Things I remember about The Mansion

As you might recall, The Mansion is what we called a very large Victorian house on O Street in Sacramento, where we lived for three years starting right after my 5th birthday. It was converted into medical/dental offices after we moved out.

The house was partially furnished with antiques and there was an old Victrola in the living room, with some records. Sometimes we'd get to play them. Most of the time, the TV was on, and our antenna had a rotor on it so we could rotate it from inside the house. Cool beans. Please don't ask my oldest brother about E-skip.

We had a full dining room that was separated from the living room by sliding wooden doors. There was a dumb waiter from the kitchen to the second floor, but we never used it. I always thought it would be a blast to try riding in it, but no such luck.

I remember standing at the very old-fashioned sink in the kitchen. I think it was aqua blue, but I could be wrong. There are no photos. That kitchen is where I learned how to make sugar toast.

I think there was a front stairway, all wood and polish, that we hardly ever used. There was a back stairway that we used instead. I remember jumping the last few steps all the time, wishing I could fly.

My grandma came and lived with us for awhile and took up the whole side-front room, which my mother called The Library. I suppose the built-in bookshelves were the reason for that. The full bathroom was between that and what was called The Study, but was really my dad's bedroom. My mother took the very back bedroom on the second floor. I remember being very surprised once when I found my mother and dad in his bed together because it was so rare.

The bathtub in the full bathroom was an antique clawfoot which my mother de-valued by painting it elaborately and gluing fake jewels all over it. She did the same thing to the bathroom walls. It was big and pink and maroon and fairly hideous. She wanted to be a hippie, I think. 

There was a laundry room off the kitchen that led to the back porch. Or maybe it was the back porch and was just closed in. There was a small stairwell that led downstairs to the basement; my dad kept a workroom down there, in the small finished part. We could go out under the rest of the house from it, which was all dirt and cobwebs and musty. One year, my mother decked it all out as a haunted house for a church Halloween party. I didn't go down there for the party, it was for the adults.

Our front porch was huge and I remember sitting on it once in awhile. I also remember my next older brother getting ahold of the movie camera and making several short films of my little brother and me, stop action; and of flowers, bees, butterflies - you name it, he filmed it. Those are in the box in storage too.

I remember sliding around on the hardwood floors in my socks with my little brother.

I remember there was one full bathroom and one water closet on the first floor; and one sink and bathtub upstairs on the second floor. 

I remember my oldest brother built a miniature golf course in the window box of his bedroom.

I remember my sister and me sharing a room for a bit before she left for the Army, and it seems to me we had a walk-in closet. I remember her dressing to go out with friends in all orange, including stockings and shoes. Possibly.

I remember the entrance to the attic was in my next oldest brother's room, which he shared with my little brother. 

I remember for awhile I had a black and white TV in my bedroom - the height of luxury, because then I could watch TV from bed, something I eventually grew out of (in my 40's).

I remember being told to clean up my room, then getting the only spanking in my life from my dad because I had just shoved everything under the bed. No joke, I was a cliche from the beginning.

I remember the back yard was huge, at least to a five-year-old, and we had to go down about 25 steps off the back porch to get to it. My dad grew purple irises and there was honeysuckle and an orange tree. When the house was converted in the mid-1970's, they paved paradise and put in a parking lot.

I remember my dad mowing the front yard by hand. With a push mower. There are home movies of me mugging the camera and imitating him.

I remember swimming in a little 2-foot wading pool in what was laughingly called a bikini. There are movies in The Odd Saga of my older brothers splashing each other and running around. 

I remember chasing bugs in a field on the corner, which is now an office complex. It's where I began a love of ladybugs and pretty much got over my fear of insects. The grass was tall; I think we were lucky there weren't any snakes in there as well.

I remember having my "boyfriend" from school come visit for a playdate. He was the baby boy in a fairly prominent Sacramento family, from what I was told. He only ever came over once.

I remember our last Christmas together as a family. My parents blew out the stores, apparently, and there are photos of me in a brand-new blue satin robe, pretending to iron clothes with a toy iron and board. I remember figuring out there was no Santa that year, too. A few months later, my mother was moving us all to a two-bedroom house in a different part of town, where I had to share a room with her and my little brother, while my two older brothers had the other bedroom.

I remember running downstairs to my daddy in the basement, because I had asked where he was going to sleep in the new house and my mother told me he wasn't coming with us. 

I remember for years after we moved out, whenever I dreamed at night of home, it was The Mansion that filled my head.

I don't remember everything about living there, but what I mostly remember is I was happy, when the family was still a family and I was young enough to believe it would be that way forever. The home movie that was my life, and which, childlike, I believed God was watching while eating a bag of popcorn, was mostly perfect.

I'm not sure I wasn't right.

Stories of Childhood, Part 2

My first memory is of being dressed in plaid, standing next to my little brother and in front of my older sister having my photo taken. I think I remember it because I've seen the photos. I was about three or four.

My next memory is of sitting at the kitchen table drawing while my mother washed dishes or something, and it seems to me the song "Happy Together" was playing on the radio in the background. That's not necessarily true, but it sounds about right. I drew what I thought was an elephant and also a scribble I called Dennis the Menace. I remember it because both pictures are glued into my baby book. I was still about three or four.

There are home movies of us watching The Lawrence Welk Show, and I think I remember trying to hog the camera. "No," you say, "You're not the dramatic type." Notice the sarcasm coming from your mouth. My mother put the date on a piece of paper with some M&M's and took movies of that. My oldest brother hid beneath a blanket so only his toes were showing. This was before we moved into The Mansion, so I was almost five, I think. 

About the same time, there are movies of us standing in full sunlight in our best Easter clothes. All I remember, aside from what I've seen in the video, is that my eyes were (and still are) extremely light-sensitive. Today, and also because I'm getting to the end of middle age, I tend to wear sunglasses on rainy days and I definitely don't drive at night if I can help it.

My oldest brother edited all our home movies in the late 1960's, early 1970's, and called it "The Odd Saga." Hmm, he was right about that. In any case, I haven't looked at them for years. He edited our trip to Texas in 1969 as "Voyage to See What's At The Bottom of Texas." I'll talk about that maybe another time. They're all sitting in my storage unit, waiting to be converted. I'm not sure it will ever happen, but perhaps if I write about it I'll remember more details. Or maybe I should do a Kickstarter campaign to "preserve the heritage of the white middle class family in America."

Insert major sarcasm here.

Stories of Childhood, Part 1

I realize it's been over a year. 

I got a job, found a place to live, found a church where I'm feeling more and more comfortable; I've also been seeing someone special for a few weeks. I have not, however, had any good medications for about two months. I'm living on a very thin edge until my new benefits kick in and, of course, some days are better than others.

I also bought a new car, which means I need to find a second job. Gee, I wish I could make money on this blog. I may have to put a PayPal button at the bottom ...

Meanwhile, back at the ranch ...

I've decided to start blogging my childhood. Nothing bad, or nothing intentionally mean, but things I want to try to analyze, or at least prove to myself and perhaps other people who see me that I've always been this way and that it's probably okay. I mean, God made me this way, God works with what He's given me and no matter how hard I worry, I'm along for the ride no matter what. 

My kids keep telling me I should write a book about my mother. Perhaps. I even have a name for it: "All We Had for Christmas One Year Was a Can of Spam." My mother is a storyteller. Very few of them are completely true, several of them are outright fantasy, but at one time or another, she told all of them as Gospel truth. The above title was a story which was included in a litany against my dad and included beans that refused to cook through and spending money on "tars for the car" instead of things for the family, which still made my mother angry three decades later. 

I don't know about now. My mother is turning 90 this November; my dad has been gone for more than 10 years and she's been in Texas living with my sister since then. I'm planning a visit, which will be the first time I've seen her in a long time. 


In any case, some of my stories are about hearing her stories. 
My children also tell me they're going to write a book about me and call it "It's An Adventure." I used to tell the kids, when life got crazy or out of hand, or even if we were just lost in the car, that it was an adventure and to take it in stride. I think I was mostly trying to convince myself. 

Nowadays, the adventure for me is making myself get up and go to work with people who don't know me and whom I don't want to really know. There's a difference between coworkers and friends, you know, and bipolar disorder is not a great conversation starter in any case.


So. Yeah. The first story.
It's not a long one. Along with the bipolar disorder there's OCD and extreme sensitivity. My mother called me Nervous Jervis all my childhood and really, that's also where the ADHD fits in. My previous doctor told me it's not real ADHD, it's a symptom of the bipolar called hypomania, but if the shoe fits ...

We lived in this big house on O Street in Sacramento, a Victorian before it was converted into dentist offices with two floors, a full basement and a really cool attic that we called the third floor because the window in there was higher than the rest of the house. 

I was five when we moved in, but hey, I already knew it all. One morning before anyone got up, I decided I'd be helpful and light the furnace. I don't think the house had a thermostat; if it was cold, you lit the furnace and if it was hot you turned on the swamp cooler.

Already you can see where this is going. I didn't. I'd seen my older brother do it and decided it couldn't be that difficult, considering he was only 12 years older than I was but hey, it's me! I turned on the gas and proceeded to look for the matches. Yes, I blew off my eyebrows. I remember the rest of the family coming when I yelled and then all of them laughing at me. I don't even remember getting a scolding, although I'm fairly sure I did.

That's it. At some point while we were living at that house, my kindergarten, 1st and 2nd grade years, my mother took me to a psychologist who told her I was the world's youngest teenager. Wrong diagnosis, but for some reason my mother thought that was the funniest thing in the world. Those same years, my dad quit going to church and we quit eating around the table as a family. My sister left to join the Army and my oldest brother didn't leave to go to college. 

At the beginning of 3rd grade, my mother left my dad and took us with her. 

I could go on, but I don't want to get too serious too soon. Maybe next time I'll talk about irises in the back yard and taking my shoes off to walk home from school. You know, other stuff with maybe a happy ending or something like that. 

Have I mentioned my short attention span yet?

My Life Got Too Noisy

Being Mentally Ill is not even as fun as it sounds.

"What?" you say. Yes, it's true. All these years of suspecting the worst and lo and behold, I find out just how much God loves me even if I am bipolar.

The OCD, the ADHD, the ups-and-downs of depression and lack of focus ... Believe it or not everyone, it doesn't mean I don't have enough faith in God. It just means He loves me in spite of all that and changing my heart doesn't necessarily mean changing me into a "normal" person.

The goal here, folks, is to remind you all of the difference between feeling down and being sad because of circumstances; and the all-encompassing, physically debilitating effects of despair, anger, absent-mindedness and an almost unerring tendency to say exactly what's on my mind at any given moment.

No filters.

If you try to tell me about experiencing God's love and healing, but you have a two-income family, a successful marriage and children who aren't tired of you, I will stand up and walk away.

Circumstances are always in flux. The idea that just believing in God to smooth the way whenever we get into trouble and everything will always be happy and joyful just because you claim salvation ... Well, that's a lie.

Real life hurts. 

Real life is when you don't have a place to live and go from one couch to another because you're mentally ill but your family doesn't actually believe it.

Real life is when you cannot hold down a job because it makes you physically ill to meet new people or be in a crowd.

Real life is when you can't go to church because you can't not tell them "how you're doing" when they ask.

Real life is being high-functioning and intelligent but mentally ill and no one wants to see the mentally ill part and place too-high expectations on you.

Real life is hiding from people who say they believe in God but don't believe in me.

Anyone getting the picture yet? I am angry. 

However, I'm not angry at God. I'm angry with myself a lot of the time because I believe the things people say about me: "Pull up your big girl knickers and get over it." It's not easy.

Bipolar syndrome used to be called "manic depression" and is now described as having "hypomania." 

WebMD states,

"During a hypomanic episode, elevated mood can manifest itself as either euphoria (feeling "high") or as irritability.

Symptoms during hypomanic episodes include:

• Flying suddenly from one idea to the next
• Having exaggerated self confidence
• Rapid, "pressured" (un-interruptable) and loud speech
• Increased energy, with hyperactivity and a decreased need for sleep"

If you have known me at all, you have seen me in action with all of these. My best friend used to tell me I was an explosion in a paint box. Yeah.

Read the rest of the article, people.

So let's get down to it. I cannot fully describe everything happening with the chemicals in my brain. I can only work with the doctors and take the medications and do the best I can.

Some days are better, some are not so good. All the things I want to do, like use common sense or keep my mouth shut - that's impossible sometimes. 

God's healing is in the medication. God's healing is in His Word. God's healing is in the unconditional love I receive from Him. God is faithful, even and especially when I can't focus on anything long enough remember that.

I may not have been the best of friends. I certainly wasn't the perfect mom or wife. I'm not even sure if I'm capable of any of that right now.

All I know is I can't give up. Despite not being able, at this point, to separate the emotions from the circumstances, I can't give up.

Every time I go into the doctor's office, the question is, "Are you feeling suicidal or thinking of harming yourself?" My answer is no. Suicide is a cop-out, and I have to believe I'm better than that.

It may take medication to be better than that, but I can't give up. I have plans. I have goals. I have a life to live. Just right now though, it's a little difficult to see that from where I'm sitting.

I am a sinner, saved by grace and a child of God through my very personal, very interesting relationship with Jesus Christ. 

Don't you dare tell me I don't have enough faith in God. 

Do remember that some people have it harder than others, mentally or otherwise. Think about what platitudes you're offering to people who deal with mental illness, especially if you're offering them from a pulpit.

Believe it or not, I still have a huge capacity for love, and there are very few people I have given up on forever. So don't give up on me.

And please, allow me to be who I am, even through all the struggles, because an explosion in a paint box is bright, colorful, interesting, beautiful and dynamic.

I Miss Homeschooling

Some of you may know that I had to empty out my storage unit a couple of months ago. It wasn't easy - I ended up losing my furniture and throwing away or giving away a lot of things.

But there were boxes of papers leftover from homeschooling my kids back in the 90's-early Naughties. Boxes and boxes and boxes. And boxes. I kept every paper they ever did from every school year from 1994-2002. It's daunting.

I thought to myself, "I'll have all these memories of my kids when they were little." Boxes and boxes. I threw away a whole bunch (recycled, so don't go all Mother Earth on me), but there were still some boxes left that I didn't want to get rid of quite yet, mostly because I hadn't gone through them.

So there those boxes sat outside, with the word, "SHRED" on them so I would know what to do with them. Today, it being a kind of quiet day here (unemployed, doing transcribing on the side, sitting in my pajamas), I decided I'd get started shredding. I brought one box in, set up the shredder and started.

Two hours later, I'm sitting here with a large outdoor garbage bag (you know, the green/black ones) full of shredding and the box is only half-empty. Remember, this is only the first box. There are six other boxes out on the patio waiting to be dealt with. But back to this box.

I've often wondered if anything I've kept over the years is really worth keeping. Actually, I've been wondering about that a lot since I emptied storage. I want to have good memories, I want to look at something and say, "Wasn't that adorable," or "I was so happy then." When it comes to these homeschool papers, though, I wonder, "Why in the world did I keep every damn single solitary piece of paper?"

I've kept out a few. Some drawings, some journal and story papers, one or two crafts. I'll probably have more as I move through the boxes.

Meanwhile . . . I remember organizing and finding curriculum and grading and teaching and using "The Price is Right" for math lessons and on and on. And I miss it. I don't know if I have the wherewithal to do it again, but I still look back and think maybe I didn't do so bad a job of it.

I've taught every grade from kindergarten through 12, learned along with my kids (ASL at the local community college with my high schoolers who needed a second language), and generally had fun exploring God's world with my children.

It's amazing to me that no matter what else, God keeps His hands on all of them. Oh, they might not think so, they're so grown-up and skeptical. Still, I believe that at least they are better people than I am. That's what parenting is about - make little people who are good people when they are big people. Four kids who are self-sufficient. Four kids who have goals and plans and friends and family and jobs and even faith.

I've had a difficult few months. More than a few, actually. But, I still believe that I was the best mom I could be, that I still am. (Those of you who disagree, please stand in THAT line over there.) If nothing else, I am so proud of all of my kids that I burst to tell people all about them. Not about how good a mom I was, but how proud I am of them.

How can I not believe that God is with them?

All the things I wish I could say

It's hard sometimes for me to explain myself.  
Depending on the situation, I can talk up a storm. Even writing things down, like this blog, I can get to the nitty-gritty and sound perfectly intelligent and witty and urbane and all the other fun exciting things a good blogger is supposed to sound like.

And then my overactive brain starts to get distracted, and I wander off-topic, or I have so many things to say all at once that I don't know what to say next. Like this blog. I fear I've confused some people.

Sometimes I have no filters.
Because it's very important to me that people understand.  Unfortunately, that will never be the case.  Some people understand because they know me - family (sometimes), intimate friends (I have about three of those since David's death), and possibly other people who might come across me and get my - quirks - foibles - idiosyncrasies - weirdness - from either experiencing them or it's their professional opinion. 

Meanwhile, I have so many things to share that sometimes it all just comes out a jumble.

I am an explosion in a paint box.
That's what David used to say. I miss him. He was a master of linear thinking - he could take everything I spewed forth and make it sound like I was a genius.  I have no doubt that I'm extremely intelligent - I just need someone to help me sound like it.  

David used to also tell me it was his job to take all the random post-it notes in my head that I've tossed into a cardboard box, and turn it upside-down on the table and organize it for me.  You can't imagine what it was like to finally have someone who not only understood but celebrated my short attention span.

I am not trying to excuse who I am.
But I wish I was brave enough to ask for accommodation from the people around me. To me, if I try to explain that large crowds are scary, even if it's meet-and-greet every Sunday morning at church - it comes out sounding like an excuse for being anti-social and arrogant.

There are so many things I know about myself that come across as arrogant or silly or selfish or pathetic, when they aren't really.  They're just who I am, and I need to remember that God made me this way and I don't have to make excuses.

There is nothing more frustrating than knowing exactly what needs to be done and being incapable of doing it.
The Apostle Paul said something similar in Romans 7:15 - "I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but do the very thing I hate." RSV. He was talking about sin, and sometimes I feel like all my quirkiness (and isn't that a nice word for it) is actually sinful because I'm not like "normal" Christians.  

I see other people going through many of the same struggles, or even worse ones - and they seem to be able to keep believing, keep hoping, keep knowing that God is directing their lives. I want that.

I want to be like everyone else sometimes.
I'd love to be able to sit around a table with people at church at a Sunday luncheon and carry on a real conversation. I'd love to be able to make phone calls. I'd love to be able to interact casually with other people. I wish I could express my faith in such a way as people don't doubt God but see Him.

It's not going to happen. I'm over 50 years old and that's just not the way I'm wired.

But God . . .
"But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me." 1 Corinthians 15:10 ESV. 

I-yam-what-I-yam sez Popeye the Sailor.

I wonder sometimes if Paul wasn't a bit on the Autistic side of things.  Of all the Biblical people I want to meet when I get to heaven, Paul is the one I'd like to talk to first and longest.  He's such a sympathetic personality.  He seemed to have all the quirks I see in myself, plus the intelligence and wherewithal to commit his words to paper and have people understand him.  

I long for that.

One body, but which part am I?
"Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. 14 Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many." 1 Corinthians 12:12-14 NIV.

The same God, everyone different. Not one part more important or smarter or quirkier than any other part. I wish I could explain it so people wouldn't think I was making excuses for my behavior. Sinful I am, but so are you. Quirky I am, but why be normal when quirky can be so much more fun? Full of doubts and crying out for mercy as I strive to be faithful - we are all that. 

One body, many parts, God Almighty who perfectly loves us as individuals and as His people. It's never easy for me, but God never said easy - He said faithful.


Just as a P.S. to anyone interested . . . 
Here is someone who is certainly better at expressing herself than I'll ever be:

http://thethirdglance.wordpress.com/2014/07/26/undercover-autistic-on-disclosing-autism-in-the-academic-workplace/

Asperger's and Self-Diagnosis

From the Blog "Asperger's and the Alien"

Prepare to enter the wild and woolly world of an adult with Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism characterized by intelligence, quirks, social difficulties and downright strange and oddish behaviors. 

People with Asperger's generally are high functioning in everyday life but have great difficulty connecting with others due to the inability to read faces, body language and subtle verbal clues. They also tend to take words literally and have a hard time multitasking. 

Oversensitivity to touch (clothing has to be soft and often the tags removed), light (do not leave home without the sunglasses), sound (loud noises and noisy places are avoided), taste (many Aspies have quite a limited diet and are frequently very picky eaters) and smells makes the everyday existence more of a challenge. 


Fasten your seatbelts and come on in... 

From the Blog "Life On The Spectrum.net"

Symptoms of Asperger’s Syndrome

These are a collection of symptoms from an Aspie’s perspective. For a a list of more medical definitions, see The Triad of Impairments and there’s a page of tips if you Think You Might Have Asperger’s Syndrome.

• People greet you by saying “here comes trouble” and you don’t know whether or not they’re joking.
• You scare off new friends by becoming obsessed with them.
• People call you “sad” for being interested in interesting stuff.
• You try to help someone, only to find your help wasn't wanted.
• You hear a lot about how “you’re only making things worse for yourself”.
• You don’t understand what’s so funny about teasing. You feel you’re being mocked.
• You are exhausted by always pretending to be normal, but fearful the Real You will be rejected.
• You hope, with each new group of people you meet, that this time you’ll get it right.
• You laugh later, and more loudly, than everyone else.
• People say you speak too quickly, but you know you have to get the words out before you forget them.
• You notice that after people have known you a while, they stop asking how you are.
• You’re the only person wanting the music turned down.
• You forget to eat.
• Others get annoyed b/c you write down/read back details of appointments to be sure you got it right.
• You find yourself unable to explain something without giving the whole back story too.
• You can cope with a party, but have to hide in the loo to recover every now and then.
• You see other people exchange “a look” but don’t know what it means.
• You like to hide away on your own, especially after spending time with other people.
• You find it hard to work out what will happen next, particularly if people are involved.
• You don’t instinctively know when you’re being teased.
• You organize things: from smarties to your DVD collection… everything’s in order. Or not!
• You load the dishwasher the same way every time… and redo it if someone does it differently.
• People think you have no sense of humor. (They’re wrong, but that’s what they think!)
• Your senses seem to be more sensitive than other people’s.
• It’s “always you”.
• Other people think you’re being intolerant, and you can’t understand how they cope.
• You feel “different” from most people, and feel that you don’t “fit in”.
• You are so passionate about your hobby/sport/interest that you lose track of time.
• You’re always the last to get the joke!
• You were bullied at school, or college, or work.. and/or are still being bullied.
• People think you’re being rude and/or critical when you’re not meaning to be.

From the Blog "My Noisy Life"

Oh, this is me.

I know some people think I'm hopping on the bandwagon because my granddaughter was diagnosed last year - this is not the case.  It is because she was diagnosed that I started researching Asperger's in order to be the best grandma I can be.

And then I recognized myself.

I lost my job yesterday.  It was coming - I have been trying to find alternatives to working in a group setting for a long time, but this was rather abrupt and, while not devastating, still somewhat frightening as to my future.

However, I believe in the end I can't use Asperger's as an excuse.  I can only site it as a large part of the reason I'm not good with being in an office full of "normal" people.

I also think my relationship with the Lord has a lot to do with me being as "normal" as I appear to be.  Once you get to know me, you see the real me, but usually I can fake it in front of strangers and people who only know me as The Choir Director or Ainsley's Grandma or sometimes even The Job Interviewee.

I have decided that I will speak with my doctor and therapist about an actual diagnosis - but that doesn't mean my life begins and ends with that.  I have gone 52 years trying to figure out why I'm different, and compensating as much as possible with routines, notebooks, schedules and relying on God, and I will continue to do so.  But because it's been such a long time, an actual diagnosis will go quite a long way with helping me just feel better about myself.

You can agree or disagree - I'm trying hard to just be me.

(the quotes from the above blogs have been edited to correct spelling - because I am rather OCD as well!)