Saturday evening began very nicely. I took off early for date night since Aida has been sleeping less well than usual lately. There’s no way I can ever get “enough” sleep, in the medical sense, so what I do is aim for a weekly average that doesn’t dip below six hours a night. Possibly sometimes I manage but I have no way of knowing since I’m generally too exhausted to do averaging in my head anyway.

Mr. Hot Diggity took me out to his favorite neighborhood pub, which lists a selection of some two dozen rotating brews each night – visibly rotating, in that the waitress is liable to come by and snatch up the “on tap” menu at various points during the evening to cross out a couple of choices and scribble in whatever the next kegs contain. Food items also have a tenuous hold on existence there, but they usually let you order something before informing you they’ve sold out for the evening which keeps suspense at peak levels.

Added drama on Saturday came from Mr. Hot Diggity forgetting his reading glasses at home, so perusing the menu involved some very clever iPhone photography and expansion maneuvers that allowed him to scroll thoughtfully one at a time down the list of brews to make his selection. This so suits his deliberative personality that I wouldn’t be surprised if he adopts it as a regular thing – though he’d be wise to have his glasses along for the bill, at least. I had to fill out his credit card slip for him on Saturday and I really can’t vouch for the total I came up with in my sleep-deprived state.

And that level of excitement was exactly perfect for the evening, thank you very much.

*****

Eleven o’clock found me driving home, content and relaxed and ready to crawl in for an early night. I texted Nina C to let her know I was on my way… and got this in return: “Ach!  you do not want to come bk this way.  aida in tub after puke fest.  ok to use Resolve on carpet?”

*****

And so once again I found myself tumbling down from a charmed and delightfully frivolous evening – back into the autism trenches.

Just to frame the situation properly: Aida has not so far learned to anticipate or in any way mitigate the effects of a “puke fest”, to take Nina C’s term. The night culminated in a grand total of five cycles of laundry for her bedding – all of which first had to be thoroughly hand-rinsed, and if you don’t know what I’m talking about I will leave you to your blissful ignorance. Plus two more baths (for Aida – I would have liked one myself, but by the time things slowed down enough for me to consider it the tub was full of waiting laundry), a few scrub-downs of the bed frame, walls and carpet, and a couple of hours of checking on her every time she made a suspicious sound while trying to fall asleep.

On the upside, as the background to the evening I did see some bits and pieces of Saturday Night Live for the first time since college, which was good for a few slightly manic laughs.

*****

I feel a great affinity with Cinderella. Her story really isn’t about being found by Prince Charming. It’s about how she moves between worlds, pulling herself together from rags and exhaustion to dance through a night on the town, always with the certain knowledge that the clock is going to strike midnight and all that finery and sparkle will fall away again. She is a fitting inspiration to those of us who face numbingly difficult daily struggles – whatever their names – and still come out and dance under the stars when we can… You know who you are. I even have the privilege of counting some of you as friends. This dark little fairy tale of mine is dedicated to you.