What I don't have Patience For

I hardly ever get sick.  That's one of the perks of having four kids...you develop an immunity to the world's bugs that's akin to Wonderwoman.  But at least once a year, and it's usually around Thanksgiving or Christmas, I do get sick.  I hate it.  And I don't have the patience for it.

I'm a terrible patient and will avoid going to the doctor at all costs.  Some kind of bug has been going around town for weeks now and it had the audacity to pay a visit to my house.  I can honestly say that today is the day I have felt the most human in a while, even if I do sound like a cigar-smoking eighty year old with emphysema.

This has been, however, a gentle reminder to me that I should be exercising more and perhaps taking it a bit easy.  A reminder I will take under consideration.

It also begs the question, How can I tell if my autistic child is sick?  The answer is, sometimes you can't.  With my own son, he starts to act real squirrely when he feels bad.  More yelling, more stimming.  Last night he coughed a lot in  his sleep and was so congested that it sounded like a foghorn. When I informed him he would be staying home from school today, he could hardly believe it.  "Logan go to school?" he asked me, over and over.  And I reassured him that no, he did not have to go today.  He has been uncharacteristically quiet today. I'm praying we have the energy to at least put up our tree the week of Christmas, and look forward to bedtime.  Maybe when I wake up, our resident superbug will have seen its happy behind out the door.

My Hidden Addiction

This evening I found myself doing it again.  Losing hours gazing at digital images of old rooms, turrets, and wide, open porches.  Hi, My name is Rachel Stogner, and I am an old house addict.

It's been a forever addiction.  But they need so much work! They're a money pit!  What would you do with all that space!  There's no heat or air!  The paint is peeling!

I've heard all of it and I have one thing to say:  I don't care.

There's something about an old house, an antique house, that speaks to me.  There's a soul there.  You can walk in to any of them and feel the people that have gone before.  Walls that bore witness to countless conversations, rooms that saw dinner parties, quiet family evenings, heated arguments, love and affection...it's all there, and I love it.

So I found a few websites that cater to one of  my, ahem, favorite pastimes, which is perusing these places.  You would not believe how many cast iron stoves, mosaic fireplaces, and tin ceilings I've glanced at. If I believed in past lives I would think I had many, because I feel such an affinity for these old places.  Perhaps it's the potential that they have to become beautiful again, perhaps it's the presence of so much history, but there's something alluring and attractive about an old beauty that's become a fixer-upper.

The image at the top of this page is one of my favorite old houses.  It's Varina Plantation, and one of my earliest ancestors lived there after buying it from John Rolfe, husband of Pocahontas.  Sadly, today, there are many places like this in the Deep South that are falling into ruin.  They are unconventional homes for our time...a time when many people are turning to a minimalistic lifestyle and shunning the excesses of square footage and elevated ceilings that so many of these gorgeous homes have.  It makes me sad to see these places forgotten or turned into condos or apartments, but what's even sadder is looking at one of my favorite sites and noting that one of these beauties was demolished.

So I spend some of my spare time looking through these antique gems, imagining what it would be like to own a mid-century Modern in Tennessee or a Queen Anne in Georgia.  The truth is, though, my favorite type of home is the Craftsman or Prairie style home, which is so prevalent in Texas.  It happens to be my favorite style, which is a good thing, because I really can't imagine living anywhere but here.  There's no place like home.  It's ironic that someone like me lives in a 1970's ranch, but maybe one day I'll achieve my dream of restoring a place like that.

As a realtor I can say that some houses like this get passed up because people automatically assume it comes with a host of problems that they don't want to deal with.  This may be true, or it may not, or it may be worth it.  I urge you, the next time you're house shopping, even if you're "just looking", stop for a moment. Imagine it in its glory days and consider the potential.  You just might fall in love.

The Dark Side

I am posting a link to this article, in the hopes that many will read it and have their eyes opened.  I love my own Logan so much.  He is sweet and funny and kind and smart.  He also has days where he is overwhelmed with frustration, cannot control himself, and screams and is in general difficult to deal with.  It's not his fault, and it's not his choice.  It's how he's wired.

I do not condone what this woman did.  But I can completely and  unequivocally understand her desperation and frustration.  I'm sure that in her head, she felt like what she was doing was the only option left to her.  I wish someone had reached out to her, held her hand, told her she wasn't alone.  The fact of the matter is that sometimes autism is violent.  It's painful and physically taxing for the caregiver and the individual being cared for.  Logan has come such a long way in being able to communicate and do things that other kids do. When he was younger, things didn't look so rosy. He would climb on my back and  hit me.  He would try to harm himself.  I have a cracked rib that healed improperly from one of his temper tantrums years ago.  He was laying on the couch and as I bent down to him he kicked me.  There are still times when his frustration is incredibly great, and he tries to harm himself.  It's scary.  It's heartbreaking.  And it's incredibly difficult to make people understand how exhausted you are, how much of an adjustment you've had to make in your life in order to deal with this.

The other issue is also how difficult it is for the person who has autism.  Logan cannot maintain control over himself all the time.  He knows this.  It angers him and it makes him sad.  He cannot express adequately to me, or to anyone, why he is screaming, what he needs, or that he is sorry for a certain behavior.  It's frustrating for everyone. When you add to that the dearth of services available for autistic individuals in the state of Texas, it becomes a problem that will soon overwhelm many aspects of our society and educational system.  There are many, many families like the Stapleton family.  Families who do not live normal lives, and who exhaust every avenue available to them in hopes of finding some sort of relief or help for their troubled children.  I hope that when you read this, you will be made more aware of the people around you...not just the ones struggling with a disability, but anyone in your life who may need a little extra love and support.

For myself, I can only be thankful.  I have a wonderful family who loves Logan and helps us out as much as they can.  Logan has excellent teachers at school, and we have a great support system within our own church of people who have taken the time to get to know us and Logan, and who have made a concerted effort to educate themselves on his disability.  I have many friends through social media who reach out to me often, with articles or listening ears or simple affection.  I know I am loved and I know my family, including Logan, is loved.

My prayers and thoughts go out to this family in Michigan.

http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/desperate-act-mom-accused-trying-kill-autistic-daughter-n155816

Driven

My thoughts turned to my grandparents again today.  I wasn't close to either one of my grandfathers.  Both very different men.  My mom's dad was named simply "R" by his mother.  He signed most things "R.B."  for "R.  Boliver".  When he joined the army as a cook, he was forced to take a name, as they couldn't accept an initial on his paperwork, so he began to refer to himself as "Roy".  He worked for the Santa Fe Railroad.  He was a math wizard who would dupe his coworkers out of money with bets on whether or not they could solve specific equations.  He was a musician.  He was mean and depressed but never this way around me.  He smoked and cussed and drank and worked and worked and worked his entire life, including his childhood.  You might say his demons drove him.

My father's father was a different sort of man.  He was highly intelligent and smooth-talking. One of my earliest memories of him was going out to his ranch with my father and looking across a pasture.  A line of Fotomat booths sat out in that pasture, because he had bought a Fotomat franchise.  I remember cattle everywhere.  A miniature horse named Little Bit.  A dairy that he owned.  In his seventies he got his real estate license and stuck his fingers in the property pie.  He traveled.  I can count on one hand the number of memorable interactions I had with him, but I do know this...he could never sit still.  He was also a very driven person, and I think that when he finally passed away, it was very grudgingly.

I think about these two men that I'm related to and maybe I can understand the circumstances in my life at this point from what they went through.  I live a very stressful life.  Raising children is, in and of itself, challenging.  When you throw autism in the mix, it gets that much more dynamic.  You really do have to become used to a new normal.  And then there are other things that add to it...your interactions with other people, for example, can become supercharged, and some people can have a profound effect on your life.  This summer I found myself growing more and more restive and depressed.  My husband thought it was because I was tired of taking care of kids around the clock...but that wasn't really it.  It was true that they were getting bored and that I needed them to go back to school and be busy just as much as they needed it, but that wasn't really what was nagging at me.  What was bothering me, what was turning my restlessness into full blown depression, was the fact that I wasn't doing anything.

Increasingly over the last year I have found that staying as busy as possible works wonders for me.  The more stuff I can pile on myself, the more ambitions and goals I can make, the more I can focus and manage my life. In spite of this, I made a conscious decision this year to tone it down a little.  I decided to focus on my children, and on trying not to kill myself with overwork.  And I feel strangely lighter.  Still busy, and still very obligated to succeed...but not overworked to the point where I might want to rent a rubber room.

Who Taught You How to do That?

                           



Earlier today, I finished cutting squares to make a simple quilt.  I've never made a quilt before. After I cut all the squares, I got out my machine so I could sew them together into a quilt top, but bad news...The machine was broken.  Due to the frustration I always experience when dealing with this particular machine, and also because of my stubborn nature, I said to myself, Fine.  It will be completely hand-stitched.  It may take a while, but I'll just enjoy the journey.

I reconciled myself to the fact that this process was going to take some time, and accepted the fact that many afternoons would be spent putting this piece of art together.  (Quilting is an art.  Don't believe me?  Google "Gee's Bend" or "The Art Quilt Gallery, New York" and you'll see.)

As I pulled the needle through the fabric and tied the thread off, a thought occurred to me:  How do I know how to do this?  Who taught me how to do this?

And you know, I'm really not sure!

Both of my grandmothers grew up on farms.  They were from a different, slower time.  They knew the importance of taking care of what they had and making it last, and they understood that self-sufficiency wasn't a luxury to be indulged in as some sort of social experiment; it was a necessity.  Both of them knew how to sew really well and could make anything from a tablecloth to a pair of pants.  In particular, my maternal grandmother, Eleanor Boliver, was an excellent seamstress.  I once gave her a few yards of cloth to hem into a curtain.  She returned it bearing the most tight, even stitches you could imagine...and she did it all by hand.  My paternal grandmother, Rose Hatcher, had a full sized quilt frame at one time.  I can remember that when she set it up, it took up half of her very large dining room.  As a child I could hide under it and pretend it was a tent, but the rest of it was a mystery to me.  Yet, because I spent hours in their company, I observed a lot.  How to tie a thread to keep it from pulling through the cloth.  How to shuck corn.  How to boil water, store onions, grill a hot dog, whip potatoes, snap beans.  How to enjoy the pleasures of basic life itself.  Do I remember who taught me how to thread a needle or keep it from slipping straight through the cloth?  No, but it was someone who loved me enough to show me how.  And those same someones also taught me a much bigger lesson:  worthwhile things take time, and patience, and the enjoyment is sometimes just as much in the creation of it as in the end result itself.

The Value of Waiting

As summer drags its weary ass out the door, I've had time to sit here and contemplate a lot of things. Namely, the following:

This is true.  I'm not a patient person.  I hate waiting in lines, pumping gas, and repeating myself, unless I'm repeating myself by virtue of teaching a new or interesting concept.  I dislike complaining and I don't like being around people who complain excessively. But I've had to learn the value of patience.

When I was in college for the first time, I was distracted by all of the different courses available.  Did I want to take this music class?  What about archaeology?  How about Russian?  Did it fit with my degree plan?  Who cares?  It sounds good!

Of course what happened is I wasted a LOT of time and didn't succeed my first time around.  I wasn't focused.  I didn't understand what was important, and I messed around and didn't invest my time in the thing that truly mattered...and that was the degree I was aiming for.

Now that I've decided to go back, I meet with an advisor on a regular basis and I make sure that I follow my plan to the letter.  I don't allow myself to become distracted by other things, no matter how good or tempting they may look.  It doesn't help that I find a LOT of things interesting, but if I continually "explore" and "nibble" at all of these interesting things, then I won't get to where I need to be.  I won't succeed.

So what is worth our patience, and our personal investment?  Obviously, I'm going to include the pursuit of knowledge in my answer.  It's the only thing you can take with you when you die.  What else?  How about the personal relationships in your life?  Who is important to you?  Is it your family and friends?  How do you treat them?  What about yourself?  Do you take care of yourself?  Are you as patient with yourself as you expect other people to be?  What about your personal success?  Where do you want to be in ten years?  In twenty?  I know, that seems so far away, it's hardly worth the bother of planning for.  But really, it is.  It's worth every minute.  It's worth it because time moves so much faster than you can imagine, and life changes all the time.  If you're not doing what you need to do now to get to where you want to be later,then you might want to take a good, hard look at what you're doing and change a few things.

I can tell you that the biggest motivating factor for change in my life has been my children.  When you become responsible for someone else, or a group of someone elses, then that is a real game-changer, especially if one of those someones might live with you for the rest of his life. You suddenly look at your life and decide that certain things aren't so important anymore, but being able to live long enough to take care of this kid, and live in relative comfort, is.

I still have years left before I finish school.  Sometimes, when things seem far away or impossible, its easy to get discouraged and give up.  Waiting doesn't come easy to a lot of people. But I promise, if you do, it will be worth it.

I Really Can't Say

I just finished the rough draft of a novel I've been working on since last year.  I write a lot.  It's a huge outlet for me, and usually my catharsis takes the form of poems or short stories.  I've had several good ideas for a novel-length work, but none of them ever came to fruition, mostly because I got busy or lost interest.  One of writing's biggest rules is if it can't hold your own attention, as the author, then it's not likely to appeal to your readers, either.

This novel, however, was different.  I actually enjoyed the creative process and the character development.  Now that the rough draft is finished, I'm looking forward to delving back into it, reading through it, and making the necessary changes it needs to be a great read.

What's it about?  People ask me this.  To be honest, I really can't say.  Or won't say.  This has been my experience in the past:  I've come up with a great idea, and in the excitement of discovery, I blabbed.  I blabbed to family, I blabbed to friends, and something got lost.  In the excitement of telling, I sent the story out into the world before it was ready to walk, so to speak, and after that my excitement dwindled.  I had other experiences where I actually shared details of the story, and the person I shared it with didn't respect it for what it was...a truly creative work that came from the deepest part of myself.  They either didn't understand how much it meant to me, or they offered "helpful" criticism until there was nothing left.

So I learned an important lesson.  When you bare your soul, be careful who you bare it to.  Be careful when and how you do it.  This is a challenge for someone who is a generous person by nature.  We want to let everyone in our world.  We want to show them this wonderful thing we found.  We want to know them and let them know us.  Yet there is something to be said for reticence. Sometimes it's best to proceed with caution and get to know someone really well before opening all your doors.  When the time is right, then you can tell your story, and at that point, your audience, whether it's the general public, friend, family member, or coworker, will be ready.