This morning I woke up as usual, nothing to indicate the strangeness of the day to come. Apricot came in as usual for his morning pets and food, nothing from him to give me a clue. As usual in the fall and the spring, I checked the temperature for the outside world to see how much clothing I needed to wear for my walk, and got my first shock of the morning.
33 degrees? It was 80 during the day two days ago. Okay, whatever, haul out the entire winter set of walking clothes. (PS. Yes, I'm in the USA using Fahrenheit for temperature.)
I headed out for my walk, and got a bigger shock. The world was white. (Except the roads). Not only was there snow all over everybody's yards and cars and roofs, but it was still snowing. I had to go back in, get the umbrella, and walk in the snow. Heavy wet snow, too. My feet got all squeaky. (My shoes have this weird thing where if they get wet they squeak.)
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| A shadow selfie of me walking with an umbrella in the snow. |
Harrumph.
When I got back, Apricot appeared to feel the same way, because he'd disappeared. Under the couch in the tv room and I still had the Saturday vacuuming to do. The vacuum would go right up and bump the couch that he was under. I can't do that to him. I managed to persuade him out from under, but then I'd shut the door to my bedroom (with the headboard hideyhole) and the door to the tv room and he got quite agitated because there wasn't a good place to hide from the weather anymore (the snow falling didn't bother him, but the wind had started getting stronger, and that apparently is terrifying).
He kept going down the hall, seeing the doors shut on the two rooms with the hiding places, the last room's door standing open to reveal the (non-running) vacuum cleaner, and then he retreated back to the living room, casting about in vain for a hiding place. I felt so bad for him and tried to help him settle, but he wouldn't.
I gave up on helping him find a hiding place in the living room, changed the order of my room vacuuming a little and did the bedroom first to give him a hiding place as soon as possible. After I finished it I tucked the cleaner away in the pink room and turned it off and then went to get Apricot.
He had located a temporary hiding place under the big wingback chair. He was not coming out for anything (fool me once and all that), but I knew he'd feel better under the headboard so I pulled him out from the chair. This is the first time I've ever forced him to do anything, and I felt really bad about it. I placed him down next to the bed and under he went in great haste.
The snow had stopped falling. But the wind had picked up, and continued strong all day, making the house creak and shudder. And I don't live in a shack; it takes some doing to make my house shudder! Apricot stayed under the headboard all day.
This was all to the good initially because I was having a delivery of a tiny sofa for my living room. I only have that big wingback chair, and although I love the chair and enjoy sitting in it and having somewhere to lean against when I'm exhausted, the chair doesn't have room for more than me. With three cats (eventually) I wouldn't have a place for them all to be with me, as my lap will only hold one and that's only if I'm not using my lap for the computer. So I bought a mini sofa called a settee.
I made a deal with the furniture place that I would buy a new one, but then they would put the new one out for their display piece and give me the one that had been the display piece before. This is so I can use the settee right away and don't have to wait for it to degas for two months like I had to do with the sofa (the big sofa in the tvroom) that I got earlier this year. (By the way, this strategy worked. The settee only smells like the show room and it's not a bad smell and I have to have my head on the arm rest to smell it at all.)
The initial talk with the delivery guy didn't go well.
Him: I'm ____ from J___ and we have some furniture to deliver to you today. A recliner?
Me (the call interrupted my vacuuming so I'm already discombobulated and now confused as to how a recliner and a mini sofa could get mixed up): Ah, no, a settee.
Him: What's a settee? Is that like an end table or something?
Me (thought not speech): You work delivering furniture, why don't you know what the furniture is called for goodness sake?! (what I actually said: "No, it's like a miniature sofa." I couldn't think of the word "loveseat.")
Him: Oh, right.
At this point thought kicked in, and it occurred to me that if he didn't know what a settee was, I'd better make sure it was the right settee. So I told him about the switch-a-roo that I had agreed on with the company and said that he needed to make sure it was the one from the floor, because if it was the brand-new one I wouldn't be able to accept it.
Normally, had they brought the brand new one by mistake, I probably would have just tried to make it work. The living room is a big room, so maybe the smell wouldn't be so bad. But they (different they) have been replacing the roof at work for the last three weeks (yes, three weeks, and they won't be done till the end of November!) and the tar smell or roofing smell or whatever that is has been inundating the lab (where I work) and really challenging both my respiratory system and my emotional ability to cope. Cumulative effects and all that. So there was going to be no challenging smells here at home!
Then he wanted to know if he could come early, which I was highly doubtful about ("I should be back home by 10:30...") because I'd deliberately set the delivery time to be an hour later than I normally get back from my parents' house. (I eat breakfast with them on Saturdays.) When the big tvroom sofa had been delivered, they'd called me saying "we're here, where are you" while I was still at my parents' house! They were early then, too.
Well, turns out he didn't get to my house early this time, despite thinking he might. I don't know if the one stop before mine ended up taking ages, or if my extreme discomfort with the "arriving early" suggestion came through in my voice and they just goofed off for a half hour. They came at 11:30, so it's possible they chose to get lunch before then.
The power went out at about 10:30. I find I am extremely uncomfortable when I don't have power to my house. I don't really know why it's so upsetting to me. There was plenty of sunshine (the snow was almost all melted away) and I could read a book just fine sitting in my (moved) wingback chair. I'd been debating between reading and watching tv anyway, so just because my choice had been made for me shouldn't have caused quite the disgruntlement it did. But I've been like that before with power outages, so it wasn't the choice thing. I just really really don't like them.
The power actually went back on right when they brought the settee through the door! So I teased them that they'd done it. I was expecting to talk to people so I was much more people-oriented than earlier when the call from them had interrupted my cleaning. I need to be prepared to talk before I can do it adequately! (Why is life with autism, even high-functioning autism, so blasted frustrating and complicated?!)
I also leaned down and sniffed the back of the settee, to make sure it was the right one. (The sofa hadn't started smelling really bad for several hours, so I wanted to make sure this time.) I thought I'd done it fairly quickly and without a lot of fuss, but the one guy noticed and said, in a mildly hurt voice, "We brought the one from the floor!" So I had to say something like "Just checking. I really can't stand the degassing smell" so they could perhaps understand that it really was that important to me, and I wasn't just dissing them or whatever.
Anyway, the settee was delivered, Apricot was still under the bed, and the day kind of calmed down after that. The power came back on like I said, but then it kept flickering in and out all day. This was annoying and after the first time I didn't bother correcting the clocks. It occurred to me that of all the days for the power to go out, the day before Daylight Saving Time ends or starts is the best day because I have to change the clocks anyway!
Late in the afternoon I headed out to hang out with my friends for our Saturday night game night and supper. Before I left, I went in to the bedroom to say goodbye to Apricot. I've made it a practice to always do this before I'm going to leave for anything other than my predictable timed walk, because it makes me feel better and it also makes Apricot feel better, I think. He seems to like knowing that now I won't be back for a while. I mean, he'd like me to stay, and is often as cute and adorable as possible trying to get me to stay, but I think it helps his anxiety to have fore-knowledge of what's happening.
The power had gone out seconds before. (Literally. I'd been playing on the computer, on the internet. I shut down the computer and put it in its bag to take with me, walked out to the kitchen with it and noticed all the clocks (microwave, oven, etc) were blank again. The timing of it was baffling to me because it must have happened in that tiny space of time after I got off the internet and went into the kitchen!)
So when I walked into the bedroom to say goodbye to Apricot, it was quite dark in there. The windows are all light-blocked (so I can sleep) and the usual light that's on during the day, well, obviously wasn't.
I crouched down by the opening to the headboard hideaway. I'd said as I was walking over to it, "I really should believe you about storms when you hide. You've been right every time so far." (He never hides for longer than the storm takes and he's always right about it getting worse, even when all the evidence pointed to the storm being over. He should get a job at the weather channel.)
I could barely make out shapes against the darkness, so as I crouched down and leaned my head down, I was rather surprised when I was greeted by a furry head bump. Apricot came out from under the headboard for his goodbye kiss! I asked him if the storm was over (after I kissed the top of his head and told him I was leaving for the evening) and he stretched leisurely and made his way back under the headboard. I gathered from this that no, it wasn't. (He was right too. My car is a Prius, tall and narrow with a heavy base from the batteries, so while I don't get blown all over the road, the wind did try to tilt me from one side to the other as I drove to our supper location!)
Apricot can be so sweet when he isn't completely terrified. He knew I was concerned that he was hiding not just from the storm but from me since I'd forced him out from under the chair and into the bedroom. And he came out, even though the storm wasn't over, to let me know that it wasn't me. Then he went back under because well, things were still scary and creaking and shaking. I think it's scary too when the wind grabs the house and makes it shudder with the force of it.
When I got home around midnight, the storm had long since died down. Apricot met me in the kitchen as usual as if nothing had happened that day. I like that he doesn't have "aftershocks" from when he hides from various scary things.
Today (the next day) he has been perfectly normal. He even tried out the new "be-with" arrangement. He didn't want to be right next but across from me on the wingback chair was acceptable.
He has made some great progress this past week and I was afraid the terror on Saturday was going to give him a setback. It doesn't seem to have affected him.
The snow had stopped falling. But the wind had picked up, and continued strong all day, making the house creak and shudder. And I don't live in a shack; it takes some doing to make my house shudder! Apricot stayed under the headboard all day.
This was all to the good initially because I was having a delivery of a tiny sofa for my living room. I only have that big wingback chair, and although I love the chair and enjoy sitting in it and having somewhere to lean against when I'm exhausted, the chair doesn't have room for more than me. With three cats (eventually) I wouldn't have a place for them all to be with me, as my lap will only hold one and that's only if I'm not using my lap for the computer. So I bought a mini sofa called a settee.
I made a deal with the furniture place that I would buy a new one, but then they would put the new one out for their display piece and give me the one that had been the display piece before. This is so I can use the settee right away and don't have to wait for it to degas for two months like I had to do with the sofa (the big sofa in the tvroom) that I got earlier this year. (By the way, this strategy worked. The settee only smells like the show room and it's not a bad smell and I have to have my head on the arm rest to smell it at all.)
The initial talk with the delivery guy didn't go well.
Him: I'm ____ from J___ and we have some furniture to deliver to you today. A recliner?
Me (the call interrupted my vacuuming so I'm already discombobulated and now confused as to how a recliner and a mini sofa could get mixed up): Ah, no, a settee.
Him: What's a settee? Is that like an end table or something?
Me (thought not speech): You work delivering furniture, why don't you know what the furniture is called for goodness sake?! (what I actually said: "No, it's like a miniature sofa." I couldn't think of the word "loveseat.")
Him: Oh, right.
At this point thought kicked in, and it occurred to me that if he didn't know what a settee was, I'd better make sure it was the right settee. So I told him about the switch-a-roo that I had agreed on with the company and said that he needed to make sure it was the one from the floor, because if it was the brand-new one I wouldn't be able to accept it.
Normally, had they brought the brand new one by mistake, I probably would have just tried to make it work. The living room is a big room, so maybe the smell wouldn't be so bad. But they (different they) have been replacing the roof at work for the last three weeks (yes, three weeks, and they won't be done till the end of November!) and the tar smell or roofing smell or whatever that is has been inundating the lab (where I work) and really challenging both my respiratory system and my emotional ability to cope. Cumulative effects and all that. So there was going to be no challenging smells here at home!
Then he wanted to know if he could come early, which I was highly doubtful about ("I should be back home by 10:30...") because I'd deliberately set the delivery time to be an hour later than I normally get back from my parents' house. (I eat breakfast with them on Saturdays.) When the big tvroom sofa had been delivered, they'd called me saying "we're here, where are you" while I was still at my parents' house! They were early then, too.
Well, turns out he didn't get to my house early this time, despite thinking he might. I don't know if the one stop before mine ended up taking ages, or if my extreme discomfort with the "arriving early" suggestion came through in my voice and they just goofed off for a half hour. They came at 11:30, so it's possible they chose to get lunch before then.
The power went out at about 10:30. I find I am extremely uncomfortable when I don't have power to my house. I don't really know why it's so upsetting to me. There was plenty of sunshine (the snow was almost all melted away) and I could read a book just fine sitting in my (moved) wingback chair. I'd been debating between reading and watching tv anyway, so just because my choice had been made for me shouldn't have caused quite the disgruntlement it did. But I've been like that before with power outages, so it wasn't the choice thing. I just really really don't like them.
The power actually went back on right when they brought the settee through the door! So I teased them that they'd done it. I was expecting to talk to people so I was much more people-oriented than earlier when the call from them had interrupted my cleaning. I need to be prepared to talk before I can do it adequately! (Why is life with autism, even high-functioning autism, so blasted frustrating and complicated?!)
I also leaned down and sniffed the back of the settee, to make sure it was the right one. (The sofa hadn't started smelling really bad for several hours, so I wanted to make sure this time.) I thought I'd done it fairly quickly and without a lot of fuss, but the one guy noticed and said, in a mildly hurt voice, "We brought the one from the floor!" So I had to say something like "Just checking. I really can't stand the degassing smell" so they could perhaps understand that it really was that important to me, and I wasn't just dissing them or whatever.
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| See? It's a tiny sofa! With my green blanket on it and Apricot checking it out. (This is the day after it came when Apricot had come out from under the bed.) |
Late in the afternoon I headed out to hang out with my friends for our Saturday night game night and supper. Before I left, I went in to the bedroom to say goodbye to Apricot. I've made it a practice to always do this before I'm going to leave for anything other than my predictable timed walk, because it makes me feel better and it also makes Apricot feel better, I think. He seems to like knowing that now I won't be back for a while. I mean, he'd like me to stay, and is often as cute and adorable as possible trying to get me to stay, but I think it helps his anxiety to have fore-knowledge of what's happening.
The power had gone out seconds before. (Literally. I'd been playing on the computer, on the internet. I shut down the computer and put it in its bag to take with me, walked out to the kitchen with it and noticed all the clocks (microwave, oven, etc) were blank again. The timing of it was baffling to me because it must have happened in that tiny space of time after I got off the internet and went into the kitchen!)
So when I walked into the bedroom to say goodbye to Apricot, it was quite dark in there. The windows are all light-blocked (so I can sleep) and the usual light that's on during the day, well, obviously wasn't.
I crouched down by the opening to the headboard hideaway. I'd said as I was walking over to it, "I really should believe you about storms when you hide. You've been right every time so far." (He never hides for longer than the storm takes and he's always right about it getting worse, even when all the evidence pointed to the storm being over. He should get a job at the weather channel.)
I could barely make out shapes against the darkness, so as I crouched down and leaned my head down, I was rather surprised when I was greeted by a furry head bump. Apricot came out from under the headboard for his goodbye kiss! I asked him if the storm was over (after I kissed the top of his head and told him I was leaving for the evening) and he stretched leisurely and made his way back under the headboard. I gathered from this that no, it wasn't. (He was right too. My car is a Prius, tall and narrow with a heavy base from the batteries, so while I don't get blown all over the road, the wind did try to tilt me from one side to the other as I drove to our supper location!)
Apricot can be so sweet when he isn't completely terrified. He knew I was concerned that he was hiding not just from the storm but from me since I'd forced him out from under the chair and into the bedroom. And he came out, even though the storm wasn't over, to let me know that it wasn't me. Then he went back under because well, things were still scary and creaking and shaking. I think it's scary too when the wind grabs the house and makes it shudder with the force of it.
When I got home around midnight, the storm had long since died down. Apricot met me in the kitchen as usual as if nothing had happened that day. I like that he doesn't have "aftershocks" from when he hides from various scary things.
Today (the next day) he has been perfectly normal. He even tried out the new "be-with" arrangement. He didn't want to be right next but across from me on the wingback chair was acceptable.
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| Those are my feet sticking up from the laptop screen. He stayed there for maybe five, ten minutes, which is a long time for him. |
His progress? Let's see.
First, he has been investigating strange things or strange noises instead of hiding from them. I've noticed this happening more and more over the past few months. I always praise him and say good boy when he investigates new or unexpected things. You can't learn not to be scared if you won't examine the thing scaring you. Now if he decides that it's a scary thing and he should avoid it (my heavy windbreaker jacket has fallen into this category--he waits across the kitchen until I take it off and hang it up) then I don't have a problem with him avoiding it. As long as he took the time (and bravery) to check it out first.
Then this past week he has decided that tummy pets are okay. He's let me pet him four, five times before curling into play cat, and the play cat is more because (I suspect) it probably tickles to have his tummy petted. Great strides!
And he did something that I was not expecting and hadn't been thinking about. When I go to work, I'm wearing five pounds of clothes because it's cold in the lab. When it's warm outside in the afternoon, right before I go home I change into shorts and a tshirt and put all the other clothes into one of those reusable grocery bags. When I get home, I take the bag with the clothes into my bedroom and distribute them as needed (some get worn again, some go into the laundry hamper).
I've always invited Apricot to "come help me put the clothes away" and he usually comes along cheerfully, but he's always avoided the bag I'm carrying.
Now with Pippin, if he was walking with me and swung in next to me, I would "boop" him on the shoulders and back with the clothing bag. It's soft and no harm's done, and Pippin would arch his back into the bag's base as if petting himself with it. A different sensation than either my hands or his own grooming, I think. He liked this.
Apricot was walking with me to the bedroom and swung in next to me. I was befuddled from the roofing fumes at work and not thinking quickly or, well, much at all. And just going on muscle memory, I booped him on the back with the bag. Right after I did it I thought, oh, crap, you idiot, he's still skittish around that bag!
Only he wasn't. He arched his back into the bag just like Pippin had done. He seemed perfectly at ease with the entire situation, as if nothing unusual had happened at all. But this is the cat who prior to this incident had never walked close enough to the bag to encounter it.
So I called him a brave boy and such a good brave kitty, and let my admiration show in my voice. Because I hadn't worked up to this concept or prepared him for it or anything!
And Friday when I came home from work he was in the kitchen window in the tunnel cat tree, apparently waiting for me. He even stayed long enough after I got out of the car for me to get a picture of him!
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| Waiting in the window |
He's becoming such a brave boy. I only wish I could convince him that nothing outside the house can get to him or hurt him, and he doesn't have to be afraid of storms. Because I missed having him around yesterday.
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