Upside Down

Have you ever felt like the world has gone mad? Or maybe your world, or your space in it has skewed itself? Mine has.

I have regular schedules. I try to keep everything spaced out and well planned. I don’t like last minute additions, but I can be flexible for once-offs. But this week, as my yarn goes flying across my yard, so too, my careful planning goes all to hell, in the blink of an eye.

My kids were given a chance to sign up for another ‘camp’. It’s actually four days of field trips, accompanied by ABA tutors. It’s a fantastic opportunity. The times and dates are irregular to accommodate the locations. It’s free. We found out last week. Not a lot of notice, but doable.

We have had a neurology and cardiology appointments on the books for weeks now. They don’t interfere with camp. Our ABA company decided to reschedule our times without checking with us, or anyone else for that matter. We’ve had screw ups on my part and our tutor’s due to the lack of communication.

This whole week has turned from a mildly chaotic week, to full blown chaos. We managed to get the ABA schedule readjusted to fit some of our needs, but I’m going to have 3 people tomorrow and 5 people on Thursday, in my house. Not counting my family of 5.

Tomorrow’s schedule:

0800-1130 Kids Gone Wild (bouncy house heaven)
1130-1315 lunch, calm down and chores
1315-1515 ABA introducing new tutors
1515-? Cardiology for Jamie

Kids crave structure and routine. Kids with autism REALLY crave structure. I expect by Friday, I’m going to have some out of sorts kiddos. There will be tantrums, fights, all kinds of mayhem.

The tutors are nice. They are not my friends. They come to work. I have to keep an eye on them. Sometimes, they don’t catch my kids manipulating them, or they exceed what they are supposed to do- in a not right way. Two of them are new. They lack experience with the job or my kids. So I have to communicate with them. I also watch what they do, to see if I can correct some of my parental fubars. I make them, we all do. But it’s not comfortable. It’s like being in a doctor’s office for 2 hours. My home becomes not my home. The kids know it, and so do I.

And my yarn, it flew across the yard in a yarntainer that fell out when I tried to unload the truck. It wrapped itself around the wheel well of the Otomobile, and ran across the grass, with the hat in progress, still sitting in my purse on the front seat. Ever tried winding a ball of yarn while the wind’s blowing 20mph? Not fun.

Top it all off, I was right. The neurologist evaluated Lukas’ EEG, and he’s now on seizure meds. It wasn’t as hard as getting my diagnosis or Jamie’s. having a family with two seizure freaks, made getting the testing a lot easier.

It’s going to be one helluva(n) upside down week. Cheers