So. The intention to post more often is derailed by life again.
March. March was my last post. Following March, we had both Miss M and Mr G assessed for a slew of things (ASD to anxiety to ADHD). I quit my fabo but life-and-time-sucking job and went to a new job (longer commute, better culture). My sister died unexpectedly the week before she was moving home from Alaska. I was supposed to be her executor, but she didn't ever follow up with writing/filing her will, so I'm (now, finally, after three months of filing forms and waiting for various bureaucratic processes to flow through) her estate's personal representative. With the job change, insurance changed, and I'm trying (still) to find ways to get appropriate therapies/counseling/care for Miss M and Mr G.
Life? What life? But the new job allows enough room to at least make progress.
Progress means Mr G has a 504 plan that covers his executive function gap (part of his Asperger's) and the math learning disability (computational working memory - holding numbers in mind while computing values - definitely a challenge, and yeah, that one comes from me). Miss M has a 504 meeting coming up (held off until her new teacher got to know her a little).
Progress means my sister's house is nearly ready to sell, we're collecting money owed, we're putting up the notice for claimants on the estate, and I'm starting to be able to get answers to my questions (where for the last three months, the answer has been 'until you have legal standing for the estate, we can't answer' - which is good that they are sticking with the appropriate answer, but boy does it slow stuff down!).
Progress that isn't happening so much - me actually dealing with the losses and changes. I'm running too fast, doing too much, to steep in it. Though I've grieved a lot, poured it out in the first month after my sister's death (at 51, of a catastrophic heart attack), I feel this mid-level grieving, the daily pinging against the hole where she used to be, the tripping over it unexpectedly, is now being back-burnered. I've developed some skills at holding it at bay while I get through the jobs of the process. The relationship loss is still hanging out there, gnawing at me periodically. I still haven't forgiven her for her arrogance or stubborn refusal to take better care of herself, her belief that she was right, always, about herself, and which meant she never got the care she needed. Accepted that those were features of her that were not going to change easy, but not yet forgiven.
I also don't have any skills yet at handling the real challenges of Miss M's diagnoses, the ADHD, anxiety, and wildly erratic IQ levels (from the very highest that can be measured, to the bottom end of average - and average is a really huge range). Floundering on this one, until I get the support program running... and get some advice that seems to actually fit her. Mr G is easier - though I still worry for him, he is really more a known quantity.
Floundery.
Still, only so much that can be done at once. Deadlines and kids come first. Estate business (complicated by the lack of a will - please, everyone, get one! It sucks trying to do this all without one), finding the right support and care for the kids, those come first. I am positive that the grief will hang out and wait for me while I work on the rest of it.
Meanwhile, I'll nibble bits of it when I can, break off chunks to deal with incrementally, so it doesn't sneak up on me. Even though in a lot of ways, I don't wanna.