AUTISM AND ROUTINES

We’ve been a week without A/C (naturally since it’s the hottest week of the summer so far!) Since I work from home, this has been a particularly uncomfortable, yet tolerable week. Tolerable because of the choreography of open windows/ closed windows, mornings upstairs, evenings downstairs, fans, and fan placement. Luckily for us, we recently purchased a  tower fan to take on our recent camping trip. Online, the fans get mixed reviews, but ours have worked great (we have used them almost non-stop) and we have been very thankful for them.

Yes, we have lots of family and friends, and we’ve had lots of offers to have us come spend the day or night. Sister Hannah even took up one of those offers and has been at her dad’s for two nights. However, Jess and I stuck it out here. Why? When at the heat of the day our upstairs is about 86 degrees?

For the sake of routines.

Keeping Jess in her routines is that important. We could adjust. But, I don’t want to. I would eventually pay the price in one way or another. Who knows? Maybe I am as bad as Jess about routines. Now that I stay home with her, I like our routines maybe as much as she does. 

Maybe Jess has lost a few pounds. I have had a hard time getting her to leave her fans on in her room. She keeps turning them off so that she can hear better. In the evening on the day before yesterday, she came downstairs and said, “Whew, I’m hot!” I looked at her and sure enough, she was red in the face and had beads of perspiration on her upper lip. She had been in her room with the door shut and the fans off, listening to music and doing her dancing.

Replacing an air-conditioning unit is so expensive, and it is always a bummer to have to fork out such a large amount of money, but I have known the day would come since the day I bought this house. I made it almost 8 years with the old system… not bad. Even if I was not as financially prepared for that purchase as I would have liked to have been, at least I was mentally prepared.

The great news is that today, we are getting our new A/C installed. There is much work to do when a 35 year old system has to be replaced, and done so in accordance with e-score (=rebate $$!)  So, it may be tomorrow before it is finished. 

When it comes to having work done around the house, I sometimes have a tendency to let things go way too long. A main reason is the mother-hen protectiveness. I do not like having unfamiliar men/workers around either of the girls, especially Jessica. When I finally get around to making arrangements to get things done, I am pretty particular about who I select to do the work.

Before we got started with the replacement process, I asked friends for referrals and got many good ones. I chose to go with Conditionaire Company, Inc., for several reasons. I got several glowing recommendations for Conditionaire, they are participants in the e-score program, they are residents of our community, our children grew up in the same schools, and in the same summer activities, and Mr. Ray is the nicest man you will ever encounter.

For the time being, Jess is still in her routine, and we are still counting down to the 9 a.m. phone call.