An UGH Mood

Last night, I was really, really tired for some reason. I got home from work, made spaghetti for the kids, and then pretty much just veg'd the rest of the night. All I wanted to do was park my butt in front of the TV and just zone out as much as possible until I could justify going to bed.

Cyd, however, had other plans. She came up to me after dinner and said, "Mom, is it alright if I make some desert?"

Normally I am OK with this, as Cyd is a pretty good cook. However, her clean-up skills leave a bit to be desired. And, since I am trying to sell my house, I have to stay pretty vigilant about having it "showing ready" at the drop of a hat. So I weighed Cyd's desire for desert with my desire not to have to clean any more than absolutely necessary, and with a heavy sigh, I caved.

"Ugh! Fine!" I said.

Cyd bounced off, then came back a few minutes later with a box of spice cake mix. "It's not 7:30 yet and I just have enough time and so is it OK if I bake this?" came out of her, all on one breath.

I don't like cake all that much. In fact, the only kind of cake I really, really like is chocolate with white frosting, but Cyd doesn't like chocolate anything (besides brownies, that is...). And, Cydanie and Mychael generally only have one piece of cake each, and Bretten won't have any at all because she doesn't like any cake. That means whenever Cyd makes a cake, I either eat 3/4 of it by myself, or I end up throwing away almost a whole cake - both of which drive me crazy. I didn't have any better suggestions for Cyd, though, so once again, I caved.

"Ugh! Fine!" I said.

Off she runs again, only to come back five minutes later to say, "Is it OK if I just go over to Kerry's house and borrow some eggs because our eggs are all gone and I only need three!" Again, I am irritated - besides the fact that I don't like to borrow stuff, in general, and now I would have to go to the store sooner than I was planning on so that I could return the eggs to my neighbor, I was also thinking that if Cyd would only read the box before starting and assemble all her ingredients, then she'd know we didn't have eggs before she even started! Then I could convince her she couldn't make a cake, and then I wouldn't have to eat it all or throw it out, or clean up the mess afterwards! But no, it was too late - the mix and the oil and the water were already in the bowl. So, here I cave again, with another exasperated sigh: "Ugh! Fine!"

I am sitting there, reading the paper, thinking that finally Cyd is all set and I don't have to worry about her until it's time to clean up. It was not to last, as Bretten comes in with the bowl in her hand.

"Mom," she says, "is this all stirred up good enough? Cyd can't stir it all the way, and neither can I, but when I told her to come tell you, she's all, 'Mom's ugh.' Then I said, what do you mean, Mom's ugh? And she said, 'Mom's just ugh.' So I asked her what that meant, and she said, 'Mom's in an ugh mood.' So I asked her what an ugh mood was, and Cyd said, 'Everytime I tell Mom anything, she just goes 'ugh!'"

Of course, then I felt guilty for saying "Ugh" to Cyd all night, but I was also a little bit tickled at her perception, since recognizing and understanding other people's moods is generally a struggle for people with autism. And that was enough to get me out of my 'ugh' mood for the rest of the evening.