Wild-Heart.net

Recently, I took a brave step and started video blogging. I’m taking a huge step here and going to post the most recent one. It’s in two parts. I tend to ramble. It’s a brave step. I shot it late in the evening and am wearing no make-up and had taken my evening meds about an hour earlier. Any who. If you want to know what the family and I have been up to you can watch the following two videos.

My apologies for the abrupt cutoff at the end of Part 2. Normally I just upload the video straight from my camera, but this time I used some editing software to shrink the size down a bit and split it. I guess Avidemux got the last few seconds on the second part. Ooopsie. Oh well.

For those of you, and I know there are quite a few of you, who end up here after searching for information about parenting a schizoaffective child. I realize you won’t find a whole lot of information here, just as you won’t find a much anywhere on internet. It’s a lonely diagnosis to deal with as a parent. If you are interested in an online forum for parents such as us, please, don’t hesitate to use the contact form. The link is on the right and up top. Let me know. If there is enough interest, I’ll install a private forum for us to have a place to gather and share what information we do know from our children’s doctors and the scant information that is available online. I hope all is well in your lives and that you, your child and families may eventually find peace in dealing with disorder that has such an awesome ability to wreck so much havoc in our lives, especially if there is one or more co-morbid diagnosis involved. Don’t let it all overwhelm you, click the link to the contact form and let’s see what we can do together.

It was long, yet not long enough. We arrived late and it was already drizzling. There are a couple of short videos added to the collection on the Videos page (link on the right or the button up top). Has my son changed since in his first 3 weeks at Youth Challenge? I think so. It’s easier to tell in his letters and his phone calls than it was from our visit yesterday. After about an hour of indulging in sugar and caffeine, I really didn’t get much of a chance to visit with him as he was hyper and all over the place. For him it was a day of freedom. He was able to listen to music for the first time in 3 weeks and have a few hours of unrestricted time. I heard many words of praise from his Cadre, Sergeants and various other staff members. It was a good day. Even though we had to leave early due to my back going out. Didn’t seem to phase him, though. He was too hyped on Mt. Dew and the excitement of getting to do the repelling tower again with his buddies. I think I miss him twice as much now. *sigh*

And I could use a little help finding it. Perchance one of you might have it tucked away in your recipe box. If so, I don’t know how I could repay you but I’ll come up with something! The recipe is for Peanut Butter Bars. I originally found the recipe 7 years ago on AllRecipes.com. I’ve been through every single peanut butter recipe on that site in the last two weeks and have yet to recover it. I used to have a notebook filled with all of my families favorite recipes. It seems to have grown feet and walked away. Back to the recipe. There is no oatmeal in this one, nor is there chocolate of any variety, however, they do have the consistency of a chewy brownie after they are baked. The first part of the recipe calls for the peanut butter, butter/margarine, and sugar to be slowly melted together in a sauce pan and allowed to cool before stirring in the eggs and flour. I don’t remember if there is vanilla extract in the recipe or not.

Why, you may ask is this recipe so important? And why and am I in such a desperate rush to find it? As you might recall, Boy #1 is attending National Guard Youth Challenge. This Saturday is Family Day. We are allowed to bring them treats and favorite foods from home. All he really wants is two things, these Peanut Butter Bars and a McDonald’s cheeseburger. The later because, “Momma, I’m so sick of canteen food. It’s not bad but it’s not good either. I know you’ll have to get it the night before and it will be cold, I don’t care. It will be better than any burger I’ve ate in the last month!”

Any who, if the details of the recipe that I have given have rung any bells, please, leave me a comment or use the contact form (link is on the right) and share! Meanwhile, I will try to come up with a way to reward whomever is able to accomplish this mission.

A parental tool of discipline! I wish I had thought of this earlier. In past couple of days I have discovered a way to get the children to do what they’ve been asked to do. They, just like Little Bunny Foo-Foo, get three chances, if they still aren’t behaving they get subjected to early 80’s Power Ballads. Who wouldn’t do anything to make Chicago stop singing Hard To Say I’m Sorry? Bwahahahaha! And YouTube gives me quick and easy access to such atrocities. By the time he gets to, “Hold me now,” they are apologizing, begging for me to make it stop and doing what has been asked of them. I love you, YouTube.

Most of the time, Boy #2, who is a few years and a basement away from becoming  an internet addicted, basement dweller, only leaving home to go to work at Best Buy or Circuit City…. Sorry got lost in there for a second… Anyway, most of the url’s to YouTube that he sends me are lame and of no interest to me. But this one is pure genius! I laughed until my side hurt! And there is a whole series of ‘em!

My apologies for the lack of posting. It’s been quite hectic here. Keeping a sharp on Boy #1 while waiting for this coming Saturday to arrive when we deliver him to Ft. Gordon for his first day of classes at National Guard Youth Challenge whilst attempting to school Boy #2 and Baby Boy has been a challenge.

There are so many songs that pull at my Celtic heartstrings that I could share with you today. Songs that make my heart and soul long for home, that small Irish-Catholic farming community of one Church and one pub full of extended family where everyone is related to everyone in one way or another. Where they say our Great-great-grandfathers decided to settle because the land of gently rolling hills, valleys and streams reminded them of their homes they left behind in Ireland. But I couldn’t pick just one.

Since this week is so focused on Boy #1 taking a huge step to change his life for the better and will be ending with his departing from us for 22 weeks, the song that seems most fitting is Danny Boy. When Boy #1 was an infant and toddler and we happened to be at my parent’s house, if it was time him to have a nap or if he was simply fussy, my father loved to snatch him away from me, sit down with him in the rocking-recliner and very quietyly sing Danny Boy to him. It always quickly calmed him and now and then I would catch a tear falling down my fathers face as he watched his first-born grandchild slumber in his arms. They share a bond that at times has infuriated me beyond belief, one that I have tried desperately to comprehend over the last 16 years. Regardless, on this St. Patrick’s Day, my father’s second favorite holiday of the year, and this being the week that Boy #1 starts a new journey into manhood, I’m going to share Danny Boy.

Oh Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen, and down the mountainside.
The summer’s gone, and all the roses falling.
‘Tis you, ’tis you must go and I must bide.
But come ye back when summer’s in the meadow
Or when the valley’s hushed and white with snow,
‘Tis I’ll be there in sunshine or in shadow.
Oh Danny Boy, Oh Danny Boy, I love you so.

He made the cut! Boy #1 received his letter from National Guard Youth Challenge today informing him that he has been selected for the class starting in March at Ft. Gordon! We go to Augusta for orientation next Saturday and he reports for first day of classes on March 22. Holy Saturday. A 22 week program. At the end of which he’ll have a diploma/GED. These are all good signs in my book. He’s completely psyched and ready to go and is even looking forward to the first two weeks of the program which they call Hard Core Challenge, which from I’ve been told is similar to basic training/boot camp. It’s the two weeks that make it or break it for the new cadets and he’s not worried about it one single bit. Yay!

I found this over at Agelika’s other blog. I swear to you this is exactly how Boy#1 and Boy#2 interact with each other everyday of their lives and always have.

Things are sort of falling back into a regular routine around here.  I’ve put off blogging about the trip to see the specialist at Emory because it is  rather odd for me to deal with at the moment. The good news is that the med that my local cardiologist put me on has the pulmonary stenosis back at a mild state. But she discovered that I have a 5.4cm main pulmonary artery aneurysm. Currently she is working with all of my doctors to track down the cause of the aneurysm before deciding on how best to approach correction of it. She highly suspects a genetic form of a connective tissue disorder. If this turns out to be the case then it determines the way the surgeons repair the aneurysm, they would do a wrap type of procedure instead of a graft type. In the meantime, I was told to try to remain as stress free as possible and to keep taking my anti-anxiety medications as Rx’d by my neuro-psyche.Allof the lab work for Lupus and other common connective tissue disorders and coronary artery disease came back negative. So the next step is an MRI to check for MS, which my neuro-psyche said is possible that I might have but highly unlikely to be the cause of the aneurysm as I would have to be at the end stage of the advanced-progressive type for it to be affecting my internal organs and to have caused that. (Think: Annette Funicello) and there are no signs of any type of MS being at that stage. But it’s all part of what must be done and tested for in order for insurance to cover the genetic test for the type of connective tissue disorder she thinks is running in our family and my neuro-psyche after getting into more detail about my physcial medical history and family medical history tends to agree with her.

In the meantime, trying to stay calm and mellow with 2 teenagers and a schizoaffective child and a certain other outside influences is certainly a challenge but one in which I’m attempting and the kids are finally starting to come around to reigning in their obnoxious boy-only household behavior. I’ve also updated my will, living will and power of attorney in the last week as I was told to do. “Just in case, you know.”

With all of that out of the way I’ve become aware of just how precious everyday is and I’m not going to let any certain outside influences continue to screw with my family and our peace and happiness. From now on it is gloves off when dealing with these sorts. Life is too short to spend it in a state of stress and anxiety brought on by the poor behavior of other people.

KDE4 was released yesterday. Yay! Not really. It’s lovely but still obviously not quite ready for prime time for those who like to configure their main panel. Even worse was an ATI driver update on the same day that hosed my xorg.conf. Got that straightened out.

As I recently told a friend:  I think I play with various Linux distros (read: torture myself with) is because they give me something to challenge my intellect with. Something to fuss and frett over that I can have that moment of victory that leaves me with that moment of having the feeling of, “Yes, bitch! You are mine! I won and you lost! Take that!” Life doesn’t provide me with very many opportunities to accel or conquer many problems and we all know how unappropriate those words would be if used when getting the upperhand in a parental situation. LOL

Tonight the youth minister whom voluntered to be Boy#1’s mentor for National Guard Youth Challenge is joining us for supper and paperwork. Tomorrow my sister in-law and her family will be visiting and Monday it’s up to ATL to the clinic at Emory.

Not enough hours in a day.

2007. I swear this year is simply trying to kick my ass to see how much I can handle.

Late Monday evening, Boy #2 woke up with a stomach ache. We assumed it was either a virus or gas as the tummy pain wasn’t localized. The stomach pain continued through yesterday but by 20:00 the pain had become localized to his right side and more severe. We could have taken him to the pediatrician’s after hours clinic but I knew if they suspected appendicitis they would send us to the hospital, the same if we went to the urgent care clinic, so we went directly to the emergency room.

We didn’t have a very long wait in the waiting room. The doctor and first year resident ordered lab work which came back with a sky high white count, so off to radiology they sent us for a CT-scan. Twenty minutes later we had the results. Acute appendicitis.  They went ahead and started his IV line in the ER and gave him some Nubain for the pain.  Then we had to wait and see if the surgeon on call and the anesthesia team would be willing to perform the procedure at that particular hospital. We had taken him to the hospital closest to home (about a 5 minute drive). It seemed that the problem was that they do not do pediatric surgeries so they first had to find out if the surgeon would do it, he asked his hight and weight (5′ 6″, 129) and said, “He’s the size of a small man, I’ll do it, let me know what anesthesia says.” At first they didn’t want to do it. So they made calls to the other two hospitals in town and nope, they couldn’t do it, they were backed up and wouldn’t be able to touch him until sometime later this afternoon at the earliest, they relented and agreed to perform the procedure where he was.

The surgeon was able to remove his appendix with the lap/scope procedure. He started at 02:00 was done in 45 minutes. Boy #2 then spent an hour in recovery before they brought him up to his room. They discharged him this afternoon at 14:00. Man, was he ready to get the heck out of there and come home. He had been ready to get home since they brought him his breakfast tray of “clear liquids only.” For the next 4 hours it was like having a grumpy old man in the room. “I want real food. I need something I can sink my teeth into. I’m sick of peeing into this jug thingy.  Can’t you talk to the nurse and tell her she HAS to let me go home now?!” Heh. He’s been resting comfortably and has had no need for the Lortab they sent him home with. Ibuprofen has been sufficient to keep his surgical pain under control.

I  thought that tomorrow we might have a day of reprieve. It doesn’t seem like it’s going to work out that way. Baby Boy and I had appointments scheduled with our neuro-shrink for Friday but his office called and asked us to reschedule for tomorrow morning. Neuro-shrink is also a forensic-shrink and he was called in for more testimony for a trial at the last minute for Friday so they had to shuffle things around.

Damn. I’m exhausted.

So, how does one celebrate Halloween when taking into consideration the needs of a child with early onset schizoaffective disorder? The difficulty arises because any sort of play involving imagination has the potential to break the barrier in his mind between reality and fantasy and the two become one. So this year, while Boy #1 is helping out at his church’s haunted house, the rest of us will be having our own little at home celebration. Ordering in pizza, having obligatory cupcakes and watching the only Don Knotts movie that I can stand to sit through. The Ghost and Mr. Chicken.

Baby Boy was discharged from the hospital on Saturday. The first thing I noticed when we arrived was how disorganized his thoughts and behavior still was. I asked the charge nurse if he had been this way since his admission or if this was just excitement over going home and he said that he had been like that for the duration.

The changes the hospital doctor made to his medication was to taper him off of Xanax during the 5 days that he was there, moved his Abilify to
bedtime instead of morning and made the Seroquel at bedtime permanent as opposed to as needed. He kept him on the 100 mg Lamictal at morning and noon and 200 mg at bedtime. At least he is finally sleeping again and the voices and visions have drastically minimized.

Baby Boy is very slowly starting show some progress at home towards being less violent and and defiant but it is still very obvious that he is cycling frequently through the day and responding to the slightest of stresses with outbursts of rage. The staff at the hospital said they had to frequently redirect his behavior, when we calmly attempt this at home he becomes agitated and aggressive.

Whenever he is in a calm state and I attempt to calmly and quietly work with him on the things we talked about during our family session at the hospital, such as creating a daily schedule that he can see and follow for more structure and practicing going to time-out calmly, and how to ignore his big brothers so that they don’t have the power to trigger him, he becomes violent and it triggers another round of mania. I’ve emailed his regular psychiatrist with all of this information. I think he’s either going through Xanax withdrawal still or Lamictal alone as a mood stabilizer during the day just isn’t going to do the job.

And yet somehow through it all, we’ve been able to complete our homeschool lessons yesterday and today. Granted, it took much longer than it used to but we made it through. Today was better than yesterday which left me with bruised shins and multiple bite bruises received when attempting to stop him from rhythmically beating his head on the wall.

Tonight was actually a rather good night for him, too. The first since he’s been back home. He and Bonus Boy both got in trouble and landed themselves in timeout for cursing out Boy #2 because he was fighting off a migraine and didn’t want to take them for a walk. They didn’t think I was within hearing distance. They were wrong and both were sent to the kitchen table for time-out. Poor child, I think it helped to have a partner in time-out. Something about it made him stop and think about what he had been doing the last three days and we had a good talk when it was over. Now, if he just remembers it in the morning. *sigh*

Baby Boy is back in the hospital. This time it was a much less eventful admissions process. His medications stopped working. We had an appointment with the psychiatrist a week ago this past Friday and some adjustments were made to his medications as the visual and auditory hallucinations were occurring again. During that appointment, I mentioned to the doctor the study I had came across that had been done in Finland that shows a link that prenatal fetal hypoxia might somehow trigger the gene for schizophrenoform disorders at an early onset. As an example, Baby Boy has early onset schizoaffective disorder while the usual age of onset for the disorder is either early 20’s or even later in life. The doctor recalled reading about the same study and asked his nurse to pull his MRI films so he could take another look at them and see if there was evidence of prenatal fetal hypoxia damage to his brain suffered at the time that I was pregnant with Baby Boy and nearly miscarried at 4 1/2 months. Sure enough he found. So there is some credence to the studies findings. As I said, he made some adjustments to his medications and we gave it 10 days.

Yesterday, I had to call the doctor and let him know that the changes had not helped Baby Boys symptoms and in fact things were actually becoming worse for him. He asked us to bring him in for an emergency appointment. He tweaked his medications a bit more and added a benzo to use as needed for when he has violent outbursts. He slept through the night for the first time in over two months. We thought perhaps we were going to have the start of a good day for a change. He woke up at his usual 06:00, helped me make oatmeal and biscuits and get Boy #1 motivated and out the door to school. At 07:00 the mood swing started, the violent and delusional boy was in full gear and before I could stop him he had climbed up on Boy #2’s bed and was giving him all he had because he was convinced he had stollen something of his that didn’t even exist in the first place. Okay. Time for the benzo. Thirty minutes after taking it he calmed down, another 15 minutes he was in full paradoxical reaction to the benzo and having to be put into a theraputic restraint.

We finally got him calmed down and called the doctor. He said it was time to call the insurance company and the hospital and get him admitted for a full on medicinal evaluation and changes. The time has come for the big guns aka the old standards. In the last two years he has been tried on nearly every atypical anti psychotic mediciation approved for use in children. They work for up 2 months, sometimes 4 if we’re lucky before his liver learns to metabolize them quickly and they no longer work.

I hate this. Watching my child be wracked and tormented by a neurological mental illness is sometimes more than I can bear. He’s now in the hospital, 2 hours away from home. I just pray that the attending doctor will work closely with his local doctor and that they can quickly find a med combo that will help him.

Prayers, kind thoughts… they’re appreciated. Thanks for reading.

Boy #2 is currently grounded  for having a horribly bad attitude and thinking that he can yell and scream at me as if he were my ex-husband. He’s done nothing but complain about the fact that he is grounded and Boy #1 is not. You know the typical sibling and teenager strife. However, Boy #2 is an evil genius at times. His latest attempt to “set-up” Boy #1 has me fuming.

First a bit of background… I am incredibly particular about how I do laundry and what goes into my washing machine and dryer. I check pockets, especially Boy #1’s and Bonus Boy’s as they tend to leave pencils and pens and school papers. Also, after every load comes out of the washing machine I check the tub thoroughly for anything that I might of missed. It’s my OCD, I check the tub AGAIN before starting a new load of laundry.

This afternoon after sorting out a load of towels and making sure the tub was free and clear and starting the load, I happily walked away. At some point during the washing of that load of towels, Boy #2 got the brilliant idea of setting up Boy #2 by tossing in a usb-thumb-drive and a black permanent marker in the washing machine. The only thing that saved him was that the cap stayed firmly on the marker. Time will tell if the thumb-drive has survived. And of course he’s playing the Shaggy routine; screaming, “It wasn’t me!” But you see, Boy #1 wasn’t home, Bonus Boy and Baby Boy were at the computers for free time (which Boy #2 is grounded from after pulling an all nighter Friday night on MySpace and YouTube). He was the only one with a motive and access to the marker and the thumb-drive. Of course then he tried the “Mom is Crazy” routine and of course I had to have put them in the washing machine along with the towels when I loaded the machine. Um. No. Not in this lifetime. Dig a deeper hole.

And they think parents are the enemy?

I can’t hit a ball, never could, and I feel like I’ve been stuck in a batting cage for the last month dodging a never ending barrage of balls being pitched at me.

Where to begin? As if any of this matters other than clearing cobwebs from my mind so that maybe I’ll actually feel like blogging again instead of hiding.

Let’s start with the quack of a doctor I started seeing for primary care last fall who informed me that I have COPD, told me that it was in my medical records yet refused to show me where exactly in my records it was and when my symptoms were not getting better refused to refer me to a pulmonologist or a cardiologist even though it had been over six years since having seen either one. Well, I finally found and had my insurance change me over to an internist that seems to be relatively competent. He would have an even better time of doing his job if the afore mentioned quack would release my medical records to him.

New doctor set me up with a referral to a pulmonologist. Pulmonologist reviewed my x-rays, had me do a breathing test, said my asthma is under control and the problem is not COPD but that as I had suspected, the pulmonic valve stenosis stuff is worse and that I need to get a referral to a cardiologist as soon as possible because with the symptoms I am exhibiting it is possibly time to replace that heart valve and, “when you go, if they decide it’s time, make sure you tell them that I want to be on the surgical respiratory team because what you have is really rather rare and I’d love to be there for the surgery.” Gee, Doc, you bet, I’ll make sure you get to be there for the freak show. Still waiting to hear back from my internist on the cardiology referral.

Then there was the referral to the GYN. It had been 5 years since I’d had the lovely pap done. Yes, I know. I am a Darwin candidate. Especially since I’ve had three procedures to remove (non-HPV related thank you very much) pre-cancerous cells removed in the past. She did the exam and history, etc. Asked if had any concerns or questions. I let her know that I’ve had no less than 12 menses since the first of the year and about the cervical pain I experience during sex. She had no answer for the frequent menses other than a possible sign of perimenipause and/or stress and then told me that the cervical pain was most likely all psychological in nature. Lovely. Nothing like having the person who just peered up your vagina telling you that you have mental health issues with sex. Five days later I got a call from the GYN telling me that my pap results came back with results for a non-STD related bacterial infection and she actually apologized and said that was the cause of my cervical pain. When I asked her what caused the infection she made a statement that made my husband beam with pride when I later told him, “These types of infections are usually the result of repeat injury to the cervix, if your partner is well endowed, that is the most likely cause of the repeat injury leaving the cervix vulnerable to infection from normal bacteria.” Way to go, Joe! In the mean time, I’ve had cramps like a mofo ever since that pap three weeks ago. Made worse by the pelvic ultrasound that she scheduled and that I had done yesterday. Talk about a surprise. I hobbled my way back to the exam room and the tech pulls out the vaginal probe, “I’m going to be doing a vaginal ultrasound today, we get clearer pictures of the uterus and the ovaries this way.” Way to ruin a day.

I think I can talk briefly, in circles about how things are going concerning the information in the password protected post. Let me just say, after having played the nice neighbor once in this neighborhood and the one neighbor that became a daily part of our lives losing his mind and murdering someone, I will never again be the friendly neighbor. I don’t want to know who my neighbors are. I don’t want my children to know who our neighbors are. Baby Boy is just now starting to re-stabilize after having to deal with the trauma of another male figure in his life doing something horrifying.

On the plus side of things, I think we’ve finally found our homeschool groove. Boy #2 distracts Baby Boy and Baby Boy distracts Boy #2. Boy #2 however, is a night owl, so he stays up late, logs in and does his school work from 9pm until 2am and then sleeps until 11am. Baby Boy works on his school work from 7:30am until noon. Unconventional but it works for us. The best part is that it keeps Boy #1 and Boy #2 from their previous routine of bitching at each other for at least an hour every night at bedtime until one of them gives up and falls asleep.

Another positive, the topamax has done wonders at keeping the migraines at bay and even seems to be helping the fibromyalgia a bit. It’s also a wonderful thing to have the flexeril on hand for the days when the spasms and spasticity would otherwise have me tethered to the walker.

At the close of a week that seemed fought with the difficulties of the the dramas of the bus situation and school IEP compliance difficulties with Boy #1, and the struggles of attempting to get Boy #2 to focus on his homeschool work instead of drifting off into drawing and music applications, there have been a couple of positive things happen this week. They are very significantly positive things for me.

1. Bonus Boy’s mother and I are finally communicating.
2. My sister and I are communicating again after nearly two years of silence.

The week ended much better, really, than it started. I have to remind myself of that fact. Living in a testosterone ladened household tends to make it very difficult to see the trees for the forest at times. Any who. I’ll probably get grief for the song I’m about to leave you with but hey, it’s a feel good song and it’s a positive one.

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“[...]it is our strong recommendation that you make arrangements for your son to be picked up from school today instead of riding the bus home. It has been brought to our attention that further threats to his person have been made and until we have arrested those who forced their way onto the bus yesterday and attacked him, which should be later this afternoon, we recommend he not ride the school bus.”

That was from the phone call I received from Campus Police about an hour or so ago concerning the drama that occurred yesterday with Boy #1. I assume the “we” she was referring to was County Police/Deputies in cooperation with Campus Police. Yeap. Nothing like teen drama on a bus that serves quite the varied social populous. Seems that one of the kids who plays him as a fair weather friend played off some of his own remarks about one of these thugs little brothers and passed them off as Boy #1’s remarks. Impossible as Boy #1 no longer has anything to do with this kid since he gave him candy towards the end of the last school year and it turned out to be meth (took a $25 drug test to figure it out) and we spent several hours helping him go through the tweaking out phase of a first time user. Oh yes, as if parents don’t have enough to worry about, 12-14 year olds are actually giving meth away, telling other students that it’s candy because that’s the new trend, flavoring the crap so it tastes like candy. F*ckers. So the boy has had it out for Boy #1 since he and I reported it to the proper officials at the school and the police department.

Two neighborhood drop-out thugs from up the street forced their way onto the school bus yesterday afternoon and proceeded to pound the crud out of Boy #1. Had this happened out on the street I would have understood if he fought to defend himself. However, this was on the school bus and I’ve got to say that as sick as it might sound to others, I’m proud of him for keeping his hands to himself and not fighting back. I’m so very proud that he was able to maintain that much control of himself. Why should I be? Because he is normally very impulsive due to the bipolar disorder and being a teenager, he acts without thinking and in the past that has gotten him written up and suspended from the bus more times than I care to remember.

He maintained control. That means his meds are working. Belittle me if you wish but I’m proud of him. The result is that this time, the punks that started this are going to be charged with assault and battery and my son isn’t getting yet another mark on his school record.

When I saw this opportunity to tell you about element skateboards and zero skateboards I absolutely had to take it. For long time readers the reason should be obvious. With four boys in the house that means four skaters in the house which means that I’ve heard a LOT about Modern Skate & Surf Co. over the years. Their website is one of their regular stops when surfing the internet. Which always leads to a lot of, “Hey, Mom! Check out this board!”

In our neighborhood, skateboarding is one of those few things that I don’t mind the boys doing. Gods know we can’t keep a decent bike around here for long before it is stolen. In the last 3 years We’ve filed four police reports for stolen BMX style bikes but not a single one for a skateboard. Living in a townhome there is no room to bring 4 bikes in the house when they aren’t being used and yes we have even tried chaining and locking them. But skateboards slide right under beds and sofas. Not to mention they are just simply cool as heck. Have you seen the deck designs of some of these element skateboards and zero skateboards?

If any of you, and I know there at a LOT of you who read and never comment, happen to know where I could find coloring pages for/from the new Transformers movie I would be eternally grateful. I’ve got a 9 year old obsessed to the point of psychotic fixation insisting that he must have something from the new movie to do his next creative writing assignment with. Thanks in advance. And yes, I have exhausted Google.

Yesterday was the first day of school for our household. Boy #2 and Baby Boy started their homeschool year and Boy #1 and Bonus Boy started their Public School year.

Already, OpenOffice.org is getting a workout. With the content controls enabled in IE7, Boy #2 cannot cheat when he uses OO.o for his various writing assignments. Yesterday he gave it a work out typing up definitions and sentences for his spelling words. This morning before 07:00 Baby Boy was at the desk and typing up his Creative Writing assignment for the day. He likes to find a coloring page and then write a story to go with it. He hates being corrected by adults but doesn’t mind the red squiggly line under misspelled words in a word processing application.

Boy #1 took to school his usual letter typed up by me for his teachers explaining his Other Health Impaired IEP seeing as the Special Services Department never gets the IEP’s to the schools prior to the start of the new school year. He seemed to really like all of his teachers and his homeroom teacher is male this year. We have a suspicion that will be a good thing as Greg responds much better to male authority figures than female authority figures.

Joseph called Bonus Boy’s mother last night and it would seem he also had an excellent first day. I wish I had pictures to share but Boy #1 has taken all of the batteries out of everything including my camera, yet again. Never fear. I shall be hunting their room for batteries out of RC cars later today (what goes around comes around) and will at least be able to take pictures of the two homeschoolers at work.

Yesterday evening was an amazingly early and quiet evening. We had all, except Baby Boy who was still sleeping, and Bonus Boy who had gone to his mother’s on Sunday, woke up at 04:00 so that goodbyes good be said and given to my mother as Joseph and I had to make the road trip with her to the Atlanta Airport and be there by 06:30. All of the children were asleep by 19:45 last night. Alas, Joseph and I were also so tired that we were both sound alseep before 22:00.

Here’s to the hope of another good day and beginning of what will hopefully be a fantastic school year!

*As a note. I apologize for leaving most of you on the blogroll neglected over the past couple of weeks. While my mom was here visiting it was just impossible to do much blog reading. By the end of the week I hope to get caught up with all of you as soon as I’ve finished upgrading to KDE 4. I’ve missed you all!

I don’t say this for pity. Pity is for suffering, not for surviving. However, in the last year there was some news that came about concerning Wynonna and abuse suffered by her daughter and the struggles they have gone through. We’ve gone through much the same with Baby Boy on top of everything else. This song is a beautiful one full of hope and calm and strength. Open it in a new window and share it with your families.

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Song of the day followed of by a brief photo *cough* essay *choke* if you can call that of what the rest of my day will entail if only I lived in my fantasy world.

If the books and supplies are put away that must mean that the homeschool day is finally finished.

Yeap. Looks like the family workstation and homeschool central is straightened up for the day.

And I’ve already prepared Zen central. Even more supplies stashed away under the coffee/altar table.

Not quite yet though. Must make meatloaf first. And this is what awaits in the kitchen. *le sigh* What do you use your Ikea Blue Bag for? Awesome laundry bag for us.

I might sell my soul to for someone just to do my dishes. My mother tells me that’s what teenagers are for. I’d rather they pile up than listen to them complain about a sink full when there’s a dishwasher. Why I remember when I was a teenager we didn’t have a dish washer. And we had to walk barefoot in the snow… five miles up hill…Seriously though.. no dishwasher until this house.

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It’s not always a bad thing. Boy #2 just brought down a bunch of discs they had taken off to their room with. What was in the stack of discs but a DVD backup that I had completely forgotten about. Why is that exciting? I now have my lost music collection back! This has got to be a good omen!

Two years ago, the in-laws gave the boys a computer for Christmas. They already had one and yes it was old and pieced together but it was running linux and worked great for them. We tried running Windows on their frankenputer but they constantly were getting spyware and trojan infections.

Enter the gift from hell. I begged my sister in-law to not let her husband follow through with this plan. He was an only child and loves spoiling the boys with video games. The problem is the video games they want to play always end up with someone angry so they’ve been removed from the computer from hell. Now it’s only for school use, public school homework and Time4Learning for homeschool use. They were warned repeated not to use Internet Exploder for any reason other than Time4Learning. And they heeded that warning until yesterday.

Boy #2 asked to be signed up for Time4Learning to use over summer vacation. He wanted to get ahead and then when the new school year starts, ask for a grade placement test. Well, he had a distraction problem. He’d sit down to do schoolwork and end up spending hours on YouTube and MySpace and accomplish very little with the school work that I was paying for him to have. I installed the Firefox plugin for parental controls and blocked everything that was a problem for the children. By #2 threw up his hands and quit his plan after 24 hrs. Then he snuck on the computer and used IE to get to the things he wanted. Now I have an infested system that if this one last thing to try doesn’t fix it is going to end up having to be reformatted and winblows reinstalled.

This is the sort of thing that led to my retirement from computer & internet support services. And I hate it that my 14 yr. old child is acting like an internet addicted techno-tard. And I hate that damn computer even more today.

I’ve made a decision and I’m sticking to it.

I can’t recall if I posted before about the house hunting we were doing. Keyword “were” and you may as well change that “we” to an “I.” Long story short. I married a man with Asperger’s that has never been treated in therapy and whom also turned 30 last year. Yes, I robbed the cradle but that is besides the point. See, he also has some OCD tendencies and the general thinking in the psychiatric world is that for some reason, once a person with OCD tendencies reaches their early 30’s it will either get much better for them or much worse. His has gotten worse.

I love my husband and I hate to complain so much but you try living with someone who has a fear of bodily fluids and a fear of moving. That bodily fluid thing can really screw with a girl’s self esteem when it comes to matters of sex. But I keep reminding myself that it’s his problem and not mine. Which isn’t easy especially when you live with 5 male beings in the house and they disdain everything “girly.” It’s not easy when you’re lying there hot, sweaty and satiated after sex and you open your eyes to see your husband propped up on his elbows with his hands up in the air like a surgeon waiting for gloves and hear the words, “Hurry up and get me cleaned up so I can wash my hands.” Huh? What? Okay. Such is life.

I keep reminding myself that in less than 9 yrs., all of the children but Baby Boy will be living elsewhere, be it work & school, or just one or the other. When they turn 18 they will be responsible for themselves. Cold? Perhaps, but they’ve been warned and prepared for that magical age for several years now.

The money we saved from my disability back-pay after 4 years of fighting for it? That tax refund that was going with it to put a down-payment on a house. It all went into new furnishings for the town home. If he ever gets around to painting the stairwell, the minute hallway, and our bedroom, the property manager promised new sub flooring and carpet & linoleum throughout the home. He’s got until this weekend to get it done. This had all better be done before my mother arrives bringing back Boy #1 on the 26th of next month.

But the choice I made that I’m sticking to is thus. Due to a snag that occurred during that 4 year battle for disability, I lost the ability to have a passport. That will be changing very soon. In fact, it will be changing around tax season next year. I married a basement dweller w/out a basement who was lucky enough to marry not once, but twice. With 3 bio kids to claim on taxes every year, it results in a very nice tax refund. I announced that next year, he can get his toy car. He’s been lusting for another Honda CRX since his was totaled by a drunk driver over 10 years ago. But in exchange, I want a 3 day 2 night all inclusive vacation somewhere far away from home and children. And I want one every year. And I will have one as soon as I am able to get that passport.

I let Joseph know that he is more than welcome to join me on these yearly 3 day vacations. He replied wanting to know if any of them would involve a boat or flying over large bodies of water (his OCD list also includes extreme fear of water). I replied that they most certainly would and he said, “You can go alone.” I replied, “That’s great! We won’t have to spend money on airfare to get my mother to spend 3 days with the children. You can be here with them while I get a break!”

Once I have my wits about me (read: have had enough coffee), I’ll be making a phone call to Baby Boy’s psychiatrist. When we saw him last Friday, one of things we discussed is that he has been rather hyper and unsettled for a couple of months. The doctor suggested we try just the smallest dose possible of Adderall. Just to try and see if it would help. Knowing our family history of being unable to tolerate any form of stimulant, he kept it to the smallest dosage and only Rx’d 3 pills for 3 days. He said we’d know within 24 hrs.

He was right. There is no way in hell I’m going to give him another today or tomorrow or ever again.  He hyper focused on an internet game and all seemed to be okay… until last night. He was awake until 23:00 and then slept until 02:25. We’ve both been awake since then. The only positive thing about this trial was that it killed his relentless appetite. See, most atypical anti psychotics have a  horrid side-effect of causing a voracious appetite, a hunger that seems impossible to satiate.

One more cup of Java and I should be ready to make the call… I think. I could always email but eyes are blurry as hell just typing this.

This morning, Kate told about her son’s loss of hot tub privileges. We’ve been going through something similar. I started to leave this in her comments but realized it was way too long to be polite in posting it there. I’m sharing her pain. However, for us, it’s not a hot tub.

A couple of weeks before Memorial Day, we picked up one of those cheap snap-set pools for the two youngest. With great warnings from both Joseph and I, we told them that if they put holes in it that were too big to repair with duck-tape, the fun would be over.

For two wonderful weeks, Baby Boy eagerly logged into Time4Learning, did his lessons and the resource worksheets, did his science lessons from the kit we purchased from HomeschoolScience.com and did a couple of history related sheets from LearningPage.com. No arguing, no stubborn, “I don’t want to do school today.” Why? Because he knew as soon as he was done he could put on his swim shorts and go out in the pool. And he would stay in that pool with his various GI Joe action figures, from 13:00 to 18:00, only coming out to re-apply sunscreen. He was calm and content and homeschooling was effortless.

Then, the teenagers decided to do cannon-balls into the pool until the seam split. No amount of patching could hold the water back from the large split seam. Now Joseph is dead set against replacing it. A $10 pool is worth eating a bit of crow in my opinion. Not in his. But I’m still working on wearing him down. I don’t care if we end up replacing it more than once for the peace and ease it brought into our daily routine. To me, it’s worth the parental fight.

• My nest is half empty pushing my anxiety level to new levels. Some may think that the years in which I did not have physical custody of my bio-boys was fun and easy. Little do they know me. It left me with an irrational fear of being separated from both my bio-boys and my bonus-boy.
• Baby Boy continues to struggle for stability. Friday I finally had an opportunity to speak with our family psychiatrist about this without him being present. The consensus being, severe early onset of schizoaffective with the major problem being, due to his previous hospitalizations, he tries very hard to maintain a facade of not letting anyone know when he is struggling with the auditory and visual hallucinations resulting in an increase of stress to maintain that control which triggers the mania aspects. The doctor said that he has one of the most severe cases of early onset he has seen yet also shows the most uncanny willpower to mask it and attempt to control it that he has ever seen. We also discussed this being the last time we try a different atypical anti psychotic. If this med combo doesn’t work, it’s time to pull out the “big guns” of the older and more potent schizophrenic medications.
• Had a lumbar MRI six weeks ago which revealed degenerative disc disease with two discs being fused with calcification spreading up the back of the spine and one disc bulging. This explains the lower body neuropathy and neurological symptoms but not the tremors in the upper extremities and decreasing fine motor skills. Waiting for a referral to a neurologist to make sure it’s just the fibromyalgia and not something else co-occurring.
• On Memorial Day I made the best smoked/grilled chicken ever. I also ended up with heat exhaustion from being outside all afternoon in the sun and the heat from the grill.
• Joseph is on vacation this week. The goal is to finish painting the interior of our town-home. The kitchen is half done. I’ll attempt finishing it tomorrow while Joseph works on patching holes throughout the rest of the house. When we’re done, the property manager claims new sub flooring, carpet and linoleum will be soon to follow.
• Father in-law and his significant other will be visiting a week from Sunday. We haven’t seen them since our wedding. It always throws me off guard. Joseph is a carbon copy of his father… only taller. His father also has the most unsettling way of looking a person straight in the eyes in a way that leaves one feeling that your soul has been left completely visible to him… It’s Joseph with age and wisdom. Lord, what a future Joseph and I have if Joseph also gains that much of his father in years to come.
• My last living grandparent is failing. She had the beginning stages of renal failure and was refusing to eat. She seems to have improved a great deal and I’ve been told that she’s came out of the renal failure. Her birthday is Sunday. I have to try and find a good time to call her this week. She keeps asking my parents, “When is my girl going to call me? She’s long overdue to call.” Thing is, having Nate home full time since his last hospitalization has left me with little time for luxuries such as long phone calls. And Grandma always talks with me for a very long time, always at least an hour and a half. Thank the gods for unlimited long distance!
• Boy #1 is now 5′ 9″ and only 15 years old. He just might grow into thoe size 12 feet someday.
• Boy #2 is now 14 and lord help my sanity. His personality is that of a great-uncle that while living, lived to keep drama going in the family. He carries a giant spoon with which to stir the pot at will.
• I’m a horrible mother of sons. While I enjoy them more the older they become, and the teen years aren’t quite as horrible as I had feared, the voice changes that boys go through is akin to nails down a chalkboard. There are days that I dread waking up as I know it will be followed by Boy #2’s forever changing and croaking and screeching voice.
• My mother will be here for my birthday this year. She will be arriving two days prior. She wants to meet Joseph’s family that lives here in GA and has suggested that my birthday should be the day. I’m more inclined to simply leave her to supervise the children and take a night away from home in a local hotel. Alas, between my mother’s wish and those of my neighbors & friends it will likely be that I play hostess for my own backyard birthday party.
• Bonus Boy is insistent that he wants to be here for the entirety of my mother’s visit and has begged Joseph to please ask his mother if he may stay with us the entire 12 days instead of just the 7 in the middle. I won’t hold my breath for that one.
• Sunday, the boys and I watched an older movie that has long been a favorite of Boy #1’s which he hadn’t seen a few years, 8 Seconds, the story of bull rider Lane Frost’s life. Boys #1 & 2 and I followed it with an older Julia Roberts movie, Something To Talk About, simply because, while it’s set in The South, it reminds us so much of life “back home.” Not to mention Robert Duvall reminds us so much of my Dad.
• Boy #2 has enrolled in Time4Learning for the summer with his goal being to complete 7th grade curriculum this summer and then take a grade placement test when school starts back in August. If he completes this goal, having seen Georgia’s mandated curriculum requirements for 8th grade public schools, he just might end up placed in 9th grade… There is that much of a disparity and that much lacking Georgia public school curriculum.
• Boy #1 wants to try to get accepted into National Guard Youth Challenge as soon as he turns 16 in January. I’ve been working with one of their mentoring coordinators to find a qualified mentor here in Macon that is willing to at least meet him so we can get the ball rolling. Last week, I dreamed of his wedding. It was unsettling to say the least but reassuring just the same. He later told me that when he is done with NGYC his goal is to join the Marines. Which made the fact that in the dream he was in full Marine dress uniform for his wedding, a bit more unnerving.
• I wish I was more tolerant of having two teenagers with two different musical preferences in my home. Honestly, I have to hand it to my parents. They rarely complained when my sister had her music blaring from one side of the house and I had mine baring from the other. In their shoes I would have gone completely insane.
• I think I’m finally getting sleepy. I’ll attempt something more interesting and upbeat tomorrow.

Ciao for now.~