I'm Officially Hiding Out And It's Necessary For My Sanity

I have to confess that I've been avoiding the Boy as much as possible these days. It's so much easier than it use to be now the he's away a college! He use to always find me when he was home, even when I didn't answer his screams for "MOM!!" I would be as silent as possible as I listened to him running through the house screaming my name until he eventually found me. These days though it's not so easy for the poor guy to find his mom when she doesn't want to be found.

Image from paypal.com

What has made me avoid him lately? Well what doesn't, but the latest thing that has made me avoid him like the plague is his new "business venture" idea.

I guess it's is an Asperger thing, obsessive interests and such, but whenever he gets his mind on something he can be brutal. Just brutal!

The latest is his idea to create this product (that is highly secret so I can't say what it is on here) and then sell it on ebay. The only problem is he doesn't really know how to sell on ebay and felt he needed someone more established and experienced on ebay to sell his new item.

That's where I come in. Not that I've ever sold anything on ebay or anything like that and he knows this so that's not where I come in.

Here's where I come in.

He called me a few weeks ago to ask me if I knew anybody who could sell it for him on ebay. My mistake was ( before getting more information) saying, "Why yes, I know a couple of people. I'll ask them." After that he called my every single day, morning and night to find out if I had asked them and gotten their email address so he could contact them.

He need to "discuss" things with them he said.

It was my understanding that all he needed was someone to put these items on ebay for him and when the items sold, these people would get 20% commission and the Boy would get the rest. What I didn't know was the Boy needed about $3000 to get the components to build these items in the first place and was going to try to get these ebay friends of mine to front him the money!

WTF!

Good thing I found out about this scheme BEFORE I called them or gave the Boy their contact information. After getting this last bit of information (that I should have found out in the first place),  I told the Boy to just forget about it.

 Focus on school work. Get an hourly job on campus. This wasn't the time to invest in a business. Wait until you graduate!

I reminded him of that last business when he and a friend had "incorporated" and we're still dealing with the tax ramifications on a corporation that existed, but not really even though legally it did according to the government and a bunch of legal papers.

Try explaining it to the government. "Well uhhhhh, they were just 17 years old and still in high school and the business never made a profit and really isn't a business at all because they never had time to build it because they had school work to do so do they really have to pay that $2000 in penalties and back tax?"

No, I don't want to go there again!

I hope the Boy can't find me!

I'm Going To Brag Now

This is the Boy when he was one.  It is NOT a little girl and that is Not a dress (it's a one piece jumper thingy and has snaps up the legs) despite what some certain people may say..  

I've been bragging all over Facebook and Twitter about The Boy's grades this semester.  Now it seems only proper that I do a blog post in honor of him.  For the first time in his life, he has made all A's and B's.  Not only that, he made the dean's list this semester with a 3.5 GPA which brought his overall GPA up over 3.0.  I can only hope this upward trend continues!  He has a really tough schedule for Spring with a Business Statistics class, a Technical Writing class, a History class as well as a computer/IT class.  Whew!  He will probably need a note taker for his History class and this is one accommodation that the college refused to give him but it is on the list of needs from Alabama Rehab.  I hope it's not going to be too much of a battle to get them to add this one accommodation.  The Boy does have a recorder that he can record the class lecture and one of those pens that records as he takes notes as well.  He didn't need it fall semester, but he will for spring semester.

He now has enough hours officially to be considered a sophomore and one of his classes was a 300 level (Junior) class and he did great!  Three of his classes were Computer or Information Technology related and one was a Speech -group communications class.  I can tell you I was worried about that one, but he pulled through with a B!  I am so proud!  He's called me three times from his dad's to tell me he made the dean's list.  He's really proud too.

I saw him briefly this past Monday when his dad dropped him off because we had a phone interview with SSI and I couldn't do it for him without him being here since he is now considered an adult.  I had also received a questionnaire from his high school.  They were doing a survey of all the recent graduates and wanted to know what the students were doing now and how they felt about their days at the high school.  Questions like do they feel the school prepared them in writing, math, etc.  Also drug related questions.  I read the questions to the Boy and he had to choose how he felt on a scale from A to D.  He was extremely negative about the school on the first few questions to the point where I felt it was a little too negative.  I told him that the high school must have prepared him at least a little if he's doing this good in college.  He thought for a moment and lightened up a little on the school, but he still didn't feel they did that good a job.  

One of the questions on the survey was "do you feel the guidance office was helpful?".  The Boy looked at me puzzled and said "what guidance office?  I didn't even know there was a guidance office!"  I know he must have known at some point where the guidance office was, but I have to admit there was at least one guidance counselor at the school that I didn't really like.  She always seemed too busy for us and wasn't really helpful at all.  Unfortunately, this particular counselor started off with the freshmen when the Boy was a freshman and moved right along with him for most of the years.  I didn't have much to do with her.  Like I said, she wasn't helpful.  Just bothered and impatient.  (I'm being nice because what I REALLY mean is she was a Bitch!) 

 It probably wouldn't have made much of a difference if the Boy had known where the guidance office was located.

I've known that the Boy was capable of far better grades than he got in high school.  To me this proves it.  Not just this semester but last year he did really well in his English comp classes.  The school was not set up to teach the way the Boy needed it to be so he could learn and excel.  He had far too many classes going on at once.  It would have been better for him to have just 3 or 4 concentrated classes for one semester and then the other 3 or 4 the next semester instead of dragging out  English, Math, Science, History or Electives all year long giving him 6 or 7 classes to deal with all at the same time.  He had to go to summer school three or four summers and he actually liked it better because he only had 1 or 2 classes.   I think he's the only kid in the world who liked summer school!  I would have died if I had to go to summer school while I was in high school or middle school.

He loved it!!

Anyway he's out of that high school now, thank you, God!  Yes, I did pray about it a lot and I still do.  I'm praying for college success now.  Prayers work!

Ray of Sunshine (aka The Boy)

                         

"The only disability in life is

a bad attitude."

Jimmy Scott Hamilton

"Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference."

Winston Churchill   

The Boy informed me yesterday while I was taking him to get his hair cut that he hates me and forgot how bad it was at home.  He said he thought being shut up alone in his dorm room was bad until he got back home.  Then he remembered how bad it was here.  Ouch.  And why am I so concerned about his teeth and hair and going with him to his hair and dentist appointments since I know he doesn't like going alone? Once again, it took me by surprise and hurt my feelings.  Especially after all I did to make sure his room is clean and ready for him when he got home and his refrigerator  loaded with things he likes to eat.  He tells me he's out of toiletry items and we head to the drug store to get what he needs, go to his favorite restaurant, invite him to go for walks, etc.  I racked my brain trying to figure out why it's so bad here for him.  I told him if he's so unhappy with me, then why doesn't he go live with his dad?  "That's even worse," he says.  Should I take comfort in knowing that his dad is "worse" than me even though I've ruined The Boy's life and he's better off without me?

Over the years, The Boy has blamed me for pretty much every thing that goes wrong in his life.  If he made bad grades, it was my fault. Late for school, my fault.  Internet down, my fault.   Everything was my fault.  And sometimes it really was my fault, but oops!  I am human after all.  I only play Zena, Warrior Princess (what The Murph started calling me when I was slurping down protein smoothies right and left and gained about 10 pounds of muscle)  with her stealthy panther kitty (that would be Phantom) on tv.  I do my best, but am only perfect 99.9% of the time.  The other .1% he's just gonna have to deal with.  Which is next to impossible for him to do.  The Boy just doesn't deal well.  That he gets from me.  We are Type A's.

I quit my job to stay home with The Boy and started a home daycare which I ran until he started kindergarten.  When he started school, I closed the daycare, volunteered at his elementary school whenever I could and started taking time for me while the boy was in school.  I started biking more and picked up running to help relieve some of the stress I was feeling during this time.  The Boy struggled in school.  He wasn't yet diagnosed with Aspergers's so we didn't know what was wrong.  I was an easy target to blame.   The Boy's dad blamed me when The Boy started failing in school.  "Why isn't The Boy doing better in school? You're not working .  So and So has a full time job, 3 kids and they are all making straight A's and competing in sports.  You only have one child and you don't even work.  Why isn't The Boy doing better?"  - that's what I heard, almost every day, (that I was a failure) until finally I got a job and a divorce.

The blame game stops here for me.  I love The Boy and will do all I can to help him, but ultimately he is responsible for his own life and happiness, Asperger's or not.   The Murph and I will not allow him to be disrespectful to me, which he is most of the time.  Lectures don't work, taking away privileges don't work and I really don't know what the heck will work.  He's been so negative the entire time he's been here this week that the Murph's new nickname for him is "Sunshine", since he's such a "Ray of Sunshine". At least it makes The Boy smile when he's being negative and we call him "Sunshine".

 Counseling at school is definitely in his immediate future.  I tried to make an appointment last semester just so The Boy could get acquainted with a counselor at the school should any issues come up while he is there.  The Counseling center at the school wouldn't even talk to me or let me make an appointment on his behalf since he's 19 years old and The Boy never would call to make the appointment despite the sticky notes with the phone number on it that I stuck all over his dorm room.  This time I'm going to call and hold the phone to his ear so he can tell them "Yes, I want to make an appointment".    I don't know what else to do.  This is way out of my pay level.   I want 

The Boy to be happy and POSITIVE.   Zena, Warrior Princess needs help.