The power came back on early Sunday morning. Hallelujah! I was beginning to lose it! Enough said about that - but we are back in the land of the light!

My new focus of my "free" time (ha ha) other than trying to get my book about autism started - which hasn't happened yet- is trying to reconnect with old friends from the past - especially college. I have a friend from Moody that got me hooked into "facebook" and that has actually helped me a lot... When I was in college I was always the one that kept everyone connected to each other - I kept track of everyone's whereabouts and was kind of the "yellow pages" of our friendship circle. It's funny when I think about it now, because that is just who I was. I did that for YEARS after we were out of school. (Part of this was due to the fact that I was friends with a lot of guys - moreso than with girls - and because I was the GIRL - it was almost logical that I be the one to keep everyone connected. ) Now I have started doing it again. It's almost weird. I've been out of college for 15 years and all of the sudden I feel this urge to find out where my old friends are - are they married, do they have kids, where do they live, etc? This can be a difficult task, especially when they move all over the country, change e-mail addresses without telling anyone, etc. I have one "friend" in particular right now whom several people are trying to get ahold of and all I can say is - "that number is not listed at this time" - I know, I'm crazy. But it is entertaining - and with my unlimited long distance - it can be really fun to chat on the phone with someone I haven't talked to in 5 years. I'll keep you posted on my findings :) And, if you are a long lost college friend of mine, please let me know (LOL).

RAIN RAIN GO AWAY....

I am getting really tired of this weather. We have no power. Horrific storms came through here yesterday - almost seemed "hurricanish" as they were coming through. Power lines are snapped all over the place and there are trees (big ones) down all over, too. We lost power at supper time yesterday (Thursday) and are being told that we may not receive power back until Sunday night at Midnight. Yikes. It is not a real problem to not have power - more of an inconvenience --but autism and no electricity don't go very well together. Katie doesn't understand why she can't watch her videos. Telling her that the TV is broken doesn't mean anything to her. That is where it gets difficult. You can't explain anything to her, or reason with her. It is very black and white - either she can watch her videos or she can't -- no in between....and there is no way to explain to her why she can't watch them.
We are actually at my parents house tonight. Bill is in a wedding tomorrow. We had a sitter and were supposed to be going to the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner together - but with no power we couldn't leave a sitter at the house with the girls...so here we are, using the computer and doing the laundry - and Katie is soaking up all the videos she can :) It's almost kind of funny - like we don't realize how much we use electricity until it isn't available. Oh well, Bill says we can pretend to be roughing it in the U.P. It's kind of joke because he knows how much I hate "roughing it" and that camping is not one of my chosen activities ....

Katie's new teacher came for a home visit yesterday. That was really nice. Katie took to her right away. My only concern is once again that the school system isn't setting her up for success. We've had all these meetings to get this new AI classroom set up and as of yesterday it still seemed as though the new teacher hasn't been given all of the resources she needs to get things done. She doesn't even have all the names of the children who will be in the class. It's only frustrating because (and for those of you who have read my blog for awhile know) it seems like we always have little snafu's that keep things from happening as they should. The good news this time is that the teacher is awesome - I am just concerned that they aren't giving her everything she needs....



I'm tired today - stressed a little I guess. Two weeks 'til school and I can't wait. They both need it so badly. .. and so do I. I'm looking forward to drinkng my latte' and cleaning my house. Isn't that pathetic? :)

I know that I haven't written very much about the new classroom that Katie is going to be in this year - but I am really excited about it. Her new teacher called yesterday and is going to come do a home visit next week to get to know Katie. I think that will be great. She sounds wonderful and is really into these AI Kids - and it was reassuring to know how focused she is on their safety - especially after the issues with Katie running away last year. She said that she is used to kids with elopement issues (running away) and that she is totally focused on keeping the kids safe. That was a huge relief for me. As much as I want Katie to learn, she also needs to be safe in her classroom - otherwise I am not able to focus on work or other things that I need to do while she is in school. Last spring I went through about 2 weeks of being so stressed out on trying to keep Katie safe at school that it about drove me through the roof. I couldn't sleep and I just wanted to scream -- I don't want that to happen again - so this is reassuring for me.

It's starting to cool down here. The girls are still enjoying the pool, but for the first time in awhile, it is almost too cold to swim in the morning. I love it.

Well, I need to run - lots to do before work this afternoon...

Well my best intentions of starting that book have yet to materialize. It's always one thing or another it seems. I am hoping that once school starts and I have a day or two a week to myself that it will be a different story and I can actually get going on it.

Three weeks til school starts - that for me is hard to believe. We aren't ready. Not even close. I need to buy both of the girls shoes and clothes and all that good stuff. We've done bookbags and lunch sacks, but that's about it. With both girls being in school all day this year, it will be a real change for us as a family. It's awesome though. Katie will be in her new classroom for the AI kids aged 3-6 and then Mary will be in the big 1st grade. Yee-hah!!

I think that I have decided to start writing a book about my experiences with autism. I'm not really sure how I have arrived at this conclusion, but I have always enjoyed writing - and since autism is such a huge part of my life and the life of my family, I thought that maybe this would be a good way to take a lot of what has happened in our lives. I am thankful that I started blogging almost two years ago...as it will provide a lot of information to help me with the book. I'll keep the blog updated with the progress of my writings. I thought maybe I'd try and get started today.....

THERAPY...didn't go very well today. I don't think Katie was feeling very well and she was so crabby. She cried and cried and was fussy. It wasn't good. It has been a really hard couple of days. She hasn't been herself for a few days. But that is the way autism is. It's really difficult sometimes to know what to do...

We have therapy again tomorrow -- so we'll see how that goes. I'm praying for the best. I really can't wait for school to start. Katie needs it so desperately. She needs the routine on a daily basis. That's an autism thing. She's doing a little better tonight..

more later...