From the mouths of babes...

Life has a way of throwing things at you that you are not ready for. It's what makes us grow and adapt. Today has been one of those days where I am not feeling the best and struggling to deal with teh Boyoes with patience, if not humor. 

That's when my elder son delivers a line that simply smacked me in the face. 

"My traitor is my creator."

Now this is coming from a nine year old. He likes to write songs and this happened to be the latest title of one such.  I am quite certain he did not intend it to mean as much as it does, but still...  Left me blinking.

How often do I/we let the little, and the big, "traitors" in our lives create our mindset? Our mood? Our way of "being" in the world? Do not mistake me here; I am not saying that we ought to be without influences, but rather quit sabotaging ourselves.

All too often in my daily life, the "traitor" is me. 

Ok... Aspie...

So... I did this Apsergers quiz thinger... Scary hard for an Aspie to do. Seriously. This was my results page.

Your Aspie score: 175 of 200

Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 49 of 200

You are very likely an Aspie

So if you want to take a little bit of time (more if you are Aspie-ish) and answer the 150 questions, heres the link:

http://www.rdos.net/eng/Aspie-quiz.php

Have fun!

Seasonal Confusion

Talk about total seasonal confusion! I went outside to bring the recyclables to the car and decided to walk around the yard a bit. I discovered a few surprises while out there.

We have had frost, snow, & freezing temps; the whole winter thing the past few weeks has chilled me to the bone. Yet, for all that... There was the tiniest of butterflies fluttering round my dead Rose of Sharons! I watched it flitter and hover round my soggy, dead garden for a few minutes in wonder, before it decided to really move on. I have no idea how it has survived this long, or where it hid during the coldest, soggiest times. It did bring a smile and joy to me, so thankful I am that it has made it this long.

Once the lil thing moved on I looked at my bleary garden, missing its green cheer... And saw a hint of green. Closer inspection led me to discover the silly cat nip plant that refused to grow all summer was quite alive! Healthy, vibrant green, it has a bunch of leaves, barely budded and mature ones both. THAT brought out a squee of delight! My kitties are happy for it too... But I have really missed my annual harvest of it for teas. Yes, teas. I love to blend my own teas; some other people love, and some still more cant seem to appreciate. *chuckles* Still, they are my own and I love them. Cat nip, a mellower member of the mint family, has always been part of my tradition.

So here I sit with a cup of cat nip and chamomile, and a HUGE smile. I may not get as much of a harvest as I would have liked, but at least I will get more than I expected.

"Black Sea" excerpt

She sat very still and straight in the dingy. Only in her mind was she hunched and curled around herself in fear. Apprehension and dread permeated everything here, in this place between. She had been Summoned to this dark place outside of time, though she knew not why or how. Her eyes darted from the shrouded Boat Keeper to the midnight expanse that ought to have been sky. The emptiness of that sight filled her with dread, her stomach knotted tight and her heart thumping against her ribs. Her gaze flickered to the water that was not water, black as pitch. It held her trapped fast. No reflections or ripples marred its glassy surface, though she knew it ought not be that way. Instinctively she knew its touch would burn with a salted acidity. It was death, this whole place was death. Death of all that was light and good.

She pulled her eyes away, forcing herself to look forward, beyond the Keeper and its long pole... To the island in the too near distance. She did not know how she could see it, that obsidian shore placed in the middle of this unnatural water. Yet she could see the individual shards that was the gravelly sand. It shimmered in the most peculiar way, absorbing what light might have ever been, like uncounted black holes. The void was total and complete and she did not want to go there. But she was Summoned. She had no choice. So very straight and still she sat in the dingy, struggling to stay sane and alive.


All these years later I still wonder at the Black Sea, and its Island... And at the other alive one in the boat behind me...
This is the place of my darkest despair, my deepest fears. The place to which more than one Summons have been given. And each time, I am sent back alive, if not whole. Were it not for the light and beauty of the Grotto and the Tree, I should have been insane and dead long ago.


-Excerpt, a very rough one from the first draft, of "Summons"

*Blink*

I am quietly freaking out. Very quietly. And that is the worst sort of freaking out I do. Why? *snorts* Cause it means Im about to step out of my boxes, layers, and walls. It means peeking out, (or worse yet, STEPPING out), of my world. It is one thing to know that this blog CAN be seen by others, and a totally scary thing to know it IS seen by others. It's the sort of mental blinder I have to allow me to actually write what I do here. Knowing that Im "hiding in plain sight." Now, I know, the trick will be to keep putting down what is a very real slice of my mind and heart... To STAY open and real. Hence the quietly freaking out.

Hello. This is me. I am here. I am real. I am a royal mess. Nice to meet you.

Brain Dump

Yeah.. it's time for a brain dump, cause there's tooooooo much miscellany floating round and round and round...

I. I REALLY should have called the Nintendo folks a LOT sooner.. Like months ago. The power cord for our Wii took a dump and it has been an on-again-off-again thing to try to replace it. Lots of dead ends in the stores, and my Aspie kicks up when I have to call people. So wish I had kicked my inner Aspie a bit harder, and sooner. Eric was very helpful, nice, down to earth, and set it up to send me a new cord, free of charge. WooT for Eric! Cant wait to play my games again!

II. DH is on a cleaning streak. I really hate when this happens on a Sunday. Sunday= Do Nothing Day. Oh aggravating. True, the house is trashed from me not feeling well, and the piled up laundry form the water filter needing to be changed is taking over... Just... It's SUNDAY! And to let him empty the dishwasher and reload it... *shudders* SO BEATING my inner Aspie on this... Talk about HARD. Maybe music will help that. And doing some chore he wont ever touch, like the cat litter changing. Yeah, that sounds good. Mine. All mine. My way. My order. My sanity. Oh yeah, Aspie...

III. The party for oldest Boyo went really well yesterday. My Mom really, really, really, knows how to cook!!!! Our house is too small for any type of party indoors, so had it at my rents. We combined some other occasions into it, like a couple anniversaries and a few other Bdays. Lots of family there (all my side of the fam, but THAT is a whole other novel), and a great time was had by all. It was loud, a bit crowded, and long enough for me to need a good deal of desensitization last night. I really want a sensory room... but thats a dream for another reality.

IV. The Boyoes look soooooooo good with their mohawks!!!!!!!!!!!!! hehehehehehehe! I am getting a bit more practiced, I think. Took less than an hour for each one, so at least it's taking less time. Still wrestling with getting pics of them up for y'all to see. Its a bit of a process to do it the way I know best...

V. My back hurts. Think stress and sleeping funny caused this newest wave of gah.

VI. Why would anyone put a $10 bill in their cell phone?

VII. My coffee is cold now. Blargh.

VIII. Boyo has more money from his party yesterday than DH & I do... Least till payday hits again, then if boyo still has his cash, he'll have more than us again...

IX. I need a job. This topic is a novel in itself, so cramming as much as I can back into the mental box from whence it came. Stomping it back in really. I haven't worked outside of the house in over 10 years. Aspie beating me on this in a bad way. I hate filling out applications in general; trying to fill them out after a 10 year gap is all but impossible to me. There have been no responses to the few I have managed to put out there. Doesn't help that for all my time in school, I never actually achieved any sort of degree. I was a few credits short of three different degrees... and all counts for nill on an application. And why cant I list being a SAHM as a job anyway?! *snorts and shakes her head* Moving on...

X. I really want to go back to class. I miss it terribly. I LOVE to learn, and learn a wide variety of things. I would love to be able to achieve some degrees, but really I just want to learn. And here again, no money to do so, no job to supply the money to do so... Gah.

XI. NaNoWriMo is just not going to happen this year. I'm scared of what I know will come out, so hiding again from it... for now. But with less than 2k words? Not happening. Nope. Not unless Tweets, and blogs, and IMs count. hmm... There's an idea. "Diary of a Not-So-Closet Aspie" Moving on before THAT sticks in my head...

XII. I have a "thing" with numbers, so will end on 12 here. Had too much for three, blew past seven and nine, so ypu, 12 it is. And the "ypu" links to #12's number "thing." I have ways I do things. A sort of internal coding that is very hard to break, and rewrite, or hack. Like the numbers I live by, and the words I make/rearrange to give little "tellers" of how I'm doing... For anyone clever enough to know the code...

For right now.

Time slips quietly by, like the misty raindrops gathering and falling off dead leaves too stubborn to let go. And here I sit within my mind; sitting in the shadows of the in-between. Which way will I choose?

I am tired of letting other things decide that for me, at least for right now. I don't know if I will be able to say that again tomorrow, or even later than this moment... For right now, though, I want to choose the sun steeped meadow, the warm evening breeze dappled with pollen and honey. At least in my world that sweet scented wind wont make my head explode...

For right now, I do not want my life summary to be "...", I want it to be more permanent. A period, an exclamation, even a question mark would be fine. Just not "...". So, for the next however-long-it-takes, I choose to be wandering in that beautiful vista, remembering what hope tastes like.