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A week in the life OR Is it Friday Yet? Posted By: janneane7
Posted On: 03/21/2008
I share this not to bemoan my life or to whine… My hope is that many of you will read this and think “YUP, this is my life” or that you will laugh out loud and say “oh yeah I had that week last week…”
It is my hope though to at the very least make you laugh. Heck that’s what I do after a week like this!!!
What else can you do?
My essay is titled: A week in the life OR Is it Friday Yet?
Woke up Monday with a splitting headache (possibly because I had to meet with people connected to Andy’s Adult program) and a seriously leaking bathroom sink… I cancel my meeting. I don’t need to deal with them when I am feeling like this. Then to make things a little more interesting, I fell down the cellar stairs. Thankfully I only twisted my ankle and bruised my leg. Later the plumber came and shut down the sink until he could fix it on Tuesday. Monday night, my husband fiddles with the kitchen sink for over an hour. In the process he shot water all over the kitchen, 3 times (the floor around the sink, has never looked so clean) and he broke the faucets!! Now we only have running water in the toilet and the bathtub.

Tuesday: I wake up with another headache. I help Andy get ready and then take him to his crappy adult program. (It pains me every time I drop him off) then it’s off to work. After work the plumber came back! HOORAY! He fixed both sinks and we have water again. PHEW! Thankfully since we live upstairs from my Dad (and he owns the house) he covered the expense. As for Andy; the weather was crappy and his mentor is out of town… he is bored out of his skull!

Wednesday: I wake up and discover the toilet is running non stop. My husband says he’ll look at it tomorrow when he has the day off. This seems pretty simple, so we are just turning the toilet off and then on at the shut off until this gets settled. Work has been absolutely nuts with 5 new parents (of kids with ASD) calling me this week looking for help and resources. I can’t catch up because we have a very important mailing out to get out. I hate fiddling with mailings when families need me, but this one is time sensitive and other families might loose out if this mailing doesn’t get right out. By noon my head is killing me. I head out at 2:00 to meet Andy at home. The weather continues to be a cold with wind, rain, and some snow… Andy continues to be bored out of his mind and doesn’t want to hear anything from me… Only two more days until Andy’s his mentor Carrie comes back. I cannot wait!

Thursday… I wake up at 2:30 a.m., my heart is absolutely pounding from a horrible nightmare where Andy and I were trying to run form a nuclear bomb. (Why can’t I have nice dreams with puppies and kittens? or even better me hitting the lottery?) I know I won’t be going back to sleep anytime soon. Finally though I drift off around 4:00 a.m. I wake at 8:00 and there is my constant companion, my headache. Well at least today is my day off. BIG fun today too because I’m off to the GYN… After my Dr. appt. I decide to go to work because even though it is my day off, I have SO MUCH to catch up on. A few hours later I come home to find that my husband has no idea how to fix the toilet. Time to call the plumber AGAIN. Is that my head pounding? Yes I think so… Andy comes in at 2:45 but we have to run right out to pick up my husband’s work truck from the garage, and I have to run Andy for a haircut. I’m glad to see that Andy is calm and happy. Thank God for small favors. Andy LOVES to see Becky, his cute 30 year old hair dresser who has been giving him buzz cuts for years. Andy walks in the door behind me, but I am not moving fast enough and he is impatient. He decides to push to get around me to get in and he bangs in to a 6 foot tall display of every kind of hair care product you can think of…. Hair spray, mousse, gel and shampoo go flying everywhere. I look up and see the place is packed. Of course everyone is looking at us. And no big surprise, the crashing of the hair care products and seeing Becky has someone else in her chair throws Andy off. Between being excited to see Becky and smacking into the display he is REALLY REVVED UP. My son who just moments ago was so calm and quiet, starts making VERY loud noises and JUMPING across the salon…oh delightful.
I see that the women in the other salon chairs and those who are waiting look genuinely terrified. They pull quickly pull their feet in as my 6 feet 2 inches and 290 pounds loud son jumps full force across the 1, 2, 3, times across the room . I make a grab for him while trying to pick up the mess and tell him to “sit down!” I explain that Becky will be with him in a few minutes. Becky, who KNOWS Andy doesn’t do well waiting, has a client in her chair and God only knows when she’ll be done. Andy sits for a few minutes making horribly loud noises and doing his best to look as autistic as possible. He is waving his hand in front of his face while he grunts, growls and tics. SUDDENLY he leaps out of his chair again, and is jumping across the floor. As I get up to grab him again I feel my head pound and think “Oh I am having one big cocktail later!” The 2 woman sitting across from us in the waiting area are doing their best to try to ignore us. I on the other hand try to be light and up beat… “Oh Andy” I say, “why are you so revved up?” while thinking Becky PLEASE HURRY! Of course Andy leaps out of the chair yet again less than a minute later. Once again I grab him again and tell him to please sit down. We got through this scenario 2 or 3 more times, and then finally Becky calls him. She is ready.
While Andy gets his hair cut I have 5 minutes to bury my head in Ladies Home Journal. Then he is done; it’s time to head to the little meat market near my home, pick up something for dinner and then head home. My head is still throbbing…
In the back of my mind I hear that old commercial “Calgon take me away…” and I think at least tomorrow is Friday!
       
carmel66 wrote this reply on 03/21/2008
And Friday is no relief...!I think I'm going to be having that week NEXT week. Carson's recovering from flu, home therapist is in ITALY (!!!!so jealous!!! with her BOYFRIEND), DH is out of town and I'm just waiting for the second shoe to drop - which would be Morgan or me (or both) getting C's flu.But look at it this way - you got a lot accomplished (2 sinks and 1 toilet fixed, haircut) and got the mentor's vacation week over with. The light is at the end of the tunnel.....

Motherof4 wrote this reply on 03/21/2008
Yes, that was quite a week you had! I really hope that no more plumbing will break for a very long time and that the people responsible for Andy's adult program will finally start to listen to you. (Will that take a miracle?) And, yes, I have had weeks like that. I hope you get a nice, quiet evening soon, with Calgon, chocolate and/or a cocktail, whatever suits you best.I'd love to see you write about what a really GOOD adult program would be like. There's such a need out there, and the more ideas parents see, the more ideas they'll think of, too. If enough parents have enough ideas, maybe we'll be able to lobby our state legislatures for better services for all of us.

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