A Touch of Lace

Lily has been growing like a proverbial weed.  She's sprung up almost overnight, finally cracking the "growth chart" she's loitered below for so many years.  Every time I take her to a doctor's appointment...and that is "many"...I note her measurements.  You know that baby book you keep for like the first 18 months of your baby's life and then forget where it is?  That's going on in my iphone right now.

See attached chart below:

I like charts.

She's gained almost 30 pounds in less than two years.  It's pretty amazing.  So much of my "autism narrative"...so much of how Leslie and I reacted to Lily's behaviors was overridden by a desire...a NEED to get her weight into a more healthy range.  Now though...game on.  The kid's killin' it at the dinner table.  Now I don't feel so...threatened by her loss of patience when she eats.  Now I don't feel like it's imperative that she get SOMETHING in her, so why bother with working on her self feeding.  Time to refocus.  Kid's got some wiggle room (no wiggle-related pun intended).

So anyway...growth spurt.  Her feet apparently also grow.  Sometimes I forget that.  My parents noticed her toes might be stretching the fabric of her current footwear and took her shoe shopping.  Mom sent me a picture.  Lily's favorites were the powder blue ones, but I liked both.  She refers to colors by their corresponding wiggle.  The powder blue were "Blue Anthony Shoes". 

Side by side comparison of blue anthony shoes and also...blue anthony shoes

It will become more complicated when she wears the red and navy blue ones.  All blue shoes are blue anthony shoes...so... pointing may be involved. 

At Lily's current shoe size...(Big kid size 1) the velcro options are dwindling.  I reached out to fellow autism parent, blossoming autism blogger, and AC of PA staff member, Jen for suggestions on clickable shoe closures.  I knew her son had them because she had initially struggled getting them on his shoes.  She pointed me to Zubits website.  I then went to Amazon and found a pair of knockoffs (Aircity) at half the price.  I bought white because I thought they'd look sharp with the shoes, but also look decent with ANY athletic shoe.  But they have tons of colors.

In a nutshell...they are powerful magnetic closures that you lace your shoelaces through then use the magnet to open and close them.  They look like this...

The magnets are STRONG, but you can get varying strengths for bigger (or smaller) people up through active adults using them for running shoes.  I Amazon Primed them and a couple days later I followed the simple directions and within a couple minutes (like seriously, Jen, what the hell was your problem?) had them on her blue anthony (not the other blue anthony, they have velcro) shoes.  I was pretty excited. 

She's been wearing the powder blue ones pretty much, but when I picked clothes out for her first day of school I thought the darker shoes would be a better contrast and not too "one note". 

Note shoes. 

Yeah...I um...didn't try them on Lily before I fully tightened the laces into the closure and snipped the ends.  I tightened them so much they wouldn't fit over her feet and then close.  I um...can't fix them because I already clipped the ends of the shoe laces so there's no flexibility to loosen the laces and start again (so...sorry Jen). 

So...today I'm shoelace shopping.  We'll try again tomorrow.

Conversational English

I was telling my friend Bec that "I'm well" in response to her question asking me how I was doing the other day. I told her that's my new default instead of "good thanks", and told her this story.

My boss's boss's boss is named John. That's not super relevant to the story but I figured John would be easier to type than "my boss's boss's boss". Anyway, John has the corner office on our floor and he's super nice and outgoing and every time he sees me he says, "Hey, Jim, how are you doing?"

And I say, "I'm good thanks, how are you?"

And without fail he says, "I'm doing really well, thanks." And I immediately think...you sonofabitch...did you just fucking subtly correct my grammar??

So I'm like...god dammit...this is my boss's boss's boss. I will be damned if I'm going to allow this shit.

I'm doing well...I'm doing well...I'm doing well...I practice it in my head. It's so informal and "Montana" to say "I'm good, thanks". It's ingrained.

I'm doing well...I'm doing well...I'm doing well...

So the next time I see that son of a bitch I'm all prepped and ready.

And he says, "Hi Jim, how are you doing today?"

And I reply..."Good, thanks, how are you?" ( GOD DAMMIT )

More practice...

The NEXT next time I see him I'm fucking ready. He says, "Hi Jim, everything going alright?"

What. The. Fuck. He flipped the script. Well...i have no response to THIS. we didn't prep for THIS. Who can answer something like that off the cuff?

"Doing good thanks" (FUCK!)

The NEXT next next time I landed it, but stammered a bit, (.5 deduct)...

I used his own words back at him. "I'm doing really well, thanks," but it tripped over my tongue. Wasn't "natural".

And I realized that for some reason I OFTEN say, "I'm well" to people. But...for some OTHER reason...never in response to John. So...now when people ask me how I'm doing...it's "I'm well". And I'll keep fucking saying it until it's so ingrained in my head that when that friendly sonofabitch asks me it'll flow as smooth as McDonald's soft-serve ice cream..."I'm well, John, how are you?" I'll say. See how he likes THAT!

Meanwhile...he has no idea that I'm hostile about what is probably not a subtle grammar correction, but just the same thing he says to everyone.

UPDATE:

So today, he sees me in the hall, and basically now I have a brain block around John. I start breaking out in a cold sweat whenever I see him. I've got the conversational yips. So I see him walking toward me and he says, "What's the word?"

And I froze like a deer in the headlights...because­ who the fuck EVER knows how to answer that question, and also...because I was still all "I'm well, thank you, how are you?" like I'm just learning to speak English and think everything anyone says is "how are you". Couldn't get my high powered brain to just go on autopilot the way it's supposed to with conversational niceties.

So instead, I just totally ignored his comment and gave him mine "I'm well, thank you, how are you" and then he said, "Doing okay, how about you?"

"Good thanks"

DAMMIT!