Tired Tonight

I'm tired, but I don't get much quiet alone time, so I wanted to write this while I could :)

It's Sunday night, Thanksgiving weekend. I'm on the living room couch with a computer on my lap. The whole house is dark except for the three little lights above the fireplace. It's quiet. Bobby is in bed after having sat with Matthew in his room until Matthew finally fell asleep. 

• Today was a really stressful day for Matthew. He desperately wants to meet folks' expectations of him and Fast Sunday is rife with land mines in that regard. He had a panic attack or two, a serious case of decision paralysis all day, and pretty much felt stressed every moment he wasn't actively playing or laughing with someone else. 

There's a telescope on a tripod in the middle of the living room. It's pointing at the gas fireplace's pilot light. 

• James and Matthew were working with the telescope this afternoon and discovered all sorts of fascinating things.

There's an enormous pile of library books stacked between the couch and the brick mantle. I've got to find two long-overdue books, return literally 100 others, and pick up a couple of holds. 

• Matthew's teachers tell me he reads and comprehends texts at the 5th grade level, but he spells like a 2nd grader. That is pretty unusual. When you put that with his math performance scores, there's reason to suspect dyslexia. I wouldn't be too surprised about that. And I'm not too surprised that his previous teachers may have missed it. It's subtle. He's still young. And his previous teachers have always had bigger, more damaging issues to work through just to get the classroom under control. 

Half of the kitchen island is covered with a sheet of cardboard littered with cups, silicone molds, and spilled epoxy resin in 4 different colors. 

• James made chess pieces and a chessboard out of epoxy resin this weekend. What a mess. What a cool experience. Once the resin fully cures, I look forward to having my kitchen island back.

The kitchen sink is full of so. many. dishes. Most of them are too large for the dishwasher and need to be hand washed. 

• Alex generates a whole lotta dishes when he bakes. And since it was Fast Sunday today, I made Chicken Parmesan for dinner and that also generates piles of greasy pans and cooling racks *sigh* Bobby and I try to keep up pretty well with the dishes, but Sundays are just plain crazy.

Robert is in bed, too. 

• Normally, he stays up late in the living room doing homework or playing video games, but not on Sundays. That's the main reason I can sit here quietly and blog. 
• Robert seems to have jammed or broken his toe this weekend. He was playing tug-of-war with Nova and caught his toe on a wall corner. It hurt a lot at first, but is getting less painful. 

Alex and James went to bed as soon as we got back from the Sister Missionaries' place. 

• This afternoon, Alex had made 2 kinds of (full-size) cheesecake and a quintuple batch of muddy buddies. He took a lot of it to the Sisters. I waited in the car with Nova. Nova is usually content to hang out with me no matter what I'm doing, but this time she was watching the kids interact and share food with the Sisters and she wanted to be part of that action. 
• I've started taking Nova with me on car trips where I don't have to get out of the car. She's a whole lot happier being with me/us than being home without me/us. She's very polite and disciplined in the car. She hops in, scouts the interior for crumbs, then curls herself into a doggie doughnut on one of the seats and goes to sleep. Seriously, folks, we got crazy lucky with this one. And I'm super pleased that she sleeps with James. That gives me a break from 9pm until 6:30am where no human nor animal in the house is needing my attention.

Matthew is currently asleep on a cot in the middle of his room. 

• His loft bed can be too hot/scary/isolating sometimes and then he prefers to sleep closer to the floor. As soon as I had finished reading out loud to Matthew, Bobby came in and tagged me out. We've tweaked the bedtime routine here and there. Some parts are much better now and some parts still have much room for improvement. Matthew does better with a variety of audio books to choose from. This week, I've even started singing to him a little. He said tonight that he thinks the anxiety meds aren't helping anymore. I'll be keeping an eye on that. 

I'm even more tired now. It's getting hard to keep my eyes open. 

• In the midst of trying to get dinner made while Matthew is having a panic attack and James is pointing out one of the extra-crispy (i.e. BURNED!) chik'n patties I had prepared for Matthew's vegetarian version of Chicken Parmesan, and Robert grudgingly clearing the table before setting it for dinner (e.g. "I don't want to do this. Why don't people just clean up their own stuff when they're done with it?!"), Alex asked if I wanted a hug. What I really wanted was for someone to do or give something to me without expecting something back for it, and I said so. In a nice way. I gratefully accepted the hug, though, for what it was: an effort to relieve some of my readily-apparent stress. Then I noticed that Bobby had unloaded and loaded the dishwasher, Alex had started the noodles cooking, Robert said a genuine "thanks" when I pulled out a clean tablecloth for him to use, and Alex and James were actively comforting Matthew through his stress. By the time dinner was on the table, I was feeling significantly better. 

And I'm not ready for Christmas. 

• It occurred to me that Christmas falls at the end of the calendar year, but at the very beginning of winter (winter solstice, Dec 21). Christmas should actually be celebrated at the end of January when we really need something warm and light to look forward to.
• I'm thinking about a lot of things these days. I desperately want to be respected as a mechanic at the bike shop. I feel like I have to prove myself to them again and again. The reality is, though, I'm struggling to accept myself as a mechanic. I want their approval first, then I'll believe it for myself. I recognize that it would be better/healthier for me to go about it the other way 'round. I just don't know how to do that yet.

I hear Robert laughing in his room. His phone is out here with me, so it must be something he's reading. 

There's a faint odor of dog urine coming from the front room. 

• I'm renting a steam cleaner for the carpets tomorrow. Nova is fully potty-trained, except when she's particularly nervous about me being gone. She continues to help our family far more than she messes up, so I'm not complaining, per se, but *sigh* Urinating is better than destroying furniture with her claws, right? Just say yes.