Farewell 2011!

This has been an incredibly long year for me. Like most people, I have spent much of the past few days reflecting on the events of this past year, and how they have affected me. Am I still the same person I was last year? I don't think so. I'd like to think I'm a little wiser, and a little stronger, and a little more confident in myself. Confidence. Confidence is a funny thing, isn't it? It isn't something you learn, like riding a bike. You're either born with a natural ability to grow it - like great hair - or you're not. I think I had confidence as a child, but I went through years of people brow-beating it out of me. I was made to depend less on myself and more on other people. My entire being became dependent on what others thought of me, and how I could make myself more likable. Over the years, I've exhausted myself just trying to please everyone else. But not in 2011. I stopped caring. I don't care what everyone else thinks. It is not my job to please everyone, not to mention that it is impossible. In this new year, I want to change the focus of who I make myself better for. First and foremost has to be God. Only in Him can I find peace. Then, I need to worry about what **I** think about me. Finally, my husband. I want to shine in his eyes. This past year has been hard on us, and I know that he still loves me, our sparkle has dimmed a little under the exhaustion. I don't think my resolutions are much different than most of my peers - lose weight, contribute more to society, focus on my family, find inner happiness. But how many of us really stay true to our resolutions? Most of the time, by the end of the year, I think we're all just so busy trying to keep our head above water that we forget what we set out to do in the first place. I wonder what would happen if just for one year we erased all of the excess static in our lives and just focused on what it would take to make ourselves a little happier and a little better. Put down your dorkaphone for an afternoon and curl up with a good book, cuddle your little one, take that special someone for a nice long walk ... and what if we did that more often? Not just once in a great while, but once a week? What if, we took an hour out of our day every single day to just hear the peace? That's what I plan on accomplishing this year - finding a little bit of peace in my chaotic world. Between homeschooling, scouts, stuff with church, and all of the other balls I have flying in the air, peace is very hard to come by. But I'm determined to find it this year. Where is your peace going to be? Wherever you might find it, may God bless you in this upcoming year!!

Autism + Puberty = Hell

Call it ... the New Math. It is where I'm living today ... and most days recently. But today is especially bad. Like, I want to run screaming and yelling, sell all the kids and sail to a deserted island bad. One of the things I've accomplished over the last year is getting Red diagnosed. It was a long and arduous process, but it finally happened. [Not like it really matters now, because our health insurance got messed up and we'll have to start from scratch to get him back into services, but whatever] ... Red has Asperger's Syndrome, and his primary issues revolve around ADHD, SPD, and ODD. For those of you not well-versed in the language of random initial, all of that basically means that he's going to be defiant no matter how hard you try, and he isn't going to concentrate long even if you do, and don't touch him or play loud music because he'll freak. A few months ago, I decided I was tired of the struggle and decided I was going to put him on meds. A chance encounter with an autism specialist changed my plans, though. She told me that as autistic children, especially boys, start to reach puberty, meds can make them go completely wonky. It has to do with the change of hormones and the effects that it has mingling with the chemicals in the meds. She told me that as bad as it is, we just need to hold on until after he's gone through puberty, and then start him on something. Ugh - that's like THREE YEARS AWAY. Every single day is a fight and a struggle. He can go from unintentionally sarcastic to blatantly disrespectful in the blink of an eye. He's become a bully to the others, and he has no sense of respecting our rules at all - even though, our rules are fairly standard and not difficult to follow. His behavior is escalating every single day. He lies all the time about everything all the time. Last week, he started burning things - no actual fires, but burning plastic and stuff. Today .... well .... today was really bad. I'm just so very tired. I don't know how to fight him anymore.

Melancholy.

I'm having this feeling tonight - I'm not sure where it is coming from. I'm not in a bad mood, but not really in a good mood. I'm not feeling any anger or frustration or sadness ... but not giddy or excited or silly. Just kind of ... meh. Blah. Ugh. I started going back thru and reading my blogs again - I'm so all over the place, you'd think that I'd either learn to focus or something. Meh. Once again, it has been awhile since I've written. I think I would best be served if I stopped apologizing for my long absences. I'm really proud of the things that I write ... when I actually do sit down and write. I just know that - whatever this is - better be temporary. After a very busy couple of weeks, I need a couple of days for my brain to go into a bit of rehab, not become encumbered with more unnecessary and unfounded gobbeldy-gook. Maybe I need to find a fluffy bunny....