Fine...

I've mentioned before how tricky I am to live with. Well...I was being nice. I'm also frequently an emotional roller coaster AND I don't tell anyone. Think on that...
I've been pretty worried about James lately. His health has been stagnant. I mean, we're ok (fine). Not like I think we're headed to the hospital soon, but more like...'so is this it...?'
And the last cold hit him pretty hard. Add that to typical life stress, small children nonsensicalness (it's a word), business stress (we have 2 of them too), all sorts of crap....well, basically we had a lady bug influx one afternoon and some (a shit ton) came inside, which happens out here, and I um....I fruck out. Ugly cried. For a long time. While vacuuming lady bugs.
The good thing about this is that when your children see you lose it completely...they're usually ridiculously good for the rest of the day. Shock and awe. I'm all about it.
Anyway, the other thing looming over my head was this big blood draw we were going to have to do as soon as the kit arrived. Not only cause it's stressful for all, but because the amount of blood is A LOT for a 29 lb child. Basically he's donating blood. For this particular test, I had to collect a fasting AM urine, separate it into tubes and make sure it was enough they were full, freeze them for 2 hours before leaving for the dr to have the blood drawn, where our amazing phlebotomist was taking care of all the other stuff. How to make sure all this happened was making my head spin, cause if anything didn't get done properly, the whole thing has to be redone. If they couldn't get ALL the blood, the test doesn't really work. Luckily Tom knows me well enough now (one would hope) that he was aware that until this was completed, I was....not really okay. At least we know! In fact, I voiced it. I said, "until this is all done, can we just allow me to not be ok?" (Enter dramatic hand gestures here).
To which Tom replied, "yep."
He gets me.
So here's how the day has gone.
3:30am- wake James to pee in cup.
Never really go back to sleep and whenever doze off, have dream about messing up pee collection, or dream about Tom messing it up which I've still not recovered from violent feelings of.
5am- wake James again for more pee. Success! Separate into tubes and get it in freezer. Make coffee and sit in dark reading and snapchatting with book Whoreders cause they're as weird as me.
7am- pack up all stuff, plus Halloween stuff for tomorrow at school plus gfcf cupcakes I made for another kid's bday at school cause I'm a control freak and need James (and Kristen's kids) to eat my food that I know every ingredient of.
Get kids dressed and Eve fed. Pack up meat as gift to nurse for going above and beyond.
7:45- start 45 min drive to dr.
Appt at 8:30am. Done by 9 with draw. Held James for about 15 min drinking chocolate pediasure to make sure he doesn't faint. Eat snack, bathroom, play with waiting room toys.
9:30am- head to toy store for some major overcompensation. Check.
Now we are off to school after another snack. Results not back for about 3 weeks. Soooo...for now...we're fine.
Fine.
....fine...

Why Shit Doesn't Get Done

Everyone with kids knows how hard it is to get anything done with them around. One of my favorite sayings: cleaning your house with kids around is like brushing your teeth while eating Oreos. Truth. It's hard enough to do the things we don't maybe love to do even BEFORE we have kids.
But throw any type of special needs kid in and the difficulty increases exponentially. Everything becomes an emergency. Probably the special needs parent has learned to cope so well under pressure, that they thrive on it and thus put themselves in situations that create the stress they crave. You know, like booking 17 things in one day, or leaving things til the last minute. And when there is a moment to relax away from research, paperwork, therapy, heads spinning, you have to choose to take it, or get shit done. Depends on the shit, really, so you have to weigh the importance. Sometimes just letting shit go will make you a helluva lot happier than stressing about it.
For those with kids, think how disastrous your house gets when one of your kids has an illness. There are snot rags littering the floor, dirty bathrooms, unmade beds, laundry piled up, everyone wears PJs all day, showers are optional, dishes are dirty. Shoot, this could be me anyway. But then consider your child being ill ALL THE TIME. And while you get used to it and adapt, sadly, there has to be a level of acceptance into the chaos of your life or you'll go batshit crazy. Hopefully both parents reach the same level of acceptance together, or you'll drive EACH OTHER batshit crazy.
So if you come to my house and see faded toys and chairs scattered around the yard, and a kiddie pool still containing water even though it's October, don't judge. Consider, perhaps, that my old quirky dog detests water bowls but will drink from the kiddie pool, and I can't handle the added stress of getting her to drink, so we leave out the kiddie pool.
If you see our garage halfway cleaned out, and all the crap that needs to be sorted or thrown away is strewn around the front, consider the fact that the people we hired to do it never came back, and my husband only takes one day off a week. The kids and I would much rather have him spend time with us rather than out in the garage.
If you notice my dining room table has several stacks of paperwork for a really long time, then I tell you I cleaned and you see it stacked into 3 neat piles...you should understand that they are organized into "stuff that needs to be dealt with", "stuff that needs to be filed", and trash. And the trash pile will get to the trash can next time I walk that way with empty hands.
If you notice there are always dishes in my sink, consider the fact that they actually haven't been there that long, but that I cook food for my child constantly, so as soon as dishes are done, they are dirty immediately.
So instead of looking at our house that needs painting, TV that needs hanging, deck that needs fixing, cars that need washing, grass that needs tending, stink bugs that need vacuuming, windows that need cleaning, toys that need picking up, light bulbs that need replacing, laundry that needs folding, dogs that need bathing, etc etc etc ad infinitum....and thinking: 'wow, these people are rednecks', perhaps consider thinking: 'wow, these are some happy and really well adjusted people!'
And be glad you're not our neighbors. ;) And if you ARE our neighbors...well...be glad we're all a mile a part and there's a healthy tree line.

New chapter, same book

I've gotten a lot of texts asking how yesterday was, and so instead of typing it all out, again, I'm just gonna post some of those convos on here:




























This is the waiting room ^^^


Okay. We good? That's all I know. :)

On the Road Again...

Most of my blog posts should have a theme song. I wish it could play in the background while you read. Then you'd really be in my head for a while.

For the past few days, Like a Virgin has been playing in my noggin nonstop.

You're welcome.

Anywhoooooo....we are...on the road again. Literally. On our way down to Lynchburg, VA to The Rimland Center. The NNY Autism Center I guess dismantled their out of state patient care due to state restrictions or something. It's a bummer because I was really hoping we were done with expensive deposits and new dr visits, endless paperwork, explaining The Story, and terrorizing James. But alas, no such luck.
On the plus side, I'm pretty excited about this place. If we had known what we were doing...at any time in the past few years, this is where we would have gone. But since James isn't autistic, we didn't know where to look. They have a biomedical approach to neurodevelopmental issues. AND they work closely with a nutritionist who's cookbook I've been using for a long while now. I'm sure we will need more bloodwork and who knows what, not to mention more visits, but at least it's only 3 hours away instead of 9....winning!
Also, this is James's 3rd day of a cold with a fever, where usually you should see a doctor....but I haven't taken my kids to a traditional medicine doctor in over a year, because they actually haven't needed it and also because I'm tired of explaining myself. So it's nice that we happen to be going to a doctor today to get him checked out.

On another note, last week we got an invite to a picnic at Robert and Luciana Duvall's farm, which is about a mile from the barn.



The kids were a good excuse to have our picture taken. But in reality, we should have had them take the picture of us cause they haven't seen Lonesome Dove, so they didn't understand the coolness of Augustus McRae.