Hobbyhorses

I'm not sure if it's a positive sign that I don't head straight to the psychology section of the bookstore and look for new books on autism (I do always end up doing the little flamingo head-to-the-side scan during every trip. And I usually take the opportunity to find Bryna Siegel's book and hide it in another stack somewhere). And I haven't hit the children's section in search of curricular materials in awhile. Not that I think things are going so swimmingly academically: I think this is probably burnout.

I'm ashamed to say that I've blithely told many people, "Yeah, the curriculum sucks, but so what? I just buy my own books and teach her." That was under the Old Dispensation, before Primera became ragingly noncompliant. These days I sneak in a page or two of math problems while she eats her breakfast. The other stuff? The days when I would make up lists of therapeutic activities (1. Jigsaw puzzle. 2. Connect the dots. 3. Coloring. 4. P. 47, "Teach Me Language," 5. Baron-Cohen and Howlin. &c., &c., &c.)? Long gone.

And some of it's b/c her life is more normalized now anyway, and it's filled up with things we want her to be doing. Except part of me wonders if I've given up on the Heroic Rescue Mission because the day-to-day just gets so frenetic.

But anyway. How did this start? I went into a bookstore and bought Tennessee Williams, because my mother always liked the line from The Rose Tattoo re trying to be a little kind, and I wanted to see if she'd remembered it correctly. And the 9/11 report, b/c I want to be an Informed Citizen (and b/c a nice and well-heeled family had given me a generous tip, and I decided to treat myself). And Clinton's biography, b/c I read the first twenty pages of it a few weeks ago and found it surprisingly engrossing. And I forget what else. I think an anthology of French poetry. And translations of Anna Akhmatova.

These fragments have I shored....