problem-solving
Overheard in the Wolfe House #276
Peggy (after arriving home in surprise visit in the middle of the day): You’re writing code?
Sam: Yes. (pauses) For Sibelius.
Deep thoughts while traveling I20
Yesterday Michael drove us to East Texas to visit Aunt Regina. After years of driving the kids to all their extra-curriculars and these past few years of going solo on so many things, it’s really nice to sit back in a comfy, air-conditioned seat, doze off from time to time, and let someone else deal with the traffic.
That was the case last month, too, when two of my sisters took turns at the wheel of the rental car as we visited the Florida Keys for almost a week. Although, with that being on my bucket list and all, I didn’t do any dozing off.
The Great Sister Trip, Florida Keys, June 2014
During the drive home from East Texas, I remembered how hard Mark and I worked to keep the kids entertained on long trips. We were always far from family, whether in New York, California or Texas, and rarely had enough money to fly. As a young boy, too, Sam was a terrible traveler. In the early years, we didn’t even try. We’d load the kids up dressed in their pajamas at about 8 p.m. and drive all night, taking turns in 3-hour shifts at the wheel.
That was exhausting. Mark often did the lion’s share. I figure that’s how he knew he could spend his summers driving long-haul truck routes. To recover, he often spent the next day (as in the first day of that family vacation) sleeping.
When the kids got a little older, we brought movies along. We bought a little tv with the video player built in and used a DC adapter to run it off the cigarette lighter.
The kids didn’t want to watch movies all the time. They liked playing old-school car games, too. The alphabet game, the license plate game, travel bingo, Mad Libs. One year, I made a copy of a Texas road map and taped it to the ceiling of the van so they could follow the route along and check off towns as we passed them.
The kids would see more towns than were on the map, so they made their own checklists one year, too.
There are a lot of towns in the Texas Panhandle.
I never thought about it as any more than trying to help them be comfortable and save Mark and me a few gray hairs from the trips. Our road trips were pleasant enough for as long as they were.
Yesterday, though, I came to understand that those long rides and little games taught the kids a valuable lesson about confronting boredom in meaningful ways, and about being observant.
Probably something to keep in mind before you ply your kids with electronics. That is, unless you can find e-versions of those games that make them look out the window and work together from time to time.
Overheard in the Wolfe House #273
Peggy (noting the washer lid is open): Wait. The washer went off-balance?
Sam: I opened it before it started.
Peggy: I didn’t hear that. Did I miss it?
Sam: I can hear it when the motor sound starts refracting.
Peggy (face palm)
Bring a blanket and …
Paige wants your foreign travel packing tips. Click through to YouTube if you want to leave it there, or leave it below and I’ll get it to her.
Oh, and that little adapter thing. It’s traveled the world so much it could be a Flat Stanley. Her Grandma and Grandpa brought it back from Saudi Arabia. Her father and I used it on our European travels.
Trouble at the Gate
This trail ride was a thing of beauty. It was terrific to see Sam’s determination at the end, but “closing the gate” was not to be. Sam and Trevor did not medal in this event, either.
I always kind of wonder whether a real gate would be easier.
Overheard in the Wolfe House #270
Michael (watching YouTube and trying to tie a bow tie for the first time): That middle step is on crack.
Saturday night in the kitchen with Sam
Over the years we have made a true commitment to our family’s health by doing a lot of cooking and baking. Tonight, I’m making another batch of yogurt and Sam is making kolaches.
I had enough variety of leftover beans from a bunch of winter cooking to make a mixed-bean soup, too.
Over conversation about tablet computers, e-reader apps, and area equestrian Special Olympics (they moved it up to today instead of tomorrow … awesome flexibility demonstrated by area stables in order to avoid predicted storms), I put this old family favorite together, substituting in lamb stock for water at the end.
Bountiful Bean Soup
2 cups mixed beans
1 quart water
4 slices of bacon, diced
1 large carrot, sliced
1 clove garlic
1 bay leaf
6 cups water
Salt and pepper to taste
Bring beans and first quart of water to a boil. Cover and let stand for an hour. Drain and rinse a little. (This helps reduce your need for Bean-o)
Fry bacon in a dutch oven and discard all but 2 t. of the rendered fat. (Or, leave out the bacon and heat 2 T. of olive oil.)
Add the carrot and garlic and saute for a few minutes to carmelize, then add beans and water and bay leaf. Bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer, cooking for 90 minutes or so until the beans are tender.
Remove bay leaf, taste and add salt and pepper to taste.
Overheard in the Wolfe House #266
Peggy (looking at Sam’s frazzled face): So you had a rough day, too?
Sam: Yes. But at least I got something done at horseback riding.
Probiotic Potion Master (in training)
I wish that the amount of awareness and research into autism and the gut was part of our lives when Sam was a baby.
I can’t help but think things would be different. I touched on some of the problems that emerged when he was a toddler in See Sam Run. But there was never, ever any kind of meaningful conversation with his pediatrician until he reached his teens.
By then, Sam’s food preferences could just as easily fall into the category of an eating disorder as be seen for what they likely were — an adaptation to what gave him bellyaches on a scale that I don’t think the rest of us could tolerate.
But Mark and I were ready to take out a second mortgage on the house so that Sam and I could spend the summer at an in-patient treatment program at Ohio State when Sam was 14 or 15 years old. Sam had shot up at that point, but he wasn’t eating meat. He looked every bit as undernourished as he was, especially his skinny little quads and calves. The program helped get kids with autism to expand their eating choices. Another parent on the autism journey whom I really trust had recommended it.
Fortunately for us, the treatment director recommended that we rule out Celiac disease before we got there, since that was something they typically did before they started treatment anyways. Sam couldn’t eat any gluten for a week before the blood draw, and he got really hungry.
He decided he could eat meat after all. He like sausage the best. He also figured out ways to taste and try new things to decide for himself whether he liked them. We decided that was enough of a breakthrough not to hock the house.
Even though they were able to rule out Celiac, the test results hinted at trouble. We talked about it, but there really was nothing more to be done, the doctor said.
When it was time for him to transition from his pediatrician to the family physician, she asked me if I had any concerns for him. Again, I tried to open the door to talk about his digestive troubles. She said she didn’t know anything about it and that was the end of that.
The issue has re-emerged for him and this time we are going after it a lot more informed. When he was a preschooler and would only eat cereal morning, noon and night, we fortified his milk with l. acidolphilus. I’d always made yogurt over the years, although Sam wasn’t always a big fan. We had some inkling of what needed to be done to help his digestive system, but we didn’t know to what degree.
My first hint, honestly, that there was a much, much bigger world of beneficial bacteria out there was when my daughter, Paige, started making us kimchi and told me it was a health food.
Light bulb.
So, now we are all about the fermenting here at the Wolfe House. I started with Creole cream cheese. I tried not to channel my home economics teacher as I sat that milk out on the counter for a day and half. But it was wonderful. I made crepes and filled them with the cheese topped them with warm strawberry jam. Sam likes cheesecake so I thought it wouldn’t be too much of a reach, but it was. Oh, well, more for Michael and me.
Plus, I had a whole bunch of the kind of whey the author of Mastering Fermentation likes to use in her recipes. Next up was probiotic ketchup (a hit) and hummus (good, but a miss for Sam.)
When we make our salad dressings now — Sam is a huge salad fan — we use vinegar with the mother. (Just Google it. The point is to eat food that’s alive.)
Judy Thurston over at Hidden Valley Dairy suggested keifer (another hit) and I just ordered supplies I need to make soy sauce and regular cream cheese.
I want to get good at making cheese so that I can make the one he loves: Parmesan.
I’m still working on getting supplies for what I’m sure will be a big hit when I get it done: salami.
No kidding, it’s fermented. Is that why sausage was the breakthrough for him 10 years ago?
Well, back to the kitchen. Got more potions work to do.
See Sam Drive: Lost in mid-cities
If I ever doubted that no good deed goes unpunished, the lesson was reinforced today.
Michael had a job interview and asked to borrow the truck, since the air conditioning is out in his car.
(This is February, you say. This is Texas, I tell you.)
So out of his routine was he, that when he returned to the truck after the interview, he realized he locked the key inside. He called to ask whether there was a hide-a-key.
(No, son, a hide-a-key is something parents make their kids do with their own car.)
He didn’t want to pay for a locksmith if Sam could come with a spare. There was time. Sam loaded directions in the GPS on his phone and headed out.
Sam is not a fan of I-35. E or W. He took State Highway 114 and headed south on Precinct Line Road to where Michael was, in North Richland Hills. That was probably a mistake. Maybe U.S. Highway 377 would have been better. He got lost somewhere in Keller — so lost that he pulled over and called police to get help. They came and gave him directions.
Sam made it to the parking lot where Michael was waiting and the two of them were supposed to follow each other to I-820, where they would part ways at I-35W.
I thought all was well and then Michael called me again.
“I lost him,” he said.
Every parent of a child with autism knows this terror. And now his brother was learning it, too. Michael recounted as much of the situation as he could, starting with the moment he realized Sam was heading down State Highway 183 the wrong way, and I was at a loss of what to suggest next.
Sam had turned his phone off to save battery life. That worried us both. Not only was he not communicating with us, we knew “Siri” wasn’t giving him directions home.
“Call the police. Make a report,” I told him. “We can’t do this. We need the village.”
A co-worker (one of several that talked me off the ledge today) offered to take me home and Shahla provided a bit of support via text. Meanwhile, Michael was making a report with the police. I so hoped that Sam would be parked in the driveway when I got home, but he wasn’t.
I put an alert on Facebook and started to regroup. I would take Michael’s car and meet him and the police in North Richland Hills where they were making a missing persons report. (Because Sam has autism, it would have gone out immediately.)
And then Sam came down the driveway. I called Michael. The police shredded the missing persons report Michael had just signed.
Sam’s car parked in the barn formerly known as a garage
It took awhile for the emotions to settle and the conversation to begin. Sam knew he had separated from Michael and had been going the wrong way down the highway. But he remembered the directions Michael gave and when he was sure things weren’t looking right, he turned around and went the other way. He stopped at a medical center to get directions, too, and then he headed home.
(So, Tim Ruggiero, not only pizza places, but also medical centers are good places to get directions, we learned today.)
We gave ourselves a list of things to do, like Michael joining AAA, and Sam putting GPS in his car with a “home” button, and me putting a hide-a-key on the truck, so that all our good deeds trying to help each other out don’t get so punishing.
And, a big shout-out to all of the mid-cities’ finest. You got to know autism today and you did well.