Last week a friend and I took a 3-day cruise to Nassau, the Bahamas, for a quick little vacation break. I had never been on a cruise before and wasn't sure if I'd like it -- the thought of not being to get off the boat wreaked havoc with my control issues, hehe.

Here are a few pictures...



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This summer I´ve been in Kamchatka Region with an expedition of the Institute of Volcanology and Seismology. So, I get some pictures.

I am a little late with posting this, since it's the evening before Thanksgiving day, already, for most of you. But here's a really cute, feel-good holiday craft that I first did when teaching a bunch of special-needs kids... CLICK ME DESPITE THE TIMING, AND LOOK AT THE TOP OF MY ARCHIVE!

Since that's late, I'm going to get slightly ahead with something else, and wish those of you that are celebrating it, a Happy Thanksgiving. Whether you celebrate it or not, I'm going to put out there that I'm thankful for you. In one way or another -- for some of you, in many ways -- you contribute to my life.
That could get a lot longer....you know it could!....but one blip is late and I'm making sure to put the other down early, because things have been....uh....well, I'm thankful....I am, but.... Things with Jamie have been pretty harsh, lately. To give you a glimpse, it took four hours today for me to get Jamie over a really bad sensory/autistic....episode. After we made it over that peak, we were still on treacherous ground, but at least we were pointed towards a peaceful valley far, far, far, far below. I told a friend that at that point I was smiling....smiling like someone who was released from a dark, locked cell after a long time, to take a pleasant Springtime walk in the sunshine....through a minefield. When Jamie crashed for bedtime tonight, after only 9 hours awake, the meltdown that ended his day was triggered by....what had happened with daddy (and it was something that would only trigger problems with the neuro-disabled) seven and a half hours before.
And that's it for now, because I am completely out of spoons. In fact, I've been running on the ghosts of spoons, for a few days now.

Путешествие по реке Амазонка дает человеку весьма специфический опыт. Начать с того, что вместе с пассажирами на кораблях плывут коровы, куры и поросята, а также груды товаров. Сами пассажиры спят на палубах, болтаясь каждый в своем гамаке. А мимо проплывают берега, душный день сменяется прохладной тьмой. Туманные рассветы и невообразимой красоты тропические закаты...
Звезды освещают путь судну в ясные ночи, а отблески далеких зарниц - в ненастье. И так может продолжаться несколько суток, пока корабль идет по великой реке. Ведь река - единственная транспортная артерия в краях, где дорог отродясь не было, сколько помнит себя человечество.
Когда корабль покинет порт - загадка, на которую никто не знает ответа, кроме пьяного капитана, ошивающегося в баре на берегу. Сколько именно времени пассажиры проведут на воде не знает ни капитан, ни сам Всевышний. Когда в расписании указано четверо суток, то они легко превращаются в неделю если судно наглухо сядет на мель и придется ждать следующую посудину, которая его стащит.
Предлагаю Вашему вниманию небольшой фоторепортаж.
Долгий путь начинается - нетрудно догадаться - в порту...


( в путь! )

beaucoup trop = too much

There's too much going on, too many responsibilities and issues alurk.

I have a build up of laundry and dishes. I'll blame that partially on the 18 Nov Day w/Out Natural Gas. We're running out of clean undies and socks for Jasper. He's peed on (but not in) his trousers at school almost every day the last week or two. Apparently, Jasper's got some issues with aim while sitting on the potty.

These two tasks are literally growing around me, and I'm overwhelmed. Partly, don't want to do laundry because of the expense, though I went ahead and got change for $5 at Safeway tonight, in good faith that maybe I'd get some laundry done. The dish water has been drawn up countless times, but no dishes done. I cannot simply get the urge to do them.

Today, Jasper still had a fever from the night before, despite two doses of acetaminophen, at appropriate intervals, of course. So, I couldn't take Jasper to school. And, though I'd made tentative arrangements for back-up childcare with Uncle Allan, I was too exhausted from the night before to wake up in time to complete some community service hours (that I actually had some intrinsic interest in completing).

Then we got ready to leave for parenting class. I'd hoped it would be okay to have Jasper in childcare for the two hours the class would take, but we ended up getting turned away once we got there. I'm okay with that, though I really want to end this parenting class BS as soon as possible; now I'll have to return in ten weeks to complete Lesson Four.

We headed to the bus stop. When I saw it would take a good twenty minutes for the bus to arrive, I thought we'd try our hand at what appeared to be a food bank at the Salvation Army building behind us. We got some bread and bakery items, along with some bananas, apples, and a sack of lettuce.

I accidentally/incidentally missed Food Not Bombs yesterday, so this helps. I feel, however, like I got a lot of shit I don't really need. I mean, I don't need three boxes of scones and two of cookies. But, now that I have them, I'm going to eat them and stuff my cheeks with them like the stingy [read: genuinely afraid of not having enough to eat] little squirrel that I am. I feel so fat and strung out on refined sugar :/

I just ate two pieces of pumpkin pie.

Also, tmrrw is another gamble. If Jasper is still feverish, Clinton and I have decided it would be best to get Jasper to his doctor. This means, I'll have to call Clinton to fetch Jasper and/or make an appointment with Dr. Katie. I may or may not be able to put in my typical three hours of work. I would have to take Jasper with me to therapy. This would be okay, since I was considering doing it on Wednesday anyway, but I was really looking forward to at least one "real" session this week. I'd cancel Wednesday's session. I may or may not be able to go to the University District food bank like I was planning on.

If Jasper is well, it's business as usual... but I have to make all these decisions at 7am tmrrw. I'm feeling a little stressed.

Back to the community service, I'm freaking out b/c I'm supposed to get in these 25hrs by 5 Jan 2010 and I'm starting to genuinely doubt I'll be able to make the cut. I have very little availability. I can work from 9am-1pm on Thursdays. I could also put in time on Sundays, but I haven't found a place that wants hours then. There's a possibility for Fridays, though I really don't want to give up the one free day I have with Jasper, both for his sake and mine. Even if I could arrange childcare for Fridays, I'm not sure where I'd get hours in.

Did I mention I'm trying to do this all via bus? I have a minivan, but I cannot afford fuel for her, nevermind maintenance. I disregarded that when I drove to work on Saturday, and I nearly perished with fear and loathing. I've also spent more money on food this month than I can budgetarily afford, esp if I can't work tmrrw. I've spent around $50. My dad's been helping me for several months now, and I haven't gotten a check this month yet.

I'm stressing.

And stressing makes me feel like a failure.

And it feels like everyone else has more than me, either by having fewer issues or responsibilities or sensitivities and/or by having more friends, resources, love.

Feeling this way makes me feel like a whiny asshole.

Maybe it's just the sugar talking...


~andrea

Haven't seen anything like this at a house sale in so many years... been floating on air for hours.

ARRGGH lj-cut is not my friend! More Photos!! Before and after the skirt lining was removed. You can see the poor peach silk was completely shattered.

( Edit to add photos! )

( After shattered skirt lining was removed )

Some recent aqusitions. The chair is one of a set of 4 thonet chairs I picked up in Athens, GA. The typewriter is a classic 50's Royal won on eBay.


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I think I've gotten three more articles published, since last I asked -- pretty please with gleeful little boys riding dragons on top?! -- you to click on one. If you go to my archive, you'll find one for World Diabetes Day, a new Q/A piece ("Why do good times make my autistic child grumpy?"), and Part 1 of an ongoing feature I'm doing for Prematurity Awareness Month. I'd be much oblidged if you'd go read and pass them on, or at least click them open and let them load. When it comes to that ongoing feature thing....over the rest of the month, I'm hoping to publish pieces using the stories of other parents of preemies. I have a few lined up, although only one person has been able to send me what I asked for yet, but if you have a story to share and I haven't asked you yet (or you know someone who does and would be willing/interested), please get in touch, and we'll go from there.

Also, again, if you think you'd be interested in or even WILLING to try out a writing gig with them (or know anyone who might be), please get in touch for more info. and referral info. The pay isn't guaranteed to be great, but it's an easily-made little something extra, for some it leads to more substantial jobs (for others it's just a good way to exercise their writing skills), you can write about pretty much anything you care about, and -- quite frankly -- if I refer you and they hire you, I get $50 out of it, whether you write one article for them and then quit, or whether you keep it up for years. I'm really hoping to get enough referral bonuses to be able to buy Jamie the new carseat he needs. He's too tall for his current toddler one, so the straps cut into his shoulders instead of starting above them like they are supposed to for the best safety.

Aside from that, it's life as usual, plus sneaking in studio time whenever I can, to try getting commission backlog finished in time for the holidays. It's getting a little easier, now that Jamie is FINALLY accepting the idea of letting himself sleep when he's tired, with the additional seasonal bonus of him going to bed earlier because his SPD-fueled Seasonal Affective Disorder starts wearing him out on top of whatever else already is, as soon as the daylight starts failing. Heck, I might spend Thanksgiving night in front of my kiln, because after a day's festivities with the extented family, he's bound to be wiped out pretty early.

...I couldn't let this one get away from me without getting it down in a timely fashion. Jamie's been having a pretty rough week. It had been steadily improving towards not-as-really-bad, with yesterday being the best of the recent days, Jamie not having had any trouble spots, really, until almost 3pm (and that one a three-times-in-a-row problem with short-circuiting and failure to control the hitting reflex), and then only one more after that, at around 5:30, 6pm-ish (another of the same), which lead into a wind-down to a fairly decent bedtime. Today, though, was rather bad again. Nothing we haven't dealt with before, but still bad enough to make us go, "Wow," a few times. On the other hand, there was one rather outstanding positive. It was a little past 4pm when there was no getting around one of Jamie's 98% "possessed" autistic/sensory meltdowns, which lead us to attempt bathing him, lasted through the bath, and ended part-way through the rinsing shower. That caliber of meltdown usually lasts around 45 minutes, which this one did (though with a long stretch of bad-day lead-in), although usually the rest of an hour and a half goes into a cool-down and recovery period. This time that took only 5 minutes or so. Eniways, when Jamie was halfway toweled off, he said something about pee-pee and poops. I asked him if he wanted his diaper back on, or if he wanted to sit on the potty. (Chances slightly favor him picking whatever the second option is, in general, should all other things be equal, so we often propose our preferred option second.) He said he wanted to go downstairs and sit on the potty. (He's got a mini-potty chair in his room, we were next to a toilet...but it's the one downstairs that has the seat insert for little butts, and since we spend most of our time downstairs, that's the one most of our few willing potty attempts have been made on.) Ok then! So down we all marched together, Jamie still quite naked and thus also a bit cold, Keainid thinking about the fact that this whole dang place is carpeted, and wincing. We made it to the downstairs bathroom, I straightened out Jamie's seat and helped him on there (while Keainid turned the heat on in the bathroom)....and within maybe 30 seconds, he was peeing in the toilet. His hand was down there either to point himself down as I'd gone over with him before, or just because he was feeling a part of his body he was unusually aware of at the time, so he also peed on his hand, but thankfully I was able to clean that up before the hand went everywhere else. Impressively, there was only a little drip to clean up, otherwise. So let's review....he recognized that he needed to pee, he responded to the idea of using the potty, he expressed specific intentions regarding that activity, he HELD IT until he was on his intended potty, and then he peed in the toilet. HALLELUYAH! No, I'm not expecting smooth sailing through this breakthrough pass and into the sunset, but this is still a rather major first. This is the first intentional and successful use of the potty. (There was only one other successful use of the potty, and it was accidental on his part.) Naturally, we reinforced the occasion as best we could. He sat there a while longer, too (though he never did poop then, or the rest of his awake-time tonight), before telling me he was all done, sliding down, and waiting for help with his diaper.

Over the next two hours, I asked him a few times if he wanted/needed to go pee-pee in the potty. He -- thankfully without any triggered issues -- always rejected the idea. And when it came time for his bedtime diaper change, his diaper was very full of urine. Now, there are a lot of possible factors. He had a diaper and clothes on, and was covered and warm, instead of being naked, slightly wet, and a bit cold. He was back to being busy with his stuff, instead of being between major activities (bathtime, and going back downstairs). And of course, with his sensory issues, there's really no telling if he's going to be capable of these not-reflexive-yet recognitions and habits, from one moment to the next. All the same, and carpets be damned, tomorrow the heat might end up jacked up A LOT, and mommy might spend a lot of time slightly more bored than usual, as Jamie spends time as half-nakee-boy, and she intently watches the color of his penis.

I know, for a four and a half year old boy with ASD and SPD, not being potty trained yet is far from unheard of. But my, that'd be a nice Christmas present.

ADDENDUM ~

Jamie cares MOST of the time when he's wet or dirty. Occasionally he'll be oblivious/not care/defiant, but the majority of the time he'll ask for a change when he needs one. This week he's often asked for a change as soon as he urinated even a tiny bit (and you could barely tell from the diaper), and a few times before he'd actually done anything. Once, earlier this week, I might even have gotten him on the potty in time after that happened, except he short-circuited and starting hitting on the way, so the diaper stayed on and we had to do a Time Out instead.

He's been in the early stages of potty training for a good year or more now, near-readiness pre-training for quite some time before that, and we just haven't been able to get him past that, or he's been unable to get past that, or whatever the we-can't-know truth of the matter is. While there's no saying we'll see this kind of thing again any time soon, it's still MAJOR that we saw it....really, saw a bunch of its....for the first time! And of course it stands out in such sharp contrast to the period of time leading up to it, wherein lies the lesson. It would've been so easy to not bother even trying for the opportunity, given what we'd just gone through with him. There was no reason to think we'd get anywhere, and, in fact, somewhat more reason to think we'd trigger a slide back into the troubles we'd just gotten him through. But I just went with my instincts, and....WOO HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

I think I wish there were something word-wise I could say right now, but it's not surfacing. My mind feels like a changeling soup, as that from which Odo might have come. It's a little frustrating, b/c there's a lot of stuff to process lately and I want it done now... or do I?

In a way, I'm content with the amorphous ambiguity, though a little less tolerant of the uncomfortable/negative feelings/thoughts that arise. Satisfaction mingles with yearning, fatigue with zest, gaiety with mournfulness, hope with woe. My inner world pushes and pulls, further from and closer to ppl as the tide of thoughts ebbs and flows, though not respectively.

There are feelings of disgust, anger, loneliness, fear, exclusion, condemnation, failure that are coming up. While I don't know if I -enjoy- them, I think I'm sitting with them a little better. Friday was horrid, however. I could barely tolerate being in my own skin. My thoughts were so self-toxic, and I couldn't seem to escape them. I don't want to brush them aside completely, though, because I am still toying with the idea that (some of) the criticisms were valid, though harsh or exaggerated... and yet, I can't hold them. So, maybe they're not useful.

Everything is okay right now.

But then, I'll feel like everything is NOT okay right now!!

And I suppose both things are true.

For the time being, I'm ignoring two okcupid persons/conversations, which brings up lots of opportunities for guilt, etc. I'm trying to be gentle with myself, to acknowledge that if I'm not ready to handle them, likely offering closure to the conversations, then it's not time to do so. And while I don't aim to cause anyone harm, my intentions are to not do so and that counts for a great deal with me.

Otherwise, I'm feeling this at once healthy and light as well as heavy and unhealthy pull toward my friend Bryan. I am writing this somewhat as a way to make my feelings known to him... I like some of the yummy things I felt in spending time with him. While I am able to find fault with him, I'm fond of his particular scheme of attributes... I feel yucky when I feel him pull away, or offer less than I'd like of togetherness energy... Right now, I'm grappling with my own self-loathing (misdirected self-protection device) for feeling connected and sweet and sweaty about him, as well as feeling like he's pulled away, or that I want him closer/more often (is that even true??) and he wants me further/less often.

ngah.

Sunday evening, I saw a glimpse of synergy with him. A mutual, dynamic conversation, with us equally potent... but it was just a glimpse... I'm wary of making too much of it, but likewise letting it slip away if there's more.

I've had several friends point out to me, as though I could not see it for myself, that I am wading through a lot of responsibilities and issues right now, and that perhaps seeking an intimate relationship is not the best idea, or that it's actually counter-productive. This makes me ache. I cannot seem to help but translate this to mean that I currently do not deserve a partner, though I know that is not what anyone is meaning or implying.

I keep feeling like what I really want is a partner. One friend pointed out how perhaps starting a relationship on unequal footing would create a permanent limp. I could see that happening, and yet part of me hopes for some currently inarticulable way in which a partner could come in, and slowly but surely offer the kind of dedicated intimacy that I want... without either of us feeling indebted or burdened by the other.

But maybe I don't want to be too close to anyone right now. I changed my okcupid and lovelab profiles, saying that, though single, I'm only looking for friends. ::shrug::

There are also my feelings and issues with Kheper, but they seem a little less focal. I think I attached too much at first to his acquaintance, and perhaps I do not truly see him. Also, it was while spending time with him that I came upon the toxic internal tide on Friday. Though not -his- -fault-, I feel the need to withdraw from him a little and get my footing. I think I was approaching him from an insecure/unhealthy stance.

There have been some opportunities for communal living sprouting around me... and I feel a general anxiety. I think I have been quite burned in the past by communal living situations. I have a hard time thinking they could actually serve and include me. And it just seems like a lot of work.

Okay, all of a sudden, I'm done.

~andrea