He’s doing excellently well at school, at his autism program and at gymnastics, but Justin has been an absolute beast at home this week, and I wish we could figure out why. It’s possible he’s coming down with something, I guess, and I’m kind of hoping that’s it, cause I’d rather not face the possibility that this is a power struggle that will go on for some time. It’s convenient to blame everything on Asperger’s, but we have to constantly remind ourselves that he’s still a five-year-old boy, and he will behave like one. Sigh.

I turned 34 a few days ago and had the rather depressing thought that when my mother was my age she was going back to school and getting ready to rejoin the workforce, whereas the most intellectually stimulating thing I do these days is watch Jeopardy. Of course, when she was 34 her youngest child was already nine years old, and my kids are still pretty young, but I do wonder if I’m going to have any marketable skills left by the time I’m ready to look for a job. I’ve never had much confidence in my skills, even when I was working (I always felt like I was lucky to get the job I had, and didn’t know how I’d ever find another), but now that I’m almost six years removed from that world it seems like a distant dream. I knew what I was signing up for with this motherhood thing, and I’m happy with my choice, but it won’t be easy to sell myself to an employer someday.