The Done List: June 9

When I finished my business day today, I still had 6 hours worth of work left to do and a houseful of kids terrified that if they let go of me for even a second I'd vanish back to the mystical place known as Paris.

Needless to say, the kids came first.

I got back to work eventually but was distinctly lacking motivation. That's what happens when you feel you've accomplished nothing. So I squeezed in a break (I'm exceptionally good at taking breaks) and wrote this. Quickly - so it's wordy and poorly edited. I'll come back and do a proper and obsessive edit when my brain is working.

So here it is, my Done List. Like a To Do list, only better. A To Do list is all about the things you haven't done yet and get to feel guilty about. A Done List, on the other hand, is the things you actually did.

In the end, writing it down proved to me I had not spent my day in vain and provided the motivating sense of accomplishment I needed to finally finish my work. Therapy by blog. Yay me.
And so ... Today's Done List

• Cuddled 2 terrified kids through the 5:30 a.m. unleashing of unholy hell from the skies.
• Got clothes-hating 3-year-old dressed for the day. Notable because most days he walks to school in his pajamas.
• Managed to get shorts for 10-year-old into dryer in time for him to wear them to school. They were only a bit damp. Gave him hug for ignoring mom's inadequate housekeeping.
• Saw 3 kids out the door to school. Allowed 3-year-old to leave house wearing sandals with socks because it made him happy. Gave him special kissing hand.
• Made and drank life-giving coffee.
• Earned money to pay mortgage by working demanding job.
• Paid mortgage.
• Ate lunch, as proper nutrition is critical in preventing late-night chocolate binges.
• Washed 6 loads of laundry. Since it's all piled, unfolded, on my bed, I am about to go sleep on it.
• Realized I’d scheduled critical meetings in the middle of 10-year-old's graduation from 5th grade. Which is tomorrow. Frantically rearranged calendar to take morning off.
• Cuddled 2 terrified kids through the second unleashing of unholy hell from the skies, then engaged DVD player in hopes of maintaining sufficient physical separation to cook a meal.
• Made spaghetti dinner with only three meatballs and no ground anything in the house. Convinced children to eat every bite, including scary green peas. Rewarded them with duty-free German chocolates and YouTube videos.
• Boogied with 3-year-old to the Hamster Dance and the Chipmunks’ rendition of Cotton-Eyed Joe and tried to teach diva to snap.
• Supervised writing of thank you notes for teachers. Praised Aspie for writing 7 of them. By hand. Without dictation. Yes, I said 7.
• Praised diva for creating letter so touching her teacher will cry, and – more importantly – for proper use of the subjunctive. A grammar prodigy if ever there was one. Or rather, were. See what I mean? It's hard for adults, and my girl's got it nailed.
• Bragged about grammatically talented daughter on Facebook.
• Supervised 3 delightfully cheerful and independent children through bedtime. Helped 3-year-old get redressed after he soaked himself to the skin washing his hands.
• Simultaneously helped diva sound out the long words in Animal Ark chapter book (hard book - it's British), read But Not The Hippopotamus to preschooler who insisted “that’s not a hippopotamus, it’s a hippo,” and ignored 10-year-old playing video games when he was meant to be reading. The kid reads plenty.
• Distributed hugs and kisses, sprayed anti-monster "spray" around room to protect children from bumpy night-time things, addressed bedtime angst in 10-year-old, promised to check on diva "till the sun comes up," and allowed 3-year-old to hold my bellybutton until he fell asleep. Still don’t know why he does that.
• Bonded with amazing au pair who makes my life easier, in hopes she will like me enough to continue doing so.
• Confirmed details of baseball game for 15 au pairs + 3 kids on Sunday, while doing research on possible nature-themed outing for family + guest on Saturday.
• Went back to work. Wrote detailed article on difficult concept I did not fully understand and brazenly sent it off for review at 3:57 a.m.
  
• Posted totally unnecessary blog entry so as to further delay sleep.

Not too shabby for nearly 23 straight hours of awake. Bed now. Must be cheery, showered and dressed for 5th grade graduation in the morning!
Note: getting dressed appears nowhere on this list. I spent the whole day in my pajamas.
[Also, thanks to judicious editing, you are getting only half the list my sleep-deprived brain drafted in the wee hours of this morning. Scary thought.]
PS - Apologies here because I may have stolen the "Done List" concept from the Yarn Harlot - see blog list at right - whom I admire for more than her amazing knitting skills and creative pseudonym. Too fuddle-brained at this hour to remember for sure.

Barbecue

Today, I watched a woman verbally eviscerate an entire room full of people on behalf of my son.

I love her. I want to bake her cookies. Make her a meatloaf. Decorate her a stunning 3-tier celebration cake in a whole rainbow of colors.

This woman is the advocate I hired to help my beloved Aspie get into a school where he can get what he needs to be successful, to thrive, and honestly to learn that he is worth loving, something that his dad and I haven't been able to teach him by ourselves, despite nearly 11 years of trying.

He's a great kid. Super smart, full of heart, naive and trusting. And the public schools in our area - and I'm a huge advocate of public schools, I really am - they are killing him.

So I hired this woman to do what I cannot. To raise her voice and stand up for him. To yell at people and call them names. To make them see what should be right in front of their noses. That he needs to be around kids like him, if for no other reason than so he can make real friends. That he needs help to manage the emotional minefield of peer relationships, and even teacher/student interaction. That he needs small groups of students and patient teachers to thrive, to learn, to find his own version of success. And that he is smart enough - this kid, he's so smart! - that surviving should not, by itself, be enough.

We got his classification changed. After 5 years of pushing and testing and more pushing, the schools now finally admit that yes, he has Asperger's syndrome. (You don't want to know what they'd labeled him before - it just pisses me off.)

Other than that, though, we failed. The entire elementary school team was on his side, and we failed. Dozens of tests, the endorsement of a truckload of psychiatrists, along with that of the biggest name institution in this field. And we failed.

We failed because of one inane bit of bureaucracy. Our elementary school never asked for help. Under enormous stress because of the regular school environment, he acted out. More than once. Tried to run away from school. And because they love him, they managed it themselves. They never asked for help, unless it was from me.

So now, he's not getting any.

We have one more - very unlikely - shot. And I'm going to bring my new best friend along to articulate what I cannot.

I hope she skewers another dozen people and roasts them over an open flame.

It's Easy Being Green

I work for a living. I know, hard to imagine that I can find time for a job. But I do. Work for a nice, big company, with lots of people in it. Used to be a lot fewer people, but then we executed a merger. We got hugely enormous and became genuinely multinational in the process. This is cool, because it means that sometimes I get to go to Paris. And I like to go to Paris. Not just for the food, either, though that's certainly a draw.

On my first trip to Paris, the folks on my team wanted to get to know each other. So we did a personality analysis.

As our consultants explained, each of us is a blend of three colors, one of which is usually dominant. If you're mostly blue, you are heavily analytical, always thinking about the future, and generally staring at your bellybutton because you are so inwardly focused. If you are red, you are driving and driving and driving - though you may not always know toward what, and that "what" may sometimes be a big giant cliff. And if you are green, you are the Chatty Cathy of the group, the social butterfly, the networker. And you are always late, because the person you are talking to right now is incredibly important. This pisses off the blue people, who are always on time because they are insanely precise, as well as the red people, who never wait for anyone.

This will come as a complete shock, of course, but I am mostly green. I am also always late.

On Wednesday after work, I walked into my hotel and found an American friend in the lobby, waiting for her French boss, who was joining her for dinner. I kept her company while she waited. Of course, he was late. He is green. She is green, too, so we understood. And when he arrived, apologizing, we explained that there was no need because all of us are green.

At which point, green social beast that he is, he invited me to dinner with them. For which, huge thanks.

We spent 45 green minutes on the sofa getting to know each other before we realized that if we didn't leave we'd never find an open restaurant. Then we chatted at the table without even looking at the menus for at least 20 green minutes more before we realized that if we didn't order we wouldn't eat before midnight.

Everything was late. None of us cared. We were too busy enjoying being green together.

The food wasn't bad, either. At the aptly named Spicy restaurant, we enjoyed intriguingly spiced dishes along with a chilled bottle of red wine (and J-P, if you read this please share what type of wine it was because I loved it and I cannot remember). Oh, but the best part - aside from the green conversation - was the dessert. It was called Spicy Coffee. And with that, I learned a new food word - degustation. For Spicy Coffee was a bit more than that. Along with our teeny tiny cups of French coffee, we each enjoyed a degustation of two insanely fabulous desserts. One was a small, cannoli-like pirouette cookie filled with an appropriately green pistachio cream. The other - it was ooh-la-la good! On the top, chopped spiced fruit - maybe apple? Then a thick layer of a smooth custard akin to vanilla pudding, only richer. And then, at the bottom, a layer of perfectly spiced and saturated gingerbread. Together in one bite, they blended perfectly. Rather like our conversation that evening. Fabulous!

We closed the restaurant. Then our newest French friend suggested we see the Eiffel Tower at night, so we did ... and, not realizing that our green natures had brought us to the Tower after midnight, we missed the last subway train back to the hotel. So we chatted and walked and chatted some more. Crossed the Champs Elysees, all bright lights and cars and dramatic presence. Chatted a bit more. And finally made it back to the hotel at 2:00 a.m.

Being green is a bit like being blonde: you just have more fun. Though one might occasionally appreciate just a little more sleep.