Deviate

I've been slowly getting ready for my senior year of college - it's hard to believe that by this time next year I will possess my bachelor's degree. Returning to school was never part of the plan - until it was - and some days it doesn't quite seem real.

Recently a friend of mine wrote about how her life path has deviated and I was shocked to find myself crying as I read it and thought about how my own life's path has taken twists and turns that were unexpected and unforeseen. What touched me the most about reading Seattlejo's thoughts were how she focused on what she has gained from the unexpected turns in her own life. It is easy to think about all the "what ifs" there are in life but much more valuable to reflect on what is because of what has been.

Going to work right after high school instead of following the more traditional college path has given me a family - the four people I love most in the entire world and cannot imagine life without.

Jumping into the pool of a bi-cultural marriage without first stopping to check that there was water in it first has shown me that regardless of what anyone else says, I am an excellent judge of people and of what is good for me.

Becoming a wife and mother at the age of 20 has given my children a mother with lots of energy, silliness and playfulness.

Being blessed with three children in a year and a half has given me more patience than I ever thought possible. I am stronger than I ever imagined.

Going back to college in my thirties has given me a much deeper appreciation for my education and what it will mean for me both personally and professionally.

My life's path has not been a traditional one and even now, as a 'non-traditional student', I continue along a crooked path rather than a well-traveled highway. I am thankful for my own path because I would not be who I am were it not for the deviations that have steered me in unexpected directions.

San Diego!

Have you ever met someone and just instantly clicked? Like, from the minute you meet you're laughing and joking as if you've been friends forever? That happened to me in February when I met my fellow blog whores Yo, Christy and Mel in Vegas for GTHAFR '09. And it was still in effect when we all met up again - along with TATTOO WHORE Shelly - in San Diego where Yo and Mel live.

For me it wasn't quite the crazy drunken time that Vegas was - I try to pretend to be a responsible adult when I have the kids with me - but that didn't stop us from having a kick ASS good time.

We tried to convince Marvelous Mom and Stepdan via a frantic flurry of emails and pictures to buy this boat but they refused since it is a "stinkpot" and not a sailboat. Sigh.

Shelly got a tattoo in Yo & Mel's dining room by a huge bald guy named Bubba who was wearing an orange jumpsuit with numbers on it and "just needed to make some quick green". He left when it was *almost* done, the sirens were making him jumpy for some reason.

Shelly is now Tattoo Whore and has a bodiless Boston Terrier tattooed on her arm. Honestly, I tried to talk her out of it - I was going to Vegas next and did NOT want to be present for the fireworks that would result when my non-tattoo loving father got a glimpse of it - but she was undeterred and let Bubba do his thang on her virginal skin. Well, virginal of tattoos that is. After all, she IS a whore. heh.

The Things have decided they want Christy to be their mother. She went on the roller coaster at Mission Beach with Thing 1, listened to Thing 2 wax poetic about legos and played Super Mario with both of them! She tried to talk them into coming home with her but they balked. Now that we are home, they've decided they're going to take her up on the offer after all. Their flight arrives in Boston tomorrow morning at 8am Christy. I hope y'all can pick them up, they've never ridden the train before!

Look at Thing 2, he is thrilled that Christy is letting him win! Or maybe she wasn't letting him win, she doesn't look too happy about it!

Here are my boys and I in the pool at Yo & Mel's place where we may or may not have consumed several gallons of bloody marys. (The whores, not the kids. They drank Dr. Pepper.)

And here is Thing 2 with Grandma Shelly, our persistent lady of the dog tattoo. A.K.A. Tattoo Whore. This was taken shortly after Daughter huffed out of the pool because we were laughing at her attempts to relegate her brothers to a 4 foot square section of pool because she was "USING" the rest of it. It's a lot easier to laugh at a hormonal hissy fit when I've had one or four bloody marys.

There are more - many many more - pictures but this is the short overview of BlogWhore '09. We had so much fun, laughed until our faces hurt and I cannot WAIT to do it again!

What?!?!

The drive from San Francisco to San Diego was a long one with just me and the kids and we were all tired and cranky when we got to the hotel. I was trying to get us checked in and Thing 1 was bouncing off the walls and teasing his brother.

I finally lost my temper and hissed at him through clenched teeth, "Will you please ACT YOUR FRICKIN' AGE!!!" (Yes, I refrained from saying fucking. I'm not completely hopeless.)

He clammed up for a second, looked at me and said:

"Ok. At what age do I begin to frick?"

I laughed so hard I peed my pants. Where did that smartass kid come from anyway?

Beautiful San Francisco

Due to the hardness of Scientist Genius Brother's guest mattress (Marvelous Mom said it was comfortable, she's obviously crazy) and daughter wanting to see eleventy million things in San Francisco, we got a hotel room in the city for our last night in the Bay area. Before we checked in we drove over the Golden Gate Bridge because believe it or not, I had never done that before. These pics were taken from the visitor center viewing area on the north side of the bridge near Sausalito.

Marvelous Mom with her gigantic grandsons...

And Marvelous Mom with her gigantic daughter. Heh.

When we checked in at the hotel the only thing the Things were interested in doing was swimming in the hotel pool so Marvelous Mom generously offered to stay with them (I don't think she wanted to shop in every store in San Francisco with daughter) and Daughter and I hit the city.

We got hopelessly lost in Chinatown and it was fabulous! Lunch was in an awesome Italian place across the street from City Lights Books. The waiter was a born and bred Italian - and hawt according to daughter - and the food was incredible. City Lights Books was first on daughter's list because it's in Christopher Moore's book Bloodsucking Fiends. Then we went to the Beat museum where she bought Jack Kerouac's book On the Road. What can I say, she has an eclectic taste in her reading materials!

That night Scientist Genius Brother, Marvelous Mom and I all had a lovely dinner sans children in the restaurant at the hotel while the kids watched tv and ate pizza in our room. Then Mom & Bro hit the B.A.R.T. back to Berkeley and the kids and I got our beauty sleep in preparation for the long drive to San Diego the next day.

Being in Berkeley

Mom and I are letting the kids sleep in this morning (and giving ourselves some much needed peace and quiet!) so I had some time to go thru my pictures from yesterday. The drive down was long with more fighting between the Things than we've EVER had before so when we do the second leg of the trip to San Diego I am considering giving them dramamine to make them sleep. Or a fifth of vodka. Whatever.

*It's a JOKE, I'm just joking!*

We wandered around Berkeley yesterday while Marvelous Mom took my car to Sunnyvale to visit a childhood friend. Daughter and Scientist Genius Brother went to see the new Johnny Depp movie (drool) and the Things and I got ice cream and then hung out in a park in the middle of the city.

The park was absolutely hysterical. There were lots of homeless people, some sleeping on the grass and others congregated in the shade hanging out and talking with what looked to be assistance workers - possibly from the YMCA that adjoins the park grounds.

There were several hippies playing guitars.

A gaggle (flock? swarm? school?) of teenage boys were skateboarding on the opposite end of the park from the homeless guys chatting.

Young lovers were making out on a blanket off by the playground area.

And a guy in a THREE PIECE BUSINESS SUIT was doing tai-chi in the grass.

I'm telling you, only in Berkeley.

My little tree-huggers doing their thing...

Eating ice cream in the plaza outside the Berkeley B.A.R.T. station...

And finally we finished off the day eating pizza at Zachary's, the best pizza place on the entire planet!

Today we will go into San Francisco where Daughter has an itinerary as long as her arm (we might make it to a quarter of the places she wants to go) and then tomorrow it's off to San Diego!

Minivan Mom

Well I've done what I swore I would never do again. I bought a minivan. We wore out two of the damn things back when the twins were babies and toddlers - practicality won out over coolness - but almost six years ago husband shocked the shit out of me and bought us a brand new Acura MDX. I love that car! It's COOL! I had a cool car! But my driving 25,000 miles a year has taken it's toll plus the twins have long stork legs that no longer can fold themselves into the way back seat.

So we traded in our little P.O.S. (but fun to drive when it was working) '93 Saab 900 turbo convertible for a Honda Odyssey ex-l. It was a no brainer when we found out the Saab qualified for the Cash for Clunkers program. The credit we got for it was five or six times more than the car was worth *and* was the same amount we paid for it so I figure it's the only car we have ever made money on. Or at least broke even with.

We're keeping the Acura because *gulp* daughter will be driving in a little over a year - plus I LOVE that car! - so I can still be cool when I'm just hauling around one or two people and don't need enough leg room for my rapidly growing progeny. Plus it has AWD which, if we have another snowpocalypse, we will definitely need.

Road trip '09 starts on Friday and the new van will make it infinitely more comfortable for everyone. The things can watch movies on the dvd player, daughter can stretch out on the very back bench seat and sleep and I can count my pennies as I get 25 mpg on the highway.

But I won't be cool.

My Boys

Although the fact that Things 1 & 2 have Asperger's Syndrome is listed in my little bio to your right, I've yet to write about what it is and what it means to me, to them, and our family.  The kids and I leave for Road Trip '09 on July 31st and because we will be meeting up with my whores, the Vegas Show Girls, I thought this would be a good time to bring up the subject of Asperger's because Yo, Mel, and Christy have never met the Things and forewarned is forearmed!  (Shelly is their Stepgrandmonster so she already knows how brilliant - and difficult - they can be. :)

This short summary of Asperger's is by Nancy Mucklow and is the best description I've found yet for what Asperger's is:

Asperger Syndrome is a type of autism, and autism is a neurological disorder that affects the way a person interacts with others and his or her world. It’s not a mental illness, and it is not caused by weak parenting. In its more severe forms, it’s a disorder because it causes disorder in the life of the child. In its milder forms, it is more of a marked difference from the norm. In our culture, which judges people on the way they interact with others, these disorder-differences can have a profound impact on a person’s life.

You’ve probably heard the parents complaining about the difficulties they’ve had with the child in the home - obsessive behavior, irrational outbursts, wild fears, and irritability over the smallest issues. These problems are not misbehaviors, but rather the child’s responses to an inability to comprehend what is going on around them and inside them. Some experts have called it a “mind blindness,” one that causes the person to stumble and bump into complex social situations that they can’t “see.”

Yet by effectively “blinding” the mind to certain aspects of daily life, Asperger Syndrome enables the child’s mind to focus in a way that most of us are incapable of. They feel their feelings more intensely, experience texture, temperature and taste more powerfully, and think their thoughts more single-mindedly. In many ways, this ability to focus is the great gift of Asperger Syndrome, and is the reason why a great number people with Asperger Syndrome have become gifted scientists, artists and musicians.

It is as if the Asperger brain is born speaking a different language. It can learn our language through careful instruction or self-instruction, but it will always retain its accent. While Asperger adults go on to successful careers and interesting lives, they will always be considered unusual people.

Her summary is only part of the entire article which she wrote especially for Grandparent's of kids with Asperger's.  If you're at all interested, the whole article is available here.  Click on 'Family Matters' in the left column and it is the first link listed.

Things 1 & 2 fall into the "moderate" category of Asperger's, with Thing 1 presenting as slightly more "Aspie" than Thing 2.  Thing 2 has two common co-occurring issues in Aspie kids, severe depressive disorder and ADHD, both of which he takes medication for.  I'm also pretty sure that Thing 1 has some OCD issues but because they do not interfere with his day to day life I'm not worried about them and he isn't under treatment.

Talking to the Things is sort of like talking to Bill Nye the Science Guy on speed.  Or an encyclopedia read by that speed reader who used to do the teeny tiny car toy commercials.  Their current obsessions are politics (they are firmly in the liberal democrat camp), religion (Thing 1 is a militant atheist and Thing 2 is agnostic but much more open minded than his brother) and all things scientific.  Scientist Genius Brother *frequently* comes to my rescue and the boys call him once or twice a month to settle disagreements on the magnetic field of the earth, answer questions about the possibility of non-carbon based life forms on other planets and tell them what absolute zero is.  (Apparently it is different than just plain old zero.  Who knew?)  Thank GOD their uncle is a genius because most of the time I haven't got a clue what the hell the boys are talking about.

Reading people's body language and facial expressions is not something they can do without some help and prompting which means that they often talk LONG after their audience is bored with the topic and they haven't got a clue if someone is ticked off at them until they are specifically told.  Or thwacked on the head.  Whatever.

I learned long ago that getting upset, yelling and screaming or spanking them just escalates any behavior that I'm trying to stop.  We work on a lot of redirection, correction and explanation.  Thing 1 especially wants a rational explanation for every instruction he gets so we are currently working on just following my instructions and asking for explanations later because I can't always explain all my rationale to him right when I'm telling him to stop/start/change whatever it is he's doing at the time.  If he can do this by the time he is 16 I'll be happy.  Right now it's all practice all the time.  And lots of wine for me.

Thing 1 also is working on the tone of voice he says things in.  About 90% of what comes out of his mouth is just fine as far as the words go but the tone of voice he uses makes him sound like a total and complete asshole.  He comes across like a condescending prick and we're trying to help him be more aware of HOW he says things as well as what words he uses.  Some days it feels like a losing battle but we have to get him to understand and moderate his tone or else he is going to get his ass kicked.  A lot.

Thing 2 has struggled with social issues at school for a very long time but seems to be doing very well at a new school that he started at last November.  He wants friends, he wants to do social things but has a hard time cracking the social behavior norm codes that other kids expect from him.  Dungeons & Dragons, video games and internet sites have truly been a godsend for him and he has a few close friends with hopes for more next year.  Funnily enough, he gets along GREAT with girls and kids older and younger than he is.  It's his peers that he has the most trouble with.

Newsweek magazine published an article not long ago about autism and Ari Ne'eman, the 21 year old founder of the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network.  It was fascinating for me to read not just because of the information but because Ari sounds so much like my boys.  I hope that we can teach them to be as successful in the world as he has been.

But right now it isn't easy.