Those days when you wish for a special needs fairy godmother

Sunday, I took Sabrina to see Cinderella at the New York Theater Ballet. We were both very entertained by the stepsisters, played by guys in drag. As the ballet went on, I realized exactly what was missing from my life: a special needs fairy godmother.

I so needed one yesterday, when all of this Max stuff had amassed into a towering pile of to-dos. I had to call back a physical therapist who might start seeing him on the weekends. I had to get in touch with our local Boy Scouts troop leader, because Max is still hesitant to venture into the Cub Scouts meeting in the big church and we need to figure out what else we can do (I'm thinking hold a meeting at our house). I had to call the insurance company and harass them about not paying bills. I had to review a thumbnail drive Max's school sent home with videos of Max eating and suggestions that two feeding specialists have, as he tends to swipe his spoon to the side of his mouth when he puts it in and food falls out. I had to call back the president of a local congregation because a mutual friend had put us in touch after he heard I was trying to find a temple that had programming for kids with special needs.

Along the way, I called six diferent Cold Stone Creamery stores to see if they make the Cars 2 PhotoCake Max is obsessed with and it turns out it's done with this special technology that nobody near us has and this very nice cake designer emailed me to say she might be able to make some semblance of it but it would involve getting the Cars 2 image and taking it to a local supermarket who would copy it onto rice paper as an edible image and all I could think was THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT I NEED IN MY LIFE, FIGURING OUT HOW TO GET AN EDIBLE IMAGE MADE.

Oh, and Max's iPad got messed up (it was dropped, we're not sure when) and we replaced it with a refurbished model and needed to upload the Proloquo2Go speech app again and his speech therapist at school was helping only something wasn't quite synching up and emails were flying around.

And, yeah, I had work to do.

Then I did that awful thing whereby you start thinking about every single thing you have to do—prep for Thanksgiving and figure out Max's birthday gift and order holiday cards and buy holiday presents and teacher gifts and plan winter vacation!!!—and you yourself into even more of a tizzy. !!!

Mostly, I am able to coast along from day to day, cross stuff off my to-do list (I use a Stickie note on my Mac), save tasks for the next day. But every once in a while, WHAM!!! The sheer quantity of stuff that needs to be taken care of gets to me.

I really, really, really wished for a fairy godmother to swoop in, wave her wand and handle everything. And so I clicked my heels together and said "There's no place like home, there's no place like home and..." oh, wait, wrong story.

Then Max's bus showed up and he squealed when he saw me. In his backpack:

School pic! With Max's trademark (but not yet patented) smile and a shirt that made him look like a linebacker and bangs that seemed like they'd been cut with a hatchet.

And suddenly I was less grouchy. For all of 5 minutes, but still.

The only remedy finally was to go to sleep early and call it a day, but not before I had dialed 1-800-FAIRY-GODMOTHER to order myself one.