I’m almost done with my special education Odyssey. This afternoon, I have to go to special ed camp expo for area summer camps that teach kids social skills, and tomorrow, I meet with a consultant to make sure I haven’t missed anything.  So, almost done, but not quite.

I visited a really fabulous school that is geared to kids with high functioning autism and anxiety disorders on Tuesday. An 11 million dollar building with bright and shiny equipment and a safe and loving philosophy. However, it’s an hour away from our home. Maybe it would be an hour and a half during morning traffic. Would that commute be horrible for my kid?

I spend a good part of every day making mental pros and cons charts. The next step is taking Ian to intake sessions. Intake. Sounds like he’s going to get strip searched for prison. Hopefully, it will be more pleasant.

With all the driving around, visiting, composing mental pros and con charts, and recovering with multiple glasses of wine in the evening, things have been far from normal around here. But life goes on, and I have to keep this ship on course.

One of the challenges is making sure that I have dinner on the table every night. That task is made more challenging by the fact that my family is plowing through vast amounts of food every night. Teenage boys sure eat a lot.

On Tuesday, I made a big meal with the plan of having a repeat meal on Wednesday. I cooked up one package of Italian sausages, one package of German sausage, one pound of egg noodles with a container of fresh mushrooms, a head of broccoli, some leftover grilled asparagus, and a salad. Sounds like two nights worth of food, right? Nope. It was enough for one dinner, my lunch, and Jonah’s first dinner (he eats two right now). I had to run out to the supermarket for chicken and a box of Mac n Cheese. On Sunday, we almost decimated an entire pot of chili.

I have entered into a brave new world of dinner. I haven’t figured out how to plan around feeding locusts yet. I think I need to multiply my normal cooking amounts by three.

When things get stressful, one must also keep the ship on course by maintaining one’s own sanity. So, I’m forgoing the laundry and squeezing in a mani-pedi this afternoon. We’ll hang out with friends and family over the weekend. I’ll make time to catch up on the blogs and twitter to remember that there’s a whole world outside of mental charts and intakes and IEPs.