Oceanside, Nevada

No. Not yurs.

That’s what it feels like lately, anyway (as ecto pops up the “HEY! NEW SHIT! DOWNLOAD NOW?” dialog in the midst of my typing, making every keypress a futile “BONG…BONG BONG” until my typing catches up to my eyes and realizes, “Oh, hey, maybe I should stop and do something about that dialog.” Developers: It’s totally awesome that you build mechanisms into your software that let us users know when something new and cool is available but when it actually interferes with using the software, well, that’s just annoying. I’m looking at you Speed Download, Remote Buddy and, yes, Apple. Because I just LOVE walking across the house to my print server which has refused to print anything because Software Update wants to inform me that the latest “unspecified bugs” download of Garageband is available for my print server. Because I need to be able to craft thumping beats on my print server), as I find myself stuck in a mode where I’m doing lots of reacting and very little acting.

Last week we decided to keep The Boy home to hopefully get ahead of the nasty cold he’s had for, oh, EVER (seriously, is there some sort of mutant super cold going around? Seems like everyone I know—including me—spent like three days being really, truly miserable and then the rest of their life just being kinda stuffy). The doctor gave him an antibiotic for an ear infection and a new tube of acne medicine so progress was being made until TJ left for the pharmacy to pick up said medications. Whilst in the care of my lovely 17 year old daughter, an otherwise responsible and sober child, The Boy decided it would be a good idea to pour scalding hot water over his head.

You know how sometimes you know why something happened but you don’t know why something happened? The Boy, like many autistic persons, has several obsessive self stimulatory behaviors (or “stims”) that range from very simple stereotypical behaviors (hand flapping) to relatively complex ritualistic behaviors. The stereotypical behaviors don’t change over time (and are fairly common across the autism spectrum, hence the name) but the ritual behaviors can evolve and change over time. Two prominent rituals are the “wet head” ritual which evolved from “wet hand.” In the wet head ritual, The Boy fills a cup in one of the sinks in the house and pours it quickly over his head, like a splash. Then he finds an authority figure in the house and makes a big point of showing them his wet head while saying “No more wet head.” I don’t know why he does this or what it does for him internally but it seems to be a response to stress or frustration.

His other big ritual revolves around the coffee maker. Until very recently we had a Keurig single cup coffee maker—a truly wonderful invention. Like any similar device, the coffee maker, when not actually making coffee, will also make plain old hot water. The Boy has developed a ritual around making a cup of hot water and immediately splashing it violently into the kitchen sink. This, of course, is not good and he’s splashed family members from time to time doing this. This is called the “Making Tea” ritual because when we tell him to stop it he responds, “No more tea!” We found that we had to remove the reservoir from the machine at times to keep him from draining it by making obsessive cup after cup. Again, I have no idea why he does this. Of course, being the basically undisciplined slaves to convenience we are, eventually the coffee maker gets put back together because a coffee maker that can’t make coffee has no purpose. Or coffee.

So on the day of the pharmacy trip, Flip was in the other room when she heard The Boy “making tea” (keep in mind, this is a single cup machine and brews a cup in about thirty seconds. If you’re in the room you might not actually hear it until it’s almost done brewing). Before she could say anything she heard a splash and The Boy started making very upset noises. By the time she had gone the less than ten steps to the kitchen sink The Boy’s scalp and forehead were an angry red blistered mass. She put cold water on it immediately and called TJ who had her put ice on the burn.

So I know why The Boy did this, in that I know that, for some reason, he decided to conflate these two rituals but I don’t know why because I don’t have any insight into his inner world to tell me why he does these things in the first place. FWIW, he’s okay. We managed to soothe the burn and we’ve kept it pretty well slathered in antibiotic ointment so that, a week later, his head looks sort of like a pink peeling alligator golf shoe. I think he’ll heal without scars, thankfully.

Aside from The Boy’s pain and suffering, the downside is the Keurig went immediately into the trash and, with it, all ability to make that dark, bitter, elixir of life that I now pay $2 for in a popular nationwide coffee conglomerate several times a day. So, for the last week, as we go through the morning routine to get ready for the day, I’ve had “Englishman in New York” playing in my head. Specifically the line in the song where Sting sings “I don’t drink coffee, I drink tea, my dear…” Only, in my version, it goes “I can’t stand tea, get me some fucking coffee, preferably in a freshly scooped out human skull, NOW BITCH!”

It’s been a challenge.

But wait, there’s more! The rest of the week was filled with TJ’s time of the month when she’s moody, quick to anger and just generally difficult. I won’t go into detail out of respect for my lovely wife whom I adore and who will read this at some point, but, well… anyway. TJ left to visit her sister in Albuquerque over the weekend and the news broke that a local endoscopy clinic, by engaging in practices that any first year nursing student knows are of a malpractice-type nature, potentially 4 exposed 0,000 patients to hepatitis and HIV. I’m one of those 40,000. Which made for a lovely weekend and I’ll have my test results later this week, thank you.

Heap on top of that an explosively growing business, pain in the ass customers (some of them apparently batshit crazy) and a partner with enough drive and energy to power small towns and you see why I haven’t had the time to replace my blog’s generic banner with my daughter’s lovely artwork.

Speaking of which, I need to tend to the aforementioned business. Happy day, folks.

Tags: No Comments