Truly Random Reflections (long posting)

I haven't had a chance to get on for a few days, and so, from the Random Reflections from Angie blog come some Truly Random Reflections from the last several days...

*I think I have whiplash. Seriously. I was shopping at Target on Saturday afternoon and was going to leave. I was about to pull on to a two lane highway, and then all the sudden realized, "Wait! That car is in the lane I want, not the lane farther over." So, I stopped. And then I thought, "Hang on...it just feels like I got hit, but I didn't pull out." Needless to say, I had quite the moment of confusion before I realized -- I got rear-ended! Both myself and the gal who hit the car jumped out, and there didn't appear to even be the slightest bit of damage. Bad, I know, but we didn't then exchange information. I know...don't lecture me, if you feel so inclined. I was able, however, to write down her license plate number after the fact, since she got in a different lane than me. I did notice that my neck hurt, but it has been hurting for days, so no big deal. Well...now it hurts in a different way. I'm not in horrible pain, but it is uncomfortable. Oh well -- what can ya do? At least everyone was okay and I was in the car alone.

*Gray's Anatomy was excellent this past Thursday night. But, really...c'mon..."to be continued?" Seriously. *Sigh* Unfortunately, we are quite certain that George's Dad will die. Too sad!

*Something that I always thought would happen isn't going to happen now, and that is hard to get my mind around. I always thought we would adopt from China. Really...I've thought it for years now. However, I had to be 30 before I could do it (their rules). And, then three days after my birthday, China put into effect new rules for adoption. I thought, "Okay, I think we're still good." Well, then this weekend, I happened to have a reason to look them up, and I saw one thing that I hadn't seen before about a net worth requirement that we just don't meet (and probably won't for a long time, I would imagine). This has been pretty disheartening for me. Here, after years of thinking this was something we would do, when it is finally time that we might be able to actually think about it, it's gone as a possibility. That sucks.

*Friday was report card day. In our house, report card day sucks. I can remember when I was a kid (heck -- even when I was in college!), report card day was awesome. I never really had to work at school (even in college), and I got good grades. And, here we have boys that struggle in school. Even when they try hard, the results are not always so great. We promised Noah earlier in the week that maybe he could get a video game that he had been wanting if he did a bit better on the next report card. Duh -- we weren't even thinking that the next one would be coming out that same week! Most of the grades stayed the same (including the nasty stupid "F" in spelling, even with the modifications that we put in place), although math went from a B- to a C+ (not a huge difference), and the writing grade (with modifications in place, since this was one of the main areas of concern) went up from a D- to a C. I decided that was a good enough "improvement" and told Noah he could get the game. I thought that would be good enough for him, but then all of the sudden, as we were driving to a haircut (right after opening the report card), he BURST into tears. He said, "I keep working and working. Why can't I get A's?" It felt like my heart had been ripped right out of my chest. Oh geez!

On the way to the haircut that night was the first time I shared with him the big "A" in our household -- Autism. How do you explain that to a seven year old? I told him, "You have something called Autism." He wanted to know, "What's an autism?" I wasn't really sure how to explain it to him, but just told him that something in his brain works differently than some of the other kids in his class. And, because of that, school might be harder for him sometimes. I told him, "I know that stinks. It's not fair at all, but that's just the way it is, and I'm sorry." Of course, I was starting to cry by then. I did point out though that this was why he gets to take breaks at school, why he gets to chill out in the resource room sometimes, why sometimes his tests look different than the other kids, and this is also why he has his "helpers" (what he calls all the people who work as one-on-one paraprofessionals with him). I told him all of that is because everyone wants him to do well, and they want to help. He was pretty on edge for the next several hours and seemed to cry at the drop of a hat. I don't think he really got what I was trying to tell him, but hopefully it plants a seed, and we'll revisit it again later. I don't want him to feel like it's an excuse, but he also needs to know that there *is* a reason that this seems so hard.

*I put in an entire year's worth of book keeping into my new Quickbooks Simple Start for one of my businesses this weekend. Whew! Glad to have that done! (Not so glad though that I have to remit my sales tax for the whole last year and I haven't been setting it aside. Blech!) Oh...and on the money front, I actually balanced the checkbook last week for the month of December. Wow! I'm such a big girl. *wink* (Oh, this was, of course, using the +/- $10 method. LOL)

*I'll end with a little funny (at least I thought it was funny), since the things that I have written about seem kind of down. I got Jack (age 5) dressed the other day for school. I put a rugby type shirt on him (with a collar, etc.). He said, "Are we going to church today?" I said, "No, just school." He said, "Then why am I wearing such a handsome shirt?" LOL!!!!!

*Shoot -- one more thing to add. I had a meeting with the school on Friday *finally* about Jack. I had felt like it was like pulling teeth to get them to finally meet, and here he has been struggling in kindergarten for an entire semester. I was not expecting the meeting to be so positive, but it really was. The people there were: me & Molly (who watched a Blue's Clues video on our portable DVD player, and also handed me feminine supplies occassionally from my purse), the speech therapist, the occupational therapist, Jack's teacher, the elementary special ed facilitator, and the assistant principal. It was great that we got to talking about things, and really were all on the same page about Jack's strengths and difficulties. His current "label" is Communication Disorder, but that isn't accurate at all. (Heck -- they figure he might not get to receive speech soon because he is doing so well in that way.) They will finish up some testing and we will meet again near the end of February for an annual case conference review. It is a bit early for that, but since we may be changing his "label," they wanted to do that. They are looking into if he qualifies for an Emotional Disability (because of his sometimes extreme anxiety/distractability), Learning Disability, or Autism Spectrum Disorder (which is what one psychologist said before, but nobody else has seemed to agree). We all agree that it is hard to pin down Jack for labeling needs (for him to get services). There was also some discussion about alternate programming for him next year, such as half day in kindergarten and half day in 1st grade or half day in kindergarten and half day in the resource room, but to consider him a 1st grader. This would be because his school district doesn't hold back kindergartners. He just barely made the cut off this year (because of a law change that moved back the date), and so he is one of the very youngest in his class. As the facilitator said, "And, this means he is *always* going to be one of the youngest." So, we'll have to wait and see. I just hope that if that comes to pass that he will take it in stride. I suspect it is really the best option though, and then for him to start "real" 1st grade the following year. Keep him in your thoughts, if you are inclined!