Kinetic Energy

He’s rolling around on the couch and rooting under the back cushions like an upside-down mole.

Okay, so Chris’s brother was having cable issues. He calls and gives Chris an earful, since apparently even though he no longer works in our local system, being a cable guy makes him guilty by asociation. Chris agreed to go out and fix his cable, but now Michael owes him a favor. And that favor will be fixing the boat motor like he’s been promising since last summer.

Now don’t get me wrong, we don’t mind helping people out. We really don’t. But it takes cahones (or juevos grande for those Colbert fans) to ask a cable guy, your brother no less, who just walked in the door from a 12 hour shift to come fix your cable right now since the guy who was scheduled didn’t show up. Oh, and you wanna watch the *bleep*in’ race.

It’s actually pretty typical. We get asked to help with stuff like this on a semi daily basis. If it runs on electricity, we’re the go to people apparently. I mean, yeah, we are geeks and techies but still. I got a call the other night from Chris’s grandmother who couldn’t figure out how the remote worked on his mom’s new TV.

I’m not griping, really I’m not. It’s just getting a little old that we are expected to drop our lives and fly over to whoever’s house to fix something that isn’t really a necessity. Our lives are very busy. We are both up before the sun and usually don’t even have the energy at the end of the day to spend time together, let alone spend on someone else’s issues.

Maybe I’m just in a cantankerous, “get off my lawn, you meddling kids” kind of mood, but it seems to be more of a theme lately. I’m tired of taking bullcrap. The days of the gracious and politely diverted eyes and changing of the subject are gone. I am tired of seeing ill-mannered children and even less socially graceful adults. I’m enjoying calling it like I see it. I can walk with my head up and sleep well knowing that whether I’m right or wrong, I stood my ground on what I believe.

I really feel torn right now. Imperfect Genius wrote an excellent post on her blog called Perspectives On Autism that puts me in awe of what other homeschool moms do with their autistic kids. I guess I am still in the coping with the concept phase.

Something I need to clear up: Nick is not my child. He is my stepson. I call him my son because that is what he is to me. He is my first baby. Chris and I have been together for 10 years, and started dating just before Nick turned 2. We fought for seven years to get custody. By the time we got him, his mother had caused almost irreperable damage to his development. Maybe one day I will get around to posting the “Event Journal” I kept during those years to give you an idea of how neglected and abused he was.

Ever since we’ve had him full time, it’s been like trying to put a shattered Ming vase back together while spinning plates with one hand. I had, during summer visitation years ago, made so much progress with him and now it was all undone plus some. Still to this day, I want to cry out of frustration and anger. The shining beacon I had was his teacher. She was fantastic and did such good things with him. I was really heartbroken when he moved on to middle school. But I thought “Maybe this new teacher will be just as good”. Unfortunately she wasn’t. We’ve pushed for them to come up with the money to send him to The Benedictine School, but have been shot down at every turn. Trust me, it would kill me to send him away for 5 out of 7 days a week, but I want to know he will always have a place to live. Even if Chris and I are not there.

Everyone else says “You should fight them!”

I say “I can’t.”

I poured so much of my energy and life into fighting the legal battle for custody, I have nothing left. But by the same token I look at this almost 12 year old toddler and think “I could not homeschool him”. Every summer since we’ve had him (with the exception of the first) he has stayed home rather than going to the local day camp. I’ve had every intention of working with him. But you know what they say about the road to hell…. By August every year, I’m going nuts. I have cracked. And each year he has gotten bigger and more difficult to manage.

That’s why this summer is so important. I can’t be a good mother and send him back to a school that has consistently neglected him. I can’t be a good mother and homeschool him without losing my mind and dragging the whole family down with me. So here I am, torn between two rotten decisions. If I can survive the next 2 months, I can consider homeschooling him.

This summer will (hopefully) be different because:

J & D are getting more independent

I now have a gate at the bottom of the stairs (laugh if you will, but I’ve come to the conclusion that Nick is my magnetic opposite: no matter where I am, he’s on the other end of the house.)

I have a clear “babystep” plan for him rather than getting discouraged when he doesn’t make any progress right away.

We have a pretty well ingrained routine that only needed slight tweaking to include him.
I actually have friends willing to watch him so I can get a break by going to the gym.

Hopefully all those factors plus having a place like this to write things down will help me survive the summer.

Okay, all is going fairly well so far. Of course, you could ask me how I am in a month and it probably won’t be such a positive answer. But for now it’s so far so good. Nick is in decompression mode for now. I really won’t begin “boot camp” until next week. Monday or Tuesday. This morning the poor boy slept until almost 8:30. That’s a full 2.5 hour sleep in for him. By that time on any other Friday he would have been in school for over an hour already. It’s all a matter of routine forming at this point. Here’s how the ideal day will look:

5:30am- Okay, I’m up…sheesh.

6:00- yeah yeah..grumble…shower

6:00-8:00 (or whenever Nick wakes up)- laundry/dishes/whatever

8:00- breakfast for the kids & clean up

9:00- Boot them out the door for sitter and go to the gym

10:00-snacks and lessons (Daniel reading, Nick basic letters and numbers possibly reading beginning by the end of summer)

11:00- Free time LUNCH

12:30- Nick nap, J & D outside

……4:30- clean up 5:30- dinner Rinse. Repeat.

Will that happen every day? Not likely. But hey, at least I’m going to try. And hopefully it will work. I know that without having that gym break I’ll go completely bonkers within a month. Plus I absolutely have to stay on top of things around the house for my sanity to stay intact. Telling that to the three baskets of laundry in my bedroom waiting to be folded and put away is another story.

Took some pics at J & D’s Baseball game yesterday. Jess knocked one into right field off of the pitching machine. Daniel was having fun playing in the dirt.

Okay so the Sci Fi channel has been getting a lot of my attention lately. Between the (semi)new Dr. Who series and Ghost Hunters, I’ve been in geeky heaven. Ghost Hunters had a marathon on Sunday. I have to say, I am still calling the St Augustine lighthouse episode my favorite. Although the former cancer hospital and the tuberculosis sanatorium were almost equally creepy. Chris didn’t come to bed until 2am. I have to admit I had a hard time getting to sleep myself after watching all those.

In other news, I got the new science explorer the other day, I figured I’d let the kids try it out although I really want to wait until next year to use it. We’ll do that one day a week and the science kits another. I hope I can maybe place another order this week. I don’t think I’ll have an easy time finding that Kingfisher History of the World book. The last one I watched on ebay went to over $80. Ouch. Worth it I suppose since I’ve seen it listed for as much as $250, but I’m going to keep looking.

Not much else to report here. It’s a nasty rainy day so I’m going to have to come up with something for them to do during our scheduled outside time. I’ll probably give them some computer free time. Actually they traded Vsmile games with a friend yesterday so maybe that will keep them busy.

Well, I’m off to read the morning headlines then on to laundry and dishes! Yay for housework. Can you tell I love it?