Sagas

This is what I live in. Sagas. It’s like living in a soap opera universe only instead of knuckle-biting melodrama over who’s sleeping with who and who’s secretly related to who… It’s just people doing mundane things in highly dramatic fashion.

Case in point:

Yesterday, it was clear that it might be the only day between now and his surgery that I could get little man into a quiet salon to have his hair short short short. You see, J overheats. He doesn’t recognize outwardly when  he’s very warm or very cold, at least not in a way I’ve yet to discern, thus those around him have to keep an eye on him and make sure he’s staying cool or warm accordingly. This is not the hardest of things when he’s cold but when he’s hot, it’s downright scary to me. He gets so hot so fast and sweats like a wild animal. When you add to this the fact he has luscious, flowing, thick locks of dark hair… He becomes the king of the sweatballs in 5 seconds flat. It’s truly amazing, horrifying and gross not to mention dangerous in terms of dehydration, etc.

So off we went to get his hair cut. Did I mention he hates the process? That he shrieks the entire time? Well, he does. 

Salon #1, a so so alternate to the best one we’ve found, was close to his occupational therapy clinic so we tried there first. Closed on Tuesday. Crap.

Salon #2, run by two fabulous ladies in Acton (Kids Kilps)… They’re on vacation. Crap again! Now we’re getting pretty far afield, so I cancelled J’s afternoon appointment.

Salon #3, just a generic family salon… Yeah it had a sign but didn’t actually exist.

Finally, we reach Salon #4, Supercuts in Northborough, MA, by Wegmans. I meandered in that direction in our search because there’s an IHOP right there and he and I both love IHOP. It was absolutely empty when we entered and we were barely in the door before he started crying. The two young women working, whose names I regret not getting, greeted us warmly and understood when I gave them the heads up about J’s autism. Not only was he a little kid loathing haircuts, he wasn’t going to follow our directions without serious work.

They handled his screaming better than I did, no joke. They sat me down in a chair, put a cape on me, then I pulled J onto my lap and they put the cape on him. He may have been crying but he was snug in my arms, so he held a LOT more still than during most haircuts. She used the clippers on him and was done quickly, leaving him about 4.2lbs lighter than when he walked in and certainly more cool. I even remembered to warn her about his red birthmarks so she didn’t think she’d buzzed too close to his head as a hairdresser has believed in the past.

For the bargain price of $24 (cut + tip), he is a LOT more cool right now and I am a lot more relieved about how he’s going to cope with 90 degree weather. He looks great, he’s over the initial trauma of it all and he only cried off and on for maybe 30 minutes afterwards. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear those lovely people at Supercuts cheered over seeing the back side of us heading away from their salon, but at least while we were there we were treated very well and very kindly.

The funniest part was at the end when we were cleaning the hair up off all of the things when J marched away from me, grabbed his cat and dog, and glared at all of us as he firmly huffed out “ALL DONE.”

This kid doesn’t need to say a lot sometimes, those few words said it all and I was torn between laughing at the drama with which the line was delivered and crying for the fact that I was a major cause of his upset in that moment.

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In other news, J’s genetics screening came back clean. Whatever caused his autism is not related to any known genetic disorders at this time. The chance of there having been an underlying genetic disorder were very slim so while this is news, it was expected news and we’re plugging along like usual anyway.

Also, we didn’t get IHOP. He was too mad. We had McDonalds at a rest stop in Natick. Cause, well, that’s how we roll sometimes and he loves their fries. I still want IHOP.

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