I need a drink.  Not even a drink.  An IV of margaritas that go straight into my veins.  Oh, I’m all talk.  Did I tell you that I’ve given up drinking?  For the past few months, I’ve noticed that whenever I drink I want to die.  My muscles ache, and it’s like I have to choke down the drink to begin with.  If I’m going to choke on something it should be broccoli or some other essential, life-affirming vegetable … not Malibu Rum.  Do you know how much porn spam I’m going to get with all this choke talk?  So, yeah, doing this fucking life sober.  The good news is that I’m not an alcoholic so I can jump head first off this wagon at any given moment.

Speaking of wanting to mainline — this will get me all the international pharmacy spam — Veruca has been sick.  After an auspicious beginning, she’s been home all fucking week with this cough fever combo.  I’m amazed that it only took me 96 hours to really, really get used to her being away for a few hours a day.  Needless to say, the illness hasn’t dimmed her personality.  Tomorrow, I don’t care if I have to put ice cubes in her drawers, she is going.  DD is ready to see her go.  I am ready to see her go.  And her school is ready to see her.  They haven’t called, but I know in my heart that they miss her terribly.  I’m sure of it.  This is my mantra.

Can I talk about my site for a minute?  Really, who could stop me?  There’s been a weird trend that has happened as my traffic has increased.  There is this amazing group of people that either silently or outwardly lend support.  Amazing coming from a big crop of strangers.  Thank you.  I’m also starting to get the comments that cut.  Someone said something nasty about Veruca today (that didn’t get published and they got one of my special, custom-made banned IP messages, too).  I know it just goes with the territory and you cannot take these things personally.  People really need a venue in which to release their aggressions and why the fuck not launch their crap at an innocent four-year-old?  But I question where to draw the line.  The other day a couple people implied that DD was starting to get better looking which, as a mother just translates into, “DD was ugly and now he’s not as ugly.”  In cases like that, I just close comments.  I knew those people didn’t come from a place of ill will and it’s more about my sensitivities as a mother who thinks all her kids are part of this huge constellation called Awesome.  Anyway, this morning I emailed Heather Armstrong aka Dooce to ask for her advice.  She’s running a successful site on a grand scale and I know she’s been faced with these same challenges.  She didn’t reply to my email, but she did post this today.  You know that I make all things in the universe about me, so I think it’s clear that she wrote it just for me.  She talks about hatemail and how she created a whored-out page of ads and puts all her hate mail there.  It’s pretty brilliant and an idea that I’m totally stealing … since she wrote it just for me.

Aspie had his counseling appointment today.  Oh, wait — before I talk about that, HUGE NEWS:  Aspie got in trouble for talking in school!  You may have no idea what great news this is unless you have an Aspie in your life!  He was talking in the lunch line when the kids were supposed to be quiet.  He had a recess taken away, though his sentence was drastically reduced by the teacher and he ended up getting off with a warning.  My kid, the one who couldn’t carry a conversation if it came with a handle, is now an obnoxious, hard to contain, chatterbox.  Can juvie be far behind?  I. Am. Thrilled.  Okay, back to the doc.  A hadn’t seen his doctor in about 18 months.  It’s hard to describe this dude.  He’s completely disheveled and I’m always struck by the fact that he wears white tube socks with dark brown dress shoes.  And plaid … always plaid.  He looks like the love child of that hamburger guy from Popeye — Wimpy? — and Mr. Magoo who got an additional DNA download from the Absentminded Professor.

Absentminded or not, he remembered so much about Aspie.  I mean, I know he takes notes, but he remembered what my kid wore — that was a really fun phase we went through when Aspie was completely fixated on velvet blazers and neckties — the first time they met.  He remembered their secret handshake (sure, he probably does the same handshake with all the kids, but this is my fantasy where my child is just so memorable), and A’s love of all things train-related.

Even as an underage child, Aspie is protected by doctor-patient confidentiality.  Does it bug me that he goes behind closed doors and talks about God only knows what with someone not a parent?  You betcha.  I sit in the waiting room and flip through Family Circle, pondering turkey-shaped cookie place card holders and all the magic I could create if I actually used my label-maker (Family Circle just makes me feel like I’m not doing enough), and I look at the clock — a lot.  I strain my ears and hear nothing other than Dr. Wimpy’s booming laugh and imagine that Aspie is telling all the bad ME stories.  Like the time I went to add cold water to his bath and instead added scalding hot … WHILE HE WAS IN IT.  I still haven’t forgiven myself for that.  Or I imagine that he’s telling the good doctor that I serve too much processed food and he just longs for asparagus.  I check the door often to see if CPS is coming up the hall for me.  And if they do take me away, can I take my Family Circle with me?  Since Martha Stewart got sprung, the female prison population has been missing special somethings like turkey-shaped cookie place card holders.

Dr. Wimpy was so thrilled with the changes in Aspie over the past year-and-a-half.  We — Special K and my mother and I — certainly remember what he used to be like versus now, but it’s so nice to hear it from an outside, and for that matter paid-professional, party.  Aspie no longer needs to be dressed like Hef to feel conversant.  He can handle a handshake; hell, he can handle a hug.  He gets the joke where he used to be so wholly and unwaveringly literal … you can imagine the fun we had with idioms.  He has the ability to shift from one topic to another, even if his full range of topics is still pretty limited.  Dr. Wimpy said it and I’ve said it too; he is a different child.

As we were pulling out of the parking lot, I said to A, “You know, I think it was so amazing the way Dr. W remembered so much about you.  Your likes, your dislikes, your clothes and your school and things that you’ve struggled with.”  Without missing a beat, Aspie replied, serving up his usual sigh-eye roll combination, “Uh, yes, Mother.  Dr. W is what’s called a “Child Psychologist”.  He’s supposed to remember all these things.  It’s his job and he obviously does it well.  It’s why I wanted to see him.”

Sigh.  Looks like I might be jumping off that wagon sooner rather than later.

I almost forgot about Devil Dog.  What else is new?  Poor kid.  He’s the third.  So often overlooked and forgotten.  Not really, but he’d like you to think that.  A few people emailed wanting to know how he has been handling the reality that he is not going to school despite his insistence to the contrary.  In short?  Pretty well.  Pay no attention to that cut on the top of his head.  It was not obtained by throwing himself face down on a tile floor in a fit of despair.

Day 1 wasn’t too bad because Special K was home.  They spent the afternoon playing soccer.  Yesterday wasn’t awful either because DD is turning into a total mommy’s boy.  He was happy to have me all to himself.  We lounged on the couch and cuddled.  He sighed and said, “This is really nice.  You’re special.”  I think he’s special too.  In a kind of  ”Don’t Feed the Animals” kind of way.

Today, I finally braved the scary territory of putting him in street clothes.  Truly, I didn’t want him getting any fancy ideas that he was going to school and I knew clothes would send him waddling down that path.  He did well, though.  We brought Veruca to school and went to the grocery store.  He was excited to be free aka not in a cart.  He piled grape jelly and wheat bread into our handbasket.  He was happy to help.

We got home and he settled in for an epic sleep.  I went and picked up Veruca at the end of her day.  For the first time this week she was actually happy to see me.  She chatted quite a bit on our fifteen-minute ride home.  She’s already learned a whole new litany of songs.  You should expect a catalog of videos soon.  I asked if she played outside today and she informed me that a boy chased her all around the play yard.  ”A boy?  Was chasing you?  Why?”  She started laughing and replied, “I don’t know, but your husband is going to start crying when he hears this story!”  That’s her new thing now:  she calls Special K “your husband.”  Yesterday I was laying down when K came home from work.  She came barging into my room dragging Special K behind her and said, “Mommy, I’d like to present you with your husband.”  We’re currently investigating to see if she’s been watching The Tudors while we sleep.  I do enjoy having a man brought to my chambers, however.

Another kind of odd and creepy thing happened today.  I was standing near the foyer of our front door when Veruca said, “Who’s that behind you?”  I slowly turned to look at emptiness.  She was pretty insistent that there was “another Mommy standing behind you.”  Great.  Am I just destined to never have two minutes to myself?  Now I can’t even shake the afterlife?

Aspie has been so happy since going back to school.  Over the past couple of days his stomach brain seems to be staying in his nerve center and he’s almost joyful at times about this fact.  He asked me to schedule a visit with the counselor who helped us get to an Asperger diagnosis a year and a half ago.  He said he has some stuff to talk about, nothing bad, but he’s looking for some ways to deal with the mind chatter and anxiety that plague him.  I love that he’s that self-aware and confident enough that he can say, “Hey, I need some help here.  I’m lacking some tools.”  It’s especially amazing for an Aspie.  I made the appointment.

Happy Memorial Day.  It seems so odd that today is a day to recognize our fallen soldiers.  Men and women gave their lives in the name of freedom and protection.  In exchange, we get a three-day weekend out of the deal complete with barbecue and 20% off selected items at Best Buy.  Something seems very inequitable about this.

We had my brother — incidentally, a veteran – and his fiancee over this afternoon.  As their wedding approaches (just a few more weeks!) it’s nice to take last-minute advantage of these lazy days. 

Aspie was all kinds of dramatic this weekend.  He actually ended up on punishment for his mouth and his penchant for throwing laundry on his bedroom floor.  I encourage free thought and independence and even intelligent debate but I won’t raise a fucking brat.  So you won’t see him in many of the pics of this weekend — and let me assure you that there are no pictures of him smiling – because every time I pointed a camera in his general direction he pretended he was ducking from shrapnel. 

You know, sometimes I feel like he’s almost cured of Asperger’s Syndrome.  Okay, I’m no Jenny McCarthy, but I wonder if he was misdiagnosed or something because he seems so normal lately.  This weekend was a reality check.  Just in the way he acted most of the weekend.  Moody, could not — literally couldn’t — accept advice, guidance or information from any person.  He wasn’t just being a know-it-all…it extends beyond that.  It’s really annoying to deal with and I spent a large part of the weekend doing my own little self-control exercises as to not lose my fucking mind and bash his teeth down his throat — thankfully I’m not a teeth-basher type…mostly because I’m well aware of the cost of dentistry.  The only thing more difficult than dealing with a nine-year-old who won’t listen to reason, is dealing with a nine-year-old who won’t listen to reason whilst he’s wearing a blackwatch plaid bathrobe in 80 degree weather paired with horizontally striped pajama pants, white soccer socks (pulled up over said pants and hiked up to the knees), a black skull cap and a lightsaber threaded through his bathrobe belt.  I would be lying if I said I didn’t fantasize that I was in some Star Wars movie and I was given the power to vaporize him.  In a “comes back in a sequel” sort of way, naturally.  Do people actually get vaporized in Star Wars?  I don’t know, but I’d like to think so.

Veruca spent most of the time in the yard saying , “Mommy, take a picture of me now.  Take a picture of me with this pose.  How do you like this one?”  So, yeah…most of her pictures are not candids though she tries hard to make them appear as such.  She is fully aware of the camera at all times.

She’s really keyed up about her upcoming role as flower girl in my brother’s wedding.  The plan?  I’m not telling her that it’s the day of the wedding until it’s time to put her dress on.  After the original dress purchase, it took me a month to get her to stop asking if today was wedding day. 

Oh, and we let her get a pet.  An ant.  And he has to stay outside.  And he may look a little different every day but it’s only because he’s growing up so fast.  Shhhh.

And, yes.  Her fingernails are blue.

Devil Dog tired himself with endless time running around and playing soccer.  The original goal was to exhaust him for bed but I think he exhausted my brother more.  Age is a bitch.

DD really is my brutish child, simple in his needs (he requires a lot of food and has started a terrible habit of groping me and then exclaiming, “I feel better.” — he’s your basic man).  His newest trick is Love With An Agenda.  He’ll spontaneously approach and tell me he loves me and he’ll kiss me.  Within a few minutes I’ll realize that I’ve been pickpocketed of something.

So much is going on right now. 

I was supposed to be away this weekend for Lola’s baby shower.  My mom hurt her back so that trip is scrapped. 

I am starting full-time at Evil Beet on Tuesday which requires a big life adjustment for me.  It’s a good and positive move but I need to get some serious structures in place so my life feels more organized and doesn’t crumble down around me.  I’m strongly considering getting Devil Dog and Veruca into a pre-school program a couple days out of the week.  They are sick of me.

When I was planning on going to PA this weekend, Aspie and Veruca were coming with me.  Special K was taking Devil Dog to see his parents on Long Island.  Now, through some amazing twist of luck, fate and insanity, K is taking all three kids to New York.  All.  Three.  Kids.  Allow that to sink in, folks.  I can’t believe it either.  When I have child-free weekends like this, and this isn’t my first, I make huge plans to get drunk and pee with the door closed, but guess what?  I never do.  I usually end up being more of a raging bitch than usual.  I’ll eat an entire family pack of Twix, end up sleeping with candy wrappers scattered all around me, do a lot of dramatic sighing and obsessive texting throughout the day to get updates on the heathens.  I’m really screwed up.

I’m hoping Special K doesn’t read WHN tonight because if he does, my kid-free weekend may be revoked.  As a matter of fact, as soon as I publish this, I’m army crawling down to his desktop and yanking the cable modem and telling him I forgot to pay the bill.  Because I must tell you…Veruca and Devil Dog have been fighting all day.  Like, beating the shit out of each other type of fighting.  I know you must find it very difficult to believe that this child is capable of violence, but…

Veruca screams at DD, “Hold my hand and don’t let go for anything!”  DD screams back, “No!  Be quiet!”  

“Yes!” 

“No!”

“Yes!”

“No!”

And then a white patent leather go-go boot to DD’s forehead, a closed-fist punch to Veruca’s jaw (from DD, not me…though tempting).  I freak my freak, yell at them, and then force them to hug, kiss and proclaim their love for one another.  Sidenote:  As if you couldn’t tell, DD is still into the “I’m blind!  I can’t see!  I can’t see!” routine.  

Then the cycle beings again.  “Hold my hand and don’t let go for anything!”  Fuck.  My.  Life.

Aspie got in trouble for talking in class today.  And when I say “got in trouble,” I basically mean that he was gently spoken to.  He’s pretty devastated.  You know that he prides himself on stellar behavior and a sparkling academic record.  Personally, I’m thrilled he’s getting a little static.  Recently he’s been a little mouthy, a little rebellious and he’s getting a sense of humor.  For my Aspie, this is improvement.  I want him to have a voice so others don’t choose his voice for him.  Developing a sense of humor and making jokes means he’s less doom and gloom.  We haven’t had a talk about Obama’s strategy for Iraq in weeks (however, he is still staying awake nights, worried about college applications, choosing a major and trying to figure out how far he’ll have to commute to campus.  Baby steps).  He’s not only having more conversation, he’s initiating conversation.  Granted, the topic may have to do with the tragically short life of a mayfly, but again…it’s progress.

Pray for me this weekend.  Hell, pray for Special K.  He’s gonna need it.

Aspie had a half-day today.  He has another tomorrow.  He has another next Friday.  Why does the school district hate me?

He had a friend over after school today.  I’m going to call him Handcuffs.  So Aspie got off the bus with Handcuffs, and I greeted them, asked how their day was and asked HC if he liked grilled cheese sandwiches.  He has a peanut butter allergy and I’ve been living in fear all week that I am going to be the one to kill this kid.  Thankfully, our house is rife with epi pens.  And I cannot lie- by the end of the afternoon, the idea of a swift “swing and jab” was a rather appealing concept.  He replied, “Yes, but with no crust and slightly soft in the middle,”  without breaking stride.  Aspie’s eyes were the size of Oreos over that and that was only the first thirty seconds of our afternoon together.

Upon walking into the house, HC chased Aspie around the dining room table for a few rounds, insisting on handcuffing him.  I intervened and got to work on their soft-center sandwiches.  Oh, would you like to know how to make a grilled cheese sandwich that’s slightly soft in the center?  You make a grilled cheese like a totally normal person and when you serve it, you say, “Here you go, just like you ordered.  Soft in the middle!”  It’s a recipe that works.

So, I’m kind of a bitch.  But this was Aspie’s first time having a friend, a friend who was a total unknown element to me, over for the day.  It’s a big deal.  Eighteen months ago, he couldn’t look in someone’s eyes and insisted on wearing neckties with his pajamas.  This is normalcy and it’s a welcome addition to our life.  And I could see how nervous he was.  Nervous that his friend would be a monster and I wouldn’t be pleased by that.  When I gave them their lunches, Aspie thanked me, sincerely, three times.  Once for himself, once on behalf of his ungrateful buddy, and once more for good measure.  After lunch, when HC wanted to play video games, Aspie said, “I think I’ll just pick up the table first.”  I had to push him along his way and encourage him to at least pretend that he was a normal, self-centered nine-year-old.

You would have been very proud of me as I overlooked the pile, pile of hand towels that were thrown on my bathroom floor.  I pretended not to hear when HC said that some toy, “totally sucked.”  And when he started eating bacon that I had grilled for a recipe, I just put some on a plate and handed it to him with a smile.  I smiled as I microwaved said bacon because its temperature wasn’t to his liking.  I smiled as I silently as I picked up the ground-in remains from our carpet.  I even smiled when HC’s mother sat in my living room and gave a disapproving cluck as I told her what I fed her kid.  She let me know “Pork is never allowed in my home, but it’s fine if he has it…here.”  And no, they aren’t Jewish.  It’s just fattening-bacon, that is.  Not Judaism.  Of course, this is the same chick who does yoga stretching every time I see her so I can’t relate to her anyway.  I even held my tongue when her kid started talking to my kid like he was stupid because he couldn’t figure out the mechanical workings of a Transformer toy…though there will be dialog about that later this evening.  I did what I could to appease my son’s anxiety over the whole situation.  I.  Was.  Good.

I’m not sure if HC is a monster.  I think he is just your normal pre-teen.  If anything, I think my kid, the one who insisted on getting homework out of the way prior to playing the wii and would be aghast if he knew about the hand towels,  is probably the oddball.

Overall, I survived the day without imbibing.  I call that “success”.

Sometimes I almost forget that my son is on the spectrum.  He’s come so far and it’s easy to let it slip your mind.  But I see him in social situations and the fear is renewed.  I worry about Aspie.  I worry that he won’t say, “Get the fuck away from me and stop it before I shove those handcuffs up your ass.”  I worry that he allows people to diminish him.  And it doesn’t even strike him that there is another option.  Or that this isn’t okay.  Where is his voice?  I worry as he gets older that he will be so easily led and his truths will be defined by whatever he picks up in the wind.  I worry.