2010/02/03

Wednesday, February 3, 2010 (#34)

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Josh drama

adapted from a rant on IM

School is open tomorrow, with a 2-hour delay (ludicrous; the roads are clear) so I called the Home around 4:30 to ask if we were on for 5:00 still -- and she says she (the main caregiver) and her mother (the owner) are both stuck in meetings or something... they *might* get out before 7, but otherwise they'll be back at 7. They'll call me if either one of them gets out earlier.

At 6:30 I call to confirm -- no answer; I leave a voicemail saying that if I don't hear from her in 5 minutes or so, I'm going to start getting Josh ready.

We have some drama with Josh, who at first seems all ready to go -- but then makes it plain that he wants Sandy to come (he took down her sandals and put them at her feet -- pretty clear messaging there, which would be an encouraging and positive thing if the whole thing weren't so stressful). He shoves me outside and won't let me in (I don't force the issue).

While she's getting ready, he gets undressed... but after she puts on all her outdoor stuff, apparently he is satisfied and cooperates with getting dressed again. As a result of this, we arrive at about 7:10 -- theoretically giving at least one of them extra time to get there.

They aren't there. Two teenage girls answer the door. Maybe we've met them before -- I'm bad with faces, and I'm pretty sure we hadn't been introduced -- but in any case this is just kind of not a happy situation; Josh just shoves his way into the house. Fortunately they seem to recognize him, and one of them calls the caregiver person to see when she's going to arrive. (Josh just shoving himself into a house when there isn't anyone there I know is almost up there, on the Social Dread scale, with the time he tried to break into a total stranger's house while I was taking him for a walk. If that was an 11, this was maybe a 7.)

She turns the phone over to me, and the caregiver says she won't be there until 8.

My head is saying, like, well what the [censored] are we supposed to do until then, and what the [censored] were you doing getting into a meeting when you knew Josh would be coming over this afternoon? You should have been ready for him at 3pm!

But I don't say that, because I'm not good at saying that kind of thing. Instead, I basically say we'll just drive him around or something until 8, and I'll call her if we can't get him to leave the Home with us.

Fortunately, he seems totally on board with the idea of going right back out again. (I worry what that means... it could just mean he's used to being taken out places when he's there, which would be good, or it could mean he's starting to not like being there.)

After hanging up the phone, I realize that what we should do is go by Whole Foods (emergency only, since we've been boycotting them) to get him some orange juice -- which we ran out of because we weren't expecting to have him for THREE [censored] DAYS -- and then go home and wait for the call.

Oh, and did I mention that the downstairs toilet -- the only one Josh will use -- is stopped up again, worse now? (At least the upstairs one is working; they cleaned the line from the house to the street -- this seems to be a different problem, and the plumber says it's probably a side-effect of the larger problem with the other line, which is going to cost $4k to fix and I don't know when they're going to start on it.)

So it would be REALLY GOOD if we could, y'know, NOT HAVE JOSH for a few days. Or weeks. Until that problem gets fixed.

(further ranting about money and taxes and stuff omitted)