Doctors, Dealerships and Addendums

First off, I can't spell today, so bear with me…I'm having one of those days you have when you can't spell "water". Do you remember those days as a kid? When you looked at the word "water" and thought…."Wow, that's an odd word. I wonder how we got that collection of letters to mean a clear substance that when thrown on you makes you wet."

Then shook your head and went to out to recess.

Yep, one of those days.

Any who, I was in the shower today thinking about a friend of mine that is going to a cardiologist for a heart murmur and how she was upset over the way that a certain doctor's office told her, "Well, the turn around on varicose vein surgery is _______ number of days…." when she called about a cardiac visit.

I told her that I probably would have said, "Well that's great but not what I'm calling about. I'm calling about a cardiac procedure…" And if I was in a angrier or vicious mood, which was sometimes the place I was in when my son was going through diagnosis, I probably would have added, "…However you certainly have that response down pretty well haven't you…"

To which they would have probably responded, "Well, we get a lot of varicose vein patients," to which I would have replied, "Well, I'm not one of those patients and this really brings home to me what warm and personal service doctors are now supplying in this age of 'corporate medicine'."

Yes that is how I think, how do you think people come up with those zippy quips? We stay up all night or think about them all the way home in the car.

My husband and my poor friends….

Who had the bad luck to vacation with us, and more specifically myself…

I sat down at my desk today and in front of me were several blank sheets of notepaper. These were given to me by one of our friends, who had them in their possession and probably thought it was ludicrous of me not to have brought a notebook or journal to write in while I was on vacation. Well, I had the delusion that I would be able to write my blog in my husbands "mini" (mini-laptop, for those of you that don't know what a "mini" is). And of course, I didn't have time to write in the room because I was never there.

And God bless em, they scrambled around and got me paper; what good people they are for putting up with my crap.

We did have a wonderful time and even when we went and sat forever on bench's waiting for dinner we had wonderful company to kill time with and so we didn't mind all that much. I don't know what I am going to do when we finally go to Europe without them. It's not quite going to be as fun.

We have the most wonderfully humorous pictures because of our friend's imagination. We have the most wonderful memories with them.

My parents had friends named "Walt and Marion". Walt and Marion owned a parcel of property up in the northern part of the state called "The Ranch". And it was where my brothers and father and my uncles hunted.

I remember my family going there on weekends with Marion, and the smell of chicken floating through the car and how much I admired Marion's polka-dotted tennis shoes.

I haven't seen "The Ranch" in a while but last time I did, it sat on the edge of toppling over.

"The Ranch" was nearly 100 years old when I was little, it had no running water, no inside plumbing at all, an outside well that was hand-pumped (in which we would store perishables and cola) and an outhouse (everyone should experience a real outhouse at least once in their lives….Nothing like it) It had a chamber pot in the master bedroom (which was the only bedroom) and had I never seen it- I would have never known that people used chamber pots at one time. It had an old wood stove that was the only source of heat in the house, and when we spent the night in the fall, my brothers and I would snuggle down in the living room in sleeping bags and listen to the sound of that wood stove crackling all night.

I have, in fact, gone by it, because I live not far from it now, and have stopped at it. I have camped on the lake and I feel connected to it. But it was sold either shortly before or after Marion's death when I was eleven or twelve and there are no trespassing signs all over it. So it's sort of illegal for me to actually visit it in earnest.

So one day, I was talking to my father about Walt and Marion and my oldest son Chewie asked, "Who?" And I told him that they were friends of the family. And my father chastised me and said, "You mean to tell me that you have never told your children about Walt and Marion?"

Well, like certain parts of my young adulthood that do not concern my children and certain movies that I've seen and not really found all that great, but have a cult following…There are certain things I neglect to tell my children about my past that come up later. Not that I mean to, but there never comes an opening in our conversations for these past memories to be brought up in…

So I told them about Walt and Marion. They were more than friends; they were family.

Like our friends we just went on vacation with…More than friends; they are family.

I took my beloved Malibu SS to the dealership in town so that they could fix various things on it yesterday. Unfortunately those people have no idea what time is or how long it takes to get from point A to point B.

Booga is currently in the play at the high school. He is doing attendance and is going to hand out programs at the performances. He loves the idea of doing the play. And since I want him to be able to have as much of the high school experience as I can possibly get him to have, I am all for it.

And Booga so much wants to be an actor. However, I'm not sure that the concept of acting is something that Booga can really comprehend. (Although, I've seen high school plays before and really, I don't think high school students always comprehend what acting is either….Does that sound snarky? It does. Oh well…) But I have stopped putting limitations on Booga; since every limitation I put on him since he was a non-verbal five year old -has been successfully busted through.

Anyway, I told the guy at the dealership that I needed to get to the high school at 4:30 so I could pick up my son and if you lived where I did, you would know that from where that car dealership is to the high school is like following a snake. It winds through neighbor hood streets and back ways until you come across the high school. That is unless you want to take the main drag which is also time-consuming and frustrating, because you have this one traffic light that takes a good three minutes to change.

I could cast a sock on knitting needles and get at least three rows done before it changes.

Not even kidding.

More people than I have complained about that light.

So this guy at the dealership waited till 4:25 before releasing a rental for me to drive home. Jerk. (He's not doing the work on my car as it is, and my husband is not kidding around when he tells someone what is wrong with our car and wants it fixed. My husband is a mechanical genius. He started his adult mechanical career as an automobile mechanic and his hobby is restoring cars. And I'm not talking about getting a car and letting someone restore it, I'm talking about bringing home a rust bucket and restoring it himself, with the exception of the interior and the wiring….Interior is too much like sewing I think and wiring is too much like computers…God knows why this is….)

So now, I'm coming up behind the high school which sits on a whole city block, and coming around the corner and it's already 4:31, and I was so angry I smacked the steering wheel. All I could think of was Booga and his teacher standing in the rain waiting for me and Booga wondering whether or not mom was coming to get him. And as I came into the driveway I saw Booga standing alone weaving back and forth looking out on the front of the school. Looking like an average student. Not at all like an autistic one.

I beeped the stinking van's horn (I don't like soccer mom vans to begin with…And this one needed to be detailed with Oxy-clean badly) and Booga looked at me, and then looked at me again and then approached the van and asked where the car was….Just like my older son would have done when he was in high school.

And as we went home I looked at him, and he was falling asleep, just like his older brother would've done when I picked him up from the high school. Although by the time he was the size of Booga he would've insisted on driving the van to which the argument would've been that it was, "RENTED-CHEWIE!"

It really felt like he was not autistic for a split second. For a few minutes it felt like an average kid was being driven home by his average mom, in an average van.

There is something wonderfully simplistic about that. Even though I would never trade my Booga for any other kind of kid-because Booga is his own sort of normal. There are days when you wonder what it would have been like if you didn't have the care of someone with Autism. And you wonder what life would have been like if this person hadn't been afflicted.

But is it an affliction or a blessing?

It's a mixed blessing; this is how I have come to view it.

Booga is Booga and wouldn't be Booga if he didn't have this thing going on…And I don't want to change him, I want the world to change for him. I want our lives to be average and not the exception.

I never knew prejudice existed before Booga. I lived in this very sheltered place where those things didn't happen. I never lived with someone with his kind of disabilities; they existed in our family and in our school but never in my home. I never knew I could do the things I have done before there was Booga; I was so shy and socially inept, and still am to an extent, but I have gotten so much from him. There are so many ways I have grown because of Booga.

I thank my beloved God for that.