Always snowing

A friend of mine on Facebook recently moved from a warm climate to a cold one.  She posted a beautiful picture of her family's new home that was covered in fresh snow.   A friend of hers warned her to make sure to stay home in the snow storm and stay off the roads.  To which another mutual friend who lives in a another pretty snowy state replied:

"If you stopped driving every time it snowed, you'd never leave your house." 

I chuckled when I read it but I also sighed.  This is our life in many ways.  There is always a "snow storm" of some type blowing through this autism house.   While it's easier and sometimes safer to stay home, that does a number on your mind too.  Certainly doesn't do your kid any favors either.

I often find myself wonder "Damn, just how long is this winter gonna be???"  The ten thousand hours days that start anywhere between "Dark Thirty" or "Oh My Fecking God O'Clock".  The events that you have carefully planned that explode in your face because the slightest thing was amiss.  I understand that there will never be a moment where I can just think "There, it's all fixed now." but the last few months have been a constant Blizzard of things for lack of better words.   I get that when we learned  Kiddo had autism that life wouldn't even go back to "normal" and we would have to learn to adjust to the "new normal".

It just seems lately that whenever we adjust to a "new normal" the Kiddo is like "NOPE!  Let's change it up. I don't want you getting soft." I'm guessing puberty hasn't helped with this.  Spending that time in the old school with staff that clearly didn't give a crap about the special needs population.  Switching to a new school, just start getting settled there and then my father dies.  Start to slowly pick up the pieces there and then it's the holidays and all the craziness that comes with it.

This morning was the cherry on top of the shit sundae when he woke up in a pretty good mood only to discover that the Internet was not working.  It was an area wide outage. There was nothing we could do other than offer our phones and our data plans to him for comfort.  But this is a Kiddo who wanted his iPad to work and no other devices were acceptable.  So we just kept hustling.  A long walk with the dogs.  A long foot and hand massage with lotion for input.  Tons and tons of every redirection for as long as we could.  The Internet finally started working again but the meltdown lingered.  Like any good snow storm, it left a good mess in its wake.   The day was already ruined before it even begun and calling for a "snow day" wasn't even an option.

The bus pulls up and I warn them that he's in a mood.  The driver just sighs and says "Wednesdays" cause even he knows that there will be a storm every Wednesday.  I promise to call the BCBA and teacher at school to see if they can give them some help on the bus and the driver agrees. It's a safety issue. It has to be addressed.  They pull away and I almost make it back to the front door before the tears start.

It would be so easy to just stay home and wallow but I got some shoveling to do.  There's really no choice here.   Mama Fry is gonna need an industrial snow plow at this rate.

My backyard a few years ago. Even my dogs were like "Oh Hell no. You better go make me a potty path."