Consistency

The leaves on the trees are small in the desert. The bright thirsty skies have made them hardy, so they don't need much nurturing. Where the leaves are big they're trying to catch more sun and rain. They need more nurturing. Those plants don't survive here. Not without a lot of assistance anyway.

The little leaves here shimmer like snowflakes against the blue sky. Baby Cale loves to stare up at them with a great big baby smile, and will do so for as long as I'll let him. Meanwhile, I love to stare at him.

I love to watch the shadows of the wiggling leaves on his face, separated here and there by spots of yellow light. They seem to know he needs a little leaf ballet on his face to soothe him and let him know he's not alone. I'm not supposed to let him stare at the leaves. I'm supposed to "KEEP HIM ENGAGED," but honestly, how can I help it when the trees engage him better than I can?

The only problem is that the trees don't fill a cup when he needs a drink of water, don't set cereal out when he's hungry, don't change his diaper or put dry clothes on him or talk to him or help him color or open the container of Legos. And they aren't sitting at the dinner table with him when he screams and throws his food on the floor because he can't say, "all done." I am.

DDD came yesterday to talk to me about the hours of therapy Cale qualifies for. He can get speech therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy, music, water, and horse therapy. Apparently horses heal autism. "Huh," I said about that as I felt the confusion crinkle form right between my eyes.

I asked about ABA based therapies, which some of the parents I've met at SARRC say their children have qualified for. Some of these children are getting 35 to 40 hours per week of ABA based therapies through DDD. ABA is an umbrella term for a variety of fairly complicated behavior therapies that can help children with autism learn to communicate more appropriately and consequently, behave more appropriately.

One of the hopes is to lesson disruptive behaviors (stimming and tantrums for example) so they don't interfere as much with their ability to learn what other therapists are trying to teach them.

I did inform my DDD case worker that some form of behavior therapy will be crucial for Cale before any of the other therapies will be effective for him, but she said that a child has to be under three years old to qualify for behavior therapy. Well, Cale is three and a half. So my timing is off again. Sounds familiar.

I can just picture a speech therapist trying to work with Cale. "Say ba-ba-ba," the speech therapist will say. And Cale will throw himself to the floor, slap himself in the face, bang his head, and scream at the top of his little lungs. Yup. And this will cost the state $150. per hour. Yet they won't provide behavior therapy. Oh but THANK GOD he'll get "horse" therapy. Shit.

Our only hope is for me to try to learn and implement ABA based therapies myself. I've already started the jump start class through SARRC and right now we're focusing on Pivotal Response Treatment (a therapy under the ABA umbrella that focuses on social communication via vocalization).

This therapy requires a form of consistency much like the green that fills each blade of grass in my neighborhood. I hope I can stay strong for the task.

This is what PRT looks like for Cale right now. The therapist says to Cale, "cookie." If he makes any sound that is filled with intent then he immediately gets a cookie. If he doesn't say cookie (or something) then he gets a cookie waved in his face but not given to him. As soon as he says, "cookie," (or "uh") he gets the cookie. Inappropriate behavior (like tantrums) are completely ignored. This is not complicated stuff.

Cale gets it. He knows what he's supposed to do, and it isn't too hard for him. However, I've been trying to get him to say "drink" all afternoon. I know he's thirsty because he hasn't had any fluid all afternoon. I'm following him around with the cup, handing it to him until he grabs for it and looks at me, then I hold on to it and say, "drink."

Instead of saying "drink" he has managed to send his sister to her room, ears covered, with all of his screaming. He's thrown every small household item we own, broken a lamp, and knocked over all the chairs. And this is after a WEEK of consistent PRT.

Right now, at this very moment, he's sitting on my desk screaming into my face with his big red drippy face and grabbing for the cup. But he still won't say drink (or "du" or anything appropriate for that matter). I'm turning my back on him, writing, and ignoring the little shit until he's done screaming at which point I'll again say, "drink" and we'll start the whole process over again.

It doesn't matter that it's dinner time and I've made nothing. Or that I have two other kids who are hungry, zoning out on the T.V., and need attention. It doesn't matter that the sheets need changed, the laundry needs folding, the dishes need to be done, homework needs to be done, etc. Nope. All that matters is that I hold this stupid cup and wait for a quiet moment to say, "drink.

A friend of mine told me awhile ago that practice makes perfect. I've actually been reciting that in my head today. It's been true in every other area of life, so it's got to be true for this too. What my son may not realize is that my will is infinitely stronger then his. We'll get this perfect. It will either end in him saying "drink" or dying of dehydration. All I needed was for a professional to back me on that for my will to solidify like concrete in a mold.

Cale seems like he'd rather go through hell then try to talk to me.  But I have to remember that it's his disease, not him, that keeps him away. It isn't personal. And my refusal to participate in his bad behavior isn't personal either. He'll figure that out.

I do love the weather in this wide valley of Arizona. It's spring all the time. And right now the Saguaro cacti are making a serious attempt to bloom. The big fat yellow-green buds poking out the tops promise to reveal blossoms I've never seen. Either they've never bloomed (since I've moved here anyways) OR I've never noticed. I'm not sure which. I'm usually too self-absorbed to notice anything on the tops of plants.

Better Thinking

Some people say that God has a sense of humor. I wouldn't call it that. I don't think that God is trying to be funny at all. He does however, know just what I need, when I need it, even if I don't agree with him on what that might be.

Medicaid officially denied Isabel for the second time. I got the letter late in the afternoon last Thursday. I guess that autism, head banging, feeding disorder, and failure to thrive physically, aren't really that bad after all.

Instead of helping her now while she still has a chance of becoming a self-supporting adult some day, they've decided to wait, possibly until she's an adult and can't work because she didn't get early intervention as a child. Lovely. Then they can take care of her for the rest of her life. What an utterly fascinating decision. I apologize for the sarcasm. It's really not a pretty color on me.

It's left me with a sense that another piece has fallen out of the bottom of my support structure. I've got quite a few holes in this thing these days. Not only has it become down right rickety, but there's a big heavy ugly chunk sitting on top of it.

Isabel sits in that odd place on the autism spectrum. The center, the gray area, that spot right in between too sick for regular school and too well for state help. The professionals are screaming at me to get her therapy, but the state doesn't think she's that bad. My sweet girl. What am I going to do with her?

Alden (my dramatic one) spent the night at his Grandma and Grandpa's motor home on Friday night. He always screams, "MOOOOMMM!!!" if anyone goes near the front door. But he was gone and I forgot. I ran upstairs for five minutes, and Isabel opened the front door and let Cale out. Now, Cale doesn't sit in the middle of the spectrum. He sits on the bottom.

The neighbor almost hit him driving up to her house on her way home from work. She parked, got out, picked him up, and wrestled him to my front door (he fights hard when he's interrupted from doing what he wants to be doing, in this case - running around in the street).

She looked half traumatized as she handed him back to me saying, "He was running back and forth in the middle of the street! He took his pants off while he was in middle of the street! They were already off when I got to him! I didn't hurt him, I just didn't think I should leave him out there!!"

I actually kind of laughed. Isn't that terrible? It was such a horrible experience (and it's the second time it's happened in the last month) that I just get to where all I can do is laugh. I suppose my old "I should be a better mother" feeling rolled around in my stomach for a second, but my nerves are so fried I really struggle to muster up the appropriate guilt.

"It's okay," I said, "I know you didn't hurt him. He's autistic, needs behavior therapy, and doesn't leave his clothes on. I really appreciate you getting him out of the street and bringing him back."

She did not look happy. I might actually have CPS called on me for the first time. That's okay. Maybe if someone besides me starts crying, "WOLF" I'll actually get some support.

I looked at Isabel and said, "Sweetie, you cannot let Cale out of that door." "Okay!" she replied. This is her catch all phrase for when she doesn't fully comprehend what you've just asked of her.

Cale did qualify for Medicaid, but the soonest DDD could do an appointment with us was two weeks from the date he qualified (they move at the speed of a small snail). They're coming this Friday to figure out how many hours of therapy per week he'll qualify for. I just have to wait. I'll get help with him soon and I'm holding my breath.

I wish I could describe the anger I felt towards God and this state after I read Medicaid's denial letter for Isabel. I wish I could weave it into some glorious combination of words, giving the feeling a beautiful expression. But I've never read a beautiful description of anger, nor do I have the power to turn the black sludge into something it just isn't.

I'm afraid I'm in danger of becoming a deeply embittered, crotchety old woman in a black dress, back humped, and hacking unintelligible smoker's noises at people as they walk by. Do I want to turn into someone that no one can stand to be around? Maybe. Then I could move to Paris by myself and wander the Louvre all day every d... oh wait. No, I don't:)

I'm not a person who can afford to be angry (at God especially). If I throw scraps into that fire it'll just grow. It's already being fed with the pieces falling out the bottom of my support structure. I must focus on the remaining nails and wood, in spite of the fact that the pieces keep falling off.

When anger surfaces I have to pray immediately for it to be removed. Now, I can't expect it to dissolve like Alka-Seltzer just because I ask for it to. But if I'm willing to set it aside and ask for God to show me the truth, typically the truth comes which heals the anger from it's source. It took me a few days this time but the truth finally came.

The idea that God and this beautiful state with it's blooming cacti couldn't care less about my daughter, left me staring straight into a flaw in my thinking. I don't much like addressing flaws in my thinking but this particular one harasses me to death, much like my son trying to con me out of a glass of chocolate milk. The flaw is a "perpetual problem." This is what my counselor calls it. A perpetual problem is one that doesn't go away and must be addressed again and again as it surfaces in each new situation.

The flaw in my thinking is this: If God cared about me then he'd... (fill in the blank). If he, she, they, it, cared about me then they'd... (fill in the blank). If... (fill in the blank) happens, then I'll be okay. And if it doesn't then I won't.

I was driving down the road the other day to go meet Shane for lunch. Cale was quiet so I got thinking about a friend. This got me thinking about my relationship with God which is usually a good thing, but I was feeling really mad at God. And the problem with being mad at God is that I need him. Bad. I need to believe that he loves me and that he has a plan for my kids. So, I decided to try to view my relationship with God as a friendship for a moment.

I started thinking about my friendships in general and I realized that I'm such an all or nothing kind of person. If a friend treats me the way I want them to then I feel important and loved, but if they don't then I don't. Yeah. And what's really broken about this, is that this is how I have tried to function in my friendships for a very, very long time.

I think that people must either love me or not care for me at all (in my human relationships it's probably, realistically, somewhere in between) and I base this love or not on my perception of how I'm being treated.

The problem with this is that I've never been very good at figuring out what's an appropriate amount of love in a friendship. I tend to try to make it too big or too small, when it should really be the just the right size. I (my ego) should be the right size. It's not all about me (and it's not all about MY kids). It's my perception of God's love that's off, that it has anything whatsoever to do with whether or not things are going my way. The way I see things is often so limited.

If I say, "If God cared about me then he'd make Medicaid give Isabel therapy," it's a bit like my son saying that if I cared about him, I'd buy him the candy bar. I do care about my son AND I'm not going to buy him the candy bar AND he doesn't necessarily get to understand why.

This thinking flaw makes a couple of assumptions that just aren't true. The first, of course, is that things need to go the way I think they should in order for me to be okay. That people, places, and things need to line up in a particular way, in order for me to be okay. They don't, and ironically, I'm still okay. The second assumption is the REALLY self-centered part; that it's personal when they don't.

The physician that reviewed Isabel's case and rejected her, didn't know Isabel at all. Whether or not he/she "cared" about her is completely irrelevant. He/she wasn't rejecting her personally. It hurts, and I don't know what it will mean for my family, so I want to take it personally. But why do I have to make it some one's fault when I've been damaged? Damn it! I really, really want to make it that physician's fault!

The same type of thing occurred with a group of my friends recently. I asked them for help with my kids and they said, "No." I'll spare you the details but, to make a long complicated story short, it was going to be too hard to help me.

It wasn't personal and that I quickly came to understand and accept (sort of), but afterward no one ever called to see if I was okay. That part felt personal. They knew I had just found out my kids are autistic, that my friends couldn't help me with it, and that I had to be feeling hurt and alone. But, not one of them ever called.

In a state of self-pity, I called a friend of mine in Montana and told her about it. I remember saying to her, "I've been hanging out with these people for almost four years. Do you suppose that I made them mad? Do they hate me? Or do they just not care about me? I know I shouldn't separate myself from people, but how can I NOT?"

She sighed and said something like, "I wish so badly I was there with you and I love you very much, but it isn't their fault. You know their decision wasn't personal. As far as them not calling, well, I'm sure it's neither that they hate you or that they don't care about you. They probably think you're mad, which you are, and they probably don't know what to do with that. People don't always know what to do for a friend who is hurting, especially when that hurt is coming out sideways all over the place. I wish they did, but they don't."

That group did me a favor actually. It's taught me to deeply value the love and support that I do have in my life.

I had someone tell me recently that when you have special needs kids, that's when you find out who your friends are. I do find that to be true. Later on a few of the people out of this group of friends decided to help me after all. It wasn't in the way I had originally planned, but it has turned out to be a very precious piece of my support structure. I've come to discover that no matter how hostile the world feels sometimes, there are always a few big hearts with a capacity to love giant love at the toughest possible time. When it's inconvenient.

Things will not necessarily go the way I think they should even when it looks really, really important to me that they do. And it isn't God's fault. The other day, I was watching my children fight viciously over who had more happy meal toys. It was clear to me that I had nothing to do with their argument and I thought it was a stupid thing to fight over. I said to my kids, "No matter the outcome of your argument, I will still be here make sure you both have enough happy meal toys:)"

Suddenly I could picture God as this parent figure watching me fight with Medicaid over therapy funds, and I realized that I'm not fighting with God. I'm fighting with siblings. People I have to share this planet with. I also realized that no matter the outcome of my argument with the state, God will still make sure that I (and my children) are taken care of somehow. Oh thank God I don't have to be mad at God. I'm still working on not resenting the state.

The biggest gift in all of this, of course, has been the shift in my thinking. I'm still trying to grasp fully that my faith needs to be in God, not people or circumstances. Maybe my support structure needed to loose it's weakest pieces so that I can focus on the pieces that are working and strong and growing into something that can support this time in my life.

Shane got the job at the community college. He'll be working his usual ten hour days and IN ADDITION he'll be teaching from 6-10pm three nights a week. God that's a lot of hours. But it'll pay for Isabel's therapy. And I've got to make a more serious effort at getting stuff published. I've started ABA training for Cale and will be able to implement that round the clock for him and Isabel in the home. I'll have to write after the kids go to bed from now on. Pray for us. It's going to be a long and happy year.

O is for the Obstacles

My oldest, Alden, is in a skit during next week's school assembly. He'll be the letter O. He's been practicing his line with glee in his smiling face all weekend. This is because he thinks I'm coming to his assembly. He thinks a lot of things actually, half of which don't come true these days. It's one of the ravages of living with autism. One doesn't get to be a normal kid, even when one is a normal kid.

I will not be going to the assembly. I'll be at SARRC with Cale trying to get him to interact with me in front of a group of therapists, trying to rationalize in my mind why I can't get my own child to interact with me. I get to pay attention to the one that doesn't want my attention, and ignore the one that does.

Someone will be at the play. It'll either be Daddy or Grandpa or Grandma, and that will have to do. I often tell Alden how grand and magical and full of love heaven must be to have sent him so many people that love him, but he still tends to look at me and say, "Why can't you come Mom?"

I can just picture Alden on stage in his letter O costume, his puff of blond hair poking out the top of a kid sized, stuffed oblong circle. The skit will be held in the auditorium of his windowless, giant box school where the artificial lighting glares off the frigid linoleum in long blinding streaks, and where the tiniest noise booms like a canon blast. Isabel can't stand to be in that auditorium at all. We took her there for an ice-cream social at the beginning of the school year. She stuffed her fingers into her ears and cried under a table for the duration of the ice-cream consumption. I adore Isabel. She often does what I feel like doing.

This auditorium is chilly at best, in spite of it's vastness, until they fill it with singing children. Then it warms like an ice-cube in a hot tub. I love Alden's assemblies.

He got a citizenship award during an assembly last year, and I'm such a gushy mom. I remember standing there smiling big which was in direct contrast to the fact that I was crying uncontrollably, my tears hitting the cold floor and pooling under my dress. People looked at me like, "What? Your kid's getting a small award. What's with the tears?" NO ONE else was crying.

And I remember thinking, "Ahh...let them look." I savor shit like this like lemon popsicles on a hot afternoon. I had just spent a year helping a woman who had lost her kids through drinking and using drugs. The details obviously wouldn't be appropriate for me to go into in a blog. In a nut shell, we did months of work and she finally got her kids back. Then she promptly got drunk and lost them again. The whole thing being fresh in my mind at the time of that assembly, made me shake from my core with gratitude. Maybe it sounds mean, but I was glad that wasn't me. It might've been at one point if I hadn't overcome certain obstacles.

So I choose to let "small" citizenship awards part the clouds themselves and strike me with nothing less than the ecstasy of heaven. It is nothing short of an absolute miracle that I get to be here with all of my presence, to observe such things. To live in gratitude over little life happenings, boiling just under the surface of my skin is just about as grand as grand can be.

For next week's assembly, however, Alden won't be looking for me as he says his line. By then I will have gotten up the guts to tell him that I won't be there to shake with gratitude and cry onto the floor. The lemon popsicles are on the back burner for now.

Alden's teacher knows that he has two autistic siblings and when Alden comes to school with an empty backpack on his day to provide snacks for the class, she makes him the V.I.P. (Very Important Person). He loves being the V.I.P. It means he gets to be her class helper all day long. At snack time, he passes out the teacher's "back-up" snacks completely unaware that anything's ever been forgotten. I think his teacher is the V.I.P. don't you? In dealing with autism (and other special needs) there will always be people that don't care. But don't be alarmed when you encounter them because there will also ALWAYS be people that do care.

I've tried to explain to Alden that his sister and brother both have autism. It's difficult to explain what autism is to an adult. Try explaining it to a six year old. The words have nothing real to attach to and they float away like balloons after a birthday party. I found a children's book that is designed to explain autism to a "neuro-typical" (normal) sibling. I just haven't gotten around to buying it yet. It's on the list.

Alden does know that he doesn't get to go to many birthday parties, join soccer, or have his mom show up at school during lunch time like his other friends do. He also knows his parents are arguing a lot these days and that we're often too tired (and too desperate for bedtime's promise of quiet) to read him a story before bed.

During the Autism conference I went to a couple of weeks ago, Temple Grandin's mother (Eustacia Cutler) was the kick-off speaker. And "Wow" is really the only word to use. After the talk we were given the opportunity to ask her questions.

One of the questions asked of her was, "If there was one thing you could've done differently on your life journey through Temple's autism, what would it have been?" And do you know what she said? She said, "I would've done better by the siblings." I bought her book and in it she says this:

"...my other three children have asked to be omitted from this tale, which says worlds about their childhood or lack of it. While trying to help Temple, I left them in the dark. Their innocence lost, they had to be braver and more generous than children should have to be. Temple and Daddy were the stars - the siblings and I, minor constellations circling uneasily around them."

Alden has to be braver and more generous too. He HAS to be a minor constellation too, because autism is the center of our current world. There are untold obstacles in our path, in Alden's path. He often has to sacrifice his six year old needs for the good of his siblings. And this is not a fact that will change as he gets older. That's just the reality.

But I pray for the strength and the energy to keep him in the light. I took him on a "date" to the library today and we checked out three Junie B. Jones books (which he's been asking me for). They're the first chapter books he's read and he is so proud. And Shane has starting taking him to swimming lessons WITHOUT his brother and sister. It's just Alden and Daddy time. He puts on his swimming suit the second he gets home from school and then proceeds to wait for the next TWO HOURS for his dad to get home from work. I'd say he looks forward to the swimming lessons.

Maybe Eustacia's willingness to share her experience with me can have the same effect on me as the mother that lost her kids from drinking and using. Maybe I can avoid, at least to some extent, her experience. And maybe I can shake with gratitude for helping Alden overcome the obstacles of living with autism. Maybe I can shake with gratitude for our whole family being strong enough to overcome the obstacles of autism.

Shane said to me once that he hopes to become grateful for autism. I thought he was nuts. GRATEFUL for AUTISM! I think I might actually have said, "That's just about the stupidest thing I've ever heard!" He smiled and said, "No it's not."

And you know? That idea is starting to solidify. Think about it. Autism forces my family into being better than it wants to be. We have made changes we've never been motivated to make before. We HAVE to reach out to others for help. We have to buy organic produce, eat better, exercise more, communicate more effectively with each other, work together as a team. We have to sacrifice our individual selfishness for the good of the whole, buy perfume free lotion, and love each other hard. Oh...that last ones sets me shaking at the core again in and of itself. Yum.

I will be there with Alden in spirit, as he sacrifices his mom's presence for the good of the whole. Maybe one day in the distant future, I'll remind him of the day I was absent. The day he stood in front of his entire school in a stuffed O costume and said a sentence as full of meaning for his family as any other sentence in the whole wide world, "O is for the obstacles we've learned to overcome."

Breakfast

I woke up this morning irritated with God. Not a sudden and furious, punch holes in the walls kind of irritated. Instead it's an irritated that has grown slowly, almost un-noticed, like clutter on the counter top. One piece goes unnoticed. Two might spark a second of attention, then another look away. Three starts to feel uncomfortable but still isn't enough to do anything about. Then one day you wake up and you can't see the top of the counter and the magnitude of the chore ahead overwhelms.

I can't see the top of my counter.

I heard a fantastic speaker one time who talked about being angry with God. He said that if you have a friend that you can't be angry with sometimes, then it isn't a real relationship in the first place. He said he likes to think he has a real relationship with God and that means there's times when he gets angry with him.

The NEW Medicaid medical investigator came over yesterday to do Isabel's THIRD interview. She was really very kind and informative. She explained to me that there are two different assessment tools used by the state.

The first is based on the development of a 0-5 year old. It includes all the stupid questions we've been answering for the last nine months (this is our third time through the interview process), such as, "Can she roll over?" Yes. "Can she dress herself?" Sort of. "Can she bathe herself?" No. And so on and so on. It does NOT focus on lack of communication and head banging because these behaviors are fairly normal in toddlers.

These behaviors, however, are NOT normal for children over six years old. The second assessment tool is based on the development of a 6-9 year old. It focuses on lack of communication and self/other harming behaviors.

The medical investigator confessed that if they were to use the second assessment tool for Isabel, she'd be accepted into Medicaid with flying colors. But because she's only five and a half years old, they cannot use the second assessment tool. They must use the first. And since Isabel is actually doing quite well compared to a nine month old, she didn't think that Isabel would qualify at this time. She recommends we re-apply in December when Isabel turns six.

So the question remains, how do we come up with the $1200. per month (out of pocket) it will cost to get Isabel's most basic therapies (speech and occupation therapy) until December? The worst part is that Shane and I disagree on how to go about doing that. It's funny how un-manageability in one area of my life always shines onto every other area of my life, illuminating their deficiencies as well.

I was up until 11:00 last night preparing for Isabel's I.E.P. meeting, which was this morning. There are always so many things to do. I finally went to bed picking at God over the Medicaid deal regarding Isabel. Then I began cursing him for it all.

Isn't it enough that I moved to Hell? That alone should've been enough. It's not enough that I've moved away from the place I know and love? The place we'd have HELP from family and friends with our kids? Isn't it enough that we have to do this alone?

And isn't it enough that I've sacrificed my dreams so that Shane could try for his? And isn't it enough that you've given me two Autistic kids and that every attempt to help them is met with a brick wall? Now we have to come up with all this extra money we don't have? Now we have to look at possible financial devastation? OR taking on extra jobs (with time and energy we don't have) to make ends meet? When will it end? And where the hell are you anyways?

I climbed into bed, desperate for a moment of T.V. to shut my brain down before going to sleep. On the T.V. was a story about a village in southeast Asia who'd lost a years worth of rice crops to an infestation of black rats. "Oh man," I thought as I watched these people search their fields for any surviving kernels. For a second I felt grateful, then I caught myself and said to God, "Wait a minute. I know this trick. It isn't going to work this time. You still suck." And I went to bed irritated with God for forsaking us AND for destroying the rice.

After the I.E.P. meeting this morning, Shane and I went to breakfast to discuss things. Honestly, I should've known better.

We showed up at Cracker Barrel and sifted through the endless knick knacks. Clutter of this quantity feels to me like noise. There were bird house wind chimes with dangling tea cups and saucers that, I guess, clank into each other in the wind. There were clothes and quilts and blown glass trinkets of every kind that might topple, with one touch, into a giant broken heap. There were porcelain dish and tea pot sets with blue and purple and pink flowers lining their bubbled shapes. A little tin house shaped hanger that said, "Home Sweet Home" made me wonder if I'd ever be a grandmother.

There were heart shaped hearts on heart shaped things with heart shaped letters on them. Hearts, hearts, and more hearts. It made me wonder if they'd realized that Valentine's day is long dead. Never before have there been more hearts, flowers, and bird house shapes, compacted into one location.

Stuffed white Easter bunnies with brightly colored eggs sewn carefully onto them, hung over the edges of wooden shelves, tempting children to pick them up and squeeze their heads. Tiny T-shirts that said things like, "Being this cute is a full-time job." lined the isle along with endless piles of candy, lemon drops, Black Jack, and Clove gum.

I had to go into the bathroom to escape the knick knacks. It was quiet in there and it smelled like lilac scented lotion. The bathrooms at Cracker Barrel always smell good. As I was looking at my eyes in the mirror, I slowly became aware of the soft music playing on the overhead speakers. I recognized the song I used to sing to God under my breath at the coffee shop I worked at during college. It's called "I Still Believe in You." It was a tacky, country version of the song, and I really wasn't in the mood. But, it got the point across. "Okay," I said, "I hear you. But I'm still pissed."

My husband and I sat down and ordered pancakes, sausage, and hash brown casserole (yum). Then we talked about the money. All of a sudden, the chattering of the other people started to crawl up my back and the number of small items on the table seemed to double in number. And Shane's voice got loud in my head. Much louder than he was actually speaking.

He was getting irritated and was saying, "I'm just saying there are other options. The house will be the last thing to go. I'll deliver pizzas at night if I have to. And you could find a job with insurance that covers the kids."

"Like what?" I asked, a little stunned that he was serious.

"You could teach," he replied in an accusatory tone (my perception) with his face two inches from my nose, but not really. It just felt that way. He was actually sitting across the table. "I cannot imagine that what is best for our children would include losing the house," he continued.

And then I said, "I can't imagine that having a mom that's gone all day is what's best for them either. Maybe this fall when two of the three are in school."

The magnitude of EVERYTHING suddenly slammed into my brain all at once, and my head started to spin like some sort of giant washing machine. How can we do it all?

I'm reading books on diet, trying to make and find gluten/casein free foods. It takes me a full day to bake a week's worth of gluten free foods.

I'm reading books, and I have more to read. I'm learning about speech therapy which it looks like I'll have to do with Isabel myself. I've learned that speech therapy and O.T. go hand in hand because a person really needs both to build the proper muscles for speech. So I have to become an O.T. too.

I'm learning about Physical therapy, and feeding therapy. I'm learning about various behavioral therapies including DIR, ABA, PRT, VBA, Hanen program, and RDI and I am making a desperate, rookie attempt to apply some of them with Isabel and Cale. It takes implementing a behavioral approach on a constant basis for it to be effective with an autistic child.

I have a book on my top priority list which I'll read when I get to it, that can serve as a foundation for reading the more challenging books on bio-medics. I'm learning about DAN! doctors, different developmental pediatricians, psychologists, vitamin supplements including B12 shots and Vitamin D, herbs that detoxify the system, gut problems, immune system problems, chelation therapy, etc., etc., etc.

My task is to become an expert in a bunch of different professions, in a very short amount of time (my kids' well-being is at stake), professions people take YEARS to become experts in. And I'm just BEGINNING to learn how to work the school district.

How can I be a good mom to my autistic kids, with ALL that entails, and try to teach full time? It's not the teaching that bothers me. In fact, being an art teacher instead of an autism expert is incredibly appealing. But both?

It was hard to do it back when we lived in Montana, had ONE normal child, and had a lot of family and friends around to help. Now, with what our lives have become, I have no doubt it would rip our marriage apart like a pack of coyotes on a bunny. We barely get it all done as it is.

You see, Shane doesn't mind living life at 6 million miles per hour. He rather enjoys it and would be happy if I did too. I, however, CAN'T STAND it. I won't risk the well-being of my children to hang on to a tract house. And he won't risk their well-being by letting them lose the home they know. The situation truly looked impossible and I left the restaurant thinking, "God does TOO give us more than we can handle!"

We didn't speak throughout the rest of breakfast or on the way home, and I silently told God to shove his song where the sun doesn't shine.

Shane's been applying for evening teaching jobs at the community colleges for like, two years now. Like I said, he likes to live at 6 million miles an hour. He'd NEVER heard back from any of them before. But, when we got home from breakfast, he had an e-mail from one of them asking for his transcripts. I know they'll like them. Shane always made perfect grades. Maybe if he gets in, they'll look at mine too. Maybe they have art classes in the evenings.

It's a possibility that's never been a possibility before, so there is a spark of hope.

And I did find out, just today, that Medicaid will help Cale. In fact, he qualified in less than a week's time. He is "in immediate danger of being institutionalized." All the medical investigator had to do was look at him to see that. Not only were they right on qualifying him, but they want him to to get IMMEDIATE care. Finally. I'll get some help with my Cale.

So, who knows. Maybe the old adage is true that "God always shows up just in time, he just never shows up early." Jerk.