How to be Overwhelmed.

I haven’t been on here in a while because I’m the victim of an overwhelming life.

I’ve gone back to school to get my Bachelor’s of English. It’s online school and it’s consuming all my time, that is all my time that isn’t taken up with two part-time jobs, the usual housework, and then there’s autism….

My son is 13 now. He’s been getting steadily more aggressive the older he gets, not out of malice, but because of the normal teenager stuff. Mood swings, rages, defiance, it’s all there. Unfortunately it gets dangerous. I am at my wits end trying to figure out what to do. My husband is home now, but he’s only here when he’s off work. Lately the situation with our son has started interfering with his job and mine.

So until life is somehow brought under control….I don’t know when I’ll be able to post.

Keep praying..hoping…anything… We need all the help we can get.

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Lack of Responsibility

I find it aggravating that in this day and age no one knows what responsibility is.  I don’t know if is it because of the “blame game” culture we live in or if it is just going extinct because responsibility isn’t taught to kids these days.

The thing that has sparked my outrage is this….

Someone hit my Jeep! Hit and run!

They ran into it.

Cracked my headlight.

Dented my fender.

Then just drove off.

Never said a word!

I suspect it was someone dropping their kid off at the Head Start school that is two doors down from us.

You know, I understand. It is really freaking icy out. Sometimes accidents happen. You hit an ice rut under the snow and you slide sideways unexpectedly. It happens. That’s why it’s called an accident.

But seriously, why not tell me?

If they were dropping off their kid, what kind of example were they setting? You’re thinking that kids going to Head Start are really young and wouldn’t notice any way. Wrong. Kids see everything, everything you do influences the kind of person they will be when they grow up. Do the right thing, show them how to be responsible. One day they will make a huge mistake, break a lamp, get in a fight, maybe even wreck your car. Do you want them to remember how you hit a car and didn’t tell anyone? Do you want them to hide their mistake like you did?

Maybe there was another reason, you say?

You’re thinking maybe they aren’t sure they can afford the insurance rates from an accident.

NEITHER CAN I!

I know that I will have to pay for the deductible, get a rental while it’s being fixed and deal with all the hoopla of organizing the repairs whether they told me or not, but that is not the point! If you do something wrong, OWN UP TO IT. It’s the right thing to do.

It sucks to get in trouble. I know that. No one wants to be yelled at. No one wants to admit they screwed up. No one wants to admit they were wrong. It doesn’t matter. Do the right thing. That is how the world works….or how it should work.

A majority of the world today feels that they are not responsible for their actions and look where it’s gotten us. Work ethics are dwindling, sexual harassment is rampant, families are broken, crime is up, government is failing, education is falling apart- all because no one wants to take responsibility for their actions. It’s always someone else’s fault.

It comes down to a lack of integrity.

in·teg·ri·ty

1. the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness.
   “he is known to be a man of integrity”
   synonyms: honesty, probity, rectitude, honor, good character, principle(s), ethics, morals, righteousness, morality, virtue, decency, fairness, scrupulousness, sincerity, truthfulness, trustworthiness
   “I never doubted his integrity”
2. the state of being whole and undivided.
   “upholding territorial integrity and national sovereignty”
   synonyms: unity, unification, coherence, cohesion, togetherness, solidarity
   “the integrity of the federation”

The human race needs integrity in order to survive and thrive a species. Otherwise our culture will collapse in on itself. The world will be destroyed all because of lack of responsibility.

So man up, woman up, cowboy up, however you want to say it. Take responsibility for your action, tell the damn truth and make the world a better place. It all starts with you.

Absence and Changes

I apologize for the long absence. Life has been difficult lately.

Still can’t seem to get school under control. My senior is still struggling to get sorted with Personalized Learning. The constant changes and rearranges the school has been implementing has put her in a state of mind where she couldn’t care less if she goes to school any more. That is a terrible place to be especially for a senior, they tend to be biting at the bit to get out of school anyway. Some of her classmates are doing alright, but there have been quite a few kids who have transferred to other schools and a couple that have dropped out. It’s a sad state for education.

My son isn’t having  a much better time either. They finally found an aide, but because of things being unsettled he had a couple of dangerous meltdowns. So now he has two aides. However, things remain unsettled. The school can’t decide what they are doing and hovering around the whole mess is this sense of secrecy. No one is communicating. I keep hearing, “there are going to be changes, but no one is telling us” and “we’re not allowed to talk to you.” That is the part I really don’t get. Why can’t anyone talk to me? I’m his freaking parent! He doesn’t communicate well because of his autism, the only way I know what is going on with him is if someone tells me. Why make a hard situation harder?

It breaks my heart that my son can be in a perfectly good mood all morning, walk to school happily, then walk through the door of the school and immediately start hitting himself in the head and poking himself in they eye. Nothing happened. No trigger besides walking through the door. What does that tell you about the environment at school?

However there is a light in this dark tunnel.

Because of the big heart of one of our neighbors, my husband has been hooked up with a local job.  It’s one of those “I know a guy who knows a guy” situations. Long story short. My husband is home! He starts at his new job this coming week. It’s going to be different. He’s been working in the wind industry for nearly a decade and he’s going to miss it, but as he keeps saying “family first.” Autism, puberty, and stress at home make it necessary to change.

I am stupidly excited about him being home, but I’m also apprehensive. He’s been on the road for nearly 5 years and we’ve only seen each other 8 times a year in all that time. We’re going to have to learn to live together all over again. I almost want to put out my hand and say, “hi nice to meet you.” Routines are going to have to adjust and space with have to be shared.  I know that I’m going to have to learn to give up a lot of control. I’ve been mom and dad for quite a while now. It’s going to be quite an adjustment for all of us.

Hopefully with someone to share the stress with I’ll be able to get back to writing and maybe start feeling like a human again.

Poem: Will Power

A small poem about Will Power

 

What can I say?

My voice has been silenced.

                            You’re strong.

My soul has been injured.

                           You’re resilient.

My strength has failed.

                          You’ll get over it.

Doesn’t work that way.

Even mountains fall down.

 

 

10 Great Dumb Ideas to Fix Our Country.

I know that there is a lot of concern about the direction our country is going, and rightly so.  Nothing seems to be going well. Healthcare is falling apart, everyone is arguing, and no one is fixing it. So I thought I’d put my two cents worth in.  Here are some great dumb ways to fix things.

1. Elected officials get paid minimum wage. That way they aren’t in it for the money and we get to keep them grounded in the ways of the people.
2. When congress is in session, the our elected officials can live in dormitories and they only get paid when they show up to do their jobs. Clock in and clock out like the rest of us.
3. National service. After High School every kids should serve at least a year in a public service or military entity. I don’t mean go to war I mean learn discipline and responsibility.
4. School should be year around. Having the summers off only helps a few, mostly it just makes it hard for parents to find child care and kids lose a lot of ground.
5. Insurance companies need to be regulated and simplified. Insurance shouldn’t be so conditional. Either it is there to help people afford times of health crisis or it needs to go.
6. If you are going to legalize pot, use the money to fund public programs especially things like medicaid and medicare. Then you won’t have to cut them and put a lot of people in desperate straights.
7. Recycling centers. This needs to happen. Packaging is getting crazy and there is way too much waste. Put some of that retail tax toward fixing the problem.
8. Prison work programs. Staff the recycling centers with prisoners. A nasty job gets done and prisoners get to contribute to society instead of just consuming resources. Maybe it will help them choose a better life and maybe it will deter others from choosing crime.
9. Mass transit. We need more railways. Other countries a lot smaller than us have bullet trains. We could cut down on a lot of pollution and create a lot of jobs if we just sorted out our transportation.
10. Apprenticeships and internships. There are a lot of people who are not that interested in becoming cubicle zombies. Some people want to work with their hands. We need more on the job training options that will be more than just a college course with no experience. Internships and apprenticeships allow people training and experience so they are ready to enter the work force at full speed.

I know that most of these come with lots of problems about how to fund them and who will be in charge etc, etc, but honestly something must be done to get this country on track again and yelling at each other about who is right or wrong is getting us nowhere.

So there you go. Kitchen style politics simplified by someone who knows nothing. But maybe, just maybe someone will get inspired and run with this. Good luck.

Random song pick Saturday: Alexiane – A Million on My Soul

This is Autism, but I Still Love Him

We’ve been having a rough summer.

My son always has trouble with summer, because he is autistic. The normal trials of summer bother my son too like boredom and cabin fever. In that he is like all other kids, but there are a lot of other issues that come into play.  For example, thunderstorms. He’s terrified of them and yet gets upset because we aren’t having a storm every time there is a cloud. There is also the heat. He loves to be outside but the heat gets to him as well as the allergies that come with summer.

This year has been particularly bad because not only has it been over 90 the whole summer but the air has been filled with smoke from all the wild fires. Outside is not healthy. Inside is boring. It’s a brewing storm. Then you add in things like fireworks from the 4th of July. Loud unexpected noises that sound like thunder happening throughout the nights makes him very edgy. For weeks after the 4th he jumps at every little sound.  He wears sound proof headphones, but the fear is there even if the sound is not.

It finally came to a head one day when he hadn’t been sleeping well. It was a couple of weeks after the 4th and we’d been fighting to go to bed every night . He hadn’t been sleeping and neither had I. Bad combination. He was playing video games. (He likes mini golf) and he couldn’t go into a shed in the background. I told him that it was just part of the scenery and he got upset and started to bite his arm. I told him to go into his room until he could be calm. In the few seconds it took for me to set aside the game controller  he had gone into  his room and slammed his head into his window with enough force to splinter it. 

It didn’t hurt him any, although he had some broken glass in his hair. I had to first get him calm and then get all the glass cleaned up. But he was upset to begin with, then he was upset that he had broken the window, then upset that I couldn’t magically fix it, and upset that I was upset.  It was a long time before we could get sorted and then right after that a thunderstorm hit. Needless to say it wasn’t a good day.

It was a this point that I began to think about medication. I hate myself for thinking about it. I don’t like pills. I don’t like how I feel when I take them and usually I have bad reactions to them. So the thought of putting my son on them when he can’t tell me if he is feeling weird makes me shudder. We had tried him on medication once a long time ago when his violent outburst were getting out of hand and it had turned him in to a weeping pile of mush that was still violent. We gave up, threw away the pills, and learned to live with the outbursts.

But he is getting bigger now. He’s 12. He’s almost as tall as me and weighs 120 lbs. So off we went to the doctor. After a long discussion, the doctor decided that it was probably anxiety that was the route of the problem. If we could get that under control then he might not be a danger to himself. I was willing to give it a shot even though I was wary of the possible side effects.  The second problem was sleep. I found some chewable melatonin and I hoped that would help.

The first week was amazing. He was going to sleep because of the melatonin and although he was still getting up in the middle of the night, it was still an improvement. The Sertraline was working. He was in a great mood. We had to make a trip to Helena, which is a two and a half hour drive, for my daughter’s orthodontist appointment and I was expecting a blow up when we had to go home. But he was great shopping and he was great coming home. I didn’t even know how to handle a trip without a melt down.

It was great while it lasted.

About a week into the medications, we were watching tv during dinner and the character’s gloves had run away and gotten into some trouble and were sent to jail. In the blink of an eye, my son exploded. He was pounding his fist on his tray knocking food everywhere and then started to bite himself and hit me and his sister.  It was weird! Usually there is some warning before a meltdown but this was like a lightening strike out of a clear blue sky.

Over the next couple of days he started to get worse. He just kept getting really angry over such small things.  Then the big blow up came. My daughter had another dentist appointment this time to get five teeth pulled. (I know that’s a lot, but her regular dentist hadn’t been doing his job and let 4 years go by without telling us that she was going to have a problem with her baby teeth not coming out. So now we are in dental crisis, but that is another story.)

Now here was my first mistake. My son is scared of the dentist but is also really fascinated by it and as soon as he knew my daughter was going, he started asking if he could have an appointment. I told him he would have to wait for his appointment. The longer we sat in the waiting room, the more agitated he became.

Here was my second mistake. I should have known this trip to the dentist would be hard on my daughter and I should have found someone to watch my son while I took her to the dentist.

You have to understand at this point that my son doesn’t handle other people’s pain well. When he sees you cry he gets upset because he doesn’t understand the reason. Often he will attack the crying person. I am assuming because he believes that will give them a reason to be upset so it makes sense to him in a backwards kind of way. Needless to say our family tries to keep the crying to a minimum and let it out only when he isn’t looking.

Unfortunately my poor daughter couldn’t help it. She’d never had dental problems before so this was her first experience in having teeth pulled and five at one time was traumatic. She couldn’t help it she cried.  This set my son off. He didn’t understand why his sister was upset.

Here was my third mistake. My daughter wanted to get somethings from the store despite how she was feeling after the dentist. I warned her against it but she insisted that she was fine and she could handle it. So I stupidly listened. Half-way down the street my daughter changed her mind. She was in too much pain and wanted to go home. Before the trip I had warned my son that if his sister didn’t feel up to it then we were NOT going to go shopping and we would just go home. I thought he had understood, but when we started down the street toward the stores and then turned around, he got upset.

Here was my fourth mistake. I didn’t take him to get food.  It was about lunch time when we finished at the dentist. Because my daughter was feeling so awful I didn’t want to make her sit and wait while we ate. Instead I took my son to a gas station and grabbed some of those deli burgers and chips and a bottle of milk and headed out. He really wanted to get food at a restaurant and got upset.

Here is my fifth mistake. I didn’t stop at the car wash. It is a treat for my son when he is good to go through the automatic car wash before we leave town. Again, I didn’t stop because my daughter was feeling so badly.  I should have know better. Foregoing the car wash always causes a melt down. It was the final straw.

From that moment on it was a nuclear fallout meltdown. The drive back from Great Falls in an hour. Usually the meltdowns don’t last more that half an hour and usually we can get him out of it by playing I-spy or something. But this time I think the medication was in play. Nothing would stop him from pulling his sister’s hair or punching her from the back seat. He was spitting and trying to break the window with his fists and his feet. Foolishly I stopped on the side of the interstate to try and switch everyone around so that I could keep my daughter safe from his attack.

We ended up chasing him around in the ditch and trying to tackle him to keep him out of traffic. I’m sure the people driving by thought we were trying to kill him. He was punching and kicking me while I tried to get him to calm down and get back to the jeep. He grabbed handfuls of my hair and ripped some out. Finally we got him to the jeep but he got a hold of my daughters neck. In getting him to let go of her he got a hold of my hair and pummeled my head with his fist. I got kicked in the chest, repeatedly bit and he grabbed handfuls of my skin on my arms before I finally got him into his seat and buckled in. My daughter drove while I sat in the back by him and tried to keep him from kicking her and bashing his head through the window. Unfortunately that put me in the strike zone. He was so deliberate with his attacks. This wasn’t like his normal meltdowns. I kept telling him that I would be okay, that he needed to take deep breaths, that I still loved him and he would be alright, but nothing stopped him.

That was the longest hour of my life.

By the time we had gotten home I was near hysterical with terror and guilt. I had to wrestle him into the house. I sent my daughter downstairs out of harms way and took my son to his room. It was dark and he was still agitated. Then almost as quickly as it started he was back to normal. He wanted a drink and a snack. He sat down and started to watch tv. At that point I was doing my best to stay calm. I wanted to sob and curl up into a ball and shake, but I knew it would only set him off again. I stayed out of the room where I wouldn’t trigger him but also where I could keep an eye on him.

This is the damage that I came out with. I was so  stiff and sore. This doesn’t show all the damage. I have a lot of bruises on my head and legs, but you get the idea.

I am pretty proud of myself. Considering the craziness that we went through, my son came out without a mark on him.

My daughter only had a little welt on her neck. I managed to protect both my kids from harm. I don’t know how, but I did.

I called the doctor when things looked like they were as calm as they were going to get. We went over and the doc was shocked at the level of damage on my arms. He thought maybe we needed to up the dose of Sertraline because it seemed like it was working, and he get me some Risperdone pills to use as needed when things were out of hand. We went back home and I followed the doc’s orders. But over the next few days, my son stayed angry. He was mad about everything. He kept biting himself for tiny little upsets. So I talked it over with my husband and we decided to stop the meds.

 

It’s been three days now and he hasn’t had any blow ups. Well, there were a couple of small ones, but I’m not expecting miracles.

The thing is this is our life. I can’t say I’m not affected. I’m a wreck.  I love him completely and I’m terrified for the future. I’m not scared if him. I’m scared of what he’ll do to others. This whole episode has turned my fears into reality. What happens when he goes to school? What happens if we go to Great Falls again?

I know that it may get worse as he gets bigger. I may end up with broken bones at some point. I don’t want that to happen, but I’m not going to fool myself. This is Autism. This is melt downs. It’s hard. I hope that we can get past this someday and he can have a productive life, but I fear the alternative. That it may get too bad and he’ll have to live in a home where he’ll be doped up and live a miserable existence. I don’t want that either.

Right now I’m not feeling real positive. I’m bitter at the world for the lack of help. I’m angry at myself because I should have known better. I’m disillusioned with my life right now. But it doesn’t matter. This is Autism and we get up every day and keep going. I love my son regardless.

Happy Birthday to my Son!

He’s 12 years old now. It seems hard to believe. 12 years of struggling and fighting to get to this point. It seems longer and yet it doesn’t seem that long at all.  I guess that’s normal. Most parents feel that way. I guess it’s different because it’s been 12 years of Autism.

Life is not easy when you have Autism in your life. Whether you are a parent of or are the autistic person, challenges abound. Let me give you an idea.

It’s been 12 years of communication issues. Sometimes he’s been unable to communicate at all, sometimes he can get across what he wants after a lot of effort. Sometimes it causes so much frustration that he becomes violent.  Sometime we have the same conversation hundreds of times a day.

It’s been 12 years of health issues.  RSV virus, Jaundice, ear infections every few months, dental problems, bruises and bite marks, behavioral issues, attention problems, sleep disturbances and allergies.

It’s been 12 years of sleeping issues. The first six years of sleeping in our bed because of night terrors, then the next six years of sleeping in his own bed but getting up multiple times every night, which means that I’ve slept on his floor more hours than I can count.

It’s been years of violent outburst and broken things. We’ve had to replace a TV, several chairs, and now a window. There are holes in the walls, a lot of broken toys, and quite a few rips in our clothes.

And yet through all this, he has grown and started to thrive. He has friends who adore him. Everyone in town seems to know his name and they always say hi to him. He reads, he writes albeit both really slowly and with difficulty. He loves to tell jokes. He laughs and plays. He knows what he likes and isn’t afraid to tell you. He loves to help around the house and help in the yard.  Although he is usually terrified of new things, he loves an adventure. He’s terrified of storms but can’t wait for them either. He loves amusement park rides even though the surroundings overwhelm him. Animals love him although he is usually scared of them. He’s growing into a relatively well rounded young man.

I know that we have a really long way to go and not all of it is going to be positive. Sometimes every day is a struggle, but I look at how far we’ve come and I couldn’t be more proud of my son. He’s overcome so much to be the wonderful 12 year old that he is today.

Happy Birthday, Bubba!

Random Song Pick Saturday: Don’t Cry – Seal

Lost My Way

I want to apologize for my absence. Life has attacked from all directions lately and I was overwhelmed.

We had a bad bout of troubles around here including unemployment, legal issues, financial problems and hospital stays. The stress consumed us and I pretty much went into emergency mode where I only focused on survival.

Things seem to be leveling out, not quite sorted out, but at least manageable. I hope to get back on track here soon. Thankfully, a reader on Wattpad contacted me and let me know how much they loved my novels on there and it really helped pull me out of the mire. I feel like I’ve taken my first breath in months.

I will try and get my act together and get sorted out, please be patient with me.

Thanks,

Adriana