All the Good You Find Along the Way

At the Alligator Ranch, OF COURSE they'd suggest he stick his head in its mouth!

This year was full of good.  Some of it is hiding in those posts further down the page, but most of it was just simple and quiet and persistent and existed mostly in the often invisible and unnoticed march toward helping Eric conquer his impulse control issues that still divide him from his peers and make life harder than it has to be.

We will never achieve 100% control, it's not possible, and we may have reached a plateau at this point in time, due to the onset of elongation of certain body parts and changing pitch depth and the ordinary complete loss of impulse control that comes with all of that (yay, puberty AND autism...this looks like FUN!), but that's okay.  Where we are is okay.

When he's not saying he's sorry, and looking down at his feet scared someone is going to correct him again for picking his nose, or chewing his toes, or using his whole face to eat, he's pretty happy, and that's a win.

Playing Munchkin with a vengeance

He LOVES playing games.  Munchkin, Monopoly, Risk, Chess, Donkey Kong, every single one of the Papa's Donuteria/Hot Dogaria/Pastaria, etc. games on NotDoppler, he cannot get enough of Star Wars Lego's, Star Wars books, and his love of Gilbert and Sullivan remains quite intact.  He likes penne pasta with meatballs and "jar sauce," mushroom omelettes, steamed broccoli, and would sell his sister for a good piece of tilapia, so his tastes are evolving, finally.  No more is it "fruit, meat, fries."  Now it's "cool fruit, differing meats, sometimes fries, and more and more variety in all things."  Winning!

My larger child has done amazing things...she is on course to finish her Honors' Thesis, she works as a lab teacher for the Biology department when they need her, she's an Anatomy and Physiology tutor, and a Biology tutor, employed by the school in their tutoring center, she found a boyfriend, he's nice, and she still comes home like a champ to help out as much as possible.

She works hard, she gets weird awards she isn't expecting!

Their Royal Highnesses, Claire and Bryan of Kings' Landing...'cause that's not creepy at all

She had a LOT of fun dressing up this year, making costumes with me, and working her ass off ALL the damn time so she could maintain that perfect 4.0 every semester like she mostly always does.  We'll never speak of the Art Department again, because that was just unjust and gross, and honestly, at this point that one "B" is just splitting a tiny hair off the hundredths place in her GPA.  She will yet again work at Cheley (which she has gotten rather good at, btw) and next year she will begin her two semesters of internship for her Kinesiotherapy Degree.  She still sings like angel fire, but had to finally bid a bittersweet adieu to the Music Department because, well, life moves on, and so has she.

For me?  I have pursued the cure for Hep C like a Honey Badger.  It took waiting eight months to make it even begin, and I am five months in to the whole six month course.  All I can do now is cross my fingers, hope, and wait.

Costumer Extraordinaire, Clay!

As a family, we made incredible new friends this year, some as a result of the Wizard World mess, and some we met as we traveled and played in costume at conventions.  My favorite thing I discovered this year was that comic book art is SUPER COOL, and the people who devote so much of their lives to those drawings are fascinating, driven, passionate humans and my suspicions about art turned out to be 100% true.  Whatever formal art has become (I'm looking at you, USM ART DEPT and the whole museum scene), it has in many ways lost its ability to connect with people.  I find more things to laugh at, cry at, challenge me, and entertain me on Deviant Art than I have found in a museum in twenty five years.  I LOVE the internet, and I LOVE the people I meet there and this year has taught me so very very much.  My favorite thing I own right now is that original drawing of the girl named only "Red" above, By Tess Fowler Gutierrez, a comic book artist out of Los Angeles.  You can find a much better photo of it here.  Thank you, convention goers, costumers, comic book artists, prop makers, CGI artists, pepakura creators, people who tried EVA, people who succeeded with EVA, and all the people making real, walking art and taking it on the road.  You guys rock.  And 99% are also the kindest, coolest, and most compassionate people I've met in a long, long time (I'm looking at YOU, Clay le Brun, and YOU Paul Patacek, and YOU Rafe White and especially YOU, Tess Fowler Gutierrez).

There are others, of course, but their life and support has been quiet and constant and more back-channelish and I wouldn't want to risk embarrassing them in a blog post, but LauraSplat, you and our army of friends have gotten me through some super dark days.  Roll call...if you want to be named, I do, in fact, appreciate you all, and all you have to do is PM me and I'll add you to the list.  :D

Apples and Trees

Finally, a note about my real life that few people "get."  Living with two versions of men with Asperger's (a large, engineering version who was never helped, never treated, never taught the necessary skills to really adapt socially), and a small one who is getting the benefit of ALL THE THINGS is a difficult life.  I could not do this without the help of the people who found me and I found them through this weird window on the universe called "the internet."  I'm a dreadful introvert, preferring the silence of my fortress to the chaos of face-to-face interactions, yet I find that the balance of "out at conventions" and "home to the internet" has been a valuable, life-healing journey this past two years.

Thank you all.

Toodles 2014

Could someone now follow me around and whisper "2015" every time I write a check please?  I hate having to cross out the previous year and scribble the new one across it for five months....