Booga went to homecoming this week. But it wasn't the only thing he did.
He was very handsome; he wore a brown suit with a striped tie and his dad's good shoes and with his ever present sunglasses he looked like someone from "Men In Black".
Only it was "Men in Brown".
He was asked by a group of kids that felt like it was an opportunity to give the intellectually disabled kids in their school the opportunity to go to homecoming…Just like everyone else.
Booga actually had a great time even though he told his teacher (who happened to be chaperone that night) that he needed to go home at 9:30 sharp. Like his coach would turn into a pumpkin or something like that.
He told us, as he stumbled into the car, that he asked a girl to dance and that they danced, however, he didn't kiss her.
According to his sister, this is one of his goals in life…To kiss a girl.
The other thing Booga did this week that totally blew me away, was go and connect his computer to the internet all by himself.
This I wasn't expecting simply because it's a chore to take the card to the other computer and connect to the internet. But he did it. And the internet didn't suffer from it; although he hit YouTube pretty hard.
My husband and I went to the store and picked up a few things and left Boog on his own. When we came back I looked in my office and the internet card was gone.
I opened Boogs bedroom door and there he was on YouTube. Watching movie clips. Apparently his father has seen him "googling" stuff as well. I said to him, "Hey, what's going on here?
He apologized profuselyand I said, "I don't care if you get on the internet. But the next time you want to get on you need to tell mom first and then she can get the card for you and you can connect it." Simply becauseBooga goes about getting the card-and anything else for that matter- like he's killing snakes.
Interesting week.
It proves to be more so with the fact that I have to deal with thedisaster they call DHS about some things that are unresolved about Boog.
Booga has been sick, and I don't mean, kind of sick, I mean really sick.
He had Pneumonia and we weren't sure where this came from because it's the summer and it's odd to get Pneumonia this time of year.
Anyway, he started work this summer at a place that trains people with special needs to work out in the public and I kind of wonder if wasn't something someone had at work?
However, it doesn't matter, he was dog sick.
He was so sick that when the third of July came around, Booga was made to watch the fireworks from our front porch, which is no mean feat because it requires that you stand at a certain part of the deck and crane your neck. We also watched the fireworks on television, but it hardly matched watching them in person.
We were planning on taking him to the fireworks on the fourth, however, he wasn't getting better, and so we took him to the hospital.
We spent the day with him watching him get pumped full of antibiotics and liquids because he was dehydrated. Again we watched televised fireworks and Booga struggled to breathe.
The next day he felt better and was on an inhaler that he used quite a bit but it would take at least two weeks for him to fully recover.
In that time, the cold that initially gave him Pneumonia, gave me the flu. And I was dog sick.
It was so hot that I didn't know half the time if I was sweating because I was hot or if I was sweating because I had a temperature.
We just purchased one of those handy dandy thermometers that you stick in your ear and tells you your temperature in one second. It was difficult for me to figure out at first because I'm stupid. But eventually I figured out how it worked. We had to get a new one because I went to use the digital thermometer that my husband and I had bought when our other children were small, on Booga when he was sick, and it had died. So for a couple days while Booga was sick I used the old fashioned method of hand-to-forehead and the tell tale sign of just walking up to Boog and having the heat just radiate from him.
I put it in my ear and the thing went off and I took it out and it said 99*.
"Great!"
My husband and I can't be sick. In our family the world stops if one of us is sick. So you can walk around our house and in various places are antibiotic soap and GermX hand sanitizer that gets used for everything from washing hands quickly to disinfecting the keyboard and phone to antiseptic on minor scratches.
So Boog and I were sick together. At one point when I was driving one day, I would cough-then he would cough….I would cough-then he would cough….And it went on like that. Then one time he coughed and I coughed and so forth and so on….
At one point I didn't cough at the allotted time and Boog looked over at me and said, "It's your turn."
During our convalescence I taped "Time Bandits" which is a Terry Gilliam film and since Booga loves Monty Python, and "Time Bandits" is "Pythonesque" he loved it. At one point in the week Booga looked at me and said, "Mom it baffles me."
No word on what baffles him, something baffled him, however, I was not privy to what it was exactly.
Could be the fact that we were both sick in the middle of summer?
We had a big family party for my niece and nephew who graduated. (Same niece that has been raised by wolves.) I planned an impromptu eightieth birthday party for my mother with all of us kids involved and Booga started work this week for the first time ever, ever.
(That tenuous silver strand of umbilical is beginning to become even more tenuous and thin and it was only one thing in a myriad of things that were going to happen over the next week).
In my life right now, these things such as my mother's eightieth birthday party, the twin's open house and Booga ending school for the summer, going to work all in the span of four days are all kind of mind bogglingly difficult for me. I don't like chaos and there's a lot of chaos for everyone involved in all these things and a lot more chaos to the third power with someone that is taking care of a person with Autism.
And so it all went sort of like this:
On Monday I made five pans of brownies, four for the open house and one for Booga to nosh on because he loves brownies.
On Tuesday, I scanned and printed out several pictures of my niece and nephew.
Then on Wednesday pulled several empty bottles out of the closet and out of the box of bottles in my office and set them in the sink to soak the labels off of them, then spent the afternoon and part of the evening painting Modge Podge on them and strapping strips of tissue paper to them, then slapping the pictures on them and Modge Podging over that. Thursday I went shopping for flowers to put in the bottles while Booga went to art class. This was seemingly the busiest Wal-Mart that God ever created because the lines were the longest lines for check out that I had ever seen. It took me a whole half an hour to check out.
Booga got out of school on Friday which was a half day. Shortly afterward I packed up four pans of brownies two with icing and headed to the other side of town to help my sister in law make food for the party. While there, I and a friend of hers went to the hall accompanied by niece and nephew and decorated with the bottles and flowers and some wind catchers with little graduation caps in colors on them.
Then I came home and wrote down everything I needed to take with me to the open house and needed to get done that day on the chalk board in the kitchen and again, made two more bottles with pictures and bought more flowers.
All the time that this was going on I was Face Booking my family and arranging a birthday party for my mom who was turning eighty the next week. And this happened to be so cumbersome because no one wanted to do it the day before Fathers day. (Too be honest the last thing I wanted to do on the Sunday after the open house was go to a party and provide food and host- right now I was helping my sister in law host the twins open house and then of course I had Booga getting out of school and going to work for the first time and riding the public transportation for the first time in his adult life…So…) Finally I decided that it was too much work to try and get everyone in agreement on a date after her birthday so I said, "Let's just do it this Sunday." The end. Everyone except my oldest brother was fine with that (and that was because he had already made plans for that day).
I felt like I was going to pass out.
On top of that I get this feeling as though sometimes, things that others think are easy and they can just breeze by with are the very things that lock me up.
Like cooking in my kitchen which is unreasonably small.
And Heaven forefend that Booga and I are in the kitchen together at the same time or that I watch him at any activity. I have to stop what I am doing and walk out and wait for him to complete his task or he'll stand there and wait and watch me like a confused statue. Or try to explain to him why the big roaster is upstairs and in the kitchen when it isn't Christmas or Thanksgiving. There are times when I wish he were more aware so I didn't have to constantly explain.
SO finally the day came for the open house and I stumbled half-awake out of bed, out to the barn, nearly stepped on a cat, threw open the freezer door and got three pans of Macaroni and Cheese out that I got at the restaurant supply store. I stumbled back into the house, opened the roaster and plopped the three frozen pans of Mac and Cheese into it and took a deep breath and set it to cook. That worked out well except for the fact that I couldn't lift the thing and Boog had to carry it out to the back of the car. We were at the hall most of the day. The next day I went to the store and picked up two huge pans of fried chicken for my moms party and ran screaming into town in my car to pick up a birthday cake and get to my parents house by one o'clock in the afternoon.
She was happy and I got rid of a lot of left over salad from the twins party.
I really "cake and chickened" myself out. I think I can do without birthday/graduation/wedding cake for at least a month or so and I'm all done with chicken for about a week now. When Booga and I came home on Sunday and I took off my bra and went out and sat down for a while I caught my breath and he and I went over the use of bus passes about three times. And I think he understood. And he ended up loving work. Apparently they have vending machines that are all important to Boog.
This is the end of his first work week. My week is still on going. There is no rest for the wicked until possibly Friday and then I have my father his father's day present to take to him and another family get together and I must take a German chocolate cake to on Sunday.
I find that being that busy is not exactly my idea of fun. Not at all. I would rather take on one problem at a time, do it well, and go on from there.
There are times when you look at your kids and go, “Where in the heck did you learn that?”
Recently I have been doing this with Booga.
For one thing he has learned to use the computer in my office, which is something he hasn’t shown an interest in since he came out to the living room one day and announced to me that he wished for his computer to thrown in the fire pit.
Some days we all feel that way Boog.
However, he decided a little over a week ago that having a computer would be really cool. Because there is this thing called YouTube that he could go on and watch clips from movies and stuff about movies and movies about movies….Oh the list goes on and on….
SO suddenly he wants a computer.
I have no problem with this. Other than the fact that I don’t think that Booga understands the term “virus” or the idea of not clicking on everything that pops up- that is unless someone else has taught him that.
And there is something Booga has learned that like Yoda on Star Wars- I would like him to “unlearn what he has learned” and that is HOW TO LIE. This is something that I would like him to do.
Boog, as I have stated before, gets a certain amount of money for every chore he does.
He has learned that he doesn’t have to tell us how much money he has. He can say he only has a five dollar bill and not five ones….That way he doesn’t have to count change back to us.
It makes his life a little easier and is disturbing for me who always proud of the fact that I had this child that was so innocent that he didn’t know how to lie.
Obviously along the line somewhere, he’s been polluted by the world in some respect.
I can’t be with him always. I have taught him things I thought were important. I have now showed him how upset someone gets when you lie. Hopefully, because Booga hates it when you’re upset with him, this will show him that lying is wrong. If not we will reiterate it a few times so he can understand it. Or make a big deal about it at the dinner table and tell him that Jesus doesn’t like it.
That usually does the trick.
The Lord doesn’t like it.
Thank God he loves God.
All I have to tell him about something he is doing that is wrong or about someway he is acting that is wrong is that God wouldn’t like it and it puts a lot into perspective for Boog, because…..It’s God. The last person he wants mad at him. God’s the last person I want angry at me for that matter or anyone else in my family.
Have you read The Old Testament…Yeah; God is pretty scary when he’s mad.
So we have this to reprogram in him.
Thanks world.
Something I found out about myself is that I don’t like anything to be out of the ordinary. I would like it if I could keep all my schedules as they always have been. The same television shows with even better twists and turns and things like that, no one leaving no one coming no one doing anything that isn’t the same as they did yesterday. With the exception of the fact that I wish that my husband was here a lot more- but making the same money as he always does.
I would like us to stay the same age. I would like Booga to stay the same age as he is right now and I would like everything to go on just as it has since I became adjusted to this whole course of routine of the here and now.
Don’t make me change this routine again…that’s too painful. Part of my children becoming adults is that whole changing thing and every time they’ve changed it’s been painful and hard. Every time they’ve left and every time the cycle of them changing from my child to an individual adult in the world has been as painful as a dull rusty knife.
When my children were small I couldn’t wait until they were older and less of a concern, and when they got to be older and less of a concern I missed the little ones they were and wished I could go back there just so I could do over my mistakes and cherish them a little more as the babies they were.
When I dream of my children they are little children. In my dreams they are little ones. Maybe this is because they were little for so long? Or maybe because I don’t want to let go of that special sparkling time in their lives and how much better it could have been if they had been little children in this time in mine and my husbands life when we are more centered and more settled? But then who is to say we would have even had children if this had been the case or if I would have even had the same children? Because I would want my children that I have now- I’ve never wanted anyone else’s children. Even before birth I felt a kinship with my children that far surpassed any relationship with the exception of my mother and my husband.
And here it is, the precipice of my last child becoming an adult. He’s speeding towards it like a locomotive. He’s pulling away from my hand with little concern about my feelings in the whole matter. Because that’s the way kids are. They can’t care how you feel about their own adulthood, because if they do, well, then they are too worried about how you’ll feel about them no longer being your baby.
Why is it that we want to hold that hand just a bit longer?
Is it because we are concerned about how our child will fare in the world or is it this selfish need for the world to go on as it has for the past few months or years? Is this our need for sameness-for our routine not to change? What is it?
It’s painful and like movies where the hero or heroine is having a hard time just before things turn and all turn out fine. I always want to quickly move through their conflict in their lives and get to the happy ending where you think that this is the way it is going to go on from now on. You know, everyone settled and happy and the world spinning and babies laughing and birds singing and the sun shining and your children happily playing at your feet. That sort of scenario, you know it, it’s gone on forever. However, growing happens and things do change. This is part of life and if it stopped then we really couldn’t call ourselves alive…We’d just be existing- just existing in the world. Wouldn’t we? Not actually what you could call living.
No one prepares you for Grown up things. Like the fact that your child with special needs will someday be attracted to girls. Or the fact that they will go through puberty….Slowly and painfully….And that you will have more wonderful and frightening things come about because of that. No one prepares you for it. It’s like you don’t believe it will happen that they will eventually grow up and move on from you. That someday they will start pushing away from you because so much of their lives are about needing you.
Booga came home from school and was pumped about going on a school trip to an island some ways away from home. And he was bouncing like a school kid. I was sure that I had read that they needed sleeping bags and pillows but then it could have been all that prep that went into getting my other kids ready for sleep away camp when they were in school. SO I called his teacher who immediately knew it was me. That is never a good sign. It means you’ve called her way too much. She said hello like she was getting a call from a pesky neighbor who called a lot about her dog barking too much. “Ooo, that’s not a good sign.” I said aloud, “You already knew it was me.” “Well, I have you programmed into my phone.” Another not so great sign… “Oh well, I was just calling to ask if Boog needs a pillow or a sleeping bag?”
About this time Booga had come up behind me and was leaning over me listening to this conversation. He stood like a vulture that would-if need be- grab the phone from me immediately if I said anything that might hinder his sojourn to the island. He was so close in fact that I began laughing at his concern about this….
“What’s funny?” “Boog is standing over me because he’s terrified I’m going to do something so that he can’t go…”
As soon as I got off the phone we completed his packing by making sure he knew how the camera’s worked. I had told his teacher he might need help advancing the film but it would be fun finding out what he thought was interesting. I gave him his money we had saved out for his trip. And he dutifully put it in his wallet. I put his bag next to the door so he wouldn’t forget it and sometime during the evening he picked it up and moved it to his room-because clearly it would be safer there right? Anyone who thinks that would really have to see Boog’s room. It’s “everything in it’s place and everything has a place” but his dad and I are going to have to clean it out this summer when he is spending some respite time with his aunt because it’s the home of the one the worlds oddest pack rats.
So this morning he got up like usual and had his breakfast and coffee…(Coffee- which is something that has just manifested in Booga’s life…..the need to drink a cup of coffee with creamer and Splenda.) He brought his bag out to the dining room and he ate his cereal and drank his juice and put on his shoes like he does every morning after he showers and puts on aftershave and deodorant. He grabbed his other bag and then stopped when he saw the bus pull in the drive way; which he never does. And in a manner of the way his father says goodbye when leaving for a foreign country or a road trip that is going to take him to some distant far off land like-Alabama-where they still serve Coke in glass bottles. He looked at me and said, “Well, I’m going.” Suddenly I realized this was my cue to get all mushy-like when dad leaves. “Okay, be careful. And take lots of pictures and have fun.” “Okay Mom. Bye.” “Bye.”
And with that he took off for his retreat from me. It’s about the time he would be getting home right now. But on the itinerary, they should be in the Butterfly house or back at the hotel or shopping now. I hope he took pictures. I hope he doesn’t give them a hard time at bed time. I hope he’s okay with the pizza and doesn’t get all freaky about it. I hope he gets up when they want him to and I hope he doesn’t fight with anyone.
