Color and noise

The holidays falling so early this fall meant that just this once, the holidays were all over before the pokeberry harvest was.  For one year, I've gotten in ahead of the birds.  So I took the 4 ply worsted weight yarn I had spun from a Romney fleece from 2012, and dyed some of it this week:

Romney dyed in pokeberry, onion skins, P. perlata

First I took what pokeberries I could get from the backyard, soaked them overnight without heating them, and dyed one skein the next day.  I used a lot of vinegar both to soak the yarn and to extract the dye.  Then I took the bags of onion skins I had been saving for who knows how long and dyed a second skein.  Finally I took the one small lunch bag of Parmelia perlata lichen I could find in my pile-o'dye-stuff (there must be at least two others hiding around somewhere if not more; I couldn't find them, but I did find the tablet-weaving cards I'd been looking for for a couple of weeks to give to a friend, so not all was lost).  Thus you see above, pink, rich pearly gold with a red tone, and lighter gold.  Together with the one last skein of undyed white yarn, I guess I'll knit a vest this autumn.  All together there's about 700 yards.

But fall means crunching leaves and noisy children apparently.  The noise does NOT stop and I'm stuck in a mode of being so depressed and so sensory-defensive, I'm barely holding on with my fingernails.  The kids do not stop making noise.  They shout, they yell.  Feivel runs a truly non-stop soundtrack to his life; the others just like hearing their own noise.  And it's making me cry.  Their dad keeps telling them to stop, but they're really just not aware of how much intrusive, unnecessary noise they're all used to making, and how fragile my psyche really is right now.  I mean, obviously I'm hiding how close to total breakdown I am from them, I have to, but every little thing digs in me, it's death by a thousand cuts, or in this case a thousand shouts.

Feivel is very on-edge.  The academics at school elude him and there's nowhere near the support in reality that exists on paper.  I don't feel I can cope with him or with the school situation any more.  This is a kid who needed wrap-around care since infancy and has needed deep special education services throughout his life, who has received neither.  How has he gotten to the point he's at of being reasonably functional and for that matter alive and never seriously harmed?  Because Jeffrey and I are his 24/7/365 unpaid wrap-around care and educators.  We've taught him to read, we've taught him his social skills, we've done what we can to keep him safe even if it has meant the police having to search for him more than once.  But it's beaten me, it's broken me, and I can't do it.  He had a small break down, not nearly as bad as some in the past, Friday night.  We got through it, but he's likely to have another.  And there's nothing we can do and nowhere to go.  There's no psychiatric hospital equipped for patients with developmental disabilities, there are no beds, there are no schools anywhere in the area with the right blend of services, the school he is at might be adequate if what they put on paper existed, but MCPS outright lies.  He doesn't have what he needs.  And I can't get it for him.