This seems like a good enough time as any to revive my blog.
“Snnrk!” You wake with a start, wiping your nose on your sleeve. *sniff* “Oh, have you been gone, Disco?”
Yes I have, smartass. For the past almost five years, I’ve been in limbo between my last blogosphere and here. I LOVED my last blogosphere. I was on it for a good ten years or so. Initially, I started it in the early aughts to read my friend’s travelogue. Oh, I suppose I could have found out where my friend was and what she was doing just fine without a subscription to the specific blogging platform ; however, I 1. wanted to get the real poo she made available only to peeps on her “friends” list and 2. was looking for a corner of the Interwebs anyway to post random randomness what amused me.
“You both should have just gone on Facebook ,” you yawn. “Oh, wait, this was before Facebook was invented. Back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.”
Correct. Jesse Eisenberg had not yet sketched the plans for his mighty social empire on the walls of his cave. I believe you can see a daguerreotype of this artifact at the Smithsonian, after the government shutdown by President Voldemort ends.
Now shut up, millenial, and let me finish.
So, yeah, I got the travel updates and the posting of “memes”. Then I found a few of my local chums who were members, and I coerced additional friends from in real life to sign up, and then I was both the consumer and the consumed and that happened pretty quickly. On the one hand, I’m embarrassed to admit it because if I say “I was a part of a warm community of individuals who even though only online I could call friends” I feel like the nerd in high school who says he does too have a girlfriend but you don’t know her because she lives in Canada. On the other hand, the communal blogging kept me writing on a regular basis — if nothing else, about my bland-ass life in stultifying detail, but also it got me a couple new posses in cities outside Chicago, as well as through the Bush years (remember, back when we thought America had problems?) and a discriminatory work situation and postpartum depression and my child’s diagnosis and a subsequent departure from the rat race.
Then came the Russian hackers invading everyone’s accounts, plus also the introduction of the Book of Faces, and suddenly there was a mass exodus of users to this new shiny thing. “Sorry!” my online friends called over their shoulders as they left the building carrying their plants and desk tchotzkes and thumb drives in a bankers’ box. “Come join us over on Facebook!”
“No thank you,” I replied, cleaning my fingernails with a letter opener. “It’ll never last. I’ll be here keeping the lights on in the meantime.”
As with so many other decisions I’ve made, you can see how well that worked out for me.
LiveJournal is dead.
I still ain’t caving in to Facebook though. Trust me. I am too thin skinned and nothing good will come of it.
I saw today on one of the hellsites — in my world, it’s either the site formerly known as “Twitter” or the Insta — that someone I know is going through his own personal shitfest. So as to not be all up in this guy’s business, I won’t elaborate on the details. I will say that they are all things that were not caused by him personally, and in that spirit, they made me look back about 16 years ago and some change. Perhaps you’ve heard me refer to that period IRL or on one of my blogs as The Year That Cannot Be Named but it is otherwise known as 2007 and it was the worst year of my adult life so far. It included sudden death and disability, job loss, a car accident — and that’s just for starters. Everything in which I believed got snowglobed and and nothing has been the same since then.
But, the Universe eventually stopped shoveling crap at some point. It was just really effing hard at the time.
Plus I learned to draw upon creativity, which, as I’ve said here before, carries me like that silly-ass poem about the guy looking back on his life with the footsteps and junk.
That flippant remark is courtesy of one of my former 12-step sponsors, which she’d say in response to the weensiest of things I would bring up about my dear old Mom. Now, I worked with the woman for eight of my 31 years of recovery, so she wasn’t without merit, but she was way heavy-handed with the easy comebacks. I get that she didn’t want to complicate things. It’s just that it took on this pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps tone, which does about as well for me as beating the same dead horse she would pull from her lazy Susan of pat answers.
Then said sponsor retired to California, freeing me to find someone closer to home (Glenview, IL) and a little more creative with her feedback with whom to work. The new lady actually does these weird things like praise me when I do something correctly, or affirm that I’m in a good space. See, this sort of thing is unusual for me, as I have a history of choosing mentors, therapists, bosses and the like who didn’t cut me a lot of slack. In my own twisted way, I thrived on it, plus I just loved the feeling of moral superiority it gave me over people who subscribe to the ooey-gooey approach of taking direction – you know, where you get told how proud someone is of you, or that they love you. Garbage like that. I’d think, man, I’m such a BADASS because I don’t need that airy-fairy crap! I’d much rather let someone in a position of authority yell at me/treat me like shit/talk to me like a child instead!
Geez. I wonder where I got THAT from.
I’ll not go further in that vein, because I don’t want to fall into a vat of syrupy victimhood about my formative years. Let’s just say that nowadays I’m putting my trust elsewhere.
Anyway, there’s a book that came out in 2022, co-authored by an illustrator whom I have been admiring from afar for the past few years. (I became aware of her work through one of my fave online comic-makin’ resources and its benevolent free Friday night presentations by various talents in the field.) As luck would have it, the authors of this book have been offering some super cool online workshops* through a Northwest US Alano club. (If you don’t know what an Alano club is, in a nutshell, it’s a place where recovery groups have meetings on a regular basis.) I attended one of the workshops last week; it was on creating one’s own family tree. I’m not a stranger to the concept of making your own family – through 12-step fellowship and therapy, I’ve been hearing about that shit for years, but what am I supposed to do, go up to somebody at a meeting and say, “Hey, can I spend Thanksgiving with you plus also ask you to enforce my DNR order if I’m hit by a bus?” – although it wasn’t until last Wednesday night that I heard it framed in a way that resonated with me.
The co-author/illustrator referred to this chosen family deal as “an ecosystem of mothers”, and gave some examples from her own personal tree. She explained what it meant to be mothered by a community, and posed some questions like who are our non-biological mothers and who/what takes care of us.
Yeesh, this paragraph sounds EXACTLY like the airy-fairy crap I said earlier in the post that I didn’t need.
But hold it up a minute: the co-author is talking about how I can learn stuff from and be taken care of by, like, more than one thing, instead of being all butt-hurt about the job my bio mom did raising me**.
Huh.
Putting pencil to sketchbook, I came up with a list of individuals and groups and inanimate objects that comprise my Ecosystem of Moms. I did do some drawing as well. Mostly it was of my House and the Experience of Getting It*** with A Sun and Wildflowers in the Front Yard. (Turns out that seasonal members of a “family of choice” can be a thing too!)
There are others:
The teacher who brought me barrettes and a comb in 4th grade when she noticed nobody was helping me at home with my hygiene.
A local performance collective of which I am a part, that encourages me but also doesn’t let me get away with putting sloppy, sub-par work on stage.
My husband’s mother. I know this sounds kind of awful, but I definitely drew the long straw as far as in-laws are concerned in my marriage.
Myself as a friend and companion. I mean, who the hell else has been with me through 54 years of bullshit and human experience?
My special-needs support group of Bitchin’ Northside Moms, who save my parental bacon on a monthly basis.
A few of my women besties (including a certain one who is no longer here and is still missed very much by me, although I like to think we are still “in touch”****)
Healthy food and cooking the healthy food and sharing it with my family.
Arts and crafts and drawing and knitting, which get me through difficult times much in the same way that G-d does with that guy in the footsteps poem.
There you have it. The list is more comprehensive than what I have here, but you get the general idea. I apologize if I’ve left anyone/anything out (and also for not using the bullet-point function, which I can’t seem to find on this site.)
This is also probably one of the most vulnerable I’ve allowed myself to be in a post that I’ve ever put up in this thing. Excuse me while I go into the other room and peel off my skin now.
*free!! I was so impressed by the subject matter and authors that I made a donation to the club anyway
**On one especially delightful phone call for my 45th birthday, Mom told me that growing up I was “unraiseable”; when I shared that with a group of my peeps and said “Unraiseable” was going to be the name of my memoir they roared with laughter and told me I should call it “Unraised” instead
***I really should do a separate post here sometime on how that all went down
Maybe in an alternative universe. You know, the one in which I stood over my daughter’s bassinette 18 years ago and thought, “Gee, I bet when she’s a senior in high school, she’s going to have some totally typical experience going to her prom where she gets asked by some chick or dude” — non-binary wasn’t on my radar at the time, but really, in light of the eleventy billion other problems I’ve had in raising my kid since then, cut me some slack — “and there’ll be flowers involved, and she’ll stay out all night, and she’ll throw a hissy when Dad and I tell her we can’t afford a brand new gown so she’ll have to go and buy one at the thrift store like all the other kids who have arty-farty parents.”
This is the same bizarro world I was in when Grace was four and I tried to use prom night as an impetus for potty training*. As in, “Trust me, you’ll be grateful on your prom night that you’re not in Pull-ups anymore.” (You can imagine how well that worked out for us both. Denial is thick and juicy.)
So, yeah, tonight was Prom Night. Since Grace will be at her high school** until she’s 22 years old, she’ll have at least three more of these before she graduates. Prom this year was a significantly modified two and a half hours at a nearby banquet hall. No limos were involved, she attended neither a before- nor an after-party, and her date was one of her classroom aides. I think she had a good time, though, so for her, it worked.
One of the contributing factors to the assumed good time is that I didn’t go all out on the dress-up thing. Not that Dad and I wouldn’t have scraped up the difference between the cost of a gown and whatever money Grace would have earned from her paper-hat or babysitting jobs, if we lived in the above-referenced bizarro world. Not surprisingly, that’s not her path. Hell, she would have gone in her Hello Kitty sweatshirt if I would’ve let her get away with it. Here’s some sensory issues that come between her getting all formal for prom or pretty much anything else:
-an aversion to cosmetics and/or nail polish***
-extreme discomfort with wiry undergarments
-fear of shoes with heels
-doesn’t shave her pits****
-finds wearing jewelry annoying
-hates having her hair styled in anything beyond a quick ponytail, barrette, or a trim with the passion of a thousand burning suns
Fortunately this also means that my 18 year old female doesn’t give a shit about designer clothes or the stores from whence the non-designer clothes came, which made my list of prom chores cheap and simple and not involving any time wasted on Internet rabbit-holes. The flouncy red dress originated from Macy’s Backstage, flats from Ross Dress for Less, and the underwear and tights I am 99 percent sure I bought at Aldi. I had her wear the gold heart bracelet I gave her at her bat mitzvah*****, a sequined flower pin instead of a corsage, and the costume jewelry necklace I wore as a bridesmaid at my brother’s wedding.****** The biggest coup of the evening was how I got around the hairdo hating. Oh, there was some squawking around me doing the French braid part — only one, and I was lucky to get that in — but I spent several hours knitting a ginormous red poppy to match her dress, then sewed it to a metal-free elastic band. Along with some glitter spray the poppy piece looked rather nice in Grace’s hair, if I do say so myself.
In brief, if I’ve done nothing else right today — and I haven’t* — at least I hit the nail on the head with my parenting.
*I’ll not get into the details here and now
** as a “super senior”- a term I’m not wild about but since I can’t come up with a clever substitute, I’ll deal with it.
***she was cool with tinted moisturizer, but scraped even the quick-dry stuff off her nails as soon as I was out of eyeshot
****therefore ruling out anything sleeveless or strapless
*****which was given to me by a family friend at my bat mitzvah back in 19-cough
******it came home in a napkin because Grace pulled on it until it broke, but not a big deal because it lasted 26 years which is more than I can say for my brother’s marriage
Welp, it’s an ugly month in Chicago right now politics-wise. I kind of don’t want Run-Off Election Day (April 4th) to get here, because as idealistic as I’d like to be about the next Mayor of the city in which I’ve transplanted myself, the odds are not in my candidate’s favor.
Even though my pick didn’t win four years ago, I was a good sport about it. And really, Mayor Lori seemed to be okay at first, but then she didn’t do what she said she was gonna. Yeah, yeah, I know, that’s politicians for you. Plus pandemic, plus (totally warranted) civil unrest, all the good stuff. Still, though. I don’t think it’s too much to ask for my public servants to give a hoot about, you know, the public. A fantasy, I know, but one that I’m not willing to give up.
I made jokes about Daley, which looking back were kind of unfunny. I didn’t have a kid back then, though, and I didn’t own property, and I hadn’t lived here that long yet, so I thought I could get away with being flip about The Machine and/or The Dynasty. It was different when I only had my own ass for which to look out. Shame on me. As for Rahm, I totally despised him. I do not care that he was like the “alt rock and roll” Mayor, there is a special place in hell for him for closing those 50 schools when he was running the city. Bad man!
But now, holy shit. I’ve been an official resident of Chicago since 1991, and we’ve never had an elected mayor I’ve been excited about until now. I think my candidate can heal much of what ails this city. And his opponent has a crappy past record plus also the law and order deal scares me.
Wouldn’t it be something if Brandon Johnson wins this thing.
As for Paul Vallas? He can go suck a WHOLE BAG of dicks.
Dear hubby took Grace out to the thrift store with him, giving me a blessed slice of uninterrupted time in which to write this. Sure, there’s plenty of unfolded laundry, and a stack of New Year’s cards that need to be assembled and sent out**, but I value the precious alone time I have in a 1,100 square foot house when no night-shift working husbands are asleep or autistic teenagers are home from school causing me to feel guilty about not cramming every available minute with structure. The rest of the crap, I don’t need privacy to do.
All that said — in memory of my old blogosphere where we used to post these meme/quizlet things to review the year that just passed — here’s a little Q & A on 2022.
1.What did you do for the first time this year? I got a tattoo, dude! I’m posting a picture now because, given that I was still wearing a down vest in May of this year, I don’t expect to show it off until June of 2023 at the earliest. Clearly it’s pretty amazing, and I kind of can’t wait for folks to see it when I wear tank tops, instead of the ugly scar I got it to cover.
2. What are you looking forward to in 2023? Now that things are (I guess) “back to normal”, I expect to enjoy my usual array of annual stuff, such as working the haunt, my silent retreat, summer vacay at the Maine cabin, and getting plants into the ground. A second, more reliable, new-to-us car is also making its way into our household in the next month or two***. Plus there is Yo La Tengo and Lord and Master Iggy Pop in concert this spring. Plus the knitting of new things and the drawing of comics that are as of yet unconceived.
3.Who had your back in 2022? This year, it was my long-suffering therapist. That I had to pay someone to buttress my sorry ass I know sounds lame, but there you go. It beats having to bother my husband and my friends with that crap.
4.How did you close out last year? What will you be doing this New Year’s Eve? Well, last year I watched the Greatest New Year’s Eve movie ever made (see below), and was planning on doing the same this year. I did, however, get invited to a party for NYE 2022, and since my mother in law was in town to hang out with Grace for a few hours, I decided to doll up and nip over for a spell. I kind of feel like it’s bad luck for the New Year to not watch The Movie, but for a fancy party instead I took my chances.
5.What did you learn in 2022? I am just not willing to do the amount of exercise at age 54 that will make me look the same as I did when I was in my early 30s. It won’t take the same amount of activity post-menopause to be that buff, it will take a hell of a lot more. Frankly, I’d rather be knitting or drawing or writing, even if it means not entirely sticking to the *ahem* minutes a week my internist wants me to get.
6. What kept you sane in 2022? The knowledge that no matter how dire our world situation right now, and though the current US President frequently falls short of the mark, at least certain people aren’t in charge anymore. That last part was kind of like my mantra.
7. What did you do on your birthday? I answered lots of nice texts and tweets and got one of the treasured paper cutout cards from my mother in law’s stash. Dear hubby took me out for lunch and then we went shopping for a sick new iPhone. (It’s not set up yet. I don’t dare start using it until my bomb-proof Otterbox arrives later this week. I am just not that lucky or graceful.) I got my free refreshing beverage from Starbucks and went to the Sequential Artists Workshop’s Friday Night Comics when I got home. All in all a lovely day.
8.What were some highlights of 2022? Well, I guess you’re going to have to buy my latest zine entitled, “Best of 2022” to find out, won’t you? It costs two whole dollars! I take Venmo, BTW, and shipping is free.
9. Did you keep your New Years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year? I didn’t make resolutions for 2022 but I did set an intention. The setting of my intention is between the Zoom group of friends with whom I did the intention-setting ceremony and me, so you don’t get to know it. Sorry.
10. What did you want and get in 2022? What did you want and not get in 2022? I got my work out there. I mean, it was nothing tremendous or anything that would make me a household name, even among arty-farty households, but I put my drawing and/or writing out beyond the confines of my drawing table. I was in two local anthologies — one was for something I wrote, the other was for two of my comics — and I sold a surprising amount of cards at a holiday sale this year. Additionally, I completed the NaNoWriMo of comics: SAWgust, in August, and got a page of my drawings and a statement in that anthology too. I mean, I set the goal of doing one daily diary drawing every day for the month, and I did it! Not every drawing out of the 31 was a winner, but there were some nice ones in the batch.
Oh, and I wanted a new sofa and we bought one, like regular adults do, firsthand and from a department store. I also got invited to a few of the Cool Kids’ Parties this year. I still feel like the people throwing them made some sort of mistake, and that I was going to overhear when I was in the bathroom some of the other guests say they didn’t understand how I got invited, but it never happened.
What I wanted in 2022 and didn’t get was the customary roster of civil and women’s rights — Roe v. Wade, for fuck’s sake!! — and even though dear old Mom reminds me that it’s human nature for one group to dominate another, I remain hopeful otherwise.
Best wishes for a warm and happy 2023, all.
*Way back in the darkest of ages (1992-96), I worked as a receptionist for a law firm. It was my first grown-ass job where I had to be alert and in pantyhose at 8:30AM. I had to, aside from looking cute and sounding cheerful no matter what fresh hell was going on in my life at the time, announce incoming phone calls by name and what number line. One of the other admin assists was named Darlene and though she herself was v nice, I used to cringe when calls came in for her because her line was number 13. “Darlene, line 13…Darlene, line 13”. Ghod. To make matters worse, there was a dotty older admin assist who used to conduct a pretend orchestra whenever I said it.
Oh well. The job, it got my knuckles off of the ground and kept the lights on.
**Because g-d forbid Ms. Has to Be Special and Different send store-bought holiday cards like a normal human being.
***I shall not talk about the death of the Buick for the notion will make me cry. It was my grandfather’s, and I plan to hang on to it until there is nothing left of it but a chassis and the transmission we paid $2K for this summer.
Folks, it may be time. I’ve been saving my pennies for a little while now.
Yeah, I know I said I’d never get one because I’m a Jew and while I’m meh about breaking Jewish laws — I’m pretty pick-and-choose about all the Jewish things (cough) SLACKER (cough) anyway — I always felt badly about the whole Holocaust victims getting them against their will.
So I sent out a feeler. I’ll keep you posted.
Greetings:
I am a friend of J– S—, to whom I believe you are related. She has spoken well of your work, and after reviewing your portfolio and IG feed, I have to concur!
Currently, I have no tattoos. I am interested in getting one on my left shoulder, where I have had a significant scar since the 1990s. Back then, people used to say to me, “Don’t get a tattoo! You’ll regret it when you’re 50!” Now I’m 53, and what? I’m going to regret it in my 80s? I’m tired of looking at this scar and would rather have one of your beautiful works to look at instead.
I’m interested in something with plants or flowers. Specifically, I’d like a peony or peonies, as they are only here for about 10 days a year and I’d like to have them around all year long. If you don’t do peonies, we can talk about some other stuff.
Please let me know your availability for consult appointments. I can be reached at this email or on my cell at 773-xxx-xxxx.
It’s been a few minutes. In fact, it’s been so many of the minutes since the last time I updated that I actually had to log in to my WordPress account with my password. Stuff has been Going On: the reopening of places to eat food and do artsy things in Chicago, the falling away of the mask mandate – I am donning mine for to ride the public transportation though – a de-hybridization of twelve-step meetings, and the ongoing weird feeling that COVID is still just silent footsteps behind my loved ones and me, waiting to pop an inflated brown paper bag. About the only thing that hasn’t resumed is, due to the employee shortage, sorely needed respite service for Grace, so I can go be in shows and do in-person workshops when dear hubby is either sleeping or working.
Oh yeah, that’s another thing: DH got promoted to his dream job. It’s a good news/bad news kind of dealy. What’s nice, other than the obvs goals achievement for him, is the loosening of our household’s budgetary belt. (Gosh, it’s pleasant to be able to go out to eat with friends AND fill the car up with gas now, rather than having to choose between the two.) The down side is that it’s his turn in the bitch seat with shifts, which means All Overnight All the Time Including Weekends and Holidays and six months into it, it’s not as temporary of a situation as I’d hoped. We are all adjusting, pretty much anyway. Grace, thank the gods, can actually be left to her own devices* while DH is home sleeping, so I can go out for a few hours on the weekend days without her in tow. She’s still not ready to be left completely unattended for more than about half an hour, though. At the biological age of 17 I’m sure we could leave her home alone and like, not get in trouble with the law or anything. It’s just that she doesn’t use a cell phone or get ready for bed unprompted and hasn’t internalized to call 911 if there’s an emergency and let’s be honest, we are still not in the clear where THAT is concerned. So DH and I do not feel comfortable or responsible with him going to work at 9pm and me doing a show or working the haunt or going to a play until 12:30am. We have found a lovely grad student from one of the local OT programs to do companion care, but she’s a student and not always available. The online care services are crickets right now. Don’t even get me started on the dearth of subsidized respite either.
Anyway.
Pandemic or not, spring rolls on in Chicago. My bulbs came up according to the calendar and not the weather, which has predictably gone from unseasonably cold and rainy in May to 80 degrees over the course of a weekend. It’s also time for Special Olympics Spring Games. I’ve tried to get my daughter more involved in SO, not for her expression of interest or putting forth of effort, but because it’s all about the structured activities in an appropriate environment. There’s a whole bunch of crap that they do besides competitions and skills practice too, like online cooking classes and kayaking and nature stuff (which she actually digs). My lack of full-time work kind of makes me a sucker for volunteering at both SO and the Chicago Park District, so I got asked by the coach to chaperone Spring Games this year.
Now Grace gets an excused absence from school, and I get a bumpy-ass** two hours on the bus to the stadium. We get there today and there’s kids and teenagers from all the schools and parks in the city, including her best friend who is also about the same amount of autistic as Grace and they have to be prompted to say “Hello” to each other and everyone is cool with it, and there’s no irony or guile or sarcasm as far as the eye can see. There’s a flock of boys we didn’t know from Adam running up to us to give us fist-bumps over her medal, and athletes sitting down on the ground with their fidget poppers, and the girl who competed against Grace wins first place and collapses on the grass crying, and everybody’s doing these things because that’s just How They Roll. Grace doesn’t eat her lunch or really want to talk to the person sitting next to her on the bus, and is getting whiny and unpleasant, and nobody bats an eyelash or asks me ignorant questions. It’s truthfully kind of a relief, for me to have the break from trying to help her navigate the life outside of the special needs community.
Then we come home, and Grace goes to her room for some sweet, sweet alone time, and I sit down and write this. Maybe afterward I go outside and futz around with my seedlings, because it’s 75 degrees and as far as I am concerned, at this point in the day I am entitled to a Preferred Activity myself.
*Meaning that she doesn’t really do anything productive, just basically sits in her room under the blanket for hours, and comes out to use the bathroom or bite chunks off of a block of cheese from the fridge; HOWEVER, she is not at risk for running around wrecking things and/or making messes and eating non-food items anymore which is HUGE considering how much worse things could be with her disorder
**Seriously, I have to wear a sports bra for the bus ride alone, there’s THAT much bouncy bouncy to it.
Okay, so 2021 was kind of a letdown given the anomalous grind that was the previous year (aka 2020, aka The Year That Cannot Be Named). I expected better. It was, however, A Year, and you and I both deserve a lotta cred for making it through. In that spirit (plus also the memory of my old blogosphere where we used to post these meme/quizlet things to review the year that just passed) here’s a little Q & A on 2021.
1. What did you do for the first time this year? I didn’t do anything spectacular, although I did give a few new things in the subset of my done-to-death skills a whirl, like adding a few more knitted sock patterns, comics, zines, and recipes to my range.
2. What are you looking forward to in 2022? I’d love to say that I’m looking forward to living life more like how we did Before Times, but after 2021 I learned that’s a pretty fantastic timeline for right now. Instead, I’m keeping my expectations realistic by looking forward to doing more of the same things that I mentioned above with my artsy-craftsy matters.
3. Who had your back in 2021? My mother-in-law was very generous with personal resources during the ongoing pandemic, particularly around Grace and my parenting of Grace during the lockdown part of the pandemic, and then also the part where things opened up a little more after the vaxes. In general, dear hubby’s mom is the bomb.
4. How did you close out last year? What will you be doing this New Year’s Eve? Same thing I did last year, and the year before that: watching the greatest New Year’s Eve movie ever made!
(This year it was without dear hubby. He had to work the overnight shifts this weekend. Boo.)
5. What did you learn in 2021? Thank you notes or texts or emails are pretty much no longer a thing.
6. What kept you sane in 2021? Zoom workshops helped me to keep me sane this year. Hooray for free and pay-what-you can workshops on writing, comics and fiber art! May they roll on even in the least of pandemic times.
Plus my therapist, bless his long-suffering heart.
7. What did you do on your birthday? I answered lots of nice texts and tweets, had takeout from one of my favorite restaurants, and drove to three different Starbucks to find one that wasn’t closed due to what I assume was either the ‘Rona or staffing shortages so I could get my free birthday beverage. Then I listened to the accordion player in the parking lot of the Melrose Park Target while drinking my Mocha Frappucino (no mocha, just two shots of sugar free vanilla instead). Then dear hubby showed me how to play three chords on the guitar I got for Christmas*.
8. What were some highlights of 2021? There were those glorious two seconds in May when we thought the world was going to open for reals, and I went to a few art openings and indoor coffee places without a mask and hugged people and it was fucking beautiful. Additionally, dear hubby and Grace and I spent a week with his family at a delightfully rustic cabin with its own private beach in Emden, ME. There was also the online meeting that I go to that happened IRL, where we all met at Belmont Harbor on a Saturday and I got to feel like I was one of the Cool Kids by basking in the sun plus the in-person glow of all the in-person persons.
Additionally, through a little effort on my part, the support of many others and much good fortune on behalf of the Universe, I reached 30 years of continuous recovery from substance use. Nothing at which to sneeze or shake sticks.
9. Did you keep your New Years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year? I didn’t make any resolutions for 2021, remember?** I didn’t make resolutions for 2022 but I did set intentions. The setting of intentions is between the Zoom group of friends with whom I did the intention-setting ceremony and me, so you don’t get to know ’em. Sorry.
10. What did you want and get in 2021?What did you want and not get in 2021? I wanted a vaccine for the coronavirus and got three of them. It wasn’t the magic wand for which I’d hoped — largely due to a certain group of people who think they know better than science — but for me and my loved ones, it’s way better than naught. I also made the agreement with dear hubby to do the haunt this year, which I did and it was freaky and fun as always.
In 2021, I was elated by Biden’s election and really thought he would kick more ass in certain areas — e.g., the January 6th insurrection — but other than a Better Than the Alternative am not entirely getting what I want from our current President. I could additionally natter on here in response to this question about society’s ills, and why a person of color can’t simply go jogging without being harassed or shot at by the police, and men still get to be the boss of women in many areas but especially women’s reproductive health, but I’m not gonna.
Oh wait, I just did, a little.
On that note, all the best in 2022 to the two or three people — I’m probably being generous here — who are reading my blog. Much light in the New Year.
*Now that I know three chords on the guitar I can start a band!!
**refer to last year’s Year in Review if you don’t remember either
Whoa! I just checked my stats and it turns out that people have actually been reading this thing. (Unless, of course, it was a lotta ‘bots, in which case you can forget what I just said.) I figure I better post something.
The Reopening — such that it is — and its range of somewhat socially-distanced and sometimes-masked activities is finally happening. Now that everyone with a brain who can have the vaccine has gotten their COVID shots, we are meeting face-to-face in many situations and giving hugs, handshakes and/or elbow bumps, which is nice. Many of my 12-step meetings are in the process of transitioning to back-in-person. (A few decided to stay virtual altogether, though, so there’s the whole New Normal for that.) I’ve started seeing my therapist live again, and I have to say I am getting much more mileage out of the in-person appointments than I was when seeing him virtually.
Dear hubby and I signed Grace up for the full six weeks of extended school year offered by her high school. It’s in the mornings, which leaves a gaping hole of unstructured activity in the middle of most days and Friday, but it still beats the pants off of last year’s virtual school and throwing stuffed animals into a recycling bin in the backyard out of an utter lack of anything else to do or anywhere to go. (Hopefully her beloved day camp* will be up and running next summer** full-time). DH is working his butt off — sweet, sweet overtime — as his place of work is affected by a certain large music festival that the Mayor insists on Chicago hosting despite like three different kinds of COVID variants being out there. Plus also he has to keep (portraits of) Barack and Michelle cool during the sticky summertime.
Then, next month are the trips to Maine and Pennsylvania, which we obvs missed last year. These vacations to the middle of nowhere are lovely, but it unsettles me to go places where there’s no Lyft drivers or public transportation or grocery stores within 30 miles or ambient lighting after dark. I’m sure I’ll be fine once I get there and then complaining about having to leave when they’re over.
In the meantime, I just started an Instagram account for my artworks and whatnot. Only for artworks and whatnot! I have to be VERY careful due to my thin-skinnedness around being left out and disliked. I’m already getting bent out of shape because people aren’t following me back over there. If you want to make my day you can follow me at jacqwolk on the IG.
I have also completed my set of wee zines about the pandemic. Let me know if you’re interested in purchasing or trading them. Thanks!
*When Grace turned 12, I had to start wearing blinders where other people’s kids were concerned with summer camp. Folks, if you get to plunk down a deposit, have your child pack their own damn trunk for four to six weeks, and wave goodbye as the school bus pulls away to Wisconsin or wherever the hell children go for overnight camp, do not take it for granted.
**Even after years of dealing with my daughter’s level of functioning, my mind says to me, “You have a teenager! Shouldn’t she be in a paper hat asking if customers want fries with that during the summers?”
There! That title should get me a couple of pop-ups on some people’s Google searches!
I know that I’m posting this entry down to the wire, but as you can well imagine, I’m not a big fan of the so-called month anyhow. Ribbons, those godzawful puzzle pieces, a certain organization that feels it speaks for all families and individuals with autism whilst spreading not very friendly or accurate information…it’s all a bunch of baloney. So what if I post this entry in May. People are still going to be “aware”* of autism then.
Several years ago, back when Grace was in elementary school — it was a community-strong one, and she had a primo special education teacher there who really “got” how to instruct kiddos like mine — some of the parents of children in the gen-ed program expressed frustration to me over the lack of practical information out there about autism. Like, the one in 100 or the one in 88 or whatever the hell the statistic was at the time was great, but it didn’t really help them understand autism. Consequently, these parents didn’t know how to talk with their children about it. For some families, my daughter was the first person they may have knowingly met with an ASD.
I was pretty visible at this particular school. I held a position on the Parent-Teacher Organization, and I volunteered at a lot of events. I like to think that I was approachable where asking questions about parenting a youngster with autism was concerned. Sure enough, the day came when some of the parents asked me to give a presentation at the school’s Family Center.
“But I’m not a professional or anything,” I reminded them.
“Doesn’t matter,” they said. “We just want to hear from your average parent.”
Ha! Average, I can do in my sleep.
As part of my presentation — I did them even after Grace aged out of her program at the school — I offered a handy-Andy handout to the attendees. It featured miscellaneous supplemental stuff such as quotes about how to be helpful, information from the CDC, and my favorite reads about special needs and/or autism. The handout also featured my personal Do’s and Don’ts when dealing with the parent of someone with autism. This list is as follows. I have tweaked it to reflect Grace’s age because some new Do’s and Please Do Not’s have surfaced as she’s gone from young’un to teenager.
DO:
DO remember that a child with autism is a person. “Level of functioning” and even the word “autism” don’t tell much about an individual. Ask what a child with autism likes or how they interact with the world. This is far more useful for arranging a playdate with a typically developing kiddo or picking out a birthday present for your nephew with ASD.
DO “know your audience” when speaking to a parent of a child with a developmental disability. For example, I have little patience for platitudes. Think about it: isn’t the idea that I would look at my child’s autism as a blessing when I’m struggling to teach her self-care insane? It sure seems like it to me. My friends of typically developing and autistic children alike indulge me in dark humor, occasional venting, and political rants. I know that’s not for everyone, though. Some parents get their strength from particular therapeutic modules for their kiddos, some from religion, others from throwing themselves into advocacy.
DO be open-minded about how you can accommodate someone with an ASD when they come to visit. A teenage cousin with autism was absolutely insistent at a family gathering upon drinking his soda from a regular glass instead of a plastic cup like the rest of us. Not a big deal. Some children with ASD prefer to have things a certain way, such as juice from a box and not a cup. And friendly as your dog might be, he may terrify a small person with big sensory issues.
DO find something complimentary to say about a child or teen with autism beyond their looks. Yes, my daughter is gorgeous. Just like I would with a typically developing girl, I reinforce that she has more to contribute than just a pretty face. (Sidebar: she wipes off makeup, hates “sexy” clothing and has expressed no interest in me helping her shave her pits, which I think is kind of awesome.) The security guard at her last school told me she has a beautiful voice because he overheard her singing in the halls, which I loved hearing. My friends have also reported that she has a “lovely demeanor” and a “great spirit”.
DO make phone calls and write emails to politicians and other decision-makers urging them to support legislation and budgeting in favor of special education and public services.
DON’T:
DON’T ever say “You’re SO lucky” when you hear about a service my daughter is getting. Just, don’t. You have NO idea how hard families like mine have to fight to get resources for our loved ones.
DON’T complain about hardships involved in raising a “gifted” child**, if you happen to have one. It’s shocking how many parents have done this right in front of me and even my daughter. There is a lot more at stake for her if she is not in an appropriate sixth grade classroom than for your child if her middle school doesn’t offer honors Calculus. A LOT.
DON’T pass along anecdotal stories — for example, your church friend’s belief that her grandson’s behavior improved because enough people prayed for him, or what alternative therapies made your formerly autistic nephew “normal”. This was a big issue for me when my daughter was younger. Now as she enters adulthood, I’ve been starting to hear about “windows of lucidity”, and it pisses me off. You may think you are sharing helpful information, but after 16 years of parenting 1. don’t you think I’ve heard about it already?, 2. it’s kind of insulting, and 3. if it was that beneficial to my child being able to deal with a world that doesn’t accommodate her, I guarantee I would have done it years ago.
DON’T tell me about all the famous people in history who theoretically were/are autistic. I am parenting my child, not Einstein or Bill Gates.
DON’T be afraid to admit that you don’t know much about autism. I am much more willing to have a frank and open dialogue with you about autism and/or my family that way.
*Awareness is tired. Acceptance is also tired. Screw acceptance and awareness. I want ACCOMMODATION.
**Even if you are another parent of someone with autism, it serves no purpose to brag about bogus labels like “high-functioning”. It may even keep the person from getting services that they need. As much as you want to separate your special snowflake from the rest of the handflapping bedwetters, autism is a SPECTRUM. Deal with it.
Discount Inferno! 