I’m somewhere between thinking that they’re going round-and-round or falling off… take your pick.

The Monster likes taking the bus, it seems.  He’s used to the pattern of it, and he’s pretty much good about knowing what’s expected of him vis-a-vis using it every day.

As you’ve all seen, I have a love-hate relationship with the Monster’s busing.  I hate that it takes him thirty-plus minutes per day to get across town to his school, but I do like that they pick him up and drop him off, and that the aide and driver seem genuinely concerned for his well-being.  I despise that the company that owns his route – Durham School Bus Services – doesn’t seem to give a rat’s ass about what’s best for the kids with regards to keeping the route running smoothly when there’s substitutes, or with keeping track of their drivers, or whatnot.  (And for any representative of their company reading this – if your company did care, you wouldn’t be blasé about when you can’t reach the bus by radio, when the bus is going to be unreasonably late, or just wave your hands and not tell anyone anything when there’s a major screw-up in your staffing.  So nyah.)

Apparently, once last week, he got on the bus at school and got into his seat, before calling up to the driver, “Bus driver, lets go!”  (Told to me by the aide and driver.)  To me, that’s fantastic, since that’s clearly not something scripted that he’d have heard around home or the school.  He doesn’t fight or fuss about having to be on the bus each way, and is very quick to bounce out to the bus each morning when it pulls up to the sidewalk.  Coming home… really depends on his energy level.

On the other hand, the bus was fifty-five minutes late again this morning, with the bus company hardly being concerned that it was so late.  (They couldn’t reach the bus today “because our two-way radios don’t work properly when it’s raining”.)  Of course they’re not concerned – they’re not the ones who have to worry about how the schedule change affects a child with Autism, or how it might make him miss therapy appointments.

The biggest positive for me from this year is knowing that, regardless of where we go from here assignment-wise in the coming school year, at least he seems to cope very well with having to be on a bus – a noisy, uncomfortable environment – for the ride to and from school, and that’s a big win.