Weird Texts

 Life is never boring when you live with Autism.

The Dog Walker is constantly sending me random texts and pictures. The crazy thing about it is that he always just assumes I know what he is talking about. Like last night...I'm getting ready for bed and it's late. Suddenly I hear that random ring...

"Kidron? Imla? Ziz? Edom? Eloth? Uzziah? Joash?"

That's it, just like that. Do any of you happen to recognize these names from Chronicles? Well, I'm busy, so I simply ignore the text. Then a few minutes later...

"Ibri? What do you think that name sounds like? Boy or Girl?"

Now I don't know about you, but I NEVER sit around and ponder things like this.

Then I get random questions like this one...

"If they say seminary graduation is on the 20th, what am I going to do for 2nd period the day after graduation?"

My response of course, "Go to seminary."

He's just so silly, but he sees a side of life that in my busyness I would probably miss without him. I was at Sport's baseball game while he and Teach were home making dinner. He sent me this text picture...they were cutting a watermelon and he found a heart shape in it. He was so excited! That heart was so important to him he snapped several pictures just so I could see it.

Most days I love that he is autistic...and that's the heart of the matter...
and the melon.

Tax Relief Tuesday

See the resemblance?

I love a good freebie! Since Tuesday was Tax Day, several local businesses were offering "tax relief" treats. One of them was Panda Express and they gave away a yummy Angus beef entree.

The other freebie we sought out made even the whiny ones happy...an order of curly fries from Arby's. Those of us who were home decided to head over there for lunch. Then, when the school kids got home, Teach took them over for an after school snack. But the Dog Walker was out walking dogs, so he missed the second group. When he got home, I handed him his coupon and told him to head on over in his car and pick up his free order of fries.

Now Arby's is only a couple of miles from our house, so this seemed like a great idea. Then he was supposed to meet up with us so we could ride together to Panda Express. We sent the Drama Queen ahead with her truck full of kids while we waited for the Dog Walker to return. He showed up as expected and hopped in the van. It was only a short distance to Panda Express and since it was mid afternoon, they weren't terribly busy.

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We had to wait a few minutes, but eventually we were back in the van and on our way home. When we stopped in the driveway, the Dog Walker climbed out of the van and headed for his car. When he came back, he was carrying a small bag from Sonic.

"What's that?" I asked casually, thinking maybe he had stopped for one of their $1.19 cheeseburgers. The Sonic was only about a block away from the Arby's. He gave me a "duh" look, "That's my free fries." Now it was my turn to be surprised. "You got free fries from Sonic?" I asked incredulously. He just looked at me. "Of course I did," he replied, "you gave me a free coupon."

"That coupon was for Arby's!" Again I got that blank stare. "What did they say?" I asked. "I just told them I had a free coupon for curly fries so they gave me some," he said. I was getting a little frustrated. "Sonic doesn't even sell curly fries!" I nearly shouted. "Did they ask you for money?"

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Again, the "duh" look, "No. They just gave them to me." He shrugged his shoulders, "I had a free coupon," he replied. Then he hustled up the steps and into the house, calmly munching on a not-so-curly fry.

So if you are a Sonic worker and yesterday you took an Arby's coupon from a large Autistic kid, "Thank you!" It was probably easier to cough up that dollar from your own paycheck than try to explain it to him...you can see how well I did.

Caucus Meetings

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I don't know how things work where you live, but in Utah, March is the month for basketball tournaments and political caucus meetings. I had never been to one in my life (caucus, I mean)...until yesterday.  The leaders of our church have been concerned that not enough people are participating in the political process so they STRONGLY encouraged us all to get involved and attend either the Republican or the Democratic caucus meetings.  Both were held this week with record numbers.

The caucus meeting we attended started at 7:00 at our local middle school. It's about a mile from our house and my sweetie jokingly suggested that maybe we should just walk because we would never be able to find a parking place given the new emphasis on politics. But after we made the dance run, we really didn't have time to walk.

We loaded into our smallest vehicle (thinking it would be easier to park). The Dog Walker crawled in the back and folded his long legs up behind my seat. He was NOT excited to go, but his Government teacher offered extra credit...

We drove down the street and around the corner and cars were already filling up both sides of the main road. Walking would have definitely made sense, but we were almost late so we quickly parked and hoofed our way to the school. It was terribly crowded! Each district was put in a different room and we got the lunchroom.

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After we signed in, we established a seat at one of the extremely uncomfortable tables and waited. I didn't really know what to expect but we have always been politically-minded at our house. Every year we collect the fliers from the various candidates and share them with the kids. Then the kids help us choose those who best represent all of our interests and then those of us who are old enough to vote cast a vote that represents the entire family. I figured we were doing basically the same thing at a caucus meeting.

After some initial business we got busy with the nominating. The Dog Walker wasn't at all sure what was going on and at one point he became the lone negative vote (out of 111 people) on some point of business. The chairman just smiled at him and moved on.

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As our friends and neighbors started nominating people to become delegates for our group, the Dog Walker started squirming and suggesting names. Thank goodness we were on the back row! First he wanted to nominate his dad. I shot that idea down quickly. Then he picked another neighbor he thought might be good. I talked him out of that one right before they closed the nominations. My friend's wife was oh so grateful!

Then they passed out the first of many ballots so we could cast a vote. After the first round of voting, I let the Dog Walker run home. He had other homework to do and this meeting promised to be long and tedious. We had already been there an hour.

Almost two hours and 6 rounds of voting later, we were relieved to head out into the cool night air. We had to walk about three blocks to find our vehicle, so that gave us plenty of time to talk and review the process. It was hard not to feel like we had just wasted three hours of our lives. None of the people my sweetie voted for in the County round earned delegate honors and only one of mine did. It seems that those running the party would continue to run the party in our little corner of the world. And you know what?

That's OK by me. I was wishing I had run home with the Dog Walker.

Guest Blogger - Bully Free Zone by the Dog Walker

You know that I love guest blogging just like I guest-blogged about my Merit Badge accomplishment and the Marching Band Tour I went to. Right now, I’m about to talk about one Christmas that has happened in 2008, the year when my little brother, Curly was born. There was a bunch of snow in 2008. That much snow was all we had in that year then the snow we had for this Christmas in 2011. That’s kind of sad huh? Well, some people in this family were glad that there wasn’t snow, so that they didn’t have to be scared of driving in it or slip on ice. Well another problem that used to happen was that with this snow we had in 2008, I went to stick my tongue on our lamppost on the edge of our driveway.

That’s kind of like the movie A Christmas Story, the part where the kids forced a kid to stick his tongue on a flag pole. I was lucky that I didn’t get my tongue all the way stuck to the lamppost. Our lamppost was made of fiberglass instead of metal, but everyone thought that I was being funny. They knew I wouldn’t really get my tongue stuck.

Okay, remember what I told you about the part of the kids forcing a kid to stick his tongue on a flagpole? Well I think that’s bullying to others. I’ve never been bullied at school in my life, sort of. I just think it’s a lesson that we do not bully others, otherwise, you’ll get bullied yourself. I made this video for Reflections that talks about bullying. It’s actually a music video with the some parts of the family showing of how bullying is bad.

Now you realized that those are really wonderful things on how to make the world a better place, by just being nice to other people. So whenever you get bullied or put in a situation like that, don’t make it go wrong, just fix it and then the problem will be solved.

***His video has moved on to Region Competition. If it wins there, he will compete at State. We think it's fun, but that's because it is full of our favorite people!***

Pancakes to Go

I’ve just been dying to tell you this story since last summer! So remember our camping trip to Community (or Lake Hill) if you aren’t a local? I want to give you a few more details. The Dog Walker is always responsible for packing up everything for us when we go camping since he loves to camp and me…not so much. I make a long detailed list and then he heads out in the garage, gathers up everything and stows it in the van.

This particular trip was no different. After he was finished and nearly everything was crossed off the list, I quizzed him on the particulars. Did he pack the charcoal… lighters…hot dog sticks? How about the Volcano…the huge frypan…and the griddle for the pancakes? Check, check, and doublecheck…he had it all. Perfect, nothing for me to worry about but the clothing and coolers.

Fast forward to our campsite and unloading the van…the Dog Walker was setting up our tent and my sweetie and I were unloading the food and necessaries for the camp fire. That’s when I came across the “griddle” that he had packed. It was still in the box which would have been OK, except that this was an electric griddle I had purchased for the Gym Rat for Christmas rather than the little camping griddle that fits over the burners of the camp stove.


I called the Dog Walker over and asked him how he was planning to scare up a little electricity…was he going to plug it into a tree? He sheepishly shrugged his shoulders and went back to blowing up air mattresses. My sweetie and I giggled a little longer as we attempted to rearrange the menu now that pancakes were not possible.

Living life with an autistic is fun because you never really can figure out exactly how their brain works. After a few minutes it dawned on me that Teach was driving up by herself early in the morning and we could have her grab the griddle as well as the half dozen other things I had forgotten. I sent her a quick text (thank goodness we were low enough in the canyon to still have service). She responded with a “no problem” so we settled down and went back to enjoying our campfire.

Pioneers?

It was fairly early when we heard Teach’s tires crunching on the gravel road leading up to the campsite. We were excited to see her and grateful that she was safe. After a quick hug, we walked to the trunk of her brand new car (well, new to her anyway) to unload. She popped the trunk with her fancy new key and the first thing I saw was the griddle. I nearly fell down laughing…she had grabbed the griddle that I bought for the Drama Queen for Christmas…it looked just like the one for the Gym Rat. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “I thought you wanted the griddle.” She still didn’t get it.

No, she’s not autistic, she’s just blond.

When My Blog was Young...

After a rather short conversation with my sweetie, we decided it might be fun to join the Grumpy Grateful Mom (and all those other nice ladies) on her 2011 Review Extravaganza.

I started this blog on January 19, 2011. I was only a week away from my 46th birthday and I guess you could call this my mid-life crisis (although I’m not sure I want to live to be 92). That was the day my eye doctor prescribed the bifocals. I’ve bounced around a lot in my posts, some from my childhood, some from our early marriage, and plenty from our current life.


My favorite January post explained why I have a church pew on my front porch and confessed that I also have one in my living-room!



February was mostly dedicated to our “falling in love” story, although I did manage to throw some other crap in there as well. The Gym Rat celebrated his 24th birthday and he became my first kid who actually appeared in a post. My sweetie has long since agreed to let me post actual pictures, but when our blog was young, he was still hoping for a little anonymity. My favorite story from February is about the Dog Walker playing basketball. You don’t want to miss that one.

We started the Food for Thought Feature in March. It has been a fun way to share and archive our family recipes, but my favorite part of that is the stories. Almost everything we eat has some family history in it. People have asked me about the Dog Walker so many times that March seemed like a good time to share. I wrote seven different posts about autism and his diagnosis and treatment, so many that Bossy told me I was getting boring! And that didn’t count my favorite post on Cell Phones that is definitely classic Dog Walker.

I’m so glad I started this blog so I could keep track of the day-to-day silliness. It's been fun looking at some of the old posts and choosing my favorites. Let me know which ones you like best.