indigo doll and the spectrum sprites- too evolved to drive

scream

2009-10-12T17:00:00.000-07:00

i'm back! and it seems, a little insane. heads up. thanks to laura's timely and thoughtful comment on my 'i'm ill, pay me attention' post (below), i have just been transported into a brilliant maurice-sendak-twitters-defensively gawker post, which in turn catapaulted me down a late '7o's tinted winding lane of maurice sendak reminiscences courtesy of the commenters therein. with a "the hipster grifter gets how long?" on the side.

my kids love 'in the night kitchen', which they often ask for when at granny's house. granny downsized majorly nearly two years ago, but, of course, that process afforded zero book culling. both my parents are the kind of people who hoard nothing but books, bookshelves having long taken over their houses, quickly becoming entirely inadequate to their purpose. i don't know how they can live like that. (she said, eyes deliberately not sliding three inches right to a teetering pile of 100+ paperbacks next to the bed).

anyway they love it, just as my sister and i were transfixed by it as kids. (we may have occasionally preferred 'some swell pup' fot it's frank, if contextural, illustrations of poo and wee and the fact that the primary adult carer appears to be a bear for no apparent reason whatsoever.) mickey wears an outfit made of pastry, for a start, which to a kid with nary a whisper of s.p.d. seems entirely ideal. the book is like a child describing drunkenness. utterly compelling, completely bizarre, more than a little bit wrong... plus it is anatomically correct. why don't we see the gruffalo's penis ever? actually don't answer that.

anywaaaay, as previously predicted i am, i am afraid, almost nearly over 'where the wild things are', and it hasn't been released yet. i saw another trailer at the cinema the other day and found myself borderline indifferent, although i still believe the casting of max to be exquisite. no, now, i am almost beside myself with excitement about this. seems i heart wes anderson more than i heart spike jonze/ wild things- i did after all sit through 'the royal tenenbaums' twice, one showing right after the other, and can actually find myself crying with laughter and lying prone on the floor unable to speak even attempting to describe 'the life aquatic'. funny, because i never thought i'd have to choose. (alright, i didn't have to choose. but i have. screw you spike, i've seen 'lost in translation', i know what time it is. not really. i'll probably see 'wild things' too. god i'm fickle.)

.

and people are saying why didn't you get it when poppy had it and i say i don't know, i don't even know if that is what i've got, and they're like hmm

2009-10-01T06:39:00.000-07:00

.... i'm not very well.

but it can't be swine flu because if it was swine flu i'd have to stop and i can't so it can't be.

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aside

2009-09-26T02:14:00.000-07:00

when the kids were little, i did a lot of distracting whenever they were upset or wanted something they weren't allowed... i manipulated their attention so that they were more disposed to do things in a parent led, safe way. i got a lot of good feedback about this when other more experienced parents witnessed me doing it, so i kept doing it. i was after all making it up as i went along, like we all do to a greater or lesser extent.

i was just watching rudy playing with a little toy in my room. engrossed for a minute, it then whizzed under the bed, and his attention then jackknifed onto the subject of what is under my bed- poppy's birthday present. we had a brief conversation about that and secret keeping and reassurances that he too would have another birthday one day, and i instinctively redirected his attention to a book. in the space of a minute, he went from the book, to some makeup brushes, to a bust of the virgin mary (long story), to rubbing this french sort of plush bunny (my daughter's) across his face and naming it linda, to turning the lamp on and off, to pressing his wrists against a mirror, to squirting from a perfume bottle, back to the book, found the toy, dismissed it, to putting an emery board in his mouth, to starting a conversation about transformers whilst running the entirety of his arm up and down my duvet, to running out of the door muttering. as the paediatrician says, he's a busy boy.

might my technique of distraction have something to do with it? or am i making it all about me again?

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hmm. well. what would shakira make of this. and indeed, do we care

2009-09-25T15:50:00.000-07:00

i don't mention my friends here, because i don't feel it's really my place to. only about two of them know that this blog exists, so were i to be yammering on carrie style about who did what to thingy in whahoojima and why, it would be a little distasteful. i don't talk about my friends behind their backs, and writing about them here definitely counts as "talking".

but it depends, i suppose, upon the parameters, doesn't it. the context. and with that in mind, let's talk about... yeah. vampires.

my friends are, without exception, feisty ladies. they might strike you as the quiet girl, the friendly girl, the married lady, the professional powerhouse, the teen mum, the society grand dame, the butter wouldn't melt martial artist... and to say that we merely have fondness for wine and, like, shoes in common does us disservice. you know how this works. you know who you click with. you know who skitters just outside your circle, those who you talk to every day, maintain a friendly and/or professional rapport with, but you know you could never find yourself saying, to this person, say, in context, the words "anal monkey bartering" at 3am after 23 units of alcohol, a 20 minute giggling fit, 45 minutes of introspective tearfulness and two tubes of chillicheese pringles. you have to go with your gut there.

we're a mixed bunch, but somehow cohesive. i might even go so far as to say that we, each of us, dabble in feminism... but i would probably have to chair a three day summit in order to define where exactly our particular branch of feminism lies, to explore the roots of it. is it nurtured? is it reactionary? why are we waxing? which do we hate more- the patriachy or grazia?

but there seems to be one common chink in the armour of our righteous sense of fairytale averse scepticism, however. and that would be twilight, the perennial guilty secret.

i'm the only one on team jacob. and more anon.

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wha... tha... fa...

2009-09-24T12:50:00.000-07:00

obviously i live in the uk and i'm a bit behind and everything, but i feel like i have slipped into a parallel universe.

well, colour me conflicted.

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:- I

2009-09-22T13:14:00.000-07:00

yes, i'm completely rubbish. sorry. but i have an excuse. sort of.

the school where p., and now r., go do this infuriating part time initiation month for the incoming reception class where they go mornings, then afternoons, then mornings and lunch, then lunch and afternoons... after which they are deemed ready to go full time, and you, hopefully, cease to run into yourself coming back down on the way up to school, endlessly trailing the book bags and discarded clothing items of the 5 or so miscellaneous loud and scampering children suddenly in your charge, your 'quirky' children being the relentlessly social creatures that they are. it's a good idea, but like many good ideas entirely a pain. i am currently walking to and fro school 3 times a day. this is kind of fine because the scales and i aren't exactly enamoured of each other at the moment, but that might have something to do with the plain insolence of an inbuilt body fat percentage calculator with the gall to tell me that i'm obese even though my bmi is fine, and normal, thankyou, and no of course this is not actually my cheese, i'm actually holding onto it for a friend?... but kind of not fine because each round trip is about an hour. anyways.

this was fine, though. this was a letter from the community paediatrician received yesterday cc. just about everybody:

"rudy _____ _______. d.o.b. __/__/04. problems: developmental co-ordination disorder/ communication issues/ attentional difficulties. rudy is a very busy 4 year old boy who seems to have some of those overlapping difficulties that we do see clustering in some children. he is ready for school. he has been seen by (ed psych- he hasn't, swine flu) and by (speech and language). he has certainly had a detailed work up from (occ. therapy, and this is putting it mildly).

having identified these particular problem areas for rudy, i am now going to pull back as we don't wish to medicalize and pre-judge his educational career at school (yay). i am copying this to the doctor who covers (the school), who will, i am sure, wish to discuss rudy with the special educational needs co-ordinator, with mother's permission (i should imagine that that means me). however, i am happy that the appropriate supports are in place to enable rudy to get off to a good start at school.

best wishes, etc. dr. _____ ______ ma phd mrcpch"

:-D

and in rudy's homework diary yesterday:

"rudy has settled in well- he is really enjoying the toys and outdoor area. he has come over to work with me willingly (about wall-e)- even if in a bit of a hurry to go back to play! a super start rudy! i look forward to teaching you this year."

<:-)

....his uniform is already in a woeful state.

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whither fierce?

2009-09-14T08:26:00.000-07:00

my fashion life is lived vicariously now, totally disconnected from the girl i was in london... that fashion fearless freak frequently accosted by japanese tourists and style photographers, openly discussed on the tube, greeted with a nod of appraisal from soho to selfridges, snarled at by the teenage girl gangs whose trainer choices i adopted and adapted (i see your lily allen and raise you me in 1999), subject to many an eye roll, snigger and frown; noticed.

it's a certain sort of neediness, a certain sort of bravery. on the surface, i didn't care what other people thought, i was fierce. brimming with bravery, bold customisation and ill advised credit purchases; a prada punk. but of course i cared what people thought, deeply. i was interested in provoking a reaction of any sort, like a ten million and three bright young things before and after me. an art director that wanted me to work with him (in some mysterious and unspecified role) once accused me of purposefully channelling the imaginary love child of elizabeth taylor and sid vicious. i was outraged; i was secretly thrilled.

fay weldon wrote "there is nothing more glorious than to be a young girl and there is nothing worse than to have been one." of course i'll always affectionately deny that. i denied it as a young girl when i first read it. being a young girl certainly didn't often feel glorious aside from the anonymous pavement strutting. i'm happier now. but that freedom to wallow in supeficiality, the summoning of the chutzpah, the luxuriating in the reactionary whispers, sauntering past in feigned obliviousness... wasn't exactly wretched. there's been little opportunity for that recently. i still find that my seasonal wish/ must-buy list centres around the fashion forward, a former self. but my choices now, as i slide open the wardrobe door or stand in the cashier queue working out how i'm going to pay the rent after this, always lean towards the safe. i'm almost appalled at how affected i am by that.

boots by stella mccartney. i know.

heroes

2009-09-13T04:46:00.000-07:00

when i went to get him on friday, i saw her first. it was a warm, bright day. she was walking in a single file crocodile on the veranda back to her new classroom. i waved. she took a moment, looked around her, and waved back, tentative and somehow sombre. i could hear the singing before i got to the door, familiar from last year. they were all lined up, gazing at their teacher with rapt attention, singing a song together about body parts or automotive components or cakes in a cake shop. they were doing actions. the sun streamed into the room, spotlighting my little boy in the lineup. he was oddly formal in his uniform, arms flailing like wielded flamingoes. he occasionally pushed his fringe out of his eyes, always on the brink of a wide smile, oblivious to me. it look me a second to recognise him. i keep thinking he's in the next room, or the garden. i keep wandering into his bedroom. i keep laughing at myself.

this week's wake up call, and therefore our theme song:

excuses

2009-08-24T04:11:00.000-07:00

so. we're going to my mum's tomorrow, and then she is very kindly having the children while i have a much needed weekend with my SO, and then we're going to stay with his family until my mum's birthday, after which school will start. yes, i've sewn on all the labels. i've also got to find time to decorate my kitchen. i don't know when. if i'm not around, this is why.

see you on the flipside, dynamite. x.

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update strings/horns news music

2009-08-22T17:09:00.000-07:00

this just in- i'm going to take the pressure off and he's going to be nice to me. in other words, it's taken us three days to get back to normal.

in other news- i caved. i ate. chorizo tastes of paprika and DEATH, and apparently this combination is no longer palatable to me. this is a slight bummer as i was simply trying to wean myself off cheese. early indications suggest that i still love cheese.

and finally- i wish i was at v festival. i've just been jumping around to calvin harris having epic flashbacks involving ian brown, experimental eye makeup, semi-religious experiences in marquees, and the intense, almost unbearable happiness a big piece of knitwear can bring to the vulnerable and nippy reveller in the small hours. for various reasons i don't remember much of my early adulthood, the bit before kids, although i'm fairly sure i was both a. unaware of my relatively slinky dimensions and b. a total bitch.

actually, i just looked at the lineup and said "oh, meh." out loud. i blame the chorizo rush. i remember when all this were fields, etc.

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i can't haz cheezburger, or, a uncharacteristically self indulgent, moping post, with possibly tmi. i offer a link to lolcats as recompense.

2009-08-22T08:49:00.000-07:00

i'm not quite sure what i'm supposed to think when my SO says we are having problems in our relationship, have been for months, that i am lying to myself if i splutter with disbelief at the suggestion. like i did.

i'm not sure what to think when he says he can't afford, or rather, resents the assumption that he would, take me out for dinner. (it's my birthday in three days, a meal out was all i asked for. we haven't been out since march.) equally, he resents the assumption that he would take me and the children on holiday, to provide us with this, with that... when i never even asked him to. never even hoped he would. wondered if he would come with us one day, yes. never once assumed he'd pay to go to bloody disney, despite his mentioning it mere weeks into our relationship.

should i have thought "ouch" when he told me that he'd taken his parents out for dinner last night? like i did?

he says he's sick of pressure regarding where the relationship is going, if we're getting married. this pressure does not come directly from me. i admit i do occasionally wonder aloud where this is going, if it has a future. it's been three and a half years. we have never really discussed it.

he says he lavishes his time on me, and that, because of me, he has no time to sort his own life out. he works full time, plays basketball, lives alone. on average, he spends 2 to 3 weekends a month with friends, family, or by himself. the other weekends he spends with me. we live 2.5 hours apart. he is angry that i passed up on an offer to get me driving lessons while he had the (then very small) children on alternate saturday mornings two years ago, but now i will be learning to drive this autumn when rudy starts school.

he says that i am not supportive of his plans, and because of me, he and a friend of his will not be going travelling together for a few of weeks this year as previously planned. this is news to me. i was demonstrably upset for him when he told me that he would not be going, and had previously encouraged him to get on with the organisation. apparently i made him feel guilty.

all these ambitions and aspirations he had when he met me are going out the window. apparently this is entirely my responsibility.

there is no time to discuss any of this. it's out there now, since thursday, but there hasn't been a good time to talk about it since, despite his continuing anger.

i have a feeling this might not be the funnest birthday ever.

added to which i undertook at the beginning of the week to do the frigging master cleanse (dairy allergies) and now only my tenacity is seeing me through. if i stop, i'll get judged by a man that stopped smoking, cold turkey, three weeks ago. with help from the alan carr book i bought him last year.

burger king would help.

sorry.

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oh. hang on a minute...

2009-08-17T03:08:00.000-07:00

adhd?

is this a joke?

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for those about to enter reception class, we salute you

2009-08-14T06:43:00.000-07:00

rudy is not being diagnosed with asperger's! just dcd/adhd! for now! under ongoing observation! unmedicated! for now! for ever if i have anything to do with it!

and rudy just 'graduated' from nursery with a certificate, a fairy cake, and a medal that says "winner" on it. we've said goodbye.

it's been emotional. now to sew a million name tags into his uniform.

*throws devil hand signal.*

*goes to make pot of tea.*

other people's children

2009-08-10T11:19:00.000-07:00

hmmm. i can't be the only person who has ever stumbled over a photograph of a child who is clearly my children's half brother on the internet (etsy, of all places) and thought, with all due respect to his mother, that my two were actually much better looking and actually in my honest, totally unbiased opinion my kids are like something out of a burberry campaign, and then felt really bad, but i'm damned if i can find an appropriate forum.

my brain thusly marinated in evil superficiality and shock, i toyed, fleetingly, with the idea of encouraging (read: masterminding) p n'r's careers as child models, with a view to raising their university tuition fees (fine art and engineering, respectively, probably, hopefully) and improving everyone's lives a hundredfold with their winsomeness. of course, i swiftly dismissed the idea. for a start, the pair of them are wont to swan about looking almost unbearably beautiful... and then a camera is produced... at which point they both adopt the squint/ expand-mouth-laterally-to-extremities-of-jawline school of smiling. but more importantly, neither of them would really stand for it. unless you happen to be the progeny of a rockstar, or a once-in-a-generation kate moss type, modelling can reduce one's sense of self to nothing but a set of scrawled features on a piece of acetate- rather specifically what i do not wish for my children. so it'll be down the mine like the rest of us, then.

later, as if to compound my instincts, i watched a documentary on bbc3 entitled baby beauty queens, or something, about the inaugural miss mini miss uk beauty pageant for the terminally over glittered tween (i might have misremembered the actual title here) and was pretty much disturbed to bits. there was a lovely, intelligent, pretty child who had had cosmetic surgery at 7, whose mother would get cross if she chose to wear her glasses rather than contact lenses. there was another lovely, intelligent, pretty child whose mother had made her a believe-board with pictures of naomi campbell, pound signs and a chihauhau called gucci on it. of course, there was an adorable, ethereal and gracious sweetheart from a council estate (cue lingering shots of smashed windows and copious litter) who genuinely didn't feel that winning was important, and had a likeable, bright mother desperate to give her preemie princess something to believe in.

a twelve year old, 5'6", natural (read: suspiciously unglittery) beauty in a £3k frock took the crown. hell's teeth. apart from our preemie princess, who quietly got on with carving out a career in modelling, and good for her, there were tears, tiaras and tantrums abound. and that was just the mums. i am ever more grateful for my daughter's ambition to open a patisserie, and my son's ambition to try "all of the jobs, except magician". ("just because.")

sometimes i think i might not actually, technically, be the worst mother in the world, and i wonder why that is not more uplifting a thought.

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home (extended edition)

2009-08-08T09:13:00.001-07:00

hey. we're home. heartfelt apologies to anyone that thought we had fatally succumbed to swine flu- we haven't, but we have been away in order to fully recouperate, and i am that highly distractable person that forgets about the internet (if not those i encounter upon it) after a day's enforced absense. we are all well and hope that you are too.

what you can see above is not our home, but that of my father. actually that's a lie. it is the home of an iron-age person, as seen from the land my father and his wife own. if you crunch across the drive and wander down the top field at seven pm (invariably with glass of wine in hand) this is the view.

so that's where we've been. enjoying the unexpected sunshine, eating expansive meals cooked on the aga, striding about in the manure with dogs at our heels. the yearling won champion of champions at the show, rudy actually did a drawing (of the sun!), i made a lasagne that could enter an appropriate hall of fame; we had a good time.

*****terrifyingly long asd rant paragraph alert*****

my father's wife is essentially a top-tier senco. she makes decisions that impact upon every sen kid in the country (which, just to confuse you, is not the country i live in). she literally identified rudy's dyspraxia at 200 paces. but asperger's?... seeing him thrive in a different context, realising how far he has come in the last six months ,witnessing his extensive, gregarious social skills and his overall adaptability anew made me able to review the recent assessments in a different, less trusting way. he's an intelligent, flapping kid with a broad vocabulary. we live in a 'deprived' area... perhaps attempts are being made to find more serious (neurological?) explanations for an inherent geekiness than are actually appropriate. for example, it was noted by the occupational therapist recently that dyspraxia was not evident during her assessment, and that his coordination difficulties are more the product of sensory processing issues. while i accept that all the recommendations she made would be helpful to rudy in terms of developing his physical and sp capabilities, i am more wary, than i was, of her suggestion of an asd label. the label could get in the way more than what i perceive as the real issues. i don't know if rudy will end up in the nba, say, but to summarily dismiss it does him a disservice (rudy is tall, so i'm not being entirely delusional.) as the statementing and support funding process in england changes, rudy will receive whatever support he needs without that definitive label. other friends and family who happen to be teaching and support assistants are beyond alarmed by the suggestion that rudy could be autistic. the preliminary speech and language report references an inability to correctly describe what is going on in an illustration of a girl drying her hair with a towel. rudy laughs and says she has a rug on her head, which in our house is about as likely. an inabillity to identify that an elephant is talking on the telephone and has the cord wound around his trunk ("he has a spring on his nose") is fair enough, as far as i'm concerned... rudy was born in 2004 and as such has never met a corded 'phone. is this not, again, cultural/environmental... and actually okay? we recently encountered a bizarre munchhausen-ish/ competitive statementing situation very close to home, which, while i won't go into the details, delivered a timely dose of further objectivity.

the paediatrician might tell me otherwise on wednesday but as far as i am concerned, there is no issue that isn't covered by the dyspraxia dx. and that's that. i'm home.

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oh. right.

2009-07-15T15:25:00.000-07:00

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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sick!

2009-07-14T16:43:00.000-07:00

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*.

triskaidekaphilia

2009-07-09T13:06:00.000-07:00

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.

ma-ma-se, etc.

2009-07-07T10:59:00.000-07:00

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.

postal

2009-07-06T03:59:00.000-07:00

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.

indigo dog

2009-06-19T03:42:00.000-07:00

my son is not a "funny looking kid", he was working those babygros from about 3 months old, he was the baby everyone greeted with a "duuuuude". he's seriously popular, and kids can be shallow people.

my son is not "slow". i'm sick of people- of friends-telling me, apropos of nothing, that "it's not important if he doesn't ever go to university", based on their feeble grasp of his diagnosis. wtf? first of all, he's four (4). secondly, he's scary bright and a great communicator with adults. third, he's obsessed with robots and comes from a long line of celebrated engineers on all sides. i had to seriously hold my tongue this morning as someone laid the "so what if he's not academically clever" crap on me whilst her own child had just picked his nose and riffed on bums and willies for a good five minutes.

my son shouldn't be persecuted on his own turf in the interest of "toughening him up". we are currently under siege by neighbouring kids every day after school and on weekends as some fences are down and those responsible can't be bothered to replace them. these kids will stroll into my house and use the play equipment even if my kids aren't around. i'm laid back, but these kids are really really not very nice, and their parents assume the issue is that my kids are "too sensitive". i am turning into an alsation; montana is likely to throw down some cgi werewolf madness this weekend should this continue.

my son is awesome, eerily placid, with a delightful take on the world. ignorant pigeon-holing haters are beginning to rile me. it's bringing out the indigo in me. it's not good.

.

processing...

2009-06-18T04:04:00.000-07:00

every time we meet with a new professional, the outlook looks bleaker. this week it was a very long occupational therapy assessment; educational psychology and speech and language coming soon. as i've said before, i don't quite understand why this is happening when previously we were all satisfied moving forward i.e.p.-wise with a list of "differences" rather than a solid diagnosis. actually i do, but it seems a little inconsistent. the thing i am attempting to focus upon is how "charming" and "delightful" all these new people profess to find my little boy.

so i've retreated somewhat, as i am apt to do. it can be quite tiring being how i normally am socially, and at the moment i don't really have it in me. i can't really string a sentence together. the phone rings and i can't always pick it up. i'd rather not speak at all than have people be all nice and understanding because that's when i can't keep it together anymore. it's just how i am. i can pull off my usual cheerfulness with the kids (to a point), the school run, and the required amount of interaction involved in day to day living, but no more. the closer someone is to me the more less i have to say to them at times like this. i feel like i'm letting people down and am not very good at articulating what's going on with me.

anyway, being all kinds of done with the "characterful throw", i am cheering myself up looking at ryan reynolds, and suggest that anyone else with a severe predilection for snidely funny bearded beefcake follows suit. here's ryan with multiple ow-ies having suffered some sort of run in with a marvel character. that might be code for something; i'm beyond caring.

.

it's not right, and it's not okay.

2009-06-14T13:12:00.000-07:00

i used to be so obsessed with this film; travolta's performance remains my number one go-to dinner party oscars injustice. (you know. these things come up.)

anyway.

this doesn't feel right but, two days after the rest of the internet, here it is.

this is what has been on my mind most of the weekend. it's been very quiet.

this, and the fact that a million gossip sites are now full of comments informing their readership that autism is a mental illness.

(i just had to go back and edit because i'd capitalised correctly, this always happens when i'm distracted- when i concentrate it is a humungous fail, hence the usual modus operandi.)

um!

2009-06-10T14:12:00.000-07:00

incredibly, when we got to the doctor's surgery this morning (not paediatrician), my daughter did have an appointment and it was today and it was at the time we turned up!

i am not a completely unorganised delusional sham of a mother!

*raises glass of wine. well it is wednesday!*

the assessment went okay!

no referrals, no interventions, no diagnosis!

yay!

my daughter just experiences life with a literally painful intensity.

boo.

.

head/ hands

2009-06-08T15:18:00.000-07:00

1. on the phone just a minute ago, i told montana that he has a new name on this blog. that he has a name at all. and he is bitterly disappointed that it is not 'futurecybertron'. honestly.

2. because it is now attempting to be summer, one felt one had to step up the grooming a notch or twelve. i went into lush looking for something that would render me slightly less reptilian and waltzed out with a 'business time' massage bar, which, as you will know because you are so utterly and irrevocably hip, is some sort of 'flight of the conchords' tribute. watching that, i realise that it's supposed to be an aphrodisiac. oh. whatever- i am totally distracted by the smell of my arms. it's so very great that i am going to have to give it up... at least on weekdays, or days in which i have to pull focus of any kind, or not get chased down the road by dogs. honestly, it's like baby powder, or burlap, or freshly printed wedding invitations. ridiculously good.

3. little boy is now on his third (3rd) copy of wall-e. he is literally wearing them out.

4. i'm turning the kitchen into a gigantic chalkboard. right now. don't say anything. just pass me that brush. what do you mean, "regrettably compulsive"?

5. it's my daughter's first assessment tomorrow.

6. there is no espresso in the fridge. there is no espresso in the fridge. there is no espresso in the fridge.

7. everyone, and by everyone i mean everyone in the world that isn't me or you or perhaps some other people you know, is going on holiday this weekend. away. everyone. look at them, with their patrick gale novels and their passports and their sun tan lotion and their hopes of relaxation and/or a good time. quitters.

8. at the end of the month, i get to go clothes shopping. glee. this doesn't happen very often anymore, as i need to keep my children in socks and evacuee-style frocks. i am attempting to resist the urge to spend all my hard saved wedge on one beautiful (ridiculous) item that lives year round in my wardrobe with all of it's glamourous (ridiculous) chums, while i lurch out of the house each morning in tracksuit bottoms with ground in play-doh and some delapidated t-shirt commemorating my wonderful time at the sorbonne (i never went to the sorbonne). exchanging the money into topshop vouchers might be the solution, but then knowing me i'll end up with four identical kate moss maxi dresses and some delusional notion that i have been practical. again. i hate what the fashion industry has done to me.

9. we have five impending blooms on our new papaver orientale, which, as my five year old daughter poppy points out, is fairly 'iconic'.

10. after a weekend of alternating threats and bribes, being screamed at, empty promises, pleading, insults, whining and foot stamping, i have been broken. i am now going to go and clean aforementioned daughter's bedroom, with any luck before environmental health show up.

i don't know where she gets it from.

nature/ nature

2009-06-08T08:03:00.000-07:00

yesterday, r. took the opportunity to avail himself of several episodes of the clone wars. it being quite a cosy sort of day, he fell asleep. because i knew that if i attempted to rouse him i would have to spend the rest of the afternoon with him on my hip, engaging him brightly in my every passing thought just to ensure that he remained conscious, i let him sleep. until 5.30pm. oops.

so by last night, the boy child was in a chatty sort of mood. i put him to bed, and he kept wondering back down again, to talk. i'd take him straight back up again, and then be plead with to stay.

"let's talk about... pistons?" he might say.

"oh, okay," i might respond. what can i say, he sells it well.

so, off he went about pistons, and because i am not particularly technically minded, my contribution to the conversation might have been disappointing but for the fact that rudy sometimes needs his own questions repeated to him before he can be quite sure about things.

i threw him one such question. i can't remember what it was. but in response i got a

"yyyyeargh. and then..."

but he'd lost me. because by that point i was sitting with my mouth hanging open. rudy had just, for a split second, for the duration of that 'yyyyeargh', and for some waving arm movements that followed it, turned into his father.

seeing as the last time rudy saw his father he was only weeks old, it is highly unlikely that he learned those mannerisms from him. and, naturally, his father does not have the monopoly on a protracted 'yeah' and gesticulative communication. but it was more than that. it was, for want of a better word, weird.

and it occurs to me that i, and everyone else in our lives, tend, quite naturally and without affectation, to think of my children as just mine- the product of my family's collective gene pool and no one else's. our faces are fairgrounds of recessive genetic traits. despite the fact that he is incredible with them, it's fairly obvious they are not montana's. they are my kids.

i eventually managed to wrap up the machinery chat and went downstairs. i had company, and soon forgot about it.

but later, on my own, an unspoken "he did that thing that you do" hung in the air, competing with my relief at not being in a situation to say it to him.

.

trip

2009-06-06T08:59:00.000-07:00

see that pigeon above us, there?

well, if you tried to tempt that pigeon with hovis sliced or a nice scone, he'd probably turn his beak up. he'd want ciabatta, dipped in the finest ligurian oil, probably, as that pigeon up there is italian. that picture was actually taken a stone's throw away from the roman forum on new year's eve, 2007. i know- take me to some beautiful historical ruins, and i'm photographing flying vermin and using the zoom to check out people's terraces. ciao!

anyway, so, because it's like june and stuff, we're discussing at present where to spend new year 2009/10. by we, i mean myself and my man, who might be feeling guilty about setting out from california in a muscle car without me this summer. perhaps. a terrible formative experience in a suburban nightclub has left him with seasonal compulsive wanderlust; new year must be spent in a different place (and for place read country) each and every year. i'm spoiled. the first year that we were together, we spent it on a remote and misty swedish island- we got in about 3 hours of daylight over a 4 day break. the second year, i clambered over roman ruins in 6" heels. we saw in 2009 watching rubber clad gendarms make examples of argentinians with fireworks on the chanse elise, while people inexplicably shouted "tony montana!" at my man (hmm. if tony montana had a beard. and was 6'4". and wasn't a drug lord.) this year, however, i would be quite happy to stay at my house. or his house. or, for that matter, babington house. sigh.

but the problem with this is that once england is done, it's done. i don't know when the current nye mandate is going to come to term, and i'm not really inclined to ask as mr. montana says vague things about the future enough as it is. i am just realising that i am becoming the kind of person that packs earl grey tea bags, is usually bitterly disappointed with the food and misses the pound sterling more than is reasonable. we resent other tourists and get sniffy about their eurotrash accessories. montana and i get stressed out speaking foreign languages in front of eachother. in paris, we spent one whole evening in our 8' wide bed- eating cheese and watching an old episode of jonathon creek, wistfully tearing up at the bbc idents.

obviously, the ideal is to build ourselves a mobile treehouse. montana stipulates hot tub, wi-fi access, a 40" (minimum) screen of some sort, decent pillows and a barbecue. i require hot water and good light. i might suggest we pimp a shed, or buy a winnebago and montana learns to solder, but before you know it, we'll be planning a "waterworld" themed new year, and hopefully my future doesn't have much kevin costner in it.

and so, concluded by a series of kneejerk reactions and 4 minutes of flight research, i'm willing to bet that montana settles for st. petersburg, which is dandy because it gives me the opportunity to shop for mukluks in the off season- which will obviously come in handy, later, for the treehouse.

i love it when a plan comes together.

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the sartorialist 2

2009-06-04T11:57:00.000-07:00

so, today there was another straight faced meeting about r.'s asperger's diagnosis. he is shortly to meet with an educational psychologist (not my stress, but i like it, so it stays) and a speech and language therapist. it seems what i was happy to think of as an asperger's 'haze'- like donald trump's hair- is to be made something more tangible. more of a hat, perhaps- an asperger's fedora seems appropriate. we, the adults present, talked earnestly and at length about the validity and ultimate goals of this process. we weighed up the pros and cons of what i am choosing to think of as 'preemptive labelling' (better 'aspergic' than 'lazy', or 'stupid'...*narrows eyes*). we reviewed what specifically in the reception year rudy might need support with. we got to the point where we were repeating ourselves and eachother, justifying the process and each of our roles within it. as per.

"i know, roight, guys, but check out my new chucks?" said the little boy in question, in his startlingly sweet bristol burr, suddenly toes-a-posing in the physical epicentre of our concentration.

ah, levity.

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oc-dc

2009-06-04T06:37:00.000-07:00

"it seems that for success in science and art," hans asperger wrote, "a dash of autism is essential."

i recently witnessed someone very dear to me boiling and ironing 20 of her son's handkerchiefs. it was a beautiful day outside. she was being exorted to come outside, put her feet up, and enjoy her beautiful garden and a glass of wine. no, she said, i have to finish these, clean out a cupboard and properly store these cashmere pieces i have just laundered. then i have to polish the bannisters. no, don't worry, i want to do it. i know what i'm doing, so i'll have it done in a couple of hours. no, go you and sit down.

it was her birthday. swear to god.

seems to me, for perfect housekeeping, a dash of ocd is essential.

i don't have ocd.

.

snort

2009-06-01T02:46:00.001-07:00

...yes i realise that i am tragic, tragic individual. and yes, i did stay up last night until 2am (on a school night) to watch the new moon trailer and, yes, i do feel that jake shapeshifting has redeemed the few hours of my life spent gazing at the mediocre smell-the-fart fest that was 'twilight', and, alright, i might have made an actual "squee!" noise when he did it and there might previously have been a bit of a "hubba" too, and, yes, i wrestle with this ethically, yes, but at least i accept that the t-shirts can't be realistically worked into my summer wardrobe of ancient fred perry and kate moss's frocks for topshop which, incidentally, i seem to have solidly budgeted around from may to september for the last three years. it's the weather. honest.

in other news, we are back! we went away for a few days to my boyfriend's 'hood. i have been mostly been drinking wine and have satisfactorily depleted, clearly, many, many brain cells. this is in no way related to the fact that the next few weeks hold both an occupational therapy and mental health assesment for my various children, so... yeah. i might go and watch that boy become a wolf again. don't judge me.

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cl-awesome; an i.d. crafting update. woo.

2009-05-18T07:45:00.000-07:00

yes, i have been doing crochet. i'm so unbelievably rock n' roll.

but please noone think for a minute that a) i am fashioning cozies for yorkshire terriers, or b) that i am any good at it whatsoever. no.

when out shopping with my sister, we fawned over a pale blue crochet thing (i am hesitant to say "throw"- this kind of etimological travesty only makes me want to suffix with an "up") which was both exorbitantly expensive and mass produced. and, while we're on the subject, dry clean only. we checked the price. we hastily put it back.

so then, after frowning over youtube for several hours, i started making my own. i've torn 3 days worth of work on it down. twice. see, i am bringing both ineptitude and perfectionism to this one.

and i can't get the hold right, so i am also developing "the claw". epic.

going dental

2009-05-17T12:37:00.001-07:00

my daughter is losing teeth at a rate of knots- in a good, colgate approved way of course. tonight she lost her fourth in as many months; thankfully she didn't swallow this one, so the tooth fairy won't have be putting on her size 0.3 sparkly hunters any time soon.

p.'s one of the first in her class to be losing teeth, by virtue of the facts that she is the oldest by a good few weeks and has a mother who lost her teeth early. and, whom, incidentally, kept the new ones in immaculate condition until the advent of her twenties, what with all the diet coke and intensive gestational periods that they hosted. not at the same time, of course. much.

so p. wants to take her tooth in to show to her classmates, but is concerned about any peceived lapse in protocol.

"mummy, we'll have to hide it from the tooth fairy, or she'll take it."

"no problem, honey pie, i'll text her. like that time we had to text her because you were at granny's house when you lost your last tooth. i'll just ask if she can come tomorrow night instead."

"did you have to text her then to tell her where it was? that we were at granny's?"

"yes. i sent directions. it wasn't a problem. so this time she'll just come to get it tomorrow."

"will she know where it is tomorrow?"

"yes. i'll put at the end of the text that we are at our usual address this time. just put it on the mantelpiece, baby girl."

i noticed that when she did, she tucked it carefully out of sight, behind a postcard of john simmons' titania, who could presumably see off the tooth fairy if it came to it. nice touch. she turned around again, on her tiptoes, thoughtfully.

"mummy, don't you meet the tooth fairy in starbucks like you do father christmas? i thought that was how she knew when to come?"

i couldn't remember what i'd said. i had to hide behind my wineglass while her scepticism bored into my temple.

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blessed three (3); stability

2009-05-16T07:23:00.001-07:00

right. haven't posted in a while.

couple of reasons:

1) crochet

or, manic stitches as coping mechanism.

2) realisation

for a while now, i've been so busy getting used to the neuro-smorgasboard my family bring to the table, i had quite forgotten to consider the other half of my children's genetical input- or should i say their biological father.

it may come as something of a surprise to some of you that my children were not, as a matter of fact, immaculately conceived. and if it doesn't, believe me, remembering that fact is bit of a shock to me. i don't remember much of it at all.

a few years ago i found myself in a bad situation. unknown place. job and home fell through; nowhere to go. friend of mine wanted to make it better. he didn't- he made it different. we entered into something that i am reluctant to describe as a relationship, it was more a hostage situation. violence. drugs. every job, every career opportunity, i had was sabotaged. the police were involved. i got used to being terrified. despite every precautionary measure available to me, my daughter was conceived, and despite ending up in hospital a couple of times during her gestation, she was born. shortly after i got pregnant again with my son and he, again, somehow, made it to term. his father went to work in another city a short time after, and we never saw him again.

bewilderingly as it seems now, it took a while to realise the relief. i needed answers. i attempted to maintain contact between him and the children, and got in response death threats, trumped up delusional accusations regarding the children's provenance and bizarre pleas that i take him back and we run away together. he had no bank account of his own, and before i could realise what was happening, he ran up huge debts in my name. my credit is wrecked. he has since had at least one other child. it turns out that there is at least one other, older, child too. so that's going to be one of many interesting conversations for the future.

this man had a terrible childhood. no, that doesn't make everything he has done since alright, but it remains. he had a severely disabled older brother that i some ways his parents found much easier to deal with. things at home were bad. he went into care and was moved from foster home to foster home until leaving entirely at the age of 15. he had bad problems at school despite his intelligence, is barely literate, can't countenence authority of any kind, still has problems maintaining friendships and relationships, is manipulative and controlling, is hugely insecure and gullible; vulnerable and easily led despite the scary tough guy image he attempts to maintain. i think you know what i am saying. i am not going to list the myriad other quirks. incredibly, he found training and got very good at a trade that allows him to change jobs every two weeks whenever he falls out with his boss and/ or goes on a two week jack daniels and gaming jag. we have zero contact- he has completely reinvented me in order to justify his actions.

i know it would impossible to have attained this level of forgiveness were he still in my life, but all of a sudden, i'm there. i don't often think about him. no, this maybe isn't what i had hoped my life would look like, but i have to be grateful for my two brilliant children, and that their differences have been identified early, before they can fester and turn on us all.

our understanding and stability are worth more to our children than any of us can really imagine.

and now, for balance, some more spongebob. not normal.

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elmo

2009-05-10T16:25:00.000-07:00

right so anyway i've had a wholly crappy few days but today fate, the stars and (trying to think of some appropriate deity here; all i can come up with is elmo...) whomever colluded to bring me out of this godforsaken funk.

it was a sunny day today. we got up early and did that nice sunday morning pottering thing where it feels like you are in an ongoing conversation even though noone says anything, necessarily, and you may all be in different rooms.

p. went to a birthday party this afternoon, so my son and i went to the park. nothing can coax r. out from behind his cuddle blanket like an opportunity to get dizzy, so we hared about the playground in a manner reminiscent of those pharmaceutical trials on spiders, from swings to slide, to smaller slide, to swing, to wierd rocking cockerel thing, to slide, to metal toadstool, to swing, to slide, to slide. but something caught my eye. i came over all private benjamin.

"rudy, " i said, "how would you like to try the super grown up balancing journey."

together, we looked across at the small course. stepping stones. logs on springs. small rope bridges. a low-wire of chain. we squinted into the dappled light that fell on the course, surrounded as it is by trees and low seasonal flora. we checked the windspeed and direction. we prepared ourselves mentally. we camouflaged our faces with boot polish.

"yeah," said rudy. and we went for it.

i was surprised and encouraged by r's enthusiasm and confidence, and his insistence that he would do this thing at his own pace. older boys came up behind us. rudy explained very reasonably that they would have to wait. they did. it didn't take long to do, this course, but it was quite meaningful for me; something i will remember.

as we reached the end, in a particular hairy part, r., slightly in front of me said,

"mummy, look! there are crocodiles all below us!"

"gosh, well, we need to be careful then."

"noooo, mummy. they won't eat us- they're cheering for us! yay!"

and with that, he jumped off the end of the course- something i would never have thought i'd see him do even two months ago.

i have a lot to learn from this boy.

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ephemera

2009-05-08T18:28:00.000-07:00

being on my own is fine until i have a glimpse of an alternative.

being alone is one thing; loneliness is quite another.

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where's rudy?

2009-05-07T13:00:00.000-07:00

rudy's keyworker has the week off, ("she is at holiday, in the north pole." states rudy, definitively; she is in poland) and the room at nursery is full of agency staff. he keeps coming home with food all over his face, his trousers unbuttoned and his shoes on the wrong feet. he is really quiet, whiney and withdrawn when i go to get him and twice so far has actually fallen asleep after getting home at around 2pm. i notice when the temporary staff attempted to engage him- for example, rudy went to get his thomas from his drawer to take home with him and on the way back tripped up over a book. he just picked himself up and carried on. as per normal. maybe because i was there, one of the temps asked him, in baby talk, if he was okay... you know, the way that you or i might talk to a pink cgi chihauhau with a broken arm out of politeness- he completely ignored her.

this has happened before. last time she had a week off, he refused to go in at all. i wouldn't say that they are especially bonded, but they get eachother. they're fond. she has in the past, even in a diagnosis environment, played down rudy's differences. that is cool, because to her that's just how rudy is. she understands that differences exist nontheless, and knows that there are some things he won't think to do or needs support doing. she understands and respects that he often plays by himself, will only really engage on his own terms, and stims out from time to time. they have a laid-back-buddy kind of rapport. this might not be the case if he was disruptive, but he's not. so it works.

seeing how much he has regressed this week makes me slightly concerned about the impending big change in environment and person-scenery, when he goes to school. he is floppier this week, taking his thomas everywhere (rather than wall-e or some other robotic conversational prop), has to be reminded to take his thumb out of his mouth to talk, after which he decides he can't be bothered. i couldn't engage him, there was nothing he wanted to do. i picked him up and took him out into the garden to watch the guy next door's pigeons, but he whined until he was lying back down on the sofa, preferably curled up on my lap, being rocked. he didn't even want to read the book about cogs and levers. he's staring into space a lot. won't play. coping.

i'm missing him.

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let's be co-people

2009-05-07T02:13:00.001-07:00

or, part 5(?) of the occasional series in which all the best things in life are claimed by indigo doll on behalf of the neuro-atypical.

i'll be quick because i'm supposed to be cleaning my house, but i just had a flashback of an interview i saw with will ferrell. and then i thought i'd dreamt it, so i turned to google (obv) and found this:

"Born and raised in the Los Angeles, California, suburb of Irvine, in 1968, Ferrell was an easygoing child. "He was born like that," his mother, Kay, told Scott Raab in Esquire. "You know those little Matchbox cars? Will would line up his Matchbox cars, by himself, and be totally happy. You'd say, 'You wanna go to Disneyland today or line up your cars?' and he'd have to think about it." Ferrell was known as a funny kid even in elementary school, where he would punch himself in the head just to make girls laugh."

*excitedly bites lip*

also, in case you already didn't know, professor simon baron cohen (designer of the aq test) is sacha baron cohen's cousin. oh yes.

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my bathroom mirror

2009-05-06T16:16:00.000-07:00

for anyone reading who may not be familiar with the comments section of this blog (think of it as a sunny backstage area at glastonbury where a previously undiscovered, and only slightly warm, crate of becks has just been found behind a hay bale. on day 3. oh alright then, don't.) the lovely LPC of privilege recently furnished me with this award (see above), and i've been a little at a loss what to say actually, apart from thank you, whilst brushing tears away from a huge pink ralph lauren frock . oh no, that wasn't me. anyhoo.

LPC started blogging in february, like me. her first post concerned weddings, like me. but she wrote from a very different perspective, and whereas i droned on about some grey dress and awkwardness with my boyfriend in the transparently bitter code of [/spinst], LPC finished her first post like this-

"A key to dealing with the problem of eventual death is to find an ironic stance towards one’s identity, while still embracing all the acts and experiences that create that identity. Embracing them over and over and over again. While irony gives distance, embrace brings immediacy. In an immediate moment, who can worry so much about eventual death? "

LPC writes with honesty, humility and insight, and a stark, evocative elegance; she can be deep about the superficial, and after lurking for a while this prompted me to comment. she recently posted on taste and had me thinking analytically about my bathroom mirror for two days. it's all really very good.

so yeah. chuffed.

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any given wednesday

2009-05-06T11:42:00.000-07:00

ohmygodiamjustsoridiculouslytired. how is it just a wednesday at the beginning of may rather than a friday at THE END OF ALL TIME. i ask you.

several people asked me this afternoon in the playground- as i attempted to herd my silverfish-ish children in the general direction of home- if i was okay. this is unusual, (but i suspect that by this point i had actual steam actually coming out of my actual ears) and i responded, "i will be by the time i have a glass of wine". and this was heartily endorsed. at 3pm. by a largely middle class, and by that i mean guardian reading, and by that i mean child-led child-rearing of the home-knitted-hummous sort, test audience.

just like occasional fried egg sandwich dinners and having a world view shaped entirely by vogue and charlie brooker columns, the occasional glass of wine at hometime is something that i make absolutely no apology for. yeah- i said it. in fact, i'll go so far as to say a glass of wine, on occasion, makes me into a better parent (see also- girlfriend, friend, daughter, cook, psychic, international ambassador, and ninja assassin. oh. i've said too much.) in this afternoon's case, it allowed me to sit and do my daughter's spellings with her, rather than taking off down the street babbling snippets of dialogue from footloose to myself before assuming the foetal position in a lift in the house of fraser, rocking. i just have to watch that it doesn't become the occasional therapeutic can of special brew. at the school gates. seriously.

in other news, i had an incisor crown fitted today at the end of a fairly epic post childbearing course of dental treatment which is just frigging amazing. i can't stop looking at it. somebody there wasn't drinking on the job.

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just a canada dry, thankyou, dear

2009-05-05T05:55:00.000-07:00

my grandmother is a legend.

born in colonial south africa as one of the very few english children in a largely afrikaaner community, she met my grandfather during the war when he was stationed out there with the RAF. after the war, she relocated to england with the rest of her family, mainly so that her sister, my great aunt, could pursue her ballet career.

my grandmother became the family's sole breadwinner for a while, and reestablished contact with my grampa. they were married soon after. from a farming background, he said he chose her for her incredible genetic stock and finely turned ankles. he sent her some money for her engagement ring, which she bought in south africa (of course) and sent him the exact change. she looked for all the world like jane russell... and actually she still does, but still with naturally dark hair and no scary face lift.

a champion of the pussy bow and never known to leave the house without lipstick or chanel no. 19, my grandmother exemplifies that adage "strong words, softly spoken"- her approval is everything to all seven of her grandchildren. all of us lived under her and grampa's roof at various times, and she has never been anything less than lovingly consistent and outrageously generous. nana's gravy is painstakingly replicated every sunday at my house; her bread sauce perfection continues to elude me. life has thrown her some curveballs in the lifestyles and predicaments of her children and grandchildren, but she has always graciously rolled with the punches, bolted to the ground with that incredible smile. when my grandfather sadly passed away on the side of a mountain in 2002, she put him into the recovery position and calmly called the air ambulance from the mobile phone i had taught her to use not a month previously. it was like he knew, but that is another story. i wrote to her, thanking her, and him, for showing me an example that made marriage look like a viable life option. my daughter was born the following year. my children adore her, and i love her very much.

it his her birthday today. may there be many happy returns, nana.

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the windmills of my mind

2009-05-04T15:49:00.000-07:00

1. triskaidekaphilia (as always.)

2. redecorating (as always.)

3. is it really acceptable to wear a navy v-neck cashmere blend jumper/ t-rex t-shirt with navy skinny jeans and ballet flats practically every time you leave the house now? because that is what is happening, madam.

4. swine flu has made it to gloucestershire. if it comes to it, i am *totally* drawing handlebar moustaches on the children's surgical masks.

5. i need to get better at working alcohol into my food budget. how many calories are in tequila?

6. i'm growing my hair back. it turns out i am not, actually, amelie.

7. has rudy got socks for tomorrow? where are all rudy's socks? (as always.)

8. tomorrow, my love, we sow a meadow.

9. a waitress asked me if i was, "like, actually dairy intolerant" the other day after i ordered my soy latte, and i almost felt justified in answering "yes- if i have it now i get really disgusting spots and this rash all over my chest and OMG the MUCUS," but that sounded a little diva-ish so i just said "nah. just faddy."

10. i recently pruned my satellite tv subscription right back and this weekend it has been nigh-on impossible to find a film to watch that didn't have jim carey in it. jenny mccarthy has ruined eternal sunshine of the spotless mind for me, and she's not even in it.

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may day/ pink boots

2009-05-03T04:12:00.000-07:00

yesterday, i went boots shopping with my little girl.

we went to the uk's most prolific purveyor of sensible shoes, which, as usual for a saturday, resembled the dunkirk landings. my sister came along for moral support and to periodically say to me, in a low voice, "we are going to starbucks after this kafka-esque nightmare, aren't we. tell me we are, or i might have to run screaming from the mall right now, possibly kicking that woman in the temple on my way. who wears capri length khakis, really. jesus."

once we were eventually served, the boot choosing process was a cinch (which colour do you like? pink. sold.) we three trudged back to the car bearing our frappucinos and something of a thousand yard stare and arrived home to some great news. two of our cousins have managed to knock up their respective wifes/ girlfriends at the same time and so we have two new babies arriving in the autumn. yay.

sitting in silence digesting this news, it occurred to me that two years ago one of these pairings were involved in the hunt for madelaine mccann when she first went missing; they were living in that particular portugese resort at the time. when i saw them some months later, my cousin spoke to me with something approaching bitterness of the hoo-ha surrounding her tragic disappearance, obviously coloured by the complex and yet by that time prevalent anti kate and gerry mccann feeling in praia da luz.

i hope that the happy news my cousin has shared this weekend helps him to develop something of an understanding as to why the mccanns acted the way that they did, and why they continue to hope that their little girl is still out there somewhere.

watching my poppy play football at his wedding in her flower girl dress certainly did it for me. she can have all the pink boots and mango frappucinos in the world. (caveats apply.)

huge congratulations and lashings of preparation h to both couples.

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ha!

2009-04-27T13:19:00.000-07:00

i've lost funny.

i just don't feel like talking to anyone. i seem to have turned into ally sheedy circa the breakfast club era, minus the dandruff and emilio estevez. about a nano second after this occurred to me, a further astonishing revellation dawned- i never really stopped being ally sheedy circa the breakfast club era. i just developed a fear of the silence. gasp. quick- everybody draw a jesus and mary chain logo on their army surplus bag and suppress that buzz of self knowledge.

you see, lest anyone be thoroughly mislead by my earlier posts on shoes and jackets and bewildering working knowledge of the turn-up, i would like to point out that i have never, ever been cool. if i have had momentary flirtations with popularity, they have been sparse and strictly contextual. some people are good at making people want to be around them. i, she said, poking her head out of a georgian handkerchief archive, don't seem to be that bothered.

but this weekend my jock boyfriend built me an actual path, so i suppose every dog gets its day.

environ-mental

2009-04-24T06:24:00.001-07:00

i've been walking around with my head in fog for the last couple of days, stuttering, stumbling, and generally avoiding contact. i spent a good two hours in hobbycraft deciding between 4 shades of red DMC embroidery floss. i went with 666 in the end. distracted and foetal whenever possible generally means that i'm processing something.

on tuesday it was formally recognised, if not diagnosised, that my son displays many of the behaviours associated with asperger's syndrome. i came to terms with this quite a few months ago, shortly after his dx of dyspraxia, so that isn't really what's been eating me. what is, is the fact that the doctor mentioned that he felt that my son's symptoms could be exaccerbated by his home environment. i don't think rudy behaves differently than he does at nursery, and, if i may quote myself from the comments section *points down* in response to laura..,

"what i inferred from what the doctor said was that my background and our inherant family culture... may be informing rudy's habits. he has... license to "geek out" (not my phrase) and his myriad quirks are quite normal to [me]."

articulating that has been cathartic. i suppose in some way i have been concerned that i am in some way "enabling" him; but that's ridiculous, and presupposes that something is "wrong" in the first place. i am concerned, as with my daughter, that any future unhappiness my son may encounter will be in some way my responsibility. but maybe that shows a naive approach to parenting. in tuesday's post i reproduced a quote concerning 'asperger's as lifestyle' in which a 'real napoleon dynamite' reacts angrily to the labelling of his way of life as an illness. i don't really do outrage, but i can relate.

roots

2009-04-23T12:16:00.001-07:00

who knows what makes us what we are.

this is a papercut piece called "speak flower" by kako ueda.

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blessed 2 (two); culture

2009-04-21T15:55:00.000-07:00

today, my son was reassessed. and, according to the consultant community paediatrician, he displays a good deal of the symptoms first described by one dr. asperger. well, y'know... yeah.

given today's findings, a further meeting will now be coordinated with the primary school that he is starting in september to discuss rudy's individual differences; a gameplan that takes into account what he will need for educational and pastoral support in this new phase of his education. at present, it is acceptable that all rudy wants to do is watch, construct and take dismantle robots. shortly it won't be, so the transition is to be made as smooth as possible. for this measured approach i am extremely grateful. and also for this... no formal diagnosis. and the reason for this, despite this long list of typically aspergic behaviours, is because, and again i quote, it is not in his best interest at present to do so. he's four.

i have been made very aware that this may not always be the case.

the paediatrician proclaimed that, unless his keyworker (also present) is significantly downplaying rudy's apparent differences, he is quite a different child at nursery than he is at home. i don't think that this is the case; i just think that there are different stimulii, and that rudy is by nature an easy child that does not attract attention of the sort to cause problems. it was conceded by the nursery staff that he behaves in obsessive and repetitive ways, and often plays by himself. it was noted by the doctor that he is, and once again i quote, exceptional ... precocious in his ability to engage with adults. his occasional verbosity was noted. the doctor, asking me a number of questions about myself, our family set up and my background, wondered aloud whether rudy's aspergergic tendencies may be - broadly speaking- attributed to his environment. he seemed intrigued.

this reminded me of this post, in which i blogged about the napoleon dynamite phenomenon, specifically this, in which a "real napoleon" responded to bewildered rumination of the character's cult status:

"the "cool" kids label the "geeks", but tell me again, who calls it a disorder? if you had [victimised me] i would have become abnormal....I suggest you... meet the family... and learn about ancestors and traditions before you go calling comeone's behaviour an illness; because one day the asperger's geeks will be labelling your lifestyle a disorder".

i have no anger from this meeting. some people already have reacted to the outcome of today's meeting with enraged confusion (the whole gamut, from "but there's nothing wrong with him!" to "why not just get on with it and diagnose him?", *big sigh*). i am pleased with the way that my son is being handled by the medical and educational bodies that he is encountering. i am proud of him, and also the way that they are working together to ensure his best interests. i have no problem with my son, or indeed my daughter, or indeed myself, being identified as "different".

but i am still processing the doctor's implications in regards to environment; more of this anon.

and for good measure

2009-04-20T08:30:00.000-07:00

five in an occasional series in which Id compiles a list of ideal houseguests...

moss "the spider is now upon my person" the it crowd.

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the big bang poster child. and as usual i'm about 2 years late.

2009-04-19T08:35:00.000-07:00

or,

part four of the occasional series in which Id points out the likelihood of a ASD diagnosis for a leading light of popular culture.

this weekend, whilst staving off a migraine and plundering my sky+ archives, i came across an episode of "the big bang theory" that my boyfriend recorded. i can't tell you how enthiusiastic he is about this programme, but it is usually part of his evening when i am taking one of my marathon baths with a margherita and a stephanie meyers book. i pressed play, with a limited throb of curiosity.

within five minutes, i was sitting bolt upright on the sofa, joyful tears of recognition streaming down my cheeks, made happier than i ever have been by a sitcom since rachel gave birth. if you haven't seen it, and god knows, as usual, i'm incredibly slow on the uptake, the show revolves around some physicists, at least 3 of which display aspergic behaviour, including sheldon. sheldon. oh my. sheldon. like at least three of my family members combined and covered in equation sprinkles, sheldon knocks all other spectral tv characterisation thus far into a cocked hat. spongebob? chloe off 24? watch and learn. he's like a definitive guide. i thought this was a given, but

Producer Chuck Lorre has denied that Sheldon is meant to be on the autism spectrum. But whether intended or not, the show's writers have been asked about Asperger's so often that they're clearly aware of its subtext when having a crowd of postdocs debate whether Superman jumps or flies.

"I just think of his actions as 'Sheldony.' Some things feel instinctively correct for his character," says Prady, who recalls one software colleague who couldn't go anywhere alone that he hadn't been to before. "He'd say, 'I can't go to 47th Street Photo by myself.' And it was maybe three blocks away. It was never questioned. Quirks were never challenged—they were simply accepted as a quality of the person."

"Are these things Asperger's?" he asks. "I don't know."

*splutters*

i can see a number of reasons why the show might want to distance themselves from the asperger's issue. issues to do with pr (not wanting to be seen "getting a laugh at the expense of someone with a disability" by the more reactionary media outlets, thereby potentially alienating a good section of the show's audience); but, maybe, more enlightenedly, a genuine empathy for the alternative "normal"s that enrich our communities and a reluctance to be part of the great big labelling machine. perhaps, though, unless the creator can truly plead ignorance, or rather naivety- and this is feasible given one of them has a computer programming background that he says informs much of the characterisation on the programme- the asperger's denial seems a little churlish.

however-

Asked point-blank in this video response on a Variety blog , though, actor Jim Parsons says that he was startled when fan questions led him to descriptions of Asperger's syndrome that perfectly matched the character he'd been hired to play. So does Sheldon have it?

"The writers say no, he doesn't. ..." Parson shrugs in his response, "[But] I can say that he couldn't display more facets of it."

*crushes*

protection

2009-04-17T19:17:00.000-07:00

it is a universally acknowledged truth that a single woman in possession of some children, some inadequate locks and a sky+ box, must be in want of a dog.

where i live, that dog is invariably a staffordshire bull terrier. equally, i could think about a rottweiler or an alsation. but i don't want one of these dogs. i want a badass whippet.

i'm thinking that maybe a whippet might charm a burglar so much that he has second thoughts about robbing me, and does some washing up instead.

that is all.

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specialist subject

2009-04-17T11:25:00.000-07:00

much has been written about the likelihood of those on the spectrum having a specialist subject. mine was passed down to me by my (dyspraxic, borderline aspie in my opinion) father- fashion.

there are some great stories my mum tells about my dad spending all their money on custom clothes from the king's road when they were first married. ah- malnutrition can be so romantic. he always had to look the part, she says. back when i worked in fashion, the tailor at one of the companies i worked for asked for a picture of their wedding photo, which he then blew up and it went on the inspiration board. so, next to bryan ferry circa 1980 and brad pitt in armani, were my parents outside an islington registry office in 1971- mum smoking (in both the literal and new fangled sense) in full length ice blue crushed velvet and a black crochet shawl, dad in platforms and the slimmest cut suit you've ever seen, each of them rocking a 25" waist a good 20 years before ephedrine was even invented. it remains one of my style keynote images. one of my hugest regrets is wearing dad's custom leather jacket into the ground over the course of ten years- even to a wedding, once- and abandoning it in a skip in east london in 2001. damn.

mum talks about my always knowing what i wanted to wear, but the obsession didn't really pick up pace until life suddenly got a lot harder for me at around the age of 13-14. i was the girl poring over french elle at the back of the class. i couldn't seem to do much else, but i could identify alaia at 100 paces, name dolce or gabbana by the backs of their hands, and i always had the right shoes, even if i had to have them for christmas and birthday combined. letters were sent home about the way i wore my uniform. i went to girls' school, rife with bitchery and competition, but looking okay just became what i did. i hid behind it, immersed myself.

i've blogged before about how dyspraxic the fashion world is, but when i got there, i was surprised (naively) by how brutal it is. so, in a way, i had to get out to preserve it as an escape. dad doesn't spend all the money on clothes anymore (he can't, they have horses), but he speaks with regret about this, and can match me in a forensic analysis of a collar or a back vent. i find observing the above shoe as spiritually nourishing as a two week holiday, even with its borderline stripper platform and convex heel echoing the calf curve nonsense. you always need something a little off for something to be truly, truly cheeky.

i mention this because it was my dad's birthday this week, and it passed by without contact between us. we have this strange relationship where we are essentially estranged but on the rare occasions that we are together, we pretend that we are not. its easiest for both of us that way. happy birthday, dad.

turning it up to 11

2009-04-16T04:19:00.000-07:00

about 20 times in any given day the inhabitants of or random visitors to my home experience noise so alarming that they have cause to throw their hands up over their ears, and run in fear for any kind of availible underground cover.

the reason for this is not some kind of time loophole which means that accessing the bathroom immediately transports one back to the second world war (although i might start saying it is), but my daughter experiencing any sort of difficulty. this might include grazing herself against a door handle, being unable to use exactly the right shade of purple felt tip (because she left the lid off earlier), or, just now, being unable to satisfactorily fashion a mermaid's tail out of a 6ft square bright pink fleece blanket. any of these, or indeed myriad other inconveniences make her bellow like a harpooned bloodhound. or twelve harpooned bloodhounds. through an amp. turned up to 11.

the volume that she manages to project is staggering. as both her brother and i are sensitive to noise, we can sometimes spend the day in a state of perpetual aural anxiety, which of course is nothing to the state my little girl gets into at every tiny little injustice of life. her outbursts and the verbal attacks on me, her brother, or any inanimate object in the vicinity that inevitably follow, contrast sharply with her usual sweet, witty and heartbreakingly cute demeanour. this routine is often followed by an attack on herself in which she regrets her actions and chastises herself harshly. calming intervention is inneffective at curbing this ritual bashing of self.

and then- snap- back to normal. her confidence and normal sense of entitlement seems entirely unnaffected, and she takes nothing from what just went down, which is relief in terms of her self esteem but frustrating in that she has learnt nothing about careful deportment around door furniture and/ or stationery care. the same things trigger the same bellows, over and over. its all compulsive, all the time. she has zero physical boundaries and is often jumping on or wrestling others in affection, causing further problems. fortunately, her brother has an incredibly high pain threshhold and an indulgent streak.

beyond my concern for her, i struggle with how much responsibility i need to take. how much is down to her environment and untraditional upbringing, and how much is neuroligical. i know she picks up on my mood when at her most anxious, so i work hard at remaining calm, which is hard at 4am when she is screaming because her duvet has moved 3 inches. i need to know how much guilt i should rightfully claim, because at present i'm overloaded.

no crystals here, people

2009-04-15T21:00:00.000-07:00

yes, i'm probably coming across as a bit stupid here, but can i just honestly say that i had no knowledge of the meaning that some people give to the word "indigo" when i changed the name of this blog?

and that when i think of indigo i think of the dye that is made out of actual human wee and fades rapidly in sunlight, but is ultimately a colour that i find flattering?

i'm going to have to say its tongue in cheek and i meant to do it now. so don't tell anyone. just play along.

warning- contains mild teen drama references.

2009-04-15T14:56:00.001-07:00

in march, i thought, "oh! it'll be bliss, the easter holidays. i'll be able to rightfully reclaim some functional sleep patterns and catch up with my sewing/ correspondence/ decorating/ outstanding work in garden/ cv tailoring/ freezer cooking/ father."

i thought, "the fun we'll have together... myself and the kids... as we craft together, bond over our favourite taxidermy exhibits at the museum, bake whimsical easter treats, and shop for new school shoes."

i thought, "how wonderful it will be to do all this over a hazy, blissful carousel ride of two neverending weeks, bathed in the warming yellow sunshine so typical of bristol in april."

i thought, "things will be different after the easter holidays; i can feel it."

and today i thought, "well, clearly i am a delusional idiot."

it rained. at some points it thundered. i spent the grocery money taking the children to see "monster vs aliens" (official verdict- "meh."). we came back to find that there was no heating and nothing to eat in the house other than a large slab of maya gold green & blacks chocolate. but, hey ho. could be lots worse. i just wish i'd stop setting myself up like this.

the future, in my mind (beyond june and its inevitable robot/ ape takeover *taps nose*), is always bathed in warm yellow light. i weigh 120lbs, and have become inexplicably wealthy. i never clean, i have infinite time to get all my important work done and also indulge in the myriad hobbies i choose to persue, whilst making a positive difference to the lives of others along the way. essentially, i believe my future is an episode of the o.c., only with less angst, more small children, more falling over, but roughly the same number of my little ponies. incidentally, my brother is the spitting image of adam brody, so i am not being completely insane here- he is enabling this bizarre delusion.

so, really, i need to have a word with him about that. and in the meantime we haven't done too badly this easter. we aquired a new "octopus" prime toy which my son is now heavily involved with, and which i just saw advertised at 250% of the price i paid; my man and i broke our nuptials doom-spell; my daughter hasn't fallen off anything and had to go to accident and emergency even once *touches much wood*; we discovered some religious imagery on the crust of a fish pie; and on easter day we had much tabbouleh and a really big bonfire. because that's just the way we kick it, as the good man sandy cohen might say.

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sweeps threshhold

2009-04-14T05:09:00.000-07:00

hello, hello- come in, and especially if you made it here from enchanting orrechiette, the olden blog, then please excuse the smell of cats and have a slice of simnel cake. do please find yourself a seat amongst the boxes. yeah, just shove that one on the floor- its full of stale promotional pasta. and yes, there are no capital letters here either, although i may yet get some if they are to be found on sale at laura ashley. yes, it has been an impulse move, but the schools are better here and the children have bigger bedrooms. are you warm enough? i'm just trying to air out the cat smell, there's a cardigan in that box marked "xmas decorations". yes, it has a reindeer on it but it contains cashmere (hence the moth holes, but that's the way we roll here).

this move heralds a new identity, not just a new home. for years, i have been known on the internet as anything, sweetie (flashback to 2002... me to friend: "what should my profile name be here?", i took the answer literally). unbeknownst to me, anything, sweetie was believed, for some time, by some sections of the intenet, to be a gay man. anything, sweetie saw me through tough times. when she started to be shortened to a.s., it coincided with my growing awareness of the autistic spectrum and so we grew together. but, in the same way that i cut two feet of perfectly good hair off last year to escape its history and because it somehow seemed too "permissive", i now bid farewell. like a badly executed witness protection programme, i am now indigo doll- or more excitingly for anyone with any knowledge of freud whatsoever- id.

indigo doll was a reletively unknown comrade of rainbow brite, the avenging angel of colour and shortlived kids cartoon of the 1980s. i knew that eventually when i changed the blog name it might reference this show in some way, given my likening the autistic spectrum to the colour wheel (which incidentally i now realise isn't my metaphor, but more of this another time). indigo doll was quiet shy and bookish, apart from when she was in her particular element. she favoured shades of navy and grey, and as far as i can see prefers flip flops to the rest of the gangs' snow joggers, perhaps because of her preternaturally sensitive feet. her sprite was called iq. i note with a satisfied superstitious air that the first episode of rainbow brite aired exactly twenty years to the day before my little boy was born. in short, it feels right.

hopefully this move won't be too clunky, business will resume forthwith, and that cat smell will clear. thankyou for coming with me.

p.s. having trouble importing comments from enchanting orrechiette, which is upsetting me no end. i am working on it.

a.s. sets her stall out

2009-04-13T16:03:00.000-07:00

it appears to some that i am now dyspraxia/ ASD mental. perhaps, i have become something of a bore. i do have this tendency to get all obsessive about certain subjects and try to gather as much information as i can, utterly immersing myself in facts and data and trivia and boring people to death with it.... well. quite.

but i know that, actually, i know next to nothing, and recently, i found myself attempting to articulate to an interested party why i haven't been reading all the heavyweight neurological tomes which are availible to enquiring minds, as might be expected. my response was something like this: easy now. i am not ready to submerge myself in autism academically. i have been through a stage of realising, with something like horror, that lots of little things that we do here are in some way "spectral", and it was traumatic not because it was in someway "abnormal" or "autistic" but because it stopped being "mummy" and "poppy" and "rudy" and started being "symptomatic". look up at the sky. look around you. how long have you got? really? yes, i know what i score on the aq test. you? well. i got a 39, and? attempting to unravell what biological quirks lead to our being wired a bit differently is not the best use of my time and energy. no denial, no resistance, just acceptance, absorption, and when we can, a laugh. there is more to me than this. and if there isn't, then let me just kid myself for a while longer, with the sun on my face and caffeine coursing happily thorugh my veins.

and so to the name change. remember a kids show called rainbow bright? this seemed appropriate. well, more so than a tongue in cheek pompo-blog title about magical pasta.

it was another good weekend.

june is indeed a far off land

2009-04-09T04:20:00.000-07:00

it is now the easter holidays, and my body seems to want me to use these two weeks to slide into a coma- probably to catch up on the thousands of missed hours sleep last term. or escape the omniscient alternate rage/ clinginess of my daughter. however, no can do- there's bills to pay and ironing to iron and a patio to lay and a huge chocolate nigella lawson confection to bake and meltdowns to manage and wall-e related obsessive behaviour to distract from and why is there glue all over coffee table and i thought i might have my hair done. but first let me slump gently over the espresso machine and say this.

i received a letter this morning, concerning my daughter poppy's recent referral to the school health nursing service. we have an appointment. in june. 06/o9. again- june. now correct me if i'm wrong, but isn't june like some far off land with hover cars and roll-up lcd screens, where i hold a driving license and the human race has possibly been enslaved by apes or robots or robot apes? forgive my hysteria, i know how over subscribed these services are. but for the first time since embarking on this spectral adventure i felt something a little like panic. june? i don't know what's going to happen between now and june?

and then i thought well, what's going to happen at this appointment that's going to make everything better anyway? a diagnosis? that's never left you exactly awash with relief before. so, with a big sigh, i just carried on. there was a scene over some face paints and my reluctance to let poppy transform herself and her brother into daleks. there was screaming. i kept my calm. i administered some more fish oil, some more tender, loving reassurance, and some spongebob. and then i turned my attention to my daughter.

in other news- the curse of the grey dress has been lifted and i am currently suspended in romantic bliss, like an anchovy in aspic.

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uncanny

2009-04-07T11:24:00.000-07:00

my internet generated superhero self...

i might be made of stone, but dammit i feel the cold.

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if i'd known it was international autism day, then i'd have baked a cake

2009-04-02T03:14:00.000-07:00

and then thrown it at "the beast", in transit ("sorry michelle! love the belt!"), because that's what you seem to have to do to get any sort of attention around here at the moment.

i honestly didn't know anything about this, and i'm usually pretty on top of these things. i only know it is international autism day because they're doing a very nice feature about a little boy and a horse on "this morning". otherwise, i might have done more.

yesterday, i spent an hour and a half calming my 5 year old hysterical daughter down after she had been bullied by some neighbourhood kids. being called a baby for crying. a gullible and sweet nature being taken advantage of. punching and kicking. brutal kids (and some, not all, are around here, and she doesn't go to the same school) making themselves feel better by picking on the sweet girl. her self esteem was in bits, and even after all that time, she still told me, when i asked her to sit at the table for her dinner, that i was only doing so because i hated her. if i loved her, then i would let her watch spongebob. then she told me i was stupid and slammed the door in my face. she screams, she hits herself, she screams that she hates herself, that she is just a stupid girl who doesn't deserve to have any friends or any fun or a nice mummy. she destroys things, she lashes at her (much more docile but equally senstive) brother.

how these forces out of my control affect her self esteem is shattering, and it is very very hard to control my temper when she tells me that i hate her. sometimes i can't. sometimes, when you put so much energy and love and care and time and worry into someone's wellbeing, and you haven't slept properly in about 6 years, and you're worrying about a hundred million things, and you are human, and there is noone else to support either of you, to be told even that you don't care can feel like the biggest f*** you imaginable. and yet i recognise her frustration, i lived this, and that frightens me. i understand why she keeps going back to play with the neighbourhood kids, even when i remind her (using appropriate words) how damaging it can be for her. she wants to make friends and she can't fathom what makes people mean to her, so she keeps, with optimism, going back for more. and whne she screams at me because i don't want her to go outside to play, i have to weigh up what is ultimately more damaging- keeping her safely under my wing, or exposing her to the real world.

it should be pointed out that until recently it was thought that these meltdowns were entirely to do with her lack of father figure, simply put, but it seems this isn't entirely the case. she is to be assessed by the paediatric team next month. kids got a lot on her little shoulders.

on international autism day, even if my children don't have actual autism, perhaps i should be celebrating all the amazing things that make people anywhere on the spectrum so brilliantly different, so wonderful and inspirational. but i think that i spend the rest of the year doing that. so maybe, today, i'd like to put it out there that parenting this thing, whatever it turns out to be, is often heartbreaking- and i say that as both child and parent. i adore my children. i put a lot of work into making our life lighthearted, fun, positive and cool, and i wouldn't change anything for the world. nothing. but today, coinciding with international autism day, i'm taking the day off from the PR spin. but i might bake that cake.

the inevitable

2009-03-31T04:13:00.000-07:00

here's one of those ten things about me posts. well, i'm tired, and its my blog. plus, i have some things to say that i cant be bothered to "work" into proper posts; i'll probably find some other stuff to inappropriately share in order to fill in the gaps.

1. i spent much of my adolescence nurturing an appalling crush on jeff goldblum.

2. the other week we spent some time with another child and their mother. some things that were said bothered me, but not enough to inform social services. let's just say we have different ways of looking at life. maybe it's a cup half full/ empty thing, but the children had a nice time and surely that was the point. now said mother is avoiding me. so, i can't help but wonder, like some sort of playground carrie bradshaw, and that can't be a good thing, what did she take about me from our meeting? and why do i care when i think she's quite mental?

3. fish oil changed my life.

4. a million years ago, in another life, drunk, i said something really thoughtless and hurtful to alexander mcqueen, simultaneously talking myself out of a studio assistant position, shortly before the rest of my party were removed from the premises by the police for an unrelated offence. i would like to take this opportunity to apologise... but i won't, because there is no way alexander mcqueen is reading this. if any representative of mr. mcqueen would like to make their presence felt in the comments section, hopefully we can move forward from here. thanks.

5. i have a shameful affection for pink kitchen appliances.

6. apparently, i narrowly missed being named "sunshine". formally. given that i have spent much of my life thus far shrouded in SPF30, black hair and anxiety, this represents a heartbreaking missed opportunity to ultimately define irony, and furthermore really stick it to alanis morissette.

7. way back in the mists of time, two months ago, my first post on this here blog concerned the fraught tension and horrific drunken fallout that typifies the shared wedding attendance experience of myself and my young man. in order to avoid yet more nuptial based misery, i proposed wiping the slate clean, perhaps literally, with my flattering but dismal grey £10 go-to frock, replacing it with something joyful from vivienne westwood. in order to illustrate just a tiny part the riotous palette i will be wearing to a wedding this saturday, see the shoe above. unfortunately this shoe is popping up, priced, in advertisements next to most uk fashion and beauty websites. edit- and train information ones. this bothers me, but no matter. hopefully anyone not duly absorbed by the happy events taking place will be dazzled enough by our lustfully fond and clearly fulfilling relationship to notice the obvious high street provenance of my footwear.

8. i refer to my neighbour with an abusive name from which one might infer that he is of scottish heritage (i have no reason to that this is the case) but also not nice. he has never once responded or spoken to me, his language is vile, and he does passive aggressive things with the boundary hedge.

9. in paris over the new year period, i managed to drop my purse full of small denomination uk currency all over the floor of a very busy starbucks. what followed can only be described as breathtaking gallic gallantry and wit regarding the strength of the pound sterling, which i was completely unable to handle. i found myself grinning and batting my eyelashes like some sort of demented miss world contestant with allergies. i would say i died a little death, but that means something quite different in france, and certainly not something starbucks stands for. obviously, i didn't.

10. i would very much like to stay in a treehouse with a dvd player. my ideal holiday might well revolve around a hot tub, greenery, a sopranos box set, rain, and stilton.

.

second

2009-03-29T15:29:00.000-07:00

...or perhaps third of an occasional series in which a.s. points out the likelihood of an autistic spectrum diagnosis for characters, objects or, indeed, abstract concepts from popular culture-

roald dahl's matilda clearly has hyperlexia.

which, as an aside, is my new gladiator name.

.

hey mickey!

2009-03-29T12:52:00.000-07:00

so, i just did a search for neuro-typical symtoms. i thought it might be nice.

astoundingly, however, no such comprehensive list appears on the internet. shocking. well, not one that I could find after spending 3 minutes with google, typing with one hand.

but i did find this, and, sadly, i thought, "...righty. well, the extremely poor wording of this might have to serve."

pathology is a powerful word, isn't it? oh, and so is mutation.

i have read before that d.c.d., among other things, is symptomatic of another root problem, but they need to start putting it better. and to be fair, maybe they did in the two years since this was published.

plus, i need more information about how an aspie rodent behaves. does he sit quietly doing sodoku in the corner of the cage? does he freak out when he's in a different place in the queue for the water bottle? does he line up his pieces of cheese in height ascendent order? does he hate the rustling noise of the straw in his bed? we're talking basic information here, scientists.

jeez.

.

max... i think i love you

2009-03-26T17:05:00.000-07:00

i must be now overdosing on soy and it's affecting my oestrogen levels, or at least that's my story and i'm sticking to it. lately, i just can't seem to stop tearing up at the slightest thing. this week has seen me bawling over, among other things, jade goody's sons; a particularly cruel support garment that i thought i was going to have to be cut out of in the changing room; the narcissi in the garden; birds that suddenly appear/ every time you are near; and today, the trailer for the new "where the wild things are" film, by spike jonze. i'd have cucumbers on my eyes right now if i could get them to stay on while i type.

i am fully prepared to concede that this trailer might be the best thing about this film. it offers glimpses of potential greatness. but, you know, i know damn well when my buttons are being pushed... take some arcade fire, some lens-flare photography, woods and some labrynth-ine creatures; throw in a breathtakingly raffish and cute little boy, boats o'er the bedclothes and some suggestions that things in said boy's world are not all hunky dory... and finally, combine with one of the most memorable images of my childhood. oh dear god... pass me the tissues/ mogadon/ gin. oh, please be good.

i hope this is going to work for kids too, and not just grown-ups on a mawkish parental nostalgia trip. it looks appropriately dark and this apparently is a concern, but could have a similarly broad appeal, and perhaps subtextual subject matter, as e.t., which views quite differently as an adult. i tried showing the trailer to rudy (familiar with the picture book and we have a few little wild thing soft toys) but he really wasn't interested. there were no visible robotics, so what did i expect. i , of course, interested in the fleshing out of the max character, he is in some ways such a one dimensional character in the story- a naughty boy, and we don't really have naughty boys in the same way anymore- we have sad little boys acting out; wild things.

the film is not out for a while, and until this trailer came out the other day, there were all sorts of rumours that this was going to be bad. speculation abounds as to what sort of struggle the studio is having with spike jonze's vision... so... there is spitting and polishing to do. or, rather, c.g.i. mischief of one kind or another. i've got my fingers crossed under the bedsheets.

p.s. i have just read that initial screenings were not seen as successful, with kids crying and asking to leave, and apparently the max character does not come off as likeable. he slaps his mum. apparently warner brothers are not happy with what they are calling a 75 million dollar art house kids film. i couldn't be more excited about this if they were doing reshoots on my street.

ceci n'est pas un post

2009-03-23T05:34:00.000-07:00

When I'm really, really disappointed in people, and feel completely disillusioned about my whole relationship with them, I don't know whether to give them a hard time, or give myself a hard time for hoping they wouldn't do that to me in the first place, so I go for the latter, because I don't know how to do the former (and because, you know, they might stop liking me or something.) And then it seems that people are queuing up to rub salt into the wound. And as being pissed off takes up an awful lot of my energy and time- like, for example, the entirety of 2005- I have nothing really to say. I fact why I am even writing this.

So, in absense of an actual post, here's a picture of Snoopy..

And look at that- I'm so distracted, I capitalised properly.

.

next week, pugsley

2009-03-18T13:41:00.000-07:00

helping my daughter out with her homework earlier made me remenisce about learning to write. she jiggles and wriggles and sometimes gasps out loud as she concentrates; her handwriting is beautiful.

when i was 6 to 9 years old we lived in a restored farm building in rural nowhere. to go to school, we had to walk half a mile to get authority provided transport, which then took us yet more miles o'er hill and dale to our little primary. The school had two classrooms, two members of staff, outside toilets, a very dangerous pond and about 28 pupils all told. i am not 80 years old; neither was i wearing clogs.

this school was big on handwriting and silent reading, perhaps because it was something that we could be left alone to do at our desks while the headteacher sat at hers. we also spent an incredible amount of time drawing and painting, probably for similar reasons. we practised so much, in enforced silence, that the standard of literacy and artistic merit was stratospheric, it was like a small pocket of genius surrounded by bright yellow fields of oilseed rape. i was the kind of child from a very early age that always had her head in a book, so my parents weren't too concerned. and why would they be.

when i moved schools, it was found that i was way above my agegroup in reading, and i also became the artistic school mascot. i was completely shocked, because at my previous school i had only ever been mediocre. it was also found that i was a complete numerical ignoramus, and this has remained the case. my learning difficulties went undiagnosed, but my handwriting is often proclaimed remarkable.

to look at the above image is incredibly evocative, calming even. when we were practising in silence i was never scared. i might well frame it.

in which a.s. fails to find her 4am calling

2009-03-18T12:50:00.000-07:00

the insomnia marches on.

i'm wondering if my brain is trying to tell me something, if actually i'm supposed to be using those hours for some special purpose, if this is time in which i should be responding to some higher calling. i am becoming more and more adept at functioning on very little sleep, and in some ways am becoming, all things being relative, an organisational powerhouse.

maybe in these lost hours of frustrated pain i am actually supposed to be writing that novel, or having the big idea that catapults us out of debt. maybe i'm supposed to be changing the world, seeking truth and justice through tireless 4am crusades.

or maybe this way clinical psychosis lies.

"it is a well discussed fact that margaret thatcher only had four fours sleep a night," my boyfriend tells me, driving to his game, "and look what she achieved!"

"shudder," I said, by now well used to having to verbalise horrified tics.

"okay, well, maybe acheived is the wrong word. let's go with caused. look what she caused on four hours sleep a night. insomnia does not mean the end of a... prolific output."

i had to stop gnawing my fist to laugh, and that is the work of a special someone.

oy...

2009-03-15T16:33:00.000-07:00

in zadie smith's second novel, the autograph man, her dual heritage character alex li-tandem has spent many hours of his life devoted to many seemingly pointless exercises, and one of them is a book. a book of categorisation.

with alex's book, his aim is to look at every object, thought, verb, theme, occassion or happenstance and assign it to one of two camps- jewish or goyish. for example- "goyish smells of the 17th cenury (sandalwood, walnuts, wet forest floor)" and "goyish holidays/ festivals which are actually jewish" and "jewish trees of note (poplar, sycamore, oak)".

at the core of his assignations lies his fundamental truth- everything interesting, everything with integrity, everything with soul, he defines as jewish.

and my point is i now realise that i am in danger of becoming this way about the autistic spectrum, such is my fervent defensiveness/ evangelism, and just maybe the point of this blog is to assign an a.s.d. to everything awesome. this could mean that in six months time a sample from it might read

aquilegias
space hoppers
new chanel couture collection
=
landau-klefner syndrome.

well, its a thought.

.

dos-stitch

2009-03-15T03:36:00.000-07:00

following on from my post last night i began to wonder if the computer/ craft interface (heh) is an unexplored juxtaposition, and, lo, it is not. the above image appears at the incredible endfile, and i was so excited when i saw it, i started to hyperventilate. well, i haven't had access to the internet for a long time, the information equivalent of not getting out much. anyway.

when i was sixteen, i made a wedding dress out of clingfilm and bubblewrap, with tin can corsetry. it was a clumsy statement, if a fairly beautiful object, and one i don't really need to talk anyone through i don't imagine. i bring it up because i have always been interested in the more "feminine" arts, and how they can be niftily spun to have, for want of a better expression before i have my coffee, bite. i also just love doing it. at school as i sat working with my embroidery frame, doing intricate goldwork, i came up against so much questioning and zipfile snobbery, that, so lacking in confidence, i just abandoned the craft and threw myself into the safety of marketing mass produced clothing. i wasn't working on kittens or disney slogans about dreams, i knew what i wanted to say but my voice was too small then.

last year, it became important to me that i take it up again. i am currently working on the crosstitch equivalent of sas training. all the fun things are done now on it, and all that is left is to infill, so much infill, which i have been doing since january and expect to be doing until, like, june. to me the important thing is not so much the finished piece, it is that i do it. it has taught me important lessons about the fact that my time has value, that i can produce something of unknowable worth that could possibly survive for generations. it has shown me that i have underestimated my own stamina.

to sit and do something like that, i read, "silences the inner chatter"- i'd be so interested to read more about crosstitch as coping mechanism, and i wonder what i might have been producing a few years ago had i the freedom to do so... it almost frightens me.

.

blessed

2009-03-14T14:03:00.000-07:00

this week, there was a day when i met with the various educationalists that take charge of my children for significant parts of their weeks, to discuss their respective progress. these meetings were back to back, and, between them, lasted about an hour and a half. that in itself is a marvel.

after both meetings, and the various debriefings to interested parties, i sat down with my green tea (oh yes, 2009 has seen some changes..) to write down and consider the findings. it seems that the child that is supposed to be the worry, the child with the diagnosis pending further diagnosis, is not in any way a worry. now that we have a diagnosis, pending further diagnosis, his differences are invoking real understanding, and, further, real respect. it's okay when he doesn't want to participate with the group. it's okay that he hasn't learned to recognise his name. it's okay that he needs coaching through the most fundamental of manual tasks. it's okay that his field of interest is so very limited and intensive. and, do y'know what? it's kind of awesome. rudy has other things to give- his laid back attitude and his generous, engaging, caring interpretation of his surroundings charms every single adult he comes into contact with. he might not say much, but what he does say is inspirational. his spirit is going to see him through.

my daughter is doing equally well. in fact, she has really blossomed since leaving the institution currently taking such respectful care of my son and moving to her new school. this incredibly funny little girl, who saw things at an early age that could easily have scarred her irrevokebly and was apparently so maladjusted, tested consistently above average and her creativity, quiet confidence and senses of humour and justice are gently carving out a unique yet intense popularity for her, even with children a lot older than herself, that i don't recognise, i have no frame of reference for. my little girl with her bob and her crazy drawings and her WW2 evacuee sense of style ... my little girl, currently sitting upstairs at her crafting station in her bridesmaid dress singing along at the top of her voice to her carole king cd, is rocking everyone's world.

maybe because i knew their father for such a short time and they came into my life as fast and subtle as a juggernaut, my children constantly take me by surprise, and yet they feel like pieces snapped from my own bones. they are magical and yet utterly familiar... is it always this way? whenever i think of my excellent, beautiful, odd children and the respect they encounter, and then i contrast how life was for me at that age i think, with gratitude, relief and excitement, of progress. thinking about this over the last couple of days put me in mind of a douglas coupland quote,"the geek shall inherit the earth". i've been thinking about two books of his (although i love most of them and girlfriend in a coma is the nearest thing i have to a religious text). specifically, j-pod, in which the typically autistic traits of a close number of game writers are explored somewhat and in a very passive, non-sensationalist and humourous manner, and microserfs.

microserfs was the defining text of my late adolescence. god only knows why- i harboured a deep distrust of computers whilst i championed craft. this did not do me any favours academically, really (and i went to art school), it was probably a kneejerk defensive response to my then quite unorthodox and outdated interests, and of course i was covering up for the fact that i couldn't afford a computer. but i must have read that book cover to cover a hundred times. more. i would read the last page and go straight back to the first... these were my people. for the first time i was encountering people who thought and felt like me. it was like falling in love for the first time. i accidentally left my dogeared copy on the bus when i moved down to the capital to work in fashion. my mum- who knew me well enough to buy it for me in the first place- said it was the end of an era.

i miss microserfs. i don't actually remember much of it, except that the main character's lives are transformed by a visionary, high functioning autistic person; i'm going to have to revisit it. it's as important, to me, as orwell.

"i think that every reader on earth has a list of cherished books as unique as their fingerprints... i think that, as you age, you tend to gravitate towards the classics, but those aren't the books that give you the same sort of hope for the world that a cherished book does."- Douglas Coupland.

not in any way frightened of poo..

2009-03-09T14:42:00.000-07:00

i haven't written a cv in years.

ask me about anything, well, most things, and i can rattle off 250 fairly convincing words. ask me about me and it all sorts of dries up.

a few years ago, i used to help a photographer friend collate visual information into trend stories and it was easy, because it wasn't for me- i was doing it for her. she'd got the job, she'd done the groundwork, she'd done something i could never do. she'd convinced people to pay her to do something that wasn't drudge work. i ran a mile from anything even vaguely challenging but not because i'm afraid of hard work- i have absolutely no professional confidence. i'm a good, diligent employee (the more lowly and badly paid the work, the harder i work) and i will drop everything and produce words for anyone else kind enough to ask me, but i can't do it for me. once bitten...

right now i am in a situation where i have to think about what transferable skills the last six years have provided me with, and what they can bring to an already underwhelming resume. i've got to go and get a job soon- one that allows for the fact that i have two small children and don't drive, and all the other jarring realities of my life.

i hate to write about serious things, though, in the same way that i have to make people laugh constantly, so here is a top five list of the experience-no-object careers that the various things that have happened over the last decade have prepared me for. well, its a start.

1. police negotiator

what i feel i can bring to the role:-
endless patience and a rudimentary understanding of the criminal mind, bestowed upon me by my relationship with the childrens' father. dogged determination to succeed despite constantly moving goalposts and unreasonable demands. ability to predict and effectively prevent all possible worst case scenarios under pressure. good coffee drinking and awakeness skills. could possibly grow a moustache. good jackets.

2. wedding planner (bahamian)

what i feel i can bring to the role:-
ability to whip up magic with muslin, candles and some ikea doorstops in under three hours. experience dealing with hysteria, panic and confectionary in a pressurised scenario. good creativity skills and an endless belief in romance combined with an unflinching grip on reality. a prevailing sense of understated elegance. constant supply of wet wipes. good jackets.

3. j.k.rowling

what i feel i can bring to the role:-

very little, but i might be called upon as a grammatical girl friday in order to prevent an angry harry saying angry words angrily quite so much. good coffee making skills. good jackets.

4. farmer's wife

what i feel i can bring to the role:-

good genes. a feel for that country living aesthetic- a flair with gingham. good range cleaning skills. the ability to remain in clement humour at 5am. not in anyway frightened of poo. good level of country style crafting attainment. adversity seems to suit me. keen on pickling. good wellingtons/ jackets.

5. life coach (carole caplin type)

what i feel i can bring to the role:-

the ability to cheerlead and dispense excellent advice on virtually everything whilst clearly stumbling through life myself, nails bitten to the quick. good jackets.

... i think i'll look into personal shopping.

discuss.

2009-03-05T13:14:00.000-08:00

today i looked into buying a new tv, freezer and microwave, the last lot having just given up the ghost within 48 hours of eachother. my findings were sobering, and so my head is in the sand, but we are probably healthier. discuss.

today i bought my daughter a macintosh two sizes too big for her because i liked it so much. i'm still deciding whether it's chicness is undermined by the fact that she looks slightly edwardian in it, with all the excess material pouffing out above her chest. i saw another seemingly segacious mother willingly, no- enthusiastically buy her small daughter a pair of lolita style heart sunglasses. i took an involuntary a sharp intake of breath. the mother noticed. she knew. and maybe because she so clearly did, i didn't say anything. who is going to lose more sleep tonight? me, probably. and who's daughter looks more ridiculous? discuss.

today i bought my son a tiny toy which he reeeeally wanted that was clearly overpriced (in that it had one) and intended never to be opened from it's packaging- just put away in an attic somewhere to be discovered in fifty years time and sold so that one can retire to the bahamas. but he took it in the bath. the little sticker eyes fell off, leaving r.baby traumatised and screaming. dredging the bath afterward, i managed to find this tiny scrap of paper, and, removing it carefully to safety on my fingertip, i thought "well, this is a defining moment." discuss.

today i bought some more post-its in order to augment my shoddy, barely functioning organisational skills. in the shop, right in front of them, stood a tall, clever looking young man, taking up lots of room with his satchel, whom i asked to excuse me. thrice. in the end, i squeezed past him, muttering (very britishly), "sorry..." and he muttered threateningly, "you will be". i froze in terror, and he wandered off. discuss.

today i bought an apparently modest dress with no clear underwear (or should that be underwire) solution other than duct tape. so today i bought some duct tape. disgusting.

can you bring me my chapstick?

2009-03-03T08:24:00.000-08:00

i've written about the film napoleon dynamite in the context of asperger's before, and since this whole flurry of concern surrounding my little boy's specific diagnosis came about, i have been itching to watch the film again, not least because i love it. but then i love any film which has awkward silences and superlative styling. speaking of which, this tattoo is by a man called brad bako, who definately has some sweet special skills.

it turned out my copy of the dvd was scratched (yet another possession sacrificed to my children's campaign of unknowing destruction), so i had to put that little urge on hold until it i saw it was on tv last night, so of course i had to put my busy social life on hold and watch it. i love a bit of gentle, dysfunctional comedy, me, so it made orange juice come out of my nose about three times.

anyway, i thought i should rethink my previous diagnosis (because i'm, like, such an expert) because of napoleon's habit of telling fantastical lies in the hope that he will win respect. for example, in one scene, napoleon tells a bunch of jocks in the gym changing rooms that he spent the summer in alaska hunting wolverines with a 12 guage because they were attacking his cousins. genius, but this didn't quite chime with the aspie profile i had in my head. thinking about it more, i am totally wrong, and i have already experienced examples of this behaviour. not from my son, although he does love to cast himself in the hero role quite dramatically, but elsewhere. anyway, i took my lil' theories to the internet, and it turns out i was right in the first place.

here's a link to a paper published on psychiatryonline.org, some of which i have pasted below-

Napoleon Dynamite is the unexpectedly critically acclaimed moviefrom 2004 that became an instant cult classic. It is also, however,something of a psychiatric conundrum. The film calls into questionpoignant issues that psychiatrists grapple with daily. As observersof human behavior, we must consider why unexpectedly successfulcultural phenomena so powerfully capture the public’spsyche. This question is ideally suited for the psychologicalexamination of Napoleon’s immense popularity. In addition, it is clear from the very beginning of the filmthat Napoleon is not like other teenagers. He is awkward, frequentlymisses clear social cues, and seems developmentally delayedboth emotionally and perhaps cognitively. One could easily entertainthe diagnosis of Asperger’s spectrum disorder in tryingto make sense of Napoleon’s challenges. And yet, inherentin most conceptualizations of Asperger’s-like syndromesis the assumption that those who suffer from the disorder arebothered by their lack of social connectedness and that thosewho spend time with Asperger’s sufferers are equally botheredby their strange behavior.

this paper would seem to identify and address the apparent dychotomy of the film's popularity when asperger's is generally regarded as very much an "outsider" condition. interestingly, in response to this paper, also on psychiatryonline.org, i found this. bow to your sen-sei.-

Few things I consider myself an expert of, but the recent analysisof "Napoleon Dynamite"... is one of them. That is because Iam Napoleon; not the Napoleon, but a Napoleon (there is morethan one of us). I grew up on the borders of Preston, Idaho,and I dare declare I am the only Napoleon to have become a psychiatrist... The "cool" kids labelthe "geeks," but tell me again, who calls it a disorder? Ifyou had treated me the way suggested in the article, I wouldhave become abnormal. Proof: my mother, a daughter of the foundersof Preston, does not get Napoleon. He is just a nice boy,and the story is boring to her because it is about every daylife!... I suggest you put down your DSM sometime and pick up the localnewspaper, visit the local church or relic hall (there’sa great one in Franklin), meet the family, read the local history,and learn about ancestors and traditions before you go callingsomeone’s behavior an illness; because one day the Asperger’sgeeks may be labeling your lifestyle a disorder.

that last line is kind of beautiful.

what katy didn't do

2009-03-03T06:12:00.000-08:00

i know i'm well over the hill and probably not qualified to comment, and god knows i abhore bitchery in all its forms, whatever my fashion allegiances may be, but until recently i have been borderline vexed by katy perry.

my reasons run thus- she's stepping on my toes just a bit with her look (...i'm sure that keeps her awake at night. i know that would make those who see me running to school in my boyfriend's t-shirt and old jogging bottoms chortle, but it's mainly a colouring/ body type thing, and i never said this list was going to be rational); pretending to be a lesbian in order to excite boys or sell records is depressingly nineties; she has been known to make thoughtless comments regarding homosexuals (before reinventing herself in the predictable pseudo-sappho mold) ,and also about lily allen (i am ferociously protective of lily allen for reasons that wholly ellude me); plus, i think her (ex?) boyfriend travis whatever is supercute even if he does look in need of a good wash, and she always looked a bit unconvinced when photographed with him. of course, given these flimsy reasons, it's not like i was devoting my life to her downfall. i found her irritating only on a par a ten minute bout of tinnitus.

however, all this has been brought into sharp perspective by the arrival of someone as irritating as persistant menstrual cramp. someone called- and i shudder to write this-lady gaga, whom i now regard, with a healthy sense of fun, as my personal nemesis. i'm all for the new, don't get me wrong. nothing makes me happier than a hip young thing mixing it up, and i'm all for experimental hairdye, unlikely shoes, androgeny, reinvention and evolution, but i do my iashion irreverence to come with a bit of humility.

as far as i can tell, lady gaga produces music which is unaffecting at best. when i first heard that song she, um, sings, i thought it was ashley simpson, and in fact i can't remember the title of it purely because i can't separate in it my head from "outta my head", which is by, yup, ashley simpson. her look is very provincial british fashion school two years ago, with a prevalence of bubble hems, off the shoulder sweats and comedy headwear. she is filthy rich. none of this bothers me, none of it bothers me at all, in fact i'm borderline indifferent until i read that she thinks this is all very important, epoch-making, significant work she's doing. she's surrounded herself with fawning hangers on/ creatives and describes this merry entourage as a modern day version of warhol's factory- or "haus of gaga" (and, no, i'm not quite sure how one would pronounce that.) she has a vision, a mission, a purpose. she has taken ziggy stardust as a starting point, been to topshop, and now thinks she is defining a whole new era. jesus.

watching this, i could feel my brain cells disintegrate at a rate usually only ever caused by persistent solvent abuse. i accept that paris hilton is in it too, and therefore we are witnessing some previously unparalelled levels of stupity tag teaming, and actually, yeah, paris does come off worse, but that's basically a given, isn't it?

maybe i'm just getting old.

.

mocha/berocca

2009-03-03T03:18:00.000-08:00

i have heard it said that there are two types of mother- the kind that think it's acceptable to tear into multipacks of crisps that they haven't yet paid for in order to placate their squalling offspring as they journey around the supermarket, and those that don't. usually, i belong to the latter. i operate a zero tolerance policy on eating in the street, also.

however, today i joined a niche subsection of the former. on my way round tesco this morning, in something approaching a comatose state, i consumed 2 effervescent vitamin c tablets dissolved in a bottle of mineral water, 2 ibuprofen and then a double espresso (there is a coffee place actually in my local supermarket, this is the absolute pinnacle of civilisation in my book.) but needs must- i have had approximately 20 hours sleep in the last week. thank god i don't (can't) drive. i am managing to remain just about functional in that i am managing to get my children where they need to be when they need to be there, and in a well fed and presented fashion. having said that, my house looks like a chinese laundry and i am avoiding the resolution of an outstanding issue with my tv/ phone/ broadband provider, basically because the very thought of it fills me with a dreadfully exhausted ennui.

i follow all the rules; no caffeine or exercise after 5pm, i eat lightly in the evening, i have sufficient time to wind down after the children are in bed at 7pm sharp, etc. i'm exhausted to my very bones by 9 o'clock, wandering around half completing tasks, so get ready for bed, and then brushing my teeth seems to kick start some evil second wind reflex. i read for a little while, and, even if it's really really bad writing, it's like i can't actually process that it's 4am and i really need to stop- i can't get my head around the fact that i need to be up again in two or three hours. sometimes, by some herculean effort, i turn the light off (traumatic, i'm afraid of the dark), and then i'm lying in the dark mentally sorting through the airing cupboard, listing outstanding jobs in the house, rethinking budgets, fretting about climate change/ wars/ aids orphans/ the damp in the kitchen, all underlined by the nagging feeling that i haven't locked up sufficiently, and need to devise a plan of action should someone break in and attempt to abduct the children. sleeping with a variety of household tools under the bed is not good feng shui, i don't imagine. i have hyperacute hearing also, which does not help- if anyone rustles a plastic bag, the clear kind that sweets or greeting cards come in, within a 50m radius of me, i am climbing the walls, hands clamped over my ears, bellowing in agony. any trace of a synthetic fibre in my bed linen and i'll grind my teeth all night without even knowing i'm doing it.

the only thing that i know will help is a good pedicure (quirky, moi? i'm obsessive about my feet), incorporating a really thorough lavender and neroli oil massage, so now i have to get to lush tomorrow. they produce a massage bar called therapy which is excellent and incorporates these oils, so it is all but garaunteed that i will haemorrage cash on their incredible but relatively expensive wares. my cat-like oversensitivity to smell (honestly, during my pregnancy i could have leased myself out to the police as a sniffer dog) means that i need things around me to smell a certain way. good smells for me are burnt caramel, lavender, coffee-obviously- tonka bean, neroli, ylang ylang, and cinnamon, which can sometimes worsen my temper and puts me in mind of the fact that this is what they use to neutralise the smell when a dead body has been hanging around undiscovered for a while, but i like nonetheless. i can feel my body literally unwind smelling these things, so most of the time i wear a lush solid perfume that incorporates at least three of them in order to maintain some sort of happy equilibrium and adequate focus on various manual tasks, like housework. however, the faintest whiff of clary sage, juniper, clove, or, less poetically, processed meat, spells at the very least a severe bout of nausea and at worst an epic five day migraine. oceanic, or ozone, smells cause me to daydream excessively or can actually make me hyperventilate and are therefore to be avoided, although i love smelling them on my boyfriend- who said romance was dead?

for my son, honey and chlorophyll are happy smells, while eggs and lilies are like his kryptonite- he becomes (even more) hyposensitive and very queasy when these smells are in the house. i use lots of candles and wax burners in the house,but i want to stop doing this, or at least change brand, because often they are too sickly sweet and often have a resinous amber basenote that lingers in our hair and clothes and makes us confused- its too much olfactory information, which is a shame because sometimes that can be exciting.

i haven't been to lush for a while as we had a significant end-of-xmas-line haul which included mainly spicy, almond and pink candy fragrances (which my daughter adores, and the snow fairy shower gel is amazing for her hair and scalp) because they were selling them off cheap, so i have none of the normal focus providing elixirs i generally rely on- hence, i now realise, this bout of insomnia.

yet again, this account cross referenced with this list of symptoms makes me wonder sometimes where dyspraxia ends and i begin.

.

and in the words of ice cube..

2009-03-02T15:21:00.000-08:00

oh, the power of rapid vitamin d production...the sun came out, and then:-

my vogue arrived.

my children made me genuinely laugh more than 4.7 times.

my espresso machine stopped producing watery stuff that looks and tastes like whats left in the bucket when you've cleaned out a pigsty

no major appliances broke.

i spent no money.

people that phoned me did so with good news, and with a cheery manner.

my hair looked awesome.

all this on 3 hours sleep.

i gotta say...

miss brightside

2009-03-01T14:15:00.000-08:00

yesterday, i posted on a little bit autistic that if the autistic spectrum can be likened to a colour wheel, a diagnosis of DCD, or dyspraxia, can be likened to a "diagnosis" of "blue-ish".

is a "blue-ish" diagnosis helpful? well, when a kid is four, definately- especially if you thought he was "green-ish", and was just hulking out all over the place. he probably won't become truly navy, or sky, or cerullion, until he is in his mid twenties anyway when he knows himself and can effectively communicate who he is... but it can be infuriatingly vague. don't most parents like to have a handle, however fantastical, on their children's future? faced with any possible impediment to a happy, secure and fulfilling life don't you want, especially when first faced with a diagnosis, that impediment to be brought into much sharper focus? you want to know what you' re up against- every heartbreaking detail, every worst possible scenario. but it goes away, and you are left with your calmingly "blue-ish" child, and a fresh sense of perspective; better equipped.

the comparison i immediately draw with this sadistic foray into the unknown is the demands for detail someone makes when told their loved one has commited an infidelity, when for some reason you seem to draw a twisted strength from any sickening detail you can glean- for any handle on the extent of your betrayal.

and this, rather clumsily, brings me to my point. it seems this colour wheel theory can be applied to many things that were previously thought to be either "black" or "white". today, on a single mother forum, i read a description of angelina jolie as a single mother. i sat bolt upright- has brad left? or, more likely, has she left brad? but no. it would seem that this forum describes anyone who is not formally married to the father of their children as a single mother. this forum believes that a woman that cohabits with the father of her children is a single mother. this forum even believes that a woman that is married to a man with whom she has children, but who is not the father of all of her children is a single mother... and i couldn't quite believe what i was reading. i sometimes struggle with the term single mother for myself because i am not technically single, being in a long distance relationship, and that's out of deference for the millions of women that don't have someone to talk to on the phone at the end of a hard day. but i sure as hell parent alone. no maintenence, no contact, no birthday cards... just a whole heap of guilt, and i'm not even the one that left.

so, let's say, on the single mother spectrum, i used to be "purple-ish" (co-habiting with the father of my children), then i was "gold-ish" (completely on my own), and then i was "gold-ish green" (completely on my own, but in a 3 year long distance relationship with someone who has a great relationship with my children, and who knows in the future). i am mainly gold, because my story still elicits empathy and exclamations to do with my perceived heroism when i relate it to people i haven't seen for a while, or people i am just getting to know, even if i dress it up in blase, cheery "everything's great now!" clothing. i don't like it. i'm no hero. if i could, i would tell these people i discoved these beautiful cherubs under a bridge in upminster. and that's not because i can't take responsibility for the fact that i had the bad judgement to procreate with someone who turned out to have the moral and ethical fibre of a ball bearing, it's because i hate for people to feel sorry for me. i don't feel sorry for me so why should anyone else?

what surprised me perhaps most of all about this expansion of the categories that are now covered by the "single mother" label was the extremity of my reaction to it. i was raised by a single mother ("rose gold"- no other relationship, but received maintenence and she worked hard to maintain that we still had contact with our father) and, obviously, am one myself, so i take any negative use of the term "single mother" (and most of the uses are, with a sweeping disregard for why these mothers might be single in the first place) particularly hard. so i never thought i would be defending the term, that i would be so keen to preserve it for the relatively martyred few- i mean couldn't it be in someway helpful to our blighted reputation that nigella lawson is now counted amongst our number?

and what colour are these women that do it completely by themselves- no help whatsoever from anyone?

well, i'll tell you. they are "platignum".

.

absorbent and porous and inebriated is she

2009-02-27T16:33:00.000-08:00

... and i'll tell you who else is dyspraxic, while i'm on the subject and have enough moscow mule in me to make a cat talk-

watch this... and believe.

.

the sartorialist

2009-02-26T06:21:00.000-08:00

i shouldn't be doing this; i should be making a little red riding hood cape and a "grandma rocks!" t-shirt for my daughter's fairy tale ball tomorrow, but i just iced 48 cupcakes and need a cup of coffee.

in the spirit of indulgence- see yesterday- i went to harvey nichol's today. and no, i didn't buy anything, i never do. well, not unless it's xmas, and then only in the food hall, for other people. or if it's my birthday, and then only in the cosmetics hall, for other people, if you think about it. i didn't try on any £900 dresses either (today anyway), but i did find myself extraordinarily breathless over the handbag you see above, and through a genuine mist of accessory inspired tears, i had a bit of a thought.

years ago, in another life, i worked in fashion. i was around various faces who were or have become household names, and the names behind the labels that most of us can't afford, but would like to, or at least are dimly aware of. fashion people, as we know, are notoriously "odd" lot. it is exceptionally cliquey and at times socially imprenetrable, and my primary impressions of the scene were that it was populated by people that had been bullied at school and were now exacting a particular kind of passive revenge- they had become cool. they had become the styleratti.

today, pawing this ridiculous object, moved by its very dimensions, i put something together for the first time- the incredible eye for detail, the need to create order and control and to communicate through something other than direct interaction, the trophyism, and, perhaps most of all, the rules...

true style and dyspraxia may just belong together like bread and butter.

.

reflexive perspective

2009-02-25T14:56:00.000-08:00

for the last two weeks i have had this feeling that i am on the a canyon edge of illness. not, i hasten to add, whilst touching much wood, an illness proper... more of a sore throat thing that makes me feel borderline crappy and doesn't even have the balls to man up and become an actual bout of flu.

also, i have been putting on weight. and again, in the interest of perspective, i must point out that i am perfectly healthy and have not wriggled into the overweight section of the bmi chart- i'm just a smidge bigger than the clothes i want to wear really allow. let's just refer to it as borderline muffin top territory, which at thirty one and with two children (at some points literally) under my belt i sometimes feel more than entitled to roll around in as much as i like... but i just cannot allow my self to get comfortable. this is stupid for any number of reasons, not least because i think a bit of flesh looks amazing on most other women, and also for the fact that i have this idea that bootcut jeans look absolutely awful on me and should not be attempted under any circumstances. (See also linen, most shades of green, kitten heels and employment. joke.)

this, and various other things to do with hormones, bank balances and a (apparently) waning libido, tell me i need something to shake all this up. a friend mentioned to me today we should start going for a weekly run together (i mumbled something about my knees in a non-commital fashion, but..), i found myself ordering my coffee today with soy rather than skimmed, and then even toying with the idea of going decaff (this is like a sixty-a-day smoker toying with the idea of only ever buying candy cigarettes from now on). all this tells me that maybe i need to at least make some token changes in order to placate the psychosomatic imbalance in sweetie-ville. or something.

anyway- so far what i am referring to as the me+ctrl+alt+del options list thus:-

1. start running/ saving for the physiotherapy bills.
2. do the master cleanse and temporarily become insane but thin, hopefully recharging my immune system along the way.
3. swap coffee for green tea and, like, pilates.

4. reduce the gluten in my diet (heartbreaking).

5. realise what incredibly self indulgent thoughts these are and how lucky i am that this is all i'm dealing with right now, that even if it doesn't always look like it within the context of the society i live in, i am extraordinarily fortunate and should put this energy into realising that and attempt in whatever small or large ways i can to improve the lives of those that i love and in my community... with donuts.

procrastinistan

2009-02-13T03:02:00.000-08:00

so! excitingly, my procrastination has a very serious psychological reason behind it- i am afraid of success. i know this, because i just read it on the internet whilst procrastinating. ergo, i am afraid of successful housekeeping- probably because it puts me in the role of "housewife" and i resist this, being particularly unkeen on marriage to an inanimate object, especially a draughty one with rising damp. what a fascinating insight into my psychological makeup.

there is none more valuable tool to pyschological self diagnosis, and indeed procrastination, than the internet. for example, this morning in the time that i could have been uselessly pursuing the ridiculous bourgeouis goals of clean clothes and a habitable living space, i have accessed information on how i should implement systems analysis in order to streamline my laundry activities; i have found out what barack obama had for breakfast; how one might employ heated rollers as makeshift pain relief; how much sky is going to cost me this month, and that an old friend of mine now keeps monkeys in rural buckinghamshire.

to label the gathering of these shiny pieces of information as mere time wasting, we must quantify the value of each them against the assumed benefits of changing the bedsheets and toilet cleaning, and therefore more time must be devoted to developing the infrastructure of this proposed assesment. so now, really, to do this properly, i have to develop a spreadsheet and a experience-value cross referencing system...

i should probably just get on with cleaning the fridge out.

malaise de la maladroit

2009-02-11T05:48:00.000-08:00

my son was recently diagnosed with developmental coordination disorder recently- or dyspraxia, or congenital maladroitness, or clumsy child syndrome. pick one, they are all the same thing.

there are certain differences between r.baby and other kids. he can't catch a ball, write his name, hop, draw a picture, or walk across a room without falling over or breaking something. he is very bright, but has problems following instructions and ordering his thoughts. he is very easily distracted. he is obsessed with small details, robots, and small details of robots. i am at the moment trying to work out if he might have asperger's syndrome, as charmingly portrayed on the big screen in "napoleon dynamite" (... at least that's what *i* think automatically of. i think it's a coping mechanism on my part- in the face of my son's special needs, i see jon heder falling off a bike and do a quiet guffaw. i am probably going to hell.) my son starts school in september, and i want him and the classroom he is going into to be as prepared as possible, and i suppose i just... want to know.

there's such a lot of overlap between the two conditions that one minute i am content with the d.c.d. diagnosis, and the next i am racing to the internet typing "my son walk on his tiptoes, flapping his hands and licking things whenever he is excited- aspergers?" into google and biting my nails down to the cuticle. should i be pushing for an asperger's diagnosis? who exactly is that going to help? and exactly who has just spread black poster paint all over the living room?

of course i am concerned for him. his school career, and indeed his life career are not going to be easy. i should know because i have d.c.d. too, and it's been a whirlwind of disorganised thought, rubbish coordination, wierd spontaneous behaviour, stumbling over my feet (physically and metaphorically), being thought generally odd, and the pitiful self esteem levels that this entire bundle of joy results in. this is maybe why it took so long for r. baby to be diagnosed- i think his behaviour is entirely normal.

oddness leads to isolation, and i see this happening already in his social life. other kids aren't that interested in hearing extended monologues about wall-e's elbows or lack thereof, and r. baby has a habit of zoning into a hinge or an axle, say, on a toy and operating it, transfixed, for hours. on the other hand though, he is outgoing and confident and sensitive to other people's thoughts and feelings, even if sarcasm is entirely out of his range of understanding. everyone loves him. now.

he is to be re-assessed in four months, and should be hearing from occupational therapy any day now. i am adrift in indecision.

on the plus side, however, i have found the perfect wedding guest dress. now i just have to work on becoming the perfect wedding guest.

that damned grey dress

2009-02-03T03:21:00.000-08:00

its barely february, and yet the ugly subject of weddings seems to have already reared its beautiful head.

i am a single mother in my 30's. i have a lovely boyfriend who lives a long way away. he is in his twenties. during our happy three years together, we have attended a fair few weddings, and, if i were to emply particularly flowery language, and given the subject that might just be what i decide to do, i might describe them as hideous blips on the otherwise blissful plain of our togetherness. or something.

to begin with, these events always provide more than their fair share of sartorial angst, but i think this says more about me than necessarily what is required. i have spent approximately 56 kajillion hours in changing rooms, umm-ing over the appropriateness of a skirt length, ahh-ing over the acceptability of a particular shade of blue in the name of getting it just right- for which read "charming, yet unremarkable." but, to cut a fairly long and tedious story short, i have, despite all the shopping, worn the same grey dress i got from h&m in the sale, for a tenner, to each and every wedding. yeah- grey. not dove grey, or grey-with-a-hint-of-pink, or lilac. no, the sky-right-before-it-pisses-down grey. and that is a fairly handy metaphor for how i feel about weddings; any previous enthiusiasm gets rained off in the face of things being... not quite right.

why this should be, this big sigh in the face of other people's matrimonials, i don't know. actually i do. what all these weddings have had in common, other than alcohol, bread rolls, vomit and that damned grey dress, is this: none of them have been ours. now, don't start thinking that that is at the heart of the matter, because it is not. you will never meet anybody as truly ambivalent about marriage than me. but, if, say, it was our wedding, there is at least a small chance, that possibly, perhaps, we might enjoy it. maybe. instead, we stand about, too drunk, avoiding eye contact with eachother during the commitment parts, trying not to die of resentment when the other disappears for four hours looking for cigars, jiggling along politely to a piss-poor rendition of 'groove is in the heart'.

anyway, this morning my beloved called me from his car on the way to a meeting, and, after we had caught up on the last few hours, spoken of the weather and breathlessly reassured eachother of our love o'er the hectares of slush betwixt us, he mentioned that we have been invited to a wedding. but! in light of a dimly remembered and doubtlessly drunken announcement at the onset of the year that i would be retiring from the wedding circuit hence, he thought i would rather not go. this bewildering ur-invitation was followed, inevitably, by a fairly heated argument in which we traded accusations and unresolved resentments, disappointments and disillusions, passive aggressions and grand transgressions... and, as you may not quite have gathered by now, its not even our wedding.

three terminated phone calls later, it has been decided that i will be in attendance, with lines drawn under all wedding experiences previous, and a new set of rules and boundaries laminated in my clutch bag (essentially, "each of us should avoid leaving the other on their own" and "be nice"). the changing room angst can begin again in earnest.

the grey dress is to go to charity. probably "mind".