Dear Abby Normal...

I know, it's been a while since we've talked. Were you worried that I'd fallen off the edge of the blogoverse? Truth is, I had a great post almost ready for you back in the middle of November. Almost complete. And so funny you'd still be laughing if you'd read it. But it's gone, kaput, poof, disappeared.

I don't know what happened...last thing I remember, I was plunking merrily away here at the computer, did that barely conscious scan of the area to make sure there were no disturbances in the force (it's a thing I have to do at regular intervals even when I'm in the middle of writing a particularly scintillating paragraph), and noticed Calvin sitting placidly on the couch trying to open a bottle of A1 Steak Sauce. He's got an uncanny way of doing things like that in between my barely conscious scans of the area, which is why these scans are so vital to our survival here in my world, and which is also why I so often have to pluck him out of both upstairs bathroom sinks while I'm trying to help Grace get ready for school in the morning. He needs to have all the toothbrushes and climbs up there to get them, but I digress.

Back to the lost blog...so naturally I had to jump up from my writing to stop the boy from either chugging A1 Sauce straight from the bottle or using it to marinate the furniture. And when I got back to business...you know what's coming and I'm still sick over it. I thought I'd clicked "save" during the nanosecond before the adrenaline and visions of steak-sauced sofa cushions shot me out of my seat. But I hadn't. It'll be back again someday, just like Frosty the Snowman, or at least I hope so since I, for one, found myself utterly entertained by the topic being covered that day. But losing the whole thing has made me too bitter to go back and redo the whole thing and all that's left is to go forward for now and revisit "Take My Identity, Please..." when the nausea of losing it subsides. Stay tuned, though. Some of my hair-raising blather never gets old.

And so, we move on. It's a new day.

I almost hate to admit this to you all, but at this point we're too close to keep secrets. I've always silently wished I was normal. Stop laughing. In high school I had visions of making cheerleading because that would have felt so...normal. P.S. Instead of actually becoming a cheerleader, I thought about it too much, was entirely certain I wasn't normal enough to make the squad, so on try-out day I maintained that my knees hurt too much from practicing...and they did, but I should have gone for it. I bet I would make it if I tried out today. One of the endless gifts of having a forty-pound child with autism (and I say this with no sarcasm or cynicism, I know it's not always easy to tell with me): It's done wonders for my strength, flexibility, and stamina. Plus, between the aerobics and the constant underlying hum of anxiety I live with perpetually, I think I could even fit into my wedding dress again. Glass half-full, folks, take it from me.

Normal. I KNOW, so white bread, so vanilla...luckily, the normal thing never quite panned out for me. Better than two decades past cheerleading tryouts, I can say that my normal ship has sailed, and for the most part I'm grateful. Some of my best moments have been totally abnormal (and a few only borderline legal, but we won't go there). Aren't everybody's?

But I think maybe I speak for all us happy Abby Normals out there, who happen also to be parents, when I say that when it comes to our kids, we fall right back into that craving for white bread again. It must be projection. You watch these little people who, through a series of inexplicable miracles, you've ended up in charge of, you carry that achy memory of wanting to be just like everyone else, to fit in, and there you have it. Which brings me to this holiday season, 2009, watching my sweet little three-year-old navigate his first semester of preschool, the only autism-spectrum child in a classroom of "normals" or "neurotypicals" or whatever's the best way to say it (knowing full well as I say it that no child, no person, is really normal or typical, and to say so without qualifying it the way I am would be an insult to everybody).

But oh, how to explain it.

It doesn't really hit home until they start doing their little onstage pageants. All of them up there singing about those 10 little pumpkins or about how they're so thankful or about dashing through the snow (that last one is coming up for us tomorrow). Ok, so not all of them up there are singing. One little guy isn't singing or doing the hand gestures, and looks not entirely sure why the hell he has to stand up there and endure these shenanigans. Oh he's up there alright, always the trooper, with his beloved special teacher in charge of supporting him through moments like these at his side. I often I wonder if deep in there he knows he's humoring us.

Yeah, people, I'll stand up here, but here's the deal. I will NOT wear the stupid paper hat you made me participate in fashioning and I will NOT sing. I will sing in the car on the way home like always, will wear nothing on my head voluntarily other than my train engineer cap, and that's that, got me?

I sobbed, a heartbroken mess, all the way home from the Thanksgiving show, and I have to stop and wonder why. Whose needs aren't being met here? Whose experience is limited? Calvin stepped down off the stage, seemingly glad to be done with it but no worse for the wear, had some snacks, and it was on to the next thing...which for him was a little catnap during the car ride home, which left him refreshed for another two-hour session with another of his teacher angels. I could search his face forever for some sign of distress over being the strange little boy on the stage who can't or won't do what the other kids do, and I'd still be searching.

I start to realized how brainwashed I am, as if there's some standard of how all three-year-olds should be, and I have one that doesn't meet the standard so I get to play the role of the grief-stricken mother who doesn't get to watch her child jump through the same hoops all the other children do. And in the middle of feeling so sad about it all, I'll suddenly have a wriggling, snuggling boy in my lap, giggling into my face, eyes sparkling with his joy and belly laughter, and I'll come to myself and snap out of it. For a while. Because this kind of process happens a million times a day, on any day, not just on preschool pageant days.

Then a few days later, turkey barely digested, time to decorate for Christmas. Five-year-old Grace kept up a running commentary over every second of the process...oohed and aaahed over every ornament, every knicknack, wanted her hands all over everything. Calvin, well, he's not so much with the chit-chat. Although he did put on my silly headband with the huge reindeer antlers, which must have put him in mind of rabbit ears, because he adorably started to do a little jumpy thing and tell us "hop! hop!"

Then there was Cal's other main contribution to our decorating endeavors, which was to keep the tree from becoming too busy with ornaments. He took them down as fast as we put them up. But finally he settled down with one pilfered ornament that happened to be Elmo playing a Christmas drum. Pretty soon I noticed him sitting with it in his lap, playing it rhythmically, saying softly in accompanyment, "drum, drum, drum, drum" as he tapped.

I sat down next to him on the couch to hear his song, he melted into me like he always does, I breathed him in like I always do, my little one, who doesn't need language to express the deepest part of him or to be understood. None of us do, really. It's all just habit. The beat of your drum tells the story you think you're telling with your words.

Then He smiled at me, pa-rum-pa-pum-pum.

Happy holidays with ALL MY LOVE,
Tracy

Oh Yeah, "It" Happens

Having a bloggable moment, and I'm hoping to find sanity and maybe even a sense of humor by the end of this post, because right now I'm a miserable bitch and out of my mind nuts, trying to recover from a combination of rage and remorse befitting a death-row inmate. I can only go up from here, or let's hope.

It came in two phases, and phase one wasn't so bad. Calvin and I were upstairs together, me putting away clean laundry, Cal puttering around with his trains. But by and by he wandered into the master bath and assumed the stance I know so well. He had to see a man about a horse if you know what I'm saying. And while his business still happens in a diaper, there's stuff he'd rather do behind closed doors. Of course I respect that (who wouldn't), so when he did his usual thing of shoving me gently enough out the bathroom door and closing it behind him, I said, ok, I give you five to ten minutes and then I'm coming in.

Because if you know anything about kids with autism, you know they display certain, let's just say tendencies when it comes to their sensory needs, and that can mean a terrible outcome when it comes to the contents of a diaper. Enough said. Really.

And another thing you know if you know anything about kids with autism is that many of them have bowel problems, from one end of the spectrum to the other--going all the time in torrents, going hardly ever until it's like passing the Hope Diamond. That's more than enough detail on that front, but I will tell you that Cal is on the Hope Diamond end of things, so I don't like to mess with him too much when he assumes the position. I think you're getting the picture that it's a tenuous balancing act.

Well, you know how balancing acts go, sometimes your way, sometimes not. Today was pretty much a not. Five to ten minutes was too long, and when I walked through the door I found my little Picasso making an intricate design on the stone tile floor from his Pampers pallette using two of my make-up applicators and my poor husband's toothbrush. An impressive everloving mess if ever I saw one.

But, dear readers, you would have been shocked and proud at the calm that came over me. I became Carol Brady, Donna Reed, and June frickin Cleaver rolled into one.

Oh baby boy, it's ok, we'll clean this all up, here we go, into the tub, I know you're a little cold, let's turn up the heat and get the warm water really going here, yes I know you want the toothbrush back but it's yucky, so sorry, I know, it's just not fair, Mommy's got you, little guy...

And on and on like that, I was so sweet I hope I didn't give him cavities, but that was really my vibe. Went with the flow, cleaned up the kid, cleaned up the floor, load of laundry going, all's well that ends well.

Yeah, you know I'm so not done.

And neither was the boy. And the part that really makes me want to just run screaming through the streets until the medics come to get me is that I KNEW IT. Again, I'll spare too much detail, but when you're cleaning them up sometimes you can tell by the state of things down there that there's more to come. I knew to be on the alert for round two, I knew it. Maybe it's a deep-seated psychological mechanism of self-sabotage for writing material. I don't know, I just do not know.

It was less than a half-hour before one of Cal's teachers was due to arrive. He was sparkling clean, merrily merrily merrily merrily chugging his trains along his awesome toy train table. There's my laptop across the room full of work to be done. I say to myself, self, why not get started, just do some easy stuff, print out those documents, double-spaced for editing, quick little task that you can do and still keep an eye on things round here.

I know, you're trying to figure out if that lingering naivete is endearing, or if it makes you want to slap me upside the head.

But here's the deal, people, the work has got to get done, and time (and time-management for that matter) never seem to be on my side. Here I am with a freelance gig in front of me, an opportunity to actually work for money that's appeared like an oasis in a desert of haven't-been-hired-to-do-squat. Sometimes that means steal a minute here, five minutes there...

So I'm sifting through files on the computer, I'm formatting text so that it's nice and readable, I print out a few documents, nice and easy...and then I saw it. In a microsecond, out of the corner of my eye. I saw the hand coming out of the diaper, saw it schmearing across the awesome train table, saw that his clothes and his fingernails were already beyond salvaging, just ten goddamn minutes out of the bathtub. And then, of course, the additional microsecond it took me to cross the room was another eternity where the damage just about quadrupled. It's amazing. He must use quantum mechanics.

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. And shame on me is right. Because now the lovely combination Donna Reed, Mrs. Brady, and June Cleaver were in freefall, probably in a group suicide pact, and all that was left was...well whatever it was, it wasn't pretty. So enraged, so frustrated. So ridiculously angry at this child of mine, who does what he does and is what he is, and is perfect by the way (prejudiced though I may be, if you've met him you know it's true). And for what? For messing up my already Everloving Mess?

I don't even know what came out of my mouth, but I know the tone of it, some of it spoken, some of it just vibrating and crackling in loud thought, but all of it venomous and rancorous and ugly:

I can't believe this, how can it be happening, only minutes out of the tub are you SERIOUS, why, why, why!!!! How can you do this to me????? Does anybody wonder why this place is a disgusting cesspool of filth and I can't get anything done, I mean WHO can succeed at THIS?!?!? Who masters THIS?!?!? March march march to the bathroom, soap and water, nail brush, rougher than necessary, march march march, another diaper, another set of clean clothes. Lay him down on ANOTHER clean towel to do this all again, again, again, again, your teacher will be here in ten minutes, I have work to do, I have deadlines, I need to make money, can't you see that if I don't get this work done we'll have to give you and your sister to Brangelina to raise while your parents eke out their pitiful existence in a tent city for chrissakes?

Nice, right? And it was worse than that, I cleaned up the language so as not to alienate some of you forever. Mother of the year, here I come. Take away my June Cleaver/Carol Brady/Donna Reed loving cup once and for all and strip me of all accoutrement, I deserve it.

But in the midst of my half-aloud/half-silent tirade from hell, something happened that stopped me dead. He looked at me. You should have seen the way he looked at me.

Wait a second, what the hell is this? He never seems to even notice my moods gone all wrong, it's usually like I'm not even there. Grace's barometer can sense it from a neighboring state when I plummet, but Cal never notices, seems blissfully unaware of any passing storms, just goes on with whatever's on his agenda, like burrowing his head into my belly button or arranging all his train cars in lines along invisible meridians in our house. Right? So why's he looking at me like that?

Like what?

His bottom lip quivered, his eyes filled up, his whole mouth pulled into that shape that can only mean one thing, that his heart's been broken. He's never done that before, not in response to someone's mood, someone's affect...no that's not true, not never, but not since before...before it all went away somewhere, when was it? Eighteen months old? Right around the time Mike noticed with some concern that he seemed "sad" somehow, and my mother wanted to know why he doesn't speak, and some of my friends gently prodded about when I might be thinking about calling that Early Intervention number? Some time between when he laughed easily and often at Gracie in the carseat next to him, or chased her on all fours around the playroom, and then didn't seem to notice her any longer? Between when he'd follow us around the room with his eyes and then stopped bothering? I swear, he hasn't reacted like that emotionally since...since before.

So what's this, then? A good sign? Emerging because I've managed to cause such sadness to a three-year-old innocent, my own child, that even his autism can't keep it off his face?

(I know, sometimes it just isn't funny, is it?)

But does it mean something else? Does it mean that the autism is shrinking? Is there a shift taking place? And it took my abhorrent behavior, showing the maternal softness of Lady Macbeth, to bring it to light?

I don't know. All I know is he looked at me, and I came to myself. I lifted him off the towel, cradled his shirtless, diapered, hunk of soft preschooler body into mine, and apologized from my heart into his soft, soft hair. Then I thanked any and all invisible listeners that might be hovering around for the honor and privilege of being this exquisite boy's mother, and promised to never ever make him have to look at me that way again. Let it be a wicked, dried-up fourth-grade teacher that does that to him, like it was for me, but not the one he's recently learned to call Mommy, clear as a bell.

And I assured him that going forward he can feel free to take a dump wherever and however and with whatever frequency he wants, I'm up for the job.

But that maybe we could switch to fingerpaints when it comes to the artistic expression end of things. Just a suggestion, that's all.

Amen.

Comedy or Horror Flick...You Decide....

So a while back, I turned 30...that's right 30...shut up, I said it was a while back. And I was all like, "Waah waah waah, I'm 30 and I have no husband and no kids and tick, tick, tick, woe is ME!" I know, I'm gagging too.

This is where a time machine would come in so handy so you could go back and slap the living crap out of your earlier self just to make your current self feel better in the present moment. It would be very satisfying.

First of all, a few weeks after that 30th birthday, my soon-to-be fiance took me to Cancun. Oh poor friggin me! And I have plenty of pictures from that trip, I was so smokin' hot the photos make me want to do myself. I'll bet even the dolphins we swam with were turned on, although they supposedly always make those noises. I think I had a different bikini for every day of the trip, and I rocked them all. Didn't think so at the time, but I was an idiot and now I know better.

Do we really need a "second of all"? No, but I'd hate to end this post here and deprive you all of knowing about "the thing" that happened to me the other day which made me want to run away and join the circus, but has the potential to be ever so humourous in the retelling. So you know you're going to hear about it and laugh at my expense and make the whole disgusting business worth something at least.

I was in my car, in the preschool parking lot, a few minutes early to pick up my little guy. Suddenly remembered that I forgot to put on lipstick. Without artificial lip color, I literally have no mouth. I'm pretty sure I lost a good 10 lbs once when Revlon discontinued my favorite Colorstay shade and I was at a loss for what to do about it.

Anyway, dug the lipstick out, glanced up into the visor mirror to apply and...wait a minute...what's this now? Oh, just a stray hair from somewhere...although from the size, how'd it get all the way up here from down...wait a minute, WHAT? Jesus H. Christ, it's attached. To my Madonna mole.

I remember when I saw the movie The Sixth Sense in the theater, no one had ruined the climax for me, and when it was revealed what was really happening to Bruce Willis, the whole goddamn thing had been so artfully done that I felt all the blood drain from my head and I was certain that if I hadn't been seated I would have dropped to the floor in a swoon.

Ok, well that was NOTHING compared to what happened to me in the car when I realized "the thing" was attached.

So I'm growing a beard, it is officially the beginning of the end.

Welcome to your four hundred and eighty somethingth month, Trace. Can't wait until tomorrow, good golly, maybe I'll need a pessary. And don't feel bad if you don't know what the hell that is, I only know because I was raised by a geriatric nurse who took care of mostly women with extremely ancient vaginas and uteruses (vaginae and uteri?) and loved to talk shop at the dinner table. How we all did NOT end up permanently rail thin is beyond me. So on that note, do yourself a favor and don't Google it right after a heavy meal.

But if you find out where to get one cheap, email me the details just in case. Tick tick tick.

The Road to Squalor, Paved with Good Intentions

I need to have a discussion with you about my filth. And when I say "discussion," I mean that I want some answers. There are so many of you out there (I've been in your homes and I know who you are and I know where you live) who keep your filth at bay so well that I find it very hard to like you. Oh I still do like you, love you even, but that's just a testament to your many redeeming qualities. Because, like I said, you make it hard.

To add insult to injury, lots of you have children, at least as many as I have, and some of you have more--disgusting little filth-makers down to every everloving last one of them. And those of you without kids, you're not off the hook either, YOU tend to have DOGS!!! Come on! What, do you all have vacuum parts implanted into your limbs that pop out when you need them like goddamn Wolverine?!?!? (Can you get that done...does anybody know?) Sorry, but I find all this very difficult to take.

When I say that you "keep the filth at bay," what I really mean is that the interiors of your homes look like pictures from any of those magazines that make me hate myself. You know the ones...they taunt and malign people like me, sitting there on their racks with titles like Better [than yours] Homes and Gardens, Good [luck] Housekeeping, and, one of my faves, Real [are you frickin serious?] Simple.

And if your houses only look that good because you've got company, that doesn't cut any ice with me. Because first of all...me? Company? Get serious. Moreover, when I know that YOU are coming over, I start the cleaning mission two days in advance so that when you finally get here maybe you'll feel ok about letting your kid open his mouth to eat a goldfish cracker.

And by the way, while we're being all candid and open, I know you're talking about me behind my back about it too. The second you leave you're on your cell phones. Betchya thought I wasn't wise to that but don't kid yourselves. I am soooo on to you. With perfect clairaudience I hear your thoughts and you know what? They leave me spent, wrung out like a used-up rag, flat on my back with a washcloth over my eyes for a minimum of 3 days while MORE filth builds up. Hope you're happy.  Because damn straight I hear you. Any of this sound familiar?

Eeeeeeew, how does she live like this?

When was the last time that bowl saw the business end of a toilet brush?

You call those things curtains? Are they MADE of cobweb?

Wonder if she even OWNS a vacuum cleaner.

Have they painted their walls since legwarmers were in style?

Maybe if we all chipped in and bought her a Swiffer Wet-Jet...


I know, I know, I KNOW! You think I don't see it?!?!?!? But people, we've been through this, haven't we? I'm what is known as an Everloving Mess. It's been well established, Google it, it's all right there.  I think it's a chromosomal defect (for which I do not fault my parents, these things happen, no sense in throwing blame around). It's just a little piece of DNA I'm missing, the piece that carries the data for all the skills that all you little Suzy Homemaker Domestic Goddesses out there make look so easy. Well, in my own personal cells that gene got a little frayed, that's all. Don't judge me because I'm a mutant, it's so not a good color on you.

The thing I really don't get is that according to the much-buzzed-about Law of Attraction, my circle of peeps should be veritably bursting at the edges with slobs like me. Yet somehow I've managed to summon into my locus of contact and concern and loving acquaintance a veritable gaggle of Donna Reeds and Martha Stewarts. How do you think this makes me feel? Like the Ugly Betty of playgroups and mom's clubs everywhere, that's what. Hope you're happy, bitches.

There's only one possible explanation that I can come up with to give meaning to this whole unfortunate set of circumstances, and I'm going to share it here, just try and stop me. Here it is. You may not agree, but, let's face it, you would be so utterly wrong.

You people need me. Yes, yes, yes you do, you need me. And it's not just about feeling better about yourselves because I'm such a magnificent disaster area and you're such Neaty McNeatersons in comparison (although let's be honest, that's part of it). Here's how I'd like to think it plays out.

You come over, you notice a livingroom baseboard covered with a layer of encrusted grime and gore that obviously dates back to the Carter administration. You, in turn, go home and notice the 3 specs of dust (no doubt made of particles of rainbows, unicorns, and newborn baby hair) that have accumulated on your own livingroom baseboard since you left your premises a few hours before.

Now here's where the magic happens, the alchemy, the miracle, the namaste, the divinity in me saluting the (so freaking obnoxiously immaculate) divinity in you.

Instead of jumping up and removing the 3 specs right then and there, something in you says to stay your hand against those impudent offenders, that approaching army of grime, for just a few short minutes, a blip on the radar screen of an eternity of cleanliness-next-to-godliness.

You hear me whispering in your ear, softly, like a lover...do it...lie down...nobody has to know. You feel a sinful pleasure sneak over you as you give in, you close your eyes against the specs, you feel a little bit dirty and you don't care, you even like it a little. I see you there, letting your dark side take over. You let yourself fall back on your chaise lounge with the white upholstery, cucumber slices appearing out of the ether over your soon-to-be-unpuffy eyes, your blood pressure easing, your hormone levels balancing, your natural hair color holding back its insidious, unyielding return to your roots for maybe one day more.

Why?

All because of me. I was there to give you a little perspective, people. There's your Real Simple for ya. And then, 5 minutes of nirvana complete, up you come and--where the hell are those Swiffers-- bango! Baseboard dust specs banished to oblivion forever. They'd increased to 9 in number now instead of just the 3, squared themselves while you were resting, the nasty little buggers. But still they're gone, and you've won, like you always do. Best of all, nobody but me knows what you did during those 5 delicious minutes of bliss, you naughty little slacker...it's our (dirty) little secret.

Just sit there for a minute more and bask in your gratitude for the likes of me.

You're welcome.

Kicked in the Gut

Oh friends, this thing that happened really sucked and I have a lot to say about it--and I mean a lot, I'm glad there's not a character limit on this Everloving blog. At any rate, if you'd just hang in there with me for a while on this one...grab a cup of whatever's your pleasure, put your feet up, get comfortable. Even hold my hand if you don't mind, there we go. And I thank you in advance for your Everloving indulgence.

The whole experience that inspires this post gave me a great idea for a T-shirt that says, "I'm very unstable, be careful how you speak to me." I'd only wear it in certain situations, like when I took Calvin to a developmental pediatrician the other day for a whopping 15-minute consultation during which my 3-year-old boy wandered around a stark, bare closet of an office with nothing to entertain him but the light switch and a telephone cord. Autism in the picture or no, how does this sound to you all as a setting to evaluate a child's development? Trust me, I'm just getting started.

I'll just cut to the chase to start us off here. During the course of those 15 minutes, the doctor told me, in his older uncle-ish, kind but blunt manner, that Cal clearly hadn't made the significant gains that we would have liked to have seen over the year since our initial meeting, especially considering the full-boat of services we've had in place since then, 25 hours a week for goshsakes, and congratulations to you mom for doing such a great job getting that going, too bad it's obviously not working. So now it's time to talk of "other rabbits I could pull out of my hat," says he, such as offering my son up as a lab rat and trying a few different drugs just to see what happens--maybe he'll gain some language, or maybe he'll gain 80 pounds before his next birthday, who knows until we try, right? Oh yeah, and the other option is to have a geneticist work us over, because once in a blue moon they find something treatable, but don't get your hopes up on that either.

Needless to say, I am wording some of this after my own fashion (not the quoted part, the quoted part he really said, word for word, about the rabbits up his, I mean in his hat), but honestly, that was the gist, the takeaway if you will. I wish I were exaggerating. A jam-packed 15 minutes, no? A few days later, I'm still scratching my head at how the doctor came to the conclusions he did, since our quarter-hour session consisted of he and I sitting across from each other at his desk having a chat, during which he never once even glanced in Calvin's general direction. Maybe his technique is to use his peripheral vision only. Maybe he likes to be subtle, and if there's one thing a child with autism really responds to, it's subtlety...um, yeah. Next maybe we'll throw in some sarcasm and just keep moving through the top 10 worst ways to communicate with kids with autism and just see how we do.

And if you're wondering why I didn't press on any of this while I was sitting there in that room for those 15 minutes, why I didn't put up my hand and say "Whoah whoah whoah, put the breaks on, doc old boy, haven't I just told you [I had] all about the skills we HAVE seen develop, all the gains we HAVE made, all the evidence of language comprehension that was never there before, how he responds to his name, his awesome eye contact, his newfound ability to attend, etc., etc., frigging etc.?" The only reason I can give you for my (uncharacteristic) muteness at that juncture is two-fold:

Part one. Shellshock, pure and simple. As in, the man's lips were moving and I was trying to process what he was saying in keeping with the situation and what I'd seen over the past year, and so much wasn't computing. And maybe I was afraid that if I had allowed it to compute and actually assimilated what he was telling me, my heart would have literally ripped itself in half in my chest. That would have been a catastrophe because so far as I know there was no cardiologist on the premises.

Part two. Well, once our 15 minutes were done, the next patient and his mom were being pushed into the 8-by-8 office space before Calvin, Grace (out of school with her cold), and I had been able to physically vacate it. Yes, honest to die, before I'd even begun getting my kids back into their coats the doctor had summoned the next victims in with the same gravelly sing-a-song thinggee he'd used on us, "Hey there [name of child], walk this way and make my day!" I stood there, gathering my children, their things, my things, my wits, having the weird deja-vu echo of hearing the little song he'd used on us 15 minutes prior, which I'd thought was cute in a corny kind of way the first time but now sounded like part of the sound track of a horror movie. And all the while I'm struggling to find any trace of oxygen left in the room as all of it had apparently been sucked out over the past 15 minutes and my lungs couldn't find any.

Our time was clearly up. And I needed to get into my car where I could let go and do the kind of sobfest you learn to do silently with your back to the kids whom you hope are not able to glimpse you in the rear view. Sure, several days later and with some time to reflect I can see a few, let's call them flaws in the good doctor's off-the-cuff, obtuse evaluation. But I'll tell you that in the 15-minute moment I'd just been through, I'd experienced my worst nightmare, or at least one of them, translated into an almost laughably amiable conversation across a desk. You're doing all you know how to do, but your baby isn't getting better. Accurate or not, justifiable or not, verifiable or not, this pronouncement came from one of the white-coated wizards we've been trained all our lives to trust like nobody's business. I'm convinced that it takes an all-out, knock-down, drag-out deprogramming procedure (or an autism diagnosis) to begin to unlearn this training, and I recommend we all take that course. As for me, I'm only at the beginning of this vital un-education. So I was undone. For a bit.

I decided to wait a minimum of 48 to 72 hours before even beginning to write about this incident because the passage of a little time makes it easier for me not to use language that would probably get this site flagged for inappropriate content by the blog CIA. I know full well that several of you reading this have caught my act live and know how, um, colorful I get when I'm exercised about something. Some of my girls (where're my girls at?) will remember a trip to Virginia Beach we took some time last century (we were SO all the single ladies...and I was SO rocking a Victoria's Secret bikini....). We asked directions from a guy working a toll booth and the guy was a grade-A tool about it. I mean what the F? You're a toll-taker near Virginia Beach, for crying out loud, are we the first aimless group of party girls who've asked you directions today? Then again, maybe that was the problem, maybe we pushed him over the edge and turned him into a douchebag...maybe he was a really nice guy early that morning and we wrecked him. Well, whatever, so I called him a name, or I should say that a name spewed out of me like I was Linda Blair with demons AND pms, that's the way it usually goes with me--the term Tourette's Syndrome has been bandied about in fun, but I don't think so, I just have a really bad potty mouth. I called him something that rhymes with sock-eating toll-taker, and I didn't say sock. Then we all started singing about the sock-eating toll-taker to the tune of Pat Benetar's memorable anthem, Heartbreaker. "You're a sock-eatin....toll-taker..." All of us in high hysterics, still don't know how we kept the van on the road, good times. Anyway, I have children now and if they talk like me I will truly have a coronary. Is incurable filthy language use hereditary? There's evidence, I've seen it. I remember the day I learned a term that rhymes with "clucking flock schuckers," delivered with magnificent gusto by my own excellent mother as she tried to hang those confounded curtains in the West Street apartment. Yeah, I should probably give my kids' teachers a heads-up.

And I might as well just go on and keep apologizing for what I do, what with all the digressions within digressions. I know this is the written equivalent of a set of Russian nesting dolls. And I'm sorry, it's how my mind works (and, on the upside, it's also why it can be pretty diverting to sit down for a coffee with me if you're cut from a certain cloth and have a high caffeine tolerance). There probably isn't much I can do about it short of invasive surgery. I read a book that called my condition adult ADD, or maybe that was the one about schizophrenia or multiple personality disorder or acute overcaffeination, I forget, but I strongly suspect that, whichever, it's somehow connected to one of my weird tendencies which makes me hardly ever remember to close a kitchen cabinet door. It's like, wait, don't shut that one yet, could be one more thing to shove in there!

But don't worry, I'll come back around to "it," the main idea, the thesis statement...something to do with a message on a T-shirt, a doctor visit a few days ago, you'll know when we get back there. But I have to put some context in place first. If you haven't grabbed that cup of something yet, this might be a good time.

We'd first met with this doctor a little over a year ago. I guess you could say it was right after all hell initially broke loose when a little group of people, also known as an early intervention (or EI) team, had come and gone from my home and shocked me back to my natural hair color by handing me a checklist that said something along the lines of "If you answer yes to any of these questions your kid probably has autism."

It's interesting, and somewhat surreal, how this first EI experience pans out when the evaluators suspect your child is "on the spectrum." Goes something like this: Since these people that come into your home are not medical doctors but "merely" speech pathologists, certified special education teachers, occupational therapists, etc., they are apparently under some strict guidelines that deny them the right, no matter how extensive their knowledge and experience and expertise, to express too much to parents about what they know about the children their careers are dedicated to helping with all their might. It's like some kind of gag order so far as I can tell. They're allowed to hint, to insinuate, to hand you a government-approved autism checklist, and, of course, recommend you seek out someone who makes a ton more money than they do--someone like a neurologist or psychiatrist or developmental pediatrician, who'll spend a minuscule fraction of the time with your child compared to the actual therapists who do the work to help them learn and progress.

So even though these "paraprofessionals" (as I've sometimes heard them called) are the ones that have the preponderance of one-one-one experience with kids like yours on their side, their opinion, to put it bluntly, doesn't mean squat on paper when it comes to a county official making a decision about how much government-subsidized help your child needs and/or deserves--help that's going to be delivered, ironically enough, by those very "paraprofessionals" whose opinion doesn't mean squat on paper when it comes to making a decision about how much help your child needs and/or deserves...it's like a mobius strip in your head, isn't it? Loop de loop de loop de loop.

You had to see naive little me when I set up the appointment for the EI people to come by. I'd thought we were going to end up with a little speech therapy for a few months to address my two-year-old's language delays. And I must say I took my time. I mean, our (former) regular pediatrician recommended we call the EI number and see about Cal's speech with about the same amount of urgency that came with her advice to give him a multivitamin with flouride and get him 10 to 12 hours of sleep a night. Not something that was going to send me breathlessly running to the phone to book my evaluation in order to secure life-altering intervention. He's a boy, he's the "second child," he's two and not talking yet, we'll get him some speech therapy through the county like a handful of my friends have done with their kids, he'll start talking up a blue streak just like his sister, and on we'll go, no biggie. Why would I think otherwise? What the hell would I know that his (former) pediatrician wouldn't even raise an eyebrow at during his check up?

Let's just say we all missed the mark. With 20/20 hindsight, I can tell you my son had autism written all over him. But a year and a half ago, I had no clue...and I'll say this for me, I'm a pretty well-read gal, especially in the parenting realm, and especially over the past 5 to 6 years. Autism shouldn't have gotten past me, not with the 1 out of 150 statistic (ok, so it's more). But it did get by me. And our (former) pediatrician. Wondering why? I've got some ideas, suspicious little me. We'll get to them, probably in another post. For now all I'll say is that if there's a movement afoot that's asking questions about whether or not you've helped cause it, maybe you aren't inclined to look too hard to find it. That's enough for now.

So the early intervention team comes in and does their thing, plays with your baby, asks you plenty of questions, fills out a lot of paperwork, talks to you very very carefully about this certain checklist they have, and then they leave. And there you stand, alone with your child, holding this checklist, this piece of paper that they've made way too many marks on, looking at the paper, blinking a few more times than you normally would so that maybe something will come into focus to make you understand what's just happened, and nothing does, so then you sift through your mental rolladex until you land on the card labelled "autism," which conjures up Dustin Hoffman's academy award winning performance in Rainman but not much else, and certainly nothing that even remotely resembles the two-year-old cherub over there at the train table that likes to snuggle you so, these people are clearly nuts, end scene.

Except it doesn't end scene, because they weren't nuts, they saw things that Cal's (former) regular pediatrician in all those 15-minute check-ups (age one, eighteen months, age two) didn't notice, but would have if she'd done a simple, simple screening instead of spending those precious few minutes scrolling through a list of questions on her laptop, which I am not making up, like "Are there any guns in the house? How about pets? Do you use smoke detectors? A carseat?" I like to call this the official "List of questions your pediatrician asks to determine whether you as a parent are brain dead." And I'm thinking, since they are so very pressed for time, they might think about reworking this bullshit just a little bit. I knew nothing about any existing autism screening, and if this pediatric group did they weren't telling. Nothing about a simple little test called the m-chat (Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers) that consists of a list of questions that parents can answer about their toddlers and score on their own. Something to raise a red flag, to give you a heads up, a fighting chance to set yourself on the right path when there's still time to make the most of those crucial early months and years when early intervention means everything.

But there was no such screening at our (former) pediatrician's office. And I knew nothing that would have made me think autism, nothing. Now I know a lot. I took that scary-assed checklist and matriculated into what one of the heroes of my life and sisters of my heart Jenny McCarthy calls the University of Google (and say anything less than complimentary to me about my Jenny, and risk seeing me erupt with fangs). I Googled myself senseless.

Once you've learned a few things that you can't unlearn, you either shove your head firmly up your ass and deny what's right in front of you, or you don't. I shoved mine up there for about a day or two, not too shabby. Then I got to work.

And how did we start the work? All we had to go on was what the EI team had insinuated with their checklist and well-placed hints, plus what I'd learned from U of G--but just from that, all signs pointed to the fact that in order to get the most important services for your child in the most advantageous amounts, you need a little something called a diagnosis. And who can write a diagnosis down on a prescription pad which then gives you the magical ability to apply for and receive these interventions (that are, by the way, delivered by the paraprofessionals who aren't supposed to know anything, you see how crazy we're talking here, do you not)?

DingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDing!

A developmental pediatrician!

Ok, so rewind to a little over a year ago, when we first visit Dr. Whatever (not really his name, we'll call him Dr. W. for short), and Dr. W., our sweet-seeming old uncle-type, talks to Mike and I at length about our son, observes him in the office setting, gives him a good once-over stripped down to his diaper (Cal, not Dr. W.), does some little tests like trying to get him to point to pictures in a book, name things, etc., you get the drift. After a good solid hour (apparently it's the first visit where you get your money's worth), we'd had what we'd come for. A diagnosis of PDD-NOS. That stands for Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified. If you're the kind of person who likes their words to come together and actually mean something that makes sense to people who speak the common language, this diagnosis is not going to be your cup of tea. I hear you. It would make exactly the same amount of sense to call it "Pencil Sharpener Alexander the Great Doppelganger Disorder--Not Otherwise Specified" (or, of course, PSATGDD-NOS). And I think that has a nicer ring to it. But the point is, PDD-NOS is firmly situated on something called the Autism Spectrum--as an Autism Spectrum Disorder (or ASD, because if it can't be referred to by an acronym, it just ain't nuthin' but a thing).

So, off we went with our magical piece of paper with just the right acronym, not to mention Dr. W.'s prescription for the maximum number of hours of services and programs. You write that stuff down on a prescription pad, and look out. All this worked just like we hoped it would, for which I will be forever grateful to Dr. W., despite the severe Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) he was going to end up making me suffer a year or so into the future. Got us going on some programs with a group of women I refer to as "Calvin's Angels," and they are also known as his girlfriends and/or harem.

Calvin's Angels are made up of five special education teachers (members of something called an ABA team), our speech therapist, and our occupational therapist, all of whom have been ringing our doorbell, coming and going, all day long over the past year to the tune of 25 hours a week. I like to tell people that with seven strangers thrust into your life in this manner, you'd think at least one of them would be a dud, would make you cringe when you hear the doorbell at her appointed time...but no. It is completely unlikely but true that I wouldn't trade one of them, not one. The gains Cal has made with this team, gains our "specialist" didn't have time to assess during our quickie the other day, are too varied and wonderful to describe in any detail in a blog post, but if I had to be brief (not my strong suit, have you noticed?) I'd say that most of the skills so far have been in his ability to understand spoken language, his receptive skills. As for expressive language, saying meaningful things spontaneously, we have further to go. That goes for play and social skills too. And we know this.

But a year ago, if my boy knew his own name, he didn't let on. You could scream it at him two inches from his ear and he wouldn't seem to notice. You'd wonder if deafness was the real problem, except that a few notes of a theme song from one of his favorite TV shows would send him running from across the house, or possibly from the next county. He hears just fine. He just didn't understand that yelling "Calvin" at him meant he owed us any nevermind--a little detail that was particularly disconcerting when he was anywhere near a busy roadway, or any other potential danger that he could be running headlong into. Before awareness of autism became my daily reality, I would wonder why I was the only mom at playgroup who had to learn to drink her coffee at a dead sprint (it's why God invented the adult sippy top known as the "dome lid"). At any rate, responding to his name, that's just one little (huge) thing that's made a complete turnaround. He might try to climb into the fish tank a hundred times a day, but if I catch him first and call his name, he stops in his tracks, and reluctantly backs away. A year ago, Fronya and Nonya (our fish, don't ask, Grace named them) would have to put up with a roommate. Not anymore. For goshsakes, yesterday he dumped my box of a skillion Crayolas and I told him in my best "You're gonna get it" tone that he'd better clean those up. And he DID! Every one! A year ago that wouldn't have happened, and it wasn't just that he was figuratively flipping us the bird, he did not know what those words meant. He does now. He so does.

Body parts and actions and objects and names of his nearest and dearest, he knows these things now. How do we know? Through the activities, the play that the Angels do with him with cards and pictures and toys and puppets and exercises and whatever else we have in our bag of tricks. The evidence of what he knows, evidence not present a year ago, is right there in black and white in a blue binder, lovingly maintained in our kind-of finished basement where Cal has his schoolroom. Everything is recorded, every trial and every error.

Better yet, these days when he's feeling a little weepy and overtired, I'll often hear a whiny, high pitched "Mommeeeee," with all the angst and woe-is-me that would often make many of us mothers of three-year-olds want to poke out our ear drums at the end of along day...but not in this case, not this glorious whine...I didn't hear that whine a year ago, not even six months ago.
And when I sing out "I LOVE YOU, CAL," he tells me back, "Ah-luh-boo." And asking for a kiss brings a little puckered-up bow-shaped mouth to mine. Or an offer of a fat little cheek if that's more his mood. There's language and then there's language.

All of that and a thousand other gains, large and small...although between you and me and the lamp post, none of them are small. When I tried to explain a little of this to the doctor the other day, he gave me a sad little "poor you" smile and said something unintelligible about how service providers sometimes like to make parents feel better by talking about "receptive language" and telling them things are better than they are. What do you say to that in light of all we've gained? It would have taken more than 15 minutes...for me to stop cursing once I started.

For full disclosure, I should tell you that I wasn't supposed to have waited an entire year to follow up with Dr. W. He would have liked to have seen us within 3 months, and then 3 months after that, and so on. But how it goes sometimes is this one gets sick, then that one, then there's a snowstorm, the guy's only in the local office one day out of the month, do I cancel and ABA session or do we go to the doctor, and on and on, and before you know it, a year has gone by.

And it's not like we were sitting around doing nothing---you'll be relieved and probably not shocked, to know that we haven't had all our eggs in Dr. W.'s basket all this time, not by a longshot, there are a thousand other stories that'll sound like those of a thousand other parents who'll lasso the moon and more to find ways to help their babies, their families, themselves along this road. There are physicians that call themselves DAN! (Defeat Autism Now) doctors who treat biomedically and are never covered by insurance because the current healthcare system is too backward to approve of their methods (another day, another post). And there's been those 25 hours a week of therapy I've spoken about. And recently we added preschool to the mix. And I have that other child I've told you about, my glistening, glowing kindergartner named Gracie, who deserves her share of parental care and attention. What I'm getting at is, there are plenty of good reasons why it took us so long to follow up...probably not the least of which was my very strong vibe that Dr. W. had already been of all the use he'd ever be to us, and that was helping us to secure the services that would be so vital for Cal, and that have INDEED helped him to progress. I wonder, though, if Dr. W. was deep down a little irritated at us, and the whole mess of an appointment was his way of saying in a passive aggressive way, you don't show up for a whole year, what do you want me to tell you? That would make about as much sense as anything else at this point.

Anyway, it was what it was, and I got home, spent my requisite time writhing around on the kitchen floor soaking all the dish towels and basically condemning myself for falling so woefully short on taking care of the beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful boy entrusted to my care by the powers-that-be, then I came back to reality and did what I should have done immediately. I got in touch with the angels, Calvin's posse, our team. Via email at first, I'm better that way, especially when I don't feel like sounding like I'm doing a scene from a Lifetime special, I get so tired of myself sometimes. Within a few shakes, my phone was ringing, my email inbox was hopping, they flooded me with the sweet relief of a reality-based response from people who've been collectively helping me take care of my son for 25 hours a week for the past 13 months. All of them overflowing with sorrow that I'd gone through such a wretched ordeal, offering to come with me next time for support (I should have thought of this), asking me questions, questions, questions...

"Did he get down on the floor with Cal?" No.

"Were there any toys in the room, a book he could open up and say 'Cal, point to the doggie'?" No.

"Did he try to engage him in any way even say hi? Cal always says hi back now." No.

"Did he ask him where's his nose?" No.

"His eye contact was nil last year and now it's awesome, didn't he notice?"

No no no no no. No attempt at eye contact, no "Hi Cal!" The only thing to play with in the room was the light switch, which Cal made great use of, plunging us into darkness every minute or so. The one interaction between doctor and patient during what I'm seeing more and more as a bizarre encounter was initiated by Calvin himself. Calvin, the one with the autism. When I begged my child one last time to please leave the light switch alone (plunging into complete inky blackness every few minutes was really the last thing I needed what with my nerves like sweet bells jangled out of tune enough already), he finally obliged me, left the light switch alone, walked right up to Dr. W., and started gently playing with the stethoscope around the doctor's neck. He looked our kind-seeming old-uncle type right in the eye as if to say, "Hey, doc, I like your cool thing there, can I play with it?" If this doesn't sound impressive to you, I'll just say that last year Calvin wouldn't have noticed Dr. W. or his stethoscope and given either of them the time of day if both doctor and instrument had simultaneously burst into flames.

I watched to see if Dr. W. would finally look at my boy, engage him at all...I mean, forget that he's supposed to be treating my son as a patient for a minute, the kid is super frickin CUTE, jeeze! Nothing. That alone should probably have provided all the perspective I needed, but I guess it was too late at that point, he'd already gotten me where it hurts.

But with a little time, a few days, I realize I know better. We may have miles to go before we sleep, but who doesn't? Many of our miles look like autism miles, yours probably look like other kinds. Look at the miles that we've covered already. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, silly Dr. W.

I don't know about you all, but I'm exhausted, and I think we all need to put this particularly upsetting little upset behind us. If there's a moral of this story, it's this: A doctor's office can be a dangerous place. At the very least, bring a friend. Bring a posse. Wear your miraculous medal bearing the likeness of the Archangel Michael, by all means. But never go there alone and unarmed.

We've Got a Lot of What It Takes to Get Along...

The other day the kids and I were playing together on the floor, and before I even knew what I was saying, a question for my eldest popped out of my mouth:

"Grace, are we rich or poor?"

Without missing a beat or even wasting a nanosecond to look up from the task at hand of building Cinderella's castle out of megabloks, she answered me with one word.

"Rich," she said, in her most no-nonsense manner, but not without shooting me a quick look that said, "...and I would have thought that was obvious." I'm very grateful she didn't add, "...duh!" At least not out loud.

And that was all she had to say on the subject, because more important matters were pressing, such as why in the world I would ever put Cinderella's bed over there in the ballroom, was I crazy?

I had to look away when I realized I was crying again (oh what else is new). I mean, she was insulting my interior design skills! Kidding. This wasn't my usual everyday melodrama--it actually took me a few beats to recognize that I was weeping with, what was it, oh yes, relief. Relief, I remember you! Seems that my daughter's one-word, automatic, tossed-off-without-a-thought response to my weird, inappropriate, out-of-the-blue question had made one thing very obvious, and this was no little thing to apprehend.

She's still where she needs to be. At the ripe old age of five we haven't been able to drive the Truth out of her,

Calvin was playing along with us there on the floor, doing his part to make a great castle-- totally uninterested in the conversation, at least to the casual observer. I can't put the same types of questions to Calvin that I do to Gracie. If I do, he'll usually answer by doing something like pulling up my shirt, exposing skin around my Michelin Man section, and burrowing his head in there like Winnie the Pooh diving into a pot full of honey. It's especially great when he does this in public. I've finally given in and started doing Pilates--it's my only recourse at this point. Sometimes I'm sorry I didn't breastfeed him longer, he and I made a mutual decision to stop over a year ago when he was just two; but then again, were we still doing that I'd probably have more than my spare tire on display on a regular basis, and even a raging exhibitionist like myself has her limits.

Anyway, what I'm getting at is I can't interview Cal in quite the same way I do his sister about the state of his prosperity consciousness, at least not yet. But he has other ways of letting me know his take on the matter. In the morning, I know he's awake because I hear the belly laughs. I go in to get him, and he's usually sitting straight up in bed, blankets wrapped around him, looking like a flaxen-haired papoose, grinning at me with a wide-open mouth. When people talk about twinkling eyes, I know it usually sounds like just a dopey, corny, banal figure of speech--Christmas tree lights do that, not people's eyes. Except that Calvin's DO do that, sorry, you'll just have to take my word for it. Maybe it's the morning light. But at any rate, I go to greet him and get him started on his day, and we're usually behind schedule, let's hop to it, spit spot! Except that his plan, every single time, is to grab me around the neck with a vice grip as soon as I get close enough, pull me down into a full-out, roll-around snuggle, and continue to laugh and gurgle and chortle at me until he lets me know he's ready to move on to a dry diaper and breakfast time. A thousand hugs and kisses for Mommy before breakfast...that's one special needs child who knows my special needs.

This all somehow gives me the feeling that he's on the same page as his sister with his answer to the rich/poor question. Just a hunch, but I don't think he'd give off a more opulent vibe if he suddenly called for his pipe and called for his bowl and called for his fiddlers three.

So that's where they stand. And me? Well, I have a better sense of what my real work is than I did before I sat down to talk to you today. If I've managed not to wring this genius out of them, not to throw off their inner compass despite the hurricanes of fear that get kicked up into the air around them more often than I'd like, isn't that a miracle big enough to make you sure more are coming? Or even as good as here?

Can I have brains enough to let them take me where they are, take me there to stay?

Someone said it a long time ago. And a little child shall lead them.

Careful What You Wish For...

When your first child enters kindergarten, it's all about new adventures and wondrous excitement. Ok no, no it isn't. Not if you're freakishly overattached to your 5-year-old and the very thought of sending her to hang out with strangers for eight full hours a day for the first time since you became anyone's mother gives you hives the size of grapefruits and makes things like McDonald's commercials where parents get to eat french fries with their preschoolers perpetually and eternally send you in search of a Zoloft pill the size of a Volkswagon to gnaw on even though you've forever sworn off all drugs that can't be obtained via the Dunkin Donuts drive-thru or a box with a spigot in your refrigerator. In that case, it's all about angst and loss and regret and the cruelly incessant speed-of-light flight of years like sand through a leaden sieve, as in one minute you're chewing your labor coach's arm off just to distract yourself from the most ridiculous white-hot pain you wouldn't wish on anyone (except maybe your impregnator) and inventing curse words in languages you never knew you knew, but then you blink and, bango, public school is stealing her away from you forever. (If this is getting to you at all, do yourself a favor and never ever ever listen to the Abba song from Mamma Mia entitled "Slipping Through My Fingers" unless you happen to be the proud owner of a that Volkswagon-sized Zoloft I mentioned. Then there's "Ribbons Undone," by Tori Amos...I'm just warning you...)

Oh I'm mostly kidding (she's lying). It's been almost four weeks now, and I'm totally fine (she's overstating), I can't even remember the last time (yeah she can) when I sank to my knees in a lake of my own bitter tears as the bus pulled away and all the other parents slowly moved away and avoided all eye contact. It's been ages (days)!

Alright, so you get my point, I've found the whole kindergarten thing a bit challenging, but I was well under way with the agony months ago when she graduated from preschool, got the head start, and now I'm pretty good. And this is how I know.

Grace is home today with a bad cold and I'm...well, people, it's totally cramping my style! (Hands over mouth in shock.) This is the deal, she started honking and coughing and sputtering last week, running a low-grade temp, and I did all the right stuff, took her to the doctor, not once but twice over the course of a few days just to make sure I was being neurotic enough, and was assured, not once but twice, no strep, no pneumonia, no ear infection, no flu. (Is this sounding familiar? Then this isn't your first visit to my parlor, is it? I so love you guys...) So even though she was still coughy and sputtery yesterday, I sent her to school, doctor said ok to go.

And then what happens? Around noon I'm picking up my boy from preschool and my cell phone rings. "Hello Mrs. Stroh-Simon, this is the school nurse, I have Grace here...do you know she has a fever?"

Ok, so that sounds suspiciously like the question the officer asks when he pulls you over. "Do you know how fast you were going?" or worse "Do you know why I stopped you?" or much worse "Have you had anything to drink today?" Was there a right answer? Of course there was, and I gave it up right away,

"Oh dear me, NO!"

And it was the truth, I really had no frickin idea she had a fever, and here's why. Any of you own one of those ear thermometers? Excuse me, tympanic membrane thermometers? I have owned several of varying costs. Well here's the deal, apparently you have to buy one that's hospital-grade and costs about as much as your car to get an accurate reading. I stick the thing in the same ear over and over again, usually my own so as not to wear out its welcome in the children's ears, and it gives me a range anywhere from 89.8 to 101.9 and back again, never the same reading twice. So what am I supposed to do, take an average? What about an old fashioned oral thermometer, you ask? It does not fly, the only thing I can figure is that my daughter thinks it's a lethal weapon and that holding it under her tongue is going to trigger the secret spring-loaded hypodermic spikes to pop out of it. (What I love most about children is the trust...) And then there's that tried-and-true, ever accurate way...let's just say that my kids have an amazing spider sense, the minute I walk into the room hiding one of those trusty little devices they immediately affix themselves to the ceiling like that jumpy cartoon cat, you all know the one I mean, claws into the plaster, couldn't get them down with a crowbar, believe me...

Anyway, so no, I didn't entirely know she had a fever. But now I know I'm a bad mommy and I'm going to get a reputation as one of those mothers who does crazy shit like send their kids to school with whooptheria or Martian death flu or teradactyl pox or whatever else is waiting to snatch them up prior to the invention of the life-saving vaccine that will eradicate these evils and make the world safe for pharmaceutical millionaires everywhere, AND WE WILL ALL THANK GOD THAT WE CAN FINALLY SLEEP AGAIN...don't get me started...nevermind, I'm already started...but that's another day, another blog post...

My point (and, like Ellen DeGeneres, hero of comic relief heroes, I do have one) is that I have to keep Grace home today, and, like I indicated several digressions ago, I'm like...hmmmm, this is a little bit of a pain in the ass. Here I am with Calvin safely ensconced either at preschool or with his many home-based service providers (aka miracle workers) several hours a day receiving the kind of teaching and stimulation that I can only give so much of before I spontaneously combust...all those hours a week to try and make a living, continue my unceasing efforts to keep the home base from becoming a smoking crater, and then there's the time for uninterrupted blogging. I mean people, that's not hard to get used to. I know! After all that fussin and weepin and hollerin, the puddle at the bus stop, the whole thing. Oh how the worm begins to turn!

I consider this shift to be very good news, meaning that I am not as far gone as I once suspected. Relatively.

Ok, I know, I hear you, I am so gone...see that little streak out there in the distance? That's me. Gone.

But I will be back, everybody's got to go back to school some time, come hell or whooptheria.

The Taj Econolodge

Well, so much for my second post being "tomorrow," that would have been around 4 days ago. But as I sit here trying to compose my next offering, someone is yattering in my face a very long story about how Dora's going to save the Crystal Kingdom. At the same time she's telling me about Dora (because I sooooo want to know all about it, so so so badly), she's simultaneously erecting a makeshift ice-cream stand and needs me to make a purchase. She's a hard sell, that one.

And while all this is going on in Gracie's world, Calvin has somehow made his high chair walk a few feet away from the breakfast table over to me and my laptop and is yank yank yanking on my shirt sleeve, telling me, in very insistent tones, "I duck! Open!!!" (Good talking, Cal! Nice request!) Which means, of course, that he is in fact stuck (not a duck), and that I should please open the belt and release him from his incarceration even though he's eaten absolutely none of his breakfast. The child is living on diluted fruit juice, corn chips, and gluten-free pretzels, what am I going to do with him?!? (That's not a rhetorical question...anyone with children on the autism spectrum who are finding any success with their self-limiting eaters, feel free to PLEASE TELL ME WHAT TO DO!!!!!!!!!!!)

Ok, anyway, that's just by way of telling you why "tomorrow's" post never came, and that it had nothing whatsoever to do with any images you might have conjured in your macabre imaginations of me passed out on the kitchen floor with a smile on my face and a half-empty jug of Tylenol-with-codeine in my hand. Nothing of the sort. Besides, I checked, that stuff's expired, could be dangerous, not messing with it.

So on to today's topic. It was going to be all about my history as an eating disordered maniac...and don't panic, I've still got the draft. But that subject is being tabled for now, because I have to tell you about our little family minitrip this past weekend.

Firstly, we shouldn't be taking any trips anywhere, because any trip at all, even a cute little (mini, wee, teensy) 200-mile road trip like the one we just took requires a little bit of cash. And at the risk of taunting the law of attraction into bankrupting me forever (oooh, I'm so scared, like I haven't stared that demon in the face before...ok, so I am totally scared, the sarcasm was fake...I find I just can't lie to you...), I'll say it, we ain't got a little bit of cash right now to be throwing wildly around on luxuries like a 2-night stay at an Econolodge in Ithaca, New York. And don't think I can't see you shaking your heads at my exhibiting the kind of wasteful, irresponsible extravagance that has already brought our nation's economy to its knees. Guilty, guilty, guilty.

But the thing is, it was a few months ago, when circumstances weren't looking so godawfully bleak and hopeless yet, that I'd been surfing the internet and found out that singer/songwriter Laurie Berkner would be performing at the State Theater in Ithaca, and that it would be a whopping 40 bucks to purchase tickets for Gracie and myself (15 for the kid, 25 for me). I should probably take a second to explain how Grace feels about Laurie Berkner...let's just say that I feel a certain way about an artist named Tori Amos, Goddess of my Life and Sister of my Heart, and that Grace seems to have a similar affinity for her Laurie as I do for my Tori. That said, I talked to the husband about it. Both he and I have an Ithaca history, Cornell for me, Ithaca College for him, and wouldn't it be nice to do a little weekend trip there, show the kids where we went to college, stay at a cheap motel, beautiful fall weekend, sure, why not, and a few clicks later I had two tickets in the orchestra section.

We settled on just Grace and I doing the concert because we're pretty sure that Calvin would have more fun hanging out with his dad and looking for a good old kegger in a good old college town. (KIDDING, I know he's only 3...although if his first complete sentence turns out to be "Daddy and I are looking for a kegger," I guess I only have myself to blame, what else is new.) Last time we tried to take Cal to a movie, the theater's sound system made him shake like jello on a trampoline and do everything in his power to claw his way over my body and out of the building. His first big show will come too, I'm thinking maybe Thomas or Diego, but for now it was girls to the concert, boys on their own. Plus, the theater is located on Ithaca Commons, which was also the site this past weekend for their awesome Apple Harvest Festival...not a bad weekend to bum around town.

[Just because I really feel like we're so close that I can't keep anything from you, I want to let you know that I just had to interrupt my posting to run across the room and save my son's life. Something in his mouth, no gum or chewing tobacco in the house that I'm aware of, God knows he won't eat anything this morning so I doubted it was food...turned out to be the rubber tire off a toy vehicle, just the right size to block a windpipe. As my pulse rate returns to normal and I type with one hand for the time it takes for feeling to return to the finger that I almost just lost to my 3-year-old's voracious maw, anyone out there with children on the autism spectrum who incessantly mouth everything they can get their hands on, LET ME KNOW HOW YOU'RE COPING WITH THIS!!!!!!!!]

Ok, so fast forward to the week before the trip. Money is scarce, and Grace has decided to come down with a whopper of a head cold, plenty of fever, a few trips to the doctor to assure me that she was strep-free, pneumonia-free, flu-free, just a mean old cold virus. I'd put off telling her about the Laurie Berkner concert until just about the day before take-off, but once she found out, every time I approached her with the thermometer to stick in her ear she'd look up at me in horror and cry out, pathetically, between coughs and honks and snot sputters, "Please let me go see Laurie Berkner even though I'm sick!" What's a mother to do? I repeat, no strep, no pneumonia, no flu...so of course, we loaded the car and off we went.

This was our first hotel experience with the kids. Well, as far as Grace was concerned, we weren't at no stinkin' Econolodge. It was the Waldorf.

"What's dat fing, Mommy?"

"That's an ice machine, honey, look, the ice comes out and you put it in a bucket to keep your soda cold."

"Wow!!!!!!!!"

Eyes wide with wonder and utter delight. And we went through the same ecstatic revelation for every little thing from the tiny soaps (they floated!) and shampoo bottles that we could even take home (GASP!), to the extra surprise pillow hiding in one of the dresser drawers, to the funky hair dryer with the magically retractable cord in the bathroom. I'll tell you, people, through my daughter's eyes, I've never stayed anywhere nicer. With Gracie by my side, the critics can write up however many stars they want, we know the real deal. And we hadn't even gotten to the concert yet.

But when we did, holy smokes. First of all, I somehow ended up with front-row-center seats. And that's just ridiculous. Sure I went online the second the pre-sale started, password in hand (rocketship!), but in my past experience that didn't necessarily mean you'd even get a seat, let alone end up in the front row. Remember when Tori Amos played the Hammerstein Ballroom? Yeah, well I do, pre-sale, schmee-sale, ended up going through a broker, landed in the back row, and I choose not to remember what I paid. Let's just say those tickets were not $40 for a pair. But I digress (who me?), sorry. Back to my story, I find our seats, shocked to be front-row-center, me with my cup of lobby coffee, Grace with her lobby juice box, the two of us sharing a chocolate-frosted donut...and all the time I'm thinking, great, this is where she thinks we'll always get to sit when we see a show.

So once we were sitting there a little while, my, how the excitement did build. I mean, come on, we were 2 feet from the stage! (And I must say I wasn't prepared for that area turning into a baby mosh pit, what the...) The set back-drop was a mural that incorporated images from lots of Laurie's songs (Look, that's the shady tree...there's the moon moon moon with the light switch....etc., etc....). And of course the instruments were right up there for all to see.

"Mommy," she whispered reverently, "Is that Laurie's...ti-gar?"

It was TOTALLY Laurie's ti-gar.

Wiggling back and forth in our seats, "I'm so excited, I'm so excited, she's gonna come out, she's gonna come out!"

And then she came out, and here's where without a visual, how can I tell you what it was like? Here goes. There was a light that came out of the face next to me, and if I could have found a way to somehow catch that in a bottle I'm sure it would easily power and warm all your homes all this winter. One of Laurie Berkner's songs goes,

I went out today and I saw the sun shine,
shining out its light,
yes I saw the sun shine,
I went out today and I saw the sun shine,
I'm just like the sun.

Holding hands with my girl while those opening strains rang out over us in the front row, Grace watching Laurie, me watching Grace, I felt just like the sun.

Worth every penny.

It's Really All About the Comedy..Really...

Hey, it's my first blaaaggggghhhhh post! I chose today to finally start this because I've spent most of the morning having a spectacular nervous breakdown...not my nineteenth, I'd say more like nineteen thousandth. So nice to know that some things don't change, once an everloving mess, always an everloving mess. With that kind of a start to the day, the thing should pretty much write itself.

It's been a good one--the breakdown, I mean. And by "good" I mean that I was having fond thoughts toward the giant bottle of kids' Tylenol-with-codeine tucked up there in the cupboard. (Seriously, you should see the size of the bottle we got when our 2-year-old broke his arm, I think they misjudged his weight by a few hundred pounds or kilos, we used maybe a teaspoon out of this quart-size-looking thing the drugstore sent us home with...although now the patient is 3 years old, so it could be expired...see, it probably wouldn't have worked anyway, I think I heard somewhere that narcotics lose their potency when they get too old, which sounds like a metaphor I don't feel like developing, so I won't). But then, after the codeine thought I had a fleeting thought about how much I'm looking forward to Dancing with the Stars tonight, double elimination excitement, too much to live for on a Wednesday to think of quaffing a quart of codeine over a momentary meltdown.

So there I was, all over the floor, in the kitchen, sobbing and quaking, using loud verbiage (all of which probably made the neighbors think I was watching Sybil or The Exorcist, or maybe playing both simultaneously), shaking my fist at the heavens about what an over-the-hill, washed-up, used-up, waste-of-talent, hopeless piece of uselessness I've turned out to be. Really, it was great, you shoulda been here, skip the premiere of Grey's Anatomy and just hang out at my house.

My 3-year-old son, Calvin, caught the act live, but he has autism and tends not to notice when I'm out of sorts, not so you can tell anyway-- for example, today he just seemed to find the whole episode a delightful opportunity to get down on the floor with me and blissfully nuzzle his head into any part of my body he could expose skin on (per usual), cooing and giggling and chortling with glee, totally unfazed by conduct from his mother that would have been most appropriate for a mental patient on the ward that the medicine fairy forgot to visit. (Which one of us has the disability again?)

Anywho, why so glum, mum?

Well, firstly, there are a few days of every month that are turning out to be very dangerous for me, hormonally speaking. And if you're someone who thinks that's just a cop out and/or excuse that women use to explain away bad moods and behavior, you're entitled to your opinion, but you should honestly fold said opinion up until it's all sharp corners and go fuck yourself with it. (See what happened there? With the language and the overreacting? I think I make my point.)

But beyond the biochemistry, there's also the little matter of personal finance. Oh glorious failure, welcome back! I don't know what it is with me, honestly. I mean, if you ran into me at the Stop Rite, it's not like you'd be thinking to yourself "this woman couldn't make enough money to help adequately support herself and her family if she were Paris Hilton's dumpy older sister." I look ok, especially all cleaned up for grocery shopping. And if you ask anyone who's known me over the four decades I've been on this ride, many would tell you how "promising" I've always been.

Promising--that's how one of my grad school mentors, my favorite and my best, once introduced me to a bunch of her colleagues. "Please meet Tracy Stroh, one of our most promising candidates." I've never forgotten her words, not to mention others so much like them, from pre-K through the Ivy league, all those folks I've totally bamboozled with my promises of promisingness.

Maybe I should have asked them all what it was that I was actually promising, because I don't think I've ever gotten that part down. There's that devil in the details again. Which is what always seems to land me face down on the kitchen floor, over and over. It makes me think of a short story by Lorrie Moore, a story called "Willing," and the lines that go,

"She hadn't been given the proper tools to make a real life with, she decided, that was it. She'd been given a can of gravy and a hairbrush and told, 'There you go.' She'd stood there for years, blinking and befuddled, brushing the can with the brush."

Now THERE'S an everloving mess after my own heart. Can you be separated at birth from a twin if she's in a piece of short fiction? Guess not. You get my meaning, though.

And so, here you have it, my first post. Not terrible for someone who started the day like I did. Because, in the spirit of "this too shall pass," and as someone said in Monty Python movie, with an British accent which makes it funnier, "I got better." I'm sitting here, healthy as a horse, typing away rapid fire, kids peacefully watching the Noggin channel where they appear to be learning Chinese phrases, all's right with the world--and I'm so sure that, sooner or later, something too funny not to make me a millionaire will spill out here. There, I said it. I am so sure!

How long is a blaaaaaaaghhhhhh post supposed to run? Do I keep on blaaaaaghing, or do I save some of these gems for tomorrow? Well, Gracie is now saying, "I really gotta tell you somefin," and Calvin is yanking me with all his 40 pounds of weight toward the source of his white-grape juice supply, which means my time at the keyboard is over for a while, I guess that decides it. (OK, let's be honest, that kind of thing has been going on the whole time I've been writing this, so excuse the inexcusable errors and/or awkwardnesses, it comes down to I either blog with the little darlings chastising me the whole way through or I don't blog at all.)

So tomorrow it is. And tomorrow will come, no codeine for me...although it would take a quart to make a dent in my caffeine exposure for the day, but we'll save that, my favorite, most beloved addiction, for another post.