Anticipatory Stress

My day yesterday was filled with anticipatory stress. DId you notice I didn't even blog?

My first assignment of the day was to get WIlson to his football game by 7:45. It was 46 degrees when we arrived... not quite what I was planning and I was alone -- Bart wasn't feeling well. I sat in the van until almost second half when it was warm enough to sit on the sidelines and take pictures. He was pretty cute -- he's awfully small out there compared to everyone else and has already declared that next year he's sticking with just wrestling and baseball. I will hopefully have time to post pictures later.

When we returned I visited with Bart and matched socks for 50 minutes (got through half the basket -- yes, we have that many unmatched socks) and then it was time to take off for the lake to meet MIke and Kari. Bart wasn't feeling so well still, so I headed out with five of the seven kids who were at home at the time. When we got there, on Saturday of Labor Day weekend, and had the lake to ourselves I realized it must really be too cold to be there. But it was too late.

We had a windy chilly picnic and then the brave kids went out on the boat with Mike. The braver kids went on more than one trip and the bravest of them all even got on the tube. The water was apparently warm, but the air was quite cold, especially when the wind was blowing. The kids ended the day by throwing large piles of algae one each other. Did you know we had rednecks in the north?

Came home and a little while later we welcome the Karis back over for dinner and following dinner I sat and beat my husband in online scrabble. Went to bed early.

The whole day I was anticipating stress when Salinda and bf and Gabby were going to arrive. It didn't begin last night because I was in bed when they came, but the stress I was dreading is certainly present this morning.

I guess the question I wish I could understand is why if this is our house and we are paying the bills, why we can't make the rules. And when you have such a large array of people with varying capacities and abilities, kicking someone out because they don't follow rules is nuts -- if we did that there wouldn't be anyone living here.

Why did I ever think that we were going to be parenting until the kids were 18? What naive ridiculous notion filled my head to think that kids were going to be able to transition into adulthood and make it in society when they could never function as minors in the world around them...

and if the average age in our country for children to be financially independent for neuro-typical birth children is 27, what in the world is the average age of kids with issues? 54??? That means we'll have kids at home until I'm well over 100.

And that, my friends, is my positive and cheery word for you this morning. Hope your day is grand!