What a Bunch of Garbage!

Let's talk about G. Unexplained gut problems, diarrhea, nearly getting himself an appendectomy, an overnight hospital stay with needles, more needles and IVs... well, nothing gets him down. Back to life as usual.

This morning I screamed in horror at the horrible bruising that suddenly appeared on his arm! And who did this to him! And... oh my... I'm going to lose ALL MY CHILDREN to social services for this... should I hide G? What happened??? Ohhhhh, nooooo.... (freakout)

"Calm down, Mom. That's from where the needles were in the hospital. It made a big bruise like that. If someone asks me, I will just TELL THEM that the needles did that," G tells me.

Ok... but make sure it's convincing!! Those people scare me! Just yesterday on the HSLDA website -

"It's OK, Mom!!!"

(hm.)

"Why do you always do that?" Patrick asks.

Do... what? But Patrick just talks to me in that "be calm" voice like I'm craaazy. I think it's his hormones or something. He thinks I am over-reacting all the time. Hmpf.

So G's been finishing his wrestling camp yesterday, and just had his PE class today. When I picked him up, he was gobbling an entire bag of Goldfish (tm) crackers. Original flavour. I saw his friend following him around with his hand out.

Before I go on, I need to point out that G has some innnteresting friends. They don't seem for the most part to be bad people at all, but people who, shall we say, don't really "get" some social situations. You know, people more or less strange as he is strange, except each of his friends seem to have some sort of different social strangeness. No, not to be mean... just... when you meet one of G's friends, you sorta have to have the word "disability" in the back of your mind when dealing with their oddities. I'm not a doctor, but betya.

So. Here's G and his friend by the trash can, munching it up. G gets into the van and as I'm pulling out his friend yells, "Bye! G got those from the trash, you know!"

Munch-munch-munch.

"Is that true, G?"

Munch-munch-munch "MMmmHmmm" -munch.

*snatch*

"HEEEEEYYYYY! GIMME MY GOLDFISH CRACKERS BAAAAACK!" We had the screaming and shouting all the way home and for a good half hour after our arrival. All-out rolling on the floor, howling about how I am a THIEF and I have STOLEN HIS FOOD. And gimme my goldfish crackers baaaack!

Well, it was pretty loud. At one point he got himself almost calm and he tried to "reason" with me. His friend wanted those crackers for himself, you know. That's why he told me they came from the trash... he wanted G to leave the crackers behind... and it's not fair because HE FOUND THEM, MOM... Can't you understand that?

Nope. Sorry. *howling rage ensues*

I know all the people in a two-block radius can hear this. I'm thinking in the back of my mind about how the people at the hospital were concerned that they could find NO FATTY TISSUE on G and asked aloud whether he ate at *all.* And here he is yelling about his mother starving him in the basement...

I finally got him calmed down, or rather, he finally decided to deign to calm down (grr) seconds before his father's arrival at home. I had convinced G that **G** could tell the story to Dad and let Dad decide what to do with the stupid crackers. Mom wouldn't influence the judge's decision by mentioning the fact that the Goldfish crackers (tm) in question have been expired since FEBRUARY. They taste a little off, but I want to eat them because they're miiiiiiiine...

Yeah.

Of course, D had some common sense and said, "You found it in the trash? Go throw it away," whereupon G started the howlfest again. We didn't even GET around to discussing the idea that here, the crackers have expired since February and G only just now got out of the hospital for horrible but mysterious intestinal ailments.

And we know this is not the first time my children have eaten out of the trash. I'm sad to say it. It isn't something I encourage, believe me. You'd think a 14-year-old kid would kinda be past that stage. I hate to blame everything difficult on his autism, but this sort of thing sure seems like a likely candidate. If there were a "cure" for autism, I'd ask for this part to be gone and that's for sure. (Go ahead and flame me in the comments, but that just isn't safe, mmmkay? Another thing I'd take? Those howling, rolling-around temper fits. I think G wants those gone, too.)

Do you know what caused him to calm down finally? D mentioned that he could have some Goldfish (tm) right here. Fresh ones, even. Cheddar.

"I caaaan?" sniffles G.

Yeahhhhh, D tells him. And they've been sitting in this jar for awhile... why haven't you been eating them? You don't have to go through the trash for Goldfish, you know...

*sniff* okaay.

(Seems like a rather anticlimactic ending to my post, doesn't it? But so go discussions at our house. Until next time.)