All I ask of you…

I felt like the only single person in the theatre with a young couple on one side and an older couple on the other. The husband of the older couple appeared to have been dragged to the performance kicking and screaming. But by intermission he seemed to be enjoying himself alright. His wife asked what he thought and he said “I like it, but she loves it” gesturing at me and the 8 or 10 people surrounding us started to chuckle. Yeah I’ll admit it, I love it.  The performers hit all the notes perfectly which always amazes me. The talent it takes to hit those notes on cue night after night live, amazing. Gives you chills or at least it gives me chills. Love it…And of course out of nowhere we got one of our famous thunderstorms right after the performance was over, pouring rain. But who cares The Phantom of the Opera was awesome…

Now off to the beach!

Employee Appreciation BBQ,

My employer catered bbq and allowed us 2 hours for lunch and gave away prizes in a raffle to show his appreciation. We have been in a pay raise freeze for a little over a year but in this economy I am just happy to have a job. So I found the lunch to be especially nice given the times. But my prize in the raffle? This I could have done without. In other news I am going to see The Phantom of the Opera tomorrow after work. I am so excited. The original plan was for all the girls in the book club to go as one of our outings. But scheduling conflicts, money, and general disinterest made it impossible for everyone to agree on a date to go so I am going alone. This has happened to me more times than I can count. Since I was 14 years old I have been forced to go to concerts, movies, or plays alone because no one in my circle was interested. Oh well, if the choice is between going alone or not going at all I always choose going alone.

From my mom this morning:
Yesterday I got a rare glimpse of Cameron. When I left the office I came down Central to get around some of the traffic. While driving I thought about the fact that there is a Dairy Queen down the street on Central. I pulled in and told Cameron I did not have a lot of money so we had to get something small. He said ok. Then he said something that I can’t seem to get out of my mind. He said ” I use to come here with my dad.” “I really miss doing that with him.” It really is sad that Cameron has a dad but his dad is too stupid to realize what he is missing out on.

Yes it is sad…I met the ex’s sister last night for dinner and she apologized profusely for her and her mom basically writing the boys off because they didn’t want to deal with the ex’s anger. The bastard. She invited them to their family reunion in September and she asked me to please let her know when the boys have events because she would really like to attend, see more of them. We’ll see how it goes.

I miss the boys when they are away I guess that’s natural but it was fun taking my time over dinner last night and not being pressed for time. And it’s nice to be in the house alone every once in awhile. I am most comfortable when I can parade around naked. I find it’s not something I can do when a guy is around they see it as a sexual invite and I obviously can’t do it when the boys are home. So it was nice to be free of the clothes for an evening and just chill out. I haven’t slept that peacefully in quite awhile.

Quiet…

After a drama filled weekend and a battery scare this morning things are unusually quiet. I had to call my dad this morning because I thought my battery was dead. Luckily he had a charger and it appears I left the overhead light on but a diagnostic showed the battery to be ok. When my dad arrived he looked around and said “the yard looks really good, surprisingly so”…Really? Surprisingly? Don’t I always wind up doing the work myself? What is so surprising? Anyway he helped me out of a bind so I let the comment pass. I have a pretty good schedule going with the lawn, I mow early Sunday morning every other weekend. Yesterday morning was especially good because Corey spent Saturday night with V and she just dropped him off on her way to church. I was finished with the backyard and was starting on the front when they arrived. Pancakes and benadryl weren’t going to cut it this weekend so I was happy to have a chance to get at least half of it done while he was away.

Cam had a really rough time of it yesterday he actually burst into tears when Corey broke his guitar. I can count on one hand the times Cam has cried and I knew he was at his breaking point. So I arranged for him to spend a few days with my mom, enjoy the pool, and get a break from Corey.  We are off on Friday at work for the 4th so I am going to take Cam for a day trip to Folly Beach. Hopefully the break with mom, a day at the beach, and the 4th of July festivities will put us both back into a decent mood…

The countdown…

I have about 90 days before Corey turns 18 and I don’t have any of the things I need to have taken care of done yet… 

Power of attorney-this time last year I met with the director of Corey’s after school and she told me it would be wise to pursue the power of attorney during the school year so Corey’s birthday didn’t blindside me. Well like all things it seems taking care of this will not be simple. I called legal aid this week (yeah it’s summer but I have been busy) when I discovered I can’t afford a consultation meeting with an attorney. Instead of a receptionist who could help me there was a recording instead. “Due to tough economic times (our state is bankrupt) we are unable to fund this office. If you are interested in our directory of attorneys please press 1.” Yep a listing of attorneys, very helpful I might add. There is nothing quite like the yellow pages on voicemail. 

Medication tweaking-For me the whole medication deal is a bit like Animal Farm. I know medication is supposed to be the big savior like Napoleon over Mr. Jones. But most of the time I feel like Old Boxer doing twice the work, getting less food, and on my way to the glue factory. Ok it’s a stretch yeah that’s definitely a stretch for an analogy lol.  I feel like once medication is on the table everything else stops. We met with Dr. B last month mostly because V insisted and I voiced my concerns once again about upping Corey’s meds. It just feels like a vicious cycle to me. And maybe I am naive but isn’t there anything else a neurologist can offer? No one even tests Corey anymore.  It’s like he’s autistic, we can’t cure it, here’s a neurologist who can prescribe and later constantly adjust medications to keep him from punching holes in the wall (most of the time), we’ll give you more respite hours so he can punch someone else’s walls the rest of the time until you get tired and send him to a group home. I honestly think this is why parents of autistic children are especially crazy, why we are either hollow shells, or Jenny McCarthy. Because it just doesn’t feel like they do anything. There aren’t any tests, no blood work, no special diet, rehab, occupational therapy, they don’t send them to a psycologist once a week. Nothing. Just diagnosis, funding, meds, group home…

Off track but the bottom line is I am in medication hell (the place I knew for 15 years I would be) and I have a respite person who just lost her job and isn’t really inclined to deal with the crazy mom who doesn’t want her kid to get medicated into oblivion so he can go sit down somewhere and stop destroying both our homes, keeping us awake, and on really bad days threatening our person. And the real irony of it all is although Corey has moved from 100 mg to 400 mg a day. He never went and sat down somewhere, he never stopped hitting the walls, he never stopped having bad days. I want to cry when I’m in Dr. B’s office because if he offered me a magic pill that gave me a moment’s peace even if there were side effects I would happily take it. I am not the great advocate parent they seem to think I am. But the bottom line is he doesn’t give me a magic pill because there isn’t one. He gives me “things we can try, things we can tweak, things that cause weight gain, things that cause dry mouth, things that cause face distortion, things that cause stomach upset, and most importantly things that DON’T give me a moments peace but leave me in the same hell I was in before.  And I have a hard time figuring out if the meds ever really did slow down the behaviors or if V just worked harder because she knew he was taking meds and I have Corey a lot less.

Staying in school-I decided to keep Corey in school until he is 21. Mostly because I don’t like the idea of giving up on the education end of things yet. I already feel like they are  just going to let him sit around until he dies. How much worse will that feeling be without school? But going to school in the autistic classroom from 18-21 means, internships, working in the community, and much more time out in public. And frankly without the magic pill I am worried.

Case manager-Corey’s case manager, the one who has been with us since Corey was 5 dropped us from her case load and gave us to another provider. I know things got a bit mean during the hearing period but I never dreamed she would cut all ties like that. So now I have a new case manager who is supposed to help me navigate through this really big transition.

The hearing-never heard anything back on it but I do hear how broke N.C. is these days.  I will be amazed if they decide to continue to fund Corey’s after school and enhanced respite when they fired teachers and cut a 1/3 of our overall budget and still didn’t cut enough.

Human Nature…

seikikuurin: this has been the week for celebrity deaths, hasn’t it?
cah1470: yeah I guess so
seikikuurin: my flist is all ablaze with “RIP” messages
cah1470: yeah well you know everyone sent me a text after work yesterday because of Corey
seikikuurin: yeah
seikikuurin: my grandmother called us to tell us
cah1470: I know I am biased when it comes to michael but I really wish the press would stop harping on the molestation case
cah1470: I always find it interesting that Elvis had Priscilla move in at 14 and died from complications from drug abuse and yet it’s michael jackson they seem so insistent to keep an asterick beside his name
seikikuurin: I think part of it is a different era because they were still protecting stars from that kind of stuff in Elvis’s day, just like Presidents
seikikuurin: but yeah I am tired of the rehash of the molestation stuff
cah1470: I watched a bit of CNN which you know I hate to do after T sent the text
cah1470: and the guy was talking about all the ownership rights michael had and how revolutionary it was
cah1470: he could barely get that out for them going back to how financially strapped he was and all his legal “issues”
cah1470: and it’s like ok, ok, ok
cah1470: the man is still leaving behind ownership rights to most of his songs and half of the beatles
cah1470: can we talk about that for 5 mins?
seikikuurin: yeah seriously
seikikuurin: you know I hate all of it anyway
cah1470: yeah I do too
cah1470: don’t know why I let it get to me
cah1470: but without fail it annoys the crap out of me
seikikuurin: lol
seikikuurin: yeah me too
cah1470: so after about 5 minutes I had to turn it off
cah1470: besides there was tennis to watch
seikikuurin: I pissed several people off when I got cranky over david carradine
cah1470: let’s not even talk about david lol
cah1470: he had a fetish
cah1470: he died accidentally
cah1470: why is it ok for a star to have a ski accident
cah1470: private plane accident
cah1470: hell hang gliding accident
cah1470: but if it’s sexual in anyway he was stupid
cah1470: call me crazy but some guy hang gliding is pretty damn stupid
seikikuurin: because we are a country of prudes who want to drag down everyone
cah1470: yep
cah1470: it’s so annoying
seikikuurin: yup

seikikuurin: “The research on emotion implies that people see women as flighty and fragile, but the cases Bindel discusses bring up another stereotype: that women have a greater obligation to control their tempers than men do. Bindel mentions Alicia Crown, who killed her boyfriend in what she says was self-defense. Her lawyers argued that she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder from her boyfriend’s abuse and from a difficult upbringing in Jamaica, but the jury rejected this defense, seeing her as “remarkably resilient.” Domestic violence expert Marai Larasi comments, “In my experience black women are particularly susceptible to being viewed as ’strong’, able to cope and somehow not vulnerable.” In this case it wasn’t Crown’s fragility that got her in trouble, it was the assumption that she, a black woman, should be “strong enough” to take abuse and not fight back.”
cah1470: ugh
cah1470: so this woman basically went to jail because she should have been able to deal with being abused better?
seikikuurin: yup
seikikuurin: and the other case in the same article
seikikuurin: a woman killed her boyfriend who abused her
cah1470: the guardian?
seikikuurin: yeah
cah1470: found it
seikikuurin: and the judge ruled that since she worked with teens w/ problems, she should’ve had the patience to deal w/ her boyfriend beating her
seikikuurin: god I hate men
cah1470: yeah that scares me sometimes
cah1470: that deep down annoyance
cah1470: since I am raising two of them lol
seikikuurin:
cah1470: Two days later, Joseph McGrail killed his common-law wife, as she lay drunk, by kicking her repeatedly in the stomach. He was given a two-year suspended sentence for manslaughter and walked free. The judge expressed “every sympathy” for McGrail, adding “this lady would have tried the patience of a saint”.
cah1470: OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
cah1470: I am so not going to be able to read this article!
seikikuurin: that’s why I just sent you PART OF IT
cah1470: lol thank you dear friend
cah1470: you know me so well
seikikuurin:

Cranky…

–adjective, crank⋅i⋅er, crank⋅i⋅est.

1.	ill-tempered; grouchy; cross: I’m always cranky when I don’t get enough sleep.

2.	eccentric; queer.

3.	shaky; unsteady; out of order.

4.	full of bends or windings; crooked.

5.	British Dialect. sickly; in unsound or feeble condition; infirm.

---

Origin:
1780–90; crank ¹ + -y ¹

Related forms:

crank⋅i⋅ly, adverb

crank⋅i⋅ness, noun

Synonyms:
1. crotchety, cantankerous, perverse.

Talk to me…

I was reading Kimba’s recent post and she made mention of how boring it is to talk about the weather or exercise. For some reason the post made me think about adult conversation. It seems like there are still all the rules from high school where you are constantly being  judged on how cool you are. And you need to always have something interesting and witty to say but not too political or abrasive. This seems like a tall order to me considering how little of an adult’s time is witty and interesting. Don’t most of us spend the bulk of our time at work? And for the majority of us outside of the arts or politics aren’t most of us moving widgets around for the majority of our time? In my case I am lucky because yes I spend the bulk of my time trading emails, pulling stats for my reports, and site updates. But I work for a VOD company so my co-workers are interesting. They are mostly performers outside of work and you never know what story one might have on Monday morning. But even those tales would probably be boring to a potential date or a friend of mine. So if talking about work is out, talking about chores is out, talking about the weather is out, and talking about physical fitness is out what in the world does one talk about after the initial 30 days of getting to know each other is over?

MNG and I used to talk about everything, all the things you would be afraid to bring up in polite company. I could let my men suck rants flow, my conservatives suck, even sometimes when I was really cranked up white people suck with him excluded of course And it was so liberating to just let it rip what I think about things, mostly what I think is stupid about the world. For example today I went shopping at the World Market one of my favorite stores and there was only one cash register open. When a line began to form the assistant manager walked up to open a 2nd register and gestured for me to come over since I was the next person in line. But when she gestured towards me a mother and daughter who were standing behind me and weren’t very appreciative of Corey flapping in front of them jumped ahead to be served. The assistant manager told them “no I have to serve the next in line first, sorry”…those ladies were steaming mad I mean steaming and my jaw was on the ground because I have to say and I try not to harp on this but a white assistant manager gesturing for me to be helped before the white lady and her mom is just not something that happens much in Charlotte, N.C. And this story although interesting is not one you tell in polite company. But I could tell it to MNG and it was so cool.

But lately his pride is pricked because over the course of our friendship my point of view has changed his mind on a few key things where his point of view although appreciated rarely changes my position. I can’t point to something and say I used to feel this way and then after I heard MNG’s take I changed my mind. And since he seems to keep a score card on everything in his life and competes in every part of his life this has become an issue. You would think since I know what he is after I could just give it to him so we can continue talking the way I love so much. How hard could it be to smile and nod? How hard could it be to say “really I never thought of it like that before”…

But for some reason I can’t bring myself to give in. I suspect if I don’t find a way to let him teach me something every once in awhile this friendship of ours is going to be over and then what? Who will I tell what the highest search terms were for straight and gay VOD last week? Who will I tell about the full brand tribal necklace my friend Q walked into work with? Or the running joke she and I have where she moves all the stuff on my desk while she is talking to me and I say “I am most comfortable when I submit to your will” to get all the guys in the cubicles going? Who will I tell all the crazy work stuff, the interesting NPR stuff, the dumb ass drivers stuff, if not MNG?

And more importantly how about this 95 degree heat? Isn’t it insane how hot it has been this weekend

TGIF…

I am so happy this week is over and I survived. I let Cam spend last night at mom’s so he could spend the day at the pool, get a break from Corey, and Icould get a break from him and Corey fighting. After I met the van I went to pick up Cam so I could get their haircut. I figured I would take advantage of being home early and get the barbershop out of the way since it’s supposed to be in the upper 90s tomorrow. Corey’s old provider was there and he told me how the director of Corey’s camp is so impressed with me. Hmm maybe she didn’t give me the “look” the other day. He said she couldn’t stop talking about how I keep it all together, how I never have the empty shell face a lot of parents have, how I keep my sense of humor, and how well V and I work together to provide Corey with a safe and happy home. And I thought wow are you sure she was talking about me because patron saint of motherhood I am certainly not. But it was nice to hear the praise I can admit that. Praise and admiration not withstanding I am so happy to have V back and my after school meet the van duties at an end.

Over the hump…

After receiving the look from the van driver yesterday I bit the bullet and left even earlier from work to insure I wasn’t even 5  mins past 5 o’clock. She actually smiled when she pulled up and I was in the drive way. To say I don’t miss this crap would be an understatement. I don’t think the providers truly grasp that I have been doing this for 17 years while most people are done with  leaving work early to meet the daycare van by now. And my life with Corey didn’t start when V came on the scene. It was 14 years of catching buses and vans, missing out on bonuses and promotions, working through lunch, and coming in early. Years of it. One year when I just couldn’t find an after school for him I paid the bus driver $50 a week under the table to make Corey his last stop and I worked through lunch for 5 months so I could leave an hour early. So yeah I am ready for V to return.

What else? Not much leaving early to meet Corey’s van spending the afternoons with my boys does remind me of their younger days. I do miss summers off, or half days. I miss driving to the beach with them on a whim. I miss going to story time at the library or Carowinds after 5pm. All the things I used to do when Corey was smaller, I was broke but worked less, and Cam was “baby”.  I shouldn’t project this week as all aggravation because of course it hasn’t been.

My SIL (my ex’s sister) found me on facebook today. It was quite a surprise, turns out she is divorced and many things have been going on in her life since we last spoke, which was 5 years ago I should add. It’s crazy how we all just stopped speaking like we don’t all live in the same town. She wanted to catch up so we are meeting for lunch on Saturday. Should be interesting.

Prickly…

So it was Corey’s 1st day of summer camp I think we survived. The director called me about 20 minutes after picking him up to ask if he had his meds this morning. Never a good sign. But I assured her he did and that he was probably going to be a bit agitated and a bit aggressive because it’s his 1st day with a new routine. She didn’t call me back with issues and I am relieved to report he did seem to settle in ok.

I took mom to an auto auction on Saturday to replace her car. I was determined not to be a negative part of mom’s troubles with her car dying. Which means I was not going to be late to the auction so she could turn all her anger and frustration over needing another car on me. I was pressed and stressed with V away, Corey in tow, 2 hours of sleep, and determined not to be late to the auction. And who calls? MNG. Ahh yes MNG didn’t have the luxury of 2 hours of sleep, or an angry mom, or a missing V, and so he did have the luxury to come back with all the stuff we had debated over the past couple of weeks to once again try to press upon me just how correct he is in all things. To say Saturday just wasn’t the day for it would be an understatement. But I did survive the early morning and ill timed phone call. Mom did get a car and most importantly I was not late getting her to the auction.

I spent yesterday mowing my lawn and washing my car. I went with the big breakfast and benadryl play since it worked so well the last time I needed to get chores done outside and needed Corey out of my hair. Is it wrong to stuff my kid with pancakes and give him a benadryl with his orange juice so he can take a nap and I can mow my lawn and wash my car? Of course the bad part of this working is the 2 hours of sleep I received the night before turned into no sleep last night because Corey took a nap. But hey my yard looks good and my car is clean…

Y invited me to come down to Charleston this weekend and bring Cam because she was taking her family to The Funkfest but I knew it was not the sort of event Corey could handle and I am glad I didn’t go. It was an uncovered stadium and it poured raining. They wound up waiting 2 hours for the rain to stop. An all day event with a big crowd and loud music is one thing but sitting for 2 hours in the rain waiting is more than I could have handled.

I find I am in a very prickly mood these days feeling like plastic without any warmth. After awhile without sex I stop feeling human almost like I don’t have a pulse anymore. Sometimes when I am in a relationship I can walk around in a low state of arousal all day but when I know there is no chance of sex I turn that off like a faucet. Turning it off makes me feel cold and out of it and ill and cranky like my blood isn’t flowing and like I am not really breathing. No kisses, no hugs, no hand holding, no electricity in the air with the possibility of sex is a personal hell for me. I don’t understand how anyone could be celibate or be in a sexless relationship. My good friend from high school told me her and her husband didn’t have sex much that it had been two years since the last time. I just don’t understand that. It’s one thing not to have a choice but how does one choose to feel like this for months on end? I think I would tear my skin off or something if I was asked to lay beside someone every night and never touch them.