The New Normal: Day 1

Hello, is this thing on? Are blogs even A Thing anymore? Who knows. I still read Amy and Kim so I know they aren't officially dead...Yet.

So why today to dial up again? Well, life has taken a turn for the weird and somewhat unpleasant and I think perhaps this may be a good outlet for me. It's that or hard drugs, and since I have a kid home with me 24/7, the hard stuff isn't an option.

Yep, Fred now spends all of his time with me. He was essentially thrown out of school, but in the nicest way possible. For the near future, I am his end all be all. I was already most of the things, but now I get to be his teacher as well! Hopefully soon the school will be providing me with some curriculum, but until then my printer is pumping out worksheets by the dozen. At some point (hopefully this week but maybe next) we will meet with some therapeutic elementary school people and decide if that's a good place for him to land. Otherwise the next option is homeschooling with intensive outpatient therapy. In both cases, it's until he's deemed 'well enough' to return to a conventional classroom.

Why, you ask?

MENTAL ILLNESS

Yeah. It sucks enough for adults. Now multiply that amount of suck by at least 459,377,590 and we may possibly hit the range of suckitude when dealing with a mentally ill child. We don't have a definitive diagnosis because he's only 8, and most of the things he seems to be leaning towards are difficult to diagnose in children. Mood disorders and the like. He's awesome for a month, impulsive and violent for a month. Happy. Then not. And he's sizable for a boy of 8, so his impulsive behaviors are leading to more and more significant consequences. Sooooooo NO MORE (regular) SCHOOL FOR FRED.

Help?

Choke

These past two days were a wonderful time, and our weekend was pretty much perfect, thanks to friends, family and little kids dancing around with pink teddy bears. However, there was one little blip that made things just a tad shy of absolute perfection: Sam's hockey tryouts. 

Sam is seven years old. He's never had to actually try out for anything before. And apparently we didn't  do a very good job of explaining to him that it was basically going to be just like a practice session. On Saturday morning, he was limping. 'I don't think I should go to tryouts, mom. My foot hurts.' I sent him to see Dr. Dad, and he wasn't entirely sure Sam was faking it, but wasn't entirely sure if he was hurt, either. Since he had been fine and dandy until just that morning we decided to go.

As soon as we arrived, he asked why so many kids were there. All along he had been thinking that he was going to have to go out there and skate all alone, and I think he seemed relieved when he realized that were going to be 25 other kids out there with him. But as soon as he relaxed a little, this guy walked in.

So I guess Pascal Dupuis lives in our town, and I guess his kid/kids play hockey. Sam was nervous once again. He looked around for some of his friends who play hockey here (which is why he wants to) but couldn't find them. 

They got out on the ice and he seemed to be calming down, but as soon as the actual drills began, I knew he wasn't really going to give it his all. The very first kid in his group to do the drill was awesome, and Sam has this really annoying habit of not wanting to do something if he can't be the best at it. His skating was lazy and he did seem to be weirdly not using his one foot. The he fell, and it was pretty much downhill from there.

Will he get on a team? Probably. I don't think they turn too many kids away, and even if they do there were some younger ones who would likely get cut before him. But I honestly can't say for sure. And if he doesn't it's going to be a bad, sad scene. For all of us. Keep your fingers crossed!

Dear West Virginia: F*ck You

A few months ago we decided to sell our house and move out of West Virginia, as you may recall. We put our house on the market for a fairly reasonable price, considering the local economy, and had lots of interest. I was, of course, losing my mind trying to keep things neat and tidy all day every day, plus vacating my ultra-tidy house with all four kids whenever the realtors came a-calling. But it was going well, this house selling process.

Or so it seemed.

Most of the "interested parties" we had were very concerned with the exterior surface of our house, which is a synthetic stucco. So to calm all of the fears, we had it inspected. And there were some issues. Still, we hadn't scared off everyone, so we set about finding a contractor to makes the necessary repairs.

We had three companies give us quotes, one local and two from the Pittsburgh area. The work is pretty specialized, so there aren't an abundance of companies who even do this kind of thing. The guys from PA were specialy trained and certified to work with this specific material, but the guy from WV wasn't. The bid from the WV guy was the lowest in price, but we had heard from several people we trust that he was likely to jack up that number once the work was started and we were at his mercy. Plus, by now we were only down to one "interested party" and they were from the Pittsburgh area, and more comfortable with the work being done by someone who was bonafied. AND! Not to toot our own horn, but generally speaking we are pretty decent folks who would feel badly about getting a cut-rate guy to do this work just because we're trying to sell the joint.

Long story long, we went with one of the Pittsburgh companies. Two weeks into a six week job, when a good portion of our house was torn apart, someone made an anonymous call to the WV division of labor about our contractor. He's a stand up guy, but some of his documentation required by this state had expired, so he was served with cease-and-desist papers by the state of West Virginia.

No one really knows who made that call, but I've seen WV contractor's truck in our neighborhood once or twice in the past few weeks, and I can't really imagine that any of our neighbors would do that to us. So now our contractor has one week to weather-proof our house and then his crew has to stop working until he gets all of his affairs in order. SOB has tried to make some calls to some of our local government guys, just to see how long things might take and if there's any way we can help facilitate the process. You know, since we're living in a house that has half of the windows and doors sealed shut temporarily, but he was basically told to go screw. In fact, one guy told him that we were probably going to be scrutinized even more for making the calls.

And why is all of this happening? Because we are not from West Virginia, and we opted to use a contractor who also isn't from West Virginia. Just like everything else here, from housework to hospitals, it doesn't matter how well you do your job, what matters is where you were born and where you went to college. And who does this hurt? The people of West Virginia.

Which is why I'm counting the days until we are no longer among their numbers.

The Great Plane Compromise

My brother, my only sibling, is getting married next weekend.

In FLORIDA.

We are all very happy and excited for this big event, however it has sparked a bit of fear into my heart because it means that we will have to take all four of my children on an airplane. Fortunately for me and my anxiety, there are a few factors that make this a more manageable situation for me. Number one: my parents are coming with us. Obviously my brother is also their son, so attending his wedding is not only a joyous occasion for them, but it's also a huge help for us. We will have a nice 1:1 ratio on the plane, and during a lot of our trip since we are staying together. Number two: he lives and is getting married in Orlando. This means that my kids will be four of about six hundred and ninety-two kids on our flight. This greatly increases the chance that there will be some other kid more obnoxious than one of mine. Even though that is a little evil, I take comfort in this.

However, one thing that continues to give me panic attacks is my husband. You see, SOB travels for work on a fairly regular basis, and has become something of an airport sportsman. He gets a rush from arriving at his gate mere moments from takeoff. He delights in being the last person to board. I learned this the hard way when we flew to Savannah last month.

I, on the other hand, am of the opinion that arriving at the gate about half an hour before boarding begins is ideal. It gives you enough time to use the restroom, grab a snack and a drink, browse the magazines and then use the restroom again. Plus, we're going to be hauling four kids, four car seats, two strollers, two computers, my camera equipment, and any other carry on items with us. And we're travelling on a holiday weekend.

So when we began discussing what time we would leave the house the morning of our flight, things got a little heated.

After several moments of pointed debate, and a call into my parents (my dad is my ally in this situation) we agreed that we would leave our house at 9:26am for our 12:15pm flight out of Pittsburgh. Neither one of us were willing to budge another minute, but I think that will be early enough to keep me from needing a xanax.

But I still might need a beer.