What’s up folks. Hope you’re this finds you doing well. It’s been a day of challenges here. I wanted to run over just few of them and help provide some context to what’s going on in The Autism Dad household. I also want to balance things out with some really positive things happening as well.

It’s been one of those weeks where nothing seems to go right and what really worries me is that it’s only Tuesday.

So I had my last scheduled interview yesterday and it was highlighting a really cool business that’s doing awesome things for the autism community. Everything was going great and Emmett didn’t even make an appearance. At some point, I happen to look over at my mixer and noticed that it had stopped recording and was throwing an error message.

I use a Rodecaster Pro and I can record to a microsd card or use it as an interface and record direct on my laptop using Adobe Audition. I’ve been recording directly to a microsd card cause my laptop isn’t doing so well and I figured it would be safer to record to the card, rather than risk relying on my dying laptop.

I’ve recorded about 80 hours worth of audio so far this season and never had a single issue.

Wouldn’t you know it, on the very last episode of the season, the microsd card became corrupt with about 20 minutes left in the interview. I’m pretty sure that’s what the problem is. That’s incredibly frustrating but I believe in redundancy and always have the Zoom meeting recording just in case.

Unfortunately, there was a glitch because instead of recording each person to a separate audio stream, it was a single stream, which is much harder to work with. Now I have to decide if it’s worth the effort to make this work, or just schedule a session to re-record.

It’s not the end of the world but it is an inconvenience for my guest and I don’t like doing that.

This morning I woke up to this horrible grinding noise that I was able to trace back to my furnace. It’s been a couple of years since I’ve had a major furnace issue but I guess it’s time. It sounds like the bearings in the squirrel box are bad, either that or the blower motor. That’s about the extent of my HVAC knowledge. Until it’s fixed, we shouldn’t be running it.

This presents a conundrum because it’s 30°F and our house is very poorly insulated. If the furnace is off, the temp in the house drops very quickly. It’s absolutely a problem. In order to fix it, I have to allow someone to come into our house, and that posses serious potential risk.

The way I see it is this. I know for sure the furnace is a serious problem. Allowing a service tech to come to the house is a serious potential problem.

They’re scheduled to come out on Friday morning, which is still a few days off but I’m hoping I can nurse the furnace along just enough to make until then. They will wear a mask and come through the side door and go straight into the basement. No contact. We’ll speak via phone or socially distanced outside. They were super cool about it and I’m grateful for that.

Right now it’s the lesser of two evils.

Next on deck we have Elliott’s school Chromebook. The audio no longer works and the school is apparently having so many problems with the Chromebooks that they don’t have any that aren’t out for repair right now. This means either Elliott can’t go to class or he takes over my laptop until they get some back in stock.

There’s a million reasons why this problematic but mostly it will throw a wrench in my work day. It is what it is and at least my laptop can help him get through for now. This sucks but I’m thankful for a reasonable resolution.

I could go on about the kids fighting and the house in a state of disarray, both of which are true. Instead I want to share some of the positives that are happening as well.

Recently I’ve been approached by clothing companies about the kids testing out sensory friendly clothing. These are just basic things like shirts and shorts. There’s one that’s sending out some things already. It’s called Nonetz and I’m particularly interested in the shirts because I think they might be a good match for Emmett. Gavin and Elliott aren’t as sensitive but Emmett really struggles in this area. Another one I’m looking at is called Tee Rex Tee, which I thought was a cool name. They’re more a novelty, printed shirt kinda thing but I like what I see so far. To check them out, click here.

When I get the sensory stuff, I’ll do a write up and share what my kids think. I can’t vouch for either just yet but the info is there should you want to take a look. ☺

Another positive thing is that leg is healing crazy fast. The butterflies came off last night and the wound is closed up and healing nicely. If you’re wondering what happened, you can read that backstory here. I’m really lucky that this played out the way it did. I was able to avoid the ER and not have anything overtly negative happen as a result.

Also, the boys have been doing a really good job of maintaining their rooms recently. I’m trying to treat Gavin’s room like an apartment of sorts. He wants to move out on his own and I figured we could use the COVID lockdown time to practice some things.

Elliott and Emmett are doing well. Their room is looking pretty good. I need to get them a storage solution because they need storage. I was thinking plastic tubs that would slide under their bed, so it’s out of sight, out of mind. I also was thinking of moving some of the less used things into the basement for storage. Unfortunately, we have a wet basement and I would need to get some plactic pallets to keep things off the floor and away from the water when it rains.

As for myself, I’ve been making some really interesting connections lately and growing my network. Presenting me with some unique business opportunities that could prove to be very positive. Most of it’s in a post COVID world but we will get there eventually.

I’m really trying to balance my focus a bit more. It’s been out of whack lately because I’m overwhelmed and exhausted from 2020. I’m going to make a concerted effort to continue with this as I go forward.