Ups and downs

I finally admitted that I am close to another crisis point yesterday. I really don't think it's chemical this time 'round, but sleep deprivation driven - if I could manage to get a 3-4 hour stretch of sleep a day, things would be a million times better. Problem is I have a breastfed 2 month-old with GERD and an almost 4 year-old with autism, situations not exactly conducive to sleep. I was talking to S yesterday and mentioning how sleep deprived I am and then in the next sentence started talking about this new quilt shop that just opened and how they have machines for use for $5/hour and I was planning on getting over there on Saturday so I could get some sewing done. She gently asked me about needing sleep and I just sat there for a moment and let some tears out. Hard as it is, she's completely right. Aside from taking care of my kids and my household I am spending ungodly amounts of energy keeping my perceptions based in reality (i.e. John wanting to listen to his I-pod and play his video game does not mean he finds me incredibly unattractive and is planning how to leave me as quickly as possible -- ah the joys of Borderline Personality Disorder).

That said, there will likely not be a hand knit sweater for Alex's baptism, I have no idea if I'll ever get any of the socks done for the 2008 Sock Knitters Pentathlon let alone the toe-up monkey sock I've been working on since Alex was born, and sewing Mei tai baby carriers is right out. Sleep has to be my top priority before I slip too far and it just sucks.

How's that for a ray of sunshine?

Cabin Fever

Michael is asleep - Yay!!!!

The past two days he has refused to take a nap and I just wanted to cry - in fact I'm pretty sure I did both days. We've been pretty shut-in recently because the weather has just been too cold to do much more than dart from place to place assuming we even make it out of the house. The cabin fever is made even worse but my continuing nicotine detox - it will be one month tomorrow if I don't count the half a pack I smoked two weeks ago. I've not been very good at balancing things lately - so much energy is being spent on keeping myself sane that there is precious little left over for things like housework.

Michael's sleeping situation would definitely be improved if I did some hard playing with him every day but I just haven't been able to find the energy to do it. I often have to push myself to do things like that to begin with since it's just not my nature to really "play", I literally have to schedule it into the day and have set the kitchen timer to get 20 minutes of real play in with him. This is not to say that I don't interact with him - we are constantly talking with each other and he shows me what he's playing with and I offer help when he needs it. It's the get down on the floor and throw the ball around kind of stuff that I'm not good at. Since I removed my main sanity-saving behavior, it's been real tough. He is definitely sensing it too as we've seen some separation anxiety resurface and the fact that I actually had to lay down on the airmatress next to his crib to help him fall asleep which I can't even remember the last time I needed to do that.

I hate this feeling of not being able to find baby-zen. As much as it seems that I am complaining about my son constantly, it's really me who has to find my way. Aside from the chemical addiction to nicotine, I had a huge psychological addiction to smoking. Stepping out into my backyard for five minutes to have a cigarette provided a much needed break - those were five minutes that I wasn't and could not be a mom. Even if I wasn't getting my down time during the week, I still had those breaks throughout the day and they really saved my sanity. The problem is that it's been very hard to find something to fit into that sort of time interval. Knitting has been great, but it's impracticall and highly annoying to me to just knit in five-minute intervals. The same goes for spinning, hopping on the computer, and any number of other things. Yes, I could go out back to practice deep breathing for five minutes, but thus far I've been resistant to it.

I guess what it is that the smoking provided was not just the break, but the break from being a mom and a wife. I love my job with all of my heart, it's what I've always wanted to do and it has completed me in ways I cannot even begin to express. Maybe it's because I put so much of myself into it, that loosing those breaks is really hard. I take so much onto myself that I need to be able to shrug it off for five minutes at a time so that I can continue to shoulder the load. Smoking was the ultimate selfish act. I was feeding my addiction and slowly killing myself to boot. Now that smoking isn't there to "necessitate" those breaks, my mind can't get itself around the seemingly selfish aspect of taking a break. Breaks are not in any way, shape or form selfish. I need downtime in order to regroup and be the best mom and wife I can be, I cannot function without them. I've fallen into the trap of being the selfless mom and I don't know how to get out.

The weather looks like it will be bearable the next couple of days, so Michael and I won't be quite as housebound. I'm getting back on the ball with taking my meds and vitamins so that will provide some chemical relief from the weather and my nicotine detox. Last but not least, I am getting out of the house tonight for some much needed alone time. This is the first time in weeks I've gotten out by myself and I really have no one to blame but myself for it. More than anything else I have to make myself take this time because I function so much better with it.

Back to square one

I was having quite a day today - actually it's been quite a week. After bursting into tears at the end of a not so emotionally charged episode of Scrubs (two episodes actually), I called my sister to come over with her cigarettes. I know that if I actually bought a pack it would really be the end of this quit attempt. So the needle countdown has been reset and I have to start my nicotine detox all over again.

I'm not sure what is going on with Michael right now. He's been stimming a lot and he's back to leading/pushing us when he wants something. I was talking about it with his speech therapist the other day and we think he may have had some sort of developmental leap and his functional vocabulary just isn't big enough to cope with it. I admit that I brought this up with both of his therapists for some feedback (read:confirmation) on the autism dx and got it. Denial isn't just a river in Egypt. It's so easy to forget sometimes, and then there are the times it smacks you in the face. We went to storytime last week at John's library. It was the first time that I just sat down and let him do his own thing unless he was trying to take food from someone. Usually I drive myself a little crazy at these types of events, following him around the room, vainly trying to get him to sit quietly on the carpet square like all of the other children. Why oh why can't there be at least one other seemingly hyper kid there instead of all of the stepford children sittly quietly staring at John with rapt attention? That image really is pushing it, but it's hard to see them sitting nicely while my child hops around the room, and I do mean that he litterally hopped around the room following the same path for most of story time. This was actually a vast improvement over past story times where we have had to leave the room several times because he was so overstimulated. Some of his behavior isn't too far outside the norm for a two and half year-old, but the problem is that he looks like he's four so I get the looks from other parents wondering why I am not controlling my child (and I admit that if I didn't know what I knew and Michael was like their child I be right there with them).

There are times when I am so happy about the progress that he's made that it's easy to overlook the little quirks, that the developmental ped was too conservative in her scoring on the ADOS test and she was mistaken. Then I have a day where everytime he's not actively engaged with me he's running in a circle in the middle of the living room or walking his circuit around the room, touching the same things everytime he passes them. It's just been hard this week because it feels like everything is so glaring, but enough whining about my lot in life.

On a knitting front, the first of the Super-Mecha socks are almost finished (I've been a bit obsessive, can you tell?). I did the heel this morning and have about 5 more lace repeats until I can start the cuff ribbing. I'll post pics tomorrow.

'night all...

I need an off switch...

Firstly, yes - it's two-thirty in the morning and I'm making a blog entry.

I seriously need to just turn my brain off for a few days. It's not that firey, manic, I have to create mode - the one that I have no idea something was even wrong until well after the fact. It's just the, "my mind can't stop thinking about creating" kind of mode - the one where you want with all your heart to lock yourself in a room and just create but you have a two year-old, a husband, and a house to take care of. I'm probably a few steps shy of a true hypo-manic episode for me which is a mixed blessing, because a true episode comes with ignorance of what is actually happening where my current state just carries frustration.

Now that we have my mental state taken care of, on to what's on the needles. The unfortunate by-product of my current mind-set is that I have 6 things on needles right now. This does not include the 3 dozen stitch markers in various states of completion, nor the several half-written patterns waiting to go up on Knitty Keen.

Needle 1 - socks on Great Adirondack Silky Sock, Serengetti colorway. I'm about an inch from turning the heel on sock 1

Needle 2 - socks on Rainbow (read - neon) variageted acrylic/nylon DK weight. This is an odd one because I had finished one knee sock, started the second, turned the heel on the second one, decided that I needed to re-do the calf on the first one so I frogged it back to the life-line (God, I love these) I put in after I finished the heel, then did the first third of the calf on the second one. Take that Strunk and White - I laugh at run-on sentences and strange non sequiturs (yes, I know it's spelled wrong in the banner).

Needle 3 - Bias scarf for Red Scarf Project (about 1/3 done)

Needle 4 - Linen Stitch Scarf for Red Scarf Project (less than 1/4 done)

Needle 5 - Version 3.0 of my stuffed fish toy prototype (I knit two of these in the past two days, the one on needles is my third).

Needle 6 - Version 1.0 of a Tree Frog prototype

The frog prototype keeps wanting to be explored and expanded into any number of reptile and amphibian toys and I keep having to beat it back. In bags around the living room, I have at least another half-dozen works in progress. I'm lucky that I designed Michael's sweater to be a 4T with a lot of ease since it may not get finished until next year. I really have to put the toys aside for right now and concentrate on finishing the scarves and then the socks because my feet are cold. yesterday I was completely consumed by the fish - hell I even had patterns written in my head for everything from a really cool/funky felted lantern fish to a Chineese dragon. There just aren't enough hours in the day and I will seriously be paying for this tomorrow.

On the Michael front, the trip to Maryland went very well - well enough that we are seriously considering doing Maryland Sheep and Wool as a family trip. Since I knew I was stressing a great deal about it, I made a point of telling Michael all morning before we left that we were going to have an "adventure" today (I said this often enough that even I started to believe it - in a good way, I already believed it in the sarcastic way). The only problem we really had with him was food wise - he ate a ton of dairy. It's almost impossible to control him when everything is served buffet-style (read: child-height). It's still working its way out of his system and I'm sure there has been some behavioral effect this time as well which I haven't really noticed before.

Now it's three and I need to get some sleep. 'Evening all....

The Devil and Philip Morris

I am working on what is probably the hardest thing I've ever done, and that's saying something considering the mental health roller-coaster that has been my life. That oh so wonderful thing is smoking. I've been on and off the wagon so many times these past few months it's not even funny. I started smoking back when I was seventeen for those oh so wonderful reasons - because my friends smoked and it would piss-off my mom (the driving force behing many of my late teenage decisions).

Aside from the insidious nature of nicotine addiction, the psychological reasons for my smoking are very hard to shake. One, I am a nervous smoker. Whenever I am feeling anxious, its the first thing I want. Secondly, and this is one of the hardest to find a way around, it's five minutes at a time when I can't be a mom. I've been working on finding substitutes for both of these but it's been very hard work. The withdrawal symptoms add a wonderful dimension to all of this. Cravings I can cope with, the short-temperedness (I'm not even sure that's a word) and what nicotine detoxification does to my mental state are very, very nasty. It gets to the point that I want to smoke just so I can feel better which of course sends me back to square one.

I haven't given nicotine replacement a good go yet, prefering in my mind to go cold turkey and get it all over with, but the time for reconsideration is now. Michael and I are going to walk down to our local wholesale club and pick up some gum or the patch tomorrow. Again, wish me luck because I sure as hell can use it.