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Saturday 25 February 2017

Starting again

Hello all

A couple of weeks ago I decided to delete all the previous posts on this blog. Why? Because even though I'd had the odd nice comment here and there, when I read them back myself, they weren't very cheerful and may have been perceived as a bit negative. Well, I thought, that's not how I want to come across really. I want it all to be honest, yes, but sometimes it gets a bit heavy-going, because day-to-day life can be a bit heavy-going. If any of you reading this had left me a comment previously, I'm sorry - nothing personal.

Anyway, I deleted them all and now we start again.

So, today has been pretty standard. Dad is away with work, which happens a lot, and then I'm like a single parent for however long he's away, because he's away at night as well. This time he's away for four nights - 5 days. Today's been ok, but as each day goes by when he's away, it generally gets harder for me to remain sane and I can end up on quite a short fuse, depending what gets thrown at me to deal with. Doing everything and not getting any "me" time is tough for anyone, but with a stroppy, demand avoidant teenage autistic son in the mix .... you get the picture.

Right now, I'm waiting for the dear boy to finish his toilet routine so we can go to bed. It's just after one in the morning - not funny. I'm not impressed, I can tell you. It's the same every night so you'd think I'd get used to it, put up and shut up, but I've never been one to just lie down and take it haha. It's tedious. All of it. I get heartily fed-up with it all, but he is how he is so that's that.

World War III nearly broke out earlier today. Why? Because I was voicing my concern as his parent when he was yet again having problems with some sad, needy, manipulative girl on - wait for it - Minecraft! She's doing our heads in. I'm not even going to begin to tell you what she's accused him of. Let's just say it's outrageous, slanderous, and she is just digging, digging, digging, trying to get inside his head, all the time, and now via one of his friends. Thing is, she never left him alone. They started chatting casually in-game - yes I know the terms (well, some of them anyway - are you impressed?) and then she sent him a friend request (or the Minecraft version of it) so he accepted it because she seemed OK. But, having seen their private chat (he showed me when the most appalling accusation was laid against him by ..... wait for it ..... her mother!!!!) I can tell you she's been nothing short of needy, greedy for attention, discussing things she shouldn't be discussing with someone she doesn't even really know, trying to get him to watch videos of dodgy TV programmes, being nasty about other gamers and trying to get him involved in it all, she was messaging him so much, pestering almost ...... etc., etc. It's been a nightmare few weeks. She got a severe warning two weeks ago and went quiet, but started up again today, so me, seeing the expression on his face change - I'm very intuitive and perceptive - I was obviously concerned. He told me what was going on so we had a brief chat about it, then later his face had that same expression on it again and there was much furious typing in Skype, so I knew something was up, but when I voiced concern he just slammed a virtual door in my face basically. This is how it is. He demands privacy, to which he is entitled, but if he shuts me out when there are problems, who else is he going to turn to? It just makes me sad when he's like that, but even if he didn't have PDAS he might be like it anyway, being a teenager! I don't know. I didn't have a typical "attitude" when I was a teenager, nor did my siblings, so it's foreign territory to me really. So anyway, I told him I was here to guide him if he needed me and had to leave it at that, nothing more I could do. Tough to deal with. If I'd persisted in wanting to know what was troubling him it would have got nasty pretty quickly. He has a vile mouth on him sometimes. It used to shock me but I'm used to it now but even so, I've learnt that it's best not to persist!

He's had a foody day on him today. One of those days where he just wants to keep eating all the time. I think it stems from his anxiety but I also wonder if there's some kind of sensory thing going on there. I've never been sure. So it's a case of trying to keep a general tally in my head of what he's eaten, the nutritional content, calorie content, etc., to try to ensure he gets as balanced a diet as possible and enough of the right kinds of calories! If he's eaten less than 400 calories worth of junk in a day I'm fairly happy! If he's had a piece of fresh fruit, other than grapes with his sandwich, I'm ecstatic - doesn't take much to make me happy!

The internet has been a nightmare this evening, so slow. Alex thinks it's down to Storm Doris. I'm not convinced, since it was fine throughout the storm, which hit us yesterday and is long gone now. I reckon it's just our (very well known, been around for decades and have a big tower in London) internet providers being useless again, but there's no way I'd move over to another well-known (owned by a man with a beard) supplier, from what I've heard they're even less reliable, even with fancy fibre optic broadband mega super speedy blah blah blah - not from what I've read from disgruntled consumers!

It's no good, my bladder is reaching critical volume, and I'm now feeling extremely tired, having been up since 8.30 (yesterday) morning. I can't concentrate on what I'm typing, so I'll have to call it a day! I really hope he's done on the toilet soon!

Bye for now!
J.