Royce's Random Thoughts

So, my son Thomas, who is autistic, is entering adolescence. In a normal child's life this is a difficult time. In Tom's, its been pretty upsetting. Especially at daycare this year, since he's been increasingly disinclined to listen to the teachers there and they have been increasingly unable to handle him (the personnel consists of three women, one who's pregnant, one who's 70+ years old, and have about twenty kids between them besides Thomas to look after.) Things came to a head Tuesday, when he started screaming and crying and banging doors open and shut, ending with him getting in a tug of war with the head of the center and then breaking a toilet seat.

So we needed to get a new daycare for him. Now. And just trying finding one that can handle an autistic 12 year old on short notice. His middle school will have an after-care program to watch him at the start of the year, but that left us with August to get through.

Fortunately moonshadowed's mother is already watching my brother-in-law's kids (who are in their teens or jsut a bit younger) and agreed to watch Tom and Miss G for us. I just have to spend a month shuttling them up to Reading Hanover, PA, drive to my work in Baltimore, MD, then pick them up in the evening.

Sadly, all that gas will still be cheaper than what we'd be paying the daycare...

Friday: 5 pm: drive home, grab moonshadowed and Thomas.

6 pm: Arrive at CarMax to finally sell my old Taurus to them. Realize I forgot the Taurus' car keys and registration. M not happy, given she hasn't had dinner yet.

6:15 Rush home again while M amuses T with CarMax's amazing self-opening front doors. [1]

6:45 - Get back to CarMax. Find out I don't need the registration since I'm turning in my tags. Told it's going to be a 45 minute wait at minimum to get the paperwork ready. Run over to the neaby Wendy's to grab dinner while we wait.

7:00 - Return with food. Discover M's salad doesn't have utensils included. Despite this, I manage to come away with my hide intact.

8:00 - Paperwork finally ready. We sign, we give keys, we get check, we go home.

8:45 - Home at last. Tom hits the sack, Mommy and Daddy chill out with videogames

9:15 - Call from CarMax, letting us know that we left our check. I tell them that we brought it home. Lady at the other end of the phone insists that we didn't. I run upstairs and find the check we were given wasn't the $250 for the Taurus, but nearly $12k that was for an auto auction company.

9:30 - Finally decide that, yes, a jury would convict me.


Saturday - M works today so I watch Thomas. More acurrately I chase him up and down the stairs as he alternates playing WoW and running about like a little loon. I drag him back to CarMax to get the proper check, do some grocery shopping and deposit the check at the bank. We also run down some energy looking at the cars as we stand on the "Green Moss Bridge". That evening I visit jvolwes and stay out too late, coming home at 10:30 pm

Sunday - 3am. Wake up. Can't sleep. Curse God.

8:30 am - M wakes up, I crawl back into bed.

10:45 - Wake up, remember I was to help Jim move stuff from his condo to Goodwill when he calls.

11:45 - Operating on Thomas Time, finally arrive at Jim's place. Drive over to Mike & Renee's to drop off some stuff, head to GoodWill in Ellicot City (closed), head over to Salvation Army (open), drop off stuff. Head over to our storage room and empty out everything except the last 10% of the bulky stuff.

3:30 - Get home and say hello to M.

4:30 - Go out again for more groceries and a new mouse (old one died due mostly to Thomas abuse).

5:30 - Get home finally. Eat sandwich for dinner. Tom conks out at 7 pm, which is too early, but then he did spend two hours running M ragged outside.

[1] Autism can be extremely frustrating with Thomas. On the plus side, he is easy to amuse usually.