Day Eight

My hour-long daily dog walk gives me time for some deep contemplation about life and the beauty of nature. Although this morning I had to pick up a labrador turd from next to a dead pigeon, so, there’s that.

It was a fragrant start to what, by my calculations, is the 42nd day of UK lockdown measures, and Day Eight of my charidee blogathon. Only Day Eight and I’m writing about dog poo. God help us all.

Yesterday I spoke about food, and the insatiable appetite that affects people with Prader-Willi Syndrome. 

Today, it’s another biggie - emotional immaturity.

I’m not talking about simply having a short fuse, like my brother did when we were kids and I used to be able to make him lose his shit instantly, with one laser-targeted insult. It was as easy as snapping my fingers, which was ironic, as he did, on one occasion, snap my finger. And burst a blood vessel in my eye when his wild attempt to give me a dead arm missed and connected with my eyeball instead. He’s a police officer now, which I hope you will find reassuring.

No, the kind of emotional immaturity I’m talking about is the PWS person’s inability to understand and control their emotions. 

The loss of control can take different forms: ‘temper tantrums’ more akin to a toddler’s; violent rages (a hefty teenage boy with PWS who has had testosterone supplements can be a frightening, unstoppable force); or sobbing meltdowns.

My girl’s speciality is the latter, a wave of crying that comes over her - sometimes with an obvious cause, sometimes not - that you have to sit and wait out, as while it happens she is oblivious to anything you are saying. You know, like how your mate got after she came round and drank two bottles of merlot after that terrible break-up and then just wouldn’t stop, despite you telling her she was better off without the bastard. The only difference with my girl is that when the tide rolls back and she stops crying, she suddenly clicks back to normal, as if nothing has happened. Not like your mate, who will spend the next half hour telling you she bloody loves you. And then puke.

The flip side of my daughter’s emotional meltdowns are that when you think she might have one, she won’t. When my mum, her beloved Nanna, died, she informed me that she felt like she should cry but she probably wouldn’t. She doesn’t understand emotions, even if she sometimes gets the theory of them, she can’t always recognise what she or others are feeling. 

Today, the feels are good, though. My daughter is curled up on the sofa watching a 1994 film adaptation of Black Beauty, happy and fascinated and not questioning the logic of a horse whose inner voice is narrated by Alan Cummings. My boy is near me, but not needing my immediate attention, as he is lost in the world of Minecraft. So I’ve been left alone long enough in daylight hours (for 42 minutes to be precise) to listen uninterrupted to an entire LP (a rather splendid pink vinyl copy of St. Vincent’s Masseducation). Although it may now have a scratch on it from where I was a bit clumsy leaping up to lift the needle when I remembered too late that the chorus to 'New York' contains not one, not two, but three perfectly enunciated ‘motherf***er’s.

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/carolyn-s-2-6-challenge1972

Song is St. Vincent - New York. You're all right if your kids are listening: this version says 'you're the only other sucker'. I mean, I prefer the sweary one, but I thought I'd treat you to the catsuit.

As part of the 2.6 Challenge (which is asking people to fundraise and donate towards small charities that are threatened with closure because of the effects of the Covid-19 crisis) I'm currently writing 26 blogs in 26 days.The PWSA UK is a charity which is absolutely vital for people with PWS, their families, carers and professionals who work with them. Without urgent help, PWSA UK will fold. This charity saves lives and for some people makes lives worth living. If you can, please go to my Just Giving page. All of you who have donated 26p, £2.60, £26 or any other amount are awesome motherf***ers, sorry, suckers.

Yellow

I've been looking up types of waves.

Breaking Waves are formed when the wave collapses on top of itself. 
Plunging Breakers reach steeper beaches and curl, moving very fast.
Spilling Breakers disperse their energy over a large area.
Internal Waves are high and become turbulent currents when they hit a land mass.
Tsunamis are caused by earthquakes and are dangerous and devastating.  

My daughter occasionally gets swamped by her emotions. We say it’s like a wave hitting her. Sometimes you can yank her out quickly onto dry land, sometimes you have to wait until the tide goes out.

Thanks to my less than exhaustive research on wave vocabulary, I can now describe the tidal phenomenom which affected her today. It was a Refracted Wave. Definition: a wave that travels in shallow water decreasing in power, curving gently. In other words, a littl’un.

It was a tiny pebble that started the ripples. And yes, it was, as it often is, my fault.

Her school tie is blue and black stripes. But Years 9, 10 and 11 actually have slightly different versions: hers, in Year 9, has a thin gold (or what she insists is yellow) outline on the black stripe, but Year 10's has a silver edge and Year 11's is red.  Clear? Are you following this?

I assumed that the colours were permanently allotted to the Years (and suspected it was a moneyspinner, to make you buy a new tie every September). But I was wrong. My girl discovered today that the outline colour stays with you throughout your time at school. So the yellow edged tie will go up to Year 10s next school year, and Year 11 the year after. Are you still following?

Let me put it simply. You only need one tie. You don’t buy a new, slightly-different coloured one each year. Like I’d told her. 

So upon discovering this fact at school today my daughter had a tearful half an hour, swamped by refracted waves of emotion. (See what I did there with my new-found wave awareness?)

Her orderly expectations of How Things Are And Will Be had been disturbed. The teachers calmed her down and tried to explain. They even did a picture to try to help her visualise it.

But what it needed was a super-duper chart (see above, preferably whilst wearing sunglasses). We got the felt tips out when she got home. The design was a little ‘busier’ than I’d planned, after we decided to decorate it with yellow things she likes. But I think she’s got it now. 

Video is Throwing Muses - Bright Yellow Gun. No big lyrical connection with today's post, apart from the colour reference. But come on, be honest, it's got more get up and go than Coldplay's Yellow, hasn't it?

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Wave
Dam