It's a Magical Place, Casa De Crazy...

Me: "How's it going, aside from wanting to come home?"

Youngest: "Good, I'm running the place.  I started an exercise club.  I learned how to play spades. I'm learning to play the keyboard. And if all goes as planned, I'm going home on Tuesday." 

That was yesterday.  The old meds are out of his system and the new meds are in.  I saw him today for the visiting hour, which due to COVID, is technically only 15 minutes.  I may have gotten a bit extra time since there were only 2 other people who showed up. He's in a wing of 16. It's sad really.

We had a nice conversation, with some tricky moments.  He didn't get agitated, just inserted his stubbornness.  He didn't jump up and pace, just sat calmly.  He talked about his plans to move forward, getting a job, squaring away his license, continuing on his meds with his therapist and new psychotherapist.  He has no interest in going back to the nic-sticks (nicotine vapes) which is really good.  One stick is the equivalent of a pack of cigarettes and does twice the damage. At this point he has no interest in quitting pot, but if he's honest, with the help of the Psychotherapist, he can at least pick strains that won't trigger other side effects.  And with a medicinal card, at 18, he can get it legally, from a reputable shop, and know what he's getting.  He knows how we feel about it, but in the end it's his choice.  All I ask is that he's as smart as he can be about his stupid decisions.

His roommate says this place is like summer camp with drugs. With no cell phones, computers, work, drama, etc., Youngest says he feels like he's on vacation.  He didn't realize how stressful day trading was for him, or always feeling like he had to have enough pot to share.  He confessed he'd gotten to the point where he couldn't tell who was friends with him just because of him, or what he could offer them. Seeing who has reached out has helped put a lot of it in perspective. He's getting a TON of sleep. I was telling this to Oldest and he doesn't know why he'd want to leave, summer camp with calming drugs? I kind of want to go to...

He still blames me, and that's okay.  I can take it. We all just have to make the best hand from the cards we've been dealt.

When I got home, the husband and I planted a hibiscus that needed to go in the ground before the fall weather really sets in.  We did some fall clean up, mowed the lawn. I put the fake pumpkins out.

While I was at the grocery store with Oldest, hubs was supposed to be working through the mounds of laundry we have downstairs. The laundry pile is truly horrifying right now. After a quick nap (I've been beyond exhausted lately), I headed downstairs to grab what he'd finished so far to fold upstairs and throw in what was left. Apparently, his working on laundry just meant throwing towels in the wash and nothing else.  So, I tossed in another load and turned to see the piles of dorm stuff everywhere and the disaster that is Youngest's room.

I haven't been able to bring myself to go down there in days.

An hour later I was well into the clean up. Painstakingly going through every crack and crevasse cleaning out trash, water bottles, and lord knows what else.  I put all his stuff away from the dorm, hung his flags back up, even changed the sheets.  No reason to waste the dorm décor I spent good money on.  It looks great down there now, a comfy place to lay his head, a home.  This of course lead to vacuuming the whole downstairs, and throwing in additional loads of laundry as the cleaning progressed.

When the downstairs was done, I moved into the kitchen.  I put away all the dorm snacks, loaded the dishwasher, restocked the fridge with water and such. I cleaned the table off, opened mail, created yet another bag of trash to be taken out in the morning. I fed the fish and the dog, threw in another load of laundry.

By the time I made it back to the living room I realized that Oldest had gone out and Hubs had gone to bed. Because apparently he gets to live in a world where I'm going to bed actually means you get up off the couch and go to bed. And when you wake up magical fairies have cleaned the house spotless overnight. Those fairies work their wings off let-me-tell-ya.

So, yeah...Just another Saturday night at Casa De Crazy.  

Where the house is magically cleaned overnight. 

Oldest is undoubtedly not bringing me home endless breadsticks from the Garden of Olive. 

Youngest is head of the circus, and we're getting the band back together since we finally have a keyboard player.