It’s About Time

The summer is winding down. Autumn starts in two weeks. My hubby has now decided to start mowing our lawns on a regular basis, which is every three to five days he informed me.

Now that the grass hasn’t really been growing for almost a month.

During the summer months I was lucky if Steve got to it twice a month. Kidlet tried to mow for me, as I have severe allergies to cut grass. However, with his busy baseball and football schedules we were seldom home during the daylight hours conducive to mowing. Our neighbors tend to be unhappy when our mower starts up at 7:00 in the morning.

Understanding timing and situations is not Steve’s strong suit. His rigidity of mind seems to prevent him from grasping probable outcomes, natural consequence, or multiple possibilities.

I ran across a suitable explanation on Aspects of Aspergers blog.

For me, it’s more helpful when people are explaining something in retrospect, because then the thoughts are all arranged neatly in their brain, and they don’t go off at tangents. So, for instance, you can explain why you decided not to do something you were going to do – explain how you went through the various pros and cons in your mind, and the overall result you considered in making your decision.

http://aspectsofaspergers.wordpress.com/2010/07/21/flexibility-and-common-sense/

Steve loves to rehash past events. He wants to know each and every step I took to come to a decision. When I try to explain my reasoning for a future choice he tunes me out. He doesn’t want to listen.

Hmmmm.

I do know that he likes to do chores or activities at the exact moment he thinks of them. He insists, for instance, on house painting in the pouring down rain because ‘it needs to be done’. Never mind that a torrential downpour has washed most of the paint off.

He wants to read a book or article at 2:00 in the afternoon on a sunny day because he ‘thought of (blah blah blah)”. Never mind that he can’t mow the yard in the dark, that it would have been better to mow at 2:00 p.m. and read at 9:00 p.m.

*Sigh*

“Sweetie, dinner is in twenty minutes!” I call to Steve as he heads to the door.

“Okay, I just have to run out to the shop to check…”

The slamming door drowns out the rest.

Twenty minutes later Kidlet and I sit down to eat. We do try to wait five minutes for Hubby in order to give him a chance to eat with us. But keeping our ever growing fifteen year old away from his chow for any length of time is cruel and unusual punishment.

Exactly twenty minutes after we sat down, in walks The Hubster.

“Mmmm, something smells good,” says He. Then he looks around the table.

“What? Did you eat already?”

*Sigh*