Brief update...

It has been a busy & relatively uneventful week in our corner of Autismland :) A blessing, really. B has had a pretty good week at school, with no huge ups or downs. They went on a field trip to a local kids' museum to attend "Sleuth School" on Wednesday & I went along to help supervise. I was assigned a group of 5, 4th-grade girls & I had a blast. They were so into it & I told then they could start their own detective agancy any time, in my opinion. B & 2 other boys were with his consultant teacher, Cheire, & he seemed to have a good time solving clues & running around looking at things. He had us all laughing at one point- there was a fairytale giant (probably 10 ft. tall at least) whose arms could be moved by levers & had a microphone where you could say things & the voice would come out in a giantish bass. B was singing Weird Al tunes into the microphone & flailing the arms around- it was a hoot.

The evening right after I last posted, B mentioned that his eye ached. I looked at it & didn't see anything amiss, but cut him off from the computer in case it was causing a headache... it was dinner time anyway. During dinner he was rubbing the eye & then said that it was a "sharp ache" & getting worse. After a brief discussion of semantics (because, if he tells me something aches, I am not thinking sharp pain...) I asked him if he'd like some tylenol, & he said yes. After choking down 4 huge chewables he lost his appetite- due ot the overwhelming fruity flavour or the pain, I'm not sure (I did calculate the total dose of 4 chewables & have since purchased a bottle of regular-strength tylenol, of which he'll only have to gulp down 2 with water, something he does daily with his other meds). When he said the pain was moving into his forehead I decided to give him some sudafed, too, in case it was sinus. B then headed for the sofa, moaning. I got a warm cloth for his head & sat with him, holding the cloth on his forehead for him & wishing that daddy the doctor wasn't at work late. The pain wasn't easing-up at all & I was worried that B might be having a migraine, something I've dealt with for years, but can't imagine trying to help B cope with. He moaned occasionally & I offered to put on some music, but he said weakly that he just wanted to "chat", & occasionally told me things about his Adeventure Quest game. We sat like this, with my refreshing the warm cloth every so often, for about 40 minutes until dad came home. B sat up to greet C & said he was feeling a bit better. We got him upstairs & into his jammies about an hour earlier than usual. By the time he snuggled into bed for a story, also much earlier than usual, he was feeling much better. C's opinion was that it was sinus & he was glad that I'd tried the sudafed... me, I was ready to throw just about anything at it, to make the pain go away. B woke up feeling fine the next morning. thank goodness! B's high pain threshold can be a good thing, but it also means that any pain he reports must be pretty severe, which can be scary.

I was looking around the house this morning, noticing how tidy everything looked (including B's room floor & the tv room- amazing!). We cleaned up so the house could be vacuumed last Monday evening, but things are never still tidy by Friday morning... & I realised that I have Adventure Quest + busy week for mom (meaning very little energy after B gets home from school) to thank for it (if thank is the right word...). B has been very focused on AQ these days, & I although I have very good intentions for after school activities (work on japanese, make stuff), I just don't have the energy to follow-through in the afternoons these days. Sigh. B is ecstatic- he's been trying out all sorts of personae- ninja, necromancer (he didn't like that one very much), werewolf (!), on top of his usual mage & wizard roles in the game. His frustration level waxes & wanes- sometimes I know he needs intervention when the swearing gets loud, sometimes it's when he starts talking the the monsters as though they're in the room. He always manages to come back down to this planet, though, so I feel ok about letting him continue with the game. Probably the wildest adaptation B has made to the game concerns the fact that he can't always get into it when he first logs-in. We helped him cope with this frustration by setting a timer for 10 minutes, & then he plays at another site & only checks AQ when the timer goes off. He can calculate his chances of getting in soon by whether the number of people waiting to get online goes up or down... This way he minimises obsessing about it all & keeps his cool. These days he just grabs the timer on his way through the kitchen & does it all by himself. C & I heard him cheering one afternoon, not because he'd been able to log-in immediately, but because there were few people waiting in the queue... he happily hummed along & was logged-on in no time. It's amazing how adaptable my kid can be.

I am still writing furiously for my sermon in 1 1/2 weeks, in between church meetings, school trips, & getting ready for an event that I've planned for my handspinning guild meeting tomorrow. Our charity effort at guild is called "Warm Extremities" & I took over as the organiser just a couple of years ago. Members & friends of the guild participate by either donating raw materials, spinning fiber into yarn, or making finished yarn into garments that can be donated. We gather everything that's been made over the year at the November meeting & then it is donated before the holidays (most goes to a local women's prison, so the prisoners can choose items to give to their children as holiday gifts). Back when B was a baby the friend who organised it came up with the idea of having a fun judging of all the finished items, to make it more than just handing stuff in, so she asked her husband, a lawyer, & C, a doctor, to be guest judges, calling it "a doctor & a lawyer judge knitwear". They came up will all sorts of goofy awards (like "the cat in the hat" award for the tallest hat) & certificates were given to the people who made them. We did this for a few years, then someone else took over & did something different. When I took over as organiser I decided to revive this judging & it was well-received last year (B wore his Sherlock Holmes coat, his Halloween costume that year, & helped out :). This year I added B as an official judge, & billed him as the only one of the 3 who has actually spun wool or made something from handspun... B was, as I'd hoped, very charmed by receiving special billing & official judge status, & is actually looking forward to going. Heh heh. Sometime advanced mommy planning actually works...