Wednesday 15 July 2009

oh. right.

so yes, it is swine flu after all. poppy was couriered out tamiflu this evening, and now we're supposed to be quarantined, with all the calpol and soup that we thoughtfully stockpiled a month ago. or, as the case may be, we did not. rudy has an educational psychology assessment tomorrow and no swine flu diagnosis (yet). there's only one of me.

hm. what would elizabeth taylor do?




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Tuesday 14 July 2009

sick!




yet more illness has struck our household. this time it involves copious vomit.

r. had his speech and language assessment today, at nursery, but i don't know how it went as i was unable to attend and rudy has absolutely no recollection of such a meeting (which isn't to say it didn't happen); his keyworker had already left when i went to pick him up.

in other news, i have just acquired a new copy of 'say anything'.... *yay*.




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Thursday 9 July 2009

triskaidekaphilia

right. i'll tell you a secret.

i have this tattoo on my inner wrist. it's a small black and grey tonal masterpiece... exquisite, even, and was done by someone celebrated in the field some time ago, when i emerged, blinking, after the whole kidsdadleavinginablazeofgloryand (deep breath) resultingyearlongnervousbreakdown fandango. someone needed to draw a literal line under things for me. i needed to claim myself back in a fairly brutal way. if stigma is on me, it needn't be in me.

it's a xiii. i know, what a badass.

not being part of a mexican gang, or much of a rockabilly, it's symbolism to me can be quickly explained as "change is good; what may look like bad luck is the necessary order of life; challenge is blessing and opportunity- BRING IT." i won't go deep into my reasons why i went and got it, or start lecturing you on prime numbers, tarot and the mayan calendar or indeed my extensive personal connection to the number for fear of inspiring a multiple eyeroll pileup, but it was a valuable process, and even my mother, who is a harbinger of good taste and was understandably opposed to the venture, thinks it beautiful. i'm not one of those mayan calender folks anyways.

in a nutshell, it's purpose is, and always has been, to serve as a personal attitude crib note whenever the whole single mother thing- or indeed the whole grown up life thing- challenges my patience/ will to live. obviously since i got it the children grew and changed, the challenges were different; the whole rudy/ASD rollercoaster started.

it helps.


speech and language therapy and educational psychology assessments next week.




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Tuesday 7 July 2009

ma-ma-se, etc.

Add Image

this is fantastic up close. i'd forgotten we saw this koons piece at versailles. i was reminded of it just now, whilst finding myself gazing, slack-jawed, upon the man's gold plated coffin, via bbc2.

we went to see the banksy show today, and surrounded by commandeered ice cream vans and terrorist rats, look what else we saw:-




it's not good. it was surrounded by those nasty electronic candles and some silk flowers, for god's sake. i'm not sure which image is more distasteful- this, in all its' terrible execution, hastily wheeled out in some confused attempt at 'faux' timely reverence; or that coffin being wheeled out just now to jive with the all-too-fresh bad taste in the mouth left by joe jackson hawking his blu-rays out front- but this one was certainly hardest to explain to my son, for more reasons than immediately apparent. so yeah, thanks for that, banksy.

although rudy did enjoy the animatronic chicken mcnuggets. yes, i did just type that.


ooh, blanket is there. yay blanket.




r.i.p.

p.s. edited to add that paris ripped my heart right out, and i'm not judging prince for chewing gum throughout either.

Monday 6 July 2009

postal

hey, ladies- long unedited rant alert. apologies for the extended absence- hopefully what lies beneath will go some way to explaining. i hope everyone is well and had a good weekend.

rudy probably doesn't have DCD, he is just too distracted to perform manual tasks above the first (yup, 1st) percentile. rudy is now three fidgets away from a formal ASD diagnosis. he is developing OCD. he will not EAT. he is sandwiched between glass slides under a MICROSCOPE and i just want it to STOP. i am SICK TO MY BACK TEETH OF THIS PROCESS.

for maybe the first time last week i really understood why it is generally perceived as preferable that two parents raise a child. no, that's not right at all. i will rephrase. i felt it might be preferable if i was one of two parents raising my children. i felt a palpable absence -someone else as wholly responsible for this scrap of a lad as i. i felt there should be someone else with whom i could share almost unbearable pressure, this guilt and this responsibility. i was even tempted to contact his father. thankfully it occurred to me after about half a nanosecond that i was missing a phantom. his actual father is the kind of self righteous clown that would immediately hold me actively responsible for "causing the poor kid's autism", and then latch on some sort of claim that he suspected that this would happen and that's why he had to walk out on us when r. was only weeks old. this is someone who once stated, before rudy was even born, that i would probably "make him gay on purpose". my speculation that this man would utilise rudy's diagnosis in order to spite me is founded on extensive experience- he's such a delightful character. and please understand that the fact that my children's father is a colossal scumbag weighs heavily on my shoulders- it's all guilt, all the time. expressing these feelings of isolation, unsupportedness and the weight of sole responsibility did not go down well with my long term long distance boyfriend. communication broke down.

we have flu, suspected swine. poppy has been found to be asthmatic.

i lost it big time with the neighbouring kids' dad. his eldest (7) had been playing with my daughter and apropos of nothing, had screamed in her face that she was a "fucking loser". her tears were met with taunts that she was a big fat cry baby. i was right there. my attempts to comfort my understandably shaken daughter were overheard by the child's father, and he felt it was important that he let me know how abnormal my children are that they get upset in such a situation. only they weren't the words he used. it was a hot day, and i've been putting up with this crap for too long. let's just say i went postal. no, not cool, but it's done now. the discussion was concluded with him realising that he was out of his depth, and resorting to laughing at me, and he got called an asshole. by me. and has he mended the fence? nope. did he immediately approach a group of our other neighbours and launch an extended character assassination on me? yep. but more powerful is the sense of shock i feel at having stooped to his level.

about two hours later, montana turned up. he'd pulled some strings and taken the rest of the week off at short notice to attempt some damage control upon my rapidly unravelling psyche. walking back from the shop later that evening, he could hear the father next door screaming at his five crying children from the end of the street. and yet i'm the one receiving neighbourhood wide shunning.


montana lay in every morning. we went to the seaside one day. i was a brittle anxious mess until about lunchtime yesterday. he left mid afternoon.





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