While Zeus and Louise don't suffer from autism, they can make life more challenging in our household. But never fear, the cats don't help the situation either.
It has been a challenging week. It was hard to put Mick back on a plane after having him home for only ten days. So this challenging week started with getting up at 2:00 a.m. on monday in order to get him to his plane on time.
I made it home about 5:30 a.m. that same morning to find both Sam and Miranda in my bed. Miranda removed herself back to her room and Sam and I slept together for a little while, but I really couldn't get back to a sound sleep. So I spent most of monday fantasizing about sleep and feeling kind of like a zombie. It was noticeable that all of us were feeling a little down, a little deflated. Pets included.
Monday night/ tuesday morning should have been bliss. Sleep deprivation continued with Sam getting up at 4:00 a.m. and being active. Excuse me, I meant ACTIVE. At 4:00 a.m.
Sam had demanded we go to the grocery store on monday and she went there with a purpose. It was all I could do to keep up with her as she marched up one aisle and down another with great deliberation, knowing exactly what she was going to throw into our cart. When we got to the cereal aisle I stopped her by saying, "No, we are NOT getting Lucky Charms. All you do is eat the marshmallows and throw away the cereal. Pick something else."
She didn't feel so inclined.
So after a trip to the restroom, which is becoming a regular feature of our grocery shopping trips, and we picked up just a few odds and ends in the produce section, Sam started to march with purpose again as I struggled to keep pace.
"Candy aisle," she said.
"Oh, all right," I replied with some skepticism. I expected to have to use my veto power over and over, but no. She marched all the way down the aisle, carefully perusing the contents as she walked. Obviously she had something in mind. I was kind of surprised, given all the choices that I find so tempting, that all Sam wanted was a small bag of candy corn. I know she likes candy corn. So does Miranda. Frankly, candy fiend that I am, I think candy corn is kind of gross and not tempting in the least. All the better.
So do you already know where this is leading?
That's right. Tuesday morning, 4:00 a.m. Deprived of Lucky Charms, Sam creates Candy Corn cereal. A big gross bowl of candy corn filled up with milk. She ate most of it. Yes, I let her. It was 4:00 a.m. and I was still sleep deprived from the day before and frankly, check out the cereal aisle at the grocery store. There is some disgusting crap living in colorful boxes in that aisle.
What Sam was unable to finish eating, probably due to a sickening spike in her blood sugar level, turned to thick, bright goo. I washed it down the sink. She went on to eat a sandwich she makes herself, and I do believe about an hour later I heard the microwave and she was ready for Top Ramen. Deplorable, yes. An every day occurrence, no. So tuesday was a wash. I gave up, got up, and did the best I could even if it was with a total lack of enthusiasm.
That brings us to wednesday morning. Still haven't caught up on my sleep. The weather had been nauseatingly hot. It was close to 100 on wednesday. And when I awoke, or more accurately, was awakened, at 5:50 a.m., it was already close to 70 degrees. There was no refreshing morning air, no fresh early morning smells coming through the open windows. It was already muggy. I could feel stickiness approaching.
I awoke because I thought I heard the microwave. Sam has been known to try to cook Top Ramen or microwave popcorn for as long as 26 minutes. One summer we had a bartender who couldn't see anything to save her life and cooked popcorn for too long in the microwave and we had to get a new microwave. I didn't want to get a new microwave, so I groaned and hauled my body out of bed. Sam ran from me when she saw me coming and slammed the bedroom door.
Not the microwave. Her suspicious behavior was the first clue. I entered the kitchen and found a broken egg in a bowl. However, there were about four egg shells on the counter. I covered the egg and put it in the refrigerator for later. These were my free-range eggs. Thankfully, they'd been on sale.
When Sam was really little she had a thing for eggs. She has always absolutely refused to eat them, but for too long in our lives she had a fascination with breaking them. On the floor. A dozen at a time. Over and over, dozen after dozen, hiding place after hiding place, until finally Mick put a hasp and lock on the refrigerator.
I thought we were finally passed all that. Breaking an egg into a bowl instead of on the floor is a new thing, though. Later that afternoon, I found another bowl containing the rest of the eggs. I found it sitting precariously on my bed. No clue what she was intending.
Every morning, either no later than 6:30 a.m. or at the first sign of anyone stirring, our cat Hedwig becomes a whiny, demanding pest, insisting on being served breakfast. She's much worse than Sam because even though I don't always appreciate Sam's independence, Sam is independent and Hedwig is completely dependent. So each morning, whether Sam is being challenging or not, Hedwig is definitely challenging to both my patience and affection.
When done catering to cats and dogs, I went to collapse on the couch, and I found a small plate on the coffee table that was overflowing with raw egg. Sigh. I got up and added it to the bowl with the one egg, deciding that I'd have an omelette once I was truly awake.
So I go to lay down on the couch again and I spot a raw egg just lying there on the carpet. On the carpet. Oh, god. Cleaned that up and finally got to drift off on the couch in the early morning muggy air.
When I got up to make tea and let the dogs in, who'd been enjoying the early morning outdoors, I noticed that there had been cat puke on the carpet in the dining room and someone had stepped in it. Probably Sam on her way to the little room.
While the least irritating of the two cats, Hecate is the main culprit when it comes to puking.
The thing with our cats is, they puke like a bulimic. What I mean is, they puke like they don't even notice that they're doing it. When I puke, and the last time I did I was being sea sick, I always seem like my entire stomach and intestines are going to emerge from my mouth and plop onto the floor. I puke and little blood vessels in my face break. No kidding. I don't puke with any sense of grace or decorum, so it is definitely something I avoid.
Well, as I should have expected, whoever puked did it as they were walking along and left more than one pile. And Zeus was on it like nobody's business the minute the screen door opened. I was fatigued enough to actually feel grateful for his assistance. And then the little freak, having had his appetite stimulated by such a delicacy, hoovered his dog food as he almost never does. I guess I just need to let him eat cat puke in the morning first. As an appetizer.
The carpets have suffered terribly. Garden dirt has been tracked in. Dog and cat hair is a given. Now we have puke residue and egg. Time to shampoo.
Also, for the past week or so, Sam has been having pee accidents again. She hasn't been staying dry at night, so once she wakes up wet, she moves into the little sewing room and sleeps in that bed until she wakes up in the morning having peed all over that bed. Then she has also, during the day, had pee accidents on my king-sized bed. Every day for several days now. Once I've had her bed stripped while washing her sheets and pads, she has peed on the remaining pads on her bed. In this instance our heat wave has been a blessing. Everything has dried very quickly outside.
When Sam has pee accidents, it's a sign that something isn't quite right with her. Often it's a signal that she's getting a cold. And I understand that this isn't unusual with autistic kids. Sometimes it's a sign of something else. In this case, probably too much restaurant food and now missing her dad. She has cried a couple of times and has said, "Sad".
It was all a bit much for me. I haven't lost my mind, nothing like that yet, but yesterday afternoon I decided I would like to have a couple of glasses of wine in the evening. Sam wanted me to cook pizza, but at 100 degrees, my oven is NOT being turned on. Thankfully, we now have a Little Cesar's with a drive up window, cheese and pepperoni pizzas always ready and always just $5. So why turn on the oven?
I made the mistake of asking Sam if she wanted to go with me because she always likes going to stores. Sam has absolutely no underwear at this time. She is still ripping them to shreds and I haven't fixed any more Frankenstein underwear for her yet.
So here's my confession. Probably more than you want to know. But I have LOTS of underwear and I keep many pairs of wonderfully ancient, threadbare, stretched out pairs, just to sleep in. They are completely disgraceful, but they're what I like. So I thought, why not? Why not let Sam wear a pair of these old ones of mine, especially since she was insisting on wearing a dress?
We're in the ice cream aisle. It's 5:00. The store is packed with people shopping on their way home from work. In the ice cream aisle, for the THIRD TIME, I turn to see Sam with her dress hiked up around her waist as she tries to pull up my old, stretched-out underwear that keep sliding down below her butt cheeks. Sometimes I'm so brilliant.
We hurried and paid then drove over to Little Cesar's.
I was so ready for that glass of wine. Living room to myself, I sat down with my glass of wine, didn't spill any, and watched one of my new favorite shows--Hung on HBO. Love that show. Funny, irreverent, and completely inappropriate. Don't worry, Miranda doesn't watch this one. Too embarrassing for her.
Miranda joins me later and we re-watch the last episode of True Blood. She keeps going back and forth on the list like she can't make up her mind which episode to watch when she suddenly says, with a touch of outrage in her voice, "WHO DELETED SHAKE AND FINGER-POP??!!" [That would be about the fourth episode on True Blood this season.]
"Well," I replied, "that would have had to have been your father when he was trying to catch up on the episodes."
"Great," Miranda said in disgust and shook her head in disbelief that that man can't follow simple instructions like NEVER delete ANY of Miranda's True Blood.
One definition of stupidity is to keep on repeating an action while expecting to get a different result. So drinking wine when I really wanted a good night's sleep, and drinking wine when it was already so hot, really was kind of stupid.
I woke up just past midnight. Nobody else's fault. Not the damned cat--to hot for her to velcro herself to me. Not Sam, she was sleeping like an angel. But I was sweaty and had a DRY mouth.
I got up, had some iced tea, made some more, changed into some lighter pajamas, and went back and stared at my big empty bed, empty except for the seven pillows I use to create my nest. Making the best of a bad situation, i.e. Mick's absence, I decided I may as well just read for awhile.
So I did. I finished "The Little Book"by Selden Edwards, a thoroughly delightful, charming, intriguing, and somewhat educating little book. After that, I was able to get to sleep. The new weather front from the Coast was moving in and the air temperature was cooling just enough.
I woke up at 6:30. That damned Hedwig again. I looked in Sam's room. Empty. I felt the bed. Dry. Dry? Really? I felt it again. Yes, really. I moved through the house to the kitchen. No evidence of Sam having eaten or having made a mess. Door to the tiny room closed. I can hear Penelope playing on the DVD player and Sam breathing deeply. I feed the pets and go plop on the couch like I usually do and start watching the Today Show. When Sam gets up, I'm amazed to find the bed in the little room dry.
I move into my room where Sam is already busy on Mick's laptop. I remind her to go pee--IN THE TOILET, and she does.
Maybe this will just turn out to be a good day.
Sam in her element.
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