A letter

Dear Fall,

You and your beautiful colours and yummy harvested foods. You really think you're all that don't you? Well I'm onto you. I see you sneaking up on us disguised as "September". We all know it's you and let me just say you are not welcome here.

Truthfully I don't know why people think you're so great anyway. You bring back the early morning lunch making, parent teacher interviews, shorter days, and the end of summer vacations. As if all that wasn't bad enough but you need to go and do this to us too?

Ah those August leaves.....

It's only August you heartless bitch. Seriously you couldn't just wait another month to prance around? Everyone knows you are just a cascade into misery anyway. Oh yes you are!!

The next time that you say hello to me I'm going to keep on walking. Walking towards my new best friend Winter. That's right.....I now like her better than you. Suck it!!

Crying over new school clothes

Just days away from the start of the new school year and we are riding the emotional roller coaster. Whee!!

Both kids are a little bit anxious about school as they always are. Neither does well with any kind of transition even good ones so starting a new school year brings new routines, new desks, new teachers, and new school clothes. Thank goodness both kids backpacks were in good shape and can be used again. Like when does that ever happen? Usually I'm doing the first bag replacement by about December and then duct tape the suckers together to last until the end of June. This year the kids get to keep their bags so at least that is one less change they have to get used to.

Now for those of you who don't have a child with Autism and you are lucky enough that if on the hottest damn day of the year you said "hey kids lets go for ice cream" and you're kids don't cry and freak out then be happy. When I say that my kids hate change I mean it is brutal for them. They don't mean to cause a fuss but it's just one of those things that is very difficult for them. So it's a really big deal to keep the backpacks. Yeah backpacks!!

Normally I try not to go overboard with the new clothes because it's just one more change for them to get used to. However both kids have grown quite a bit and new clothes were in order. I've learned not to bring the kids for back to school shopping. I just hope for the best when it comes to picking out styles and sizes. To their credit they did try to act excited about them as they looked up over their video game playing. Sigh.

So while I was smart enough to just buy the clothes when they weren't around apparently I'm not smart enough to try to clear some of their outgrown clothes from their closets when they are gone too. Drew of course still liked every single shirt in his closet and wanted to keep them. This despite the fact that he has about 3 favourite shirts and rarely wears anything else. At first I thought I was making some progress with Camryn's clothes because she happily told me that this shirt was too small and that one isn't her style anymore. We were able to pull out about 10 tops. Then the tears started and she sobbed about not having those clothes in her closet because she loved all of them. So we started hanging them up again. Sigh.

Maybe some of their clothes will magically disappear the next time they go to their dads house. I never learn.....

Be careful what you wish for or you just might have to clean the house

So after months of waiting I finally got the call that there is a developmental aide available to work with Andrew. Okay, well that makes it sound so easy. Like I was sitting around one day eating gummi bears when suddenly the phone rings and "woo hoo we have an aide....yeah". More like I called the agency in June after a 6 month wait and got "oops, we lost his file" and then " yeah we found his file it should be very soon" and then I called back in August and "oops we lost his file....again.....yes, I know we shouldn't keep losing it....or at very least we shouldn't admit it to the mother whose been waiting forever to have her kid seen....but yeah we found it again. Aren't you so happy? We'll call you tomorrow". Yah, I wish the gummi bear thing had happened. That would have sucked way less on so many levels. So moving on.....

Today was the big day. They called. We now have the appointment to meet with the supervisors to find out what my new priorities for Andrew's care are since it's been almost a year since we started this process and after so much time passing we have new and bigger aspirations for him and a new school schedule that is quite different from last years.....so we have to meet with them first before we get the aide......awesome. Can't we just get to the actual intervention part? The kid is 12 already!!

Now I'm kind of freaking out which is totally stupid. For the record I used to be an aide doing almost exactly this same job working with kids just like Drew who have Autism. The only difference was that I worked with preschoolers and not school aged kids. So I don't know why I feel so unprepared. I think it's because my house has become a bit of a wasteland over the last 9 months as I lay crippled up from having whiplash and a concussion. I guess that's a pretty good excuse but still. Maybe the 18 year old kid who slammed into the back of me at a red light that I had been stopped at for....oh.....at least 2 minutes would like to come over and clean my house for me. Oooohhhh. I should ask for that in the settlement. "I'll take a million dollars and house cleaning". I like it.

Anyway, I have exactly 15 days to get my house in good enough shape to have someone I don't know come in and roll around on my floor. Ready.....go.....

Egg?.....for real?

Today I'm going to question the sanity of the people involved with Cirque du Soleil. For all of you who love these shows I'm warning you now that you might not like my post. If you are a water, egg, or whatever lover then you can stop reading now if you'd like.

I will confess that I've never been to any Cirque show. But this is my blog and I will comment on it as if I had been to every one. The last production that came to to town was Eau. I didn't even think about buying tickets because not only do I find people twisting themselves in weird ways....well...kind of weird but neither of my kids would enjoy or benefit from this sort of thing.....or so I thought. Every year Andrew's school holds a magazine fundraiser. If you sell a certain amount of magazine subscriptions by a particular day you get entered into prize draws. Well guess what my kid wins. The Cirque du Soleil tickets. Good seats too. I had a soccer game so I had a great excuse to not go. Truthfully part of me wanted to see what all the fuss was about....especially when I didn't have to pay for it but I wasn't heart broken either. So my dad went with Drew. Just the two guys.

When they returned from the show the two of them had nothing but praise for it. Now for those of you who don't know I have had to take Andrew out of all kinds of events. A Raffi concert when he was 4, the Children's Festival at two separate shows, library story time, etc. All because he couldn't handle the acoustics of the venues. He also is the kid that wouldn't tell you he was run over by a steam roller unless you said "Hey Drew, how was your day? Did you get run over by a steam roller today?" So imagine my shock when he talked about it for several days afterwards. I heard all about this person or that, what he found funny, etc.

Okay so here I would have deprived my child from a unique cultural experience had it not been for him winning tickets. Lesson learned. Never assume Drew won't like something even if he's hated every other similar event you've ever tried. Got it. That brings me to my dilemma. The newest Cirque show is Ovo which means egg. What is with that? Um....yuck. Do they know that eggs are unfertilized reproductive material? Doesn't that just scream cultural event? I mean at least Eau (water) isn't yucky!! I guess this would be a good time to mention that eggs (from chickens) and I don't exactly have a fantastic relationship. I mean, I get that they are food and that they make your baking yummy and stuff but I don't like thinking about them too much. Never have. In fact when I found out what eggs were as a child I stopped eating them for years and years. When I see a yellow yolk all I can think about is cute little baby chicks somewhat like the ones in this picture.

Years later when I finally did eat them again it wasn't happily. Now I can manage eggs most of the time. But that doesn't mean I want to see a whole show of people rolling eggs, popping out of eggs, eggs swinging from a trapeze, and generally seeing people tossing glitter on eggs as they prance around in their colorful unitards with creepy smiles painted on their faces.....hello nightmares!!

And I mean what will they do after Ovo? Will it be Peluche? or Yeux? or Scarlatine? Those all sound kind of cool but in order they mean lint, eyes, and Scarlet Fever. Not so cool sounding now are they. And Ovo? What the hell?

But then the "you-need-to-enrich-your-children's-lives-so they-don't-miss-the best-experience-of-their-entire-young-life" part of me says suck it up princess and get your butt to the show. You'll have to excuse me if I never eat eggs again though....Ewwww!!

Hello?.......Hello?

I live in a small suburban district in a large city. We are very lucky to be an older community that has established trees, a public school, lots of small shops, and plenty of playgrounds. We are one of the smallest communities in our city and I think we could brag about the number of parks we have here. Including the one at the school we have 9 individual playgrounds. When you hear that most of the kids in New York City have to go to McDonald's to find a playground and we have so many within walking distance you have to be a little bit impressed. That being said tonight I did a circuit to the playgrounds. What do you think I found? This......

Did you notice that there was not one child playing? What the hell is wrong with us as a community? The only playground that I found any children at was the school park where only a handful of kids were. Now let's face it part of the issue is that almost all of these playgrounds are exactly the same.....colorful climbing frame close to the ground to prevent falls, a baby swing, a regular swing, and a small slide. Not much for a child over the age of 5 to enjoy but really? We are so lucky to have playgrounds and yet nobody plays at them. It was a warm summer night. Get you're butts outside people!!

These ain't Tic Tacs

These days going anywhere has become quite an event. Because of my residual back and neck pain from my accident and my awesome stomach issues....whatever the cause.....means that I have to plan my life around taking pills. I've even taken to having a plastic pill container in my purse to help me keep track. Nothing screams elderly more than having a colorful plastic box in your purse that says morning, noon, dinner, and bedtime right?

My very best days are 6'ers. Those are the days when I can get away with just my basic 6 pills for nerve pain. Yes, that's as good as it gets people. Sexy right? In preparation for this blog I sat down and thought about how many pills a bad day takes. I just about fell over it was so depressing. A really bad day can get me up to 32 pills in one day. Yes, 32!! That would be roughly 1 pill every 45 minutes all day long. Now that is uber sexy.

I wonder why I'm still single. Hmmm???

Little Orphan Cammie

We were out camping this weekend as we have been most of the weekends this summer. The kids have been having lots of fun exploring the rock beach at the river that runs beside our campground. I don't let them go down to the beach alone because I'm kind of paranoid they will get swept away. So that means the adults have to hear "Mom I was thinking about the beach and I'm not trying to pressure you so I'm not asking if we can go there soon". Subtle like a sledge hammer right?

So tonight Camryn and I went for a walk over there and she happily waded in the water, looked at rocks, and "saved" driftwood by setting if free so that it could be happy again.....yah not quite like pushing a beached whale back in honey. I sometimes wonder if someday I won't get a call from some foreign official that Camryn has been arrested while trying to save some endangered species from something. If she worries about driftwood....well let's hope the other government is friendly with Canada.

So after freeing all the sticks she could see we were walking back to our trailer. It was sunset and the sky was a beautiful mix of orange and pink clouds. Camryn reached out and gently grabbed my hand. It seemed like a perfect moment. Then she looks up at me with a very serious look on her sweet little face and says "Mommy sometimes I wish I was an orphan". "Um......Oh?" I said. Not really certain just what the appropriate response should be when your child wishes you were dead and they were all alone in the world. So I asked her why she wished to be an orphan hoping that it has nothing to do with me. To my relief it turns out that if she were an orphan she could live in nature all alone away from people....as if she couldn't just do that without sacrificing me in the process. Yah. The down side she said is that she'd be pretty sad and lonely if a bear attacked her and nobody was there to help. So now she doesn't want me to die after all. Phew.....and I was worried.