Stress Balls, Fires and Lapidary Classes.

Lapidary classes started today. My little gem of a child started his soap stone carving project (pictured) and drove me to distraction in the process. Talk about Aspergic obsessions and anxiety coming out…they were fully alive and thriving today.

Due to his young age, Boy cannot do the jewelry making classes just yet. Disappointed, he wanted to begin carving so that he could move straight into making a gem tree (pictured below). After spending the morning with all the gem cutters and receiving tidbits of information and advice, they sent us off to purchase the required tools. Me in a tool shop is like me pretending I hate chocolate – the two just don’t gel. However, after selecting a basket full of stone carving goodies from the local hardware store, I encouraged Boy to remain patient and to come and briefly look at the packaging section with me. His gratification quickly reaching immediate on the “when to begin the project” scale, he agreed to allow me 10 minutes browsing.

There we were, in the aisle, keeping our distance from each other lest one of us explode when the fire alarm went off (wasn’t us, I promise). Staff scurried toward us asking us to leave the building immediately. “Cool,” I thought. “Evacuation means going home. I can dump the basket full of $180.00 worth of tools and step-father can bring Boy back when the fire has been dealt with.”

Boy was not leaving without his tools. Let’s just say that I am now exhausted and possibly banned from the store, Boy is OVER stimulated and the soap stone we got this morning has already been filed away to nothing. Boy has also asked 1,000,000,000 times whether our fire alarms work. AAAAAGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH, how hard is it trying to balance Aspergers obsessions with real fire danger. Those firefighters just should have listened to Boy’s fire assessment: low risk, now let me take my tools.

The fire incident has encouraged me to organize a home school excursion to our local fire station. Even though we’ve had a bad day, at least an idea for another educational experience has come from it.

Boy made some cute stress balls at youth group yesterday afternoon. I’ve seen them at markets and wondered how to make them. Simple, simple, simple, Boy has assured me. You just need dough, sand or birdseed, a pair of scissors and lots of balloons. Boy was supposed to write up the instructions for me as a writing project for today but he is far too busy on the back verandah happily grinding stone into talc. Instead, here’s some instructions for Squishy Balloon Balls from Craft Bits.

Now, where did he put those stress balls, I need to go squeeze them because there’s only 11 sleeps left until our wedding.