Part 264 ~ The Adventures of King Ben & Zeus the Big Dumb Dog

If you missed the start of this series, you can find it here. A lot of things will be the same or very similar.

I took my Sciencey pictures and didn’t hold out much hope for the actual sunset. The clouds had been around all day, and they were pretty thick. My itchy, ouchie, scaly, plaque psoriasis covered skin was happy that the humidity was finally higher than 9%, but not really seeing the Sun most of the day was a bummer. I went outside at sunset anyway, cuz it’s still sunset whether I see the sun or not. It’s still my favorite time. I’m glad I was watching, it was beautiful.

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The yellow, orange, red and magenta didn’t last very long… maybe five or six minutes total. It was a beautiful five or six minutes!

Ben was still sleeping on my bed, and Daughter had fallen asleep too. It was around 5pm and I started editing the pictures. At 5:30 I decided I’d better cut up and cook the chicken breast tenders that were meant to be his dinner. I did all that and was cooking when Daughter woke up, just before 6pm.

When the “white chicken” was done, I woke Ben up. I waited until the food was ready cuz I knew he’d be hungry… and he was HUNGRY! He started putting chunks of chicken in his mouth like a hamster hiding food in it’s cheeks. I got him to slow down so he didn’t choke and Daughter brought his meds in.

He grabbed his tablet and continued eating. He said he was “ready go bedtime” I told him if he was full to take the bowl to Mom and let her know he was ready for bed. He decided he wasn’t quite full and finished the rest of the chicken.

We skipped the bath and Daughter wiped him down with wipes and changed his clothes and tucked him and Zeus in. Zeus had gone to Ben’s room as soon as Ben had mentioned bedtime. He came wandering back out and was looking at me like “What’s going on? It’s past time. When are we going to bed?” Zeus is pretty smart for a Big Dumb Dog. Anyway, The Boys were in bed, the door was closed, and it was only ninety minutes later than usual.

I did the usual and took my meds around midnight. Ben was still awake and laughing and goofing around in his room. No surprise after the three hour nap he took. I debated about whether to take the sleeping pill or not, but decided to go ahead. Daughter was already asleep, she’d had a nap also, and she could get up with him if needed. I konked around 12:45am.

I woke up around 6am and looked outside at the sky. It was pretty, so I got up and went out. It was weirdly warm outside, like someone was running a heater or something. I guess after 30s, anything would feel warm. I went a little crazy taking pictures because the sky lit up. It was magnificent, absolutely gorgeous!

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Daughter got Ben up and ready for school with the usual prompts and grumbling, but no real problems. Happy Dancing followed the departure of the GLYSB. I edited all the dang pictures for the next forty-five minutes, then got more coffee, made a pit stop, and went to Daughter’s room at 8:30am for my very first Zoom.

I don’t want to Zoom again. At least not with the all the people and the documents and the Dogzilla in the way, and the droning on and on and on… I really do NOT like IEP (Individual Education Plan) meetings! Yes, I felt a bit hurt at being excluded, but the dang meetings are too long. There has to be a way of speeding them up. UGH!

Two hours… the results are that Ben did not meet his goals. DUH! Maybe being out of school for seven months has something to do with that. The good news is that he did not regress. He maintained the skills he had in March. I call that a win! He actually came close to meeting a couple goals, which is awesome. The only thing that is really changing is that the teachers and therapists will be switching from basic education to functional education. An example would be in math, instead of just learning addition and subtraction, they’ll focus more on money adding and subtracting. How much two items cost together or how much change after buying something. We told them that we realize Ben is severely impacted by autism and that we want him to be as independent as possible in his adult life… to be able to do things for himself.

After the meeting I scheduled a WallyWorld pickup for Wednesday morning. My grocery store didn’t have the dang Christmas ham, so I ordered one from WallyWorld, plus some more snack stuff for Ben… cereal, goldfish, gummy snacks, but they were out of his “orange chicken”. Dang! So Daughter went on the great search, found some at a different store and ordered a delivery. Having a picky eater can be a pain in the posterior, especially during Lockdown in a pandemic.

Yes, we are on Lockdown again. I got one of those annoying alerts advising a Stay At Home order. If all the Idjits had been wearing masks all along, not going to bars and house parties, not gathering in large, close packed, non-masked groups… GRRR!! The few are making life difficult for those of us practicing science based safety.

Finally, at 12:45pm I was ready to dive into my WP Reader and comments. Another day of being behind. It happens. I had an hour before Ben would be home, I used it.

Ben got home at 1:52pm and seemed in an okay mood. Daughter gave him the “Nightmare Before Christmas” nightgown that she’d ordered for him, then helped him change into it. Everything was okay until right around 2:30. He took his meds, then he was on a MISSION! He wanted a “yellow lid” and he was tearing the house apart looking for one. The two that Daughter found and the one I made weren’t good enough. He went to the gate and started moving stuff. Daughter went after him and stopped him, so he started sweeping dirt into the air. UGH! I made an offhand comment when Daughter said she didn’t know what his problem was… I said “he’s probably hungry” She took that to mean that I thought she should cook for him Right Then, so she cooked steak. She was defensive. She thought I’d been picking at her, like I thought his behavior was her fault and she should fix it. We talked and she chilled out.

He eventually came in from the dirt hole, where he’d been sitting, after sweeping, and ate part of the steak. Then he wandered off to play with his chalk. I guess the “yellow lid”, whatever it was he wanted, and wanted it for, was forgotten.

It’s just about time for sunset and there are clouds in the sky. I’m hoping for more pretties. I’m also hoping that the evening goes smoothly. Ben’s dinner is already cooked and he can eat more when he’s ready. Then bath and bedtime… hopefully he got over whatever was bugging him, and we can have a chill evening.

Feeling an Artic Monkeys groove… dude’s voice is just good!

Thank you for enduring my sunrise and sunset mania. Oh, and my bird mania. Thank you for Zooming with me and sharing all my Adventures. All of the craziness that happens here at Casa Cuckoo certainly keeps life interesting. No boredom here. WallyWorld pickup at 8am tomorrow. Join me? ¡Hasta mañana!

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HUGS!

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