The Mouse's Nest

10 years later

2011-09-11T00:17:00.000-04:00

"They're trying to kill me," Yossarian told him calmly.

“No one's trying to kill you," Clevinger cried.

“Then why are they shooting at me?" Yossarian asked.

“They're shooting at everyone," Clevinger answered. "They're trying to kill everyone."

“And what difference does that make?"

Catch-22, Joseph Heller

I started reading Catch-22 in September 2001. If I took our copy off the shelf tonight, I expect I would find a bookmark about halfway through the novel, marking the spot I reached before bed on September 10, 2001. I mentioned to one of my students a few weeks later that I hadn’t been able to pick the novel back up. “But it’s so good,” he protested. “That’s the problem,” I replied.

For a long time, airplanes didn’t fly over Washington, DC. The airspace was eerily quiet. An occasional military aircraft would come along, and everybody would stop and stare, confirming that it had a right to be there, that it wasn’t happening again. A. and I still stop and watch after any airplane that seems to be too low, out of place, unexpected.

Shortly after the terrorist attacks, came the anthrax scare, and we wondered about the consequences of bringing in the mail. Then tornadoes swept through the area, hitting a college campus near us; although clearly a phenomenon connected solely to the weather, it felt like Nature was joining in against us. A year later, random sniper attacks had us wondering if we had found a new normal of life with fear and anxiety.

A few years later, I informed a class that I would be moving to Toronto “because it’s a safer place for my family.” A student interpolated in a calm voice, “To avoid dirty bombs and terrorist attacks?” In fact, the decision was based on Canada’s greater acceptance of same-sex families and the trend (at the time) of states moving in the opposite direction, but his reasoning made complete sense to his classmates.

A lot has already been said about this particular anniversary and even more will fill pages and airwaves tomorrow. Most days I can think about political implications and how our world has changed. But for now, this is more about gut emotion and sense memories.

We are family, but we already knew that

2011-06-01T12:58:00.000-04:00

It's June 1st again, which makes it "Blogging for LGBT Families" Day.

As of last month, we are a family of four, at least in the eyes of our state. A. is officially J.'s mother and we have the paperwork to prove it. To be fair to our state, we were allowed to register J.'s birth with A.'s name as "Parent 2." And we were up front about what we were doing. Crossed out father on the state forms. Attached a copy of our Canadian marriage license. Had our attorney send a letter to the appropriate bureau. Nonetheless, there's lots of advice floating around about having some sort of court decree to back up the birth certificate outside of the state that issued the birth certificate (e.g., this pdf at NCLR--it's for California, but the advice in the "Parenting" section applies generally).

Since we're in a different state than the one in which we completed E.'s adoption, there were differences in the procedure. We waited a year so that we'd be able to follow the steps for a step-parent adoption (our state has a rule about the child living with the step-parent for at least a year first), instead of a more expensive and extremely invasive "stranger" adoption. Even with all that, I had to meet with a social worker to present evidence that I understood that allowing A. to adopt J. creates a permanent relationship. Something the judge reiterated. I was good and simply responded, "I understand," instead of "That's kind of the point, isn't it?"

My in-laws were able to attend our hearing. They were excited and a bit nervous, just like A. and me. We knew this was supposed to be pro forma, but we couldn't help worrying something would go awry at the last minute. After the fact, my mother-in-law made note of the anti-climax: "It doesn't change anything about the last fifteen months." A. was not suddenly more of J.'s mother. And as we noted to my in-laws, our main reason for going through this is to take care of the "what ifs"--those life-changing events we hope to avoid until the kids are adults with their own families and we've had many years of being doting grandparents.

I'm sure I've said this before--A. and I are thankful that we have the opportunity to provide a legal safety net for our family. We understand the system enough to pursue this, we have enough money (or the ability to prioritize spending) to afford it, we are comfortable enough in our relationship to have the uncomfortable discussions about future possibilities. But not everybody is in a position to do this, and their families shouldn't have to worry that an unfortunate event will further rip their family apart.

Grad school blues, redux

2011-05-26T22:03:00.000-04:00

Most of my reasons for wanting the PhD are superficial. I've put so much time in. I'm almost ABD and then "all" I'd have left is my dissertation. I want to prove I'm smart enough to add those letters to my CV, compounded by the fact that there are so many PhDs in our town.

Then there are the reasons that carry a little more weight. I would earn more as a teacher. Not a lot more each year, but it would add up over the time I intend to spend in this profession. And the one with the most heft--my dissertation idea continues to form and mature, and sometimes I wonder if its insistence on existing will ever let me go until it's written down.

But I should listen to my body too, right? My back and shoulders are one giant knot of tension. My left trapezius is in perpetual spasm. I'm hunched over far too much. And I can't deny that when I think of leaving this degree behind, an immediate sense of relief washes over me. I think of the things I would do with this time--reading for pleasure, giving the dog more attention, turning my attention from the computer to my kids, doing more bookbinding, taming the accumulation of books and papers I don't particularly care for--and I'm happy.

I'm staring at a new set of revisions. My initial impulse is to chuck it all, instead of another week or two of killing myself to get this all done so I can stay on track for my current set of deadlines. It doesn't help that J. is fighting his second ear and sinus infection since getting ear-tubes and that the sleep deprivation continues unabated. How different would all of this be if I'd had a decent night's sleep in the past two years? I'm tempted to say that I should wait to make my decision on pushing ahead or throwing in the towel until I'm better rested, but when will that be? Certainly not before I hit the next deadlines. So I'm stuck making the call--dogged pursuit of knowledge for another year or take the time for myself now--with what limited cognitive functioning I currently have available.

Happy Birthday, J.

2011-02-07T23:59:00.000-05:00

J. is turning one. One year old. It's been a year.

Say it however you want, it just sounds wrong.

My baby is one. He's quickly leaving babyhood behind and working hard on becoming a toddler.

That he is his own person, not a little clone of me or E., has been made abundantly clear in the past twelve months. Where E. was cautious, J. barrels ahead. He has already chipped a tooth and is currently sporting an abraded chin, courtesy of a recent tumble. While he is not yet walking without support, he does not display the same tentativeness that E. did.

We didn't babyproof a lot for E. Sure, we started, but once we ran out of steam, we figured that we would just be attentive and then secure the areas to which E. was drawn. And we waited. He just didn't seem to think of getting into drawers and cabinets if their contents were not obvious.

We haven't babyproofed any significant amount in this house, but mostly because we're tired. J. takes every opportunity to crawl into the kitchen, open drawers, pull up and try to reach things. He wants to go head first down the single step between our living room and sun room. He goes after my computer, coffee, recycling. Kleenex are the coolest thing, and he will desperately try to grab one and stuff it in his mouth before I can get it away.

He continues to be a poor sleeper, waking every hour or two. On good nights, the periods sleep stretch just a bit longer. But his pediatrician has suggested that he may just not need a lot of sleep and, even if we can get him to sleep through the night, it is not likely to be as long as we would want. I pretend she could be wrong, but I know she's got him figured out.

But then, when he's had the sleep he wants, he wakes up in the most glorious mood, smiling and giggling, reaching for us, pointing to where he wants to go.

And the pointing. I have these moments when I say, "Oh, this is what is meant about pointing and joint attention." J. still does not have any words that I would record as definitively his first, but he is a pretty clear communicator. He points at what he wants and where to go. He says a number of syllables that seem, in context, to have meaning. Dis (this), dat (that), dug (duck or dog, depending on what's in front of him), mum-mum (me), mama (A.), da (yeah--apparently he's Russian).

J. gets super-excited every time he sees a microwave and something coming out of it. He will try everything we put in front of him. I believe that there's only one thing I'm seen him turn down completely after just one bite--lima beans. (That's my boy!) After E.'s picky palette, it's amazing to be able to pick a few things from my own meal and offer them to J., knowing he'll be happy to give it a try. He may not be much of a sleeper, but I definitely got my good eater.

* * * * *

This afternoon, J. and I waited for E. to finish school. He sat on my hip, supported by the sling. He grabbed his jacket from me and covered his face. "Where's J.?" I asked. He dropped his hands, revealing his face and the biggest grin.

Happy Birthday, J.

Two by two and three by three

2011-01-23T01:48:00.000-05:00

E. is in the middle of another testing cycle at school. There are three or four in a year. I'm going to try to stay off the broader issue of standardized testing in our schools today. Let's just say that as both an educator and a parent, I feel like there is WAY too much emphasis on test-taking.

Standardized testing does not "count" for E. until third grade. Nonetheless, he began taking a version of the tests in kindergarten. My impression is that they do this in part to provide teachers with a relative measure of students' achievement, but largely in order to get them acclimated to the testing process.

Much different than my experience in the days of yore, very few of these tests are done with pencil and paper. For E. this is a good thing. His motor skills are such that he might actually miss a number of questions based entirely on inaccurate filling of bubbles. Instead, he just has to move the mouse and click his answer. As a child of the computer generation, that is well within his ability.

When the standardized tests are completed on the computer, they tend to be adaptive, meaning that they difficulty of the questions is adjusted to your performance. Get questions right, and the difficulty increases little by little; miss several and you go the other direction.

E. came home the other day and told us that there had been multiplication on his test. 3 x 100 was the first question. And so he figured out how to multiply. As far as I can tell, he surveyed the available answers, considered how one might figure out the question, and moved on from there. He now knows how to multiply, figured several random facts I gave him--more of the basic-facts variety, but still requiring an understanding of the underlying concept.

I can't say I'm surprised by this. I remember doing some math problems with him in a year or two ago when it was clear that he was close to using multiplication to figure out answers. He just didn't realize that was what he was doing, didn't know the term 'multiplication' or its symbols.

Math is a second language for me. It gives shape to my thoughts. I love its order and do figures for fun. When E. would come home last year, complaining about math, saying he hated it, I had to steel myself not to take it personally. This year has been so much better for him in many ways, helped a lot by the fact that his current teacher is a math-science kind of person. Even when E. has struggled with the occasional concept, he is much less resistant to working with me and, dare I say, we end up having fun and connecting over the lessons. And when he tells me that he's figured out an advanced concept on his own, just because it was there in front of him, I can't help but say, "That's my son!"

I could really use a Time-Turner

2011-01-10T01:41:00.000-05:00

I doubt it would surprise anybody who knows me that Hermione Granger is the character with whom I most relate. I was even a bit jealous when she got to take extra classes in The Prisoner of Azkaban, because I would have done that when I was back in school. (And sort of did since in my junior year I took a 0-hour class--a period that ran before the official day began--followed by a full day of academic courses, ending with an independent study after school. Eight courses in a normally six-period day.)

I could use a Time-Turner right about now. Not for academic over-achievement, but for simple achievement.

I am officially back on the clock for my doctoral program. I have set up a work area, read some secondary literature, figured out a direction for some immediate writing. But the time I have set aside on paper has a tendency to shrink and disappear.

Part of it is spent multi-tasking. Pumping so that J. can have a bottle (that he won't drink) at daycare. Grabbing some lunch. Making coffee. And yes, checking in on Twitter and the like since I have no opportunity to do that until after I finish teaching.

Part of it gets eaten up by the pull of my other identities. I tutor a couple hours a week--math right now--in my role as public-school teacher and small-town resident. I've been doing daycare pick-up for J., something that takes about an hour total. On occasion, I time it so that I can get J. early enough to then pick up E.

I have been trying to figure out how to shift some of my work to the evening, after both boys are in bed. But J. still sleeps inconsistently. At bedtime, I never know how long I will have before I'm needed back in the bedroom. And it takes me a while to get settled back into my planned task, to get my head back into that realm.

I should have done a little work just now. There's a section of my paper that I can envision and for which I have the foundation laid. I just need to turn it into academic-speak with appropriate footnotes and formatting. I have some citations to throw in, marked out in my notes. I want to do this soon, as a follow up to my latest correspondence with my supervisor, as proof to us both that I can still do this.

I figure just a few turns and I could have those pages in no time. Those pages and a good nap too!

Resolved, 2011

2011-01-02T01:03:00.000-05:00

I'm not even going to look back at what I wrote last year. That would be one sure way to pop the optimism I've mustered for this new year.

As always, there are plenty of goals I have as we hand a new calendar on the wall. This year, it's not simply inspired by the Earth's turning. Instead, we have a few changes here--J. is starting daycare, my grad-school maternity leave is up--which are inspiring some new-leaf-turning.

My goals and their reasons:

Household:

We will finish rearranging our house. We've been moving furniture and going through our things to create space for everybody. Currently J. and all of his stuff are in our bedroom. We're about halfway through effecting the following: J.'s stuff into the third bedroom (plus switch some of E.'s furniture to J. and move other things into his room), office furniture (and A.'s workspace) into back of living room, M.'s stuff into corner of sunroom, all toys into boys' bedrooms. After all that, I hope to get started on the garden.
We will be more organized during the school week. Now that all of us will need to get out of the house in the morning, we absolutely must follow through on things like packing lunches the night before and picking out clothes. I'm also going to return to meal-planning so we don't waste time every night debating what we feel like making or eating.
I will work on E.'s accepted foods. We know better than to think this will be easy or quick, but I have a few ideas for this and a few more resources to consult. The meal-planning and family dinners are part of this. I will put a little bit of all we're eating on E.'s plate, in addition to his usual chicken nuggets or grilled cheese sandwich, not forcing him to eat any of it, but sort of desensitizing him. We are also not above bribery.

Work/school:

I'm getting back on track for my PhD. I will be taking as much advantage of J.'s time in daycare as I can to make sure I keep things rolling. I expect to finish my comps in May or June, although the actual date of my exams will depend somewhat on my committee.
I will do my best to pick up another 1 or 2 sections of teaching for next year (i.e. the 2011-12 school year). This will get me over the magical number that makes me eligible for insurance through the school district here and help us pump up our savings, all of which will give us some breathing room (and help us prepare for the eventuality in which A. goes down to part-time or returns to contract work).

I'll leave it at that for now. I have some hopes for exercise, healthy eating, and the like, but I know better than to make the list too long. If we can get the house in order, get me through comps, and manage to get everybody where they belong on a regular basis, we'll have achieved a real victory.

Santa Claus is coming to town

2010-12-24T22:07:00.000-05:00

My parents didn't want me to believe in Santa Claus. So, of course, I did.

It's not even that they didn't do anything to reinforce the myth. They straight out told me that Santa didn't exist. I would argue with them. Magic explained it all. It didn't matter that I knew my parents bought the presents and filled the stockings. Somehow Santa was still a part of it all.

I think I needed that magic in my life. Still do, although it manifests now as my love of reading science fiction and fantasy.

The year that my parents had nearly convinced me of Santa's non-existence, I received a present with a "From: Santa" gift-tag. I waved that around as the very proof I had been lacking for so many years. Even though the gift wrap and handwriting matched the other gifts from a certain aunt.

I suspect that my parents' original decision, not to indulge a belief in Santa, came from my father and matched his decision to raise us knowing about both Christianity and Judaism without encouraging blind belief in either. It's something I never thought to ask my dad before he died, but I can imagine it as a topic we might have discussed over coffee when E. was a baby. (My mother is something of an "unreliable narrator," so conversations like this just don't happen very often for us.)

A. and I are letting E. believe in Santa. The story is everywhere anyway, and E. just loves the various Christmas movies and stories, fed by A.'s love of them and habit of playing them during the fall, starting with The Nightmare Before Christmas shortly before Halloween. After seeing The Polar Express a few years ago, he found a jingle bell in our house and carried it around with great reverence.

I can reconcile our encouragement of all this with our desire to raise E. to be a critical thinker thanks to an essay written by Dale McGowan. He's run it during a couple Christmas seasons and it appears in his book Parenting Beyond Belief. The short version is that Santa provides kids with an opportunity to reason through something that they are originally told just to believe.

E. is not ready to stop believing yet. He has accepted, without question, Santa's budgetary limits and deadlines for wishlists. He does not care to notice that the gift-tags are the same as on some of our presents, that the handwriting is mine, that Santa uses different wrapping paper at our house and at his grandparents'. He does not dwell on the logisitics of Santa making it around the world in one night. All of it still just is.

And I'm happy for it to stay that way for just a bit longer.

On sneezer and wheezer and cougher and...

2010-12-20T01:02:00.000-05:00

Less than a week until Christmas. This holiday season has been more fraught than others, with E. on a bit of a trigger. It probably didn't help that we started out December with a rush of presents. E. has two advent calendars this year: a Lego one, which has become something of a tradition, and the more common chocolate calendar, courtesy of his grandma. On top of that, Hanukkah began December 1st, so there were gifts associated with that. The tears began immediately when he had some trouble putting together the Lego Star Wars set on that very first night.

Finally, we realized that he's probably been fighting illness since Thanksgiving. None of us has been at our best since he came down with some 24-hour bug the night before Thanksgiving. For the past two weeks, I've had a particularly bad sore throat. Through several doctors' visits, at least one for each of us, we've determined the following: our household is suffering from a combination of strep throat, stomach flu, and a virus (or 3). E. stayed home from school on Thursday and Friday, extending his winter break by a couple days, but he's still coughing up a storm. We should have realized, even before the sore throat and coughing began, that he was not feeling well, as an inexplicable increase in meltdowns is almost always a sign he's ill. We'd attributed it to the holiday season, but it's been even more intense than usual.

After two days of antibiotics, I'm starting to feel functional again. For the virus E. has, it's likely to take another 3-5 days for recovery. Just in time for the Christmas festivities. I sure hope that works out since I'd rather avoid continuous Lego meltdown next Saturday.

Can I get that in writing?

2010-12-08T00:57:00.000-05:00

Back when E. was in kindergarten, A. and I borrowed a DVD from the school district's autism team (not an unusual act). Three hours of Tony Attwood discussing Asperger's. Both of us found it riveting. And one thing I definitely have to give him is that it's possible to listen to him talk about the challenges posed and the work that needs to go into supporting Aspies and still come away feeling optimistic. He clearly appreciates Aspies' strengths and quirks and is one of the few NTs I've come across who really seems to get it.

A. has read even more of Attwood's work than I have at this point, and getting to hear him talk in person was a definite highlight of the conference we attended this summer.

As I mentioned before, J. was with us for the conference. A. and I had our spots on the far aisle, just a few tables in from the door. When he would fuss beyond being hungry, I would take him just out of the auditorium, catching as much as I could from the chairs on the other side of the door. I had both the stroller and sling, so we walked a lot too.

At one of the breaks, I was back in the auditorium with A. Attwood was striding out, trying, I'm sure, to get a few minutes downtime before continuing his presentation. But when he saw us off to the side passing J. back and forth between us, he came over and expressed his surprise to see the baby. He'd had no idea there was one in the crowd. I explained that we'd been in and out, depending on J.'s mood (and felt better knowing that he had not been disruptive). Attwood bent down a little and looked J. in the eyes for a few seconds, taking his measure, smiling, engaging him. He looked back at us and pronounced, "He's just fine. No autism here."

Now I get that this is not a formal evaluation and that we will have no recourse should we find ourselves with a diagnosis down the line, but really Attwood was giving weight to an opinion A. and I have already expressed: J. is neurotypical.

Some of our reasons are subtle and hard to pin down. It's been seven years since E. was this age, so the memories are not fresh. Yet while we did not have concerns at this point in E.'s life, we were able to recognize some of the earlier signs once we began reading about Asperger's.

It's not that E. did not make eye contact, but it wasn't his focus. J., on the other hand, craves our attention and draws it out of us by catching our eye. Whereas E. could spend a long time studying geometric patterns, J. will only look at them as long as there's no face or other interactive opportunity available.

There's a huge difference in how our two boys play(ed) at this age. E. has always loved toys with wheels. We would later find out that staring at spinning wheels is a common trait of kids on the spectrum. J. enjoys his buses, but generally propels them along so that he can pursue. He varies how he plays with his toys and explores them with all of his senses. Everything goes into his mouth or is used to bang into something else. We joke that his use of toys as tools illustrates the human link with the apes.

The differences extend to all of J.'s interactions with the world, his movement, his interests, the way he eats. I know that this is not a "Get out of jail free" card and that we have a high chance of some sensory issue and/or other quirks, but it's clear to us that J. is on a far different trajectory than E. ever was. It's not necessarily better--I have moments of wondering, "What am I going to do with an NT?"--just new ground.

What I did on summer vacation

2010-11-08T01:35:00.000-05:00

In the middle of a week during the summer, A. and I dropped E. and Z. at the grandparents' and headed one state over to an autism conference. J. came along with us, mostly because he had no choice.

For two days, we had a chance to listen to some amazing experts in the field of autism. This was for us, in many ways, our music festival stocked with revered celebrities. We had watched and/or read presentations by all of the speakers who would be there, but we wanted to see them in person anyway. Going into the event, we were both excited for the day with Tony Attwood and Temple Grandin.

Since J. was with us, I spent a large part of several sessions outside of the auditorium. Whenever he started fussing, I headed to the door. If he wasn't too worked up, I discovered that I could still hear the presenter while sitting in the chairs just outside the doors. When that would fail, we would walk around the hotel lobby. We got to know some of the vendors pretty well. A. took him for one session each day, so I had some uninterrupted time. And we also received a booklet with many of the slides from the presentations, so I was able to fill in the gaps.

We purchased a few books and a kit, although we haven't done nearly as much with them as I would like. (Everything's getting pushed to another time. Lots of "once the baby's sleeping better." Which still hasn't happened.) But we walked away with a lot of good material and high spirits.

A. and I also got to eat out a couple times and stroll around a shopping center (with the all-important stop at the Lego Store). Sure we had J. with us, but he was mostly content to hang out with us.

I had three interactions with presenters which made the whole trip worthwhile. Each one deserves its own post; I hope to give them space in the next week or two.

This Aspie speaks

2010-11-01T17:24:00.000-04:00

I'd sort of seen some talk about today's Communication Shutdown, which encourages people to stay off of Facebook, Twitter, and social networking in general in support of autism. With J. not sleeping and a build up on my "to do" list--plus my mind had registered that this was all taking place "next month"--I hadn't really paid it any attention. But now it's next month and my Twitter is awash in #ASDay and #AutismShoutOut hash tags.

As it turns out, much has already been said of what I'm thinking, but I'll add my thoughts anyway.

The idea behind not using social media for a day is to experience the frustration of a social disconnect. Yet this is almost backwards, as many people with autism have found that social media provide them with ways to connect much more successfully than in real life. I prefer email and internet research to phone calls. Facebook is how I keep in touch with many family members and friends. I was late to join Twitter, but mostly because I have always known that it would suck me in too much (I'm trying very hard to balance that, and working has helped limit my time). Online conversations play to my strengths and smooth over some of the weaknesses. I get more time to process what has been said and think through my response. My correspondent's words are available to read and re-read; I don't have to rely on a memory that's being bombarded with lots of simultaneous pieces of information.

The flip side is that Asperger's has not led to anything resembling silence for me. I am frequently a chatterbug in real life. In fact, I had to learn to be quiet and really listen and comprehend what's being said to me. My experience of real-time conversations is probably different from most of yours, but I didn't know that for the longest time and have never known a different experience. I didn't think to feel this set me apart until I was told that it did.

Slight aside: It irks me to be told that Aspies can't multitask. The truth is that we are champion multitaskers; we just fill up our queues with items that might be considered a single task, or no task at all, by others. When I'm talking to a person, I'm consciously processing what I hear, actively filtering out other noises, judging facial expressions and their relevance, scanning my databases for appropriate responses or anecdotes, weighing the quantity and quality of eye contact, and monitoring my own expressions and body language. When I'm tired, I know that there will be a decrease in my comprehension, a lag in putting on appropriate appearances, and markedly less eye contact.

But really, that starts to get at my main issue with things like this Communication Shutdown. So much of the conversation about autism is a description from the outside. And I can't tell you how many times I've read an article about autism or Asperger's where the outside perspective is presented as fact and I find myself frustrated since it falls so far from my experience or clearly misunderstands. I spent a long time convinced I couldn't have Asperger's because of these descriptions, because I am extremely sensitive and empathetic, because eye contact is difficult for me due to the overwhelming flood of information it provides. It was only through the process of E.'s diagnosis, the 3 1/2 years leading up to it with us knowing this is what we were dealing with, and the persistent research both A. and I undertook that I was able to realize that there is a disconnect between a large part of the literature and the actual experience.

And I guess that's why I've shifted my focus here. I want to correct some of those descriptions that share so little with my reality and give you a peek of the view from this side.

I can't do that if I shutdown communications. Likewise, you can't hear me if you turn off your social media.

Green grows my anxiety

2010-10-31T01:47:00.000-04:00

E. has a co-morbid diagnosis of Anxiety Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified. In other words, he worries a lot. This summer, we tried some cognitive behavioral therapy. It was not all that effective, more because the therapist did not seem to make any adjustments for the Asperger's piece of the equation. He told us several times that dealing with anxiety in kids is easy. But it doesn't really work that way in Asperger's.

Before we realized that we would probably be able to do more for E.'s anxiety than this therapist, A. remarked to me that maybe I could learn a thing or two through E.'s sessions. See, I most definitely suffer from anxiety too. (And I am trying to address it and will eventually, someday, when I'm sleeping again, read the cognitive behavioral therapy and Asperger's book we have.)

I recently received an email from E.'s school about their desire to form a green team and work on some initiatives. For those who know me, you'll recognize that environmental issues are high on my list of concerns. Which means that these are also something that cause me a fair amount of anxiety. For example: our local recycling does not take glass. The reason they gave when we first moved here is now moot, but they still do not take it and we haven't found a nearby place that will take it. I have a very hard time throwing out glass--it is so recyclable--so we have a bunch of it in the garage right now.

Anyway, one idea this email floated was that of "waste-free lunches." It's an idea I definitely support, something I try very hard to do for myself when I take my lunch someplace, but this is one of those times that my green desires conflict directly with my son's issues. Right now, E.'s lunch consists of the following: half a cream cheese sandwich, some pretzels, a protein bar, fruit snacks, and a bottle of water. The sandwich, pretzels, and water can all easily go to school in reuseable containers, but not so much the protein bar and fruit snacks. They are, of course, individually wrapped. My big victory, in regards to E., is that the fruit snacks are fruit-juice sweetened and don't contain any of the usual nasty stuff.

E. does not consistently eat everything in his lunchbox and usually requires a hefty snack when he gets home. But one thing I think a lot of parents of Aspies would say about their kids' eating issues is that you do NOT mess with something that is working. On occasion E. will eat every single thing in his lunchbox and, more importantly, he's not predictable on which specific items he'll eat on any one day. So we put them all in there and hope for the best.

So he's not going to have a waste-free lunch anytime soon, not unless I cut out half of what he'll eat. But now it's something I'll be fretting about until I can quiet that part of my thinking.

When the best laid plans are happily superfluous

2010-10-27T01:24:00.000-04:00

Last week's Parenthood was a Halloween episode, and one of the central plot points was Christina's preparations to make Max's Halloween experience as positive as possible. She plots out a route for trick-or-treating, explains her son's fears to neighbors, and plans all the supports he might need. She knows that there might still be a meltdown, but figures that they can lower the chances if she can control as many of the variables as possible.

And then, once they're out with the family and Max sees younger kids going to a house that is particularly spooky and definitely not on Christina's planned route, the best laid plans gang agley, so to speak. Max becomes insistent that he can handle the house and doesn't need parental shadowing. The adults stand back and wait for the crisis. Which doesn't happen. Max returns, exuberant and excited by the spider ring he got.

I was reminded of the trip we took to Disneyland about two years ago. A. and I were apprehensive and figured that it could end up a total bust. We prepared thoroughly; A. especially did her research, including exit plans and food options. There were a handful of rides we felt he could handle, plus shows and then all the sights. It would be great if we could do more, but we made no definite plans. If all else failed, we knew we could get him on the train and monorail and just ride around.

Once we were in the park, we started with the Bug's Life rides, as those are milder and aimed at younger kids. At the second ride, E. changed his mind as soon as we hit the front of the line. Luckily A. had found out that it's generally possible to leave the ride up to the very last minute, and we'd promised E. that he could change his mind at any time. We were graciously directed to the exit. After walking around and watching a few rides, he was ready to try another one. As it turned out, he didn't back out of another ride the entire time we were there. A few more rides and he was acclimated, game for just about anything he was tall enough to get on.

For the most part, E. didn't want to ride anything more than once. He has something of a checklist mentality--done that, next... The first ride he wanted to go on a second time, however, was one I never expected him to go on even once: a river ride where you travel over rapids and the like in a "barrel." There's no avoiding getting wet and you spin around at the same time you're moving around. Yet he was quite insistent.

Our preparation did come in handy though. We were able to get a gluten-free pizza at one of the restaurants and new about the microwave in the hotel snack bar--both very helpful for getting E. fed. We also stayed in one of the Disney properties, which meant that we could go back to our room for a bit in the middle of the day to get away from the crowds for a little bit. Even if we don't stay at a Disney property next time, we'll definitely stay within walking distance so we can do this again.

We also stayed flexible. We had a package that would have allowed us to enter the park one hour early one morning, but we discovered that it worked best for us to stay in the park late and then wake up whenever it happened. We did go to a character breakfast one morning, but purposely chose a less popular one so that it wouldn't be too crowded. We had no idea how E. might respond to the characters, and he was a little uncertain at first. But after a bit, he warmed up, and we have pictures of him with Lilo, Stitch, Goofy, and Daisy.

I know better than to think every such trip will go so swimmingly--we've had examples to the contrary in the past two years. But sometimes this kid surprises us in the best possible way and we get a glimpse of what we hope becomes the consistent norm.

(And don't tell him, but we're working on a trip to Legoland!)

Renovations and reintroductions

2010-10-25T17:34:00.000-04:00

I made some noise last spring about putting my focus on writing about Asperger's. At the time, I thought about starting a new blog altogether. Over the summer, this idea morphed a bit until I decided that I wanted to shift the focus here. I already feel that my identity as Mouse has moved this direction and that I have something of a presence, albeit a small one, as a commenter on Asperger's at other blogs.

To this end, I am slowly sticking most of my old posts into draft and making a few minor changes to others. The ones that will not be moth-balled at any point are those that are most directly related to Asperger's. Other posts will come back as I get a chance to go through them and as I write new posts that refer back to them.

In this process, I have also decided to change how I refer to my family members. Scooter, in particular, has outgrown his epithet. Following is the cast of characters and locations. Since I'm not editing comments, I list both their previous and new names. New designations are a mix of first and middle initials.

M.--That's me, Mouse. Aspie mother, grad student (they haven't kicked me out yet), education student (almost have my certification now), middle school teacher.

A.--Formerly Trillian. She's technically neurotypical, but geeky enough and "grazed by the arrow" in some categories, so she's not completely flabbergasted (most of the time) by E.'s and my particular quirks.

E.--Formerly Scooter. 7 1/2 and in second grade. It's been almost exactly a year since his Asperger's diagnosis, but more than three since we started researching it.

J.--Formerly Thumper. 9-months-old. He's been deemed neurotypical by none other than Tony Attwood, but that's a story for another post.

We live in Springfield; the main employer draws lots of scientists and such, so we're a quirky town. My in-laws live in nearby Capital City. Further down the road is Big City.

Memento, featuring Marvin

2010-10-20T20:37:00.003-04:00

Shortly after my last post, Marvin suffered a catastrophic hard drive failure.

The first sign was that he didn't want to shut down, clinging desperately to consciousness. Then next time I hit the power key, he didn't respond other than to tell me the operating system couldn't be found.

For a couple days, I counted Marvin among the dead and mourned. I borrowed back my older laptop, the one that is mostly used for browsing the Lego website and that has only about 30 minutes of charge in its battery. It was a rebound relationship of convenience--just enough to let me complete my work for my online classes, but absolutely no passion.

I managed to breath new life into Marvin the next week. It took Ubuntu on a thumbdrive and a little messing with the BIOS, but suddenly I had a desktop with icons... and eventually, after many versions and some tweaking, internet access. Marvin was a little different, but I felt that we could make things work again. He asked me for a password, let me change the desktop appearance, promised to hold onto some of my information in a note.

When I came back the next day, Marvin showed no memory of having taken my information. He was nice enough about it--hey, give it to me again, I'm sure it's just a misunderstanding, I'll get it this time. But it quickly became clear that every time Marvin went to sleep, the information just vanished.

Our relationship has changed. He continues to be just as helpful. In particular, he likes to insist that I set a password. I decline matter-of-factly, even when he reminds me that this will leave my information unprotected. I've quit trying to explain to him that there's no point since he won't remember my password to protect my information anyway--we'll have this conversation again tomorrow. I've quietly memorized the key for our internet access... and access at my in-laws' too. Two different combinations of 26 letters and numbers. That's a lot of brain power for this sleep-deprived person!

I feel a little guilty for typing this up on Marvin. On the plus side, he'll have forgotten all about it by tomorrow.

Awareness

2010-04-03T00:08:00.003-04:00

Today is National Autism Awareness Day. I didn't set out to mark it specifically, but really just about every day is autism awareness day here.

J. will be 2-months-old soon. We're working hard to enjoy his babyness--and mostly succeed. He prefers human contact at all times and knows immediately when we've tried to put him down, even if he's in the deepest of sleep. He's smiling and starting to giggle. Some of my favorite moments are when he falls asleep on me, chest-to-chest, sinking in with the greatest contentment.

But A. and I both spend a lot of time wondering and conjecturing, trying to remember how things compare to last time.

He smiles and makes eye contact, even works to catch our eyes. But he smiled extensively for shadows and light, preferring to find patterns around him. And our memories go back to E. smiling at our high-contrast quilt with a triangular pattern and the ceiling fan.

E. showed an aversion to intrusive sounds even in the womb, kicking at the ultrasound wand. J. was more laid-back during such exams, lazily turning away, but not getting worked up. He sleeps through a lot of noises in the house. But then today we sat in Starbucks and he was clearly disturbed by the coffee grinder and blender. And we start to wonder about sensory processing.

J. has a higher than average chance of having some issue on the spectrum. I've seen everything from a 10% to 33% chance, versus the general population's 1%. I imagine there's an even higher chance that he might have some problem, likely in the areas of sensory processing or attention.

We're under no delusion that we can stop J. from having a problem if he's already programmed to have one. But we've already determined that we'll call early intervention, jump on OT, find some help the second we have a clear indication that it's time.

Ironically, we're likely to receive less push-back from our pediatricians this time since J. has an older brother with a diagnosis. This time we won't hear that we're just over-concerned first-time parents. (Even though research has found that first-borns are more likely to be autistic.) (Oh, and our new location and pediatric clinic seems more amenable to the discussion.)

So we're aware, hyper-aware. And today's just another day for us.

Fan girl squee

2010-03-25T23:21:00.003-04:00

I regularly read Amalah. I started with her main blog, but also check in on her at the Advice Smackdown, Bounce Back, Mamapop, and revisited Zero to Forty during my recent pregnancy. What can I say? She makes me laugh, so I'm willing to read about all sorts of stuff I wouldn't seek out otherwise.

But I'm especially devoted to her personal blog since she writes so honestly about dealing with her son Noah's quirks--quirks that remind me of a certain elder son of mine--with humor and love.

So it was both a surprise and thrill to discover that a comment I left on her inaugural post for her new column--"Isn't That Special" on special-needs parenting--had served as the framing device for her second post. And of course it's full of passion and just so right.

Not entirely connected and not that I think my usual writing is anywhere as compelling as Amy's, but I figured I'd throw this out there for my regular readers, especially since I know a bunch of you in real life. I've been thinking seriously about starting a new blog with a more developed focus on Asperger's. Being the parent of a kid with Asperger's, suspecting it in myself, what research is out there, my own half-baked ideas. I'm toying with the idea of writing it fully as myself or at least in a manner more easily traceable to my name. I haven't done much in terms of deciding on a platform or figuring out how to do things like Amazon Associates (since I've read widely on the subject and have a number of books to recommend). So basically my question to you: yea or nay?

Why I'm watching "Parenthood"

2010-03-08T17:16:00.001-05:00

I probably would have watched NBC's new show Parenthood regardless, but my initial viewership became guaranteed when I read that Asperger's would come up. I definitely wanted to see how they would handle it.

Max (Max Burkholder) is the son of Adam (Peter Krause) and Christina (Monica Potter). It is clear from the very beginning of the first episode that he is a bit quirky. He's insisted on wearing the same pirate-inspired outfit to school for days. His dad is excited about their upcoming Little League game, but Max is reluctant to put on the uniform. At school (kindergarten or first grade, I'm guessing), he struggles to cut out a shape drawn on construction paper and to interact with the other students. When another kid calls him a freak, he leaps at him and bites.

The meeting at school includes phrases, like "We're not sure this is the right place for him," and a referral to an educational therapist. After that next meeting, Christina goes to find Adam and tells him that the educational therapist thinks they're looking at Asperger's. Adam responds by saying they'll get a tutor for Max and fixates on this even as Christina is trying to redirect him--it's not just the academics, there's the social component. Finally she says, through the tears, "There's something wrong with my baby."

This finally sinks in for Adam when he's standing outside of school with Max while the rest of the family is inside watching his niece's school performance. Max cannot go in because there are candles outside the auditorium, and he has a particularly strong fear of fire. When Zeek (Craig T. Nelson), Adam's father, comes out to suggest that Max just needs to get over it, it's Adam's turn to say, "There's something wrong with my son." Zeek, who is very much of the macho school of living, backs off a little, but I suspect he'll take more to come around fully.

My initial reaction was frustration over all the tears and agony. Our son is fine. He's mainstreamed, has friends, shows affection. I fully expect that he will be able to navigate life--he just needs a little extra support and explicit teaching up front. Move on, don't dwell and wallow.

But at the same time, I could feel my own tears welling up, and it didn't take long before I found myself thinking about the first time we were told the word "autism." Even more importantly, I was able to remember that we are dealing with a kid with 3 years of interventions now. We haven't had to deal with biting since it was vaguely age-appropriate. And then creeps in the memory of the note earlier this year that he had slapped a classmate. Or the fact that he wore a pirate hat this weekend (but backwards, signifying it was a "vacation hat" and don't call it anything else) when we went shoe shopping.

Our family's in a pretty good place now. He's improved and we've adapted. This is the gift of time and perspective.

You can be sure I will continue to watch Parenthood, if for nothing other than to root on Adam, Christina, and Max as they work towards a better place.

Official

2009-10-29T23:44:00.003-04:00

To borrow a line from A.: In a move that surprised no one, he has been diagnosed with Asperger's.

But it's official now. Full report to follow, etc, etc.

Nonetheless, they sent us away with a short letter making it official. And a good number of suggestions.

The hardest part will be figuring out if we can get any services close to home or if we'll be traveling to Big City on a more regular basis. That will be the case for certain things, like the nutritional counseling we can get through their clinic, but we're hoping to find a good, local match for some cognitive behavior therapy once we get onto our new health insurance.

I also came away with a few suggestions for people to call for myself. (And not even a batted eye when I asked.)

This is not a panacea, but at least we feel like we've been on the right track and have opened up a few more avenues for help.

Closer to official

2009-10-22T21:21:00.003-04:00

We've only been asking questions since E. was 18-months-old. To be fair, A. is the one who initiated them. Mostly I felt like I understood why he was odd in the ways he was--and most of them pointed to my family's bank of personal quirks, so I mostly didn't want to follow that trail too far, at first.

I wrote a while back about a particular student whom I recognized as likely having Asperger's. There's a moment I left out from that anecdote. As I read the article, I so got it. I completely understood where the kids they were profiling were coming from. But, I told myself then and a thousand times after, I am empathetic to a fault and overly sensitive to others' feelings. That means this isn't me.

A couple years later, A. and I were sitting in the coffeeshop near our condo. Our conversation, as was common in those days shortly after E. turned 4, turned to autism. Both of us had moved into fix-it mode, lining up OT and looking into other options for him. I had mostly gotten over the guilt I'd been feeling about the role of my genetics. And I finally spoke out loud an idea that had been brewing for a while at that point: I have Asperger's. My ability to read emotions and my sensitivity to others are both the result of years of observing and categorizing.

I think that since then, we've known that E. would end up just on one side or the other of the diagnostic line for autism spectrum disorder--our guess has long been Asperger's, a suspicion that has only grown stronger as E. gets older.

And now we're moving towards official.

E. went in for educational testing last week, the ADOS administered by the district's autism team.

The written report will take a few weeks yet, but the word has come back to us that he most definitely qualifies. He goes in for a full evaluation and possible medical diagnosis soon. We don't expect that outcome to be substantially different, perhaps just further refinement of where we are now.

This reminds me a bit of when we got our second-parent adoption. Suddenly we had official recognition, but at the same time nothing changed. Everything is exactly as we've known it to be all along.

Except that this time there's the kernel of the potential for where this will take us down the line.

A couple more steps

2009-09-18T23:37:00.004-04:00

As I was driving yesterday afternoon, a thought came to me unbidden: I had in my possession a business card for the child psychologist who was part of E.'s evaluation team. The one that told us to come back in a year and see where he was then. The impression A. and I had at the time was that the evaluation team was split and that she might lean towards the diagnosis.

In any case, we were back in the queue for the re-evaluation. When we called this summer, we were told we would need to fill out the paperwork again, go through the whole process. This didn't seem quite right, but we couldn't remember any explicit promises that there'd be a shorter line for the re-eval, so we did as we were told.

So I called the psychologist this morning to let her know about the recent rough patch and get some suggestions. Which boil down mostly to the fact that the adults around him need to know and understand his communication limitations. While we need to do some advocating, the main key will be getting his teacher to communicate more fully and on a regular, preferably daily, basis. I suspect this will be harder than it looks on paper since most of my communication with the teacher so far have left me unsatisfied; she never provides all the information I'm looking for and is not so good on following through. It will take a lot of effort on our part.

There was, of course, an ulterior motive in making the call today, and I didn't have to do much of anything to get movement in that direction. The psychologist pulled up E.'s record to remind herself of the assessment. I answered one of her questions that we were in line for the re-eval, but didn't have an appointment set up yet. She mentioned that she didn't see why we should have to go through the whole process again since he's already an established patient and they have his history on record.

Turns out that there was a change in the administrative staff this past summer, so our status of re-eval was not handled properly. We got a call this afternoon to schedule our appointment--not for a little over a month, but better than what they'd been telling us before.

I don't think a diagnosis will be a cure-all. But, as I explained to the psychologist, I think it will give us better access to services and some terminology that will lead to a better understanding of the cluster of issues E. has--or at least sound official enough that a teacher might take heed. Currently, there are several things his therapists are sneaking in without them being part of his IEP; with an autism or Asperger's diagnosis, he would change categories and these issues would be addressed head on in his paperwork.

We've still got an uphill battle. We need to address the current problems now and not let them go any further. And I already know it won't be easy. But I'll take the small victory for today. I'm too exhausted not to.

Kvetch

2009-08-24T13:23:00.003-04:00

It's a chilly and dreary day here. Alone, not quite enough to put me in a sour mood--I'm happy about the temperature drop since I prefer cool weather and, this year in particular, have been looking forward to switching to my fall/winter wardrobe since nearly all of my maternity clothing fits into that category.

But I've spent the morning being reminded of why I've held off so long on getting my teacher certification. (Which, by the way, I've decided to get my teacher certification and enrolled in an online alternative licensure program.) The information available on my course so far does nothing to correct my long-standing perspective that most education courses are fairly simple, but make sure you'll put in time by creating busywork. I have a worksheet to do this week.

I've also been trying to track down and clear up the problem that has led to my acceptance papers showing the wrong endorsement. I'm working on my secondary license, requiring me to pick a subject. Given the state's requirements and my own personal preference, I of course indicated Latin. Except the paperwork came back to me with Language Arts (i.e., English). I've already received several different, sometimes contradictory answers about why this happened--all from the same person. And while I most likely will get a second endorsement in Language Arts (especially if it looks like I'll be pursuing high-school teaching as a full-time gig), I do not have enough credit hours to qualify for it as a first endorsement.

The most recent email informed me that there is no Latin endorsement. So I've sent back an explanation of where its definition appears in the education department's regulations (there's a general Languages endorsement with more specific information in the subsections) and am hoping we can get this cleared up.

Then I'm also dealing with some pregnancy-related anxiety. I had already decided that I wouldn't get the H1N1 vaccination when it becomes available, despite the high priority given to pregnant women. But it looks like that will be a moot point anyway, as there's a decent chance it is currently working its way through our school system. There's a chance it's regular flu, and we won't find out test results until the end of the week, but the speed and severity with which it has hit our middle school sure makes it sound like H1N1. I expect to see it hit the other schools within a few days now. So I will probably end up exposed to it well before the vaccine would be available anyway. Of course, this makes me nervous about accepting sub jobs, so I'm trying to keep a close eye on developments in order to balance my health with our checking account. (And counting down to the end of the month when A. is supposed to get paid for the job she started this month--but we've already played one round of "where's my money?" this summer, so we're waiting to see how this goes.)

I see that I have a new email in my inbox. Hopefully it's the positive conclusion to my endorsement issue. And then, having vented here and had a happy resolution, I can return to the paper I've promised my supervisor.

The terrible twos at six

2009-08-18T23:38:00.004-04:00

In all the reading I've done on developmental delays and the like, I seem to remember coming across the idea that children who do not hit certain milestones at the expected time will go through them at a later date. I feel like we've been hitting at least a couple of these this summer.

As a toddler and preschooler, E. did not get into very much. We did some babyproofing before he could even crawl and then didn't get to much more. We always figured that we kept a pretty good eye on him and would be able to take care of any location that caught his fancy. We did not add any more latches, didn't need to. In retrospect, I suspect it is part of the Asperger's; since he tends to see the world from his own perspective only and just as it is presented to him, he simply didn't think to open drawers and doors and climb on things.

Similarly, he has not put on great displays of independence. Sure, he has learned to do more for himself, but his proclamations of "I can do it myself" have never been as frequent or vehement as one might expect from a preschooler, even as stubborn as he is.

That has changed a lot. He's into everything now. My mother-in-law has said that she never worried about leaving him for a short time, but now she knows that any amount of silence is not a good thing. At my sister's, he kept showing up with rolls of tape, taken surreptitiously from a particular drawer. When A. and I stocked up on medicines, in order to use up her flexible spending account before she was off payroll, I installed the first cabinet latch in our house--not because of the baby we were then hoping would be in our future, but because we worried that E. would be into it.

The past few days have added his loudly announced belief that he doesn't need me anymore. (Me specifically due to being the one who has denied him some things.) He's chafing at the bit and wanting to be bigger, older, able to do more.

While this may be developmentally appropriate for him at this point, it is more wearing than I imagine it would have been at 2 or 3 (or even 4). The combination of a couple more years and a creative mind is problematic. He can reach higher than before, even more so now that he's grown a couple inches this summer, and has the ability to plot out at least part of his action ahead of time. His idea of what constitutes independence is grander and more sweeping now--we've had to say no to the driving and remain insistent about holding hands (or finger, as he allowed this morning) when crossing certain streets.

Some good may come of this--he's suddenly interested in not wearing pull-ups at night since they're for babies--but I can't wait for the rest of this to pass.

Back to school

2009-08-13T22:56:00.002-04:00

The other night I had a school anxiety dream--about Scooter's school. It was right before the class lists were going to go up and I was inside the school and knew I shouldn't be there and needed to get outside. See, the tradition seems to be that the class lists go up just as the secretaries are leaving for the day, meaning the building is locked up and empty just as people start to get their information.

I've spent the summer wondering which class Scooter will end up in and if it will be a good fit. I found out at the end of the school year who the two 1st grade teachers would be; Mr. Teacher and the classroom assistant gave me a brief rundown. Although both teachers are solid in academics, the teacher who is more academically oriented is also stricter and without much humor. The other teacher is more fun, but a bit flaky. The first teacher would probably provide more structure, the second more flexibility. I could see how he would have trouble with either one, but was hoping a bit more for Mrs. Fun. I worried that since both Mr. Teacher and his assistant thought Mrs. Strict would be a good match with Scooter academically, he might end up in that class.

My worry was allayed a bit by knowing that Scooter has people on his IEP team who very much want him to succeed. A couple different conversations with his OT included heavy intimation that they would make sure he ended up in the class they thought best for him. So I've tried to remain calm with the knowledge that regardless of which teacher Scooter was assigned to, it would be the best fit available.

As I walked up to the school with Scooter to check the lists, I hit upon a sign I would look for that all had been arranged as planned. Scooter had both OT and speech therapy with a particular classmate, a kid who has some similar issues. It seems likely that this pairing would continue and it would be easiest for the therapists to schedule them together if they're in the same class.

Sure enough, Scooter's name appeared just a few lines below this kid's--under the Mrs. Fun column.

Even better, he has two other friends in his class, including one with whom he's had several playdates this summer. We even like the mother a lot.

Even better than that... the two kids I least wanted him to have in class--both picked on him and one of them is a master manipulator--are with the other teacher.

The teacher's name is only an abstract concept to him right now. I think even the list of kids he knows is mostly abstract. It'll take being in the classroom and starting back into the routine of school to make this real. But at least he's excited to go back and maybe I can stop with the displaced anxiety dreams already.

In search of the wellspring of patience

2009-08-10T23:18:00.002-04:00

When Scooter was born, I learned a lot about myself. One thing that surprised me was the depth of patience I discovered. Even when I was frustrated and overwhelmed, somehow I managed not to take it out on him. I made it through the initial hormone fluctuations, breastfeeding difficulties, picky eating, and years of sleep problems--crying copiously to Trillian, of course, but not losing my cool with my son. I understood that he simply couldn't help it and that getting agitated wouldn't help the situation.

Increasingly that's not the case.

Intellectually I get how hard some things are for him. It's not as simple as tasting a new food or then eating more than a single bite. He truly does not process our requests until the third or so repetition. He must find one particular toy before he can settle in to go to sleep.

He needs me to guide him gently in the right direction, understanding when it's more than he can handle for the moment.

But I find myself becoming short and sharp more often than I would like. And wishing he could just get over it--even though I know it's not that simple.

I worry that my patience is gone forever and that Scooter will remember me as being more tense and curt than fun. I worry that the next child will never know the mother who had bottomless reserves of calm and that I will be frazzled and frustrated from day one. I know that I don't have the ability to step out of the situation and determine the best way to find my center again.

Summer vacation has been particularly difficult. What does it say that I think all of us view the start of the school year as our real vacation?

Subtext

2009-08-09T22:25:00.002-04:00

I found it interesting that Aliki commented on my last post that she had been wondering, after reading my previous post, if I were pregnant. While it was not foremost in my mind when I wrote that post, we definitely blamed pregnancy fog for my forgetting the pull-ups and Trillian has been a lot more concerned over my bedtime lately. On the other hand, there have definitely been a good number of posts that were carefully crafted to write around the issue. I thought I'd share some of those moments with you now.

Several of my posts mention an inability to focus, blamed on either the heat or simply "too much to contemplate." Trying to get pregnant and then being pregnant certainly played a role. Only 6 days after our first insemination attempt, I reference trying for child #2 before Trillian was employed again. It was weighing especially heavy since I knew there was a chance, a good chance since I had timed things correctly, that I was already pregnant.

By the time I wrote about Scooter's perfectionism, we'd already had a positive test. That post reads as it would have at any other time, but obviously the idea of genetics and what I may pass on is a frequent topic of rumination right now.

The big piece of subtext is the crib post. The night before I headed down to Albuquerque, I re-assembled the crib. Trillian truly had wanted me to in order to make it easier to chase down dust bunnies, and I decided to put it together before any possibility of pregnancy instead of waiting until the second trimester. Of course, by the time I downloaded the picture and got around to writing the post, the "hope" in the title had switched from hoping for a positive test to hoping for an uneventful first trimester.

And yes, although Trillian and I started discussing a minivan a couple months ago, the timing of the post was due to my growing resignation that this will be our next major purchase.

The discussion I had with my sister about potential future children is portrayed fairly, especially since I waited to tell her until just before my big announcement here.

I know that I mentioned the horror Trillian and I have felt at the possibility of 16 straight years of diapers (if one includes night-time pull-ups, the kids were 8 years apart, and each used them until 8-years-old). When I wrote that, I was staring squarely at the fact that we are pretty much guaranteed no break at this point. I'm hoping for a second child who feels quite differently from Scooter on the issue of potty-training!

Cat, bag, etc

2009-08-03T17:06:00.004-04:00

Originally, I had this grand idea. I would post the following for Wordless Wednesday:

And then on Thursday I would tell the story of two Julys ago when the first person who found out I was pregnant (for the third time, which would be my second miscarriage) was Bea, because our families were spending the day together and when we started discussing dinner options, I turned down one with a phrase like "I'm not eating feta right now" (which is immediately code for I'm pregnant, but don't want to say).

As it happened, the announcement ended up on Facebook today. Since nearly all of my core readership is on my friends list over there, it just wouldn't have the same impact.

Instead I'll say the following: I've just exited my first trimester, I'm due in early February, and we've been able to see and hear the baby several times now. I wrote a few drafts during the past few weeks about the first trimester and will be posting those over the next few days.

I'll also say that the nausea has pretty much passed, but I could do without the headaches that seem to have taken its place.

ETA: And since there are so many people from my department on Facebook, I feel I should tell my supervisor now, as opposed to a few days from now when I hope to have a draft of my paper (which, realistically, may or may not happen). I'm not looking forward to telling him that my comps are going to get extended by the length of this next leave of absence.

Notes from the road

2009-08-01T21:59:00.003-04:00

Scooter's fresh out of his bath in the hotel, has taken his vitamins, and has been rubbed with lotion. Time for the pull-up...

I vividly remember looking at the pack under the sink in his bathroom and making a mental note to pack some. Guess what I forgot!?

Quick trip to the local grocery store in this tiny little town. As I drive down there, I realize it's already 8:30 (thanks, time change) on a weekend night. Fingers crossed they're open until at least 9:00. Rejoicing when I discover that they're open until 10. And they have the exact pull-ups I know will fit Scooter without any leaking!

* * * *

I also pick up a bag of raisins. We have other healthy snacks in the car too, but of course Scooter focused on the sugar today, with a side of Fritos. He was in a foul mood this evening and had a meltdown over how he needed more candy. We insisted on something healthy and managed cream-cheese crackers with apple juice. Absolutely no more sugar! As he winds down for the evening, he's a bit more pleasant, so the detox is already working.

* * * *

I'd forgotten that the Indigo Girls cuss on their more recent albums. Like the f-word. In multiple songs now. One of the times I'm thankful that Scooter's auditory processing issues and lack of interest in our music means he's not paying attention to the words.

* * * *

Trillian's insisting I head to bed. Given that I woke up just after 5 this morning, I'm inclined to agree with her.

Disordered sleep

2009-07-29T23:39:00.002-04:00

I have had two sleep studies now in an attempt to get to the bottom of my "disordered sleep." From the first one, I found out that while I do not suffer from sleep apnea, I have an insane number of episodes of hypopnea, or periods of 10 seconds or more when my breathing becomes especially shallow or slow. I also woke up 12 times during the night for absolutely no discernible reason. (Though if they'd asked I would have explained that I start to ache anytime I'm in one position for too long and tend to wake a little whenever I have to move around.)

The second study was to try me on a BiPAP, which is a machine that creates positive airway pressure by blowing air down my throat. It's supposed to let up the pressure on the exhale. I managed to fall asleep with it on by meditating, but the second the nurse began to turn up the pressure (the goal was to adjust the level until my hypopnea frequency went way down) I woke up and had a panic attack. I tried to fall asleep again, but became very aware of the lag between when I would start to exhale and when the machine's pressure would let up. I spent the rest of the night sleeping without it.

At some point I will have to address the sleep issue and probably figure out a way to deal with the sleep mask, though I'll be trying some other methods first. Losing weight is always at the top of the list, though there's a good chance it won't be enough since I've had trouble sleeping since I was a kid.

Coinciding with my attempts to work on my own sleep issues, Scooter has experienced a bit of backsliding. Usually I'll talk about his sleep problems in the past tense, thinking of the years when he needed one of us with him to fall asleep and it would still take at least two hours. We did eventually get him to where he could fall asleep on his own, decently quickly too.

That's been eroding little by little, though we did not consider it all that significant since he still was falling asleep on his own. It took longer and frequently required several visits from one or both of us. But he was staying in his own room and mostly staying in bed.

Then we hit summer. As every child before him, he complains about going to bed before the sun goes down, but he still fell asleep not much after his usual time. We tolerated the sneaking out to his playroom to get "just one more thing."

And then he said he didn't want to sleep in his room anymore. The first night, he got into the Ikea tent he had set up in the playroom and said he would sleep there. He had brought a pillow and blanket. We figured it wouldn't last, given that the tent lay on a thin mat over hard tile. But he fell asleep quickly, even with us in the next room watching TV. This continued a few more nights, though I brought in floor cushions as a make-shift bed. We then successfully shifted the whole thing back to his room until he got tired of it.

At this point, he declared that he didn't like his bed anymore. Given that we don't possess any spare beds we could just haul out in the middle of the night, we worked with him to figure out what is so awful about his bed. Well... the pillow. I showed him our spare pillows and found one that would be acceptable if only it were blue. Pulled out a blue pillowcase. Then a blue sheet to serve as a blanket. The whole production.

So we've at least got him in his bed, which is acceptable again. But the sneaking out and general resistance to falling asleep in a timely manner continues. I fervently hope that the new school year will restore a sense of schedule--or at least tire him out enough that sleep comes quickly.

Reading for something other than my degree

2009-07-23T23:12:00.002-04:00

My goal is to finish a draft of my paper, something that won't make my supervisor wonder why I've been allowed to continue in the program--sometime in the next week. This goal coincides with our last trip of the summer, a return to visit my sister (and my alma mater's library). And although I'll be trying to get some more research and academic reading done, I plan on treating myself by turning to some fun reading.

Now for the decision: which series to continue? I have four options and no clear winner right now. All of it's fluff reading, most of it is juvenile (as in, I will be heading to the children's section of our library). For all of these, I'd probably bring at least two books with me.

This one wouldn't require a trip to the library, but I'm itching to re-read the entirety of Harry Potter. I just saw the 6th movie this week and usually would have already worked through at least the corresponding book, if not the entire series, but it didn't work out that way with this one.
One of the trailers before Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was for Percy Jones and the Lightning Thief. I read that book, borrowed from a friend in Toronto, shortly before leaving there. I have not picked up any of the others and had almost forgotten about the series. But it's an enjoyable read and almost on-topic for me, given the presence of the Olympian gods.
Then again, there's a series I started fairly recently: Books of Ember. The first book was made into a movie, City of Ember, which Trillian and I saw via Netflix. The movie did not do particularly well, meaning that the remaining books will likely never become movies, but I was intrigued by the ideas and (as is usually the case) found the book even more compelling.
Finally, I made it through the second book of the Twilight series a couple months ago. I'm not enamored of the series and have grown to dislike Edward and Bella even more, but I feel almost obligated to power through in case I experience a sudden conversion. (Interestingly, I was checking out an author blog at the time I was reading the second book and she made some reference to some book she'd been reading where she disliked most of the characters and thought the writing was not particularly good, yet she felt compelled to continue. She purposely didn't name names, but I'm convinced she was talking about this series.)

I suspect I know what the general consensus will be, but am still interested to see what people say.

A body at rest tends to stay at rest

2009-07-22T22:39:00.002-04:00

I've lost momentum on my schoolwork. I try to be fair to myself. There's a lot going on here, extra stressors, oddly busy days popping up here and there, a bored 6-year-old to keep from destroying the house, heat that makes reading other languages a near impossibility. Some of those items are bigger than others, but the combination has made me that much slower to commit as much as a sentence to the screen in a day.

I will send a draft off to my supervisor soon. For better or worse. We'll see how it goes over with him.

What I'm least looking forward to is the likely pointed reminder that I would probably be making faster progress were I still a resident of Toronto.

That's somewhat debatable, even in its most simplistic form. While I would have better library resources at my disposal and a private carrel in which to sequester myself on occasion, being around the department would provide more distractions. (I have a couple friends in particular with whom I can chat for hours. Facebook, at least, spreads the conversation out.)

But I've also been thinking about this is grander terms, the likely trajectory certain aspects of my life might have taken had we stayed in Canada.

The first, one of our biggest motivators in moving back to the States, is Scooter's education. We had already held Scooter out of junior kindergarten because we expected to move and didn't want to create additional transitions for him. Maybe we would have decided differently if we'd known we were going to stay, but I'm not sure. We were still waiting on an evaluation and were not confident that he would have qualified for much in the way of services. For kindergarten, we would have been able to keep him at his old daycare for mornings and send him to a school near campus for afternoon kindergarten. And then for first grade, he would have to leave that school and go to the one near our condo. Too many transitions, too many different administrations to deal with.

Then there was the toll on our health. There was one solid year when at least one of us was sick. We thought for a while that Scooter had asthma; it turned out to be a persistent bronchial infection that took multiple medications and an inhaler to conquer. I found out this past year that I am horribly allergic to several types of mold, the likely culprit for my own respiratory problems. Trillian and I even posit that between the mold allergy and the gluten sensitivity, my immune system was working overtime and may have contributed to my miscarriages.

Not to mention the toll on our relationship. Trillian came closer to breaking up in Toronto than any other time in our now 16 1/2 years together. The above point played its part; we both felt physically off most of the time we were there. I felt responsible for dropping us into the whole situation, Trillian was carrying the financial burden of our family. Throw in trying to maintain finances across international borders, issues with the health system I've written about before, and the discovery that both of us suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder to some degree (holy hell, the winters there are long and gray, so very gray). Things have not been perfect for us here, far from it, but the tension between us has lessened considerably.

I feel pretty certain that had I stayed in Toronto, either with my family or in some long-distance arrangement, I would either have dropped out of the program (as too much for my son, my marriage, our finances) or ended up staying in Toronto alone (with Trillian and Scooter down here, another huge drain on our finances).

Not that I'll be saying all this to my supervisor the next time he makes his remark. I know he'll always think that this move was a bad idea in terms of my studies--and it's his job to focus on that. And I don't think I have the fortitude to suggest that as far as my priorities go, graduate school ranks lower than some other aspects of my life.

(Mostly unrelated, but brought to mind by the issue of priorities: due to a changing of the guard in my department, my committee is now comprised entirely of childless-by-choice professors. Two of them aren't even living with anybody. I'm not looking forward to my annual meeting.)

In the kitchen: Ice cream

2009-07-20T23:31:00.002-04:00

If you're still cursing me for the discovery that chocolate truffles are ridiculously easy to make, so not go see what I've been doing in the kitchen. Seriously.

As for me, I'm off to serve myself a bowl of chocolate ice cream.

Boy oh boy

2009-07-15T20:42:00.003-04:00

Scooter is a boy.

So yeah, this is news to nobody, but it's become a fact he needs to assert frequently and in the strongest manner possible.

I know that this is all completely age-appropriate. He's defining himself in relation to the world around him and the labels that are most readily available. He's also learning social conventions via his peers.

I have to keep all of this in perspective. It can take a lot of self-monitoring and reminders.

It's a good thing that he's finally paying attention to people and how they differ. More than that, it's impressive he's picked it up without more explicit teaching since this is a typical weakness for people with Asperger's.

But sometimes it's a tiny little dagger in my feminist heart.

He has begun to loudly and insistently classify things--toys, movies, shows, games, books--as "for boys" and "for girls." He proclaims that he "hates" certain movies and characters he loved when he was younger.

I occasionally respond to his announcements with something like, "Anybody, boy or girl, can like that." Not because I expect it to make a difference in his present opinion, not because I'm trying to lecture him. Rather, I hope that when he gets past his current need to assert his gender so strongly, that idea might stick with him and he'll allow himself to like things simply because they appeal to him.

Oh, and to counter the vehement reinforcement of gender many of his classmates have picked up from their parents. Scooter went to one birthday party with a football theme. I suspect that this father heavily emphasizes "boy" activities since his son being gay would be about the worst thing he could imagine. (Should I anonymously pass along articles on gay professional athletes?) Another parent "punished" her son by sending him to school with Disney Princess fruit snacks, instead of the usual Spiderman ones. At the time, I told him that she probably ran out of the others and that they're the same basic fruit snacks anyway--later I found out, directly from the mother, that most of her children's stuff is gender-specific and that giving her son something "girly" is a mild form of punishment.

I wonder how these parents would/do respond to a fairly normal statement from boys at this stage. Scooter has declared recently that he does not want to marry a girl (seeing as they are conveyors of "girl stuff" and all). Sometimes he'll refuse kisses from Trillian and me since we're girls (though sometimes we can win them back by pointing out that they're "mommy kisses," which are a slightly different category). I don't expect this to be predictive of the dates he brings home in high school, but I also don't care how it plays out.

Baby talk

2009-07-13T00:57:00.002-04:00

My brain coalesced long enough for me to remember a couple of the topics I had intended to stick into blog posts. And so I have picked the easiest one for tonight. (It's still very hot here, so deep thinking and organized writing requires a greater effort than I'm willing to expend right now.)

My sister, the one we went to visit last month, was the first family member I told about my second miscarriage. (And, if I remember correctly, remains one of only two extended family member's I have ever told.) She is, in fact, one of very few people with whom I will discuss child plans very frankly--outside of the vast internet, apparently. In return she is one of the few people I feel comfortable asking about her own child-spawning plans.

(All of this is a bit amusing to me, particularly since we're not super-close--certainly not like other siblings I know. And we have insanely different approaches when it comes to child-rearing, food, and some priorities. Sometimes it seems odd that we could have grown up in the same household. Compare the third sister with either one of us, and you end up with a similar dissonance.)

So of course we chatted some about our child plans in the time we had together. I had suspected that she was close to trying again; she recently, successfully quit smoking, and I knew that was one of her goals/starting points. She told me that she and her husband have decided that a 4-year gap between children was a good idea. I made note of her daughter's current age (3 years 1 month) and remarked that she was just about to hit that mark.

Turns out she's been waiting for the return of a regular cycle after going off her birth control. And, in fact, they were just about to that point.

We laughed about the different approaches we have to take in this whole baby-making endeavor. I talked about having the one shot per month--but still having a pretty good track record on getting pregnant. She has had good luck getting pregnant as soon as she sets her mind to it (it's in the genes; we are fertile women!), but she does a little math, marks off a few nights on the calendar, and her husband mans up.

We also laughed about the fact that we could end up with kids incredibly close in age, depending on the success each of us meets.

Here's to the hope of new cousins in the new year.

My brains have melted

2009-07-09T00:09:00.002-04:00

OK, it's not that hot here. Plus it's a dry heat, as the saying goes. But I had a whole mental list of things to write about, but I can't remember any of the topics now (except for one, but it would take too long to write and I'm almost ready for bed). So I'm blaming the heat. Which is compounded by the fact that we have only one portable air conditioner that we should probably move back to our bedroom since we can't shut off a small enough area with the living room to make it effective.

Really, I ought to write in the morning, since we seem to get a good block of hours before the sun really beats down. But that's when I'm staring at Word with its current facsimile of a paper that I really need to finish. I'm averaging a handful of sentences and/or a good footnote per day.

I just finished reading Stardust today. (The link is not to the exact edition I have. Mine includes the original illustrations by Charles Vess.) I was too hot to concentrate on my paper any more, so I finished the last three chapters. I'm looking forward to Gaiman's Graveyard Book and Coraline too, though I will not be starting another book until I send off a draft to my supervisor.

Last week, I received the results from my state's basic skills test for teacher certification. Back when I took it, I found it incredibly easy, leaving after just over two hours of the allotted four. My scaled score was at the very top of scale. And the breakdown of my subareas looked the same. So I think I can convince the state that I am intelligent enough to stand in front of a class.

Good thing I didn't have to prove that today.

Creating motivational opportunities

2009-07-05T23:18:00.002-04:00

Anybody who saw my Facebook status yesterday read that I have been resorting to bribery lately. I thought it was funny that the friends who responded were all parents. Funny, and not at all surprising.

So there are two areas in which we've increased our motivational efforts.

The first is in potty training. Our recent system has been to reward with a sticker for no accidents during the day and one for pooping in the toilet (which continues to be a serious sticking point). We've decided to throw in a couple more opportunities for no accidents at night. So far, we haven't been able to convince him to get out of bed when the urge hits, so he still wears pull-ups at night.

(Our neighbor whose son reminds us so much of Scooter in terms of sensory and social issues told us that he didn't stop wearing pull-ups at night until age 8. I said to Trillian, "If we have our second child when Scooter's 8 and that child is similar, we could be dealing with diapers for 16 years--for only two kids.)

Every sticker covers one letter in the word "Dollar." 6 stickers, 1 dollar. And now we have a variety of Legos that he can "purchase" from us. Extra motivation.

The second area, a new one, is food. Scooter's never eaten a broad variety of foods, but all of the food groups were represented, so we didn't worry too much. Multi-vitamin to cover the gaps, and we went along just fine. Now, we're down mostly to carbs and dairy with occasional protein (from the dairy and a few choice meat products). Once upon a time, his pediatrician said not to worry about veggies since he was eating a variety of fruit. Besides 100% fruit juice (the only way he'll do oranges), he used to eat apples, pears, blueberries, strawberries, and grapes. We're down to the occasional apple slice now (and the little bit of zucchini I snuck into him via those cookies, though he refused those today--sigh).

In one of the many books I've read about dealing with sensory issues, the suggestion was made to pay the child for interactions with new foods. The demands start at the level of looking at and touching the food. Then sniffing and touching with one's tongue. They're supposed to be easier tasks, a slow introduction to the food.

With Scooter, he gets a quarter for each step, culminating with several bites and swallows. We've decided to allow him to earn the full amount for a new food as many as 5 times, in the hopes that he'll get to the point where he decides he likes it enough to eat on its own. So often, he'll try one bite of something, announce that it tastes good, but not want to have any more--maybe because of the novelty more than anything else? He's agreed to give peanut butter a go next. Seriously, the kid has never had a peanut butter sandwich.

This could all backfire. He may simply do these things as long as he gets a reward and then stop. I'm hoping we appeal to his sense of routine, however, and sneak in these new behaviors before he can think better of them.

In the kitchen: Healthy(-ish) chocolate chip cookies

2009-06-28T23:00:00.002-04:00

I did a little baking and just love this new (to me) chocolate chip cookie recipe! Even better... they're hiding some veggies and other nutrients. I'd feel guilty, but this is the only way we've been able to get vegetables past his lips.

In the kitchen: Celebrating

2009-06-25T23:28:00.002-04:00

It was a good day, and so we had a special dinner, prepared on the grill. I'm headed out to put the cover back on, but be sure to head over there to see why we were celebrating.

An end in sight (maybe)

2009-06-25T00:03:00.002-04:00

May was a difficult month for us. Trillian spent the entire month hoping to hear something, anything from her old employer or her hopeful future employer. Nothing. My substitute teaching brought in enough for utilities and food, but I was only able to work about half the time I'd hoped for. And then nothing more since the school year was over.

June has been a little better. Her old company has brought her back on for some hourly work. Not a lot--the big guy who saw fit to lay her off in the first place has been adamant about limiting her hours--but probably enough to pay the mortgage and almost our other basics. So at least we'll be pulling less out of our savings than last month.

July could see us back to something resembling normal. Her hopeful employer--after the end of their hiring freeze, advertising the position internally for a month, and now clearing her through all the layers of HR--is almost ready to bring her in on a temp-to-perm position. Apparently they've had a problem with turnover/incompetence in this area recently, so she'll have a 90-day probation and work through a staffing firm. But it's a full-time job, more in line with what she expected to be doing when she took this previous position and has room for advancement.

Of course, we're still waiting to see something in writing, so it's all about fingers crossed and frequent checking of email here.

Home again

2009-06-21T21:42:00.002-04:00

We just spent a fun, but very hectic, week visiting family. I intended to post several times, but tended to find myself chatting with my sister in the evenings, sometimes reminiscing, sometimes passing on advice (requested only, particularly about raising children without religion since her daughter's starting to get old enough to notice these things).

My niece is absolutely adorable, even when throwing a fit. She speaks in complete sentences and points her finger or stomps her feet for emphasis. Her parents are especially doomed since she is entirely cherubic in appearance, including soft blond curls.

It was the first time she was really able to play with Scooter in a manner he found (mostly) appropriate. There were incidents involving disappointment in the other's sharing ability (with my niece mumbling, "He just has to share," and shaking her head as she walked around the house one time--of course, her definition of sharing right now always involves somebody handing over what she wants and not usually vice versa). Scooter was also dismissive at times over the amount of "girl" stuff, particularly with anything involving princesses. This even extended to him turning down the female super heroes his uncle offered. (All the males made it home, however.)

I managed to get some work done too. A good thing since the initial impetus of planning this June trip was so I could get some time in a better-appointed library than the one in Big City. There's another university just a little bit closer that would have pretty much everything I would be able to get at UofT, but I wouldn't be able to visit with family or crash someplace for free while I worked there. This was a pretty good compromise.

The worst part, of course, was the drive. We spread it out over two days both ways, making each day manageable, but extending the experience. Lavish promises of swimming at the hotels and a trip to a Lego Store gave Scooter something to look forward to, but didn't stop my knee from aching or my back from going stiff.

At least this time, we had all the supplies we needed for the inevitable vomit incident. But only one and not nearly the mess it could have been. Anybody know where one can purchase those air-sickness bags?

Just don't call me a soccer mom

2009-06-09T00:18:00.002-04:00

Currently in our garage is a 2004 Toyota Corolla. It's a workhorse of a car and has served us well. And it has helped us survive the bite of higher has prices, continuing to average upwards of 35 miles per gallon. Plus, there's the advantage of very few repairs outside of regular maintenance.

But a few road trips and adding a (large) dog to the family have illustrated its limitations. The trunk is surprisingly roomy for a compact family car, but when we're driving to visit the family we have in a reasonable radius (1 very long day or 2 easier days), the backseat becomes overloaded with a cooler and Scooter's diversions. Even for our shorter trips down to Capital City, the backseat's full once the dog's back there. He easily fills one-third of the backseat, a full two-thirds when he takes a nap.

Figure in the second child we'd like to have (or twins, as I tease Trillian) and...

We've decided that once Trillian is back to full-time work (which is now on the horizon) and we've had a few months to put some of our savings back in the bank, we'll be purchasing a mini-van, probably a Toyota Sienna.

I'm hoping my cousin forgets that time I swore up and down that I would never own a mini-van, despite her protestations of how convenient it was.

Trillian came around to this idea a lot faster than I did. And I quickly admitted that for all the situations we would need to cover on a regular basis, we probably need a vehicle with 3 rows (which the dog has made even more of a reality). For a while, I was pushing for a Highlander Hybrid. An SUV, yes, but a hybrid. Once I did a little research, however, I discovered two facts that made it hard to justify over a minivan. (1) The Highlander's highway mileage is no better than the Sienna's, and our city mileage, where there is a noticeable difference, would be minimal; (2) There's a $15,000 price difference.

So sometime in the next year or two, I will be behind the wheel of a minivan. Sometimes. The Corolla will still be the car of choice for solo trips or with a single kid. If I get the job at the Small Liberal Arts College in Capital City, it will be my commuting car until we've paid off the minivan--at which point I'll be looking at the small- to medium-sized hybrids so I can offset the minivan even more.

(Not at all) Wordless Wednesday: Hope

2009-06-03T23:18:00.003-04:00

I was surprised to find only the one set of moving stickers on the pieces of the crib. This had been its third move with us, though I suppose Scooter had used it as a toddler bed for a couple of those moves. But the crib has accompanied us so many times not because it was our only option for Scooter, but because the plan all along had been for babay #2 to use it--and it's a nice crib, a gift from Trillian's parents on the Christmas Eve before Scooter was born. It's been in pieces, leaned up against the wall in our bedroom*, collecting dust bunnies. That's why Trillian wanted it assembled, so that we could get at the dust a little more easily.

I got to it just a couple weeks ago, on the eve of another visit to the fertility doctor. Not because I expect we will have immediate need of it, but because it serves as a tangible reminder of our goal. Next to it is Scooter's old changing table.

Right now, both the crib and the changing table are serving primarily as a laundry sorting facility, as evidenced in the picture. And Trillian feels pretty strongly about replacing the mattress for a new baby. But the simply seeing the crib standing there on a daily basis is a positive reminder of what we hope is to come.

On the other hand, there is a dresser we still need to move from Scooter's closet, filled with a selection of baby clothes. It will stay there until I'm relying on more than hope that a baby will be joining us. Then you can bet I'll be combing through the many containers of clothing we have in the third bedroom, picking out the tiniest of outfits and organizing them just so.

* For Bea and the other paint chip enthusiasts: our walls are Victorian Gold. It's actually a warm, medium brown. It's the first color we ever picked out for a place where we would live (though we did pick a cheery yellow for our first house shortly before we moved out), and we both love it.

The radical act of being ourselves

2009-06-01T22:22:00.003-04:00

In the last couple weeks of school, Scooter's class reviewed the months and made a calendar. Each month was associated with a specific event or holiday. And so every time a month is mentioned, he pipes up with that month's special day.

We were driving along the other day, talking about how close June--and his summer vacation--was.

"Father's Day is in June," he remarked. Then some amusement crept into his voice, "And I don't even have a dad!"

We brought up the fact that we can celebrate Father's Day with his grandfather. This appeased him and the conversation moved back to summer vacation and his intention to emulate Phineas and Ferb.

We've long been prepared for questions, difficult questions, from Scooter about our family and how he came to be. Yet he's only once or twice asked why he doesn't have a father. He was younger then and easily satisfied with the explanation that families can look different and his family has two moms.

We haven't gone far into the "where do babies come from" discussion either. He still subscribes to the belief that babies come from "the baby store" (not sure where that came from, though I think it's his self-manufactured explanation). I've brought up at least some correction each time this arises, though the furthest any conversation has gone ended with him exclaiming, "You ate me?!" That was on the way to school and his voice carries, so I decided to table further discussion until later. I recently tried to explain the idea of a uterus/womb to him. He wasn't interested in continuing the conversation, so that's where we've left it.

This attitude, this non-need to question the way his life is, continues, I suspect, as a result of his likely-Asperger's. It's hard for him to take a worldview other than his own, so he doesn't even think to wonder about its differences from others around him.

His classmates, on the other hand, have been quite interested in the idea that Scooter has two mommies. It's one of those things that came up on occasion throughout the year. As Trillian took more turns dropping Scooter off at school and picking him up, even going in for one of my volunteer hours when I was substitute teaching, the questions increased.

"He really has two moms and no dad?"

"How can he have two moms?"

"Wait, so you're his mom and you're his mom too?" (said on those occasions when we'd both go up)

"Why does he call you that?" (referring to the non-standard name he calls me)

My answers are simple, variations on "that's just what our family looks like" and "all families look different." (And, on that last one, "It's just what he decided to call me. There are a lot of different words that can mean 'mother' and this is his word for me.")

So many of the students in Scooter's class live with their biological mothers and fathers; only a couple have divorced parents. All of them have at least one other sibling (seriously, Scooter was the only only-child in his class). And so our family interests them, challenges their definition of family, usually the first any of them have dealt with outside of their expectations.

We'll have some new classmates to introduce to this concept next year. Though I'll be interested to see how many of this past year's classmates try to explain it to them and just what exactly they say.

A pre-Blogging for LGBT Families Day rant

2009-05-31T22:39:00.004-04:00

Somehow, tomorrow is June 1st. Which means that it's another "Blogging for LGBT Families Day."

(Quick aside: Can anyone tell me where I put in an application for a moratorium on the passage of time? Just until I can finish the reading I've supposedly been doing for my comps. Or at least for the equivalent of a month or so.)

I'll be posting what I hope will be a more coherent post tomorrow, but wanted to throw out a few of the thoughts that passed through my head as I was pondering on my planned topic.

Trillian and I do not face a lot of obvious discrimination, or even dislike for our "alternative lifestyle," in our daily life. I think that a lot of this occurs because of the way we present ourselves. Matter of fact, not asking for others' opinions on who we are. Having a kid can make this a little easier too, since other parents can certainly identify with the priority our son is.

But... I can feel pretty certain that there are at least two sets of neighbors who strongly believe that our family set-up is wrong. They both belong to a church that says this in their doctrine, and it's not a church most people would attend if they disagreed--there are plenty of other churches for those people. Yet our neighborly interactions are perfectly pleasant, and Scooter regularly plays with the one kid who's close to him in age (at his house or ours, whichever is most convenient for the time).

Hate the sin, love the sinner and all that, I guess. Though I do often wonder what they really think.

There's the standard assertion that coming out, being truthful about who we are, helps fight homophobia. How could someone who knows and respects, maybe loves, somebody who's gay continue to think bad things about homosexuals?

Except that Trillian and I have first-hand experience of the fact that this is not always the case. We recently found out that one of Trillian's aunts and uncles, who happen to belong to the same denomination as our neighbors, signed a petition in order to bring an anti-gay referendum to vote in their state. Not just that they voted for it, but that they played a role in its creation. This was not even "just" a same-sex marriage issue, but one that specifically addressed the rights of gays and lesbians regarding custody of children.

They know Scooter. They send him gifts. They say complimentary things about him. And they don't think our family should exist. Their church told them to sign the petition, told them this legislation is necessary, and they didn't--not even for a second--make the connection to their own niece.

All the numbers show that the vast majority of those who oppose same-sex marriage and the other rights that have been coming up for a vote (and I won't even get started on the issue of voting on people's rights) are demographically concentrated among older voters. For most, as in a majority, of the younger demographics, this is simply not an issue for which they consider debate necessary. And yes this will sound crass, but they will grow up, the older voters will die, and there will be a shift.

Not that it will free us from these uncertain and uncomfortable moments, as there will always be individuals who feel as our relatives do, but I will be much happier when they are undeniably in the minority.

Compare and contrast: perfectionism edition

2009-05-28T23:57:00.003-04:00

Since I was in the classroom today anyway, Scooter's teacher gave me a preview of his standardized test scores. In both math and reading, he's above the district average (which is above the national average), though the math was just barely ahead. As the teacher told me, Scooter completed that test in 8 minutes. "Of course," he retorted, "I'd rather have a student finish in 8 minutes and still meet benchmark than finish it in 5 minutes and miss them all--as one of mine did."

Then during Scooter's rotation to my center, he quickly finished the phonetics worksheet. I told him that he could color it; much of the classroom is packed up or not in its usual place, making it difficult to find even blank paper, so it was easiest to have them color in the various pictures. He said he didn't want to. "Then you can sit there," I suggested (which doesn't come across well on the screen, but this was a playful exchange). "OK" was his reply.

I turned to the teacher's assistant and opined, "He's like me in so very many ways, but I had a real desire to please authority and he's fine just doing his own thing." Turns out this is not uncommon--in art class, for example, he's happy to sit and do nothing when he finishes the day's project instead of starting a new one, as is usually suggested. On the plus side--at least he's not being disruptive.

Except when it leads to the two of us butting heads, I actually love that he has this security in who he is and is willing to assert himself. Even more, I'm happy that he has not fallen completely prey to the pervasive perfectionism I have had to consciously wean myself from. This is not to say that he doesn't have moments when he obsesses over getting things just right, but it is also true that he has brought home many an incomplete or incorrect math worksheet because he got bored and there was something more exciting to attend to.

(I, on the other hand, can still remember the one mistake I made in our math workbook in kindergarten. Seriously. I can still picture the worksheet.)

We will need to monitor this to make sure that he learns to focus on required work even when it doesn't particularly interest him. Maybe I'll be singing a different tune then. But for the time being, I'm very happy he doesn't share this particular characteristic with me.

A month

2009-05-24T23:56:00.002-04:00

As I've said before, everything seems to be moving slower in this economy. It's been slightly more than a month since Trillian received notice about being laid off, slightly less than a month since she went off payroll.

I've been subbing when I can for most of that time. I managed one solid week, which was exhausting but not too bad. And then I had a week where I could only get one assignment. On the plus side, I'm making enough to pay for our utilities and food for a month--and I've gotten in good enough with one of the secretaries at the high school that she was telling me about part-time openings for next year.

We've spent most of this past month waiting to see if the big firm her friend works for would make an exception to their hiring freeze for her or be willing to hire her once the hiring freeze was lifted. Technically, her friend's business unit received approval for the position before the freeze expired, but the bureaucracy and paper pushing means that they haven't really moved forward in filling it. Frequent reassurances that they will hire her soon. Unfortunately, corporate soon is a bit different than our soon.

In the meantime, her previous company has made overtures about hiring her on an hourly basis for 1 1/2 to 2 days per week. At the hourly rate Trillian is requesting (or even a couple bucks less), we could cover 60-75% of our monthly expenses; if she could get more like 2 1/2 days, our withdrawals from the emergency fund would be negligible. Her previous supervisor wants her full-time, of course--Trillian had been scheduled for more than 40 hours per week at the time she was laid off and everybody else on her team is fully booked, so the work just hasn't been getting done. This remains hypothetical, as the work has not actually been approved yet.

More waiting. Always more waiting.

Trillian is giving either position one more week to materialize. Then she's going to start looking at companies in the metro area where we used to live, staying with family or friends in that area.

I remain fairly optimistic. I'm not always sure why, but I keep finding myself thinking, "Soon enough."

In the meantime, we're getting to the end of school for Scooter (and me), taking advantage of the free movie tickets we get with credit card points, looking forward to the local pool's opening (and a warm enough day), and making good use of what we already have.

Requisite parental bragging

2009-05-21T00:02:00.002-04:00

Kindergarten is almost over for Scooter. Mostly I try not to think about that--that and how he's now 6 and will be starting a numbered grade in less than three weeks.

But really it's been a good year. He has learned so much. Not just the academic subjects, which he really has devoured, but his social improvements have also been impressive.

I watched him in gymnastics and marveled at how he easily accepts not being first in line and is not interrupting quite as much (still plenty of work to do there).

We went to his class play where he waited his turn and delivered his line loudly and without hesitation.

I attended an autism workshop and ran into some people from the district there. They invited me to lunch with them, and so I tagged along. As part of the introduction the two people who have met Scooter gave to the rest of the table, they beamed and pronounced me the mother of "a most delightful boy." One of them, his occupational therapist, and I chatted on the way back to the workshop, about Asperger's in general and a little about Scooter. She doesn't know that he'll end up qualifying for a diagnosis, but made it clear that they would make sure he received services as long as they could qualify him under any category. She thinks the school as a whole, not just the extra services, are a good fit for him and that he very well could improve to the point that he'll be fine on his own.

And then my mother-in-law reported to me a conversation she had with the teacher's assistant. They had gotten to the topic of first-grade preparedness. And the assistant mentioned that Scooter is definitely ready, at the top of the class academically. To which his grandmother, who has volunteered in the classroom and knows the kids pretty well, responded that there were probably a good number of kids in the class who were in a similar boat. Only two or three really, and Scooter's ahead of them.

Trillian and I have long said that our main reason for sending Scooter to school is to work on his social education, that we wouldn't care if he hadn't improved at all academically. (Mostly because we knew that the reading and all that would come along naturally without too much prodding. As it did.) But it doesn't mean that I don't absolutely light up with pride over this.

Punting again

2009-05-19T00:31:00.002-04:00

I've written a number of posts in my head, just haven't gotten to the keyboard when they're fresh. Several posts about autism, more on the economy and the torture that is uncertainty, balancing between prudence and deprivation, the mixed feelings of usefulness and futility engendered by a substitute's rate of pay (better than minimum wage, but barely a drop in the bucket, especially when no jobs come up for several days), the mix of exhilaration and anxiety brought about by moving forward with our attempts at child #2 before Trillian has secured a new job, the fact that Trillian tentatively, maybe has a job in the pipeline but it's moving at a corporate pace (see uncertainty above), the affirmation in hearing school professionals describe Scooter as "utterly delightful" and clearly mean it, my thoughts on the series I watch that have been renewed or canceled (because you all care about my opinion on that). And maybe a few recipes thrown in.

Instead...

The wind picked up as I walked the dog tonight. Far, far off lightning flashed, diffused by the clouds that were obscuring the stars for once. The thermometer said it was still warm, and I certainly was fine in a t-shirt, but there was a delicious chill in the breezes that passed over my face.

I really do love this place. The ease of finding solitude while never being far from people and always feeling safe. All I have to do to enjoy some nature is step out my front door--if that's not enough escape, I can bail off on any of the nearby trails, including the one that starts one house over.

Certainly this place is not perfect, and some of the specifics will come out as I write about some of the aforementioned topics. But there's a lot to be said for a place where a daily walk counts as a moment of meditation.

sigh

2009-05-15T19:49:00.001-04:00

Longer posts on actual topics coming soon, but...

Skimming some comments on an article I was reading, someone remarked that one aspect was 'ludacris.' Really?! We're now learning our spelling from rappers?

In the kitchen: eating our veggies

2009-05-13T00:03:00.002-04:00

Trillian and I joined a CSA and are rolling in veggies now!

For me

2009-05-10T00:17:00.002-04:00

For my birthday, the only thing I could come up with was a footbath. I've had to put off bunion surgery--indefinitely now, given the job situation and my soon-to-occur attempts to get pregnant. But my feet have been killing me, so I'm trying just about anything I can. My dance teacher suggested the footbath, and I found a decently priced model over at Amazon.

But I didn't get the information passed along in near enough time. And then when Trillian mentioned it to her parents, it turned out that her mother has had one in the garage that she doesn't use anymore, same brand as the one I wanted, same basic features, shy only one non-important frill. So she brought it by for me to try, saying I could either keep that one or at least use it to decide if I wanted a different one.

Then as my birthday present, they got me a gift certificate to Amazon. I'm supposed to use it on something I really want.

Except I find that very hard to do. Not that I don't have some frivolous desires, but I do tend to make myself justify most of my purchases.

If I had received the gift certificate a few days ago, I would have used the money for the gluten-free items we purchase in bulk from Amazon (case discount, plus free shipping). As it is right now, I have two academic books sitting in my cart. One of them I definitely want on my reference shelf. The other I could probably get from the library, but it's very much in my field and will end up in my personal library some day. They would be the responsible purchase.

I don't have any well-formed idea of what else I might consider. Other equally practical items for other areas of my life, maybe. But even those aren't exactly leaping to mind.

Of course, I could just sit on it for a while and wait until Battlestar Galactica's final season and Pushing Daisies are on DVD...

Reviewing 9th grade genetics

2009-05-07T23:02:00.002-04:00

I was a biology geek anyway and enjoyed pretty much everything we did. Including dissections. (We had lunch right after that period, and while my friends would be pushing their food around their trays, not particularly hungry after what we'd just done, I'd be saying, "You gonna eat that?")

But one of my favorite units was genetics. Some of it was the sense of wonder--microscopic strands of nucleotides dance into position, resulting in a whole human being. More than anything, however, I loved the Punnett squares. All the wonder in a handy logic-puzzle format. I could calculate my chances of having a blue-eyed child with my crush at the time. (50%. Same as with the donor we've been using.) And then I could expand the square to account for more than one genetic trait.

Of course, genetics is not as cut and dried as all that. There are times when there's a step between dominant and recessive. (Exhibit A: My hazel eyes, the result of a brown-eyed and a blue-eyed parent.) And then there's sex linkage, where a gene appears only on the X-chromosome. A benign example of this is the calico and tortoiseshell patterns in cats. The gene for color is on the X-chromosome, and any tri-color pattern requires two color genes. Since males only have one X-chromosome, they will have two colors max (or be a sterile XXY male). This is also what's at work with hemophilia and color blindness.

Which brings me to the catalyst for this reminiscence.

In the past year or so, in the midst of all the tests administered to Scooter in preparation for school and general evaluation, there's been a bit of an asterisk to some of his vision testing. Various medical practitioners have pulled out the standard color-blindness testing book (the Ishihara color test, apparently) and had Scooter take a crack. Before all this, doctors either didn't try the test or didn't expect him to be able to read the numbers due to his age. But there have been honest attempts recently. The last two had the professionals shrugging and saying, "He's not totally colorblind, but he may not be seeing this correctly either. Let's try again in a bit." Scooter would read the first couple right and then got less certain. When he was asked to trace what he saw, he'd go over part of the number and then trail off. We couldn't decide if he really couldn't see or if he was just being non-cooperative.

Scooter's most recent eye exam has confirmed that he definitely cannot see all shades of color. He seems to have the most trouble with lighter shades of green and red. If you check out the linked color test, he would probably see a 71 (or a 21, as mentioned in the caption). He can see a difference in red and green, but I have no idea what they actually look like to him.

So I was interested in tracking down the genetics of this. There was no color blindness in the donor's profile--and that's more complete than my own medical history. And I wasn't aware of any color blindness in my generation or the one above me.

I remembered to mention this to my mother in one conversation. It may not have been until our next one that she was able to vaguely recall her uncle having some form of color blindness.

And so I was able to recreate this gene's path:

My mother's maternal uncle is color-blind. His sister, her own mother, is a carrier.
This gene misses her one boy-child, but is passed on at least to one of her girl-children. My mother is a carrier.
My mother only has girl-children and passes it along to at least one. I am a carrier.
I have a boy-child and am therefore responsible for his only X-chromosome. By the luck of the draw, the one he got includes the color-blindness gene.

It's a three-generation gap in expression, but it makes perfect sense, in a way I learned to figure on paper more than 20 years ago.

(And I've been told kids remember nothing from junior high.)

Things that could be posts unto themselves, but that would require sustained thought

2009-05-04T22:35:00.002-04:00

Into my second week of subbing, and I have a nearly full schedule. Diving back into teaching like this is exhausting, particularly since I have yet to go a day without some completely unexpected event. Short version: fire drill, locked out of a classroom, speaker didn't show up. Here's hoping tomorrow goes without bumps.

But I haven't posted here for a bit, so I thought I'd treat you to my fleeting thoughts:

I've been dealing with a lot of migraines lately. It had been years--as in, since before Scooter's birth. Most of these, as I now suspect earlier ones had been, are hormone-related. There's not much I can take that gets rid of them. And since I'm taking a daily aspirin, I've had to lay off the ibuprofen, which would take the edge off.
The daily aspirin is in preparation for a new round of trying to get pregnant. It's probably unnecessary, but I had some borderline blood results that make it not a bad idea.
Besides the migraines, I've been experiencing other hormone-related pains and discomfort, also reminiscent of before my first pregnancy. I'm trying to view this as a positive--maybe my body is finally ready to support another pregnancy.
I started the second book of the Twilight series. And am finding it very easy to put down.
It has been proven to me, yet again, that I just shouldn't doubt any of the facts Scooter quotes me about the solar system. He has long insisted that Venus is the hottest planet. I couldn't believe this is the case since Mercury is closer to the sun--and then I looked at a couple of the books he checked out from the library and found out that Venus is indeed warmer than Mercury.
I owe my supervisor an email. And an explanation of why I decided not to submit paper proposals to two different conferences.
I'm not on Twitter and have no real interest in it. I already have to deal with information overload with blogs and Facebook. I think Twitter would push me over that line.
I'm making truffles tonight. My excuse is that my birthday's coming up, but does one really need an excuse for chocolate?

(insert witty sub pun here)

2009-04-28T23:48:00.003-04:00

Reasons for an Aspie not to be a substitute teacher:

The job, by its very nature, is not at all consistent. There is little opportunity to develop a routine. Each day is new classes, new students, new schedule, new room, maybe even new school.
It can be unsettling to be the official teacher for a subject she does not know well, creating some anxiety over not looking less than intelligent.
It requires a lot of interaction with a whole host of people she does not know. Lots of small talk and processing new information quickly.

Reasons an Aspie (with previous, successful teaching experience) might be a pretty good sub:

Previous practice has given her confidence in her ability to maintain acceptable order in nearly any classroom.
She will already have a number of scripts to handle varying situations, both for conversations with people and for handling information outside her areas of specialty.
Her attention to detail and need to get things right means that lesson plans will be followed closely.
This also translates to a conscientiousness that means she'll do more than read a book and ignore all but the loudest outbursts. She will most definitely not lose concentration long enough that some students sneak out (as happened to a different sub on the day she was at the school for an observation).

Guess what I'm doing to make a little money!

I am the newest addition to the substitute roster for Springfield Public Schools. It was much easier than the application made it out to be. And they're definitely happy to have someone who is more than just a warm body.

Two of my classes today met in the school library to work on their research papers. The head librarian admitted to me that he usually dislikes it when a teacher sends their students to the library with a sub. But he also made a point of telling me that my previous experience as a teacher was quite obvious and that I had handled the students very well. Not that the students were all that troublesome--it was mostly an issue of keeping them from talking too loudly and gently nudging them back on task. The librarian was actually disappointed to hear that I wouldn't be the teacher's sub for the remaining days he'll be out.

It has been nice for me to find a way to earn something to stretch our savings for the time being, especially since subbing pays better than the minimum-wage jobs I would otherwise be after. I've also missed being in the classroom, so this is a way to sate that.

But boy do my feet and hips ache from a day on my feet!

Guess what I'm still thinking about

2009-04-22T00:28:00.002-04:00

I have moments when I panic, when I run the numbers and worry about how long our savings will really last (mostly when I open bills like the one we just got for my life insurance--it's figured into our budget at a monthly level, but I'd forgotten it would come due in one lump sum, right at the beginning of all of this).

But most of the time I'm optimistic. Something will come through for Trillian soon. Not quite as soon as I'd like--that would be yesterday--but all signs point to enough work, through one or more sources, coming her way in the next month or so.

And the local school district has already jumped on my substitute application, so I may be able to make it through the rest of their process in time to get around a month's worth of work before summer break begins.

I've also been able to keep the humorous side of things in view. Maybe it's immature or small of me, but the fact that the company has handled so poorly pleases me (in a schadenfreude sort of way, except that the event is not separate from our own suffering).

Turns out that the decision to let go of Trillian came from very high up, based entirely on numbers, and not discussed with anyone who actually knows her work. Her immediate supervisor, who is just below the apex of the management pyramid, did not know until afterwards. In fact the supervisor sent Trillian an email in an everyday tone, asking about an aspect of their current project. Trillian, a bit confused, mentioned that she was not working on anything, given the whole lay-off thing. Which was the first her supervisor had heard of it.

Not that it gets Trillian her job back (though contract work or even getting the job back are looking more and more likely), but I do take some perverse pleasure in the damage the big guy has done to morale. Her supervisor is completely frustrated that he has no sense of the knowledge base she has--or the fact that they literally cannot replace it with a single person. And even if Trillian does get some work back with this company, he's made it that much easier for people to understand why she might want to leave if another offer comes along.

Another glint of silver lining is that Trillian has had a lot of former co-workers write glowing references for her. The unanimous opinion among her most recent co-workers and the friend who has been trying to get her a job with her own company has been "I really want you to be working with me, but the most important thing is to make sure your family is OK, so I'll help you get a job anywhere I can." It's not the circumstances one hopes for to discover how much one's work is appreciated, but it counts for a little something.

Bad news

2009-04-20T15:39:00.002-04:00

As Scooter and I walked home from school one day last week, he gave me his bad news for the day. A friend had gone to a doctor's appointment and missed recess playtime with him, his made-up superhero had needed to run from equally made-up bad guys, and--my favorite--some kid had brought a frisbee from home and then thrown it into the street, where it was promptly squashed by a passing vehicle.

There was a sense of comfort in hearing the bad news from a six-year-old's day, especially in contrast to the very big bad news his parents have been dealing with. Trillian has been laid off. Quite unexpectedly, with absolutely no warning, not all that long after we'd convinced ourselves that her job was secure (there's already been a round of layoffs, her team had enough work to keep everyone scheduled at 50+ hours per week, and they're expecting to enter an even busier period soon).

Her company has handled this in a very ham-fisted manner. The person who spoke to her on the phone gave her some misleading information (and said more than he should have--if we wanted to sue for wrongful termination, he gave us enough ammo); she wasn't clearly told until the next day that the lay off was immediate and that keeping her on payroll until the end of the month is the sum total of her severance package. They may or may not be able to throw some hourly work her way, but it's not clear who will be making that decision. And it sounds like they won't be able to get COBRA information to her until sometime in May, after their payment of her coverage ends. The COBRA benefits will be retroactive to the beginning of May, but the sticky point is that I may or may not be covered by them--since Trillian and I are not married in the eyes of the federal government, this is a gray area. So the longer they sit on the information, the more likely it becomes that I will be without insurance for at least a couple weeks.

The silver lining, I suppose, is that Trillian detested this job. She had been brought on with the promise of a mix of the work she'd done before and the opportunity to expand her skill set. Instead, she was stuck with a bunch of editing work that nobody else wanted to do and which was really many steps back for her.

She's been working on some of her contacts for a couple months now. The plan had been to stay put until something definite was in place. Her best lead is with a large company where a former co-worker and friend has been dying to bring her on. Of course, that company put in a hiring freeze just as her boss wanted to hire Trillian. So now we're waiting to see what comes of this. The current bad news/good news is that the person who would need to sign an exception to the hiring freeze has not made any moves, but the hiring freeze is expected to end in mid-May. We're hopeful that even if we have to wait a month, things move smoothly after that.

In the meantime, we have our emergency savings. It hurts to dive into it, but this is exactly the situation for it. We've got 5 months at our current spending levels, more as we cut expenses and I attempt to pick up some tutoring, maybe substitute teaching and childcare too. Trillian already cut our costs on a couple extras, without us having to sacrifice much at this point.

The experience of even these few days has shown me how hard it will be for the economy to reach its previous state. For a few months, we'd cut back on our spending, suffering from the psychological fear brought on by all the news coverage. Just recently, having been reassured that Trillian's job wasn't going anywhere, we were spending a little more. Not tons, not lavishly, not cutting out savings, but allowing ourselves the occasional treat, continuing our Starbucks habit, planning vacations. All of that, just to get bitten on the ass. Now you can be sure that even if Trillian manages to get another job before we've been without a full income for a month, we'll be socking it away like mad, less inclined than before to spend on the extras.

Reaching for the life preserver

2009-04-15T23:19:00.003-04:00

I've been meaning to write the funny version of Scooter's recent arguments and obstinance. Trillian and I (and several others) have been laughing.

But the flip side is that things have been really hard the past few days. It doesn't seem to be any one thing that has set Scooter on edge, but the accumulation of all the little events have led to exhaustion and tears and yelling.

Scooter came out of his birthday celebrations and Spring Break not wanting to return to kindergarten. The funny bit is that he had this all worked out logically and had decided he would just stay home until 1st grade starts in August.

I ended up driving him to school that morning, as he was dragging his feet (and yelling about not going, etc). He did get into the car under his own power once he realized that Trillian and I were 100% not backing down. So he quit talking instead. It didn't last long, I'm told, but I left his classroom half expecting a call sometime during the day.

Since then, he's had numerous accidents at school. I could write a whole post on the fact that we're here at 6 and still no end in sight to toilet training. With the school connection, I am most concerned about any social stigma that may follow him.

There are other little things at school that suggest he's been thrown off kilter, though he's mostly holding together. But then he gets home and has meltdown after meltdown and generally communicates by yelling. Little decisions, like what he wants to eat, are too much, but if we offer concrete suggestions, he rejects them all.

He cops to being "a little grumpy"--and yells at me if I leave off the qualifier or suggest "very" in its place. But he says he doesn't know why. And I'm inclined to believe he really doesn't. I have memories of elementary school and bursting into tears without being able to explain why, just knowing that I felt off, but unable to figure out the one or many causes.

Right now I'm holding onto the hope that is the support team we have through our school. Not only is his OT on the district's autism team, but the child psychologist who is assigned to his school part-time is the lead of that team. And the school's special education coordinator, while not to my knowledge part of that team, is both his SLP and the go-to person in the district for social stories. Even without an official diagnosis, even without a major crisis at school, they're on the case.

I think that I had expected another layer of bureaucracy between parents and the autism team. Not that I thought they would be aloof or unresponsive, just that we wouldn't have the direct line we seem to have obtained. Technically, the psychologist isn't even on Scooter's team. She was brought in for one meeting when we went over the autism evaluation, but was not initially included in the list for his annual IEP meeting. She had, however, offered to meet with us to go over more details of the report and then expressed an interest in attending the meeting. We've since emailed or spoken with her on occasion for advice in specific situations, and she's always been quick to respond, even to call us or seek me out when I'm scheduled to be at school.

On the flip side of all this, I recognize that some part of my anxiety comes from the confirmation that this is where Scooter needs to be now, probably through elementary school at the least... paired with the fact that employment may be hard to come by for me within an hour's drive. I've started to put together applications for substitute teaching and a teacher certification program so that I can have a foot in the public schools here, plus I'll be keeping my application active at the small liberal arts college in Capital City and crossing my fingers that the local branch of the state university decides they can use me after all (although their adjunct pay is beyond crap).

Now to bed so that I can try to find some bit of energy for tomorrow.

The twins

2009-04-09T22:27:00.003-04:00

One of the indignities of the two miscarriages is that my breasts managed to grow in the short time I was pregnant--and then stayed there. To some people, this would be a positive, but here's a point of reference: I'm just now back to my old size and it required losing fifteen pounds overall... and my current size is a D-cup.

This is not a post on insecurities about body image. I have plenty of that, but not connected with my rack. I actually think I have a nice rack. (Topic #1 for those of you who've met me: Yay or Nay?)

Anyway, my style of dressing is not particularly revealing, but it does tend to accent my assets. Though to be fair, it would take more effort and consideration to hide them.

Here's my current dilemma. I have a tutoring student, a male teen. And while our sessions do include a good amount of productive explanation and drilling, I'm pretty sure his eyes wander every time we're not focused on a specific line of text. Even when I'm wearing a non-descript t-shirt.

Either I don't usually attract this sort of attention or I'm just less attuned to adults who may be a bit more subtle in their gaze, but this is new to me.

Chickensh*t

2009-04-01T23:20:00.002-04:00

Going into the opening reception for my conference, I was already exhausted, having left our house very early in the morning, met with an old teaching colleague, and then braved a major shopping area to do some shopping at Ikea and the Lego Store (first one was a necessity since we've been missing one caster we need to raise our TV cabinet, second was inevitable since it provided plenty of options for the 'surprise' Scooter expects).

I told Trillian that I would aim to stay for the first half of the two-hour reception. Since I'm staying a ways outside the city (for free!), I didn't want to push past my limits.

At the outset, I came upon someone I had met at a small conference last fall while getting some antipasti. We chatted a little, then she excused herself to get some more food--she'd been traveling all day. I sat down at one of the tables to eat my cheese and olives, trying to see if there was anyone else I knew--the program had not been very promising in that respect. The woman I had already spoken with joined me, and we talked for a good 30 minutes. At first about kids and being in safe, small towns. And then a really excellent conversation on an area of overlap in our interests, one that spoke directly to some issues I will have to tackle for my last paper before I start my dissertation (and will bleed into that as well).

During all of this, I saw a woman at a not-too-distant table who looked very familiar. I was tempted to go up and introduce myself, tell her I thought I knew her. And I was going to do this after my previous conversation ended, until I got a new perspective on the table. I saw the older woman sitting next to her and a man across the table, and the new context gave me the answer immediately: these were all people from University of 2nd-PhD-program-I-dropped-out-of. The older woman was a professor I'd had, and suddenly I didn't want to go up and introduce myself.

"Hey, remember me? You know, the one who spent a whole semester in your department before deciding she'd rather go do just about anything than stay?"

So I checked my watch, decided 50 minutes was close enough to an hour, and headed to the bathroom, conveniently located across from the elevators to parking.

Now we are six

2009-03-29T12:25:00.002-04:00

My son is now 6. Undeniably, irrevocably six.

He had decided that he would not actually be six until his birthday party. And when his friends had left, he announced that he was pretty sure he was bigger and that he was definitely a big kid now. The cuteness, it may kill me!

I had convinced myself that we had until the hour of his birth--and then I realized that it would come earlier here, due to being in a different time zone from that of his birth.

He is a big boy now. He has grown at least two inches in the past four months. He is reading at least a grade level above. He's teaching me all sorts of facts about space. (I was flipping through a book he got at his party and discovered that there really is a dwarf planet in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. I had been under the impression that all dwarf planets were out in the Kuiper Belt with Pluto.) He didn't flinch at having ten other kids running around and touching his stuff for two hours. He remembered what I told him about opening presents politely.

And the truth is that I'm not really sad that he's growing up, just a little nostalgic. But mostly proud.

Happy Birthday, Scooter!

March Madness

2009-03-26T23:27:00.002-04:00

Go Alma Mater!
It's snowing. To the extent that we will need to check tomorrow morning for a snow day. And even if it warms up for Scooter's party, it will probably be too muddy to send the kids outside. At least 10 kids inside for 2 hours!
Scooter turns 6 very soon. Getting ready for his party has served as a major distraction to the fact that he is not such a little boy anymore.
Most of the parent bloggers I read are people I personally know. (Hi, Toronto moms!) But I've been reading Amalah for several years now, from even before the move up north. Her older son has definite sensory processing issues, and so I can identify with a lot she's going through. Being the opinionated person I am, I also have a strong reaction to many of the comments over there. The worst are of the category of an early one from yesterday (see previous link), where the commenter basically said Amalah was causing these issues because of her anxiety. Definitely the mark of someone who has just no idea--and is a jack-ass. But I also get frustrated with the commenters who give anecdotes about the child they knew who had all sorts of problems and is now perfectly fine. Trillian and I made the decision early on that we would pursue those therapies that were suggested, available, and non-invasive. Although we have no way of knowing for sure, both of us feel confident that OT, in particular, has made a huge difference for him.
Which reminds me of a conversation Lisa b and I had some time ago about OT. Both of us are so scientifically minded and have been faced with putting kids into OT without knowing if it would help or if improvement would come on its own. We joked about having identical twins with the same developmental delays and then being able to put one into OT and let the other one alone. (For those who don't know me--this is my brand of science-geek humor. I would never actually do that.)
So I was moving forward on this foot-surgery thing. Even went so far as to get a second opinion (which matched the first one almost identically). Then I looked more closely at my insurance plan. They have a very specific paragraph on foot surgery, including a dollar limit on what they'll pay in a year, if it is not due to a fracture or dislocation. Which is less than a third of what the procedure would cost me. I'm going to call to clarify, but I just can't justify that expense right now. The podiatrist thinks, and I agree, that this is their attempt to keep people from getting what is technically elective surgery. (As in, there is nothing that says I absolutely must have this surgery right now.) He also asked if there was a knee or hip clause--and there isn't. Sucks that my pain is in the foot and not another joint, which would be covered. Maybe if I had Trillian back the car over my foot...
But if I don't get the surgery next month, I'll probably be heading back to the fertility clinic (which, if I read the insurance properly, will be partially covered). I've now met with a different fertility doctor in Big City, who is definitely an improvement over the first asshole I saw. Still debating some things--this doctor, as have others, would like me to get a hysterosalpingogram to check my uterus' shape, as a possible key to the two miscarriages. If there were a structural issue, they could operate on it, but I already know that I wouldn't do that. So now I'm debating whether I should do this or just push forward with the three remaining vials (which I have also decided will mark the limit of my attempts).
And then there's the paper I'm delivering in 8 days. I'm hoping for notes from my supervisor soon. Not that I'll be able to do any major rewrites at this point, but at least I should have an idea of where it sucks before I deliver it to an audience.
Gah! A houseful of kids in two days. Definitely March Madness!

Par-tay!

2009-03-24T23:39:00.002-04:00

Many, many things swirling in my head, but the number one thing until Saturday is Scooter's birthday party.

We went ahead and invited his entire class (plus a few others) to our house. So far, a quarter of invitees have responded, and we're running at an even 50% attending. I am hopeful that the final number will reflect this split, though I'm still planning for the maximum number possible.

I have been inventing and improvising a lot on this party. Initially, Scooter asked for another Thomas party. That would have been easy, but I wanted to encourage him towards something that would be a little more current with the rest of his class. When we were watching Playhouse Disney one morning and they had an ad touting the birthday party section on their website, I asked if he wanted to consider one of those. He took to the Disney theme immediately and asked for... Phineas and Ferb. Not part of Playhouse Disney, new enough that all the merchandising hasn't hit the stores yet. Absolutely no party supplies whatsoever. Hard to find anything really.

So I've been piecing things together. I ordered a frosting sheet with the characters on it via eBay, created a birthday banner with pictures on either end, even printed up temporary tattoos (they make paper for that!). For plates, cups, streamers, and such, I picked items in three of the dominant colors from the show's logo, so we have ice blue, bright green, and red accents. My crowning achievement so far, however, is the pinata I just finished of Perry the Platypus (the main characters' pet--he's also a secret agent*).

Now I just need to bake the cake and clean up enough to entertain 1 1/2 dozen kids, probably indoors--they're calling for winter weather on Friday!

*Admission time: I really enjoy this show, especially the over-the-top spy stuff. The people who write this really know how to draw in the parents.

Totally unrelated other health problem

2009-03-13T23:38:00.002-04:00

I went to the podiatrist after a particularly painful ballet class. I've had bunions for about 20 years now with varying degrees of pain. They've given me plenty of trouble even during the 15 years I didn't dance, but there's no denying that the concentrated focus put on them by barre work has made them a prominent fixture in my thoughts. This week, the joint of my big right toe was locking, plus I had some other pain that was lingering, so I thought making the acquaintance of a local podiatrist was not a bad idea.

Surgery has been suggested to me in the past. The main reason for waiting had been my age--there was the concern that the bunion would inevitably return if I had the surgery done in my 20s. I think some of this was based on the expectation that I would continue my slight duck walk, which places pressure on the bunion area.

But I corrected that walk in the past few years and have much better alignment now.

This podiatrist thinks that he can get my toes back to 100% alignment with very little likelihood of recurrence. But... only if I have the surgery done before my joints get too stiff. To him that means in the next couple years.

The wrinkle, of course, is my plan to get pregnant. This surgery and pregnancy are incompatible, so I have to decide which comes first.

Due to the severity of one foot in particular, I would have to do each foot separately and be on crutches for 6-8 weeks (back to dance and general activities in 12 weeks) after each surgery.

I'm toying with the idea of getting my worse foot done soon, after my conference, then getting pregnant, then waiting to do the second foot until after the baby is weaned. The biggest downside is that it means putting off attempting a pregnancy by another two months. On the other hand, I worry that the foot-spreading that tends to occur during pregnancy might exacerbate my current problem, potentially keeping me from activity until I would be able to go through the surgery.

What would you do?

Brain malfunction

2009-03-11T23:55:00.002-04:00

I continue to have trouble keeping my train of thought on the rails. Seriously, I think it took three minutes to compose that first sentence. Any attempts to compose a post turn into some sort of ADHD-fueled, stream-of-consciousness rant. After a few minutes, I realize that where I started bears no resemblance to where I ended--and I can no longer remember how I got there.

The other day, I needed to pick Scooter up from a birthday party and then head down to Capital City where Trillian had already gone earlier in the day. I left the house with a clear view of my destination... and turned the wrong way, had to make a couple of turns several blocks later to get back on track.

Anyway, I'm trying to finish a solid draft of my conference paper so that I can get some feedback from my supervisor. The guy I have maybe been avoiding since October. And that's a very real 'maybe.' As in, I can't remember if I even sent him an email to tell him my paper was accepted for the conference. As in, I know I intended to, even have some memory of composing an email, but I can't remember if that was in my head or actually committed to the screen. As in, I really can't distinguish between true memory and honest intention.

So this health issue I'm chasing down--and that's one of the posts I've started in my head--involves problems with blood flow and gravity. By the way, please excuse me if I've mentioned this stuff before; I can't remember what I said before and the flightiness keeps me from going back and checking. So anyway, besides the dizziness and passing out, which sent me to the doctor last month, one of the side effects of not getting enough blood to the brain is a loss of concentration. (Yeah, that sentence took ten minutes.)

I'm trying to figure out how to word my email to my supervisor. I need to explain the lapse in communication. Even if I did email him in December, it's been too long. I'm trying to walk the fine line of excuse and responsibility. And I can't figure out how to say "I'm not getting enough blood to my brain" without it sounding worse than it is. Although it's not exactly trivial either, so I don't want to just ignore it. Plus, I did let him know before that I've been having health problems of unknown origin, so the fact that I've been having health issues wouldn't sound constructed to him.

Today was not a good day, concentration-wise, so I'm hoping I can knock out a couple good hours' of work at some point, as I managed two days ago. But definitely don't expect anything coherent in this space for the next four days or so. This level of posting, such as it has been, has already taken my last once of attention. It is now time to recharge by spending some quality time with my quilt.

Party planning

2009-03-06T21:59:00.000-05:00

Scooter will be 6 in less than a month. Aside from the sappy parenting moments this causes (oh, where has our baby gone?), there is the very real issue of organizing his birthday party.

Trillian and I have already decided on a few of the details.

We will invite his entire class. I don’t like the idea of inviting just one gender. Since the class is so overbalanced towards boys, this would mean excluding only 1/3 of his class and still leaving a pretty large group.
We will invite 3 additional kids: one girl from last year’s preschool who has always been very kind to him (plus she lives not too far away and her mother is very friendly), one neighbor, and one kid from this past summer’s daycare with whom he has had a few playdates.
We will hold the party on the Saturday at the beginning of Spring Break. This is the best day for us for a number of reasons. I also figure it may create a de facto cut in the list so that we’re not actually dealing with 20+ kids.
We will have a Phineas and Ferb cake. This was Scooter’s idea. He absolutely loves the show and all the things these characters invent. Plus, to me, it seemed like a socially more appropriate theme than another year of Thomas the Tank Engine. Trillian has located a decently priced source of custom invitations with the cartoon characters, and I’m brainstorming on possible decorations and activities that can be adapted to the theme.

The biggest detail remains. Where are we going to have this blasted party? Last year we lucked out and the day was gorgeous. The 7 or so kids (and another 7 or so adults) we had over spent most of the time playing in our backyard. We had a few special activities set up, but mostly they just played with the excellent array of toys and equipment back there (most left from the previous owners). We could probably manage with 20 back there. If we were a little more organized. If we served snacks and cake picnic-style instead of at tables. If we had a couple more adults to help us (and I can think of at least 3 we could get over to our house easily).

But if it’s cold or raining or muddy? 20 kids inside our house for 2 hours would not be a good idea.

So I’ve spent a lot of time brainstorming and researching and debating (with myself and Trillian) and contemplating budgets. Home party = cheaper + decent favors – (mess and wear on the house). Party somewhere else = significantly higher base price + still need favors – (the mess will be somewhere else).

So far, we can’t come up with a space in town that would provide a party appropriate to Scooter and his interests. There are four options for sports/active parties, but they’re not things he would be interested in on his own. And forcing a kid to play sports he doesn’t like for 90 minutes seems unfair for his birthday party. The local gymnastics school does have party options, but this is the place I pulled him from after one class in favor of the place we all still love. I would consider his gymnastics school, but it’s an hour away, and I fear that it would thin the number of attendees too sharply.

There are some county-run spaces available, but they generally do not have outdoor access (if it’s a nice day) and there are liability and cleaning issues that would jack the price up. I haven’t ruled this out, but am holding off on wading through the bureaucracy until I can rule everything else out.

Mostly that leaves churches. And since we don’t belong to any congregation, it would be hard to rent the space. Not to mention that Trillian and I prefer to avoid houses of worship whenever possible.

One final possibility is the local movie theater. They don’t have a party room and there’s nothing about parties on their website, but they do rent out theaters. Scooter’s party will also be taking place shortly after Monsters vs. Aliens comes out, and he very much wants to see this. Of course, our theater doesn’t always get new movies immediately, so I don’t know if we can get all these starts to align properly.

So I’m open to advice and suggestions. I do already know that we’re crazy for undertaking this in the first place, but that’s what kids are for—making us attempt the obviously insane.

Making taxes work for me

2009-03-06T01:06:00.002-05:00

I did Trillian's taxes a few weeks ago and we're already enjoying the benefits of having our rebate direct-deposited. I finally finished my taxes tonight, having put them off since I was either going to break even or owe money.

Now if we were able to file 'married, filing jointly,' we would probably be seeing lower taxes overall. But in the meantime, we've learned how to make the system work for us as much as possible.

Last year, when Trillian owed taxes in Canada, therefore zeroing out her liability in the US, I took Scooter as a deduction here in the States, which made sure I owed nothing on my fellowship money (which is taxable here). Since my fellowship is untaxed in Canada, leaving me with no effective income, Trillian took all the child credits on her Canadian taxes.

This year, our taxes were a bit simplified. Trillian earned all of her money in the US, so there was only the one form. We shifted all of the credits and deductions to her. This included the hefty amount of mortgage interest we paid. Since our mortgage is "joint tenancy with right of survivorship," without a specified proportion of interest in the property, we are allowed to allocate the tax write-off as we desire. Throw in the child credit and head of household status, and she made out pretty well.

As it turns out, I don't even have to file a Canadian return. All of the money I made was again tax-exempt fellowship, and I didn't have any need this year to transfer education credit to Trillian's return. Easiest tax return ever.

Then I worked through my US federal tax return, knowing I would owe some money since I earned more in fellowship this year and the exchange rate wasn't as friendly to me. But it worked out to a reasonable $69.

Which I basically recouped via my state taxes. Turns out that my state has what amounts to a "poor person" tax credit. So just like that, $65 rebate. The irony is that if Trillian and I could file jointly, there's no way I'd qualify.

Maybe I'd feel a little differently about that money if our state hadn't just decided not to recognize our relationship, which I believe would have included the ability to file taxes jointly. Maybe I should spend that $65 on something that would make the Catholic Church (they were the main force behind the legislation's defeat) absolutely quail. Suggestions?

And now the anxiety dreams begin

2009-03-03T14:16:00.001-05:00

Apparently writing about my upcoming conference paper was enough to remind my subconscious that I have this coming up and should be nervous about it. Lately, my dreams have been fleeting and I’m lucky to remember more than the odd detail about what was running through my head just prior to waking up. But this one remains vivid and extremely detailed.

What struck me as particularly odd is that this dream came with a back story. I had been scheduled to speak at a conference some months prior. The opening night events had taken place, but the rest of the conference had been postponed due to an imminent storm. So I arrived at registration on the morning of the resumed conference, already in a foul mood. The new conference was on a weekend instead of a weekday, and so it was cutting into family plans. Plus, I no longer wanted to go to the banquet, for which I had paid at the original conference, but wasn’t sure I could get my money back. And the venue, which looked like a large, carpeted lecture hall without any seats, was horribly crowded, adding to my frustration.

This was obviously a conference outside of my immediate discipline, something social science-y instead. I saw from a distance the leader of our atheist parenting group, except I could hear him say that his name was ‘Gaius’ (which it’s not, although his last name is Latin-y). The Classicist I was with (no idea who, originally Trillian was with me and then she wasn’t) remarked on his name as I tried—and failed—to get his attention.

The new program was given to us in a hardback format, full of ads and other bits of information not directly related to the conference. More frustration. I headed to find a place to sit—by myself, since I was suddenly alone. Everyone was finding space to sit cross-legged on the floor. I finally settled in at the very front; high school marching bands, without their instruments, and athletic teams kept sitting en masse where I wanted to be, so the very front was all that remained.

I decided to stuff the hardback program into my backpack and pull out the original program since I thought it would be easier to find information in those few pages of paper—the organizer said she was sticking to the original order. The backpack was the one Scooter uses for school, and the interior looked much as one would expect of a kindergartener’s backpack. The lunchbox and extra change of clothes were missing, but crumpled papers lined it, along with other, unidentified items. I slid the hardback program into the back and managed to locate the other one, smoothing it out a bit.

I was pretty sure that my paper was in there and that I had even thought it was pretty good back when I first wrote it, but I couldn’t remember anything else about it, not its title or content or even why I had wanted to attend this conference.

I thought about going out into the hall as soon as the organizer quit talking so that I could sort through all the papers, but the first speaker was at the podium before I knew what was happening. As he began to talk, there was a mass exodus. Since I was sitting right in front, I felt like I couldn’t get up now that he was speaking, so I felt trapped.

The presenter was speaking in a foreign language, something odd I couldn’t place. Occasionally he almost made sense, but those moments quickly passed. There was another person standing next to him who appeared to be translating, but he wasn’t the one at the microphone, so I couldn’t hear anything he was saying. I still hadn’t found the information in my program, so I was completely lost.

And then I woke up.

*****

I think maybe I failed to mention that the worst part of a conference for me tends to be attending session upon session. Information presented orally with only limited visual support is the most difficult way for me to learn new things or follow a new-to-me argument.* And generally speaking there are only one or two papers in a session that I really want to hear, but I’m not the kind of person who feels comfortable entering or leaving at any point other than the official beginning or end.

After I register today and have answered the pressing question of which cocktail hours I should attend (opening night? graduate students? both? neither?), I’ll be sitting down with the online program for this upcoming conference and deciding which sessions I really want/ought to attend. Then I’ll make plans with the two friends who are local to the conference so I can meet their kids and try to catch up a bit. Plus a trip to Ikea and/or Lego Store—because that’s really the main reason to travel to a major metropolitan area, right?

*Seriously, want to make outrageous claims and have me nod along solemnly? Make a long oral presentation. I won’t have any rebuttals or questions until I’ve been able to process for several hours or days. And you’ll be gone by then.**

**Except you, Trillian. I will come back to the topic, out-of-the-blue, days later when you’ve forgotten you ever said those things in the first place. But you already knew that.

Shouting at myself

2009-03-03T00:43:00.004-05:00

Please pardon the wonky formatting. I tried to erase all the formatting from Word and redo, but Blogger wouldn't hold onto the changes. Twice. I have no idea what it will look like now.

I’m headed to a professional conference in a few weeks to give a paper. (And in all truthfulness, I wouldn’t be going to the expense of the travel if my abstract had not been accepted.) That it is now March has reminded me that I should, you know, actually write the damn thing already, get it to the supervisor for comments, revise, revise, revise, and so on. I only write this now since I have already put in 90 minutes today and am at the halfway point now. (Handy paper formula: almost 2 minutes to read a page of double-spaced text, 8 pages for a 15-minute talk is just about perfect.)

As I alternately typed like a madwoman and then sat staring blankly at the screen, I thought about how different my academic writing process is in comparison to what I do here. Not that every post I write comes out in a steady stream from start to end and there’s still plenty of blank stares, but this is almost always a fairly linear process with a few touchups at the end. A few cuts away to grab whatever links or pictures I need, but it’s mostly me and a single screen.

While working on my conference paper, however, it is not possible to focus on a single screen. Before opening this new document, I already had three instances of Word open.

One contains my abstract so that I can go back to it as a touchstone from time to time. Are my thoughts leading me off-track? Does this take me to the point I promised I would make?

Next to it is my “Running thoughts” file. It’s currently at 11 pages, though is not at all solid text. Bolded headlines break it up into smaller sections. Some are informational, such as the chart of all occurrences of a specific word throughout my main text; others contain a paragraph or two on a sudden thought that will probably make their way into the paper in some form or another. A further group is those paragraphs I cut from the conference paper as veering off-topic; I am a collector of words, and it usually takes a while before I feel certain that those paragraphs will not be needed somewhere else. Finally, there are the two-sentence sections, dashed off thoughts and observations that have nothing to do with my immediate work, but which may play a role in my dissertation (and let’s face it, there is absolutely no way I’ll remember them later today, let alone months from now, if I don’t get them down into writing).

The final instance of Word is, of course, the paper itself. But I’ll get back to that in a minute.

Usually I would have Firefox open too, ready to perform various searches: bibliography, library, dictionary, Wikipedia. I also have a number of academic resources bookmarked, including a number of scholarly works that are available in Google Books. (Plus, what if a friend has a very important update in Facebook or Levenger needs to let me know about a sale.) The only reason I’m not on the internet right now is that Trillian and I are at Starbucks and her need for the internet while working is more pressing than mine. (Though maybe I should put ‘working’ in quotes since she just showed me the Cake Wrecks for today.) (Second side note: and since I wasn’t online, I put this aside and didn’t get to post it until much later.)

I do have iTunes open right now. The music being played on the sound system here is not bad, but I find that having the physical barrier of headphones helps me block out ambient conversation. Familiar music also helps me concentrate since it requires less attention for me to figure it out.

Moving away from my computer, there are always stacks of books. Fewer when I’m working away from home, since I didn’t want to cart around six different books, most of which might receive one glance, if that, during a work session. So the two volumes that make up my author’s text sit on the windowsill next to me right now. At one point, both were open, with various fingers and pieces of paper marking passages I needed to reference.

And then there’s coffee. There’s almost always coffee. A snack is nice too, but not during the most productive flurries of typing.

But back to the file that is the actual paper, the kernel of the whole process.

For a shorter paper like this, and especially one I will be delivering orally, I have to start at the beginning, get the introduction set so that it provides me with the momentum and structure I need to properly approach the body of the work. It never starts out well; I always begin by supplying way to much general information and philosophizing. But that stutter moves into a basic outline which helps me see if I’m moving in the right direction. Then I can go back and cut what I’ve already written like crazy, distilling it to the most important points that will propel me forward. It should tell you something about the process that in the two weeks before today, I had written two pages that contain broad introduction and then a more specific introduction that had just moved into some of the details pertaining to my topic. I was able to tighten that up and then move into the actual body of my paper, churning out another two pages in under two hours. Parts of that came from my “Running Thoughts.” Which makes sense, since the point in keeping a file like that for me is to have a number of thoughts written up and ready to slot in where needed.

Now before I wrote first drafts on a computer, I would fill my margins with notes—facts to look up, other directions I might explore, questions to raise. In the main text, I would leave blanks when I couldn’t come up with a word or squiggles under phrasing that dissatisfied me. Early drafts were filled with these once I understood my personal approach to writing. If I don’t have a system for glossing over minor quibbles until I start refining, I will spend forever obsessing on a single word.

Composing on a computer, however, doesn’t really allow for these little notes, at least not in the same format as before, so I’ve had to develop a new system. I used to employ highlighting in various colors, but it takes extra mouse movements and, when I have tried to color code, can get confusing.

So I’ve taken to shouting at myself.

Sprinkled throughout my draft are parenthetical notes, typed out with CAPS LOCK: ON. Notes to remind myself to check exact quotes and citations, items to consider for future revisions, phrases that just don’t sound quite right, summaries to skim over one section so I can get on to what’s in my head. As long as I’m typing more than one word in this style, I am guaranteed to see it on my next read-through.

This approach has also taught me when it’s time to take a break. As I reach my limit of productivity, the ratio of writing intended to stay in the paper to my loud notes shifts dramatically. Once there’s more of the latter than the former, it’s time to look away for a bit, until I ready to address the shouts calmly.

Which is the perfect time to write a blog post. Or check out Cake Wrecks.

In the kitchen: black beans

2009-02-25T00:19:00.002-05:00

It may not be exciting to most, but I made a crockpot full of black beans. It was a little more challenging than it might have been otherwise because of where we live--go read to find out more.

Taking my small victories where I can get them

2009-02-22T22:13:00.002-05:00

I try not to worry too much about Scooter's eating habits. He is extremely picky and eats from a limited repertoire, but at least he does get some fruit and will take the multi-vitamins we have for him.

Nevertheless, I have moments when I despair of Scooter ever expanding what he is even willing to have on a plate near him.

Yesterday, I cooked up a crockpot full of black beans, knowing I will need some for a dinner later in the week. After letting them cool and dividing them into 2-cup portions, I had another 1/2 cup or so left.

A bit later I was struck with inspiration. There was a point when Scooter would eat cheese quesadillas. And his favorite preschool lunch had always been black-bean burritos (which I have never recreated to his satisfaction). We have both white corn tortillas and Mexican cheese on-hand, so I tried to approach the topic nonchalantly.

Mouse (shuffling around the kitchen): Hey, Scooter. Would you like to have a quesadilla?

Scooter (playing on the computer at the kitchen bar): Um, I don't like quesadillas.
...pause...
What's a quesadilla?

Mouse: It's sort of like a burrito...

Trillian (from the living room): but flat.

Scooter: OK.

So I made the quesadilla, mashing up some black beans away from where he could see them and sprinkling them generously with cheese.

He took the first bite with me holding a quarter of it. And pronounced it "very good." Usually that means he won't eat anymore, but there was more enthusiasm than usual in his voice, so I held out hope. He ended up eating a bit more than half of the quesadilla, unprompted after that first bite.

Hooray!

To infinity and beyond

2009-02-20T19:48:00.003-05:00

Scooter has been particularly interested in all things space. We've been borrowing videos from our library on planets, the sun, the space shuttle, etc. On our walk to school, he will summarize the information he has learned, working through the planets in order. Did you know that both Mars and Pluto are "cold, barren worlds"? (Now imagine that said by a kid who has trouble with the 'r' sound.)

While not an explicit request for his birthday list, a telescope sits in our closet, waiting for the big day next month. It may be a little more advanced than where his interest currently is--he talks about building a spaceship so he can fly to Pluto--but Trillian and I both are excited about showing him the sky and giving him a sense that it is all really out there.

Then today I read about the Galileoscope. (And also the fact that it's the International Year of Astronomy--how perfect for when my son's interest is at its highest!) This is a fairly simple, but quite effective, small telescope kit. It's supposed to be easy to put together and has a few different configurations, depending on what magnification and image orientation you want. There's also an eyepiece that replicates Galileo's viewing experience.

And here's the most amazing part--the price. One kit is $15. Plus shipping and handling, which can add a bit more, depending on where you are. For institutions and groups that want to place bulk orders, they drop the price to $12.50 per telescope for 100+. Individuals can also donate telescopes to schools and the like at the $12.50 price point.

The rub for us is that they won't be shipping until April, after the all-important 6th birthday. Plus we already have the fancy telescope in our closet.

I ordered two anyway.

The telescope Scooter will get on his birthday requires set-up and, therefore, planning on when we want to use it. The Galileoscope will be perfect for spontaneous viewings, vacations, and the like.

The purchase of the second telescope ties in with the fact that we've been consulting a lot of Asperger's information. Just as the videos and books (not to mention, several members of his educational team) mention that Aspies frequently like to take items apart to figure out how they work, we see Scooter headed this direction. And we even want to encourage it to a certain degree, just not with our working electronics. So we'll be setting up a work area for him and supplying him with acceptable items to explore as he desires. This telescope will be the first item we hand to him with this purpose. We'll let him take it from there.

Autism mom

2009-02-19T23:25:00.002-05:00

I feel like it's been autism all the time here for a while.

In the past two weeks, we have had multiple meetings: annual IEP, school psychologist, regular parent-teacher. Trillian and I are working through three different autism books--plus a fourth the psychologist loaned us. There's research on the internet, videos, the monthly autism meeting, possibly a conference.

My mind is oh-so full.

The information overflow is one part coincidence, one part design. The IEP, parent-teacher conference, and monthly meeting were going to happen within a short span of time by coincidence of the calendar. A couple of the books arrived from Amazon around this same time. The IEP meeting spawned the meeting with the school psychologist, which spawned some of the reading and research frenzy.

The meeting with the school psychologist was one of the single most illuminating hours Trillian and I have spent in discussion of autism. This woman became part of Scooter's education team when we received the child development clinic's evaluation; she is the head of our district's autism team, so it seemed like a good meeting for her to attend. She was, at our request, also at his annual IEP meeting. Even without an official diagnosis, she has been very giving of her time and knowledge. Taking her at her offer, we scheduled an appointment to go over the clinic's report in a little more detail and ask her some Scooter-specific questions.

One particularly interesting interpretation has led us to a tiny, but significant, shift in our thinking. The evaluation report puts Scooter's score on the ADOS right at the cut-off for an autism spectrum disorder (as opposed to a higher score which is classified as autism). The evaluators did not, however, assign him any diagnosis, saying that he did not qualify for either a PDD-NOS or Asperger's label at the time. But, as the school psychologist explained, it only says they can't give him a specific diagnosis, not that he isn't on the spectrum. In fact, he is on the spectrum.

Even before all of this, the psychologist had remarked that his ADOS scores (no points on the communication portion, high points on the social reciprocity portion) matched what she'd expect to see with an Asperger's profile. She also confirmed for us what we had heard second-hand, that Asperger's is simply not diagnosed before age 6.

At this point, I think we're headed to one of two outcomes when we go back for re-evaluation at the end of the summer. Either we're waiting until Scooter turns 6 (and a bit) to get the Asperger's diagnosis or they'll find that the additional services he will have received by then have removed the single point needed to push him off the spectrum.

Regardless of the final outcome, we're already relying on Asperger's information to help us work with Scooter on his coping mechanisms. It all rings true--and if it works, all the better.

In the kitchen: "baked" pear

2009-02-17T23:28:00.002-05:00

After my ballet class, I was craving something sweet but healthy. A baked pear sounded just right, but seemed a bit labor-intensive. So I nuked it. I'll stick to the baked version for dinner guests, but have found the perfect quick snack for myself.

Addressing the issue

2009-02-14T22:40:00.002-05:00

It's the last day of Freedom to Marry Week. The action for today is to take local action; the specific suggestion is writing a letter to the editor. Given the number of times I have taken pen to paper (or keyboard to screen) over the past two or three weeks, it would be a bit redundant to do that here, so I thought I'd recount the letters I've written so far.

I began by writing a couple letters to the elected officials who represent me where the domestic partnerships are currently being debated. I wrote to both of them last year; neither responded then and neither has responded so far this year. I recently wrote an email to the one who was the deciding vote against the legislation. Apparently there's a chance for another vote on the issue, so it's worth it to keep writing. But I have to admit that it's beyond frustrating to deal with this official since he won't acknowledge my correspondence (which I have kept quite civil) and he has explained quite clearly that he is voting based entirely on his religious beliefs.

I have also written a letter to the editor of two different newspapers: the local rag and the paper in Capital City. The first letter is the one I wrote about before. I adapted it, shortened it, removed the specific response to the father of my son's friend, and emailed that to the bigger newspaper.

As I explained in a follow-up, I was pleasantly surprised by the positive reception from the local paper's editor. My son's teacher and his assistant also went out of their way to make sure I knew they had read it and found it a welcome change from the usual rants appearing in that section. A few days later, another teacher at the school approached me, confirmed my identity, and then told me she was glad to see my letter.

About a week ago, another letter appeared on domestic partnerships. It did not refer to mine at all and took a very different approach. It seemed to me that the writer is not entirely comfortable with same-sex relationships, yet he explained why allowing them was necessary in a society founded on the particular ideals of our constitution. He specifically addressed the problem of legislators voting based strictly on the morals of their own religions when we are not supposed to have an established state religion. Perhaps a small thing to see, but I am glad to know that there are people in my community who can understand that the right action in regards to our society is not always the comfortable one.

One final letter I wrote--since I was in a groove--was to President Obama. It is too soon to expect an answer, as it is the last of the letters I completed, but I hope to hear something back eventually. In that letter, I addressed domestic partnerships from a different angle than the one I used in my other letters: financial. Seemed pertinent, given the biggest issues our country faces right now. I gave him a list of immediate ways in which not having a federally-recognized relationship costs us extra money. I don't think we made it into the stimulus bill, but I can certainly hope we'll be headed that way soon.

Family time

2009-02-14T00:09:00.003-05:00

I had intended to try to follow some Twitters for this day of Freedom to Marry Week. I forgot, however, that Scooter had only a half-day of school (administrative stuff and then a long weekend with Presidents' Day), which erased the time I had planned for looking at this stuff.

So we spent the afternoon doing the sorts of things families might do with this time, whether or not their families are legally recognized. Scooter and I headed to the library, where he picked out a couple videos and a book and I got my hands on Look Me in the Eye. We then headed over to Starbucks for a chocolate milk and Americano (guess who had which), passing the time by writing various words and then doing some writing--this is what passes for entertainment for us. Trillian met up with us, and we headed to a nearby diner.

Back at home, Scooter watched his videos and played with Legos, demanding that Trillian join him for part of the time. I supplied some snacks and went through Valentine's cards with him. He worked on building with his gear set and then got ready for bed with big plans to complete his project tomorrow.

(And then I geeked out to a block of sci-fi programming, which is the reason I didn't go check out Twitter after he headed to bed. I mean, Joss has a new show. Sarah Connor is back. Not to mention another BSG episode. Marriage equality is important to me, but it had to go on hold for a few hours.)

In the kitchen: crockpot steak

2009-02-12T22:59:00.001-05:00

Come read about the delicious meal I'll be making for my sweetheart on our anniversary.

In the kitchen: chocolate truffles

2009-02-11T16:11:00.002-05:00

It's not exactly a Freedom to Marry Week post, but I've written about our planned Valentine's dessert. On the other hand, food has definitely been a way Trillian and I celebrate our relationship, and I look forward to concocting things she'll enjoy. This recipe fits the bill!

Resolved for marriage

2009-02-10T22:09:00.002-05:00

The reminder I promised: If you haven't yet, go sign the marriage resolution.

I posted both at my family and autism site. I even sent an email to a local official, though that was not about the marriage resolution--just another politely worded rant at his refusal to even consider domestic partnerships because of his religion.

(All I can manage for now after putting together everything else. Did you know that--if I have the condition I think I do--my brain isn't getting enough blood much of the time? Yeah, I'm working on getting that fixed.)

Marriage limbo

2009-02-09T21:43:00.004-05:00

Trillian grows impatient with the move of legislation in our new state. She suggested the other day that we should go get married in Massachusetts and then try to force the issue in terms of the full faith and credit clause.

But there are problems with her idea, as well as problems with the solutions, that illustrate the bizarre limbo our relationship currently occupies.

Generally, foreign marriages are recognized by the US--usually without any sort of registry or other official domestic document; you just have to be able to produce the foreign marriage certificate. States are not, however (or at least I think), required to recognize foreign marriages that would not be legal in that state. So we can't use our Canadian marriage as the basis of any action in our state.

We can't just run away to Massachusetts, get married there, and then return here, legal case in hand. See, Massachusetts does recognize our Canadian marriage, so we can't perform another marriage there. It would be redundant.

Then there's the fact that such a case can generally be brought only when the couple has experienced some sort of problem that would have been avoided if their legal relationship had been recognized. Most of the time, this coincides with a catastrophe or, at the very least, a particularly stressful time. Things like hospital stays, inheritance rights, survivorship benefits--the very things I hope to avoid for some time to come. Even then, we might not be the ideal test case since we have a number of legal documents that deal with a wide variety of such scenarios.

And so we will remain as we are, married some places, not in others, in need of an elaborate map to keep track of it all.

(This is post 2 for Freedom to Marry Week.)

Another Freedom to Marry Week

2009-02-09T00:06:00.002-05:00

It's Freedom to Marry Week again.

Somehow it has crept up on me again, despite the fact that it's proximity to Valentine's Day and my anniversary should make it easy to remember. Yet Dana's post at Mombian was the first I thought of it.

The theme this year is "7 Conversations in 7 Days." Each day has its own suggested action. Not all of them will work for me, but I'm going to try to follow along in the spirit, doing what I can in this space on most days. Maybe on the other days, I'll post recipes over at The Mouse's Kitchen from the meals we'll be having for Valentine's Day and our anniversary. Two of the planned items are truffles and creme brulee!

Anyway, here are the days and the suggested actions, along with what I'm planning:

Sunday, February 8th: YouTube Challenge

Not exactly my cup of tea, so I'm giving you this instead. (Seriously, I rarely watch anything on YouTube since I have this thing against watching video on my computer. It's hard to explain, and I do make exceptions. But I definitely don't post anything there.)

Monday, February 9th: Make Your Voice Heard

Online action: a blog, vlog, comment, Facebook status, or picture. I'll try for my usual, annual post here, and post a link and/or status at Facebook.

Tuesday, February 10th: Email for Equality

There's an online marriage resolution. I've already signed it, but I'll post a reminder here on Tuesday. I'll also be posting a link at my family and autism site. (Rather than emailing people in my address book, since I'll reach just about the same number of people this way and in a less chain-lettery way.)

Wednesday, February 11th: Button Up for Equality

This may be a food post day since I'll already be adding the button to other posts.

Thursday, February 12th: Face to Face Equality

There are supposed to be events for Freedom to Marry Week. I'm not aware of any in my area, and I've already done my fair share of conversing. Probably another food post day.

Friday, February 13th: Txt 4 Equality

I neither text nor tweet, so this has all the appeal of the YouTube day. But maybe I'll make an effort to check out the conversation on Twitter on Friday and bring you a few of my favorite tweets.

Saturday, February 14th: Get Local With It

I've been a letter-writing machine recently, especially with the domestic partnerships in the local politics here. So I think I'll hold off for a bit on new letters. But I will share a post on what my experience has been and a few of the (mostly pleasant) surprises.

And in the meantime, I'm working on a few other posts for when we return to regular programming.

Again, I really need a cameraphone

2009-02-06T18:25:00.002-05:00

Headed to the grocery store and stopped at a light, I really wished I had a cameraphone so that I could snap a picture of the car in front of me. On the bumper, the following, left to right:

Palin 2012
McCain Palin
Don't Blame Me, I Voted McCain

and, the best of the bunch

Sarah!

I think that last one should be said with jazz hands.

On the scent of the trail

2009-02-05T16:51:00.003-05:00

A month or two ago, I had decided that I would give up on the quest for the source of my health woes and just focus on eating a diet that's better for me (specifically, as in low-carb, lots of protein and veggies) and dividing my workouts between general cardio and ballet. The only new doctor I would see was the fertility specialist in Big City--the other one, not CID. (By the way, saw his nurse, set up a few things, really liked her and am feeling much more happy with that clinic... more on that later.)

Then I fainted. And my primary-care physician, with whom I dutifully scheduled an appointment since this scared the crap out of Trillian, started mapping out a list of new tests I should have. For once, not blood tests, but various monitors and consultations.

But this visit also gave me some new vocabulary, so I started poking around on the internet--big surprise. And this time I really do think I have a big lead, although I'm not going into it right now since I've been wrong at least a couple times before.

(To my credit, both my PCP and endocrinologist always say at some point during my appointment, "Wait, what were your thyroid levels?" They then flip through my labs, find the most recent values, and furrow their brows when they realize that the numbers are normal, have actually improved.)

What I found this time would explain why my blood tests don't show anything. It would explain the symptoms that led to a diagnosis of fibromyalgia. It would explain why there are other symptoms that any doctor who brings up fibromyalgia tries to ignore. (My favorite is that my hands and feet fall asleep very easily. No physical/anatomical explanation can be found, so I'm told it's not life-threatening, so don't worry. Never mind the quality-of-life issues.) It would explain why I can experience bradycardia and tachycardia in a five-minute span. It would explain just about everything, maybe even the hair loss and stress rash.

It's not all rosy, as there is little likelihood I would ever be completely free of symtoms and I wouldn't be able to take most of the suggested medications while trying to get pregnant, but there are other, non-drug interventions that are fairly straight-forward and would probably be no big deal after a period of vigilance (sort of like this wheat-free thing--which would appear to have been a good meal, based on what I've been reading).

I called my PCP earlier today, leaving a message asking her to take a look at this. She's the kind of doctor who will likely look it up and happily refer me for the specific test I need (although the other stuff she's sending me for is not bad to have overall, including a sleep study to check for apnea, which can also be related). I imagine it will be a few weeks before I can get in to see everyone on the list, but I'm currently hoping I'll have some answers in a month's time.

At this rate, I should manage to get lunch around dinnertime

2009-02-04T12:26:00.003-05:00

I have only gotten to coffee a little before 10:30 this morning. My breakfast--a hearty oatmeal--is cooking on the stove.

I blame some of this on the internet's ability to suck me in. I really need to develop the willpower to limit myself to a quick check of a short list of items in the morning, but it never quite works out that way.

Did you know that low blood pressure and heart rate can cause lack of concentration?

Anyway, what kept me away from food and coffee the longest this morning was an attempt to make a couple of the appointments my primary care physician wants for me.

The first is with a cardiology center for a 24-hour blood pressure monitor. That part wasn't too hard. But as the receptionist took my information, she remarked that she doesn't really know my insurance, so I should check with them to see if it's covered or if I would need prior authorization. I decided to heed her advice, even though I knew we'd pay out-of-pocket regardless. (Trillian is quite a bit more scared by the whole fainting thing, but I'm determined to follow this rabbit hole to the end since, if I can figure this out, I will likely have some answers about problems I've had for as long as I can remember--way back into childhood.)

I hate dealing with our insurance. They're bad about covering Scooter's visits to the pediatrician, even though that clinic is in our network, and they have also required a written explanation of his "custody situation," withholding any payment of outstanding claims in the meantime. And of course they have one of those automated phone systems, a maze of options, that attempts to take verbal cues, but has to verify them and still gets your words wrong.

Today, I had to listen to a ton of general information about my benefits as I attempted to find out about this one, very specific, item. At one point, I ended up in a menu about doctor's office visits. Did I want to hear about benefits for in-network doctors, out-of-network doctors, or both? I knew that it would spout a lot of general information at me, regardless of my choice, so I tried to get out of the menu. 'Previous menu' just repeated the current one; 'Help' gave me a definition of in-network, etc; a frustrated 'No" got "Did you say both?"; 'Go back' finally got me to a human, because "I'm sorry, I'm having a hard time understanding you." Finally found out this should be covered.

Then I tried to track down an ear, nose, and throat doctor. "Has anyone ever sent you to an ENT?" my doctor asked when I mentioned, matter-of-factly, that I've had these dizzy spells ('near syncope') my entire life. Um, no... it was always treated as something I had to deal with due to low blood pressure. Nobody ever went any further with it.

So I now go to my insurance's website to look up otolaryngologists in my area. Only thing is, I can't find it under 'Other specialties,' even though the help link I click on seems to suggest they have that category. I finally find it under 'surgery.' Which brings up the panic of "Oh crap, what if they have to cut on me?!" The guy in town is in fact on my insurance; he even shares an office in Capital City with the guy my doctor usually uses. I then call the otolaryngologist in town, only to have a fax machine pick it up. I check the number again and dial carefully, just in case I read the wrong line the first time. Nope, definitely the fax.

That's when I decided to make breakfast and have some coffee. I'll deal with otolaryngologist (I like that word) later.

If I can remember... this concentration thing is a bitch!

In the kitchen: shrimp

2009-02-03T23:05:00.001-05:00

Go read about my favorite way to prepare shrimp. I don't have pictures, as this is a long-time go-to recipe. I didn't get to it tonight, but will be making it tomorrow.

Low pressure front

2009-02-01T22:31:00.002-05:00

For my entire life, I have had dizzy spells. They primarily hit me when I stand up, though not at once. I take a few steps, sometimes go twenty feet or so, and then I can feel it coming. My ears start to buzz and dots creep in around the sides of my eyes. I learned early on that the best thing I can do once it starts is to grab onto something and stay very still until it passes. If I'm not close to any support, I can usually wait it out if I don't move at all.

Stress can make the dizzy spells worse, bringing them on when I haven't changed levels. That's when I know it's time to find some quiet time.

The last time I fainted, I was about 14. I got up out of bed and started over to my closet when it hit. I had enough time to move just a bit closer to my bed and to half-lower-myself/half-fall onto the mattress. Things went dark for just a few seconds.

The last time I fainted, at least, until this week. Several nights ago, I wasn't sleeping well anyway, and then Zee started to get into some dishes. I got out of bed in order to see what he was doing, but only got as far as my dresser before the dots started. My sight went completely as I gripped the dresser, and then my knees started to buckle. Sheer will, and little else, kept me upright.

And then a couple mornings ago, I was enjoying family time in bed. I'd already gotten up a couple times, so I thought nothing of getting up again and heading to the bathroom. I got to the vanity when it started. Again, my sight was gone as I grabbed the vanity. But it didn't pass.

Next thing I knew, I was on the floor, my feet scrabbling to gain purchase again. Trillian was there within a second or two. I would say that I just sort of slid to the floor, but Trillian says it was the thud that brought her in.

Now I tend towards lowish blood pressure anyway and have long recognized this as responsible for the worst of my dizziness. Since gaining weight and having Scooter, it's been closer to normal/low-normal, so the recent severity of my dizzy spells has been worrisome.

When we got to my in-laws', I borrowed a blood pressure cuff and discovered that it was about 10 points lower (both systolic and diastolic) than the last time I had it measured. Which doesn't surprise me all that much since I get involuntarily tense anytime a professional takes my blood pressure. The lowest reading came in the morning, before I'd even sat up: 88/58, which is officially low. My pulse, too, has been sitting around 60, sometimes lower, which is what one might expect to see with an elite athlete. (Hint: I am not an elite athlete.)

So, on the off chance, I started googling the various supplements I am taking--suggested by my endocrinologist in order to fight my low-level, chronic inflammation--along with low blood pressure. Turns out that in general anything that will fight inflammation will also lower blood pressure. Omega-3s and boswellia both have a mild impact on blood pressure. The main culprit, however, appears to be the magnesium I am taking, not directly for inflammation, but to improve neural and muscular functioning. It calms down misfires and improves the efficiency of many biochemical reactions throughout the body. That first part... that's why it can be so powerful in lowering blood pressure. It is frequently used for treating pre-eclampsia.

I'll be trying to get into the doctor tomorrow--somehow the whole fainting thing has convinced Trillian I should. Not sure if I'll get any closer to an answer. But in the meantime, I've stopped taking the magnesium and boswellia and have cut the Omega-3s back to a regular dose. It would be nice to stay upright tomorrow morning.

Dog training

2009-01-30T23:25:00.003-05:00

Dog training me, that is.

Zee and I have started going to dog obedience classes once a week. And I'm already counting down the weeks until we're done.

I knew going in that the main point of obedience class is to train the owner to handle the dog. I get that, understand the philosophy. But the execution is painful for me.

A roomful of dogs, several of them barking, nobody I know, individual practice in front of everyone.

And my dog--usually calm, focused on me, intent, eager to please, quick to learn--is so distracted and excited by all the dogs that he can barely stop whining or wiggling. He has been dubbed "the hyper dog" and the teachers seem convinced that I do no work with him in between classes.

My goals in doing all of this are to bond further with Zee and to get him to follow a few basic commands, nothing fancy.

A few more weeks, and even if Zee doesn't officially pass the class, I'll count it a win if I don't die of embarrassment.

Small victories and a lesson in assumptions

2009-01-28T00:30:00.003-05:00

My letter to the editor should be published in the next day or two. After emailing it, I received confirmation of receipt and a request for my phone number. This didn't surprise me since my hometown newspaper also required some sort of verification before publishing a letter.

Now the local paper is generally a conservative paper with little substance--a small-town paper with only a handful of staff, sort of standard. That I hadn't heard back yesterday or today after emailing my phone number had convinced me that while they would eventually publish my letter, they were not exactly enthusiastic about it. Since I had been on the phone for other things, I decided to initiate the call so that this wouldn't drag out.

So imagine my surprise when, after identifying myself, the editor said, "And I want you to know I agree with you completely."

I relayed this to Trillian, who was also shocked. In a good way.

After looking at today's paper, I can't help but wonder, however, if the original letter writer has been doing some of my work for me. Obviously I hadn't been paying attention to who was writing these letters before. But now I think that this man must write at least one letter a week. Most of them appear to be ranty and make odd comparisons. So maybe I didn't need to address his statement specifically; there's a good chance most people here know to skip over those letters.

But at least it got me to submit something on domestic partnerships. And I found out that there are some supporters in places I wouldn't have expected.

Tangled thoughts on religion and being gay

2009-01-25T23:06:00.002-05:00

It feels as though a whole host of my thoughts for a couple days have been revolving around religion (or lack thereof) and being gay. Even when I'm not actively contemplating those two topics, something will leap up to remind me of their intersection.

Take, for instance, the recent news about new allegations against Reverend Ted Haggard. Turns out that the male escort he frequented (and bought drugs from) was not his only gay relationship; he also had a cash-for-sex affair with a young (early 20s) church volunteer. Oh, the mind boggles. Not because the man might be gay, but because of the way it manifested for him. Notice that all of his gay relationships (that we know about so far) involve paying for the sex that is so shameful to him, per what his religion tells him. I can't figure out if paying for it was supposed to alleviate some of the guilt or if the prostitution angle would make the gay angle pale in comparison. What I do know, though I won't go into it now, is that the strict prescriptions of religion can do so much damage.

Haggard aside, we're looking at the possibility of some domestic partner recognition in our community, and this is the primary reason I've been so focused on that point where issues of religion and being gay swirl around each other. I've been in the throes of letter-writing and will be sending several off tomorrow. Two are the standard letters to elected officials, including the reproach that both of them ignored my earlier missives on the topic, about which I am not impressed. Both are on record as against domestic partnerships; one specifically has cited his religion as his reason for opposing previous attempts to implement this. I doubt I'll change their minds, but the votes may be there without them.

The third letter is the one in which I have a more personal investment. It is a letter to the editor of our local rag, which absolutely everyone in town seems to read. I was compelled to write it after a throw-away line in another letter to the editor in which the writer suggested that domestic partnerships are 'amoral' and something being pushed by people from out-of-state. And so I wrote my letter to counter that second part explicitly while working against that first one more subtly (as in, emphasizing the importance of family in this issue).

The intersection with religion comes both from the loaded issue of morality and what I know about the author of the first letter. I've met him before and suspected, from a number of observations, that he is Catholic. A quick search showed me that he is not only Catholic, but staunchly, emphatically, and inflexibly so. Thus, I am probably right to read into 'amoral' all that I initially did.

But this is also where it crosses into a very sensitive territory. See, that author is the father of one of my son's classmates. Even trickier, it's the one kid with whom my son has a true, reciprocal friendship, one I would very much like to encourage since there are so many kids in his class who are quick to tease him for his differences. I hope that we can all be adults and separate our political and religious beliefs from our sons' friendship. Guess we'll see when we offer to have a playdate here.

In all of this, I find the religious/gay cocktail already so volatile that I hesitate to add in my own atheism. I worry about how that additional element might shut down all discussion.

Hang on for a minute while I set this up: I'm laying some groundwork for us to start trying to have another kid. Both Trillian and I still want two, but since almost a year's worth of doctors' appointments and blood tests have yielded little new information, the possibility of more miscarriages weighs heavily in our thoughts. Recently we decided that adoption is a possibility. Due to our particular situation, however, it is likely we would go the private route. So being me, I did some online searches and looked at how one would go about this.

Being in a same-sex couple does not appear to be too much of a barrier, per se, in private adoptions. There are plenty of prospective parent profiles and success stories. But it's hard to miss the fact that so many of these couples make explicit mention of the important role of religion in their family. So how conspicuous would it be to omit this? Notice that I'm not even thinking of including 'atheist' or any of its gentler synonyms ('humanist,' 'secular,' and others)--not that I'd be able to lie about this if asked directly.

OK, so that's not as immediate of a concern as the domestic partnerships, so it's a question that I can put on the back burner for now. Not that it will stop me from continuing to ponder how it is that I cannot untangle religion and being gay, even though they do not seem that they should logically overlap so thoroughly.

In the kitchen: coffee

2009-01-22T23:15:00.001-05:00

I'm talking about some delicious coffee over in the kitchen.

Bandy-legged

2009-01-20T23:08:00.002-05:00

I should and want to write about the majesty of the day. Our TV was glued to CNN for almost the entire day, and I shed more than a few tears. (Even Trillian cried, and that is not common!) But...

Holy Hell, my legs no longer work properly!

It's not even the shredding I've been doing courtesy of Jillian Michaels. Oddly, that has been killing my arms, but not so much my legs, even after increasing the depths of my squats and such (the real reason not to do this with an audience).

No, I had my first ballet class again after a month's break.

I did a couple of mini-barres during the break. And both times my legs were sore afterwards. I can already tell I'm headed there in the morning.

In the meantime, my legs feel as though they're too long and I just can't get my body far enough off the ground to walk with a normal gait. Gravity is not my friend.

Green: BPA, revisited

2009-01-16T23:30:00.003-05:00

Remember my big, long post on bisphenol-a a little over a year ago? Remember how I got my own troll? We laughed, we got indignant, we closed comments. Good times.

Mostly I was amused that an industry talking head was so intent on yelling me down. It seemed like a lot of effort to deal with a very small time blogger's take on the issue. At the time, I argued as best as I could with the information I had; I knew that the reports he cited were spinning the data and that there was much more out there to vindicate my position, but I didn't have the time or resources to track it down right then.

And then earlier this week, I found Trillian's copy of Fast Company sitting on my chair. (When she has airline miles that are about to expire, she gets magazine subscriptions. We also get The Economist and Martha Stewart Living. I can create festive decorations out of depressing retirement account statements!) It was open to an article, "The Real Story Behind BPA."

It took me a while to get through the whole thing. The article is dense with information, and I had to put it down every time my blood pressure rose too much. But there it was, the information I knew existed. If you get the chance, go read the whole thing. Really, it's worth the time! But let me highlight some of the points I wish I'd had at my fingertips last year.

Issues of methodology:

Toxicology. In this model, the issue is to define the threshold of significant harm. Experiments in this vein feed huge doses to the test subjects, seeking the point at which organ failure, cancer, and other things (like death) happen. The current acceptable level of BPA has been set using this model. If you go back to my old post, you'll also see that this is the model referred to by my troll.
Endocrinology. This model focuses on changes caused by small doses of chemicals that mimic hormones. And since BPA has recognized estrogenic properties, it seems reasonable to expect this to be the accepted model of study. But it's not, at least as far as government studies are concerned.

Studies:

"Of the more than 100 independently funded experiments on BPA, about 90% have found evidence of adverse health effects at levels similar to human exposure. On the other hand, every single industry-funded study ever conducted -- 14 in all -- has found no such effects."
The first studies of BPA's effects at low doses were inspired by multiple experiments in which unexpected results were traced back to the use of polycarbonate items (flasks, petri dishes, cages).
vom Saal examined the interaction of BPA with human blood and realized that it needed further study. In an experiment where he fed pregnant mice doses of BPA "25,000 times lower than the EPA's toxic threshold," male offspring had enlarged prostates.
vom Saal's findings have been replicated multiple times by other scientists. Nonetheless, industry often refers to his experiment as unreplicated, a blatant lie.
"Others have found impacts on sperm production, testes development, and mammary-gland tissue, as well as behavioral disorders including hyperactivity, aggressiveness, and impaired learning."
Tyl performed two experiments, the most commonly cited in the industry, claiming BPA as safe. In the first experiment, she used a strain of rats (CD Sprague-Dawley) that "can withstand a dose of synthetic estrogen more than 100 times greater than what a female human can tolerate." In the second, she used mice, but they were fed a type of food shown to "mask the effects of estrogens like BPA." Even then, her results show male mice with enlarged prostates.
Government reports have officially based on reviews of the available literature. But a closer look at these reports shows that these are not even close to being unbiased. There's a big, long explanation in the article about how much of this work was outsourced to a consulting firm that, conveniently, does a lot of industry work and has frequently had questionable conflicts of interest.

And if all that doesn't make your head spin, a mention that one such consulting firm has offerred to help Dupont defend PFOA (the potentially nasty chemical in non-stick surfaces) makes me feel pretty certain there's a similar story there.

I'd be lying if I claimed not to get some enjoyment out of saying, "I told you so." (Trillian would call me out on that immediately. And it's not like I'm saying it to my usual readers--we'll see if the troll returns.) But this is one time when I wish I hadn't been quite so right, because the whole issue is quite disillusioning and a bit scary.

Time to go clean out the pantry and try to figure out alternatives to various canned items.

want/need

2009-01-15T23:55:00.002-05:00

This post has been floating around in my head for a while now. Even though I'm still not sure I can adequately articulate the humble of thoughts I've been unraveling, an incident today has it spilling out.

Out of nowhere this afternoon, Scooter started in on a particular toy he needed. And it wasn't even that he wanted it for his birthday. He wanted it today. Logic--that toy isn't made anymore; regardless of whether or not it still exists, we couldn't get it today; regardless of all that, we weren't just buying him a toy and he didn't have enough of his own money to buy it--could not calm him in any way, and we found ourselves facing a larger meltdown than we've seen for a while.

The standard take on such meltdowns almost always include some riff on the "spoiled only child" theme. (I'm waiting to see if this will be what pushes me into tears at the next IEP meeting, as I weepily yell that this is not by design. Anyway...)

But this is not simply an issue of having a male Veruca Salt. Sure there are plenty of times that he wants something and then pouts when he doesn't get it. With incidents like today's, however, there's a different undertone, an urgency and anxiety that feels different than simple desire. I think I understand this, but I'm not sure how well I can convey it to people who don't regularly experience this.

I generally frame the fact that I have become more reflective of my purchases as an environmental issue, a desire to consume less--and it is. Yet in many ways, that I have reduced general acquisitions is more amazing because it signifies my ability to talk myself out of the compulsion to collect. While I have never been a full-blown packrat, I have a very hard time letting go of anything and usually feel a need to have more.

More specifically, this tends to manifest as a need to fill out collections. It can be ridiculous stuff, like toys from a fast-food restaurant that form a series. Even now, when I look at the little brochures that come with Legos and Playmobils, I can't help but think, "This set would be great, and then we could get this, which means we'd need this other thing, and then..." As an adult, I can quickly see that my thoughts are ridiculous and quell them before they fully set, but Scooter isn't quite there yet.

This sort of frantic, desperate need for things is not just about wanting the item in question, but rather a manifestation of anxiety. Obtaining a desired object creates some order in an otherwise frustrating and uncertain world. Stuff is concrete; it will still be there even when other things do not happen as expected. It can be rearranged, put in order, put away, brought back out. More anxiety, get more stuff.

If only it were that simple.

In the kitchen: cheesecake

2009-01-14T23:44:00.001-05:00

Did you know you can make cheesecake in the crockpot?

What? Did you not want or need to know that?

Come on, you know you want some.

Guilty (semi-)pleasures

2009-01-13T23:20:00.003-05:00

So I've figured out one way in which a semi-anonymous blog is better than Facebook: there are a number of things that I just can't bring myself to share with the entirety of my friends list. I mean, really, the person who had all of one class with me through high school does not need to be informed of my guilty pleasures. (I'm sure it comes as no surprise--I was a huge nerd in school, generally seen, even admired, as an intellectual. I have a reputation to maintain.)

So the first admission is that I just finished Twilight--that I read it at all is something that will not make my status. Amazingly, when I put myself on the waiting list at the library, I found the book ready when I went in to check out some other materials. I read through it in just three days, so I have to grant that it is a quick read (doesn't hurt that the print is large). And... meh.

I will read the others in the series, eventually, when I get around to it. Parts of the story are compelling, but I really find it surprising that so many self-avowed Buffy fans can also wax poetic about this. Bella drives me nuts. Edward keeps saying how dangerous he is, but that never really comes through. The dialog is repetitive and predictable. I'm torn about the monkeying with vampire lore--some of it is an interesting interpretation of all that has come before, other parts seem to be slapped in to fit some detail that she thought of later. The major danger comes up suddenly at the end and is dispensed of way too quickly--so much more could/should have been done with the other vampires. There was a good long stretch before that part where I kept reading only because I wanted to know more about Alice, who is my favorite character. Please tell me there's more of her in New Moon.

Enough of my life of the mind. On to the physical world. And the second admission.

I've mentioned before that I watch Biggest Loser. It is, in fact, the only reality show I watch. And Jillian Michaels is a big part of why I keep tuning in. So I was intrigued when I saw references to 30 Day Shred popping up on many friends' FB statuses and in a number of blog posts. (Side note: I really, really want to stick in the grammar-appropriate hyphen between '30' and 'Day,' but the official title does not have it.)

Out of curiosity, we Netflixed it so I could give it a go. It arrived today, and I decided to try Level 1 between an early dinner and Scooter's bedtime. Limitation #1: I definitely ate too much, too soon beforehand. Limitation #2: My knee's been bugging me, so I couldn't do all of the jumping for the cardio. Things I can work on and compensate for, but nothing compared to...

Misconception: Just because Jillian yells less on the DVD than on the show, I would have a quieter workout. Trillian and Scooter sat in our recliners behind me as I worked out. To give Trillian credit, she does know quite a bit about fitness and would probably make a decent trainer if she wanted to go that route. So she was giving me some tips on form, most of which I know (whether or not I can translate that to physical expression), nothing I mind too much. What I hadn't counted on was that she would fill the void of Jillian's usually tougher presentation by yelling out sayings we've heard many times on Biggest Loser. At the same time, Scooter was critiquing me and offering suggestions. He was particularly concerned when I adapted the jumping jacks so I wouldn't be stressing my knee. "You're going to lose," he shouted when I was not moving as fast as the women on the DVD.

The big advantage of getting this from Netflix is that I can hold onto it for a bit yet. And now that I know to schedule my workouts for school time while Trillian is occupied with work, maybe I can concentrate on the images in front of me and not the voices from behind.

So... what are you not putting in your Facebook status?

Corrupting the children

2009-01-08T22:26:00.002-05:00

There are many reasons I enjoy volunteering in Scooter's classroom on a weekly basis. One of the side benefits is the opportunity to inject just a little of my lesbian, freethinker sensibilities. My most recent visit included the suggestion to the kids who started talking about church that some people believe what they were discussing, but other people believe other things.

And then there was this exchange:
Girl: That other girl, who came to the singing thing, looks just like you. I swear you two look alike.
Mouse (taking a minute to register that this would be Trillian): That's Scooter's other mom.
Girl (look of confusion): ...
Mouse: He has two moms.
Girl: What?!
Mouse: Yep. Two moms.
Girl: Is there one husband?
Mouse: Nope. Just two moms.
Girl (slight pause): Look at how my skirt matches my shirt just right.

I love five-year-olds.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

2009-01-06T23:44:00.003-05:00

For a few months, I have found it hard to post here. Not that I haven't had many things to say. I've started countless posts and then lost steam and hit 'delete.'

I blame Facebook.

OK, it's not directly Facebook's fault, but that particular site has definitely played a role. I actually had a conversation on this topic with a friend a couple months ago--via Facebook Chat.

See, most of my readers--my regular commenters, at least--are among my Facebook friends. So I feel like they can find out about the more mundane details of my daily life much more easily than trucking over here. And by the time I sit down to compose multiple, (hopefully) coherent paragraphs, my thoughts on the topic feel stale.

So I've decided to redirect things here a bit. I do plan on posting more often between here and the Kitchen. But I think I'll be stepping back just a bit in my writing. I can't quite articulate yet how this will translate to the screen. I expect to write a little less on Scooter, though maybe I'll address how being his parent makes me reflect on my experiences of childhood. I'll also be posting more of my thoughts on autism at a site under my own name (if you're interested, email me and I'll send you over there).

I'll also be updating the look of my blogs, as I get to it. Excuse the mess as I tinker with things I really don't understand.

And something I feel great ambivalence about--I'll be sticking some ads in a sidebar. Not that my readership is so great I'll see much from this, nor do I expect to see much increase in traffic. But maybe I'll earn some coffee money. Besides, I might as well make a few cents on all those people who end up at my site due to various searches on "mouse nest" or because they're looking for women's breasts (seriously, "The post wherein you get to see my breast" is the second most common entry page, after the main site itself).

It may be that ackowledging the changes I've been batting about in my head is completely unnecessary; perhaps they'll barely register for most people. But I wouldn't be me if I didn't overthink things, and then try to drag others into my deliberations.

In the kitchen: pasta fagioli

2009-01-05T19:12:00.002-05:00

Want to know about a staple from my poor grad student days? Need a recipe for a deliciously filling soup on a cold day? Head on over to the Kitchen for my first post back.

Oh look, it's 2009

2009-01-03T23:59:00.002-05:00

It's taken me a few days, but I'm finally willing to acknowledge that the calendar has rolled over and we have indeed entered a new year. And not that I had wild success with my goals for last year, but I figured, might as well go loftier. So instead of 8 separate goals, I have multiple goals divided into five categories. (Wow, do I love lists!)

Myself

Continue with exercise, maintaining my enjoyment. At the top of things to do for this goal is to enroll in a ballet class and design the rest of my exercise around that.
Meditate regularly. Another holdover from last year. The hardest aspect is just making the time.
Figure out allergies and food sensitivities; adjust diet accordingly. I'm headed to the allergist later this week to see if anything turns up in this area. It's the latest idea of my endocrinologist, since my bloodwork still insists there's no thyroid problem.

Family

Determine whether or not we'll have a second child. The plan now is to try again, starting in April. We have three pop-sicles remaining, and I've pretty much decided that's the determining factor. If I'm not pregnant after three tries with this donor, I'm done. I haven't quite figured out how miscarriage(s) might come into play, but that's very much on my mind.
Make sure Scooter gets the support he needs at school and at home. This will start with a solid IEP in February. Even more crucial will be the transition to first grade with a new teacher. I'll also be working on a sensory diet for him at home, since I remain convinced that the better able he is to handle his sensitivities, the easier other things will be.
Develop a range of go-to recipes. I've already started this, particularly with some crockpot cooking, but my goal is to have enough easy-to-ccok dishes in my repertoire to cover four or five nights a week in a month without repetition.

Home

De-clutter. This is a slow-and-steady kind of goal. My plan is to devote an hour a week, in segments of fifteen or twenty minutes, to surfaces and drawers and just all of the stuff that has somehow taken over. I will never be an "everything must go in its place" kind of person, but I would like to cut through all the excess papers and such that we've now moved a couple times. I fully expect that I can spend an hour a week (and occasionally more) on this every week of the year and still not get to the end.
Organize my desk and work area. Another task that will get an hour a week. Once I get it under control, I will try to maintain it with fifteen minutes a week. Then I can use a little of that "extra" time to tackle the papers mentioned above.
Start some green projects in the house. Trillian and I have a mental list, which I hope to commit to paper, starting with some windows. What we tackle after that will depend greatly on finances, so we'll also be focusing on...
Focus on reducing, reusing, recycling, rethinking. We've already started re-appropriating items for new uses and just not buying things without debating if we really need them. This year, I hope to bring Scooter into this more.

School

Finish my comps. Brought directly over from last year. I am taking leave until August, so I can't officially take my last set of exams until after that, but I hope to set them up for September and October.
Submit my thesis proposal. Just the next step after comps, but one I'll need to get done soon after, especially if I might be taking maternity leave.
Use NaNoWriMo for thesis writing. It's not the intended purpose of National Novel Writing Month, but the timing will be just right for me to try to get as many words down as possible. My plan is to pour out various starts and stops, thoughts as they come to me, the ideas that are unsupported as of yet. Then I can take bits of it and prune it into shape while chasing down the appropriate references.

Online

Restart The Mouse's Kitchen. I've been having a lot of fun in my physical kitchen and really want to share some of it with others. Since I'll be working on recipes anyway, I can post my favorites. I'll also be writing about coffee, because we've been having some fun on that front too.
Post a minimum of five times (here and the Kitchen combined). I've had plenty to say, but have made it here only once a week or so. When I do post on my food blog, I'll link to it from here, at least for a little while. I'll be devoting an entire post to my plans for these sites in the next couple days.
Work on two sites under my real name. Not linking to them here. One is a family site, and I don't update nearly often enough. The other is a parenting site Trillian started, but hasn't had time to tweak as she would like or to add new content regularly. I'll be writing there and monkeying with in the background.

Now let's stand back and watch how quickly I forget I ever planned these goals.

Because I'm still ignoring the new year and am not yet dealing with resolutions/goals

2009-01-02T23:51:00.003-05:00

I ran by the local grocery store this afternoon to pick up our junk food; that's all we needed since I'd already made the week's official run. In my basket: two frozen pizzas, potato chips, and two bottles of liquor.

Since this is the only grocery store in Springfield, we have one of their savers cards. One of the benefits is supposed to be the bonus coupons printed out with each transaction. Usually they're keyed in some way to the purchases, discounts on either the items purchased or comparable items from other brands.

So the coupon that printed off with the above purchase? Poise bladder control pads.

Dude, it's not like I was going to consume all of the above in one sitting!

***

Hearing Talking Heads' "Once in a Lifetime" in the car today reminded me of an exchange with some fellow students last year.

We were all filtering in before seminar, early enough that the professor wasn't there yet. A male student was humming a bit and apologetically explained, "I put Talking Heads' Remain in Light on a couple days ago and just can't get the songs out of my head."

I responded enthusiastically, "I have a bunch of their songs on my Shuffle and always find one of their songs to listen to before an exam."

A female student (one I've written about before as annoying me greatly) joined in to add, "Must be before my time. I have no idea who you're talking about."

Now my male colleague is pretty close to her age, and he both knows and appreciates their music. But even more importantly, how could she have ever appreciated Kermit the Frog in the big suit?

***

Our alma mater made it into a bowl game this year. Since it was a manageable driving distance and in a city with an Ikea, we decided to take a couple days to take it in. Trillian didn't realize until we were there that the last football game I attended was the homecoming game my sophomore year of high school--and that, only because the friend who was driving me to the dance was in the band.

I can follow football much better than I could 20 years ago, and I definitely found that being there made it more exciting than watching at home.

Trillian assures me that I can lay claim to the full college football experience since I had the opportunity to witness a drunken fan getting tossed out of the game. Some perky blonde type, who I'd seen go past us multiple times with a couple beers throughout the game, got into an argument with someone else during the fourth quarter. She was disruptive enough that other people in the same team colors as her were shouting at her to sit down. I believe that the official reason she was asked politely by security, and then more forcefully by a police officer, to leave the area was the cussing she eventually broke into.

Most amusing to me was that her boyfriend was obviously scared of her. Even when the police officer was clearly explaining that this could be done the easy or hard way, he was looking back and forth between the two, deciding which one was scarier.

***

I have now assembled enough Ikea furniture to feel assured of my butch credentials again (despite the foofy top and shimmery lip balm I'm wearing). I think this is a large part of the Ikea appeal for me. I get to work with tools and build things, but don't have to do any of the planning or detail work.

The down side is that we now have all of the furniture we've been planning to get for our house. So now I'll have to do things like clean and de-clutter.

But maybe I can carry my ratchet around in my back pocket while I do those things, just to maintain the image.