Ya gotta do what ya gotta do, right?

Today is Martin Luther King Day, and I've got the day off work. My lovely wife, however, is working, back on a full-time schedule as of today. (She had a full-time supervisor's job before she had to quit a couple of years ago in order to better deal with our son's issues.) But as I type this post, at 3:14 in the afternoon, today has been anything but a leisurely day off.

Today is also my son's second day of school at the local community college. He has three classes today, spread throughout the day/evening. His first class started at 11:00am and, since my wife was working and I wasn't, I got the job of driving him to school. (He doesn't have his driver's license yet.) We got out the door pretty much on time, but the traffic on the freeway was backed up because of some road construction. OK... Now we were going to be a little late. That alone was enough to stress me out, but then my son added to the stress. "I never got my Suboxone this morning," he revealed to me when we were about halfway to school. Suboxone is the opiate blocker that my son takes every day to help curb the cravings for heroin. It's a prescription drug that's part of the intensive outpatient program (IOP) he's involved in at Brighton Hospital. My wife had simply forgotten to get the medication out of the safe this morning.

Well, if you're a recovering addict taking Suboxone, there's one thing you don't want to do: miss a dose. (The last time my son missed a dose, it led to a craving that was almost satisfied by illegal activity. If it wasn't for me intervening, who knows what would've happened.) So there was only one thing to do: drop my son off at school, go back home to get his Suboxone, and then head back to school to give it to him. Just another example of my wife and I having to do whatever is necessary to keep things on track. Ya gotta do what ya gotta do, right? My son and I agreed on a meeting time/place and I headed home to get the pill.

When I got back out to my son's school, I met him and asked him if he'd like to go out to lunch instead of eating the lunch my wife had made him this morning. Of course he jumped at the chance. We went to Subway, grabbed some food, and headed back to school. There was still an hour to kill before my son's next class, so we went to the school bookstore to get the books he needs for this term. Needless to say, it's been a long time since I purchased college books. I was blown away by the fact that the books for his four classes cost me nearly $500.00. But ya gotta do what ya gotta do, right?

I'm back at home now and my son will be at school 'til around 8:00 tonight, when either my wife or I will pick him up. I hope everything goes alright. It's going to be a long day for him; there's no doubt about that. And he's got a 2-1/2 hour break between his second and third classes. Hopefully he'll be able to find a constructive way to kill that time.

Now... On to planning dinner!