Why can't I write word problems?

Dear Reader,

It's been a hairy couple of weeks. School and the entire state shut down about two weeks ago. School is closed indefinitely. New York State is not playing around with COVID-19. We have been attempting to home school the boys for the last little bit. It's been alright, I guess. There's one problem, I suck at writing word problems. I can write a novel in a month but I can't write a word problem that my son can't solve in less than a minute. I am mildly vexed.

I have been struggling to find the time to write anything. The kids have been keeping me on my toes. Mornings have been busy with academic work. We fit in almost everything in the morning: English, writing journal time, social studies, math, more writing journal time, and art. It's when we hit lunch time that things go sideways. Just yesterday the boys had an epic screaming match while I was washing dishes. It seems that I have to stay on top of them to keep them occupied with stuff. The problem is, I am beginning to run out of ideas.

It'd be easier if I could just print off stuff from the internet but I don't have a functional printer. I am drawing out worksheets by hand. It's been a challenge. I am starting to run low on kid friendly writing prompts. It'd be one thing if I could let them just free write for the whole writing session. The problem is, as autistic children, they write about their special interests at the exclusion of other topics. So, it gets harder to get them to write opinion pieces, fiction, or pretty much anything other than what their focus is at that moment. This is why I have been giving them prompts for their writing journal.

We've been curating how much of the news the boys watch because they get anxious over things. COVID-19 was a huge source of anxiety for my eldest for a little while after the school explained that they might be closing because of it. It took us a solid week to explain that as long as we maintained good hygiene and proper safety procedures we'd most likely be fine. I, however, have been watching and journaling in my daily planner the progression of COVID-19 in my state. I am deeply concerned and doing my best to come up with as much indoor activities for the kids as I can.

All of this rambling aside, I am still trying to get Book 5 of the Umbrel Chronicles of Evandar ready to send off to the printer in a few months. Gods only know if the COVID-19 business will allow me to get the book out or not. Worst case scenario, it goes out strictly in digital format. I'm still trying to figure out what the hell is wrong with my interface for Lulu.com and why I can't get things going through there again. I keep getting error messages that I have the wrong version of Flash to use all their features. It's why I've been doing more stuff through KDP, even though I don't exactly like KDP's platform.