“It’s hard to work all day,” the hubby said, in one his more profound commentaries on life.

Not to poke fun at him unduly but here at 9:30 pm when I’ve been at it since 5:30 am slinging out the work, getting the boys shaved/showered/to dentist appointments, driving them to school both ways since we had no transportation in our town today, making dinner and then more work til 7:30 pm, it’s hard to get motivated for another shift.  I’m tired, and grumpy, the way parents can get when there’s way too much to do, and you feel like everyone else gets a life and you don’t.  When your eyelids droop and my fingers type errors more than words.  When you want badly to just chuck it but the angel on the shoulder says “just one more thing”

In a prophetic move, the battery died on this laptop, and almost on Mommy.  I had to restart them both to keep typing here.  How apt.

W. and J. had great days today where few parents sent their kids to school so they had plenty of teacher attention. I found it odd that one principal thanked me for bringing W. to school. I hear this a lot from teachers – when there’s no transportation, kids don’t show up at school.   I mean, really people.   Don’t you want your kids to learn something, even if it means you have to get off your arse and juggle your day a bit to get them there.

I suppose maybe a snow day lets them avoid the monotony that is autism.  Repetition until you get it is enough to make you want to scream sometimes.  Over and over and over we go with the same two word phrase or skill to the point of utter mind-numbing.  But for my guys, and probably me too, it’s the only way we make progress.

We keep going around and around, like hamsters in a wheel, brushing teeth and tying shoes and paying bills and writing press releases and phoning appointments and making cereal for snack and vacuuming the floor and practicing counting 4 forks at dinner and wiping the table and doing more emails and chasing the boys out of the cookie jar in the freezer and sorting the laundry and….

Until they get it.   Like tonight, when I forced myself to videotape the boys and create a video model of a troublesome skill – choosing just “one” item, instead of a wad.   Usually they fumble or don’t pay attention, but tonight when it was time to tape them – each guy was right on task.   Lucky break?  A day full of practice? Because we went to school today with structure and heaps of 1:1 attention?  Mommy’s reward for working hard?

Now I’m buoyed to keep on keepin’ on, with some sleep to fuel me.  After just one more thing. 🙂