The long boring explanatory post

I apologize to my friends and readers, if I have any left, for my lack of posting, commenting, and e-mail answering. I am sorry.

So WTF is going on? I'm depressed. More so than usual. This is pretty bad. If other people weren't depending on me, I might not even get out of bed. But kids and their needs don't allow for such indulgence, so I get up and make do.

Moving has been difficult. I miss my neighborhood in Michigan and my fellow stay-at-home moms there. I miss my parents, sister, and nephew back in Michigan.

Most of all, I miss having an only moderately difficult autistic child. Because the autistic child I have now has recently surpassed highly difficult and has moved on to extremely difficult. The move has been very hard on him and his behavior has deteriorated accordingly. He is contrary about everything, from tiny things that hardly matter to major issues. Some days I am furious with him, other days I feel sorry for him. But regardless of how I feel, I just can't seem to help him make this adjustment. When he came home from school one day last week, he just collapsed on the front lawn, crying and saying "This is not our house! Not going inside - not our house!" As I held him and tried to calm him down, he stated "Want go home. Real home. Want go home to Grand Rapids, Michigan." He's so distraught and I feel powerless to help him. He refuses to work some days in his new school and he talks about wanting to go back to his old school in Michigan. At age 7 he is suddenly wetting his pants like a toddler, going through 4 outfits at school one day last week. He refuses to ride the bus to school in the morning, so I have to get up God-awful early every morning to drive him. I can't just drop him off either; I have to go inside and walk him to his classroom. He just can't be trusted to go to his classroom otherwise. I don't think he likes his special ed teacher and I don't think the teacher is terribly fond of him either. Boy does okay in his regular ed classroom, so I really think that dislike of his special ed teacher is part of the problem.

We were referred to an autism specialist with the local university hospital, but the first available appointment is in APRIL. Other psychiatrists we've contacted can get see him in December or January. Not terribly helpful. The school support staff (counselors, school psychologist) are not very helpful either. Hardly anyone seems to have any training with autistic kids, let own autism certification. Even the special ed teacher is not certified in autism and isn't very experienced with autistic kids. It's a big change from the autism program in our former school district in Michigan, where all the teachers were certified in autism and there was a whole system in place designed to support and nurture autistic kids. There is no autism program in our current school district, even though it is easily as large as the one in Michigan. Instead of a centralized program for autism, they just leave each neighborhood school to deal with their autistic kids on their own. It's stupid and unprofessional.

Girl has adapted to the move with no problems. She is a normal, active, imaginative little girl who gets into the usual preschool mischief. For instance, she cut her hair herself recently. My baby's beautiful long hair is no more. She cut so much of it so close to the scalp that there was no way to save the bits of length that were left. The stylist who did her best to clean-up Girl's tonsorial mess calls the resulting style a "pixie" cut. Girl loves that and tells everyone that she has a "pixie cut, just like Tinkerbell." It breaks my heart, because I loved combing and styling her hair. Now she looks like a shorter version of her brother. At least she likes girly clothes and pink everything, so hopefully people don't mistake her for a boy. The day Girl cut her hair, I cried and cried the whole day. I was borderline hysterical. I knew I was WAY overreacting, but I couldn't stop it regardless. That helped it really hit home for me how deeply I am depressed.

Our inability to sell our house in Michigan depresses me further. We've dropped our price $20,000 from last spring to now. And that's after refinishing the hardwood floors, new storm doors and windows, new paint, and more. And including all the appliances. It's like all the equity we built up over 10 years is just disappearing. I just thank God that we never got a home equity loan or refinanced and took money out, like so many people did when real estate prices were stable or rising. Many of those folks are now upside-down on their houses since the bottom fell out, especially in Michigan. It's depressing as hell.

Then there's my relationship with Spousehole. For a while it seemed like things might be better, but now not so much. A big part of the problem is that he feels stressed by paying for both houses and he is a real asshole when he's stressed. Money has always been a big issue for him and now it's even worse. He's done stupid things like take away my debit card so that he can control down to the penny what I'm allowed to spend. His control freak tendencies have been greatly exacerbated. That makes depressed too. I don't thrive under that sort of regime.

I try to look on the bright side of things. There's no snow here. There's more sun than we would get in Michigan. Gas prices are down (under $2.00!!). But it's difficult.

My fun-loving, sex-obsessed self will be back, hopefully sooner rather than later. This gloom will pass eventually. I know that, even though right now I only see darkness. All I can do is try to find my way back to the light.

To blog is a self-invasion of privacy