Maura's Illuminated Manuscript

Of the embarrassingly few recipes that I make for my son, one of his favorites is chicken in a white wine reduction from Mark Bittman's How To Cook Everything. After the less-than-total success of his previous cooking effort, I urged him to try a recipe that was a) more nutritious and b) less likely to result in twenty-five minutes of pot scrubbing.

He used a little too much oil, which I expected. But what I didn't expect was how unwilling he'd be to fill up a half-cup measure with wine. He didn't want to spill it, he said: his ADHD meds have made his hands shake since he started taking them many years ago. He was also scared to add the wine to the hot pan.

He doesn't quite have the hang of lighting a double-ring gas burner, but it's a little tricky even for me.

Did he make more mess than he needed to? Yes, but that too is entirely expected, and it wasn't too bad. Did the chicken turn out well? Shyeah!

Oh, and one day after my bike accident, my hip feels a little better, and my right shoulder — yeah, the same one I had physical therapy for in the spring — feels worse. And I think I know what happened to my left ring finger: after I hit the concrete I noticed I was right next to a street sign. I may have punched the post on the way down.

My son came over yesterday afternoon to assemble furniture, as promised. I got to witness his dysfunction twice.

Dysfunction #1: He called me up to ask how to unlock the combination deadbolt on the front door. I thought he just needed to remember to pull the door toward him to reduce the friction, but neau. As you'd expect, there's a knob to turn to move the deadbolt in addition to the door handle. When I told him to "turn the knob", he thought I meant the door handle. He doesn't seem to have noticed the deadbolt knob or to have wondered what it's for. This kind of thing happens all the time with him.

Dysfunction #2: I left him alone to finish putting his bed together, as I said I would earlier. He didn't quite manage: he put most of the parts in the right place, but not all of them. The bed wasn't together when he left. I finished in about ten minutes; I even put his mattress and sheets on.

We're so doing the dresser together. He can't do executive function on his own, at least not without meds in him, which is how he is whenever he's with me.

You may recall that my son works in a supermarket at the other end of town. You may also recall that another store in the same chain is just a few blocks from the Devil Girl Pad. I was talking to the man working checkout the other day. He knew the Wendling, and said he was "efficient" at bagging.

I brought this up over dinner last night, natch. My son said, "I don't bag much anymore."
"Why not?"
"I packed a few bags too heavy." I imagined the consequences of that, but I didn't ask about them.
It emerged that he'd tried a lower dose of his ADD meds a few months ago because he didn't like the side effects. He didn't say so, but I know he doesn't like the very fact that he needs the meds.
Silence. "I often forget how hard it is for you," I said.
"It was hard for you, too."
"Very different situation. I got through life by pretending I was someone I wasn't. That won't work for you, and you know it."

Later I asked him, "Is this why you're having trouble getting a full time job there?"
He said he didn't know.
"Who at [your store] knows about your ADD?"
"Upper management knows about everybody." He told me about his co-workers who wear face shields instead of masks because they have asthma.

Jesus, what are we going to do that we aren't doing already?

Shiro's with Funny Lady Wednesday? Fabulous, natch. When we get together we talk, a lot, and then she's late for something like dinner or changing into a costume. I could have gone to the regular monthly poly thing just a couple of blocks away, but I needed the sleep. That's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it.

Last night? I took the 522 (A new bus route for me!) out to Bothell to have drinks & nibbles with kathrynt. She, if you'll recall, was my voice coach during transition, only much more than that. With her tea, sympathy, and fabulous Stilton cheese, she was one of the two people who helped me the most in my hour of direst need. (The other was, of course, cupcake_goth.) So I keep in touch.

kathrynt's two children are still in the single digits, age-wise. She was pregnant with her younger one while coaching me. Now she's found out he's got some mighty serious ADD. I mean she makes him sound like the Wendling on steroids, with the exception that my son was disruptive in class past a certain age. She's got plenty of parental self-doubt, as did Ex and I, but I think she's doing a whole lot of things right, or as right as it's possible to know under current circumstances. She's probably doing a better job than I did when my son was that age. If anyone can raise her son to self-sufficiency, she's the one. The trouble is, I'm not entirely certain that precondition can be met.

I didn't get home until midnight despite the pretty reasonable bus service. She was kind enough to let me keep warm in her car while waiting for the bus at her end.

It felt weird interleaving tales of Folsom and my birthday with her non-stop parenting. She & I are in such different places in our lives, but I wish I got to see more of her.

My son got a letter from his community college yesterday. He tried to hide it from me. He's done so poorly that they're restricting him to one class per term until he talks to an advisor. His ADD still owns him, basically. I'm hoping that maybe now he'll get serious about coping strategies. He hasn't registered for the first quarter of next year, which is just as well. I haven't been able to talk to Ex about it and can't until next week because a) she just had an infusion of arthritis drugs and b) read on.

Ex has put her father in palliative care because the fluid isn't clearing out of his lungs. She says if I'm going to say goodbye, I better do it soon before the pain meds addle him. That's the plan for this afternoon.

Two thousand suxteen. Ptui! I have... plans for tonight, but I'm going to need a nap.

I think my son is having a growth spurt, possibly his last. We compared heights last night, and I think he's only an inch shorter than I am now. I think that was more like two inches three months ago. Given that he's 18, he stands a reasonable chance of catching me. What makes this all the more impressive is that his mother is a 5'2" (155 cm) fireplug.

Yeah, this would explain all the sleeping and crankiness. As with babies, so even with teens.

It's a tremendous relief to me that those damn ADD meds haven't obviously stunted his growth. They've always wrecked his appetite & sleep when he takes them, so he only takes them when he needs to concentrate on something, e.g. school or driving.

[This post is not locked. Deal.]

I spent yesterday evening in Kirkland at the old place as usual, eating dinner & walking the dog with my son. After moving a few things in preparation for showing the house next week*, we sat on the couch and talked about the Wendling.

He's dropped a second of his three classes for the quarter, and he tried to do so without his mother finding out. It turns out that he never changed his password, so my ex saw the correspondence between him and his prof. He now admits at least to his mother that he's not ready for college, so she's told him he needs to work 20 hours a week either at PCC or volunteering.

Trouble is, PCC has cut his hours, saying that the don't want to schedule him during the day because his "bagging proficiency" isn't what it would need to be, i.e. he moves like a sloth. I'd noticed early on and I always wondered how they put up with that; I guess the answer is that they don't, entirely.

And why is my son moving like a sloth, failing out of school, and generally being a shiftless punk? Because he's been blowing off his ADD meds. He doesn't like the way they make him feel, and they make him want to skip meals, which freaks out his Aspie sense of eating properly.

First, the solution to these problems with the meds is to either change the dose or the med, not to just quietly stop. He clearly cannot adult without them, and that's a goddamn problem. If a transphobic asshole shivs me this morning while I'm waiting for the E line, he's fucked, and he will have fucked himself.

Second, if a med switch doesn't help and it's a choice between eating unlike other people and being a functioning adult, you do the latter. Just make sure you get enough to eat.

I have never been more disappointed in my son, and that's saying quite a bit.

My ex has asked me to watch him on Saturday when he takes his meds - 80 mg of Vyvance. She says his brain works real good on 100 mg, but if he takes that dose too many times in a row he'll get paranoid hallucinations. Christ on a pogo stick.



*She asked me to come Tuesday, but then bailed at the last minute because arthritis, thereby wrecking my social plans. I have informed her that she needs to not do that again, especially when what she wants me to do takes a tall, healthy woman all of 15 minutes.

Scene: Saturday morning. The Wendling is driving us to Kirkland, and we've just crossed the 520 bridge. The road wiggles because of major construction: approaches for the new bridge. M'boy doesn't quite follow the wiggles.

Wendling: Was I drifting again?
Nun: Yes!

Here's what I've noticed about him: he can pay attention to his direction for several seconds at a stretch, or he can pay attention to his speed for several seconds at a stretch. But when you're driving, you have to switch off faster than that.

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The calendar app that ships with Windows Phone 7 doesn't handle daylight saving time properly. It made me late for my appointment with razorbits, which is why, sadly, I didn't get awesome foils done.

How do I know I didn't just fat-finger it? Because my phone also lied about yesterday's zappy appointment, which is nearly always at the same time on the same day of the week. Both appointments were entered right before the Great Leap Forward but occurred afterwards.

Once again, I got a product from Microsoft that's worth what I paid for it: $0.00.

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Speaking of zappy, I continue to be pleased with progress. The only area I have left on my face or neck that isn't predominantly perma-cleared is the center of my throat. Ms. Zappy contends that I only have another couple of months left of six-hour sessions; after that I won't have enough hair on me to go longer than four hours at a stretch.

I rode shotgun with my son on the freeway for the first time this morning as he drove us back to the old place. He only wandered out of his lane oh, three or four times. As I told Mom during my weekly phone call, I didn't scream, but I gasped. Yes, he had is meds in him, and no, there was nothing coming out of the speakers. I think he even has trouble driving & conversing at the same time.

In other ADD-flavored news, he couldn't find his phone this morning. That would have been the third one he'd lost or broken in about a year, but he discovered that he'd left his phone at the old place yesterday afternoon, when he was there for ten minutes to - wait for it - take some short-acting meds. And because of his alarm settings, his phone woke up his mother against her wishes as he and I overslept.

Never mind flying cars. I want the future to entail self-driving cars and grafting important objects onto my son.

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Ms. Zappy has moved her office from Tacoma to Federal Way, which makes my trip a bit shorter, at least geographically. She continues to make excellent progress: I doubt I'll have to shave above the jawline tomorrow, and not much below it. Permanently clear (I really want to say "permaclear".) on the neck and face by spring? I fervently hope so. Then on to the chest & nipples, like Sherman through Georgia. Or something.

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As I type this entry, I am not cleaning my apartment. I must PREPARE FOR THE COMING OF MOM on Thursday, and I'll be doing stuff with m'boy on the east side on Tuesday & Wednesday night.