on down 31 the way Duder McDuderson tells me to go. He says, "Go to the Whiteland stop light and turn left." I pull up to a light that looks like it's in Whiteland, and my GPS tells me to go RIGHT. WTF? So, I turn left anyway, like the guy says, and I look back at the street sign to make sure this is Main St. and look to the side to see if I see Jim's and BAM! Dudes.....I got in a car accident LOOKING for the body shop, the DAY AFTER I got it out of the body shop. Thank the good Lord I didn't hurt the lady in front of me, at least not physically. By the time we both got out of the car, I was in full-on Aspie meltdown mode, and she probably thought I was some sort of lunatic escaped from the local institution. No wonder she wanted to high-tail it out of there. I was crying and begging her not to be hurt. I swear to you, I hit her going about 7.5 miles an hour in my tiny Yaris. My fiberglass front bumper has a couple of holes in it, but her 1980's steel boat bumper didn't have a ding. Still, I was positive I had broken her neck with my carelessness and kept crying and squealing like an idiot. She just wanted to get her Hardee's on and split ASAP.
As it was, I pulled over to recheck my directions and calm down and throw my tantrum in the silence of my own car. I wasn't even on the right street. This was not Main St. at all. I decided old Silver Sneakers from the YMCA was wrong, and I'd follow my GPS. All the way to Bargersville (hint: NOT in Whiteland) during some freak October tornado storm. Who in the crap KNOWS where I ended up. Some Bargersville government building with the same street address (different town GOOGLE MAPS!) of Jim's Body Shop. I'm lost, and it's freakin storming like a mofo, tornado sirens are going off, and my routine is SO EFFED, dudes. I'm hysterical by this time. As it is, I found my way back to 31, and, oh, look....there's Main St. In Whiteland. I find my way to Jim's, and wouldn't you know it? Jim don't live there no mo'. The sign's upside down and the building's vacant. My fist nearly went through ole' Jim's front window.
I stopped by the Golden Chassis Body Shop in Greenwood on my way back to the Y after my THREE-HOUR adventure. They were able to wipe the red paint off with a little solvent, and you can't even tell anyone ever hit me with their door. Too bad I now have three gaping holes in my front bumper.
Man, is this blog a novel or what? It may turn into one. Like, a real one. I still haven't decided. As it is, Wednesday's routine involves making the shopping list and organizing all of my coupons for tomorrow's grocery run, so I'm gonna end the blog and do that.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Vote for Pedro
Listen. I will write two bloggity blogs in one day if I want to. As I typed "bloggity blog", I recall that my stepfather, Juris, tells me that the kids need to stop listening to all that hippity hop music. When he says this, he hops from one foot to the other and wags his head like three snaps and a cheeseburger. It's hard to take him seriously, but these are his real opinions, folks.
The kids have said some hilarious things lately, so I figured I'd blog them.
The Little Man told me yesterday that he will put his shoes on......and I look like a meatloaf.
I took the Big Man to Toys R Us a few weeks ago to pick out the toys that he wants to ask Santa for. I wasn't being very sneaky. I carried around a pad of paper and wrote down everything he wanted and the price. I told him he was picking all of the expensive stuff. He told me when it comes from Santa, it doesn't cost anything. I told him Santa sends us a bill. My cousin wondered what we were gonna do when the kids were teenagers, and the "toys" they want for Christmas cost 200 bucks. My answer is that is the year when their Christmas gift is a stocking full of job applications.
Speaking of Santa, I don't recall ever having to keep this "secret" from anyone before, and seeing as I always vowed to never have kids (another, less lighthearted post topic), I figured I'd never have to do it. For real, dudes, I hate it. I think the actual idea of Santa is stupid. Also, I'm REALLY awful at lying. I might as well wink and nudge the kid when I mention "Santa". Seriously, I would do air quotes every time I said the word "Santa". Alas, I'm just a stepparent. I don't get to decide that Santa is stupid for the dudes. Their actual parents think he's one cool mofo, so I have to act like he is, too. That chubby effer. Put the cookie down!
The Little Man gave me a compliment a couple of days ago. It went like this:
LM: Karen, someone wrote on your car with chalk.
Me: I know. I can't seem to get it off.
LM: You sure do look beautiful when you have your glasses on.
Also, on Halloween, someone answered the door, and instead of "trick or treat", Little Man decided on "Whoa! What is that smell?!?" The guy told him it was food, but Little Man came down the driveway and said "That man, he had Doritos smelling in his breath." Awesome.
Last year some time, I was on this "we will only eat ground turkey and not ground beef" kick for like.....two hours. Anyway, I was making spaghetti with the Jennie-O turkey that the Biggest Losers covet, and the Big Man asks me, "What's that?" "Turkey," I supplied. Like I said, me and lying, we just don't go together. The Big Man astutely informs me that, "that's not turkey. Turkey is made from meat and sauce."
Who knew?
The kids have said some hilarious things lately, so I figured I'd blog them.
The Little Man told me yesterday that he will put his shoes on......and I look like a meatloaf.
I took the Big Man to Toys R Us a few weeks ago to pick out the toys that he wants to ask Santa for. I wasn't being very sneaky. I carried around a pad of paper and wrote down everything he wanted and the price. I told him he was picking all of the expensive stuff. He told me when it comes from Santa, it doesn't cost anything. I told him Santa sends us a bill. My cousin wondered what we were gonna do when the kids were teenagers, and the "toys" they want for Christmas cost 200 bucks. My answer is that is the year when their Christmas gift is a stocking full of job applications.
Speaking of Santa, I don't recall ever having to keep this "secret" from anyone before, and seeing as I always vowed to never have kids (another, less lighthearted post topic), I figured I'd never have to do it. For real, dudes, I hate it. I think the actual idea of Santa is stupid. Also, I'm REALLY awful at lying. I might as well wink and nudge the kid when I mention "Santa". Seriously, I would do air quotes every time I said the word "Santa". Alas, I'm just a stepparent. I don't get to decide that Santa is stupid for the dudes. Their actual parents think he's one cool mofo, so I have to act like he is, too. That chubby effer. Put the cookie down!
The Little Man gave me a compliment a couple of days ago. It went like this:
LM: Karen, someone wrote on your car with chalk.
Me: I know. I can't seem to get it off.
LM: You sure do look beautiful when you have your glasses on.
Also, on Halloween, someone answered the door, and instead of "trick or treat", Little Man decided on "Whoa! What is that smell?!?" The guy told him it was food, but Little Man came down the driveway and said "That man, he had Doritos smelling in his breath." Awesome.
Last year some time, I was on this "we will only eat ground turkey and not ground beef" kick for like.....two hours. Anyway, I was making spaghetti with the Jennie-O turkey that the Biggest Losers covet, and the Big Man asks me, "What's that?" "Turkey," I supplied. Like I said, me and lying, we just don't go together. The Big Man astutely informs me that, "that's not turkey. Turkey is made from meat and sauce."
Who knew?
