Author Archives: Crystal

Murder Among the Mateys

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Buccaneers, booty and bloodshed were the order of the day at my annual murder mystery birthday party last night. After plundering their way around the Caribbean, the pirate crew of the Jaded Jewel celebrated their return to Port Royal at the Salty Sea Dog Tavern, where a colorful group of nobles, sailors and townspeople had also gathered. Trouble was sure to transpire. Shiver me timbers!

I can’t see how we’ll ever top this one. Seriously, what’s cooler than building a 10-foot pirate ship in your living room and turning the rest of your house into a seaside tavern from 1688?

I really went all out this year, starting with the invitations. I created a card that looked like old parchment and stuck it in an envelope sealed with red wax. I also used the wax seal on each person’s character description and clues for the game. I printed some other documents on tan-colored paper, soaked them in coffee, and burned the edges. All that work really set the tone for the party.

When guests arrived, they were greeted with the skeleton of Toothless Willie hanging in our stairwell with a sign around his neck that read: “Pirates ye be warned.” I also used the directional signs that came with the mystery — they pointed guests to Port Royal, the Salty Sea Dog, and a few other sinister-sounding locations.

I had pirate music playing (everything from “Drunken Sailor” to “The Last Saskatchewan Pirate”…the play list was a big hit) as guests came up the stairs to the main party area. Here they entered the Salty Sea Dog. The walls were adorned with various signs as well as an actual map of the Caribbean circa 1720 that I found online and enlarged at Costco.

My china cabinet was filled with beer bottles labelled as Davy Jones’ Lager (get it?), an actual wine cask I found at Value Village, and some old growlers. For the tables, I had pirate tablecloths, candles, and BBQ sauce bottles labelled like growlers.

Also in the tavern was our storage-bench-turned-treasure-chest stuffed with pirate coins and assorted booty. Part of the game involves trying to acquire as many coins as you can, by any means necessary — so I helped myself to a bunch of coins from the treasure chest. A few other people tried that too, until the governor put a stop to it by closing the chest and parking his ass on top. (I stole the gallow master’s coin purse right out of her cleavage, but she chased me with a noose and threatened to hang me if I didn’t return them, so I had to give those up. It probably wasn’t wise to steal from the executioner. My bad.)

We served grog (rum with brown sugar, lime juice and water), though I forgot to label it as such, and some people had a whole lot of it thinking it was iced tea. Oops.

To keep things authentic, I used tin pie plates and no cutlery. We ate things like hardtack (cheese and crackers), salted meat (cold cuts), arr-tichoke dip, cannon balls (meatballs on sword picks) and scurvy savers (fresh veggies). I made a ship wheel with the tavern name to hang over the buffet table; I covered the actual table with a brown tablecloth and some fish netting.

But the coolest attraction was definitely the pirate ship. Complete with crow’s nest, sails and cannons, it made an amazing focal point in our living room. My brother, who was kind enough to build it based on plans I gave him, even went so far as to router the name of the ship into the wood. AWESOME.

Next to the ship was the dockside area with a huge British flag and a sign proclaiming this to be Port Royal, Jamaica. I made a large barrel by putting two planters together; I bought two smaller barrels on eBay. With some cardboard boxes and fish netting, it all looked pretty impressive.

The costumes were beyond amazing. I was especially impressed that my husband rented full colonial attire for his role as Governor Napier — this is the same guy who only reluctantly wore a king’s robe a couple years ago for Once Upon a Murder. The first mate took some liberties with his outfit and showed up with an eye patch, a peg leg, and a codpiece that was making its way down his leg by the end of the night. There’s no end of laughs when that guy is around.

Prizes this time included gold chocolate coins and a bunch of magnets I made with sayings like “I wanted to be a pirate, but I couldn’t get my ship together” and “Work is for people who don’t know how to plunder.” Once we solved the murder and handed out the awards, we just kept drinking rum and partying like pirates for another couple hours.

How will we ever top this for my 40th next year?

Project Slumber

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I often forget that other 10-year-olds think nothing of staying up until 9 or 10 at night and have to be dragged out of bed in the morning, like mini teenagers. For the entire two weeks of Christmas break, my 10-year-old was consistently getting up around 4:45 am.

(In summertime when I complain about the early wakeups, some parents nod knowingly and tell me it’s because of the early morning sun, and that all I need to do is black out his window to make him sleep longer. But it’s pretty freaking dark at 4:45 am in December, and he still wanted to get on with the day. Argh.)

He’s always been an early riser, but that was just crazy — he’d be yawning by 6 pm and could not keep his eyes open past 7:45, even if we were all watching the last few minutes of a tight hockey game. When Justin can’t stay awake for hockey, you know something’s wrong.

So we started Project Slumber to try to adjust his schedule. That meant torturing him in the evenings to keep him awake until at least 8 pm. We made him play games with us, Brayden chased him around a bit, I trimmed his toenails…anything to keep him from falling asleep.

We were completely thrilled when he made it to 5:00 one morning. Sometimes I can’t believe our standards have sunk so low.

Then today we had a major breakthrough: he did not stir until 6:15. I wasn’t sure he was still breathing, but I didn’t dare check on him for fear of ruining this miracle.

When he finally did emerge, he was well rested — but had a nasty-sounding cough.

Those two things couldn’t possibly be related, right?

Kids and Phones: What’s the Right Call?

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What’s the right time to give a kid their own cell phone? When they start going places independently? When they reach a certain age? When they’re capable of paying for it?

More to the point: can there ever be a right time to entrust a $500 device to a guy who can’t even keep track of his water bottle/gym clothes/day planner?

I realize Justin’s organizational challenges are more than a character flaw; they’re part and parcel of having Asperger’s. His brain tends to misfire when it comes to managing resources in order to achieve a goal. (The irony is that he spends much of his free time making lists. Go figure.)

That doesn’t mean he’s completely irresponsible. I trust him to walk to and from school, to stay home alone, even to cook a simple meal. But I’m not sure I could ever trust him not to lose an item in his possession.

To be fair, it’s not just him. My older brother never leaves the house without coming back at least once for something he forgot, routinely buys two pairs of glasses at a time because he knows he’ll lose them, and cannot use his Apple TV device because he can’t find the remote. Yet he somehow became the director of supply chain management for a multinational company. So there is hope.

But back to the phone issue. Brayden recently mentioned some of the older kids at school have phones, and I said getting a phone depends on a combination of being old enough and being responsible enough. He thought about that for a second, then announced, “I’ll probably be less responsible when I get older, so you better give it to me now.”

Right.

The Santa Question: When Will the Bubble Burst?

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At bedtime the other night, Justin was reading to me from one of our many Amazing Fact books. The page he was focused on had 100 facts about stars. I was only half listening as he read through the list one by one.

“Number 63: Before they had compasses, sailors used the North Star to help guide their ships in the right direction,” he announced, then paused. I looked at him.

“Oh,” he said, nodding his head sagely. “They got help from Santa.”

So not only does he have an appalling grasp of astronomy, but at age 10 and a half, he clearly still believes a fat stranger in a red suit slips down our chimney every Christmas. And whether it’s thanks to his talent for living in his own world, his aversion to change, or his unwillingness to get off the gravy train, he will likely continue to believe that for quite some time.

Not that I’m dissing the magic of Santa. I have many fond memories of staring out the window on Christmas Eve hoping to catch a glimpse of some reindeer…being too excited to sleep…sneaking into my brothers’ room at 4 a.m. to sing Christmas carols until it was time to go see what Santa brought. I was happy to give my kids the same experience.

It’s just that I really thought they would have figured it out by now. (Brayden might be getting close: he did notice that the last loonie he got from the tooth fairy had traces of Mom’s hand lotion on it.) I have a hard enough time coming up with one decent gift idea for them, let alone two (plus stockings!) so it would be really nice if they could wise up. Then they could move on to a mature appreciation of the true meaning of Christmas.

Or at least stop arguing about which mall has the “real” Santa.

$%&! Time Change

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I’d like to dig up whoever thought of daylight savings time and beat him with the shovel. Some of us have body clocks that can’t be easily reset. More to the point: some of us have children whose body clocks can’t be easily reset.

I hate the fall change the most. Supposedly it means an extra hour of sleep. In our house, it means the guy who gets up freakishly early now gets up at a truly unholy hour. This is the third straight morning of Justin waking up at 4:30 a.m. Yes, he’s old enough that I don’t have to get up with him, and yes, I know he’ll adjust eventually (back to 5:30…can’t wait!) I just don’t see why we have to go through this.

Changing the clocks seems especially absurd to those of us who grew up in Saskatchewan, where they don’t follow this particular ritual. (Years ago, when the province was looking for a new slogan for its vehicle license plate, a friend of mine suggested Saskatchewan: Our Clocks Don’t Change. They settled on Saskatchewan: Land of Living Skies. In case anyone was unaware the place is flat and boring.)

Maybe the Chinese have it right. Not only does the country not observe daylight savings, but all of China is in the same time zone – so if it’s 3 p.m. in Shanghai, it’s also 3 p.m. in Hotan, a city 5,000 km further west. That would be like having Vancouver and Montreal on the same time. It might be mid-afternoon in one place and evening in the other, but the actual hour is the same. Huh.

Here’s another news flash: the number of daylight hours doesn’t change just because the clocks do. Winter days are short. That sucks no matter what you do to the time. Even once Justin starts “sleeping in” until 5:30, it will still be dark outside. Ugh.

Time to (yawn) get on with the day…

Working on a Work Ethic

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One of the kids’ chores is to help with dishes once a week. It’s been almost a year since we started that, so you’d think they’d have gotten better at it by now. Practice makes perfect, right?

Wrong. Somehow the dishes end up even wetter after Justin claims to have dried them. The rule is “no water, no bubbles,” but he doesn’t seem to notice — or care — when there’s half an inch of suds in the bottom of the bowl he just finished. And when we make him go back and redo it, he whines and moans like the overworked 10-year-old he believes he is.

I get not wanting to do the dishes. I don’t get not caring whether you get your allowance. Justin could take or leave the money, even when he’s actively saving for a new video game or something. A few times we tried the natural consequences approach, where we said look, you don’t get the money unless you do the work…and it backfired every time, cause he was totally OK with not getting paid if it meant he didn’t have to do the chore. Argh.

We finally had a breakthrough, though. He started going to a weekly youth group with his friends that sometimes requires cash for activities, and we told him that had to come from his pocket. You could almost see the light bulb go on over his head — suddenly he got the connection between having a job and having money to do fun stuff with his friends. I guess we finally found something he really, really wanted.

He still isn’t any better at drying dishes, but he no longer complains about having to do them — and he sometimes even volunteers for extra work to make extra cash.

Eureka!

The Devil is in the Details

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One of the first things I learned about Asperger’s was that kids who have it generally see and remember details that other people miss. That’s a polite way of saying they zero in on completely irrelevant facts. They are human databases of totally useless information.

And they often miss the big picture. Justin is famous for missing the forest for the trees. A few years ago I repainted Brayden’s room while Justin was away at summer camp. The walls changed from yellow to blue — a dramatic difference. When Justin came home, he immediately noticed the 3×3 sticker of a new Pokemon character on Brayden’s dresser, but failed to pick up on the fact that the walls were a different color. Classic.

And while I know that hyperfocusing on details can be a useful skill, it can also be a huge pain in the butt. Years ago, when someone would ask him what he did on the weekend (just making small talk), he would say, “Jack came over at 1:26 pm on Saturday the 13th and we played until 3:42.” It took months of therapy to get him to understand that yes, everything he said was true, but that was way more detail than anyone wanted to hear.

It’s been a battle at school, too. Last year he was supposed to make a personal timeline of important events in his life — things like when his brother was born, when he started school, when he went to Disneyland, etc. He had all that — but he also noted the “birthdates” of 18 of his favorite Skylander characters. (We could argue about the definition of “important events in his life”, but that timeline was so full of what I would call irrelevant info that you could hardly read any of it. Ugh.)

Things are getting better, though. This year he was given a blank map of Canada and was told to label and color the provinces, territories and capital cities. He did all that — but he also added a couple dozen other cities, labelled every waterway, and even filled in the names of the bordering U.S. states and their capitals. It was still way too much detail, but at least it was on topic. I call that progress.

Now to see what his teacher calls it…

Limping to the Finish

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70 down, three to go. Sounds easy, right? 95% of the summer break is over, so what’s three more days? OMG THREE MORE DAYS. We had a good holiday, but that’s hard to remember now that we’re having day-long arguments over who let the spider in the house and coming to blows over who looked at who. We are done. Out of gas. Kaput. Finito.

But like I said, we had a good summer. It helped that this was the first year I could leave the boys at home alone for short periods, so no dragging them through the grocery store and fighting over who has to push the cart. They found plenty of other things to fight about, however, as evidenced by the following exchange during a 10-minute car ride:

CHILD 1: Look! Squirrel!
CHILD 2: (turns his head) What?
CHILD 1: Made you look!
CHILD 2: No you didn’t.
CHILD 1: Yes I did!
CHILD 2: I didn’t look there.
CHILD 1: You totally did!
CHILD 2: My head was pointing that way, but my eyes were looking over there.
CHILD 1: Liar! You can’t point your head and your eyes in different directions.
CHILD 2: Sure you can!
CHILD 1: But that’s cheating! MOM! Is that cheating?
CHILD 2: Look! A buffalo!
CHILD 1: I’m not falling for that.
CHILD 2: OK, fine. Look! A deer!
CHILD 1: I’m not playing with you, Cheater.
CHILD 2: MOM! He’s calling me names!

(Meanwhile, Mom is seriously considering crashing the car into a tree.)

To those moms who cherish these last few days as time at home with their offspring relaxing and enjoying each other’s company: I salute you.

To the rest of you: I’ll meet you at the bar on Tuesday.

List of Obsessions

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Lots of kids develop serious interests in a certain area, but kids with Asperger’s give new meaning to the term “obsession.” Justin gets so intensely interested in a subject that it colors every thought and conversation that he has. The fact that the people around him are all bored stiff by that same subject makes no difference.

His obsessions have ranged from his classmates’ names to Pokemon characters to sports figures. His latest one began when he was assigned a family tree project at school a few months ago (curse you Mrs. McAndrew!)

The kids were supposed to document at least 12 names on their chart. Justin is currently at 762 names and counting. He knows every detail of every marriage, birth and death in our family for the last 400 years, and he never hesitates to share that information. If I hear him talk about one more long-lost cousin, I will throw up.

I should also note that Justin writes lists. Endless lists. Piles and piles of lists. The kid is a serious threat to our nation’s forests. Early on we tried to redirect him by hiding the scrap paper, but he scribbled on his own arm, on his walls, even on my blank cheques. He used his finger to “write” on the carpet. He made letters out of PlayDoh. The guy needs to write.

So today I noticed a few lists of animal stats next to a book of facts about wildlife. A little while later Justin sat at the table with that book and read random facts out loud to me. I thought the tide might finally be turning. Could we really be over the whole family tree thing? Please God?

“A sperm whale can live up to 70 years,” Justin announced. Then he paused and looked up as if a thought had suddenly struck him. I held my breath.

Then he reached for a piece of paper and added, “Let’s put that on a family tree.”

So close.

Hot Times on the Vegas Strip

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I think the Vegas heat fried whatever brain cells we possessed when we left home. Somehow it seemed like a good idea to save the cab fare and just walk to the Atomic Testing Museum. In my defense, Chris had looked up the address and informed me it would be about a 10-minute walk. Turns out that was the driving time, not the walking time. We ended up walking 35 minutes each way. I really thought I was going to die.

And all that to get to a museum that bored me into a stupor. It might have been fascinating for anyone interested in the history of nuclear weapons in America, but I am not one of those people, and after walking so long in the heat I just wanted to sit down and never get up. Even Chris found it so-so. I can’t believe we paid more for that than for the Mob Museum the other day. Live and learn.

The day improved when we had a very nice lunch at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company. We relaxed, had a few cold drinks…and decided to walk around the south end of the Strip in what was probably the hottest part of the day. Brain damage is the only explanation.

We’re hoping to stay awake long enough to see the Strip all lit up in the dark, but given that it’s a 7-minute walk from our room just to the front door of the hotel, we may not have the energy to go exploring again.

Home tomorrow…