Transplanting a Seattleite

For the second in as many nights A. was screaming in distress at 3ish in the morning. This just isn’t sustainable, so I decided to do some real digging into making sure I really understood what was going on, because we’ve got her food intake earlier in the day and stabilized in a way that should have (and did) address any likely gas. Neither one of us is overjoyed with the character of her output, shall we say, but it also isn’t any kind of medicalizable situation and we aren’t treating it with anything either, so I really don’t think that’s the issue (it is contributing to the time spend in the loo).

I puttered. Which is to say that I started methodically cleaning and doing laundry and things of that nature. I figured if I wasn’t rage cleaning, then probably A. would participate and we’d have a nice time and she would chat. But she was really lethargic, and I kept losing her to her phone, so I said she had to stop with the phone.

It turns out that in addition to delaying bedtime until Very Very Late (we were starting the nagging to do routine stuff before bed around 9 pm, and she still wasn’t in bed lights out until after midnight), she wasn’t actually falling asleep. So the 3ish moaning/screaming was not someone _waking up_ distressed. It was someone running out of rope distressed. Welp. That changes things. We figured out what she needed to get done during the day, and I started planning for a nap, hopefully around 2 pm. That did not happen. It also did not happen at 4 pm. But she did get into bed with me before 10 pm, and I fell asleep, snored, and she switched to her own bed before midnight and stayed asleep.

Progress.

I did get to zoom with I. which was delightful, altho she apparently had some youthful type overindulgence with a friend. I’m sorry she felt like crap after, but also I’m kind of jealous that she got hammer with a friend drinking homemade margs and talking. Awesome stuff.

R. did family zoom with his mom and aunt. Yay! I poked my head in and waved.

R. and I were supposed to have dinner with the MBs however they canceled so I had canceled our reservation at LTGT because also we were there for drinks recently. We did, however, go out to Luna, which was fun. I got the veggie chimichanga, which was really, really good.

I also made a thin crust pizza for lunch — I got out the rolling pin. I burnt it slightly, but it was still tasty.

T. came over and we finally had a long conversation about how scams work. Fingers crossed. He’s a smart person and he’s very meticulous about listening to people, and that can unfortunately expose him to badly behaved folks who are exceptionally good at creating confusion, but he’s starting to understand the value of early-blocking people who are obviously bad news, which is a great life skill to have.

I cooked bacon.

A. and I both took showers, so maybe tomorrow we’ll go run errands together.

Oh, and I was in bed before 11 pm. Wow! Goals!

We’ve been getting to bed a little late, so we are behind on sleep. We started out okay, but were running 10 minutes late when we left the house. I called the front desk and warned them, and we actually rolled up about 5 minutes late so fingers crossed A. got up there before it was more than 10 minutes late.

A. continues to really hate teethbrushing, so I finally sat down and researched AutoBrush. The Amazon reviews are … a problem. A big chunk of the problem appears to be a quality control issue (brush does not work properly) that is invisible to the (new) user, but AutoBrush does not appear to be doing any obvious followup on that? So I went looking for alternatives, and found Willo. Not ADA approved BUT aimed at a population that has a lot in common with A. (and me, for that matter), and there was really interesting paper here:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11417133/

It’s roughly a case study, but reading it was _really_ a good experience. I liked the way the folks who put this thing together thought about things and dealt with issues that came up. And indeed, they had sample products they had to replace because they didn’t work, so I now know to allow for that possibility and actively pursue customer service if it does not work exactly as described.

I’ve ordered one for tomorrow, so fingers crossed the first one will not be a lemon and maybe A. will even like it. She does a great job brushing, but absolutely hates brushing AND hates going to the dentist, so it would be nice to fix at least one of those issues. I’m looking into getting her a woman dentist, because she thinks that would help her feel better about going to the dentist.

I’ve been getting robocalls from a Templeton MA number saying my National Grid account is past due. But when I check the account, it’s fine. I mean, the end of November was weird, but I figured that was no problem but then they started up again. So. I’m thinking I’ve been here before, and it was when the accounts switched over. And I know there are two services on the construction site, so I eventually reach a human being at National Grid, and after she confirms, yeah, you are not past due on your account, I ask her to see if there’s another account connected to my phone number where I’m getting the calls. I tried to do that through the phone tree, but it couldn’t find anything attached to the phone number, which was obviously incorrect. Sure enough, the other service was there, not linked to my dashboard, unpaid, etc. I got it attached, paid, signed up for paperless and auto pay, thanked the nice person at customer service and then contemplated. I did check with JB to make absolutely sure they were using power on both services (they are) before I paid it because I am not charitable enough to want to pay for someone else’s power bill.

JB also said they have this problem at other sites. A. was horrified that the default is to bill the service address via snail mail, so I wound up explaining a whole bunch of stuff about legal requirements around billing before you can access the court system to force someone to pay up. Fun world we live in, half the planet cannot figure out why so much is still done on paper and the other half cannot understand why we should ever change that. It’s part of a longer set of conversations I’m having with A. where I explain things like logistics, or exchange / trade and its permutations and so forth. No one ever explained this shit to me, I had to figure it out on my own. I’m not at all convinced anyone explains this stuff the way I think about it, which is likely to be a big part of how I spend my time starting in a few years when I’m not dealing with construction related tasks.

The day started with someone I’ve known since I was in junior high with her sending back to me the birthday money I’d venmo’d her. I’m an adult. I get what that means. I texted her this:

“I see that you have returned the birthday gift I sent you. My disappointment cannot be expressed adequately in words. Please know that if you change your mind, and would like to have an ongoing connection to me, I will always welcome you reaching out to me.”

Which has been on “delivered” but not “read” all day. So either someone else sent the money back, or that’s probably staying on “delivered” forever. There was no fight. The last live conversation we had was by phone in 2024, and she accepted last year’s bday money with gratitude (belatedly, but still, nice thank you note). Since then, she hasn’t reached out to me, and I haven’t reached out to her. I was pretty unhappy over the last couple years, as I tried to help Not Son find a path to independent adulting (yay, success!), and I kept hearing all the many things he had to say about his parents. But life is complicated, and it takes a village so I wasn’t looking for any kind of bridge burning. Maybe that bridge didn’t have to burn. Maybe it collapsed due to lack of maintenance and probably extensive abuse by a third party.

I vaguebooked about it, and people were kind and supportive. I sent holiday cash to Not Son and his older sibling. I’m Team Kid, and the increasing distance definitely involved my reassessment of my friend in the face of their first kid opting to go No Contact followed by really clear abuse of the second kid by their father / husband of my friend. I’m tentatively planning to see Offspring #1 in the summer if schedules work out.

Obviously, I have detailed personal experience with estrangement between a parent and offspring, but you could argue it is not representative because of the presence of that cult thing. I have a cousin who was estranged from his mother for years, and whose son has brokered a little bit of a reconnection after limiting contact with his own parent for a brief period of time. I have a friend whose son went no contact, but they are back in limited contact again. I have a friend who has been no contact with his mother for many decades, and whose brother has long since given up attempting reconnection. This isn’t even a complete list.

I’m Team Kid. If my own kid doesn’t want to be around me — and that has happened — I assume the fault lies at least as much with me as anyone else, and I go looking for what I can change and if nothing springs to mind, I wait. Because sometimes no one is wrong or everyone is wrong and time can help everyone get to a point where they have the perspective and energy to try a reset. I have yet to see a case where the younger generation was clearly in the wrong, and I say this as a person who has been closer to one side than the other on the parent’s side in some cases, on the kid’s in others, and been close to all parties in others.

I’m at an age where waiting involves an acceptance someone’s time runs all the way out before a change happens. Obviously, that can happen independent of anyone’s age, but the odds run a certain way. I know humans and I know myself and there’s no way in hell I’m entirely innocent of anything or everything. But I definitely was the person who did the vast majority of the phone calls and messages and scheduling of phone calls, and I am keenly aware of the balance of contributions when it came to helping out with kids and money and so forth.

I miss who I wished she was, but I’m pretty sure she never was that person, and that’s on me. I guess if I ever hear from her again, I’ll get to know who she really is, and decide whether that is someone I would accept as a friend.

ETA:

Also, if you know me in person and you don’t want to know me in person any more, please don’t wait for your birthday or holiday gift to tell me. Pick any time of year other than that, drop me a line, say, “Hey, don’t communicate with me. If I want anything to do with you in the future, I’ll contact you.” I’ll take you off the holiday card list. I’ll make a note in my contacts. There’s just no call to make the holiday season unpleasant.

A. really needed to wash her hair yesterday, and I commented that showering on Saturday would remove one of her Sunday tasks. I reminded her again in the evening. Around midnight — my hard stop for her, no more phones, and no more noise because I need my sleep — she said she wouldn’t be able to sleep without showering.

!!!

So I marched her through the shower in record time, and then she took forever to even start brushing her teeth. She was trying to get her hair dry with a towel. That only works with several towels. *sigh* So I got her hair dried with a really nice hair dryer that we normally never use (this is why we shower earlier!) and she finally got to bed, but by then, I was pretty awake and it took a while to settle down enough to sleep.

Around 9:20, she comes into my room and wakes me up. It has not been 8 hours since I fell asleep. I napped a bit longer, got up, got her breakfast, got me breakfast, go ready for an 11 am walk (which was fortunately canceled) and then tried to get her through the checkin process for tomorrow’s annual in the morning before school. But she wanted to read all the disclosures. No obvious way to download them or link to them — which honestly, is probably illegal? — so I screenshotted them but I don’t normally bulk screenshot files so it took me a while, and I couldn’t remember how to get the little thumbnail to go away immediately so I was waiting for it and at that point the 11 am walk was looming and I was hungry and she was sloooooowly eating and I started losing my shit.

Walk got canceled, I figured out how to swoosh the thumbnail, I got the various disclosures screenshotted and sent to her phone (which I also took away from her), and then I explained to her in some detail how I was feeling about things. I had been yelling, but by this point, I had managed to convert it into a job for me. I said, basically, you know my one rule is let me sleep. I said, you may have it in your head that you want me to prove that I truly love you, even more than my sleep. You are going to be wrong. We’ve talked about what methamphetamine does to humans, but what it really does is it stops them sleeping and the bad things that happen thereafter are what humans do when they have not gotten sleep. Violence. Violation. Not caring about relationships. All the horrific stuff that the Japanese army did to China mid-century. Etc. I told her, you may have it in your head that I should prove that I truly love you, and sleep when you are not around, so that I am always available to you, which is something I gladly did when you and your brother were babies, but I am not doing that now because you are a full ass adult. Not a legal adult, but an adult. If you don’t let me sleep, I — and your dad, if you don’t let him sleep — will leave you here in the house and go sleep somewhere where you do not have access to us. I also reminded her that I went No Contact (before that was a meme) with my mother (sometime around 2002 +/-) and refused to see her again (she died in 2017, IIRC). I told her I am not threatening, but this is who I am and what I am capable of, when someone is actively harming me. And then I sent her upstairs to brush her teeth, do her hair and put on clothes to leave the house, which is something I long ago stopped requiring her to do on weekends except when we are on vacation.

I think I’m going to send her out with R. to get some groceries. We also need to pick up the advent beer box. And I need to get a walk at some point.

I think one of the reasons I find this all so incredibly infuriating is, in true teenager style, she has zero interest in interacting with me during the day (except for the occasional, do you know about infodump, what you don’t know about infodump? How can you not know about infodump? Which I am sympathetic to as a conversational style because I have for sure committed this myself and also please find another overture), doesn’t remember to eat on her own until she has a hangry meltdown, will tend to put off offers of a meal or forget to eat the meal in front of her until meltdown, etc.

I mean, I get it. This is what happens with kids. You get the worst aspects of yourself at some point. And also my mother went down from dementia, and she spent a lot of years not sleeping at night and I see a real connection there that I have no intention of repeating.

I drove to RTE. I got there about an hour early, and was glad I did because it was tough finding a parking spot. Yikes! Since I had time, I looked up vegan / dairy free Dunkin’ options, and used the app, and $50 I put on the account years and years and years ago, to buy avocado toast, hashbrowns, and a coffee with brown sugar syrup in it. It was all fine, and I might do it again if I was at RTE or somewhere similar, and it was this or Cafe Car options for food.

The B.’s arrived barely in time (horrible traffic) and also had trouble parking. Fortunately, the Acela was a little late and it all worked out. We took the subway to 72nd, and walked to Arthouse, because we all had backpacks and no rollers. Go us! Once checked in, we met up with Priestess, and had drinks and the jalapeno hummus and listened to some jazz. After a while, we went over to Amsterdam Ale House and had more drinks (I really liked the Victory Sour Monkey) and food. The truffle popcorn was odd. The chips and salsa was fine. I had a burger and fries, and it was fine. It got crowded and loud after a while, and we returned to the hotel and slept. It was so simple to be alone and getting ready for bed without having to nag A. to go to sleep.

On the train ride down, I checked in with A. and R. and boy did they get into it. He was stuck in traffic; she wasn’t ready to leave, they both lost their temper and did regrettable things. I made it clear to her that throwing a (metal) water bottle was not a good choice, and I made it clear to him that I did not appreciate him wanting her to feel abandoned. Ugh. Whatever. They still have to live with each other because I’m not returning home as a reward for any of that.

For the first time in over 5 years, I had an in person Dutch lesson! It was so good to meet the new(er) dog, see Maddie (love that dog!) and of course hang out with A. and converse in Dutch. Woot! Looking forward to a weekly routine that I loved before and love again.

I’m going to turn over more of the Getting Up In the Morning and Getting Going routine to A. T. would just unilaterally take over stuff, but A. doesn’t. She instead becomes increasingly hypercritical of whoever is doing the task that really probably ought to be something she does for herself and then we don’t notice for a while because we’re just not that bright. Well, today I noticed.

I was ghosted by the person who was supposed to pick up the Ninjago set. The guy who picked up the Haunted Mansion was a little late, but that was fine. He kept me up to date, which is really all I need. I’ve already reached out to someone else and she will pick up the Ninjago set on Sunday.

Tomorrow is A.’s haircut and both of our shots. Fingers crossed we don’t forget the haircut this weekend, which we did last weekend.

Look, it’s a Monday in the first weeks of school, so I do recognize that this is always a little rocky. But this morning, I got up at 8:30, because I didn’t get to sleep until after 1:30 this morning. I woke A. up after I got through the laundry I forgot in the machine (weirdly did not smell, so I hung it up to dry and fingers crossed).

R. came down after that, and started making coffee, which is annoying, because the last thing I need when I’m this exhausted is someone underfoot. I saw a plate on the counter (I’d emptied the clean dishes from the dishwasher during my meltdown last night), asked, “Is this for you?” He said, “No,” so I started putting it in the dishwasher. At which point he said, “It’s for Ali’s pancake” and I completely lost it. I couldn’t start my tea, because he was using the kettle for coffee. He got up _after_ I’d already gotten up later than usual and after I’d already started waking A. up, and at no point in this whole process had he said anything about planning on taking care of the morning routine for A. I mean, obviously he meant to be helpful, and I did acknowledge that explicitly in my morning meltdown, along with, I get what you meant by saying, the plate was not for you, and also, do you understand how maddening that was. You had to have known that I wanted to know if I could put that in the dishwasher or if you were using it _which you were_. He didn’t realize he’d gotten up too late to start the whole process for A. Also, he couldn’t remember how I make the pancakes. Just all the things.

Anyway. I was very clear about the importance of Using Your Words, and if you are going to help out (thank you for helping out last night, which I did say out loud, Using My Words, because it was actually helpful that he got A. some real food to sop up some of that lake of chocolate milk she swallowed), then we should plan that the night before. Also, totally pointless, because I gave up on sleeping in in the morning and having R. get through the routine, because every single time it resulted in A. screaming and ranting and I had to get up anyway. Not Restful. And that isn’t years ago, either. That’s like, last school year. That’s how we settled into, fine, you can pick her up in afternoon routine, which is a genuine improvement over me having to do both sides of it while supposedly I’m doing the afternoon, but actually I wind up having to drive her in the morning, too.

They actually have a really good relationship. One of the reasons I’ve been pushing on the idea of me traveling alone more is because they definitely need more time to figure things out without me getting sucked in by screaming. (I want to be absolutely clear. All this is autism stuff. It’s genuinely screaming. People are genuinely distressed. This is not people being manipulative. This is people running off the end of their rope.)

R. drove her into school. She was apologetic about the previous evening. She was only about five minutes late to school, which is honestly somewhat amazing. I asked her to really work to get along with R., because he is trying to be helpful, they both made an effort. I walked with M., and ranted a bit about the whole thing, and we talked through an interesting story idea she had, which was fun.

A little side note on that. She was thinking of having one of the vampires of Shadow’s Brook consult / do work for the government on matters supernatural. Some of that would be supplying background, but some of it would involve actually dealing with threats / bad actors / wtf that involved other supes. This is obviously a common device in lots of series out there, and often it becomes a way of describing how even supernaturals can wind up suffering at the hands of malicious bureaucrats. I find that obnoxious, so I asked how she intended to deal with that issue. She didn’t have a plan — no one ever seems to — so I suggested maybe this work fell under some kind of treaty between the supes and the government, perhaps negotiated by the fae, as that would be the kind of thing they might do. She liked that idea, and then I asked about enforcement and since she’s brought up the idea of a geas to do enforcement to prevent supes with magic from using their magic after they’ve been convicted of serious enough magical crimes, I suggested perhaps any bureaucrat that is read into working with the vampire on this kind of consulting situation might have to swear and oath that connects to that kind of enforcement. It was a fun thing to think through; I’ll probably eventually use the idea myself elsewhere.

After we had a walk and visit, I had a brief conversation with D. from the builder, which was enjoyable. I then went and laid down in a dark room for about an hour, which was very helpful.

T. came over. He picked up the bag of spices I found in the pantry with his name on it. He’d forgotten them. He wanted to see the progress on the guest bedroom. Also, he wants a TV stand and his TV from his bedroom. He had an idea for one, and I thought it looked a little suss, so I did some research on other options, came up with a plausible one, ordered it. I had made fried chicken and salsa (sort of) without garlic or onion in it, so I put a piece of chicken and some salsa in a bowl for R., walked it out to where he was playing bridge on the porch and got his signoff on the plan. It should arrive on Thursday, and R. can assemble it, try the TV on it, and if all is well, he can drive it over to the dorm Friday or over the weekend and install it with T.

Things are definitely better now (I mean, fried chicken, amirite?), altho I am not caught up on sleep. I’m probably going to go continue dis-assembling lego next. Altho when I went to put the bucket away (I got it out of the tub to give to A. in case the bad judgment wrt chocolate milk led to vom) where it belonged, there was no space, so this morning I pulled out the foot cleaning appliance and set it next to the tub because it has some staining. If it can clean up well enough, I might list it on FB marketplace, so that might distract me from lego dis-assembly.

I will catch up on blogging.

Slept in, cleaned my sheets. I had a visit with M. I brought some stuff from the attic room — which STILL is not empty — down to the basement. But a lot of what is left is purely R.’s and he wants to sort through and get rid of things (which I am in favor of) so it’s taking a bit. I did get a bunch of exercise going up and down, tho. I also listed a few things (a keyboard tray, a keyboard and mouse, a desk lamp). I don’t think any of it will move, but you never know.

R. and I had a late lunch at Benjarong and strategized how to handle A.’s schedule. I’ve concluded that trying to maintain a consistent getting-up-time is not leading to her being willing to go to bed at a reasonable hour (and when I do, she wakes me up at 2:30 in the morning). Even if we split things up, she would be getting increasingly sleep deprived, and she is already popping more symptoms. Sleep deprivation is a known risk for seizure and mania, in addition to increased symptoms with personality disorder, and all of those are well represented in our extended family.

So in the interests of all of us having a better life, I’m going to take over mornings so R. can sleep in, and he can respond to requests for meds to help with burping / reflux / etc. in the middle of the night. She has already asked for gas-X to have in her room so she doesn’t have to ask someone else for it, which seems really fine since it’s hard to imagine getting into trouble with that medication. R. can supervise the pepcid. By taking over the morning routine, I am going to work on speeding up the various elements of it (especially the hair, but other parts as well), with a view to getting the whole routine to 45 minutes so she can get up at 9, instead of sometime between 8 and 8:30.

She’s got a lot of days in her schedule this term where her first class is lunch at 12:30 or 1:30 if she has lunch at home. That’ll be interesting. If it is literally one class, it’s worth it to just sit there and wait for her to be done. And R. wants to make an appointment at the Apple Store for a longer day to have his phone battery replaced. But we’ll figure that stuff out on a day by day basis. Fingers crossed we can all have a better sleep pattern going forward.

This whole go to bed really late and keep me up thing is dragging me down very literally, so this morning, I told my daughter that I thought she was trying to avoid thinking by staying up really late so she was too exhausted to lie awake in bed with her thoughts.

Turns out I was right.

She had a lot of the normal anxieties of girls / women / at this age, and didn’t realize it would help to talk about them. We talked about them. It seems to have helped a little. We’ll see.

R. had a meeting with the landscape folks on zoom. He also got most of the shelving away from the walls, prepping for the basement insulation project.

M. is really distressed, about politics, and how poisonous the news is, and also her mother’s health. But while she couldn’t walk right away, we had a snack and a chat and she felt better and we got our walk. I went over to CVS later to replace her broken heating pad with a new one. Having now bought on short notice two heating pads at CVS, I’m really tempted to order one on Amazon and just keep it in the box for when another on breaks and we need it on short notice.

Piano lesson went well today. T. is here for a few days. That’s kind of fun.