Then a Storm Blows Up

I was really looking forward to tomorrow.

I've been running about like a crazy woman who beats up turkeys with santa hats, getting kids settled into school, getting new speech evals and OT sessions and appointments for more evals. Also, teaching classes and trying to get stuff up in my Etsy shop. And clean my house, which still looks like a tornado blew through after the bomb went off. Oh, and there's baseball. And my ETS job. And some other stuff. And trying to get Joey transitioned. Yay, me.

Tomorrow is the first day I was really going to take some time off for just me, doing me stuff, while petting cats. The morning would be spent working my ETS job, and then the afternoon I was going to sit on a couch, playing autumn favorites like Disney's Ichabod Crane and maybe a bit of Harry Potter or Fellowship of the Ring, I hadn't really decided yet. I was going to finish making hair scrunchies and maybe bake some cookies. I was going to clean the front hall.

And none of it is going to happen.

Instead, I will be at school, sitting in on Joey's math class to figure out what the cow is going on in there. He keeps bolting from it- sometimes twice in a single lesson. The new para they tossed at us yesterday, without warning, has no experience with autism or even working in education (her parents, yes. Her, no. Apparently her college degree is in business). I feel for her. She's about to have an unhappy parent come crashing into her life on Day 3 of her first real job ever and give her what-for. That's what happens when your boss tosses you into a job when a child's safety and life are on the line, without training you, transitioning you, or even informing your new co-workers that would be arriving. Talk about "no support." Sheesh, poor girl.

My first priority, however, is my Joey. He needs appropriate support available to him at all times, and he needs it three weeks ago- well, five months ago, actually, but let's start with where we are. If he can run out of a classroom and across a hall, he can just as easily run out a door to the parking lot. He needs his academics to be brought back up to par. We started at this school reading four grade levels high; now we are "below basic." They never bothered to hire an autism specialist for the school, they just borrow the one from the lower elementary.

I can't let him lose more time- academically, functionally, emotionally. We're already trying to dig our way out of the pit he's already fallen into. We've worked too hard to let him down now. He's worked too hard. Ichabod will have to wait.