Took my work laptop back to the office & pretended I had no idea how the video display card could be entirely burnt out & needs to be replaced, as if my 10-year-old son didn't just play hours of Fusion Fall on it, earlier in the week.

My 15 year old daughter insists she's read every volume of every good Manga ever, and that there are no more. I keep telling her that means she needs to draw her own now!

Last week I ran, right after work, almost every afternoon! But I made up for it Sunday and today by doing JACK!

My husband's days are full of his job, and his nights are full of mediating disputes between Lion's club members, such as the two who each want the coveted "Scrap-book Maker" posistion and seem to have launched some kind of telephone and internet campaign against each other. As president, he's considering appointing someone to specially mediate the scrap book problem. Yeah. It's nuts.

Minnesota State Fair, Labor Day, hopfully!

My 9 year old son and I were sitting on the couch, last night. I was explaining that he needs to do his homework, and that there's no good reason for him to keep geting all these "late assignment" notes he brings home, and he said "Wait,what are you talking about?"

I told him he needs to monitor his own homework assignments, and that although his dad and I were checking the assignment sheet he brings home, he really needs to be responsible for following through on it. We shouldn't have to double check his progress.

He answered, confidently, and not exactly in his own voice, "WE decided? MY best interests? How do you know what MY best interest is?"

I explained that I'm older and more experienced than he is. I've been alive for 44 years and he's only been alive for 9.

"What are you trying to say? I'M crazy?" He spoke loudly, but he was smiling.

"No!" I was panicing, where did this calm, cool rage come from? And the unusual vocabulary words?

"When I went to YOUR schools, I went to YOUR churches, I went to YOUR "stitchel" learning facilities?"

My heart went from breaking, that my son's own experience was so genuinely negative, to asking him outright where he'd learned the lyrics to the Suicidal Tendancies' song "Institutionalized". And it's "institutional learning facilities", not "stitchel!"

Thank you, Tony Hawk's American Wasteland. I'm so (not) glad we got a Nintendo Wii.

About 6 months ago, my husband started leaving work early, on Wednesdays, picking our son up, after school, and driving him to a local Child and Family Service Center , here in Minneapolis, for a specially-created social skills group for children with Asperger's Syndrome or High Functioning Autism, in his age range. He's 9, right now. Bear in mind this place really is a private business. It's not a public community service center. If it were, I'd be infinitely more understanding of budget cuts and limited resources, etc.

I was able to accompany them several times, but until very recently I usually had to take my daughter to music lessons at that same time.

There were about 12 kids in this group. The kids would meet in a playroom, there at the center, with two teachers. And the parents would meet in a conference room, upstairs, with a moderator provided by the center. The parents could then sort of have a support-group style of meeting, in which they could tell everyone about a recent problem, and everyone else could come up with ideas usually based on their own experience. And sometimes there would be a speaker from a local resource for special needs children to tell everyone what services they offer, there, or do a presentation about something like how to do an IEP.

Then, for the last 15 minutes of the kids' class, the parents would be invited in to the playroom so that we could participate in the activity of the day so we could use it at home.

One example was an exercise in which half the kids lined up on one side of the room, and the other half on the other. Each kid had a partner across from him or her, on the other side of the room. Then the teacher instructed everyone to take one step closer to their partner. Read the other guy's body language. Is he smiling? Scowling? Did he take a step towards you ? Is he backing away? Now take another step. And another. And informed the children specifically which queues tell you you've got too close to the other person and you're making them uncomfortable. For that last bit, we parents were included in the exercise, first with our own child as our across-the-room partner, then with someone else's!

Another involved making a bulls-eye target on a piece of paper, and labelling the center "family" , the next outer ring, close friends and other relatives(name some of them); the next two or three outer rings progressive lesser acquaintances, and finally total strangers. Then they had a discussion about what topics are appropriate to discuss with each level of acquaintance. Who can you talk to about going potty? About what your address is? About a movie you liked? The last bit included parents so we could discuss with our child WHO in our experience belonged in some of those categories.

We were pleased with these therapies and others, and were able to refer to them in our daily lives when we could see our son violating some social rule and had this experience in common with him that we could use as a point of reference!

Well, about 3 months ago this place said that they could no longer offer the parent group, because they were billing our insurances for our children's diagnoses and did not have diagnoses ourselves and any staff person spending time with us could not be billed to us or to insurance. They actually asked if we parents would please all go to a psychologist or psychiatrist and get a diagnosis of "depression" because of the stress of having a child on the autism spectrum, so that they could then bill the group moderator's time to our insurance companies as a psychological service rendered to us as patients !!

Everyone said no.

So they then said , OK, no parent group then. You can just wait in the waiting room while your children are in group. My husband even said that one of them said "don't talk to each other." I wasn't there for that.

Well, the parents pretty much hijacked an empty meeting room while the kids are in group. So they still talk to each other. It's not moderated by anyone and doesn't really have the approval of the center. Mind you several have dropped out, and we're about to become one of them.

Because what else is new is that the parents are NOT invited to the kids' group . Nor are we even greeted by a teacher when our kids come out, to tell us what they did. Our son comes out with a form that says something vague like, He "had a hard time keeping his hands quiet during group today, but he did listen to the others." No mention of what the skill of the day was or what activity they did. And our son doesn't volunteer much information.

Well , since this new set-up, this Wednesday was our son's "conference." I took off work early to show up to it.

We met with a lady who informed us that she doesn't really know our son, but that she did stop in to the classroom, just now, to observe him in group for a few minutes, and that the group was listening to a CD of various household noises, and he appeared to be listening quietly with the others. I asked what the point of that exercise was, but she said she never asked. But that one of his teachers told her he was "making progress" because he used to only be willing to socialize with one specific child in that group every week, but that now he was up to 3. This woman read us this message FROM A YELLOW POST-IT NOTE!

I pointed out to her face that we're excluded from his group, have no idea what they do in there every week now, and this alleged family service center had provided for us a liason who doesn't know our son, doens't know what his class is doing, and that their entire communication to us as parents was limited to a yellow post it note, read to us by someone who doesn't know him.

She explained that other parents had said that the parent participation in group had seemed "disorganized." So they had chosen to eliminate it. What parents don't want to be included in their own child's care? And since when does an accusation of dis-organization get met with just removing the parent from the process, rather than better organize the process? She also said the teachers couldn't meet with the parents after group gets out at 6:30 , because they're only paid until 6:30. I told her you're company just chose to only pay these people until 6:30 , then, and has chosen to understaff .

I told her we, as a family, can not implement or reenforce any of the skills he may or may not be learning in that group now, because we can't see it, they can't tell us what they did, our son doesn't tell us, and that form they write on never says much. She said that if we call ahead and arrange it, a teacher can come out of the class while it's going on, and tell us, but that would temporarily leave only one teacher with all those kids. So I reminded her she's just telling me again how they're understaffed, then.

The best (lowest) part was when she suggested that our son's social skills needs could be met, instead, by joining Boy Scouts. Our son is already in Boy Scouts. He sits apart from them while they're playing, and cries when he can't tie a knot. That's why we're here. And I'm a big, fat hypocrite for allowing him to join, as an atheist who is pro-gay-rights, but that's another story.

I guess we got no reason to go back there, which is a shame, because they used to provide a very useful service. Now I have no idea what they do.

I took Thursday and Friday off work, and just stayed home with my 9 year old son, and 14 year old daughter.

Thursday we just laid around and did NOTHING! It felt great. I felt bad that it was too cool and breezy to go to a local lakeside beach. Oh, yeah, we all got haircuts.

But Friday my project for the 3 of us was to take the city bus to the downtown Minneapolis public library.

I grew up without a car. My mom couldn’t drive. My dad had a car, but made it clear it was just for him, and unless we were on some kind of all-family outing, he wasn’t taking us to after-school events or any personal activities in it. My mom and sometimes up to all 7 of us kids would take the bus together. The big kids would help the little kids. I was taking the city bus, in my small home town, alone, by the time I was 12. In fact even after college and for the first few years of our marriage, my husband and I couldn’t afford a car . We lived near downtown St Paul, and took the bus or walked everywhere.

I had no patience or respect for people who would tell me that they’d just refuse to ever take the bus , and that they were all “too dirty.” I had no choice. And it was my everyday life.

My daughter is 14 now, but she doesn’t remember how I used to take the bus home from work, pick her up from her day care lady’s house, and go right out to the bus stop to catch the bus for that last mile home, in all kinds of Minnesota weather. She nearly caused some accidents, as we sat at that bus stop, smiling, and bouncing, and waving her baby-wave at all the people stopped at the nearby stop sign! Now, in our two-car, suburban lifestyle, she has no memory of those days, at all.

What used to be an ordinary part of my daily life, up until about 8 years ago, became an elaborate ordeal! I used to know all my local routes, but now I had to go online to print the schedule of the bus that stops closest to our home. And our printer was busted, so I just had to remember. I had to find change enough for the 3 of us, and nowhere on the web site could I find what the price is, these days! So I just loaded up on quarters and hoped it would be enough. It was.

They both whined that we had to walk a whole 4 blocks to the bus stop, and whined about the heat while we waited. I was disappointed that the bus, once we boarded it, didn’t have copies of the schedule that I could take with me, as I remember they used to. It did have a box of schedules…of the number 10. Why are there a box of number 10 schedules, and no 25’s on the number 25 ?

Every time someone seated near us raised their voice, my son would whine, “See? I told you we shouldn’t have taked the bus.” He also informed me that we shouldn’t have paid money to ride the bus, because the car is “free!” Oh , good lord, my son has a lot to learn. The car is free. I’ll have to remember that. He also reminded me, as the bus stopped a for each rider boarding or getting off, and as it rambled through the city streets rather than taking the highway, that we were losing too much time, because the car was faster. He has a valid point. I’d forgotten that this one rambles around and takes the scenic route . I felt like telling him, “Did you know that when you’ve never had a car, you don’t care about stuff like that?” But we all know how much kids love “when I was your age” stories, so I kept that one to myself.

My daughter was thrilled, when we found the “teen” room at the downtown Minneapolis public library. This library was another one of my “fun” hangouts in my no-money aimless youth. But the’ve entirely rebuilt it since then, and neither of my kids has been to it, possibly not even before it was rebuilt. My daughter had been complaining that she’d read ALL the Japanese Manga at all the local suburban libraries I drive her to, so that’s part of the reason this was my destination. She found a stack of Manga she’d never read, and waved us away with her hand.

I was disappointed, however, to notice that they no longer had a wall of hanging bus-schedule-holders as I remembered they used to. I couldn’t find any at all! I suppose they want everyone to use their computers to go online like I did from home. And I should have. But I did’t for some reason. My son, with his obsession with technology , didn’t want me to read to him. He never does, in a library. He wants to go on the library computer, even though we have one at home. But the computer needed a Minneapolis library card number. And I only have a Ramsey County library card number.

So I was able to go to their children’s librarian to ask what I should do. The children’s librarian had me go to a library computer, type in my Ramsey County Library card number, write down the account number that displayed, then take it all the way over to the other side of the first floor, to a customer service librarian who kept saying he couldn’t find it in the computer until he tried about 10 times. Then he did. Then he needed my drivers’s licence and about 5 minutes of typing time until he assured me that now my library card number would work on their computers. This allowed my son to play on Postopia .com, and to notice that the children’s library computer considers newgrounds.com to be “adult content” and was blocked! OK, it kind of is, if you think about it.

One thing that is “new” (to me) since my bus-riding days, is that when you pay your fare, and remember to ask for a transfer, the back of the transfer ticket has a time stamp on it about 3 hours future to when you boarded. If you get on a return bus before that time, then your return trip home is free! If your board after that, you have to pay again. Of course back then I always bought an all-you-can-ride pass at the beginning of every month, so I didn't used to have to worry about things like correct change all the time. But I did insist we leave the library about 90 minutes after we got there, even though my daughter waved me away again every time I checked on her. But here’s a complaint I remember people from Chicago making to me , frequently, back when I was a frequent bus rider. Our bus stops don’t all have the list of what busses stop here, and their schedules. Some do, but not all. And even those that do, sometimes list some of the busses that stop here, but not others. I still had no idea which street our return number 25 stopped on, downtown, or at what time!

So I called my husband on our cell phone. Another invention not in common usage when I was a frequent bus rider. I called him from the Caribou Coffee in the library lobby, where I had broken down and bought both kids a treat, as I had promised my son I would , as a bribe, at home, before we left, so he’s come willingly. I don’t remember libraries having snack bars in them, as a kid, in the 70’s. My husband was at his desk at work, and I made him go on the bus company web site and read us our stop and our departure time! It was directly across the street from the library, but it was RIGHT NOW! We just made it! I texted him from the bus to tell him, “We just made it, thank you.” I love the 21st century.

I hope my kids got out of the experience that they do have options. My daughter is 14 now and I want her to know the bus is viable transportation for her now, especially here in Minneapolis and St Paul and their close suburbs. Obviously I ‘m not suggesting she take it alone now, but she’s getting to an age where she can. And I want both kids to know that cars are optional. They’re not mandatory to own. I tried not to force the point that cars are a luxury and that I think they take cars for granted, as do all the kids in the suburban neighborhood where we live now. It’s my fault as a parent if they think that way. But I did show them the bus alternative on Friday, and I need to make sure we take it more, so that they don’t see the bus as a novelty, but as part of our urban structure, available to us all the time.

Worked 9 hours in North Minneapolis.

Drove home to New Brighton.

Took daughter to guitar lesson in Blaine.

Picked up Vietnamese take-out in Mounds View, on the way home.

Took husband, daughter, and son to son's first piano lesson, in someone's home, in St. Anthony.

Drove home.

Drove husband and foster-cat to her rightful owner, in St. Paul, now that he's out of the hospital.

Drove home again.

It's 9:30 now, and I'm not going anywhere.

I get to work.

Put in about 2 hours. Then I get a phone call.

It's from my 14 year old daughter , calling from the front office of her middle school.

She had arrived at school with one sneaker with her new orthopedic insert in it, and the other shoe with its original insole removed, but not replaced by her other orthopedic insert. Just flat. And she ran in gym that way the whole time. Can I stop by at lunch and bring her her other insole? It's laying on the couch at home. Yes.

Then work for another hour or so.

Then I receive an email from my 9 year old son's 3rd grade teacher. You know that notice that eveyrone in class was going to memorize a 10 line or greater poem. And my son told me he was working on it at school? Well he told his teacher he was working on it at home. And today was the due date.

And

Earlier this week she assigned him a handwriting assignement, he never completed it and turned it in. He never brought it home. He still needs to do it.

And

I never sent in the permission slip for the class trip to the state capital next week. I emailed her back, assured her we'd make him do his homework and since I'm back in the 'hood anyway at lunch can I stop by and fill out the permission slip? Yes, the front desk lady in the school will have it.

So,

at about 11:15 I actually leave the office for lunch, which just isn't done any more, now that we're supposed to be trying to work 48 hours a week. I drive home. I get out a new pad of those nature-scene checks my husband just ordered with "Time and Tide Melt the Snowman" written in gothic lettering on them, as if that were a biblical reference, when really it's from Doctor Who. I pick up my daughter's shoe insole laying right on the couch.

I drive to the elementary school. The front desk lady does have the permission slip. I fill it out and pay the $10 check it asks for, although I don't really know why a trip to the capital costs $10. It's right here in town.

I drive to my daughter's middle school, and give the front desk lady my daughter's insole, she agrees she can have it delivered to my daughter's class. It occurs to me that I just handed the overworked, underpaid front desk lady of my daughter's middle school something that has touched my daughter's foot. Maybe I should have put it in a plastic bag or something. And by then there was like 2 1/2 hours left in the school day anyway. And PE as over. Futile effort.

I drive back to work and try to eat a cup of microwaved clam chowder between customers on the phone. I become convinced that while I'd stopped by home, I had let the dog out the back door and had never let her back in before I left. Something my husband has been accusing me of a lot lately, just because it really is true. I really do do that.

I finally excuse myself, drive 15 minutes home only to see my dog is inside. I give her a treat so she won't wonder why I drove home for no reason and then just left again. Then I drive back to work for about another 3 hours. I put in an extra 1/2 hour to make up for my doggie amnesia incident. I'm grateful no one asked why I needed this emergency break. I'd have been embarrassed to explain that one.

When I do get home, my husband has read my forwarded emails from the teacher about my son's missing home work, and he has left work early, intercepted my son at home and was already at the kitchen table making him do it. Thank heavens for that, because I wasn't looking forward to it. My son weeps when he sees me, but I immediately have to take our daughter to guitar lessons. Good bye.

I put about 3 more rows on my husband's scarf, from the waiting room at the music store. Then drive her home again.

At dinner, my husband says that when I woke up, before him, this morning, I let the dog out into the back yard, and then left her there and went to work. Her barking at our back, sliding glass door woke him up, and he let her in.

Remember when I didn't have a car at all? Or kids? Or a job? I don't.

L.A.Fitness opened a new gym in my neighborhood, and an adult monthly membership is dirt cheap, (which maybe should have been my first clue) and it’s pay as you go, per month, so you don’t have to sign a one year obligation, as you do with so many other gyms. I’ve never been in a gym before besides that tragic 3 months at the Curves for Women near my son’s old day care, which we won’t go in to.

So when they opened I stopped by. I couldn’t help noticing it was a little like a prison, with one front desk, and an entirely visible floor full of gym equipment, and an entirely visible balcony full of treadmills and exercise bikes. But the staff they had were all busy and the told me at the front desk no one could show me around right now. So I just left.

Their web site said members get one free session with a personal trainer. So I figured that would be the guy who could show me what I should be doing. Mind you, I did notice that only one session is free, so I could guess from that that any further meetings with a personal trainer would be an additional fee. I just didn’t know how much.

So I schedule the session, show up, and a cute little 20-something boy greets me, has me fill out a questionnaire, and has me lean my back against a medicine ball, against the wall, while holding a basketball in my hands and doing deep knee bends, and does show me how two leg-muscle pieces of gym equipment work. He has to put them on the lowest weight for each one and we both agree I’m pretty weak. On my way in, someone at the front desk informed me I’d never been in, and that they needed my picture for my computer account, even though they took it last time when I came in and looked around. I told him so, but he said, no, I’d never been in. Nice.

So then Trainer Boy sits down like an Amway Salesman and shows me which personal training plans I can purchase. If he meets with me once a week for a hour, it costs as much as one hefty car payment. And if he meets with me 3 times a week, it costs the monthly amount of rent on my old apartment. No. I wasn’t counting on it anyway. I asked HIM if he could show me how the rest of this equipment works, but he just showed me one and that they all have pictures on them showing which muscle groups they’re for, and a cartoon drawing of someone using one so you can see how it’s done. The he sort of waived his arm towards different groups of exercise equipment and told me their names, like, “Those are for upper body,” and “Those are for glutes.”

So, I guess I’ll show up for some of the classes on their schedule, most of which are during work hours so I won’t be able to go to most of them. But that won’t be any time soon.

My thighs and part of my back are still so sore from just that, that I can still barely hobble around. And I’m wheezing because I hate to admit it, she’s a lovely, good natured cat, but I really do think I’m allergic to my hospitalized friend’s cat who has been with us for about 2 weeks now. If I’m as miserable 2 days from now as I am right now, I’m NOT running in the Mother’s Day 5-K race on Sunday. Which I was really looking forward to.