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...

So Friday, myself, moonshadowed, Thomas and Georgia, plus Tracy's mom and Aunt Donna, all piled into my minivan for a trip to Cleveland so Tracy could meet with a couple of online friends and run in a local half-marathon.

Things happened thusly:

1. About halfway down the PA Turnpike [1] my minivan jerked to the right a couple of times. My best guess at the time was that since we were going through a relatively high and rocky section that it was wind. Turned out it was my left rear tire about to blow out.

At 75mph

On the fucking turnpike.

Fortunately after the initial THUMPthudthudthudthud I was able to pull off safely onto the shoulder and change the tire, which was completely shredded. Doubly luckily a cop came along less than five minutes later to keep traffic from smashing me while I changed the time (and for once the time shop hadn't tightened on the nuts so hard I couldn't undo them myself).

2. Finally got to the hotel around 4:30pm to find it being rapidly occupied by a fish fancier convention. I didn't even know you could have conventions about that. Though if you're going to have it anywhere I guess Cleveland is the place.

3. First night of sleep didn't actually happen due to a variety of circumstances. Fortunately I managed to nap in the morning while Tracy dragged the kids to the hotel's swimming pool.

4. Saturday (after my nap) we picked up Tracy's race packet and visited the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Only saw the first floor of exhibits, due to Tom going into sensory overload and Tracy's mom feeling ragged out and annoyed because they didn't have an items related to a really obscure rocker she wanted to see.

5. Sunday was Race Day. Most long races Tracy has done started at 7am or so, for some stupid reason this one began at 9am, which meant I had to drop her off and rush back to help her mom and Aunt pack up and check out before returning to the race course with them. I left them in the car with the kids while I met Tracy, since it was a half-mile walk from the parking lot to the race course.

6. Despite having the flu earlier in the week and still getting over a case of bronchitis, Tracy managed to finish with a time of 3:07 and ahead of at least nine people in a field of a thousand.

7. Then it was time to drive home. Didn't get back to our house until about 8:30pm after dropping off Grandmom and Aunt Donna. Thomas started losing his biscuit the last couple of hours, but given how much driving we'd done over the past three days I wasn't going to blame him.

8. Back to worrrrrrrk.


[1] And who's idea was it to make a state so damned large?

...they will use their new Kindle Fire to watch a certain scene from Death Race 2000 endlessly on Netflix. Not for violence or the zooming cars, but because hey there's a marching band playing The Star Spangled Banner!

So this weekend the intention was that moonshadowed's mother come down Saturday evening from Hanover PA to stay overnight and watch the kids while I go with Tracy to the Marine Corps Marathon in DC Sunday morning, where she was going to participate in the 10k run portion of it.

Old Man Autumn had other plans, and while the snow that hit the East Coast just resulted in some rain and wet snow that didn't stick to anything in Columbia, it dumped over seven inches in Hanover, resulting in Tracy's mom staying right here she was rather than slide all over the roads. So Sunday's schedule worked out to something more like this.

Saturday 9:30pm: I go to bed.

11:30pm: Wake up for no reason I can see. Check email briefly and try to go back to bed.

Sunday 2:45am: Tom wakes up. I perforce wake up with him.

4:00am: I wake Tracy and Georgia up.

4:30am: Get on the road and drop Tracy off at the Wheaton Metro station

5:45am: Get home. Divide time between surfing on the net and half-consciously doing laundry.

11:20: Pick up Tracy from the station after she completes her run. She completed her run with a chip time of one hour and twelve minutes or so.

1 pm: Get home, eat lunch, crawl into bed for a long nap

2:30pm: Tom wakes me up.

2:31pm Remind self that murder is still a crime.

3 pm: Take Tom and Georgia for a walk while Tracy gets a nap herself.

4:45: Get home, Tom immediately rushes upstairs and wakes up Tracy (of course)

5:30pm: Make shopping list, go out to the stores.

7:15pm: Get home. Tom already asleep, Georgia is taking her bath

7:30 pm: Finish unloading and putting away groceries. Eat a quick sandwich for dinner

8:45pm: Crawl into bed.

Monday 3:15am: Here we go again...

So on the advice of one of moonshadowed 's Weight Watchers buddies, she called Busch Gardens to see if we could get a Special Needs pass to go to the front of the lines for the rides on account of Thomas' autism. Turns out that we can. Soooo....

1. We're going to zoom through the lines of the park in August.

2. Because my son has an incurable mental disorder.

3. And Busch Gardens wants to A) look good to their customers by b) Avoiding children having screaming meltdowns while they stand out on the hot asphalt.

Okay, so I'm a "Half Empty" sorta guy sometimes...

Thursday: Ended up going to work until Noon. Then I went home and napped for an hour and a half so I'd be conscious at Georgia and Thomas' parent teacher conferences in the afternoon. Georgia is doing very well, predictably. She's got the teachers charmed, but more importantly she's retaining lessons from previous days, like the picture they showed me that she'd done on a wipe board of the planets of the solar system and rocket ships from the astronomy segment they did a couple of days before. Really great given her age level, though they did note she's a bit wiggly when asked to sit in a chair.

Thomas' meeting went better than I expected actually. We mostly talked about his math work, which is patently abysmal given it's all abstract stuff, which is very difficult for him. They were surprised at his interest in Geometry though, which has the advantage of being more visual learning.


Friday: Still running a fever but I couldn't take any more time off. Went in to a fortunately slow day at work, mostly because the State had fixed a system issue that we had been entering overrides for the past couple of months. Did my monthly evaluation and was happily surprised with the results. Normally I get bitched out for idiot mistakes but this time Fannie didn't find anything really serious. Go me. Almost makes up for today marking my working there as a "temp" for four years... sigh


Saturday: Watched kids while Tracy worked. Even took them out for a walk to the green moss bridge (Thomas' term) where they threw rocks in the stream for a while. Coming back I realized what a mistake it was, as I spent the rest of the afternoon completely wiped out. Started snapping randomly at people after Tracy got home, which made me feel about 3 inches tall later.


Today: Laundry, grocery shopping, nap, not necessarily in that order.

So, we had to hit the emergency room last night.

( Cut for gross medical details )

Poor Tom had been tired all yesterday, which should have been a clue for us, but we didn't realize he was sick until he started throwing up while I was out shopping. His fever was spiking at 103 before we gave him some Motrin, so he's definitely not going to school today. :(

Saturday I watched Tom while moonshadowed was at work, which was okay. We went to the NCTM and rode the PCC unit they purchased from The Hague and he had a good time.

Sunday was a bit rougher. Tom was playing downstairs in the basement with mommy and climbed into her chair to play with her hair, which she'd gotten cut and styled on Friday. Unfortunately he got the bright idea of climbing up the BACK of the chair, and before she could stop him took a header to the floor. Fortunately he wasn't seriously injured, but he did get a couple of nasty scrapes on his right foot which upset him tremendously. It took a good two or three hours to restore his calm, between getting the scrape and being told very firmly that he must keep the bandaids on. But by the afternoon he had taken a nap and was doing better, which all good.

So Tracy and I decided I could open up my birthday present a bit early that evening, since I'd guessed what it was. She'd bought me a Wii, which by some miracle Best Buy actually had in stock when she called on 2/29. We've just got the basic unit plus an extra set of controllers, so the only game we have is Wii Sports (which I'm already earning a case of carpal tunnel from playing). I guess that means I'll be heading over to jvowles tonight as soon as I get the chance to borrow some games.

I know I eventually want to but Mario Party 8, No More Heroes and possibly the latest Zelda game, but does anyone have any other suggestions as to what I might enjoy?