Comedy Through The Chaos

Hello and happy Thursday to all of you here in the Cadre sphere. I hope that the week is treating you well. If you wonder who the blue haired lady is who is talking to you right Now, I am Ms. Shannon. Excited to be joining you on this Caregiver Thursday. Be honest with you, it's going to be a little short today because I have a meeting that I need to be at that would be during my normal scheduled time. So since that is not going to be available to me, I thought based upon my schedule today and maybe as caregivers you have this internal conversation with yourself a lot.

Would I feel better if I cancel this thing that is important to me or would I rather do it and worry about the time later? And so for me, I decided that I would feel better even if this was a short time that I got to hang out with all of you, then to cancel it altogether this week, even though it's a little complicated because I have this meeting that is at 2pm Central, my time. But I wanted to tell you about this. I put a message in our community chat and I put a picture in it and it's a picture of the items that I received in a very special Christmas gift.

Many of you who may be full time caregivers like I am, and I know a lot of us here in the chat are doing that. Maybe you've gotten to the point. I am not accustomed to getting presents from my kiddo. It's just not a thing that he normally is capable, I'll use that word, of doing or haven't been thus far. You know, I'd have to take him to like buy presents and say, you were buying this for Mom. And that's not really something that I have elected to use our time doing because it's not. It's something that's cool, but it's not something that's overly important to me that way.

And normally my sister, who I talk about a lot, she's the one who buys me presents on behalf of my kiddo and she's very sweet about it and she kind of like pokes at him until he comes and gives me the presents. But this year at school, unbeknownst to me, they helped the kiddos get presents for us. And so when I picked them up last week before we went in the holiday break, they handed me a gift bag that had some stuff in it and it said to mom from Dom. He wrote on the little tiny sticker. I was very impressed because his handwriting is not always the most compact.

It's usually pretty robust, but he wrote, you know his name, hi Luke. So he wrote all of this on this tiny sticker. And he gave me this present, some presents that I knew were in this gift bag and I decided to save them until yesterday. So I stuck them under the tree, like all of the stuff that I'd gotten for him. And so when it got to the point that I got to open a present, when normally I just watch him take presents and I mean open presents and I take pictures and that's all glorious. I got to open this gift and I did it on my little.

On my social media. And I have got to tell you how amazing he did. So he picked out absolutely great things. And I know it was probably with some help from his instructors, but I kind of get the vibe that he had a lot to do with it because it's things that he's seen me use in the house. Like he got me some butter, some body butter, some lotions. And so we do a lot of moisturizing in our house. And I've been really working on that with him. He got me some very adorable holiday socks. And then he also picked out.

It's one of those face exfoliating brushes that I have one, but I don't have a pink one. I have one that I use along with him because I've been trying to teach him that skin care is for everybody, especially 16 year old boys. It's good for them. You need to wash your face. And I was really impressed. And the other thing is that he has, he's at the age now and his program that he has a job at school. So he's been like earning money. And I like the fact that they helped him with the money that he had earned to buy these presents.

And I know that they're all probably from like a dollar store somewhere around us and all this stuff. And I'll be honest with you, I don't care. It was the sweetest moment and I really appreciated how far he'd come. I'd say it that way, and even saying that way, I feel a little silly saying that, but you probably have things in your house that you have been working on along with the people that you care for. And it may have been years in the making. Some of the things that you work on, and this is one of those things that I wasn't working on it specifically so that one day Cyclone kid could pick out holiday presents for me.

But I have been working for him to be able to make choices and decisions in a way that's appropriate to him, to where he's at on the spectrum, and to give him his version of autonomy and to be able to thrive. And so for him to be able to help them make these choices and realize, yeah, mom likes those little scrubber brushes things. She gets me to use it all the time is a big deal for us. So if there's some things in your life that other people would think were silly but are actually kind of a big deal for you, hey, man, give yourself all of those roses for those moments.

It's important to do that. And you get to decide what's a big deal for you. You get to decide if it's something that's throwing you off, and it seems like a little deal, but it's a big deal for you. And you also get to decide if some of these wins that go on in your universe, even though other people might go as silly that you're so happy about it. Enjoy all of your joy for all of those moments that you have, because those joyful moments can be really fleeting. And our brain, unless we encourage and train it to latch onto those moments, it shall not.

It will let it all pass and let it all go by. So you need to get your staff out like Gandalf and say, you shall not pass to all the joyful moments in your life. I hope you appreciate that. Lord of the Rings reference. Everybody, I am going to head off to a meeting that I'm using positivity for. Even though it has been causing me some anxiety over the last couple of weeks. I'm like, okay, we're gonna get this done. It's gonna work out fine. We're gonna move on. And I want to remind you before I head out that we have a variety of amazing contributors here in the Cadre sphere.

We hope that you pass this along to other people in your life that may be of need of having some community building around them. That is what we are here for. And you can always let us know if there's particular content that you would like for us to continue to foster and create and find contributors that can support you in the way that you need to best support it. So with that, I am off to the meeting. I will see you all next week. And let me know what you think of the present that Cyclone got me.

Giant hugs, everybody.