It’s been a week since Daylight Savings Time has ended, and I am just starting to feel like I’ve adjusted. I don’t know what I like better – driving to work in the dark and coming home just as it’s getting dark at night, like it was during the end of Daylight Savings, or driving to work just after sunrise and coming home in the pitch black. The evenings dark so early do make me want to stay in more. I think it’s the dark, and not the chill. Fall is definitely here in the Midwest.

If my mood changes in the fall, it’s easy to see how Tim’s mood would change too. Although with Tim, it’s a cycle, usually through some intense mania, then depression. In RTC, he’s seeing some of his peers go through the cycle as well, and he has mentioned it when we talk to him. I don’t know if he recognizes that they are experiencing some of the same feelings that he does, but he does see that they are having a “rough day,” as he calls it.

I can’t remember if I mentioned this already – I think I did but I am too lazy to read back through my last few posts, ha ha – but we have decided not to have Tim home for Thanksgiving. Alex really wants to have friends over to celebrate his 19th birthday and since he’s had maybe 1 teenage birthday without a tense incident with Tim, we decided that he deserves to have a drama-free weekend. I’m still conflicted over this decision – what kind of parent doesn’t want their kid home for a holiday? – even though my mom understands and has given me permission to let myself off the hook, saying that we deserve a stree-free holiday. I worry though – there is a sizeable percentage of kids at the RTC that are wards of the state, or who have family a long distance away, and don’t have the contact with their families that Tim does with us. I know it is reassuring to Tim that we visit him several times a month and talk on the phone a few times a week, and I worry that he will feel abandoned if he doesn’t come home for the holiday.

Anyway….it’s a nice here in Illinois today – amazingly, nearly 70 degrees. I think I’ll get out and soak up some of this warmth and sunlight before it’s dark and cold for the season. I hope you can get out too – fresh air and sunlight have great mood-lifting properties.