Cathy: Crying out in the wilderness

I’m having one of those moments — one of those really bad moments of a stay-at-home mother or a writer. The kind where you can hear yourself screaming, but it’s as if everyone else in your home is looking right past you, no matter what you may be saying. In a movie, the lens would be panning through the doors, around the room and from a distance into close up, the sound of a scream gaining momentum until the camera is zooming into an open mouth of a crazed woman standing, in — Oh, I don’t know, let’s put her in the kitchen, with a steaming pot on the stove and a mess of undue proportion all around, but finally the camera goes into that cavern of a mouth, dodges past teeth and tongue, spotlights the uvula, and goes black, and silent. When the scene comes back up, she’s standing there, stunned look on her face, flyaway hair escaping ponytail, and breathing stiltedly.

This is also a common feeling for anyone who deals on a regular basis with someone on the autism spectrum. So I am having a triple whammy day of it — the regular wife and mother moment, the writer moment, and the aspie mom moment of it. So I thought I’d put it to good use. Maybe if someone stumbles across this blog as any one of the above, they’ll know they are not alone without having to feel like they should go on Oprah to talk about it. Following are just a few parts of my particular scenario that have led me to this moment:

1. I’m still kind of feeling like I’m writing in a void since I don’t have an income from it, although I’m generally doing much better about that feeling while actively working on a novel.
2. I spent much of yesterday, side by side with my aspie son, looking for the floor in his room — a sea of drawings, started and stopped over and over, because it just wasn’t perfect enough for him. He kept zoning out into whatever caught his attention. I kept calling his name and giving a different list: his list of choices to put things: paper to be recycled, paper to be saved, non-paper garbage or toy bucket. We made it about ¾ of the way through the mess in three hours, mostly by me and by my yelling “S- S- S– look at me — look at this — is this drawing to be saved or recycled? S- S- S– look at me — look at this — is this drawing to be saved or recycled? S- S- S– look at me — look at this — is this drawing to be saved or recycled?”
3. My husband has not mowed the lawn in a month. The grass is taller than the dog. I know I got us out of the house last weekend for the whole weekend, essentially, so I intentionally backed out of plans for this weekend, except trick or treat, so that we could focus on what slid last weekend, especially the lawn. I finally started to ‘nag’ about it, and then he actively refused to do it. Now I must mention, we have a history with the lawn that involves my ‘green’ mower and doing it myself vs the gas mower and his doing it, in which I have been shut out of the argument due to my recent bedrest pregnancy complications and the fact that I’m still ‘recovering’ from that year in bed and one of the complications.
4. I also have a teen son. His reaction time, if there is one, happens in stop gap motion. Have you ever seen anyone really look as if they are moving through molasses? That is K. And his slow motion voice has deepened to sound a lot like one of those slow motion effects, too. “Whaaaaaaa…”
5. I’m more often than not, pinned nursing my lovely baby, which leads to a feeling of helplessness to accomplish one complete task from beginning to end. Not to mention the sleep deprivation involved. Too late.
6. Economy is a huge issue and my darling husband is a classic sort — the quiet type who thinks he has to take care of it all himself and will probably give himself a heart attack trying rather than communicate better, so I end up having a freak-out moment because of the periodic buildup between us. Of course this only leads to my looking like a drama queen, and doesn’t get us effectively communicating, because he stands there in stunned silence at the monster who has taken possession of his petite, usually fairly sunny disposition wife, complete with flying laundry baskets.
7. I have my period. Period.

Thanks for listening, and if you ever have the same feeling, feel free to leave a comment below. I must say, having vented, I feel much better already, nearly as well as if I had called a girlfriend and laughed about the same. Maybe now I can rewash that laundry that flew down the stairs last night along with the three day old few sips of coffee I had left by my bedside. Yuck, spotty.