Kitchen makeover

So, we now have a house. I'm finally joining the Cult of Domesticity. I (not we!) have a kitchen.

This means I get to decorate the kitchen! Oh boy!

Here are two current pictures of my kitchen.

This is the right side of the kitchen. I don't know if you can see the fish sauce on the lazy susan, but I assure you, it's there.

This is the left side of the kitchen. That's our Desean Jackson/Jason Avant collectible cup on the counter. We got it when we ordered some overpriced lukewarm pizza combo at the horrifying Eagles-Giants game in October, the one where Michael Vick was still the quarterback, the Giants only scored field goals, the Eagles had a single touchdown, Matt Barkley finished out the game, and the final score was a boring 12-7, Giants. Oh, and the next week, Nick Foles threw seven touchdowns against Oakland. Yes, I am bitter about shelling out to see the most unexciting NFL game of all time. Also, why is Jason Avant on the cup? Does anybody really care that much about Jason Avant? Why couldn't they just have two pictures of Desean Jackson in two epic poses? Anyway, back to the kitchen.

Here's the basic problem with Grace's kitchen makeover. We don't really have any wall space, aside from a bit that you can't see to the left of the coffeemaker on the island. Except for that small area, wall art is out. This might be a blessing in disguise, because pretty pictures are one of those things upon which  I have a very hard time bringing myself to spend money. We do have counter space, island counter space, space on top of the cabinets, and a window that doesn't actually have a windowsill.

I spent some time over the break Googling "small kitchen decor" while hangin' out in my pajamas at 2 PM lying on the couch. Apparently, according to Google and HGTV and Better Homes and Gardens, a "small kitchen" is an open-concept 3000 square foot monstrosity that's bigger than my house. I had a little more luck Googling "tiny kitchen decor", although that came back with quite a few pictures of galley kitchens and other such actually tiny kitchens. I did get some ideas, however.

One awesome suggestion I found was to use pretty things as functional items in the kitchen. Functional is music to my ears. I learned long ago that as sure as I am Mr. Spock's illegitimate daughter, I can't do pretty without functional, because I either destroy pretty or I throw out pretty for functional. Basically, it's my clothing issue in kitchen form - if it has to be dry-cleaned, I'll destroy it, so I won't buy it. But pretty functional is definitely a possibility!

That's why, in the first picture, you can see a cute blue vases in the corner that I'm using as a utensil holder. We had been using a fairly sterile OXO holder, which was certainly nice and functional, but lacked pretty. I like the blue holder, it's fun! I'm hoping to find other nice ceramic gewgaws to use in the kitchen, preferably in brown, yellow, blue, or cream, which is the color scheme for the main floor.

Google also suggested using flowers to liven up the kitchen. This could be more of a challenge. Flowers are pretty foofy, not very functional, and I kill them all. (I don't even bother watering my flowers half the time since I know I'll kill them at some point down the road, so what's the use?) But they are so, so pretty! And Wegmans has flower sales all the time! Like that poinsettia on the island - that was only four bucks at Wegs, and it is a HUGE plant. I actually felt that the addition of the poinsettia did a lot to make the kitchen seem cozy and welcoming. I mean, when I go into the kitchen, I don't want to leave the kitchen, and frankly, I should be running away from the kitchen screaming at the top of my lungs from the dirty dishes that await. Once I kill the plant, I think I'm going to buy another one on super sale.

I must now depart. I am feeling an overwhelming urge to be domestic and make some jook. Dan will be proud.

I have a black belt in failure, just so ya know

I'm five feet tall. I've been told that I look like I weigh a hundred pounds soaking wet, but this was several years ago so unfortunately quite out of date. I have trouble doing things like, you know, opening soda bottles. Which is why, if you didn't know this already, your jaw is going to drop on the floor momentarily, like the craniofacial orifices of numerous individuals did when I gave individual Great Reveals.

I actually have a black belt in karate.

Yes, I can shatter boards with my fists and/or feet, and yes, it hurts.

Yes, I can take you down to the ground in 2.5 seconds. I actually did it to Dan once, because I'm super clumsy, and that's why I take 2.5 seconds and not 0.5 seconds to take you down.

Yes, I do know where to hit you to make you hurt and/or die, and this is where clumsy actually comes in handy.

Yes, I can mangle more Korean words than you will probably mangle in your lifetime, I can mangle them pretty good, too. Also, Ko Hwan means groin area, just so you know.

The road to black belt, in my type of karate, was long and hard, although less hard and less long than the more hard-core martial arts that focus on beating each other up every class in hand-to-hand combat. For me it took about six years full of blood, sweat, and tears (and more blood, and pain, lots and lots of pain), lots of practice, and an impressive amount of conditioning that I can currently only dream of while lying on my couch watching Gangland. Strangely, given my general avoidance of movement, I loved it. I could break some boards, kick someone in the palm, do a couple of 360 degree roundhouse kicks, get myself a Fruitopia from the soda machine, and go home and not move for three days.

I was sixteen when it was black belt testing time.

The first thing us apprentices had to endure before the actual black belt test (held outside of Philly with a couple hundred candidates), was the dreaded pre-test, so named because, uh, because, yeah. The black belt pre-test was designed by the instructors for the sole purpose of scaring the lazy out of you. It was rumored to be so tough and so nasty that candidates fainted dead away from the pain (thankfully the rumor was blown way out of proportion, but my friend did throw up during the ordeal). You had to do 100 push-ups! Followed by 100 crunches! Followed by 100 jumping jacks! Followed by suicides! Followed by the actual warm-up to the pre-test! It was awful! We would die! All die!

Once we actually took the pre-test, I'm unhappy to report that we actually did have to do 100 push-up, followed by 100 crunches, followed by 100 jumping jacks, followed by suicides, followed by the actual warm-up. But we all survived, probably by summoning the mystical power of some ancient Korean karate-god, but whatever. We passed.

After the pre-test, we started practicing for the actual test. The black belt test had two components. The first task was the physical performance test. Could you, indeed, remember all 52 moves to the karate form and perform them flawlessly while nameless karate instructors from the greater Philadelphia region turned their ice-cold stares of judgement upon you? Great, you pass!

But it was the second component that I knew was a total lock-up.

It was a written test. It was a hundred multiple-choice questions long that asked you things like "What was the date that the Grandmaster opened his first studio in the United States?" and "What is the meaning of the color red in the Korean flag?" (the blood of us black belt candidates, if I remember correctly). And who was the nerdiest karate student to ever roam the earth?

Surprisingly, not me. It was my karate idol, Mr. Cuddy, who was the coolest 60+ year old black belt ever. I came very close to his expansive knowledge of Korean mangleizations of various karate stances, but he always knew just a little more than I did. In fact, he gave me a challenge before the day of reckoning arrived.

"Grace, I don't mind telling you that I got a 99 on the written test. That's the highest score that anyone who trains in our studio has ever received. I want you to at least get in the 90s, because I know you can."

Game on, Mr. Cuddy, game on!

Buoyed by my recent success at the pre-test, I trotted off fairly happily in the general direction of Philadelphia with my mom, who somehow got lost in Willow Grove for an hour, so then I wasn't so happy. We got there in time, but barely.

Maybe I was flustered, or maybe I was just pulling a Grace and being as awkward as humanly possible without actually playing Starcraft, but I had a really hard time with the physical test. I knew I could do it, I had passed the infinitely-harder pre-test, but I was having a difficult time keeping up with the rest of the candidates. On the plus side, I totally owned the written test. Take that, Mr. Cuddy.

A few days later, in class, my instructor gently broke the news that my physical performance had not been up to par even tough I had passed the written test, I had to have passed both the physical and the written test to receive my black belt, and long story short, I failed my black belt test and generally sucked at life. Oh, and I was apparently the first person ever from our studio who had failed the actual black belt test. Never fear, however, I could try again in six months.

Being sixteen, I cried. A lot. Being Grace, however, my stubborn soon kicked the tears in the behind and I got right back on track. I was determined to pass that test. I would. My sheer determination would make me pass the test.

Six months later, I took the test. And this time, I passed the physical part! Obviously, I had found my groove this time around, although I didn't really know what was different. Except that this time we had driven around Valley Forge for thirty minutes before the test, but aside from that, not much.

Once again, in class a few days later, my instructor pulled me aside.

Oh no.

"Grace, I've got something to tell you about your test," he growled, ominously.

Oh no.

"Let's get the big part out there first. You passed your test!"

Oh thank heavens, the ominous growling was just my hungry stomach.

"And guess what? You got a better score than Mr. Cuddy on your written test!"

Ah, recognition! I brightened up a bit more.

"You got a perfect score, 100/100. And there's one more thing!"

One more thing? Could I even take the pressure?

"The testing board couldn't report your first score since you didn't pass the physical test, but you got a perfect score on that test, too. You actually had two perfect scores."

I fainted dead away.

No, not really, but I was really, really proud of myself. Now I could gloat about it. Muahaha. Take that, Mr. Cuddy!

So, yes, well, my body does currently resemble the torso of the Pillsbury Dough Boy at the moment, but I am actually still a black belt and can toss you on your back at any time! Not only that, but I'm a black belt with records. I'm the only person at our studio to ever receive two perfect scores on the written portion of the test! The only possible way for someone to beat my record is if they fail the physical test twice, in which situation they might die of shame, so that record isn't falling anytime soon.

Guess what, guys, I'm an award-winning black belt in Tang Soo Do!

A few of my favorite things!

Merry Christmas, family, friends, and random people who read this blog!

Dan and I had a nice holiday. Historically, this has not been the case for a number of reasons, including Grace, Grace, and Grace. Grace, as I have probably mentioned, does not do well without structure. Meds have definitely helped with that, but there is still quite a bit of OH MY GOSH I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WHAT SHOULD I DO WHAT SHOULD I DO WHAT SHOULD I DO OH I KNOW I'LL YELL AT EVERYTHING FOR AN ENTIRE WEEK going on. But with a bit of determination from Yours Truly, and with a bit of obsessive cleaning from Dan (my first angry angry trigger tends to be visible clutter), we had a nice Christmas. We made cookies, ate large Chinese dinners and breakfasts, went to a (very long) Mass, exchanged gifts, the whole nine yards.

So in the spirit of childlike Christmas enthusiasm, here are a few of my favorite gifts!

My mother, bless her, is sometimes a little confused at my self-proclaimed weirdness. She knows I like weird stuff, but doesn't always know what my definition of weird includes, which is why one year she gave me a pair of salt and pepper containers shaped like the hemispheres of the brain. Great idea, but seriously, even I might have some trouble salting my food with the left side of a very-realistic brain. She's gotten better over the years, though.

Mom: So, I looked all over for a present for you. Remember that book about defunct amusement parks I got you a few years ago? I was going to get you another book from the series, but they seem to be out of print.
Me: Really? I wonder why.
Mom: So instead, I got you this book!

Yes! A book about urban decay with detailed pictures of abandoned elementary schools! What more could I want?

And yes, I actually mean that.

One of my siblings got Dan and I car decals. It speaks volumes about the public persona we present to the world. Dan is happy, large, and baking. I'm freaking out.

Another sibling, God rest their soul, got me this awesome Oregon Trail shirt.

I, like every other child of the nineties, loved playing Oregon Trail. And I, like many other children of the nineties, went out of my way to kill off my entire wagon, especially if the participants of the journey were named after my siblings. Also, dysentery. Whenever people talk about whole raw natural unpasteurized foods, I always think about... dysentery. Sometimes cholera, too. Trust me, you don't want that all-natural spring water to get any more natural - you might get funny diseases like dysentery from someone who decided to take an all-natural dump in the all-natural water.

Dan got me the following article of clothing to encourage my recent interest in the Cult of Domesticity. 

Yes, it's an actual functioning fashionable apron! It's very pretty! It certainly does encourage me to go ruin some large cuts of meat, but Dan unknowingly broke one of the cardinal rules of Grace Apparel - the apron is hand-wash only, line dry. Any bets on the longevity of the apron?

And then, of course, there's the Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2012-2013!

And it's complete with the most up-to-date statistics on Persons 18 Years of Age and Over With Migraines and Pains in the Neck, Lower Back, Face, or Jaw by Selected Characteristics!

All joking aside, this book actually was on my Christmas list. I have an older version, but if you enjoy living life as an amateur social scientist, it's a bookshelf must. 

Until next Christmas! Or my birthday in July! Hint hint!

Grace buys a new coat

Yesterday, I bought this coat.

My last coat was from Kohl's. It was a little big on me and not the best, but it was nice and warm and functional, which is just what I needed. When I buy clothing, I make sure that the label says something like WASH WITH LIKE COLORS, TUMBLE DRY LOW. Occasionally, when I'm feeling a little fancier, I'll get something with a tag that says WASH WITH LIKE COLORS, DRY FLAT, DO NOT IRON. If I'm looking to blow sixty bucks on clothing, I'll look for the tags that say HAND-WASH ONLY, DRY FLAT. I never, ever, ever buy clothing that says DRY CLEAN ONLY. I tend to wreck my clothing in six months or less, unless the item is specifically tailored for abuse. My Kohl's coat was, thankfully, tailored for abuse.

Anyway, as of Wednesday, my Kohl's coat was working out just fine. By Thursday my poor Kohl's coat was beyond my repair. Here's how it happened.

On Wednesday morning, I was given the distinctive honor of changing one student's particularly messy diaper. I actually don't mind poop and pee at all (hand lotion and perfume are a different story, however), so this was a pretty routine job. The diaper was far from the worst I've seen. To give you the idea of what worst means, imagine your baby's grossest, most puke-worthy diaper. Now imagine that same mess on a third-grader. Third-graders have a lot more poop to give, let me tell you, and you have to change them standing up, which means that the grossness is magnified through the help of gravitational pull. Anyway, this particular child is a second-grader and apparently does not yet have the capacity to poop out an epic diaper, so I was joking around with this kid as I spent five minutes of my life cleaning his rear end.

"What the heck did you eat for dinner last night, dude?"
"UH!" (This student attempts to make conversation, but the only sound he is able to produce is UH.)
"I mean, seriously, why did you pick me for this? Couldn't you wait a couple minutes until Miss More Fashionable Than Grace was ready to take you?"
"UH!"
"I'm gonna get you for this later, dude. I know where you keep your Thomas the Train book."
"UH!"

So I changed the kid. He ran off to rescue his Thomas book. I took a couple of swigs of coffee. All good.

Now remember, this wasn't a particularly revolting diaper, but it did smell pretty bad. The aroma lingered all day long, even after someone (voluntarily!) hauled the thing out to the dumpster. I was quite thankful to go home and shower off at the end of the day.

But later that evening, after I had showered, I noticed something. That diaper. I could still smell it. It had somehow managed to invade my house. Where could it be hiding?

I had torn off my work clothes two minutes after I got in the house. They had been duly purified. Couldn't be the perpetrator.

I went around the house sniffing various items for the next fifteen minutes. Then I found it. The smell had burrowed into my Kohl's coat and my right-hand glove. I hadn't been wearing my coat or my gloves while changing the student, but I had brought the student in from the bus. The diaper must have been vicious enough that it snuck in my outerwear in the three minutes it took to get from the bus to the classroom. Gross.

Luckily, I had purchased my coat for just this type of situation. WASH WITH LIKE COLORS, TUMBLE DRY LOW. I tossed it in the washer and went upstairs to eat a nice big bowl of pureed split pee soup (just kidding on that last one, it was actually refried beans for dinner).

My nice, clean, non-smelly coat was ready later in the evening. Congratulating myself on buying a coat with a tag that said WASH WITH LIKE COLORS, TUMBLE DRY LOW, I triumphantly lifted my coat out of the dryer. Then I gasped.

The zipper had come out in the wash.

I haven't got a clue when it comes to sewing. I do remember my mom telling me that zippers are a real pain to reattach. I guess I could have asked my mom to attach the zipper for me, but the turnaround time for that would be, like, three months, and the forecast foretold cold snap. Besides, the coat was about eighteen months past its due date for a good dose of Grace Destruction.

And so it was that I am now the proud owner of a new winter coat from JCPenney. WASH WITH LIKE COLORS, TUMBLE DRY LOW.

A Snow Day!

Today I have a SNOW DAY!

When I was younger, snow days sucked because snow was cold, wet, and made your toes freeze. And I couldn't avoid the snow because my mom would throw us all out in the yard to be tortured by enjoy the snow. Don't get me wrong, I love the snow. Winter is probably my favorite season. I'm just Miss Overly Sensitive in many matters, especially temperature. I adjust the temperature in my house by one degree several times a day... the heat is usually on 69, but sometimes it's too hot so I put on a short-sleeved shirt and turn the thermostat down to 68, then I get too cold, put on three layers, and hike it up to 70.

But now I have a big girl job at a school, so I'm loving the (paid) snow day! When I was a sub I still got snow days, but I would also lose out on getting paid, so it wasn't quite as fun. We've had two-hour delays before, but this is my first paid day off in this position.

Here's what I'm going to try to do today.

• Write a blog entry. Check.
• Get off the couch and take a shower. This is a big one.
• Clean. Everywhere. Dan's a dumper and does things like pile up trash on the counter... three feet from the kitchen garbage can. And I'm getting more overly-focused on cleanliness and organization by the day.
• Shop online for some Christmas gifts. I've already got a few easy ones for Dan picked out. Gift-buying is so much easier when you have a man who actually appreciates things like thick wool socks. That and ammunition.
• Re-watch the Eagles game, which was the most fun football game I think I've ever seen. If you've read my Purple Curse entry, you know that I like the Ravens. However, I also don't want to get stabbed outside of some random sports bar because I'm wearing a Ravens jersey in Eagles territory, so I'm trying to get into Philly teams. Thus far I have been having quite a bit of success. Currently following both teams; not sure if that's allowed, but hey, I'm having fun!
• Make dinner, which is pot roast and vegetables this evening. For the first two years of our marriage Dan did most of the cooking while I hung out on the couch being a general emotional wreck. Since we bought our house we've been switching on and off every week, but now that Dan has a full-fledged librarian job and doesn't get home until about 5:30 at the earliest, the cooking is on me. I've been compiling my own recipe book for a while. I find a recipe that looks pretty brainless and pretty tasty from the internet (I try for recipes with ten ingredients or less, a max of twenty minutes of prep time, and preferably calling for lots of garlic and cilantro), print it out, stick it in my recipe binder, make the recipe, and then write in my notes. "This recipe lied. Chicken cooked for 40 minutes instead of 20 minutes. Too bland. Dan thinks red pepper flakes and chicken broth."
• Try to finish my library book before Saturday. I'm reading Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes, a book about the author's experiences as a linguist with one of ethnic groups in the Amazon. Surprisingly, this book actually has a general readership base and was based on an article that appeared in the New York Times, I believe. But to be perfectly honest, this probably isn't happening. My attention span usually doesn't let me finish books, which is why ebooks are perfect for me, because I can pick them up and put them down at will.
• Relax in my most favorite way ever with some Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword. I don't think I've ever gone in depth about this game - for a reason. It truly exemplifies my supernerd and my status within society (it's probably more geeky than Starcraft, considering the latter is actually widely followed in huge tournaments in South Korea - by normal people). Basically, it's a strategy game for Windows. You pick a (usually obscure) historical world leader (like Wang Kon of Korea... who?) and build cities, improve your land, and backstab and dominate the domains of other historical world leaders (like Willem van Oranje of the Dutch... who?). I love this game in so many different ways. Yeah, I need a new hobby. At least, I tell myself, I could be watching Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, but instead I am choosing to learn the basics of diplomatic policy. And in case anyone suggests a different way of wasting time, I've already watched all the Law and Order SVU reruns, like, twice over.

OK, I'm not getting any younger. Time to hit Bullet Point Number Two.

Don't read this post, it's private

Because I'm supernerd with a socially unacceptable supernerd focus on things like economic demography, I sometimes (OK, I lied, sometimes actually means, like, all the time) develop my own theories about sociology and anthropology for fun. Hey, I'm the girl who purchased and actually reads The Statistical Abstract of the United States 2008 to relax, so this is perfectly normal behavior.

So anyway, one day Dan, Dan's mom, and I were all hanging out in the Chinatown in Manhattan. And just so you know, the Manhattan Chinatown is the White People Chinatown, so don't go there if you want to experience duck blood tofu stir fry or peruse the phones at questionably-legal T-Mobl outlets in huge four-story Asian malls. The Asian People Chinatown is in Queens, although according to Dan, this Chinatown is rapidly becoming diluted through the efforts of opportunistic Cantonese businessmen who have realized that White People love to blow money at the Habachi Grill and Buffett, not to be confused with the Hibachi Grill and Buffet.

But back to my original point. It was around six in the evening and I was probably freaking out because it was too loud, too crazy, too cold, and too late. We were walking down the sidewalk with hordes of White People looking for a place to eat. We passed a hole-in-the-wall that smelled funny and had lots of Cantonese people yelling, so we figured it was a pretty good place. Before we tried to shove our way in, I happened to glance over to the front of the building. There, right in the middle of all the hub-bub, was one of the cooks at the restaurant. He was squatting on the sidewalk between the sewer and an empty Orange Julius cup and happily consuming his dinner of noodles and tripe. (Tripe is the nice way of saying cow stomach, and although I'll eat it on occasion, I'm not fond of it; it tends to be pretty gamey and hard to chew.) It was then that I had my Sociological Revelation.

The human conception of privacy is totally subjective.

This guy didn't give a hoot about where he ate his dinner. He didn't need no table or chair or even a wall to lean on. He also didn't care if he was intruding on the rights of others to use the sidewalk, walk over the sewer, or squash the Orange Julius cup. He didn't need privacy to eat.

I know for an incredibly shy person like Yours Truly, it's really hard to eat in public, because people might try to talk to me or something. I'll go out of my way to find a chair or a table or something so I can eat in relative peace and quiet. I've been known to avoid restaurants because I can see through the windows and notice that (gasp!) I would have to sit next to someone else to eat my food.

Most of us, I think, conceive of privacy as the ways that we can isolate ourselves, our families, our friends, or our other social groups from the outside world. When we eat out, chances are that most people like to eat at their own tables (there is family style too, of course, but that's a horror beyond imagination). We park our cars in our own garages; if not, we try to carve out "our" parking space on the street. At night we close our doors and lock our windows. We live in our own houses, not in a boardinghouse of multi-family flats like those of early 20th-century New York. We tend to like being by ourselves, because ya know, it would be incredibly awkward to dance in our underwear in most public areas. However, as I was enlightened, not everyone has this conception of privacy, as illustrated by the Chinese chef.

Which brings us to an explanation of a slur against African-Americans or Hispanic-Americans who live in poorer areas. Please remember that I am trying to explain why this might have come about, not actually well, using the slur.

Wikipedia tells me that a porch monkey is an ethnic slur for someone who hangs out on "front porches or steps of urban apartment complexes in US cities". Although I've rarely heard this particular term used, I've heard plenty of people talking about how unsettling it is to drive through certain areas of a city and see all the sofas on the porch, and depressing it is to see all the people hanging out on the corner doing absolutely nothing with their lives. At first glance, yeah, maybe this is disturbing.

But privacy is subjective. Different groups have their own conceptions of privacy. I'm not sure if this phenomenon is an ethnic thing or a socioeconomic thing, but just because it's easier to make my point I'm going to go for the socioeconomic reasons. Let's say you're part of a lower-income family living in an urban area. You spend a big chunk of your paycheck every month on your rent for an apartment that gets you one floor of a circa-1910 row home. There's barely enough room for you, your wife, and your two kids. There are too many people in too small a space, so there's really no privacy in your apartment. There's no privacy in a public area, either. But heck, who needs privacy, anyway? You and your buddies still get along wherever you hang out, which is usually not your tiny apartment. The least you can do is make you and your family and friends all comfy on a sofa on your front porch. It's a place where you can talk, eat, drink, or whatever in relative comfort. You could also go hang out in front of the corner store, so you can still talk, eat, drink, or whatever, but there's the extra bonus of never being more than a few steps away from a very large bottle of Mountain Dew and a couple of bags of chips. You've got all you need.

Perhaps some groups hang out in public spaces because they don't have much access to private spaces. Or perhaps they don't feel the need for a private space. For the Chinese chef, it was probably a little bit of both; he didn't have much access to a private space but he probably could have found something a little more private if he really wanted it, maybe a step somewhere or a stool in the back room of the restaurant.

I think a lot of middle-class and upper-class Americans look at the sofas on the porch and inwardly cringe at how the neighborhood they grew up in is starting to look like a real dump. Why the heck can't the current residents stick the couch inside? Don't they know that sofas are for your home? Are they just that uncivilized?

Nope, just a different way of doing things, just a different conception of privacy.

So that's my theory. And about a year ago I read a book about the sociology of suburbanization (shut up, I hear you laughing from over here) which theorized my theory, just with fancier words and more data. Also, the author had a doctorate, but we don't talk about that.

Getting to like you, getting to hope you like me

I started this week in the new classroom. So far, I like it a lot. It's not perfect, but frankly, I can deal with that. My first order of business is to get the kids to listen to me. Just like any other kids in any other classrooms, if I say sit in the chair, they should sit in the chair, if I say stop sitting on the kid next to you, they should stop sitting on the kid next to them, if I say stop wrecking the room and tearing your clothes off, by cracky they should clean up the mess and pull those pants up.

However, they are autistic. They don't want to listen to you and stop removing their pants, because life is so much better without pants. They usually do not respond to your threats of eternal retribution if they don't keep the pants on, and they do not usually respond to your pleas of endless recess if they keep their pants on. They also don't find work fun, just like any other kid, but they may respond to a work demand by removing pants. And pants need to stay on at school.

There are two main ways to get kids who are non-verbal, very autistic, and cognitively impaired to listen to you.

The first option is to give them no option. You told them the pants need to stay on, and you're going to hold those pants up until the kid realizes that the pants cannot be physically pulled down because you are too strong. You told them to find the number one, and you're going to take the kid's hand and make them touch that number one if you have to. This option has its pros and cons. The upside is that the kid does what you want. The downsides are that the kid doesn't want to do what you want, the kid might be too physically strong for you to make him do what you want, and the kid learns that you're not his friend. Also, it's pretty mean, if you ask me. There's a time and a place to do this, but not all the time.

The second option is to make them see that your way is the most awesome way. Your way is soooo much better than running around the room with nothing but the pure, clean air between you and your rear end. And this is where the Skittles come in to play. This is also where the awesome value of pretzels and the iPad and the TV and the marshmallows are maximized.

It works like this. Think back to when you were in school. If you did your work, behaved fairly well, and were not a jerk to the teacher, you went out with your class to recess. If you ripped up your worksheets and ran around the room like a maniac, you weren't allowed to go to recess. If you were good, you got nice things. If you were bad, you didn't get nice things.

Kids with autism may not be motivated by recess at the end of the day if they keep their pants on. They might not find recess to be all that great, or they might not (like all of the kids in my classroom) have the cognitive ability to realize that if they keep their pants on all day, they can earn good things. They need something much more immediate so that their brains connect keeping pants on with awesome.

So when it comes down to it, the second option for getting kids with autism to do what you want is to give them access to reinforcing food (yes, like Skittles) and activities (yes, like the iPad) only when they are doing what you want. Thus, they can connect keeping pants on with pretzels and chips, and in the long run, that's actually a good thing.

But, and this is the really really big but (heheheheh... butts... heheheheh), you're not going to be giving these kids Skittles every time they do something you want forever. This is something that I try to keep in mind, because it really bothers me to see very capable kids (especially middle school kids) doing things they they can and should be doing by themselves in exchange for a goldfish. You have to fade out the iPad and the Skittles. You don't want the kid to be dependent on sugar to keep their pants on, because then they'll just get fat. The goal of feeding the kid Skittles now is so you don't have to feed them Skittles later.

Which is why I'm currently feeding all the kids in my new classroom lots of Skittles.

And which is also why they're not running around the room with no pants, because they're busy receptively identifying common household items with Yours Truly.

My case in point is Small Girl.

Small Girl is in kindergarten. She's non-verbal, very autistic, climbs furniture, and is my inspiration for the above examples about pants removal. She doesn't want to sit down and learn because emptying the soap dispenser is much more fun.

On Tuesday, our first day back, I walked over to Small Girl, who was spinning around in circles by the backpacks. I asked if she wanted to do some work. She screamed and smacked me in the kneecap. It hurt.

On Wednesday, I walked over to Small Girl, armed with Skittles, pretzels, M&Ms, goldfish crackers, and her favorite toy, empty film canisters. I asked her if she wanted to come over to the table and play with the film canisters. She screamed and jumped off the file cabinet onto the floor. I plopped on the ground beside her and gave her the canisters. She sat on the floor next to me and put rolls of film in and out of the canisters (this is actually a good fine motor activity, just so ya know). Every, like, thirty seconds I gave her a pretzel and praised her for sitting so nicely and playing with the film canisters. She didn't scream and she didn't hit me, so that was a plus.

On Thursday, armed with the above combo of Small Girl's favorites, I asked her to come over to the table and play with the film canisters. This time she jumped up and came over to the table. She played with the canisters and ate M&Ms. This time, however, I was sneaky. Before I gave her an M&M, she had to do something for me first. Sure, she could have an M&M, but first her bottom needed to touch the chair. Sure, she could have a Skittle, but first she needed to put her feet on the floor. She did scream once or twice, but once she realized that she still got what she wanted a few seconds later, she was fine.

On Friday, I asked her to come work with me, and this time, there were no film canisters. She ran right over to the table. I gave her an activity where she had to match identical pictures. Every few pieces that she put in I gave her a small piece of pretzel. Every time I asked her to sit nicely, she did so right away. When I asked her to clean up, she did. And she ate about half the amount of candy that she ate the day before. Later in the day, she cleaned up her snack when I asked, sat with her bottom on the chair when I asked, and put on her shoes when I asked. When we walked out to the bus, she took my hand, I didn't take hers.

To recap, beginning of week, screaming and no work. Middle of week, Skittles, less screaming, and more work. End of week, less Skittles, less screaming, and lots of work. It'll take a while because she's very young and very delayed, but eventually she's going to have to work pretty hard for a pretzel stick or an M&M.

So this is what I did all week with the kids. Not all of them really care about working for candy. One little boy just likes to work, actually. But they're all working pretty well for me, and they all like me, because I smile at them and give them good things.

And yesterday I saw something that hearkened to successful days ahead.

It was playtime. Some of the kids were running around (thankfully, all of them still had pants) and some of the kids were getting into trouble (we don't sit in the sink, that's where we wash dishes). But three of the kids walked on over to my table and sat with their bottoms on the chair and their feet on the floor and were waiting quietly. One kid who is a little higher-functioning pulled out an activity and started matching upper and lower case letters.

No Skittles were in sight.

Live and learn

Lesson learned.

I am (was) way too emotionally attached to my job.

I am transferring out of my current position due to some classroom issues. If you caught my probably ill-advised posting on said situation, since deleted, you have a good idea for the reasons that I am transferring. Overall, I'm happy to be leaving my current placement, but there's just one thing that's really tearing me up inside.

I have to leave my little guy.

This, I have learned, is the possible double-edged sword to working in special education. You have to do so much for these kids who are delayed in so many areas. You can't help but grow very attached. Heck, I basically taught my kid to communicate. I was in charge of most of his education. I was very, very invested.

And then, something happens, good or not so good, and you have to move on.

Don't get me wrong, I'm very glad that I worked in that classroom for several months. I'm glad that I was the catalyst for the little guy's communication breakthrough and subsequent decrease in maladaptive behaviors (and trust me, by the time I go to him at the end of third grade, he had very minimal communication skills from his four or five years in the special education system, so I'm not trying to make myself out to be the Autism Whisperer or anything). I'm glad that I learned quite a bit. But I'm not so glad that this job morphed from a duty for a job to a duty to a particular child.

Being the structure-loving workaholic that I am, I've historically had issues detaching myself from my job, but now I'm supposed to detach myself from a child. I'm supposed to detach myself from a 35-hour-a-week segment of my life that held a lot of meaning for me. Not only do I need to detach, but I also need to trust that whoever is hired to take over this position will be an advocate for him. I'm sure whoever it will be is very competent and will bring lots of ideas and experience to the job, but this is my student we're talking about. That's tough. That sucks.

I've always known that I put a little too much emotion into my job (and honestly, that's one of the reasons that I think I'm good at my job), but this experience has really put it into perspective. And the flip side of too much emotional attachment to a job is too little emotional attachment to the life I have outside of a job. Jobs will come and go. The children in the job will come and go (and my position, since I was hired to work with a particular student, will end if the student exits the program, so it's much more precarious than some other jobs). As I tell Dan all the frickin' time, just because I intellectually understand that yes, too much personal investment in a job is bad, I can't necessarily grasp the concept emotionally until it hits me upside the head and stabs me in the back. This time it did.

And now, beaten down and thoroughly subdued, I resolve to try my best to leave the job at the job. This resolve will be sorely tested on Tuesday, when I begin my new position in a new classroom with new kids. Let's see how I do.

But the damage's already been done this time around.

Goodbye my little guy, my student, the most awesome fourth grader I know. I will miss you very much.

Short and Stocky

Dan had a business proposition.

"Grace! I have an idea!" Such enthusiasm, such enthusiasm. He rarely gets that excited about something that's not a perfectly-rare, disgustingly-bloody restaurant steak.

"OK, you know how you don't fit into any clothes? What if, if you had more money and more people skills, you started your own clothing store? You could call it Short And Stocky. You could even get Chevy to market the Short and Stocky Built-Like-A-Truck line!"

I didn't speak to him for at least three days.

But he does have a point (kinda). I really am built like a truck. I have wide shoulders, wide thighs, wide hips, wide calves, and wide feet. I was created in the mold of my Italian peasant ancestors, who were all short and stocky and wide and did hard work in the fields all day long. I am not fat, I am just thick and very dense (physically, just so we are completely clear on the implications of that word). I am short, my legs are short and my arms are short. In short (how funny I am!), I live in clothing hell.

In order for me to not look like I am totally drowning in my clothing, I need to shop in the petite section. The pants kinda fit me, the shirts kinda fit me, and I can sometimes get away with not looking like a hobo. But I have two major beefs with the petite consumer assumptions that the overlords of the petite clothing sweatshops dictate upon us all from up high. When I shop for petite clothing, I am expected to fall into one of two types of petite consumers.

First, there's the petite grandma section. Since the population is getting taller as the years go by, and since older people generally shrink a few inches when they start getting up there, designers and Yemeni production line employees both assume that if you're five feet tall, you must be over the age of fifty. Department stores are especially guilty of this particular urban myth. Poor little me has spent many hours desperately scouring stores for basic long-sleeved tees that are not three inches too long at the bottom and not two inches too long at the wrists, and all I can see are racks upon racks upon racks of sweatshirts that say things like "I Love My Grandkids" and "Proud Grandma" and "No One Spoils Kids Like A Grandma" and "My Grandkids Think I'm Awesome". It's almost like the store is trying to tell me something about the years I have left on this earth.

And it's no better when I try to find some basic jeans. We've all heard of mom jeans, but there are grandma jeans out there that nobody ever talks about because even grandmas are too ashamed to admit that they voluntarily purchased grandma jeans. While mom jeans can be baggy, have weird washes, and are otherwise not fashion-forward, grandma jeans push the envelope even further, sporting elastic waistbands and created out of material that's not actually jean but comfort pseudo-jean. And they actually want my money for this stuff. Dude, I am not going to pay you thirty dollars of my own money to be the laughingstock of my twenty-something cohort. Besides, that's like four or five meals at McDonald's.

And then there's the petite hott skinny section, commonly found at short-and-stocky-unfriendly stores like Banana Republic and Loft. I can seriously walk into a store and tell you how I'm going to fail to fit into their clothing by the type of music that's playing. Is it breathy hott girl music with twangy guitars and a message? My stomach has way too much bulge for those shirts, thank you very much. Because if you're not a petite grandma, you must be a petite fashion-forward Asian with a metabolism exponentially greater than mine or a petite hott skinny babe who lives on weight-loss shakes, salad, and Chobani. And because petite hott skinny people are perfectly proportionate and beautiful, just a scad shorter than the rest of us humans, they fit beautifully into thirty-inch inseam Addie or Madison or Jackson pants or whatever trendy naming scheme Banana Republic is currently marketing to its hott consumer base. But I confess: I don't fit into the petite hott skinny clothes, but I keep trying on those stupid Madison trousers in the hope that I have magically become hott and skinny in the previous six weeks.

But let's be real. I'm not a grandma. I have too much pride to wear grandma jeans. Loft Sunwashed tees have a neckline that hits around my ankles and shrink in three dryer cycles. Madison trousers threaten to rip at the thigh every time I try them on.

So what to do?

Well, there's always a tailor. That's what I usually end up doing with my jeans. I spend a couple months looking for a style that doesn't fall off my non-existent waist to rest upon my more-existent hips and then slog half a mile down Easton Avenue to the drycleaners. Then I try to communicate my specifications to the Chinese lady who owns the place and hope that she doesn't try to chat me up in Mandarin because my last name is Huang. Twelve bucks a pop for making my normal petite jeans Grace petite jeans rankles me, but at least it's a fix.

There's always places like Ross and TJMaxx. Every once in a while, malformed clothing finds its way into a TJMaxx and somehow happens to fit me. I once found some nice Donna Karan jeans at Ross that fit me perfectly. Once I wore them to pieces, I made a point to go over to the Donna Karan outlet store and ask where I could find those jeans.

"Oh," apologized the hott skinny petite cashier. "Sometimes our clothing rejects end up in close-out stores. You probably bought a pair of jeans that was made incorrectly."

Crud.

There's always three-quarter length shirts. These shirts are not too long on my arms, but then again, the sleeve length makes my arms look even shorter than they already are. But at least it's something.

And there's always other options. Like that time my mom gave me some hand-me-downs from a friend of hers. There was a plain grey t-shirt in the mix that fit me perfectly. I needed more. I asked my mom if she had been told the size of the shirt, since the tag was no longer attached. And once again my hopes and dreams of becoming fashionable were dashed to the ground: the shirt had originally belonged to my mom's friend's eleven-year-old son.

Crud.

So the search continues to this very day. At least I only have twenty-two more years until I could probably get away with faking my procreative abilities with "I Love My Grandma" cozy sweatshirts.

Brain power!

Most of the little guy's bad behavior happens because he either can't communicate something or he doesn't understand something. He only has about thirty pecs in his book that he knows and can effectively use for communication. Since he's a creature of rigid routines and very specific likes and dislikes, this works pretty well for him most of the time. But sometimes, not too often, LG still can't really talk.

But he is, I think, quite a bit smarter than we often give him credit for.

He has this colored pom-pom sorting activity that he does (it's like... beginning beginning math concepts). I have a container with a few compartments and pom-poms for each compartment. He enjoys it a lot, although I think the shine is starting to wear off. He is nine, after all. When I created this activity, I put the pom-poms in a plastic bag and put the plastic bag in another small container. Thus, to complete the activity, LG has to take the pom-poms out of the bag, put them into the small container, and then sort. It recently occurred to me that the bag was completely unnecessary and I had no idea why I had originally put the pom-poms in the bag in the first place, so I threw the bag out and just filled the smaller container. Simple.

LG did the task just fine and stimmed to high heaven over all the colored pom-poms in all the right compartments looking all orderly and stuff. Then he started to clean up. Disaster struck.

He quite obviously wanted to communicate something, but for the life of me, I couldn't figure out what the heck he needed. First he started pointing over to the shelves near his desk. There about about 378 things on the shelf, so I had no clue. Then he started rifling through the drawers where we keep his academic materials. He was obviously getting frustrated. He was getting weepy and, uh, pinchy. I gave him his pecs book and implored him to tell me what he wanted, but he wanted something that wasn't in the book. LG gave me a look of utter disgust and hit me with the pecs book. OK then.

"LG, I don't know what you want," I told him with as much sympathy as my (literally) bruised ego could muster.

"DAH DAH DAH DAH DAH!"

"Yeah, I know. I know you want something."

"Dee dee dee dee dee DAH."

"What could it be?" I really was thinking hard. LG was not amused. He started saying DAH in the tone that sounded like a five-alarm fire engine siren. A full-on meltdown was fast approaching.

"OK, it's not in your book, that's for sure," I said with more than a little desperation. "Let's do this. Show me what you want."

That LG understood. He got up and left his area. I followed.

He walked on over to the craft supply closet and pointed. Since the closet was closed, I needed a little more information. I opened the doors and started pointing.

"Do you want this?"

"DEE DEE DEE!"

OK, it wasn't the rubber bands.

"Do you want this?"

"DAAAAAAAH!"

And it wasn't the stapler. Thank heavens.

"What about this?"

Bingo. He wanted the bag of pencil toppers.

That definitely wasn't in his pecs book. Mystery solved. But then again... why the heck did he want a bag full of pencil toppers?

I was quite curious at that point. Checking to see that no disapproving eyes were watching me voluntarily gifting LG a prohibited bag of costly pencil toppers, I handed it over and settled back to watch the magic happen.

LG trotted on back to his area. He took a task off his shelves, one that used pencils to try to pound in the concept of one-to-one correspondence (he's not really getting it). He dumped the bag of pencil toppers into the pencil task. Then he happily started shoving his colored pom-poms into the now-empty pencil topper bag.

I laughed for about ten minutes straight. Never try to mess with the rigidity and sameness that is an autistic child's mind.

But think about all the steps that LG's brain needed to go through to get the bag to satisfy his OCD.

1. I need to put the pom-poms away.
2. There is no bag for the pom-poms.
3. I need a bag for the pom-poms.
4. Let me look for it on the shelves.
5. Let me look for a picture of it in my pecs book.
6. Let me point at the shelves, maybe she'll understand.
7. Let me start hitting and kicking, maybe she'll understand.
8. Wait! I know! I've seen a bag in the craft closet before.
9. I could get a bag from the closet.
10. I could dump the contents out of the bag.
11. I could use the bag to put my pom-poms away.
12. All will be right with the world!

He was able to plan ahead several steps to get what he wanted. It's a non-issue for any other fourth-grader, and barely worth mentioning for even a toddler, but it took a lot of (successful) cognitive gymnastics for LG.

So I think he's smart. And awesome. And totally going to be able to communicate very well some day down the road, if he's given the right tools.

Merry Not-Christmas

I have a love/hate relationship with the holidays. Love because I want to love the holidays. Hate because I usually hate the holidays.

My issues with the Thanksgiving-to-Christmas period began in childhood (sorry, Mom and Dad, you failed on this one!). My first problem was all me. Basically, I was an ADD wreck during the holidays. Happy Holidays meant that:

1. There was no schoolwork to do.
2. Most electronics were vetoed in the name of "family togetherness".
3. I was forced to play group games in the name of "family togetherness".
4. I was forced to go out in the sunlight and the snow and the stupid nature so "Mom can get some stuff ready".
5. We didn't go out anywhere or do anything because we were engaging in lots of "family togetherness".
6. The radio was playing horrifyingly bad Christina Aguilera covers of traditional Christmas carols.
7. There was no Christmas until Christmas.

It was the last one that really rankled me. Being the fairly orthodox Catholics that we are (you know it's bad when all your coworkers at Burger King lovingly nicknamed you "Christian"), my mom refused to do anything Christmas until it was actually Christmas. And Christmas, according to the Catholic liturgical calendar, began at the vigil mass on Christmas Eve and ended twelve days later. There was no celebrating before Christmas because you know, Advent, and the Incarnation had not yet occurred, and we were all still preparing the way for the Lord and all. So this basically meant that, prior to 5 PM on December 24th:

1. There were no Christmas lights.
2. There was no Christmas tree.
3. There were no Christmas decorations.
4. There was no Christmas music.
5. There were no Christmas cookies.
6. There was no fun allowed. At all.

So after all this horrible torture inflicted upon me at a tender age, I learned to dread Christmas. Everybody else got to celebrate all month long and we couldn't. Everybody else forgot about Christmas on December 26th. On December 26th we still had ten more days to go of family togetherness.

Eventually, however, our Christmas orthodoxy began to change.

The catalyst was the Christmas tree. Since Christmas was taboo until it was actually Christmas, we got our tree on Christmas Eve. This posed a number of problems. First of all, everybody else had already purchased their trees, and the tree-sellers, amateur economists that they were, assumed that the tree-buying season had passed and had pretty much all closed up shop for the season. Perhaps, I thought, by not selling Christmas trees on Christmas Eve, they were instead choosing to engage in good ol' family togetherness with their own Christmas trees! At any rate, buying a tree on Christmas eve was like finding one particular needle on a fir tree. My dad would literally drive around all morning searching for the lone remaining tree-merchant in the tri-county area. He was usually successful, but only after a full tank of gas had been expended. And lo! When a Christmas tree was finally located, we would often get a deal! Like a huge Christmas tree for ten dollars! What a savings!

So we'd cart the tree home and count down the minutes until 5 PM, when Christmas began. All of us would engage in ritual family togetherness and decorate the tree together in solidarity. Sometimes we'd even eat Christmas cookies! Sometimes there'd even be snow falling outside!

But then the true folly of our rigid Christmas observations began to emerge.

It took many years for this realization to dawn upon my parents. If you bought a Christmas tree on Christmas Eve, after everybody else had already purchased a Christmas tree, that meant that our Christmas tree had been passed over by all other purchases for some mysterious reason. Perhaps... the tree-merchant was trying to... get rid of the Christmas tree! Could it be... those last few trees were... flawed?

So we got our Christmas tree.

We put up our Christmas tree.

We decorated our Christmas tree.

Our Christmas tree fell over, shattering all of our ornaments.

The next year, we got our Christmas tree.

We put up our Christmas tree.

We decorated our Christmas tree with new ornaments.

Our Christmas tree fell over, shattering all of our (new) ornaments.

The next year, we were wiser.

We got our Christmas tree, checking it carefully before purchasing.

We put up our Christmas tree.

We decorated our Christmas tree with new ornaments.

Our Christmas tree fell over, shattering all of our ornaments, again.

The next year, we were even wiser. Finally. It just took three deformed Christmas trees. We rejected Catholicism for a week and bought a Christmas tree a week before Christmas Eve. We kept it in the garage, where its unholy Christmas would not invade our home before it was right and proper to do so. It also cost more Christmas tree money to be bad Catholics, but we made up the money in all the ornaments that we saved from destruction. We think that our Christmas trees all had crooked trunks and that's why they were all rejected by other buying and fell over once they were carefully decorated by all of us, but it could also be that the trees just had some gross motor issues. That's what I think, anyway.

So I grew up and got married. We got an apartment. And for our first Christmas together, we put up our tree on Thanksgiving weekend. We were all merry and bright by December 1st.

God did not approve. Our very first Christmas tree collapsed on our rug a few hours after we had flaunted the true celebration of the Virgin Birth. We had to contend with evil pine needles everywhere.

And this year, we bought an artificial tree. We'll let you know how that goes.

How I Discovered I Did Not Have Rheumatoid Arthritis

Maybe I had fibromyalgia. Or maybe it was rheumatoid arthritis. Same achy joints deal.

It was May of my sophomore year in college, and the bottom knuckle on my right-hand ring finger had been aching all day long. And before anyone (correctly) crowns me Miss Overly Sensitive, my painful knuckle was only the latest in a six-month string of seemingly-arthritic joints. It was almost funny, if it hadn't been so much of a pain in the left bicep. I would wake up every morning, come down the stairs, and make my mom guess where I hurt now.

"So, guess what joint it is today, Mom?"

My long-suffering mother sighed.

"Your left toe?"

"Nope, that was last week," I cheerily chirped. "It's my left pinky today."

Mom rolled her eyes. Doubtless she had crowned me Miss Overly Sensitive years ago.

However, ever conscious of my extremely low pain threshold, I wanted to give my syndrome a name, so I could chalk up my aching calf muscles to something a little more exciting than Wimpy Disease. MedlinePlus told me that I could have fibromyalgia. Or rheumatoid arthritis. I was fine with either one, as long as it was a medically-recognized condition.

But while it was fun to goof off on MedlinePlus and pretend I wasn't such a fraidy cat, secretly I was a little more worried. What if it was cancer? Could I have a tumor? Could you even get a tumor in your palm?

So I made an appointment to go get my (probably psychosomatic) aches checked out by our notoriously flaky doctor and her notoriously incompetent office staff. You knew my right knee had to be killing me when I willingly consented to play phone tag for three days straight.

I got checked out. After a record four days of phone tag, I was told to go get blood work. Luckily, I'm a huge fan of bloodwork, so this was exciting. I got to see several vials of my blood sucked out of my body at 7 AM on a Thursday morning! What could even beat that? Oh yeah, that one time when I had a root canal done and they put it all on closed-circuit TV and I got to watch the entire procedure. That was even more awesome!

(For the record, I'm actually not kidding about the awesomeness of the root canal. I really did find that enthralling. Oh, and you thought my irrational love of zip codes was off the wall, did you?)

I got my bloodwork done. I treated myself to a McDonald's breakfast sandwich afterwords. I instantly regretted my choice of an English muffin. Way too bland. Five more bucks down the drain.

I waited anxiously for the neuroblastoma diagnosis.

Thankfully, the tests came back negative for the neuroblastoma. Phew. However, I was told (by the incompetent office staff, two days after we had begun our most recent game of phone tag) that the test had come back positive for Lyme Disease.

Lyme Disease is the name for the various problems you start developing upon being bitten by a deer tick. Lyme is a famously elusive syndrome, with no medical consensus on how it develops, why it develops, what is the total symptom range, and if there's really any way to tell if it's ever cured or just goes into remission (like cancer! Cancer can go into remission, too!). Nobody knows much about it, but I've heard stories from people shrugging it off to stories of people permanently disabled by the disease.

We lived in the woods, and we lived in Pennsylvania, so the deer ticks just fell from the sky during the summer. Kind of like rain but with insects and possible pain, suffering, and death. I remember I did get a tick lodged in my chest once, probably when I was about six years old. Lacking tweezers, my mom opted to remove the tick her way. WHICH WAS DIGGING IT OUT OF MY BODY WITH A VERY SHARP PIN. WITHOUT ANESTHESIA. WHAT THE HECK, MOM. HOW COULD YOU.

But I was told that my Lyme Disease had been caused by a much more recent tick bite, probably within the past year. My skin was pretty pasty as it was with all the Starcraft and lack of sun and all, so I really had no clue how a tick latched on, but oh well. I was still possibly doomed.

On the plus side, although there was still ample time for my illness to develop into a tumor and/or death, at least I just had aches and pains. When I was eleven, my sister was bitten by a tick and also developed Lyme Disease. She didn't have many aches and pains, but she did develop Bell's Palsy, where one side of her face was pretty much paralyzed for two months. Thankfully, my craniofacial orifices seemed to be intact.

I started a course of meds that was supposed to cure (Or put into remission. Like cancer!) my Lyme Disease. Since my doctor is notoriously flaky, the course of meds did not cure my Lyme, because the meds she flakily prescribed were the wrong meds. I got my aching behind over to a different doctor, who gave me the correct drugs, and the Lyme started clearing up. I mean, my aching knees periodically collapsed while I was walking up the stairs, but at least my pinky didn't hurt. That's an improvement, right?

Currently, nobody knows if I have Lyme Disease or not, since nobody actually knows if Lyme Disease ever really goes away. I still get random aches, but now I can identify the source of the pain, so it's probably not Lyme Disease. It's probably the gallon of milk I dropped on my toe last night.

No big deal.

Frodo And Sam Are Homeless

When I was growing up, my dad read many books aloud to his multiplying progeny. Some of the books, while absolutely enthralling, were not the best known books of all time (I'm looking at you, Brighty of the Grand Canyon). I occasionally submitted my own requests, like Anna and the King of Siam, which were unceremoniously shot down. Our favorite books by far, enjoyed by kids and Dad alike, were The Hobbit and the entire Lord of the Rings series.

It took us over a year to read through all four books, and they made a lasting impression upon all of us. We finished the series about ten years before the movies came out, so you can only imagine our excitement at watching the whole adventure unfold onscreen. I bought myself all four books at a library book sale and read and reread the series over the years.

Most memorable, however, were the frequent Frodo and Sam sightings In The Wild.

It started with our rides. For several years, after church, we would go out for breakfast at our favorite diner, and after breakfast, we would take a ride. We'd go out in the country (the country being a mile down our street) and drive around, listen to the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah, and look at the fields and trees and empty spaces of Pennsylvania. In general, we all loved to take rides, except when my dad insisted on taking rides on Christmas Day and Easter. Seriously.

We took one particular route every few weeks that passed over a few little streams and next to quite a few "haunted houses," which were crumbling circa-1850 farmhouses in the middle of nowhere. Near the end of the drive, there was a large grassy field that looked like it hadn't been touched by humankind since, well, ever.

When we came near the field, my dad would slow down the car to a crawl. He'd roll down the windows and point.

"Look, kids! Do you see that?"

"What is it, Dad?" We knew what was coming, but it was fun to pretend.

"I see something in the field. Kind of small, brown hair... oh wait! It's Frodo and Sam sneaking across the field!"

"Wow, there they are!" said First Sister.

"I guess they're coming from Mordor," said Second Sister.

"Guys, it's just a field. We've been through this before," muttered Second Brother. Geez, what a spoilsport.

And so it went for several years. We'd drive past the field and have Frodo and Sam sightings on Sundays. Occasionally, My dad would also spot Fred the Buffalo, but we don't talk about that.

Then the diner closed. We added a few more kids and a lot more family expenses. The rides stopped for a few years.

One day, in a magnanimous mood, my dad decided to take us out for breakfast at a new place. After breakfast, we went on our ride. Past the haunted houses, past the gun club, past the streams and the hairpin turns we went, bouncing up and down in the back two rows of our fifteen-passenger van (a van that, years later, Dan fondly nicknamed The Death Van). Then we got to the field.

We all gasped in horror.

There, smack in the middle of the Shire, right where Frodo and Sam had lived, there were houses. Lots and lots of houses. Kids, playsets, shrubs, SUVs, green lawns, the whole nine yards. The paradise of Middle Earth had fallen before the eternal march of suburbanization. Eternal night had fallen upon the Shire.

Frodo and Sam were homeless, and, presumably, continue to be homeless to this very day.

Destiny Lumbers By

It was a beautiful, warm day in March 2003, the birds were singing, the snow was melting, and I was incredibly, incredibly ticked off at my dad.

The reason for the argument has long been lost in the mists of time, but I'll always remember what I did next. I was so angry that I stormed out of the house (on a day I had class!), marched down the driveway (on a day I had class!), and proceeded to take a walk to cool off (on a day I had class!). Since I was just that upset, I didn't regain a semblance of happiness until I had walked for a long time. Four hours and fourteen miles, in fact. And I totally ditched class.

Back at home that night, angrily performing madd Zerg rushes in Starcraft, I reflected on my choices for the day. I didn't regret storming off and taking a (long) walk, even though I had counted fourteen, yes, fourteen unfortunate very dead and very squashed former squirrels along all those rural roads, but I was feeling very guilty about having missed class. What if I missed some crucial information? What if the TA had finally explained our most recent really vague assignment? Yikes. Seriously, yikes.

The snarls of the Swarm interrupted my crisis of consciousness.

We require more Overlords!

Yeah yeah, OK, fine, I grumbled to myself, clicking furiously. Here are your Overlords. But screw you for interrupting my thought process. Look, I'm going to save now and exit the game! Ha, how does that make you feel now?

Finally free from my obligations as the leader of the Swarm, I got on to the class website and typed out a desperate email.

Hi, everyone. I was not in class today and was wondering what I missed. Did anyone take any notes they could send my way? Thanks in advance. Grace.

I sent the email. Then I decided I had punished the Swarm long enough, and fired up Starcraft once again.

An hour later, I checked for a response. Well, that was quick. I had received an email already.

Sure, I type up my notes from every class. This is what I have. Enjoy! Dan Huang.

Being a supernerd, I could smell another supernerd from a mile away. Dude, he typed up his notes. Which meant he actually took notes. And nobody in the class brought a laptop, so he must have retyped his notes after class. Wow. Even I wasn't that bad.

Now I was curious. Who was this guy? Why hadn't I previously detected his presence in the classroom?

Well, begin the sleuthing process!

I thought back to the most recent class. Huang was an Asian name, I knew that. I remembered that there were three Asians in the class.

Well, one wore a frat shirt with random Greek letters emblazoned on the front every session. Nope, couldn't be him.

Another one of the Asian kids was incredibly hot. Yeah, that was definitely not the mysterious Huang.

That left but one Asian. That would be the fat guy who wore the fisherman's hat and T-shirts in terrifying neon colors to class. Yes, it had to be him. That was Dan Huang. No self-respecting normal person would ever walk around with corny math puns on his clothing.

Really, I thought. I must study this Dan Huang in greater detail next Monday.

So the days went by, all five of them. Monday dawned, and destiny would soon make an appearance right before my (rather confused) eyes.

I got to class early that day. I wasn't really that into the class, and I wasn't really that into stealing furtive glances at the other supernerd in the room (really, I swear!), but I was the commuter who hitched a ride with her employee father every day to school, and frankly, I had nothing else to do at 11:45 on a Monday morning. I'd usually get a seat about ten minutes before anyone else showed up and read the textbook to get anything I had previously missed.

But was I really alone in the room?

A fuzzy memory from the dark recesses of my cranium pushed forward into my thoughts. I started.

Oh no! For six weeks I'd been sitting there in the classroom, reading about the role of women in the French revolution with my mouth hanging open and catching flies, and there was somebody else in the room!

And if it wasn't that Dan Huang, I remembered. I was just so into feminist symbolism that I had just failed to notice the other supernerd in the room who apparently also came to class early every week.

Well, I decided, today I would only pretend to read my historical documents. But I would really be watching what a Huang did in the wild.

On cue, my possible nerdy soulmate lumbered into the classroom.

In this sense, lumbered does not perform a purely descriptive, verbtastic role in my kinda-grammatically-correct sentence. He actually did lumber. First of all, there was a lot of supernerd chunkiness clinging to one particular supernerd. Also, when he walked, his head kind of tipped to one side, and he hung his backpack on the same side, so he looked like he was just falling over on the one side all the time.

So lumber he did. He lumbered into the classroom, through the classroom, and out of the classroom door on the other side of the room.

Hmmmm. Was he coming in or not?

I guess he was.

Having left the classroom only moments before, Dan lumbered in once again through the opposite door. He lumbered through the classroom and lumbered out the other door.

Ummm. This was weird.

Soon enough, the lumbering cycle began again. He lumbered in. He lumbered through. He lumbered out. Wash and repeat.

But right in the middle of the sixth lumbering cycle, just when I was considering lumbering out myself towards a safe place until class began, he stopped. I glanced up, but I also moved my book up too, so it would look like I wasn't actually looking, because I was smart like that. But now I couldn't see because the book was blocking my view. Crap.

He spoke.

"Hi."

I spoke.

"Hi."

He lumbered about two feet towards the door. Was the cycle beginning again? Nope. Again, he stopped.

"I think I might have sent my class notes to you last week."

"Oh, was that you?" I lied, shamelessly. "I was wondering who that was."

"Did they help?"

"Yes, they did, thanks. They actually really helped me understand the rationale for the Revolution, actually." Crud, I actually said actually twice. Dang, I just thought actually twice. OK, Grace, focus.

"Well," he responded, "I'm glad they helped."

"They did, thanks." Man, was I awkward.

He lumbered three feet in the other direction. So he had a net lumbering quotient of negative one.

"And your name was Grace, right?"

"Yeah. You're Dan, right?"

"Yeah."

Awkward silence.

More awkward silence.

But then, Hott Asian was there to save the day. He sauntered in with a pencil (but no notebook?), sat down on the far side of the room, stared into space, and proceeded to ignore the growing awkwardness. It was a lot easier to be less awkward if somebody else was also being less awkward.

Dan lumbered forward, towards the seat in front of mine.

"I think I'm going to sit here today. I can see the professor better from over here."

"Yeah," I awkwardized, "It really is a good view. You can hear the professor pretty well too."

"Really? Good."

"Glad you think that."

"And also," he said, "Maybe we can share notes. I'll bet your notes are pretty good."

I blushed. He thought my notes were probably pretty good!

"Well, I know your notes are pretty good!"

He smiled. Despite his girth and his Top Ten Reasons To Be A Statistics Major neon green shirt, he had the nicest smile I had ever seen.

I smiled back.

We sat next to each other during class.

And then the next.

And then the next.

And then the rest of the semester.

And then the exam.

And then we emailed each other over the summer.

And then we ate lunch together on the first day back.

And then we sat next to each other in another class we were taking together.

And then he decided to be creepy and wait for me after another class that I took.

And then I decided to be creepy and totally stalk him in the library.

But that's a story for another time.

Confessions of Social Confusion, Part Two of an Excessively Long Expose

Last December, when I was still working at the preschool, a bunch of the staff were sitting around the lunch table swapping stories about kids with Aspergers.

"Well," said the occupational therapist, "I'll never forget this one kid. He was maybe six, seven years old and just loved geography. And you know what? When I had him, he could name every single state and capital, and he was only in first grade!"

As if it had been planned beforehand, a thundering chorus of surprise rose from the rest of the table.

"Wow! That's amazing!"

I elected to totally shut up. In fact, I turned bright red and tried to crawl under the table, but then I remembered that this was a preschool and I probably couldn't fit my entire girth under the table, so I just stayed where I was.

I knew all the states and capitals when I was six or seven. Also, I knew a good number of the world countries and their capitals, too. I also used to critique maps. Why the heck would you still have Sri Lanka listed on the globe as Ceylon when it was the 1990s? It was almost as bad as listing Taiwan as Formosa. Also, Rhodesia was a British colony, so they could stop calling Zimbabwe Rhodesia. Also, Yugoslavia was now obsolete.

"Well, I had one kid who was such a picky eater that she would only eat cilantro," chimed in the speech therapist. "They actually had to put the poor girl on a feeding tube."

Okay, at least I wasn't that bad.

Part Two of the Diagnostic Criteria for Asperger's Disorder dictates that the budding social recluse demonstrate restricted repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behavior, interests and activities. And this is where my self-identity as a questioning neurotypical individual starts to fall apart. Let's take a look.

1. Encompassing preoccupation with one or more stereotyped and restricted patterns of interest that is abnormal either in intensity or focus.

Eh heh heh heh heh. Heh heh heh. Heh heh heh.

OK, I am probably the queen of weird, weird interests. Like, pretty out there. Thankfully, my interests are all pretty nerd-oriented, so I can at least tell myself that maybe I was just born to do lab work on mice genetics or something. Yeah, something like that.

Unlike many other children, I never wanted to be a princess, astronaut, firefighter, singer, celebrity, cook, or other stereotypical careerist. No, I wanted to work at the post office. And you know why I wanted to work at the post office? Because at the post office, they had zip codes. And I could look at zip codes from all over the United States all. day. long!

I also liked area codes. In fact, I collected telephone books when I was a teenager. Not for any reason other than... well, there were lots of area codes. If you gave me a random local phone number, I could tell you where that number was located. 252 was Easton. 867 was Bethlehem. 588 was up in the Bangor area. Yeah, I was awesome like that.

I was into yearbooks, too. I liked yearbooks because they had names. Wow, there were so many kids with the last name of Rodriguez in this school! Who the heck names their kid Jhon, and what kind of severe mental illness did they have? Why did nobody ever have the fairly common Scandinavian affix of dottir?

And now that I have access to a ridiculous number of library research databases, my interests have only gotten weirder.

I like reading about the history of fruit. Bananas were known as Green Gold back in the early 20th century because they were just that profitable. Fruit companies literally built the infrastructure to bring several Latin American nations into comparative modernity. The banana that you eat today is quickly succumbing to a molding fruit disease. Research scientists are currently racing to develop a new banana that is mold-resistant.

I like perusing the zoning laws of area localities. Why did all of those acres of farmland you saw yesterday hold the Rolling Hills Development of today? Because the farmland is in a Rural Zone, which means that developers try to preserve as much green space as possible. Houses must be built on very large plots of land to meet the green space requirement. If you're looking for a larger home, or if you're looking to avoid city living, you're going to need lots of green space. Right in the middle of the former cornfield.

I like food marketing. I am slightly obsessed with Chobani. Not because I necessarily like to eat Chobani, but I'm fascinated by the growth of Greek yogurt in the past ten years. It's pretty rare that you have an innovation in, well, yogurt, but Chobani started it and now you can get Greek yogurt anything. I also subscribe to (free) food trade magazines. My favorite is Dairy Foods (shocker!) followed by Food Management, which is the periodical of choice for those who serve food in institutional settings like hospitals, schools, and... Google's main campus.

So you tell me: Are my eccentric interests abnormal enough to make me ever so slightly autistic? Or are they just abnormal enough to make me supersupernerd?

2. Apparently inflexible adherence to specific, nonfunctional routines or rituals.

I am happy to report that, besides demonstrating symptoms of severe control-freak and rampant perfectionism, all my routines are very functional. They're pretty rigid, but definitely functional.

3. Stereotyped and repetitive motor mannerisms (e.g. hand or finger flapping or twisting, or complex whole-body movements).

I chalk up my swaying while standing in church or waiting in line as just ADD fidgetiness. And I twirl my fingers through my hair. Small potatoes. However, there's just one more thing.

When I was in preschool, I used to "dance" to music by spinning around in circles. I have a distinct memory of me spinning around in our breezeway and holding up four fingers to signify my age at the time. I think that's pretty common behavior for a little kid. With me, though, I never really got over it. I have done a lot, a lot of spinning around in circles in my life. I won't go into the details because then I might really just die of embarrassment. But truly, it was excessive.

But was I ADD-bored or... Aspergers?

4. Persistent preoccupation with parts of objects.

Well, I've always loved only a particular few bars of a song. I remember listening to some Backstreet Boys song for 45 minutes and never got past the first thirty seconds because I kept rewinding and rewinding and rewinding. To this day, I listen to songs on repeat in the car... like two hours straight of U Want Me 2 on a loop.

I think, though, that it ends there.

And the eternal question remains: Am I just weird or am I actually neurologically different? I sorta kinda meet criteria, and I sorta kinda don't. I mean, when it comes down to it, I don't really need to stick myself in a box. I'm just Grace. But I'm very curious, and I probably always will be.

But at least one thing's clear.

God help the progeny of Grace and Dan, for they shall be genetically cursed on both sides of the equation. I, personally, am praying for the emergence of recessive genes.

I'm Not Actually Fat, I Swear!

I've almost always been small and compact. Small because I'm five feet tall and am scaled even smaller than petite (I fit better into child-sized clothing than adult-sized clothing). Compact because I'm not actually thin, but I'm not really large, either. I'm more thick and built like my Italian peasant ancestors before me.

I once explained density to my young felons by displaying my compactness for all to see. They all thought density was the same thing as weight, which I knew was incorrect because I had finally grasped the concept of density the week before. This misconstruction of such an important scientific concept could not stand, but I could definitely stand.

I stood at the front of the class and called everyone's attention.

"Guys," I deadpanned as best I could, "I've got a question for you all. How much do you think I weigh?"

Shocked looks from everyone involved.

"No, really, what do you guys think?"

Someone raised a timid hand.

"Uh, sorry miss, I don't wanna be rude. I think you're about 115."

"Well," I shot back, "You're wrong."

"Oh."

"Anybody else?"

"Miss, you 120?" asked a particularly annoying kid, whom I had silently nicknamed Mr. Incredibly Self-Conscious.

"Nope. Guess again."

And so they did, for the next three minutes. Then I pulled back the curtain of my self-revelation.

"You were all off by about twenty pounds."

Audible, possibly exaggerated, gasps filled the room.

"Anybody know why you all guessed on the low end?"

Silence.

"It's because I'm very dense. I'm short and small, but I have lots of muscle. I have more fat rolls than you thought I did because they're part of a smaller space than most people."

Heads nodded. They got it. Many relieved faces. Oh, so maybe not all females got incredibly annoyed if they asked you how much they weighed and you got it wrong.

"Miss," said Mr. Incredibly Self-Conscious, all six feet standing up. "How dense do you think I am?"

"You," yelled the youth worker, "Are a heck of a lot denser than you think. Now sit down and do your work."

I cut off the discussion.

But all science lessons aside, I've been noticeably dumpy only once in my life. That was my senior year of college, when I lived off campus and discovered brownie mix. To my credit, I actually lost it all a year later, so maybe I'm not as lazy as people tell me I am.

Even though I'm not actually fat, and I don't look especially chunky, lots of people have actually thought that I was quite severely obese.

It started when I called up my doctor about five years ago or so and asked for an evaluation.

On the operating table (I'm not a fan of doctors), I voiced my breathing concerns to my all-business Ukrainian doctor. Most times when I tried to drop off to sleep, I said, I would stop breathing all of a sudden, and I would wake up. This would happen a few times a night, and I always got to bed late. Oh, and I was always really sleepy and ready to go to bed at any time, like at 8 AM.

My doctor referred me to a sleep specialist. This was terrifying. I scheduled an appointment, nearly dying in the attempt.

A few weeks later, I walked into the sleep specialist's office.

"Hi! How can I help you today?" My, what a bubbly secretary. She must just love torturing people.

"I'm here for an evaluation," I said. "Sleep study with the doctor at 7."

"You're here for an evaluation? Really?"

What was this?

"Uh, yes, I'm here for a sleep study."

"OK," bubbled the secretary. Why the surprised look? "Here's some paperwork you should fill out. Have a seat and we'll be with you shortly."

Hmmmm.

After an absolutely awful night hooked up with two dozen different cords on my head to some kind of weird machine, the sleep specialist broke the news. I had sleep apnea, a fairly common condition where some random muscles in the throat collapse during sleep, cutting off the air supply. Once there was no air coming in, the brain alerts the body that something is not right, effectively booting all the involved members out of a deep sleep into a partially awake sleep for air. On one hand, it's good that your brain is trying to save you from death every night. On the other hand, you're not really getting to sleep, like ever. I was told that I had fairly moderate sleep apnea and stopped breathing approximately twelve times per hour.

Well, that explained why I would close my eyes when driving down long, straight stretched of a deserted road in an attempt to get some sleep.

The cure for sleep apnea, said the doctor, was to use a machine called a CPAP (or a BiPAP in my particularly sensitive case) while sleeping. This machine pumps air into your lungs as you sleep, basically giving you CPR whenever you have an apnea, and creating terrible air bubbles in your stomach every morning. Okay, they didn't actually tell me that last one, but it certainly happened to me until I got my air pressure settings all figured out.

Lacking the proper insurance, I shelled out $1200 of my own money to buy a complete BiPAP rig. It took me a horrible eight months to be able to sleep through the night hooked up to a machine, but it was also one of the best decisions I had ever made. It did wonders for my general health and well-being.

But then, everybody started thinking I was really fat.

It started when I bought my equipment from a place online. I had to read a disclosure agreement first.

Sleep apnea is a common condition that effects many individuals of all ages. There are two basic treatments for sleep apnea. Your doctor may prescribe a CPAP or a BiPAP machine. Many patients have also had success minimizing and curing sleep apnea by losing excessive body weight. Talk with your doctor about weight management as a possible treatment option for sleep apnea.

But I wasn't fat!

Then I joined a sleep apnea online forum for general BiPAP help, because the thing was a real pain to manipulate (and I had to do it all by my lonesome, since my insurance didn't cover it). All the users assumed that I was fat. Many assumed that I was also male and 50+. After a while, I got so sick of the obesity assumptions that I created a custom signature promising my fellow posters that I was not fat. Really.

I am a female in my twenties. Five feet tall and 123 pounds. That is a healthy weight. I have had undiagnosed sleep apnea since I was in high school.

No, seriously, I'm not fat. Really.

I had to fill out that stupid medical history form every time I went to a new doctor or specialist. Everybody lifted their eyebrows in shock.

"Wow, that's very unusual! You seem to be at a normal weight."

I am not fat. I swear.

My sister had trouble sleeping, so she went for a sleep study, just like me. She told the nurse she thought that she might have sleep apnea.

"Oh, I don't think so, honey," soothed the nurse.

"Well, my sister has sleep apnea."

"Yes, dear, but you're so thin!"

So even the actual sleep specialists thought I was, uh, special. And, you know, fat.

I. Am. Not. Fat.

But seriously, although I am not fat (really!), the typical sleep apnea patient really is fat. And male. And usually over the age of fifty.

Remember, apneas are caused by collapsing throat muscles. Most people have sleep apnea because they're so fat that the fat on their neck is pushing down on their throat, making the muscles collapse and inducing apneas.

But I'm not fat. Nor am I obese. Slightly overweight, you could even argue. But my neck is tiny.

The Grace Is Fat assumptions are probably going to happen throughout my life until I am miraculously cured of my sleep apnea. However, I did find out why I have sleep apnea even though I am an atypical apneatic.

I had minor surgery two years ago and had to be sedated at the hospital. The actual surgically-repaired area felt absolutely fine post-op, but my throat felt like it was bruised. The doctor called me a few days later to give me a heads-up. Apparently they had a dickens of a time intubating me during the procedure. I have, according to the doctor, a very, very narrow windpipe. And that was causing my sleep apnea.

So there you have it. I'm not fat, I'm not obese, I just sleep with a mask on my face that makes Darth Vader noises when Dan is trying to drift off.

I am compact, not fat. I am dense, not obese. And now, secure in my BMI, I'm going to chow down a very large piece of Dan's cilantro-cheese bread.