A neurologist recently told my wife that our 9-year-old daughter may be on the autism spectrum.  He wants to get an MRI done.

This weekend, I went with her on an annual father/daughter camping trip we have done for the last three years.  On Saturday night, she refused to put her shoes on despite the fact that it was raining and muddy.  The shoes she wore earlier had gotten wet on a raft trip--as if walking barefoot in cold mud has so much better.  She also had dry, almost new shoes that we bought on vacation a few weeks ago. No, they had sand in them and were not cleaned enough.

Sunday morning, she would not leave the tent.  She said she did not have any pants or skirt.  I went to the camp shop, and could not find anything in her size.  (They did not have shoes/sandals in her size, either.)  I tried getting an XL shirt for her to wear as a makeshift dress.  Not good enough.  I bought women's medium size shorts and the sales clerk was nice enough to track down some safety pins to hold them up.

On the way home, we stopped to get her a skirt and shoes.  The skirt part went mostly OK--I had to leave her in the fitting room, pay for the skirt, and bring it back for her to put it on before she would come back out.  She started throwing fits about the shoes, though.  She insisted on buying a pair of Sketchers instead of something cheaper do make do for the time being.  Eventually, I called my wife and she asked to speak with her.  There was an agreement that she would do chores to work off the price of the Sketchers.  But then they had a fight about what chores she would do.  I said she either had to use her allowance or go home without shoes.  She would not budge.  Then we eventually got an agreement on chores she would do.  Then she could not find the right pair of Sketchers.  This went on for a long time until she finally decided on one pair.

My wife and son were away when we got back home.  I started most of the dirty laundry, but apparently the bag I did not start was the one with her bras in it.

My wife has to leave for work before I do and then I need to drive the kids to school.  Morning care does not open until after my wife has to leave.  The kids would not come down before she had to leave and she was screaming at them that they needed to be downstairs and ready for me to take them to school.  She was getting very tense, and I told her to just go to work.  After the threat that my wife would take his phone unless he got up right then, our son got up and dressed.  My wife left.  Then our daughter decided she needed to change outfits.   It was taking a long time and I was afraid my son and I would be late.  In a pattern that has become frequent, after claiming she was getting dressed for a considerable amount of time, she "discovered" she did not have a necessary piece of clothing--a bra this time.  Only when we were already running late did she tell me I needed to find one.

But I couldn't find one.  When I sort clean laundry, I make sure that all of her stuff goes into her room, my wife's stuff goes into her pile, and my stuff goes into my pile.  Our son is supposed to take care of his own laundry.  My wife, however, often leaves loads of clean laundry unsorted on the bed.  When it is time to go to sleep, she just randomly tosses unsorted clothes into her pile and my pile.  So both piles contain stuff from her, our daughter, me, and even our son sometimes.  I often have trouble finding socks because my wife has thrown them in her pile.  Furthermore, she does not put her stuff away very often, creating a huge pile with clothes from everybody.  I often can't match my socks because she has put one of them in my pile.  I go through my pile and put most of it away--there is not enough room in our closet my dresser to put it all away, but we plan to put a wardrobe in the spare room once we get our daughter's old bed out of there.  So I searched through all of the laundry in our daughters rooo, through all of the laundry in the dryer, and through all of the laundry in our room.  I could not find anything except the bra she wore the day before--which she refuse to wear again.  And she refused to go to school without a bra.  I threw the "dirty" bra into the laundry and told our son he had to walk to school.  I called my wife and she just told me to look through all the places I had already looked.  I have a sore knee, and it got worse while I was kneeling to go through my wife's huge pile of clothes.  Eventually, I did find a bra in that huge pile--but our daughter thought it was dirty.  I searched again and again, and finally found another one.  OK, she would put that one on.  But it took her much longer than it should have.  Then she complained that she could not find a specific brush.  I finally got her to use her other brush.

I wound up dropping her off at school at 8:30 and did not get into work until 9:20.  I can't afford to lose this job, and I have a new boss who may not be as understanding as my previous boss.  The stress was of not being able to leave for work was incredible.

All of this also brings up some issues from my past.  My sister, who is older than me, was always getting new clothes.  She would wear something once or twice, and then decided to never wear it again.  Our daughter is quick to decide that clothes or shoes she has worn a few times are too small or do not feel right.  I had to do with hand-me-downs and cheap stuff that I would get teased--and beaten up--for.  (Yes, when I was young my parents actually gave me hand-me-down girls clothing. Some other stuff was decade-old, out of fashion stuff from older cousins.  I was the youngest off all of the cousins.)  My mother also had a habit of throwing all of the laundry into one big pile and my clothes would often disappear for months at a time.