Anyone need an arc?

I had to build myself one last weekend - so I've got it up for sale in my driveway.

First, DH threw his back out on Sunday morning; he was uncomfortable when he woke up. By the afternoon, he could barely move.

That afternoon, we had torrential rain - a Nor'Easter hit our area and it literally poured all day and all night. After the girls went to sleep, I noticed the house was chilly and turned up the heat - when the furnace didn't kick over, I went down to the basement to see what was going on - and found stuff literally floating in about a foot of water. We have no pumps in the house (we've never taken on water like this), and the local Home Depot/Lowes was completely sold out of pumps because everyone else's basement was flooded too. Water had gotten into the furnace and the new hot water heater my BILs just installed on Saturday; and the breakers tripped downstairs because we had extension cords on the floor - so I couldn't go downstairs to open the trap (and if I had, we probably would have gotten sewage back through because the sewers were all overwhelmed too). We slept without heat that night.

Monday morning one of my dad's friends was kind enough to loan us a pump, which got most of the water out. We spent the rest of the day wet-vaccuuming up puddles of water. My BIL spent most of the day with us, trying to get our water heater re-lit. The oil folks came and fixed the furnace (to the tune of $350, because although I have a contract, there are ALWAYS parts that mysteriously fail that are NOT part of the contract. bastards.). By the end of the day, we had heat and hot water, and I smelled like stanky, nasty, moldy water. Noah was seriously on to something.

In other news, I'm bracing for the girls' CPSE meeting this coming Tuesday. The girls' ABA teachers have been super awesome and have already "paved the way" with the guy from the Board of Ed who is running the meeting. They've managed to get him to agree to put the girls in the same school (previously, he was actually considering sending them to different schools, can you believe that shit??) They convinced him that yes, while Miss Princess could handle a different teacher-to-student ratio cognitively, the fact that she still has (essentially) no functional language would prevent her from making progress. They also got him to agree to give the girls as much speech therapy as he possibly could. I was hoping that he'd allow the girls to go to a speech-language pathologist after school who was certified in the 'prompt' technique - which is really the thing that's made the biggest difference in terms of the girls language to date. I think I'm going to lose the battle on that one. Everyone is telling me that the school I've chosen will be able to provide everything the girls need, therefore negating the need to go elsewhere.

Top it all off by the fact that they've told me that seats in the classrooms are going fast. If I sign the papers on Tuesday, we're guaranteed seats. Refuse to sign, or try to push for a hearing, and all bets are off - the girls may not get seats in the school I want for them. I feel like I'm being painted into a corner. My only choice here is to sign the papers, hope for the best, and if the girls don't progress, then I have to re-open their case and start all over again.

I need another frozen chocolate martini.

Miss Princess has really been testing her limits lately: her favorite word is "NO", and with the week I've had, we've been butting heads. She broke my heart today though. She's trying so hard to talk, but is mostly still making sort of open-vowel sounds. Most of the time, I can figure out what she wants, but today - she pointed to a desired thing and said something that sounded like, "uh-oh"...I couldn't figure out what she wanted, so I said, "baby, use your words - tell me again what you want"..."uh-oh" she responded. Still baffled, I asked her to show me what she wanted, and she said again "uh-oh" - only this time, her voice was low and quiet, and her eyes were downcast and sad. Almost as if she were saying, "why doesn't anyone understand me?" I almost cried right there. I felt like I failed her, you know?

For the longest time now, Miss Princess has been calling DH "he"; he likes to tell people that its short for "hero". Nowadays she's calling him something that sounds like "hiney"; which upset him but I've consoled him by telling him that its closer to "daddy" in that it has two syllables...then I hide in the bathroom and giggle.

Dr. D. is obsessed with music lately; she loves when DH plays guitar for her. She points to his guitar case and says "gee-tar"...then she shakes her booty!

Thanks guys for letting me ramble - and send me good vibes for Tuesday!