Comedy Through The Chaos

Happy Thursday friends. Hello and I'm so happy to be joining you here in the Cadre sphere. I am Ms. Shannon, a variety of things that are word related. We're primarily the happy mother of an adorable 16 year old boy who happens to be on the autism spectrum. And I am happy to be joining you on this caregiver Thursday. You might be watching me in the replay because I am also. I know, I noticed that some of our other friends were not at their regular time today either. I am an hour earlier than what I normally do and that is my fault.

I don't even use the word fault. I said fault because I think that my brain defaults to using certain words and there has been a process where I've been actively trying to use certain words less. Hello our stigma. Thanks for joining me. I'm a little early this week. Hello Jules, I'm glad that you found me. Colleen, hello. Hello. I the reason that I was able to move this up is because our program director Colleen was able to move us up and if it turns out that 1 o'clock is better for everybody, I can scoot it up.

I did two honestly, because 2pm is really like usually one of the last adulting things I get to do in the peace and quiet of my home when we're in the regular school year. Before I go pick up Cyclone kid this morning I, I was very proud of him. I took a picture. Today is picture day at his school and so I in my opinion and esteem dressed him very, very dapperly and so we will see if he took the picture. So since I wasn't guaranteed that he was going to take the photos once he got to school, I took a little quick photo real quick before he went into the building today because I thought he looked quite handsome today and it's one of the things that has been an interesting journey for us.

Like I'm really proud of the fact that now he's to the point that he has an opinion that he conveys about his attire that he likes to chime in on what kind of shirt he has and what kind of wall, I mean what kind of hat he has. We've I put up a hat frame on his wall with a variety of different hats and if you guys are ever interested in seeing what Cyclone kids room looks like, let me know and I will take you on a walkabout and you can see all of the modifications that I've done over the last couple weeks.

I have been talking about the modification we're doing at the house and that is part of the reason I'm upstairs instead of downstairs in our studio is because the remodelers are going to be stopping by soon to work on our bathroom some more and to start buttoning some things up, which hopefully they'll be done with next week. Oh, you get to meet my cat today. Normally my cat is not around. That's Luke, everybody. Specifically, that is Luke Cage Skywalker, my cat. And it's been an interesting week and that's why I wanted to check in with all of you and, and do all this, the, this, the, the wonderful things that we do here in the Cadre sphere.

And one of the things that I had to remind myself this week, I want to share with you is that along with the care that I give from, for my son, which I'm greatly appreciative that I get to do, I also am a fully functioning human being that has a career that I have to work on. And so it's interesting the way things bleed in and how easily since we are full time caregivers and some ilk, we can let that bleed into other parts of our lives where you unintentionally end up caretaking and caregiving for people that you don't necessarily need to be responsible for.

And I have to catch myself some time and go, just because, because I'm being appropriate with the boundary that I set or I'm holding my rate regarding a negotiation or doing something like that doesn't mean I'm a bad person. I save a lot of that energy where I am negotiating and things and using that skill set on my kiddo where it is necessary and saving that energy, saving that ability to maintain bandwidth. That's where I do it so I don't have to do it every place else. And I have to remind myself that quite often to not snap into, oh, take care of this human being as well.

And it doesn't mean that I'm a bad person or I'm not kind. I am kind. But what I needed today after an interaction is I needed to call somebody in my system, particular friend Rashini, to I, I, I, I'm almost disappointed in myself that I needed somebody to validate the things that I said. But I did. Like I really had this interaction where I'm going, I just need somebody else to say, yes, you're okay in doing what you just did, even though I knew I was right. And so I hope you have some people in your life that can do that for you.

It might be some of us here in Cadre to go. Yeah, yep, I dropped that information in the chat. And yes, we co sign the decision that you made. We co sign the boundary that you set. We co sign the moments that you carved out for yourself or the reason why you maintained your bandwidth. We co sign that for you. And if you don't have somebody in your circle to do that, like, I was able to like, scroll through my contacts and go, I just need to verbalize this interaction that was a lot more tense and tenuous than I think it needed to be.

And so I was able to call that person. So I encourage you to find those people in your system that you can be vulnerable with and talk to about some of these subject matters so that you don't continually have to weigh everything on your own. Agree, Jules? Sometimes having a cheerleader support person makes a big difference. It did. Even though I had gotten off the call with the previous person, it was good to be able to call somebody and go, hey, can I just talk this through with you real quick?

You know, and to have them say to me what I was saying. Even better that in this particular situation, and I know we have other caregiver. I'm sorry, other contributors to talk about this. It was one of those no is a full sentence moments that a lot of people tell us, that's okay. No can be a full sentence. You don't have to justify everything. And I allowed myself to get sucked back into justification and then to slightly feel guilty about the decision that I made that was completely valid. Completely valid.

So hopefully you have those people that are in your circle as well to jump forward, because my remodeler just got here. That is going much better than I thought. And I. I think sometimes once you put out you need to the universe, it will give you back. I thought originally when we scheduled this, they were going to do two weeks straight, but they did last week. And then because of some necessary scheduling things on their side, they ended up taking this week off primarily. So this is the first day they've been back.

And I think that worked out really well for my son. The fact that we didn't have people coming in first thing in the morning for that long of a time period without a break. It worked out wonderfully that we got to have a few days of you get up and it's again, it's just you and mom in the house doing the things that we need to do to get off to school and go see our friends and have a break for that, I think worked out really well. And we'll be able to do a shorter stint next week. So I'll give you a real quick thing before my remodeling friend Gustavo comes here.

Here's what our bathroom looks like this week. There's currently like no floor. There's going to be an official flooring there and you can see it is a bathroom. You can tell because there is still a shower in here, but there are no other facilities that will be put back in next week. So thank goodness for our first world problems that we get to use our downstairs bathroom and I didn't have to have them put a porta potty in our front yard that who knows, My kiddo may have thought that was a grand adventure.

His mother would not have done that. So I'm glad that we could just saunter downstairs to the basement back to what Jewel said and what I was doing earlier. If you need more cheerleaders and support people in your life as you are supporting whoever it is that you are supporting as a caregiver, this is a great place to build that circle. You know, I know that sometimes we're in maybe not a physical rural community, but the universal world of being in a universe, a rural community where maybe there aren't a lot of people in your immediate circle that can do that for you, but that is also what we can lean on one another here in the Cadre sphere to provide that for each other.

If you need a cheerleader, hopefully you can connect with a lot of us who are very interested in doing that with you and cheering you on to whatever your end goal is and giving you the support that you need to be able to make it even. That's just saying, hey, you know what? Applause to to you for setting that boundary. Applause to you for taking a full shower today. Applause to you for giving yourself time to feel yourself. So you deserve those applause and that support. Thus, always the feedback that we love to have in the Cadre sphere and you can get a hold of us in a variety of ways.

In theory. I will be back at 2pm Central next Thursday. We shall see. But again, if this works as far as being malleable for the needs of the community, let me know. If you like 1pm Central better, we'll give it a shot and we'll see how it goes. And then hopefully next week I will have some additional updates on the safety modifications that we are doing here. In the meantime, please be kind to yourself. If you can't be kind to yourself, who else is going to be able to do it for you some days, but we appreciate you, and we will see you next week.