no crystals here, people

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.

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*

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

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.

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june is indeed a far off land

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

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

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.

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