First off - Happy Halloween, everybody!

Life has been a lot, lately.

( Car woes )

The kid in question turned 13 last week. 13!!! I have not yet fully wrapped my brain around that. ( Weathering the teen storm )

Due to feeling just overwhelmed, I decided to not sign up for Festivids this year. ( Justified... )

At least the autumnal weather has finally arrived. It is just wrong like the wrongest of things to require AC in October. Now I can sleep properly cold (while my thin-blooded family complains - wear PJs, dudes!).

I'm thinking this evening calls for some spiced wine and curling up with media while taking door duty for trick-or-treaters. Maybe some chocolate munching, too. :) I hope you all have a lovely evening!

I'm not officially off work until tomorrow, but UGH I am fighting off slipping into vacation mode right now, and losing. I've got 10 tabs open of recipes I want to bake for the VVC con suite (self, you have less than 2 days to do it all, STOP IT), and my mind is flitting all over the place with details.

Competing for brain space are:

1) The long-awaited sewer line replacement is FINALLY happening. I don't have a lot of faith in this company, considering they've been stringing me along for months, and couldn't even dig in the right spot yesterday (a foot or so off), but I just want it done already. I had big plans for getting stuff checked off my todo list this weekend, until I got an email from the company saying we were responsible for opening up access to the backyard. I had to spend most of Sunday clearing the side beds, then helping the husband fight with the fence to swing it out of the way to let them bring in their equipment. Hopefully they can wrap everything up today. If they interfere with my baking plans tomorrow, I will get angry.

2) I want another dog like you wouldn't believe, but I have to wait until the sewer line mess is done. It's been a freaking year, and I still tear up about with how much I miss my sweet fuzzy girl.

3) The Emperor's school starts next week. Registration and supplies shopping is done (though he still needs new shoes), and we have school orientation Thursday during which I hope to ask a bazillion questions, starting with who his IEP support people are, because I am beyond tired of going months into the school year with no info. I am terrified about how this year is going to go; middle school is a trial by fire of executive function, and I'm anticipating that my ADHD/ASD boy is going to have a very hard time of it. This transition is exactly why I've fought so hard to keep his IEP in place, so here's hoping the school has its act together when it comes to support.

4) ( Family medical TMI grossness )

5) My minivan needs to go into the shop at some point. Since I'm driving my husband's car to VVC, I really hope the van doesn't break down on him while I'm gone. (There's also a simmering resentment that my husband moaned for months about how he had to get his oil changed, but couldn't be bothered to get it done even when he had a bonus day off work. I got it done on MY day off so it would be ready to go. ARGH.)

6) The house is a pit. I keep fighting the clutter and losing. My Saturday morning garage sale addiction isn't helping.

7) I have so much left to do for VVC prep, including making a Club Vivid outfit, doing some last-minute edits on my CVV entry and getting it ready for posting, the afore-mentioned baking, and PACKING UGH. I am bringing all the booze, and it's going to be wine o'clock as soon as my stuff makes it to the hotel room.

Wish me luck in making it to Thursday night with my sanity intact!

While watching "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" he said, "I worry that the special effects are actually real and they use convicted people as victims."

Our struggles to provide him with a sibling don't go unnoticed by him. "Mom, since you're getting older, if you can't have a baby, why don't we go to the orphanage and adopt a kid?" I explained that adopting can be very expensive, running upwards of 20 grand. "Well, don't buy me any more videogames. I can get by with renting ones from the library."

I feel overwhelmed sometimes by what's going on in his brain. Today we spent a while conversing with the head of the after school program at his school, as the Emperor has been regularly getting into trouble for talking when the kids are supposed to be quiet. He doesn't want to control his talking, so we agreed that he'll sit at a separate table so he won't be tempted. Later in the car, we discussed what's going on when he doesn't realize that he's taking over conversations and shouting over people rather than stopping and listening. He said with a sob that it's revenge for all the times he's been ignored and interrupted. I refrained from telling him that people can get tired of being explained at for 10 minutes about his obsession of the moment and instead pointed out that focusing on revenge is what makes Batman such a jerk sometimes, and that revenge fuels a lot of villains as well. "Do you want to be a villain?" "No." "How about a hero?" "No, I just want to be normal."

I hug this boy a lot.

I got almost nothing done over the three day weekend, and if I weren't so worn out emotionally, I might have room to feel bad about it. As it is, the high point was making chocolate waffles and bacon for the Emperor this morning.

In the list of dubious achievements, I finished off season 1 of "Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries" and season 4 of "Lost Girl". The former was delightful; the latter left me with a bad case of fannish whiplash at the WTFery on display. (Did they lose some episodes from their order and have to condense the events at the end, or was that just really bad pacing and plotting?)

I have to write uncomfortable emails to the Emperor's school tomorrow, which I am completely DNW about. We also should attend a class picnic on Friday, bleh.

I am hardcore failing at adulting. Self, this really needs to stop.

Lately it seems like I've only had two speeds - breakneck or full stop. First I was working on my vid like a fiend, blowing off life and work and such. Then I had to play catch-up on a work project that's due at the end of today, which meant working late nights and weekends, including 5 hours on Mother's Day. I finally had everything ready yesterday afternoon, including a user instruction doc, and sent the whole shebang off to the users for review before dashing out the door to make it home in time to meet my parents and jet to the Emperor's IEP re-evaluation.

Once again, I bless my dad and his professional experience in special education and his stubborn insistence that no one is going to deny his grandson the services he needs. ( IEP battle, latest round. We won. )

We had carry-out dinner to celebrate with my folks, then they got back on the road, the Emperor got hustled off to bed, and I settled down to check the feedback on my project. Whereupon I found absolutely nothing, no responses at all. I emailed my boss this morning about the complete lack of anything, and followed up with one of the users who proclaimed herself "too swamped to look at it now". The boss later let me know she'd contacted the users and someone would be getting in touch with me. A couple of hours later, still nothing.

Today while waiting I've finished a short request, cleaned out a bunch of old emails from my work inbox, blanched at the size of my personal inbox, played several rounds of Chris Evans 2048, and basically felt the ghost pangs of "Isn't there something I should be working on?" that comes from shifting from non-stop coding to free-fall. I gotta find a better balance.

And there's the boss on IM, telling me not to feel bad about it, and that I'm doing a good job. At least there's that.

I'm completely behind on reading everyone else's updates, so sorry if I missed anything. I hope you don't mind if I chime in on old conversations as I catch up.

For as much as today was trying really hard to be Monday, part 2, it did turn out much better than I expected.

An online misunderstanding got resolved, which lightened my mood considerably. Then my boss and I discussed periods and parenting, and briefly my project queue. I love bonding with her.

The husband had a stellar first day at work; he came home energized and feeling like he can really make a difference there. It's a relief and a joy to see him excited about going to work.

The Emperor made his goal at school today and wrote down his assignments in his binder, so he got his privileges and wound up watching "Agents of SHIELD" with me. I had to explain a couple of times which were the good guys vs. bad guys, but I think he enjoyed it almost as much as I did. Bonding with my son over geek TV: PRICELESS.

As a weird-but-good cherry topper on the evening, a visitor noticed the D&D manuals I picked up over the weekend at a garage sale, and mentioned excitedly that the D&D 1st edition of Deities and Demigods was probably worth quite a lot of money, as the sections on Cthulu and Melnibonéan were removed in later editions due to copyright violations.

My heart is considerably lighter than it was at the start of the day; I like ending well.

I was sooo happy to wake up to a rainy morning today. It's been too long since we got some condensed water in these parts; it's about time that humidity stopped loafing around and applied itself to the ground.

It also spoke to how freaking hot it's been, that when I was walking to my car after work, I thought the temp was perfectly pleasant - and yes, in comparison to 100 degrees, 85 is a balmy day indeed.

I've spent the last couple of days at work chasing down on my computer system error messages with singularly unhelpful descriptions. Whoever had the brilliant idea to program a pop-up to say only "An error has occurred" should be ashamed of themselves. Eventually I removed and reinstalled the code management and request tracking applications, which involved restarting my computer a bunch of times, and finally, all was well. Argh.

The Emperor is not adapting well to the new school. His social skills teacher doesn't seem to be offering him any useful tools or feedback on the issues he encounters; granted, that's reported through his defensive filter, but my heart aches at how frustrated he sounds. I miss his awesome teacher from last year.

I thought we might be able to get through his elementary school years without having to drag him to therapists or investigate medication, but if his school support staff is not up the challenge, we may just have to take those steps.

Bleh. Here's hoping Friday is a nicer day.

Hello, everyone! Why is posting so awkward and weird in my head? I've been fine with commenting in other people's posts, but lacking in the gestalt to create one for me.

I have two main preoccupations right now: conventions (later post, maybe?) and school time for the Emperor.

I forget how much I've shared with you guys, but there are big changes afoot for the little man. He's switching schools so he can join the gifted program. We thought it would be an excellent time for the change, as his former classmates are moving to an interim building so the old building can be renovated. Plus, his amazing social skills teacher is leaving to do something different. (We will miss her so much, I can't even begin to say.)

We knew beforehand that the school he's moving to is in a disadvantaged neighborhood. We requested any other information we could get before we signed him up, and got "Here's a website about our magnet program." So basically, nothing of any use. Like, say, that he will be required to wear a uniform (only 3 schools in the district have this policy), rendering 95% of his current wardrobe unwearable. Or that the school has failed to make adequate reading progress towards the NCLB benchmarks for the fifth year in a row, which could lead to any number of unspecified Bad Things. (Like potential budget cuts for the gifted program or his IEP-mandated support team, but hey, it's not like we asked to know about any of this! Oh, WAIT, we did.) So I am disgruntled and feeling unprepared and nervous.

But also so, so lucky and privileged. Since this new school is on the other side of town, bussing is covered. However (the frogurt is also cursed), because of genius scheduling (seriously, did the people in charge of the routes fail the wandering salesman problem set?), he would have to be at his bus stop an hour and half before school starts, at about 6:15 AM. I don't live in a big town, guys; we live about 3.5 miles away from the school. I think that's a really unreasonable thing to ask of an 8/9 year old (and let's face it, me, because I'd be in charge of getting him ready and out the door on time).

But! Because I have a job that lets me set my own start/end times, as long as core hours coverage is met, and because I have a car I don't have to share with my spouse, I can drive my kid to school and pick him up. So I can complain about it with as much ire as for an annoying hangnail. I really do try to count my blessings. Similarly, I can grouse about having to buy him a whole new wardrobe, but feel lucky when talking to another mom at registration who sheepishly admitted that she's on a reduced income and was super grateful when I told her that Walmart.com had some great deals on uniforms.

I can buy him all new school supplies every year, and easily go to three different stores to catch the best sales.

I can buy him yet another new pair of shoes (he's wearing out about one pair every month or two).

I can pay his school fees, and put money in his lunch account, and sign him up for the afterschool program. These all cost money, and with my husband still unemployed, it hurts a bit, but it's manageable. I don't have to give up one or more to triage the others.

I am so, so privileged (and yet still grumpy).

I am totally jinxing myself by writing this, but...

The Emperor has been so awesome this week. He's reached his goal on his behavior chart at school every day so far, which means that he's had full privileges (TV, computer, video games) at home.

A couple of nights when I've gone in to check on him before I went to bed, he's fallen asleep with his glasses on, with books under the blanket, meaning that after we've tucked him in and turned out the lights, he's waited until we've gone downstairs to retrieve his glasses and books to sneakily read in bed. Theoretically I should punish him for that (for getting up after he's supposed to be sleeping, setting himself up to be overtired the next day, and potentially breaking his glasses by sleeping in them), but he's so damn cute, conked out with his glasses on, and really, punishing him for reading is anathema to me.

This morning, he started riffing on "Weapon of Choice" while watching some Pokemon, and cajoled me into letting him watch my vid before we left the house. There is almost nothing more adorable than a seven-year-old trying to keep up with Fatboy Slim lyrics, whisper-sung in his own garbled phonetic translation, and bopping along to the beat.

I am so lucky, you guys. Hope your Fridays are off to as a great a start as mine.

A friend's Facebook page alerted me to a proposal that's going up for vote today at the Board of Education meeting for our school district. They want to amend the current "Search and Seizure" policy to include the following:

Over my dead body will they conduct a strip or body cavity search of the Emperor without me and/or my husband there!

I sent off an angry letter, and got this in reply (from a woman, mind you):

Holy CRAPBALLS, woman - they have fucking metal detectors at the high schools. What the hell could a kid sneak past those that you're willing to give up your daughter's right to not be violated in order to potentially find? Oh, right, it would never happen to your daughter, so you're fine with it. Someone else's kid totally deserves it when it happens.

INFERNOS ON THE SIDE OF MY FACE!


ETA on Tuesday:  the report I got of the meeting from a friend is: Not passed yet, but not thrown out completely either.  Still in disbelief that actual people, not robots, want to enact this.