Comedy Through The Chaos

Hello friends. Happy Thursday to you. If you are checking in with me on Thursday, if you're checking to in with me in the future. Hello future friends. I hope that the future is treating you well. If it's not, I understand the future is not always kind to us and I'm sure that you are doing the best that you can. Speaking of whoever you are, I'm Ms. Shannon. I'm a comedian, a corporate speaker, voice actor, vet mc, benefit auctioneer, hubbing out of the great state of Minnesota. The title I'm most proud of though is Mom.

I happen to be the mother of an adorable hello Speak Wonder. Hello. Hello. I was just letting people know who I am. I'm saying I was also happen to be the proud mom of an adorable 17 year old kiddo who also happens to be high supports on the autism spectrum. So I'm happy to be joining you today on this caregiver Thursday. It is I think for a lot of us a complicated time here in the US So if you are feeling that complexity, I stand with you and I understand we're going to do our best to breathe through it and see what we can do.

Hello and hi Speak Wonder. It is raining here in Minnesota. I enjoy the rain. So does my kiddo. We need it, of course, for things to bloom. Thank you. I'm glad that you think that he is adorable. I also think that he is adorable. He is also the reason that I'm feeling a little bit behind. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I was traveling for work and that all went great. It was something that was causing me a great deal of anxiety about. But I part of why this time period is so busy for me is that this is like a busy event season which is a lot of what my career related stuff is.

So I've just been really busy and I up until a couple of minutes ago was truly just picking myself apart. So I'm going to show you a little tour of the house in a second. Second. Because I'm at that mode where I feel like every room, every room needs to be clean. Like there is a pile in every room in this house. There is a modicum of clean in every spot. Like every house. Every spot. There's something that I have put away, but there's also a project in every room in the house. And I have this evening scheduled to get some of that done.

When his pca, his personal care assistant comes this evening. I'm gonna work on some of that when Sophia gets here because that's sexy. That's what I'm gonna do with my. With my time that I'm not parenting my adorable 17 year old that I care for. I'm gonna clean the house this evening. And he's just interesting. So like last night, you know, to. To just add. Exacerbate the cleaning projects, he's decided to help disperse them throughout the house. So here's the. The part I'm going to show you first is that I have a lot of.

And I know that some of our friends, like for instance from the autism center and those things. Minnesota Autism center talked about this because we were talking about occupational therapy. I have over the years collected a variety of therapeutic things and activities for them to work. So we have. You know, that's the whole reason I have this treadmill as I use it. But I mostly got it for him. But I also have this block. And so if you were a CrossFit person, then yeah, you could use this block if you were gonna do CrossFit.

I got it. So he has something to occupy himself when he's in the house and to use therapy. And so it's one of these blocks that does this just so you know. So it opens up and it's a ramp. You can do it and jump off of it like I just did. That's cool. But this blot normally lives downstairs in the basement with a bunch of other. His. His other stuff. Hello? Hello. Cause. Cause that's a new name. A new name. In the chat. Welcome. I was explaining some of the occupational therapy things that I've collected from my son over the years and how I've been picking myself apart about the house being messy.

So to. For some reason last night he decided he was going to go sleep downstairs in our basement. And so I'm like, okay, fine. So I went down there and I checked on him and he was awake longer than Hello, Kaka's. I know where Speak Wonder is, but I'd love to know where you're joining the chat from. Let me know. Let me know if you're a caregiver. You know, if you're just checking in because you like ladies with blue hair. That is also a correct answer. There is no incorrect answer. So the thing is, when I checked on him last night, he stayed up a little longer than I had anticipated as teenagers are want to do.

And so this morning I heard him thumping around downstairs and literally like thumping around. I'm like, what is he doing? So before I could get to the part of the house. Hello? Yes, caregiver. Thank you. Very much for sharing. Before I could get out of the back part of the house to figure out what he was doing, I got into the living room and he walked past me and I saw that he had brought this upstairs. And I don't know why. I have no idea why. I don't know. He does stuff all the time. I have no idea.

As Speak Wonder put earlier in the chat, my son is adorable. He's adorable. He is his version of logical. I'm sure he had a reason. Do I know the reason? Can he, in the way that he processes language and talks to me, explain his reasoning for why he brought this up here? No. But now it's just another thing that I have to redistribute into the house. So I was really feeling that. That, that sense of, oh my gosh, that, that burden that you get on your shoulders, that burden of, I am never going to be able to have the house be clean again.

I'm going to live in squalor. Every room is going to continue to have a project. Yeah, exactly. I mean, he has a reason. Speak Won has a reason. He always has a reason. I just don't know what that reason is. And it's. It makes sense in his way. I just don't know. It's not going to make sense to me. And so I've just had to learn to not be frustrated with the fact that that is the way the world works. So I kind of snapped into do what you can mode. So I started putting a few things away. When I get like that, I kind of forget to like do self care things.

So I'm like, make yourself something to drink. You know, go get hydrate. I don't mean like make a cocktail. I don't mean that. I went. I started to hydrate. I got that. I got. I got myself some chia seed water. Yeah, it's the middle of the day. I don't need a day drink. That's not going to solve any of this stuff. It is an option for some people. It's not an option for me. So I'm not judging. I'm just saying that's not what I meant. So what I ended up doing is like, okay, hydrate. Get yourself some of that.

I made myself something to eat for lunch because I hadn't really done that yet. And then I was like, you know what I can do is I have some plants, like including one that my friend gave me for my birthday that I've been trying to keep alive. So I'm like, go water your Plants and get the plants out. And one of the things that I did last weekend, instead of prioritizing cleaning certain part of the house, part of that was you have some little projects that you haven't started that are taking up space.

And for me, what that was is. Or one of those things is I decided that this year, back to the beginning of the conversation about watering and what do we need for the plants. And those things is that my sister who lives next door, she and I talked about how we were going to really work harder on our garden and planting some things. So I have a great variety of seeds, and some of these seeds are very well labeled. You know, like, I have these. I was one of those people that fell for buy yourself these heirloom seeds off tick tock shop.

So I know exactly what's in each of those. You can see they're well labeled. But then I also ordered some other seeds online, and those are less than well labeled. And so I tried to go back to the order and kind of an alignment, see what they were. And finally I just was like, okay, I'm not gonna worry about it. I'm just gonna plan them and see how it goes. So because the weather is still odd here in Minnesota, I got myself some of those hydroponic starter trays to put in the house. And I spent the time this weekend putting them, putting some seeds in them, and then just labeling them tray 1, 2, and 3, because I don't know what they are, and we'll see what gross.

And I was like, whatever, if I get plants, that's cool. And so I just stopped thinking about it because I'm like, I don't know what these seeds are anyway. I don't even know if the seeds are good seeds or if they're just crappy seeds that may never germinate. Germinate. Anyway, so today, in my. Okay, do what you can. Mold. I watered the plant that my friend gave me because it was looking peaked. It's looking better. And I was like, oh, you should water those seeds. You started. And surprise, surprise, we have sprouts, friends.

We have sprouts. And so this is our current science project. And look at this. There's some sprouts in there. This one doesn't have any yet. I need to plug that back in. I just noticed. And then look at that. Call me surprised. And you would be correct. I was surprised to see that there were sprouts in those already, although I had planted them, and although I don't know what they are, and although I don't know what they will turn into. And so I think that is a wonderful metaphor for what we quite often are doing as caregivers, is that we are watering those, we are feeding those, we are taking care of and giving care to and for the people that we love and who are important to us.

And we don't always know when the outcome is going to happen or what the outcome is. We don't know what their virgin version of logic is. We just know that we just keep doing what it is that we can do. What I can do is water those. I can make sure that they have the light that I can provide for them. I can make sure that my son has the occupational tools and I can put him in the path of the things, because sometimes I can't get him to do the thing, but I can put him in the path of it and it in the path of him, and it usually works itself out.

And so that might be what you need to do in your situation, is you just keep planting those seeds. You keep watering those seeds. Once you put them into motion, give them the light that you can, and then give yourself that wonderful feeling of surprise when some of them do grow. That is amazing. Like, I was like, you know what? You've been too hard on yourself today. You will get clean what needs to be clean. You will get done what you can get done. And what needs to grow will continue to grow. So thank you very much.

Speak Wonder. Hopefully that helps you as well. Cause it is a continual adventure for all of us in this. In this caregiver landscape. And hopefully we continue to be a resource and trade tools with one another. Speak Wonder. It is, yes, Speak Wonder. Growth is happening even when you don't think it is right. And you know, sometimes you're just. It's just my job to do what I can to foster growth. And I remind myself of that. And then things take different amounts of time to grow. Just because that one center tray does not have sprouts yet does not mean that it's not going to sprout.

Those are completely different seeds than what I put in the other two trays. So possibly those take more time. And if I just continue to care for them, continue to make sure that the warmer tray is underneath them, continue to make sure that they get light every day, they can too, eventually sprout. And that's what I have to remind myself a lot of what I'm doing. I got my son's progress report yesterday, and he did really well. I'm very proud of him. And I told him so that I'm very proud of him because it came back really good and he's made, you know, adequate progress.

But for us, that's a big deal. And they've said he really has opened up a lot this year and that's huge, absolutely huge. So remind yourself of that metaphor. You know, plant your seeds, water your seeds, give your seed light, make sure they get circulation, that they get air. Treat yourself the same way. Plant and water yourself. Give yourself light, give yourself air, give yourself warmth. All of those things that you do for the other people that you care for so that they can grow, you need to do for yourself.

Hopefully we help you out a little bit here in the Cadre sphere with some of that, some of that support, some of that growth, some of that light. If there's anything that we can ever do to continue to support you in that, please let us know. Always drop the information in the chat. Whether you end up checking in with us live or you end up checking with us in the replay, we always love to hear from you. Speak Wonder also has wonderful content cacao so I enjoy encourage you to check them out as well.

They're another one of our contributors here on Thursdays for our caregiver community. But regardless of what kind of content you have, there is a wide variety of contributors that are here. We always like to remind you about that hearts to you as well. Speak Wonder and we want to be here when and how you need us. When you have those moments where you could use a little bit of light, hopefully we could do that for you as well. So water but don't over water. You're welcome. Speak Wonder. Don't drown your plants and hopefully I will see you back here next Thursday everybody.

Much love, much light, stay warm. We appreciate you enjoy the rest of your week.