CHRISTMAS ANGER!!!

I can't listen to depressing songs without getting depressed lately. It's the darkness. I hate the darkness of winter. And I have to be honest I am sick of daylight savings time. I'm not crazy about Christmas either, and I think my two older children are figuring out why I never really as an adult have embraced the joviality of the holiday.

Oh, I love the meaning of Christmas, the birth of our savior, the promise it brings, I love the image of the family in a mere barn and the wise men and all of that.

However, I don't care for how we have made it the holiday where we loose all sight of all reason and our respective financial and emotional minds.

For example:

You have to get the perfect gift for every person.

You have to have spent the most money on it.

You have to have the most wonderful time.

No one can be sick.

No one can be hurt.

You have to have all the traditional foods.

Every person in your family has to be there and you all have to get along….

You have to have snow, and be happy and nothing bad can happen or for the next two or three months everyone is talking about what a craptacular Christmas you had….

No no no.

I don't care for that aspect.

My family didn't always get along and the big thing was that if you wanted to confront someone on Christmas for being rude, for not watching their children, for being a mean drunk and for being a horse's ass and acting like a moron. You couldn't do it, because you were ruining Christmas….

Christmas had to be a perfect day.

Well, occasionally, because we are human, it happens. We ruin our day to day lives by our stupidity towards each other or because of someone else's stupidity and to be honest I never have figured out why people laud and magnify being stupid towards one another, because it always makes me feel like an ass, a baying, and stubborn ass.

And, aren't we supposed to carry all this love and happiness with us every day instead of just the one? SO why are we making this day pristine? Why don't we make an effort to make every day pristine?

Well, because we aren't perfect.

And perfection is never achieved and I think I've mentioned Christ a couple times in that area. No one comes close to that perfection.

So we make due with what we have and be happy with it.

We love those who love us and are with us and without us. We send our greetings and well wishes and hugs. Our feeble attempt at gifts and we are together even in absentia.

Christmas for my husband and I one year was composed of each other, because we refused to take our children to Christmas with his family while sick. We opened our presents and put our children back in bed with the flu and watched movies and cooked steaks because we weren't expecting to have to cook Christmas dinner.

It taught me Christmas was more than just family and food.

It's really the day that matters and what you do with it.

And that is something I have found helpful for everyday life, make lemonade from lemons and have something fun and memorable even though life threw you a curve ball.

Swing at it anyway, you might get a piece of it.

It also taught me to have a turkey at the ready for just such an emergency.

And I learned to bake my own cookies and have my own strategy for Christmas Eve and New Years because I found that I couldn't count on others for my happiness. And it's true. You have to learn to make the best of a situation that might not be the best.

For example:

I had this tall, PartyLite, Express It, candle holder, the one that you can change the picture in and make into a luminary. I loved that thing. It was the coolest thing I thought that PartyLite ever came out with at that time I bought it.

And I was thrilled recently when they brought out a shorter version and I bought it for myself thinking, that it was so awesome. Because you can put your wallets in this little candle holder and make them into luminaries and I would have both. I was tickled.

Booga broke my tall, PartyLite, Express It candle holder. We were tickling him and he kicked the coffee table (kicked the coffee table) over and the cast iron grate on the coffee table came down and smashed it. I was in shock. I was so angry at him but you can't be angry at Booga. And I was so sad; because I really liked it.

So the biggest problem I have right now is that I can't cry in front of anyone because then Booga feels bad and everyone wants to comfort me and that just angers me because I don't want to be comforted. I want to hold on to my anger like a trophy. But then something happens and dissolve into tears in my office because I don't want anyone to see me crying because it will start the whole comforting/anger cycle again.

And sometimes I just want to scream at people but since that is socially unacceptable...And again with the vicious circle of life.

So, I had to order another one. And really bummed me out because now I have to wait for it to arrive and it's not cheap. However, crap does tend to happen now doesn't it. And so we are just happy we have the means to make it healed.

What's the lesson in this? Not to get angry?

Well, people are going to get angry whether we like or not. You are going to get angry, whether it righteous anger or silly stupid anger or "you're in the store and the clerks are not paying attention and you trip over an end cap they left lying on the floor in the aisle" anger.

So the best thing to do is take that anger and try to figure out a way to make it go away before you unintentionally hurt someone and try to forgive whoever, and try to fix whatever, to make that wound heal faster. First thought after the rage subsides, should be, "Okay, how can we make this okay?" And then follow this up with action and take that action.

Comprehend?

Take this as you will, it helps with daily life and also with life with the autistic.

Granted, I'll be honest, there are going to be times when this is not going to work, (and you can recall those times in your own life) but 70% of the time, it will work because we get angry over the most ridiculous things. Trust me. We do.

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My husband was looking at Booga sitting on the couch, and Booga noticed and told him, "Okay, shows over…." Sometimes he'll motion for you to turn around and stop staring at him.

Booga gets angry too.

Autistic Fury.

Sounds like a martial arts movie.

On being normal at nineteen

I've written about "Normal" before.

What is "Normal"?

Well, in a movie I watched I heard it said that "Normal" is what everyone is and you are not.

That's double talk. If everyone else was normal than we would all be the same with the exception of those who were not "Normal". And those would be a handful.

Where are the rules of normality in this world? Is it written down in a book?

Thereby this we are normal?

No.

The intellectually impaired truly aren't impaired per say. Other's might understand quicker or be farther along in their development as human beings but that's not being normal. I know men in their seventies that aren't grown up socially, same with some men in their fifties, same with some men in their thirties and so on….Same with women; we don't get out of this either.

SO what is normal?

 

There is no real normal. It's an illusion brought on by eating too many Oglanuts.*

 

Booga was sitting with his teacher. And lately Booga has been going through some real independence issues. He's also become a bit rebellious and since he can't pierce his upper part of his ear, nose, eyebrow, and lip and so on, and since he can't color his hair all the colors of the rainbow it's a little worse than it was with my other teens.

Such as the whole, "Don't watch me," thing, the keeping secrets and locking his bedroom door and the whole drinking coffee thing (which I believe is similar to the whole coloring hair and piercing body parts but only on an autistic level.) These are all levels of rebelliousness that can't be eased by outward signs of independence such as alter ones appearance to the chagrin of mom and dad.

Anyway, Booga was sitting with his teacher and she said to him, one day not long ago when he was getting in trouble a lot and she spoke to him saying, "Sometimes, we just need to be….."

And Booga completed her sentence, "Normal."

It broke her heart that she realized that Booga knew that there was something not right with him.

I can't be surprised. He's smart. He's not mentally impaired so much as the veil of Autism keeps him from showing his true mentality.

I mean, his brother and sister and not that much older than he and they are gone. Missy got married, Chewie moved away to another state. And he has to know, he's not doing the things they did to grow up and become adults, like, driving and dating and going to prom and going to parties and getting into trouble (well at least for the things his brother and sister got in trouble for) and graduating from high school. He's been sheltered by the fact that we made sure he was confirmed in a special needs catechism at about the same time as the other two had been confirmed and we go about treating him like any other kid.

But lately, it's more and more apparent, that he is not just any other kid; because he's going to be twenty, and these things aren't happening and he's still in high school….And everyone's on him to be quiet in public and to give people, "personal space" and so forth.

And so we told him, "Booga, no one is normal." Which is true.

Not Mom, not Dad, not your aunts, uncles or cousins, no one can claim to be normal and perfect. Not even people that seem to be normal and perfect can claim to be normal. The only person that was normal and perfect was Christ and they crucified him, because he told people that they were wrong and they didn't want to hear it and because he had to die on the cross for our sins.

We're all imperfect human beings. And as imperfection is not normal, no one can claim to be normal.

There's simply no such thing as "Normal".

Can you think of one person that you can call "Normal"? I mean, no imperfections and aside from Christ himself.

Yea.

So, no normal.

Deal with it.

It's not sad, in fact it's very enlightened, the individual that can determine that he or she needs to grow.

I would like more people to examine themselves and check on the fact that they need to grow personally, mentally, socially, spiritually….

So does that make Booga smarter than a lot of people? Less impaired as it were?

May be.

Pretty heady stuff there. Think about that.

 

*And you know what I am talking about if you've read Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy, by Douglas Adams.

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Small silly and the woman in the mask....

So we were getting ready to eat dinner and Booga and his father and I were holding hands saying grace over dinner and when Booga was done eating dinner he turned to his father and said, "You're holding my hand, you sly devil."

 

I know-but I guess you would have to be there.

 

 

Booga had an IEP (Independent Educational Program) meeting at his high school, and I had to pay on my layaway at K-Mart, and wash an oversized duvet that I had meant to wash for days. Now, I hadn't had the time nor the inclination-since the nearest town with a laundry mat is quite the drive and the duvet was too big to wash in my washer. And since I needed to make the payment at K-Mart I decided to do it after the IEP-killing a few birds with one stone as it were.

 

I put the duvet in the washer, popped in my coins, put in my detergent, set the timer and left it to wash in the laundry mat.

(No, I'm not crazy….Okay, I figure anyone who steals that duvet needs it more than I do….And good luck washing the thing when it gets dirty because there is three alternatives when washing that thing.

 

Expensive.

Even more expensive.

And washing it by hand.

 

 

No good way around it.

I had been sick when it was on the bed and I didn't need to spread the wealth of germs to other people in the house.

 

However, I digress.)

 

I got in the car and went to K-Mart.

I am not a K-Mart person. I do not care for K-Mart, I use to work at a K-Mart, however, they do have a great layaway and sadly Wal-Mart does not, so, here we are.

I went and paid on my layaway and decided that I needed some rubber gloves so my hands aren't so utterly soiled when I cut up chicken or had to handle turkey. So I went into the pharmacy and picked up a box of expensive (they're six dollars and something….SIX DOLLARS FOR SOMETHING I'M GOING TO THROW AWAY!)

rubber gloves and went up to the check out.

 

I weighed my options carefully because this particular K-Mart is not the most organized thing in the world. The checkout's had tons of crap in front of them, and they were hard to get to…There is stuff just beyond the check out's that hide more stuff that is behind another wall.

 

You just kind of go, "What?" and shake your head and squint your eyes in amazement at this K-Mart.

 

And so I decided to get behind this woman in a motorized wheel chair with a flu mask on her face.

 

This is not odd. Not in a town with a flu epidemic going on. People with disabilities and special medical problems go around with those masks on and believe some how that this helps them from getting sick.

 

I listened to the conversation between the check out girl and the woman in front of me as I do most of the time when I am standing in line at the check out.

 

I heard what I thought was her saying that she had been sick with "the mumps".

You don't hear about it often.

Most people under the age of thirty are immunized for mumps as babies. Unless they are my age and never had immunizations for it or they had a relative that believed that tripe that immunizations are the case of Autism and won't immunize their child. Then they end up getting and giving mumps to someone who's never been immunized. SO it isn't unthinkable….

 

I found my mind wandering a bit while I was watching her check out…I was looking at the motorized chair and wondering what kind of illness or disability lead her to be wheel chair bound. She wasn't mentally disabled. It could be neurological or possibly to do with a growth deficiency and bone growth or density, leading to her being in a wheel chair….Maybe an auto accident or accident when she was a child?

 

(These are all things I think about when I am in line and watching someone else speaking to the checkout person. I'm looking at their coat and checking out their hand bag and looking at the person they're with -if they're with someone- and looking at their hair cut. Sometimes I don't even look at them and I look at the idiocy on the fronts of popular magazines, seeing if I have that "Martha Stewart Living" magazine and checking out what little do dad's might be hanging out at the checkout waiting to be last minute purchases….)

 

Despite the fact that she was in a wheel chair she stretched and yawned and wiggled her stripped sock clad feet and talked about how she couldn't be around her nephew, and how her mother was stunned she was tired because she had slept for three weeks, and how she couldn't get "it" again now.

 

(Hua. I had mumps and I didn't sleep all that much, however perhaps it affects people differently).

 

Suddenly I heard myself ask out loud, "So what did you have?"

 

"Swine flu!" She said gleefully through the mask. "I had Swine flu for three weeks!"

 

The checkout girl and I exchanged a horrified glance.

The poor checkout girl.

You have to be nice no matter what when you're a check out girl.

 

So when I got up there to check out. Which I hesitated to do since I would have to touch things that Swine flu Sweetie touched, I looked at the check out girl and asked, "Would you like to dip yourself in hand sanitizer?"

 

"Yes." She answered quickly.

 

Then I went on to say how I felt about this woman exposing her Swine Flu-self to everyone! And what nerve this person had and I thought, 'Thank God Booga's immunized in case I get it.'

 

And then I thought, 'She didn't know us, and what if either one of us- the check out girl, or myself- had been just a few weeks pregnant….It could kill us, just because this woman needed to get out and go to K-Mart; and why couldn't she had gotten her mother or someone to get her things, why did she have to go out and get them?'

 

I picked up my clean duvet and drove home. When I got there, I hand sanitized every stinking thing in my car. I sprayed the car when I got home. I sprayed my purse, the inside of my purse, the inside of my wallet, the receipt. I sprayed my shirt and pants and put my jacket down the laundry shoot.

 

What the heck was that woman thinking? How thoughtless.

 

I am still going, 'What the heck?' over that one.

 

Still I am praising God that Booga has the immunization against "the swine".

 

A sick Booga is not a good Booga.

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H1N1 and The Booga

Booga and I went to the school for the H1N1 vaccinations. There was a sign outside the cafeteria as you walked in that read, “We are only vaccinating children from 0-18 years and pregnant women.”

Well that was weird because the sheet that came with the vaccination authorization sheet said, “Everyone 24 years and younger and pregnant women”, and I already gave consent and sent it back into the high school.

That had to be a mistake.

Then I thought, “Maybe it’s not, maybe it’s changed because they don’t have enough?

Then I thought, “Maybe they won’t ask.”

He doesn’t look nineteen years old.

But he has to have a vaccination, I mean; he’s in high school right?

He had been silently observing the bizarre parade of children in varying states of mania and health, some climbing all over everything and everyone, some coughing like they already carried H1N1.

Yuck.

We stood in line for what seemed an eternity.

An old woman in front of us would grab her chair and move it every time the line moved. She would walk a bit and then sit down when the line stopped all movement. It was a sort of one person musical chairs that no one ever won.

I found that funny.

I wondered if she was someone’s grandma, and if she wasn’t, was she a caregiver and what parent would allow their child to be taken care of by a woman who clearly couldn’t stand on her feet for much longer than a tiny march of minutes?

Suddenly a mother of one of Booga's classmates, came up and grabbed his arm, “Oh good,” I thought, “Someone I don’t know that knows Booga.” I love that, because they act like they’ve known me forever-even though I can’t remember them from “Sic-um.”

She had a young girl with her that was probably someone Booga knew in middle school and he was so excited to see her he blurted out, “I’m nineteen now! I’m all grown up.”

Well, so much for ‘he doesn’t look nineteen,’ and ‘maybe they won’t ask’.

And I really couldn’t lie because well, it’s immoral and the guy behind me looked like a minister from the community church and his wife and kids, so, I couldn’t do that.

I was beginning to worry I had spent an hour in line for something they were just going to deny Booga.

Would I get up there and would they just turn me away?

We finally got up to the cafeteria and again, there was a sign that said, “We’re sorry, but only children from 0-18 years old, others must wait till December.” Or die off and leave a continent of parentless children similar to “Lord of the Flies”.

We got up to the Health Department workers dealing with the paperwork of plague.

They dug his form out of a box of forms they had probably received from parents all over the county. I filled out some minor things and went to the next station. Two women quickly went over the form and one check marked it and another stamped it.

Then he got up to the lady who assigned tables for vaccinations.

She looked at his sheet.

“How old are you?”

“Nineteen.”

“He’s nineteen,” I spoke over him, “But he’s still in high school.” I said with probable apparent terror in my eyes.

“He’s going to get vaccinated anyway, I ask all the kids that, I want to make sure they know how old they are.”

I thought, “Wow, she could’ve just said, ‘nope, he’s nineteen’ but she didn’t.”

“Do you want a shot or a mist?” She asked Booga.

“A shot.”

I said amazed, “Okay, but that is a shot. You don’t want the mist?”

“I want a shot.”

I looked at her stunned “Apparently he wants a shot.”

“Okay then.”

So we got in the line and up till the time they put the needle in his arm, I truly felt like he was not going to get this vaccine for some reason or another, because this just wasn’t my luck.

Honestly, I don’t care if I get sick because together God and I can overcome anything. However, Booga is difficult to gage when he is sick. I can’t tell how he is feeling even when he tells me how he is feeling.

As we walked down the hall to the parking lot, after we spent our fifteen minutes in the cafeteria waiting for something like Booga turning purple or passing out or something like that that never happened, I thought, “Wow, I wish I could control my other children and get them their vaccinations when they need them.” Of course they are adults with jobs now and one gets her vaccinations by default. The other one, I have smack across the back of the head and remind incessantly to get things like car license plates and vaccinations….And they both still don’t always do what I tell them.

I sometimes think because I tell them to do these things.

I don’t do it to control my children but to protect them. Like I did Booga.

I looked at Booga, next to me. His long dark eyelashes framing his large cobalt blue eyes, sometimes there was a slight smile come across his face.

“I love you Booga.”

By default, “I love you Mom.”

Yes, but do you know how much I love you?