Eight hours apart every day might be saving our relationship.

Sunshine  (OK, really both girls but I'm focusing on Sunshine) gets on the bus at 8 and gets back at 4.
During those 8 hours I clean up (after her), do (her) laundry, schedule and reschedule (her) appointments, shop for (her) food, order and pick up (her) meds. Yet, despite all these things that in some way revolve around her, I don't mind. I am not sure I think that the stay-at-home-mom-of-a-special-needs-kid life has done me (us) well. I think the burn out people talk about has, well, burned me out.
When the kids leave for school I have a chance to eat, do laundry, plan what we need to do next, and work on the house,
the same things I would normally work on. Shouldn't be any different.
and then I sit down to "watch TV" (also known as take a nap).
I go to appointments some days!

Everything is basically pretty much the same. But there are no kids here. The house is quiet. Although now I have to plan things more and stick to a schedule. I make way more use of my planner because things are much more planned.

The most notable change is that I don't feel worn out when I wake in the morning. When I wake the kids up, especially Sunshine (honestly, Fe is up before anyone else, playing in her room happily) in the morning, I am able to play instead of rush and engage in her fits. She gets help getting dressed in the morning, with effort to help her feel and look better, instead of having things blindly tossed into her room. She gets more patience than I would ever be able to give if I was knowing that I would have to deal with the crud all day long.
Sure, patience runs out every once in a while, but way less often and more calmly than it did three months ago.
And today, after therapy, instead of rushing her to buckle up so I could drive; I played with her and we both laughed and had fun. This is HUGE.

And Sunshine is learning to be around kids her own age and how to communicate with them and play with them and take breaks and come back and do work. For the past few years, we haven't been able to go to parks or take breaks because we were just trying to finish this one activity and then go play. But by the time it was finished, it was too dark, cold, or late to go play. Sunshine has had far more control over our lives and has been able to control what and where we have done things.

We were able to play yesterday. Homeschooling/stay at home 24/7 mom, isn't a good idea for us right now. I'm glad we decided on trying to give standard public school a chance.