Big Word Day · Wednesday May 9, 2007 by Abbie
I couldn’t wait for the reading to be over this morning as our new to us sofa arrived just before Ram woke up! I really wanted to sit on it, but Ram just wanted me to read ‘a few more pages’!
We finally got downstairs and had a good sit on it. It isn’t actually used, but is from the factory showroom. It had some dust on the wooden frame on the back so it fits in very well with out house.
I was a bit worried at how Ram would take it as he often has difficulty with new things, but he seems to be fine with it. Unfortunately it is in the wrong place at the moment. Ram can’t sit on a sofa to watch TV for some reason. We have a completely open plan room downstairs, so in the sitting area we have a sofa facing the TV for adults to sit on, and Ram’s dog kennel, and along the back of that we have another sofa facing the kitchen. Ram usually knees on this leaning against the back facing the TV to watch TV. Right now the new sofa is there, but I don’t really want him sitting on it that way as the cushions will be damaged. In fact that is one reason why we got the new sofa. So we will have to swap the old small sofa and the new one around at the weekend when the Dxh is here.
As the sofa arrived so early, we decided to pay a last minute visit to My Dear Friend who had the stroke last year. Her son was at school, but Ran was happy to play on his Wii. On the way over in the car Ram said that he would like to try out the insults he read about in the book. I laughed because even though MDF has memory problems, as a linguist I knew that she would know those words. Ram laughed when I told him, then he thought for a moment, and said: “Actually, saying that she is discombobulated isn’t an insult, it is true since she had her stroke!” I again laughed and said that I thought MDF would think it was funny too.
So when we got there Ram sat down with us in the sitting room and told her about the book, and the insults, and why calling her discombobulated wasn’t really an insult but the truth. She did think it was funny, and was impressed with the words. Ram then went up to play Wii tennis. I imagine he will know a lot more about tennis now.
After Ram left the room MDF said that she was really touched that he talked to her like that. It was the first time he had had a discussion with her.
Ram came downstairs when her youngest son came home from school , and said he wanted to go home. I said that indeed it was time to go home but first we had to let MDF to finish talking, as Ram had just barged in and interrupted. We also had to sort out some more Discworld books to borrow, so it did take about 10 minutes to finally say goodbye.
In the car on the way home Ram was in tears of anger! He said that all neurotypical people lie all the time and they shouldn’t! Apparently it was too long between the time of saying that we were going to leave, and the moment that we actually left the house! He really was very upset about it. And he didn’t calm down for some time after we got home!
He was still in a bit of a mood in the evening. We had a bit of time before we watched TV so I was trying to update the blog, but Ram was still in a mood and wouldn’t leave me alone. I finally snapped at him. He went off and sat on the new sofa with a blanket over him in the dark. When I came out of the study, I sat down beside him and gave him a cuddle through the blanket. He was much calmer now, and he told me that he was pretending that he was listening to different universes. One was the birds universe where he could hear the birds singing, another was the water universe where he could hear the cave universe where he could hear the dripping of the rain water, and pretended it was water dripping on rocks, and the computer universe where he could hear me typing on the computer.
We then settled in to watch How the Other Half Learns. It was a real eye opener for Ram as he has no knowledge of either private boarding schools or state comprehensives!
Yet more Discworld at bedtime, but there wasn’t as much as usual as I started to fell asleep. I don’t know how much longer Ram was awake but it was some time after I started to fall asleep because he woke me up a couple of times.
