Saturday afternoon I went to a meeting of the Minnesota Coalition of Scottish Clans as a representative of colgaffneyis. Rather to my surprise, I found it well run, quite informative and I was able to make a couple useful contributions to the discussion.

I did a little shopping afterwards, then went to SW Minneapolis to visit Tom at his group home. This was not a good time. When he saw I was alone (without mia_mcdavid) he burst into tears, pushed me out the front door, and threw himself on the floor in a tantrum. The staff member on duty tried to calm him down and let me in, but nothing worked. After 20 minutes on the doorstep I left–Tom clearly did not want me and the staff would handle him better if I were gone. Rejected. I was quite shook up.

Sunday morning I woke up to the alarm at 6 AM. This was according to plan–I had to do a couple things for a system upgrade at work, one of those things that has to happen in off hours. This went exactly as planned and I was back asleep by 7.

After I woke up again, and James (#1 son) and I had breakfast, I got in the car and drove to Mankato, where Mia and another member of colgaffneyis were packing up after the HistoryFest there. I stayed for a couple hours, helping to load the truck. Mia also showed me around the site. Quite an interesting place; I would like to go to an event there some day. However, this time I was tired and depressed, perhaps in reaction to the incident with Tom the day before.

When I got home I took James out to dinner at Chili’s, and then home. I told him that we were planning to go to Winona and meet Mia there later in the week. He was really unhappy at this prospect–he did not want to go on another camping trip. Just like two weeks ago. So the day ended with the following choices before me:

1. Drag him kicking and screaming to Winona.
2. Stay home with him, being grumpy and frustrated myself at missing an event (and Mia)
3. Leave him home alone and go by myself.

(3) would be the obvious choice in a normal family, but since James has Asperger’s syndrome our life is far from normal. He is not nearly as bad off as Tom, but leaving him alone for days could be risky. He might not remember to take his medications or do other basic tasks of self-care, sitting in front of the computer or the television and oblivious to the world around him. As a parent this had been a thoroughly depressing weekend, one of the worst in a long time. And I had to go back to a difficult work situation the next morning.

James was very good about getting ready for school Monday morning. I drove him there, rather than insist he wait at the bus stop in the rain. I got through the morning at work somehow, then spent lunch hour carefully doing all the reading and exercises for my Irish class. The afternoon at work was better, working on a couple interesting and worthwhile problems and participating in a well run and productive meeting.

The evening went well. As always, Irish class was interesting and enjoyable. I got home to find that James had taken his showers and was about to take his evening medicines. This was really good; often without a parent to flogpush him through his chores he will procrastinate until way late and everybody’s temper is ruined. Not this time.

Today the morning went well. No trouble getting James up and he easily got to the bus stop in time. Mia and I have talked; perhaps I can leave him here while I go to Winona for a couple days. We will have our cell phones to keep in touch with him. So I am feeling a little better now.