Dad: "What do you want for dinner?"
Noah: "Steak"
Tommy: "Meat"
Mom: "Whatever you want dear"
Sarah: "Mac and cheese"
Amy: "Not steak"
Evan: "Da da!"
We had pizza.
Category: Tommy
Rough day for the bus
Tommy is a senior this year. His whole school career he has either been driven to school or ridden "the short bus." A special needs bus with 7 to 13 students with a variety of handicaps and disabilities (along with no trained aid – soapbox issue) is far different from a full size bus with..oh, 40 to 60 students. Tommy is riding the regular bus for the first time in his life. So far it has been a good experience. This morning however, he miss his bus by 30 seconds. Ran up the street just in time to see it pulling away. That had to be frustrating to a person who is used to a bus pulling up in front of his house and honking the horn then patiently waiting while he rose from bed, dressed himself, grabbed a Poptart, and leisurely hobbled to the bus.
This day continues to be hard for Tommy bus-wise. Apparently a student got on the bus without a note authorizing that student to get be on that bus. The bus is returning to the school and a small riot is occurring on the bus. An irate Tommy called to complain to me. Obviously, he had joined in with the other students to raise voice and gripe. I think I talked him down from such a mistake. This is a difficult situation for an Aspie.
Such an inappropriate dad
Tommy missed his bus this morning so I had to drive him in. On the way to school I asked him about his camping trip this past weekend and how he was feeling. Now I like esoteric humor and double entendre and often for my own entertainment include references in my conversations that simply are missed or go over people’s heads without changing the flow or meaning of our discussion. I entertain myself this way. I asked Tommy if he used the latrine in the woods then to be clear I added, "Did you shit in the woods?" I was making a reference to this book
Poof I’m a taxi
First missed school bus of the year. Perhaps he’ll take a lesson from this.
From the mouths of babes
Tommy, exasperated, after playing all day in our heat: "My PS/2 is overheating!" Then stares at me like he wants me to do something…
August Happiness Challenge
Watching Tommy perform at the STAR annual horse show makes me happy. I am thrilled that he has achieved such success. Seeing him perk up at the winning of a blue ribbon in one category after taking a 5th place in another made me even happier!
From the mouths of babes
Granddaddy: "Tommy, I’m taking Sarah, Noah, Amy and Evan to McDonald’s. Want to go?"
Tommy: "No. I’ll stay here."
They leave.
Dad: "Tommy, please find Molly."
Tommy: "Ok. Is Evan awake?"
From the mouths of babes
Cathy: "It’s too loud."
Tommy shouts back: "What do you mean it’s too loud?"
Old People are so Schtooopid
Apparently my children really do not understand what I do. As I looked over my son’s recent changes to his blog, he took it upon himself to explain, "The 3s are backwards Es, the @ is an A and the 5s are Ss." I wonder if I should tell him about blue boxing and phreaking.
Egad they’re real!
Saturday night Cathy, Tommy, Evan and I decided to grab a bite to eat. And we treated ourselves to a restaurant. As we are being seated my eyes fall upon the grill that the restaurant is giving away and I drift over to it to fill out the marketing information registration as the rest of the crew move on. "It’s Doug!" I look up to see Thing 1 and Thing 2 and a nice couple, obviously their parents. Look away! Don’t make eye contact. Blast this facial/name recognition deficiency of mine. Wait. You have to look at their faces to recognize them otherwise its just bodies in clothes. Clothes! Look for clues. Well, Thing 1 and Thing 2. Pretty big clues! Tall guy. They know me. Where’s my help? Panic! Look at grill. No look for Cathy. Eh. The restaurant is a cloud of blurry people. Looks like I’m staring at the prison train from The Wall. Eeks. No help there. Clues? A theatre reference on the shirt! Thing 1, Thing 2. Suessical! It’s the Barrys!
Whew! Takes a lot of words to recall 5 seconds of one’s life. I don’t know if it is the stress of worrying that if you don’t immediately recognize someone that you will offend them or if it was all that beerdamage I did to my brain in college or if its the stress of my life in general or if I just am incapable but regardless of how well I know you there are simply times where I stare at your face and no name will come to me!
I really like seeing our online friend’s in the real world. It is nice to pretend that I have friends in the flesh for the people who read Reality Me probably know me better than people in real life and the readers probably interact with me more than people in real life. I really stay locked in the basement A LOT! We need human contact! Granted, Scouting and some of the other activities of the children have brought us out of our hermitation a bit of late. And that’s nice. Of course, I wanted to bug the Barry’s and be social but Cathy in her ever present since of prudence would not let me interrupt their dinner although I sneaked in a "good-bye" and "break a leg" despite Cathy’s protests. Barry and family, it was great seeing you guys!
Heading to Sicko tonight!
When Tommy declared, "There should be a law that you have to speak English in America."
I ranted at him for half an hour. I didn’t force my view upon him rather made an effort to open his mind to another perspective. I used examples such as "if you went to Spain, you should have to speak Spanish"
and he’d retort "but I am not living there"
so we went through what-if scenario after scenario and using examples such as the nice people who work at CiCi’s pizza and do not speak a word of English yet they communicate with the patrons just fine. Eventually Tommy was begging to end the conversation and I released him content that maybe he’d heard something; more than likely, he will simply think twice before raising such issues in front of me again (which would be a shame).
Since Tommy will vote for our next President, and since he gets plenty of far right opinion for other relatives, I felt it prudent that he and Sarah begin their political education. How fortunate that R. Neal of Knoxviews.com offered up some tickets to Michael Moore’s Sicko! I’m sure their grandfather will deprogram them afterwards. It is not the point-of-view that I want to impress upon the children as much as I want them to appreciate that there are multiple ways to see a subject, multiple solutions to a problem, and that they should try to see everything as if they were in that other person’s shoes. See you at the movie tonight!
Code Your Own Game!
So Tommy is a World of Warcraft addict. As a programmer, I think my children should know a little bit about coding. I have decided to install Visual Studio Express on their computers and letting them earn computer time by learning about programming. Write Hello World
, earn some Youtube time. Write your own game and then play WoW. Actually, I don’t want to set this up as a drudgery so a carrot/reward system won’t work. I am hoping they just find it cool.
Happy Birthday Evan!
Two weeks ago it was Cathy’s birthday. This past Thursday, Noah turned 11 years old. Today Evan turns two! Two very fast years. When Amy was born, I bought a book and started writing her a letter a day which became a letter a week, then none at all. When Evan was born, I bought a book and never put word one in it. Ah! Good intentions replaced by actual doings. The upcoming birthdays are Amy turning five on June 10 and Sarah turning 14 on June 24 then Tommy turns 17 on August 15.
Calls a parent never likes
Tommy, "Our bus just got hit. I told the officer I didn’t do it."
The school bus experience has been horrid this year. There is no lack of irony in the year ending with a bus accident. Tommy’s description was that a trailer clipped the back corn of the bus and the bus didn’t even move much. His friend’s mother called and said, "the bus got side swiped!" The accident happened within walking distance of the school but they are making the children wait until another bus can come to move them from the accident scene to the school. Since it is a short bus of special needs students, that does make sense.
I had hoped we could arrange for Tommy to ride the regular bus home at least once this year. I think he is fully capable of handling the regular bus. Getting off the short bus would alleviate so much turmoil! And possibly introduce some.
Update: Tommy called, laughing, to declare, "we’re on tv!" Looks like WATE got the footage. Guess we will have to record the news tonight. The kids on the bus sounded way out of control.
Update 2: Some more details.
Fire at Bearden High School
(Ok. Not a fair title but I made you look! Alternate titles: "Hot class at BHS" "Tommy Burns the String at Both Ends" "Tommy Scrambles Over an Open Fire")
Tommy’s wildlife class has been learning how to build fires on campus..an activity that would get most kids expelled. Today his class will have a fire building contest where groups have to build a fire up and burn a string 2 feet high. Tommy has done this on camping trips and should do well. After they burn their strings they get to cook on the open fire. Tommy choose to scramble eggs on his fire.
This morning we prepared his orange by slicing off the top third. Then we used a grapefruit knife to separate most of the meat from the skin so that this did not burden him during class. We put the sliced top back on and held it in place with rubber bands to keep the juices in during school. The recipe calls for 2 eggs so I sent 4. I could not find a egg carrier so I sliced up the egg carton to be a protective case. Tommy did not want any seasoning. We packaged the eggs and the orange carefully in an insulated container with ice packs. In the pocket of the container we put a plastic fork, aluminum foil (wraps around the orange while it cooks in the coals), and printed instructions. While others eat hot dogs and marshmallows, Tommy will be living it up with scrambled eggs!
Update: Tommy did well!
