Cathy and Jeff Romanczuk
Autistic Family Update
10/10/98
Camille is gone. Last Monday morning Cathy hit the back of a pickup truck that she thought was equally as willing to make it through the yellow light. Unfortunately, the truck’s driver decided to stop and the Saturn kept going. The bright side is that except for being pissed at herself, Cathy is unhurt. The same can’t be said for our 6-year-old Saturn, unfortunately. The $3,500 in damage to a car with a $3,775 Bluebook value is considered a “total” loss. So we’re forced to go car shopping. Depending how this goes, we may fix Camille anyway. Maybe not, for such a low impact hit, she came apart like cheap plastic, not the “space-age alloy mix” the dealer praised, about the same time he told us “dents are a thing of the past.” Apparently dents are; annihilation isn’t.
I have to give an update on the cottonwood I mentioned last letter because it’s too funny. It was cut down, but the “stump” is about 12 feet tall. If we knew a wood carver, we could have a fine totem pole in the back yard. It was supposed to be a three-foot stump, and I had visions of using it for a bench, maybe even a table. Or at the very least, doing a remake of Van Heflin’s best scene in Shane. That is, chop out the sucker with some Alan Ladd wannabe while he takes frequent breaks to leer furtively at Cathy. As it is, we have a giant hat and coat rack in our yard. It’s just so ridiculous, I can’t even be annoyed about it.
I’m doing my “autism causes since 1943” presentation at the New Mexico Autism Conference on 10/24. I’m about ready and it’s converted from thesis to show even better than I thought it could. All I have to do is deliver.
10/17/98
So I went to my first State Fair last month. For a Philadelphia kid, it’s like a boardwalk with no beach. Of course, New Mexico also has a beach with no ocean (White Sands), so why not? Besides the boardwalk-like stuff, there was a rodeo (which we didn’t go to) and a horse show (which we did). Interesting what people can train horses to do. From this non-country boy’s perspective, I’d have to admit that although horses can walk backwards, they really hate doing it. Also interesting is what people spend their time on when their life isn’t autism. I could just picture the endless hours these people put into training and prettying up their horses.
Cathy picked out a big red 1993 Ford F150 pickup. Maybe “big” is inadequate. Let me put it a better way: if we weren’t living in the fifth largest state, we’d probably have to register it in two states because it barely fits in New Mexico. Two gas tanks, a V6 engine you need a step ladder to work on, and a bed that’s bigger than the king size one we sleep in. It looks like a refugee from those monster truck shows. “Don’t you daaarrrreeee miss it!” I test drove it out of the dealership, thinking that it moves like my Big Old Bomb from Penn State days (a ‘73 Ford Custom 500). I tried to adjust the interior rear view mirror, but couldn’t reach it from the driver’s seat. When turning, you can actually feel the engine, cab, and bed make the turn in shifts. Then, as Cathy drove it back toward the dealership, she said, “I like this one. I feel safe.” Well, that’s my honey talking, so I felt obliged to make a deal, despite my nagging suspicion that we should have gotten a vehicle that actually fits in our garage.
10/31
Happy All Hallows Eve! Luke’s going to be a soldier (airman, technically) tonight and Kate’ll be Tweety (furry yellow pajamas with Tweety’s big eyes and little beak on the hood). Luke is wearing a hand-me-down battle dress uniform. The depressing part is it fits him now. He’s going to be a little taller and a lot bigger than I am before he’s done. Holy crap!
Cathy and I got through the Autism Conference and my 39th birthday okay. I had only 10 people come to my presentation, competing as I was against a “headliner” and a real person with autism. (Of course, these adults with autism who are high-functioning enough to go on tour and talk about their experiences seem a far cry from Luke and Kate. Hell, they don’t seem much different from me.) That isn’t sour grapes, really. My talk was advertised as being too intellectually challenging for public consumption and this scared off a lot of people. I even had one heckler, a dumbbell who missed the intro and came in to see me saying that the psychological reasons are the second most written up (behind neurological). She took this to mean I was saying psychological is the second most likely reason for autism and wouldn’t shut up about it until I gave her that Romanczuk look and she left. (I didn’t intend to give her the look, which only proves it’s a good thing I didn’t bring my handgun. Bam! “Anybody else have a stupid question?”)
11/1
Hallowe’en is dying. Last year, maybe because it fell on a Friday and the weather was fair, we had a bunch of visitors. So everyone stocked up for this year. This time, though, the temp was in the 40s and we had less than a third, noticeably fewer anyway. With the kids, I made a big figure 8 around the block we live on and the one east of it. When people realized they were going to have left overs, they started giving us big handfuls of candy. We cleaned up! It reminded me of my trick or treating glory days, with 50 row houses on each street. Of course, between this and the left overs Cathy didn’t give out, we have more candy than we can eat in a year. As Jamie Lee Curtis might say, Hallowe’en isn’t for wimps.
Once again the Autistic Family is on the move, and again it is more driven by circumstances than by choice. Our budget from DOE is almost half what it was for each of the previous 2 years. Which means that I have to let 2 people go and I decided I was one of them. The other person will be going to the unemployment line while I go back to Oak Ridge to do other work for the company. That things turned to crap wasn’t completely in my control, if at all. Sure I could have schmoozed and politicked a lot better, but dumb ass me thought hard work and consistent quality were what mattered. So I have one more job to do for the company before I get the hell out of government work. Should be an interesting task, one in which I’ll get to use the recently acquired degree and the Project Management skills, but it isn’t a sure thing yet, so I don’t want to jinx it by saying more now. The sure thing is that in 2 years I’ll be ready to bolt to nongovernmental pastures. Got to get off the downward spiral before it sucks me down, too. The only bright side is also the dark side. Because the government can’t go out of business, things can get phenomenally bad (the bankruptcy point for normal companies), and then continue to get even worse. On this cheery note, I’ll sign off.
Sincerely,
Jeff
lukate@charter.net