Venting for Sanity

Don't read this one. We all have our own lists and I should just shut up. I have no idea why putting this out there serves as my only chance for a release valve, but it does, and it is, and so I write:

Today I needed to sort out 600 scattered jpegs for 60 sixth graders behind on an important project. Today I needed to interview 120 students on my new video equipment to create a digital thank you for a major recording star, who happened to drop into my classroom during the production. Today I needed to shoot bits and edit a short segment for our school community service organization; this involved first graders dressed like sea cucumbers, and little boys wearing robot masks. Today the fifth grade needed my help with their research projects, now into the crucial publishing phase after working diligently with my support on developing inferential questions, conducting research in the library as well as online and via interviews, note taking, and citing sources. But today was the rooster's first day back to school in a while, and he's on antibiotics, and, as I think you will recall, I had zero (zip, zilch, nada) hope of him making through an entire day, but I hoped upon hope I'd at least have the bulk of it, including the tribute to the singing star, under my belt before he got bounced out of school.

I finished the 120 interviews, along with a little of this, a little of that, and none of the time I'd hoped to have for the fifth grade, by 2:40. At 2:45 I got the call. "Our boy hit his friend." To be more accurate, my boy hit the child of the woman who wanted him expelled when he spit at her a couple months back; their last name is one I expect many of you would know, and while you should never, ever hit anyone, I do wish my son would especially and immediately stop hitting people with foundations named for them who donate impressively to the school and who have lost their patience (perhaps justifiably) with his aggression.

"I'll be right there." I gathered him up, tried to have something akin to a useful conversation about hands not being for hitting, arranged by fantastic luck to have his amazing occasional sitter pick him up, and managed to make some headway on the jpegs and the sea cucumbers before picking up Peaches to head back home by way of the grocery store.

Tomorrow I have a half day to try to catch up on the outstanding business of today, as school closes at NOON. That means that if the rooster can hold it together for four hours, I need to straighten out only a few hundred jpegs and put the trickiest-to-edit parts into the community service video to show Monday. I won't be able to begin to edit the 120 thank yous, though, because while I have all this to carry forward from today, tomorrow's own agenda includes a meeting with my boss, giving a stern cyber-bullying talk to some precocious fourth graders, turning in overdue time sheets, and filling out some neglected POs by noon. As the week draws to a close, my outstanding rooster business also includes the OT form that I need to fax to the school district, the arrangements for a summer camp shadow, the ABA log, and ABA tomorrow night. But the thing is that I don't know if the rooster CAN manage for a few hours tomorrow. It's all piling up, it's all toppling backward on us, we're all drowning. If I get the call tomorrow before noon, there is no place to move everything to on subsequent calendar pages... next week at work starts the slippery slide to Open House, graduation, summer programs... Next week in the land of roostery autism includes twice to OT, four nights of ABA, a full functional re-eval, observation by the inclusion specialist, a visit from the Pre-K-Itinerant Teacher, restocking the gfcf cupboards, and the slippery slope to his fifth birthday, new blood work, and an increased ABA schedule.

My mother wants to know when we can come for a visit. It's just 2 flights and a 70 mile drive to get to her house 3,000 miles away. They have never heard of gfcf in my hometown, where a good many meals come with a side of biscuits, and my mother drives an hour across the state line to get to a decent grocery store. I really, really, really want to go. I want my mommy. And my stepdad. But at the end of the 10 travel hours with my children, I will need to be hospitalized.

There is some worse stuff I haven't been writing about too because it's just too much, and it feels disloyal. We all have stuff like that, too, don't we?

I would like to find Saddam Hussein's old cave and make it my own.

I hope nobody read this. But I do feel a few pounds lighter.