This week I have had Joel up two nights where he just can't sleep.
Last night I ended up lying next to him and falling asleep just to keep him in his bed otherwise he has these urges to go into the bathroom with a routine of walking in - standing on the lavatory, opening the cupboard above the lavatory (the key for this has been thrown on the roof so it's rather redundant at the moment not containing much as it was there to hide toothpaste etc from him). He then proceeds to go into the shower then hops into the bath where he kneels down and does what looks like a prayer to Allah (he doesn't go in the bath usually. In fact he has a fear of the bath when it's full with water but for some reason this way of getting in is different). He then sort of turns the light on and off. Eventually this broke the light a few weeks back so the children have been having 'spa baths' by candlelight which sold it to Holly for a bit but the novelty soon wore off so finally an electrician came to fix it this week.
Andrew the electrician fixed other lights too which had broken and said he had another household he goes to as there's a boy like Joel who does similar things to their lights too. He was so nice he even managed to fix a hook which fell off when he hung his coat up. My word I need people like that around. He will be back no doubt!
In the mean time I'm looking for a handy man as I need someone (a knight in white shining armour) to come and rescue all the electric toothbrushes from the roof ! Including all the keys for the windows and the key for the cupboard in the bathroom which I was supposed to have as a security cupboard as a deterrent from Joel! The last handy man I had was so peeved off with these fiddly locks I gave him to put on my cupboards in the kitchen which took him double the time he thought he'd be that I've not seen him for dust . I also had another handy man/gardener who spent most of the time in the garden as he didn't really want to do the handy man jobs. Well you can't force these people can you? I would love to have some sort of power over them but all I can offer is cups of tea and a look of gratitude from their mortal presence forever indebted to them for their DIY skills.
I once had a Romanian au pair who was male (I have never had a male au pair again nor an au pair since for that matter so you probably know where this is going). Anyway I thought I could have a ready made DIY man and gardener around. Little did I know the guy hadn't stepped on grass nor seen flora and fauna in all his life and looked like he hadn't seen light when he arrived in the country. He managed to actually break the mower by mowing over the electrical cord and he didn't know the first thing about changing a light bulb so I wasn't impressed at all. He also threw up in my car on the way down to Cornwall and blamed it on my DRIVING! I very nearly ditched him on the road as I had him PLUS three kids which meant I now had four kids to look after. Anyway that's a whole other story and I hope I don't have too many disaster stories like that again.
The main thing about autism are all the things we take for granted in a house like shutting doors. I now have to lock every door like a cell block officer. At the end of the night I have to secure the doors as escape artist Joel will be onto them if not. Once he even managed to open the front and back doors very early one morning and we found him on the trampoline waking up half the neighbourhood.
Today I had my lovely neighbour over who babysat for sleeping two year old Max while I picked Holly up from school. I shot back to meet Joel off the taxi who in turn ran upstairs and proceeded to do his bathroom routine and came down to hand me the bath plug. Thanks Joel. I wish he would solve the latest mathematical problem or make himself into one of these 'gifted' autism people for a change. Don't get me wrong. I do think he's gifted in some area, but just not sure what it is yet. I don't think he's going to be the next Einstein by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm hoping he might surprise us with something. Why else would he be here?
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