Some people have described hell as a state of being acutely disappointed in oneself. Aron Ralston described hell as being trapped for days in the bottom of a cold dark canyon, alone.

But I discovered today that hell is actually ironing a bunch of enormous curtains.

If I do not live well, when I die, I believe I will be made to forever launder giant applesauce and Dorito-stained drapery panels and then spend an eternity trying with heat and starch to make them look crisp (it’s impossible, btw).

I loathe ironing, which didn’t help this cause.

So much effort, so much time devoted to a fruitless task. My boys don’t give a Fig Newton that I have spent the better part of two days undoing the damage they have done to the window treatments. I have a feeling that unless I turn into an anthropomorphic female Great Wall blocking their access, they will be right back at wrapping themselves in the curtains, while wiping their hands and faces thereon.

It’s such a first-world problem, it’s ridiculous. As I cursed to myself while wielding the hot iron, I deep-down thanked heaven that I had a house free from typhoon damage in which to hang some curtains.

Cursing while giving thanks is one of those delectable ironies which is not lost on me.

I’m tremendously grateful for the boys who live in this house, and for the house that is taking a beating from the boys. There’s a destructive symbiotic relationship happening with our abode and it’s hard-livin’ occupants. The guys are wrecking the floors, the walls, the mouldings, the toilets, the sinks, the light fixtures, and the window coverings (obvs).

Jeff and I are trying sooooooo hard to keep pace with the boy-caused destruction. We clean things. We repair things. We replace things. But it’s difficult to keep up. Just this week, Jeff pulled with his pipe snake an action-figure, a fist-sized beanbag, and three toothbrushes from the toilets of this house. We are a sewer-system catastrophe in waiting.

Also ironic: that we are being undone by things put in toilets which don’t belong there, while the poops are landing daily anywhere but toilets. As I bathed the five- and two-year-olds tonight, Jack tagged four areas of the house with his BM.

Maybe Alanis Morrisette should write a song about us.

None of Jack’s bones are broken.

This news is so welcome, so extremely good. I spent last night lying awake with fever and chills imagining me taking care of Jack with a cast covering two-thirds of his body. He still is walking a bit like Quasimodo, but it may be that a) Jack just walks how he walks, and b) his ankle pronation is bugging him. He sees the orthopedist next month.

I’ve turned into a loud, racking cough machine so Truman and I stayed at home today, drinking fluids and resting. A quiet day can make one realize what one has. I’m not speaking of things.

*An open window in the middle of March wafting the fresh smell of earth through the curtains.*

*Buttered toast with raspberry jam for lunch with the three-year-old.*

*An afternoon nap on a sick day.*

*A tiny colored box of Cadbury chocolate eggs.*

*The gift of knowing that the developmentally disabled ten-year-old doesn’t have any broken bones.*

*A creepy and imaginative Neil Gaiman book.*

*Listening to the Psalms while doing laundry.*

These things made me grateful.

Yesterday Dutch fixed, for the second time in a week, the pantry door that was hanging sadly from a single hinge after one of Jack’s angry throwing-of-the-door moments. The hubs lamented that our house isn’t composed entirely of a) steel doors with b) lots of locks and c) cement floors, as well as d) no carpeting anywhere. Any. Where.

Someone needs to start building houses for autism families that are purely about function. Forget home decor. Anthropologie accents wouldn’t last five minutes in a house like mine. Furniture barely scrapes along to see another day. Same with appliances and sinks and toilets and bathtubs (anything involving a drain). You get what I’m saying.

We need built-in cameras like the Jack Cam so we can always be watching for Code Browns. We need sensory rooms as a standard feature for sensory integration purposes. Every autism family knows that sensory input is this Giant Thing That Rules Our Lives. May as well build a room with swings and slides and monkey bars and vibrating/heated cushions, and glowing lights and foam pads and a ball pit and trampolines and a disco ball of some sort. It would be the heart of the house, I promise.

Currently, my house feels a bit like an orphanage, and I mean that in the most generous way possible. A happy-ish orphanage like the one in Annie where those doggone lovable gals sing and dance while they scrub the floor and washboard the laundry and whine about Miss Hannigan (me, I suppose, in this scenario. Great).

It’s orphanage-y around here because everything is trashed. Shredded. Used and abused. It all takes a real beating from the guys. I feel like I blog about this way too much. Like seriously, way way too much. Maybe it’s boring to someone who lives in a generally poo-free house. I don’t know.

I do know that a newly-acquainted, fellow autism mom said to me this week (never before having visited this particular little dysfunctional blog) that she was sick of the Pinterest-generation blogs about perfect houses and fancy home cooking and adorable kid crafts and birthday parties. “I want to read a blog about cleaning poo smears off the walls,” she said, much to the hilarity of my entire support group.

Someone needs to become the autism home builder/retrofitter. With the right design, durable and functional could probably look amazing.

Less institutional, more intentional.

I spent part of my Saturday afternoon sitting next to my husband watching a show featuring older folks reminiscing about life in the 1930’s and 1940’s. Don’t everyone clamber to hang out with us at once.

My husband has an affinity for listening to old folks, or “duffers” as he affectionately calls them, wax nostalgic about the old days. As he laughed at the stories of boys driving homemade orange crate cars at high speeds down the hilly streets of the Avenues, I looked at the footage of women in heels and dresses, with hats and pantyhose as everyday wear.

It dawned on me that I never would have made it, fashion-wise in the pre-war and WWII years.

I do love the glamorous hair styles of my grandmothers’ generation, and the bold lip colors they wore. But tailored skirts and blouses every day, with stockings and Sunday school shoes? I don’t think so, sister. Everyone thinks Katherine Hepburn was such a rogue of her era for favoring trousers and flat shoes. I think maybe she just wanted to be comfy, and to heck with conventionality.

I wear skirts plenty, especially in the summer when skirts are like wearable air conditioning. But lucky for me and my generation, maxi skirts are pajamas masquerading as actual clothes.

One of the ladies on the show talked about how coal dust used to coat everything. She said that curtains had to be washed once a month, and wallpaper scrubbed to clean off the black dust. “People today don’t know how good they have it, since they don’t have to do these things anymore, ” she said.

I agree with her. And I will add that contemporary women are lucky ducks because we can wear jeans, boots, and cardis every darn day if we please. Or yoga pants with stretchy tees and sneakers, no up-do or pantyhose required.

Woot!