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.
