Category Archives: stress

Skunk 2.0

Posted on January 27, 2011 | 5 Comments

It’s back.

We thought we’d dispensed with it three years ago. Remember? No? Read about it here, here, here and here.

Okay, so maybe this skunk is just a distant relative.

Either way, a few day ago this little bugger must have found cousin Pepe’s former apartment, moved in and got right down to the business of stinking the place up.

It’s really horrible to be awakened by a smell. Scents are the things that reach deepest into your most primal, lizard-esque brain cells and touch your very soul, whether for good or ill. This smell is definitely squarely in the “ill” category, as it propelled us both out of bed and into various activities: me going downstairs to fetch the vinegar jug, my wife to opening windows and doors wide to let in the 30-something degree air from outside, which smelled fresh and sweet.

I filled up a spray bottle with vinegar and began saturating the surfaces and air with the tangy, neutralizing elixir. This helped some, but it required regular booster sprays throughout the day. Whatever that polecat was doing, it certainly knew how to smell up the inside of the house without being detectable from the outside.

I called up the same wildlife guy as last time, and he came out and set traps the very next day.

Nothing caught so far, but it’s only a matter of time.

And this time, I am going to put up the wire mesh around the deck to keep that bugger OUT. Between that and a regular application of cayenne pepper spray in the back yard, we shouldn’t have skunk problems any more.

Michael asked me why God made skunks, if they’re so stinky and cause so much trouble. It was difficult for me to provide a good answer: “God needs skunks here for a good reason. Daddy can’t really figure out what that reason is, but God’s a lot smarter than daddy so that’s why He’s in charge.”

I am going to ask Him when I get the opportunity, though.

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Posted in dad, frustration, life, stress

Selah

Posted on October 26, 2010 | 6 Comments

Sunday our long-awaited Oregon weather finally returned, in the form of a deluge of near-Biblical proportion. The sky flashed with lightning and rang with thunder, the wind howled, and the streets became rivers.

Up until then the weather had been unseasonably dry, as well as rather warmish. Then came Sunday’s display. It’s as though the weather was heading out to the back deck with its morning coffee, caught sight of the calendar and said “Oh, shoot! It’s almost November!” then bolted, shoeless, out the front door to try to catch up with as much of  autumn as it could before it had to make the winter deadline.  It was apparently quite angry with itself for missing out on the season, judging by the ferocity of the downpour.

And I have nearly zero interest in setting up my Halloween decorations.

This, I do not understand. I really enjoy Halloween, and I have a big list of things that I should have gotten to by now, but haven’t. And I’m not stressed about it, because my lack of available time has been countered with an equal lack of enthusiasm.

I’m not sure if it’s because the forecast for Halloween night calls for rain, or the recent issues we’ve been having with Michael. He’s moved past The Marble Incident, and has grown the wiser for it (that’s what I’m telling myself, anyway.), and his attitude toward going to school has improved tremendously. But there is still progress to be made here in general.

And there are a number of other things going on here that have sapped a lot of our strength and have unfortunately left me, at least temporarily, with a hazy sort of ennui toward just about everything.

Not the least of the burden centers on an item I’m concentrating on at work, which I’ve likened to attempting to deconstruct a Picasso painting and re-envision it as a Country-Western ballad. In an engineering sort of way. It can be demotivating to have a deadline approaching while still attempting to wrap your brain around something that seems practically insurmountable.

And of course the standard level of house work and day-to-day life effort continues ceaselessly, despite the best efforts of my wife and myself to keep up, having long abandoned any dream of getting ahead of it all.

It can get a fellow down, if down is given much latitude.

But such is life, and it moves along, and year moves on to year, and things change, and downs are always followed by ups. What we struggle with today will not be what we struggle with five years from now, and you never know what’s around the corner, and whether something that appears as a trouble now will turn out to be a blessing later.

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Posted in holiday, ponderings, stress

The Song Remains The Same

Posted on October 6, 2010 | 4 Comments

A new school year. A new school.

Same boy, same issues.

I won’t bother with the in-depth recap; those who’ve muddled through this blog from the start will know that we’ve been through this before.

Three things: 1) Michael does not want to go to school. 2) Michael does not behave well when he is at school. 3) He’s begun wetting the bed again.

All summer long we’d talked up his new adventure in the fall: a real school, with classrooms and teachers and a principal and a playground and a flagpole and a lunch room and everything. He was so excited.

Until it finally came time to go.

The first day wasn’t too bad… there was some reluctance to let mommy and daddy leave, some clinging to a leg, some tears. But it was soon rectified by savvy, nearby teachers who recognized our struggle and who then swooped in to engage Michael and whisk him out to the playground.

The next day was far worse: Michael’s mommy was subjected to severe clinging and a lot of tears.

By the third day, Michael had for all practical purposes grown talons to cling on to mommy’s leg, and was flooding the school’s entry hall with tears. Not good.

Daddy stepped in and took over the morning drop-off. Little boy talons cannot sink into daddy’s leg nearly as deep, so it’s easier to pry him off.

We also started seeing the bed wetting begin. Michael hadn’t wet the bed in a year, so this must be stressful for him. We re-instituted using pull-ups at night time, and making sure he doesn’t drink anything past 6:00 PM.

We made sure he had protein for breakfast. We made sure he had plenty to drink. We made sure he had plenty of time to wake up, get dressed and get to school so that morning wasn’t a rush but a relaxing glide into the school day. And he stays perfectly relaxed and happy each morning until the van passes the flashing yellow lights of the school zone. Then the tension begins.

Some days I’ve had to just walk away and leave him there in the entrance, crying. It makes me feel three inches tall. One time I found myself calling “help!” when I didn’t see a teacher nearby, and the school counselor zipped out from the office and gently took Michael from me, explaining that I had to go to work.

Even though Michael does eventually calm down from the morning drop-off trauma, the rest of the day does not necessarily go smoothly.
I believe it was on his second day that I received a phone call from the school principal, who calmly went over a list of actions that Michael was alleged to have committed against other students: hitting, spitting, name calling.

My blood ran cold listening to that report, knowing that we absolutely do NOT condone any of those behaviors at home, and that the old patterns were playing out again.

The very next day, I got another call from the principal with a fresh new list.

This continued for several days. I was pretty sure she had my number on speed dial.

And then one day, the principal called not only to read off a list of behaviors, but to tell me that another little boy in his class is afraid to go to school because of Michael, and that this little boy’s parents are concerned.

Lord, help us.

The principal suggested that we meet with her, Michael’s teacher, the school counselor and the school psychologist.

I told my wife about this, and we both sighed deeply, wondering if somehow they were going to find a way to expel him from school. We thought the worst. I envisioned us quitting our jobs and living in a trailer somewhere, with our unschooled six-year-old bouncing off the walls, rows of bed sheets hanging outside to dry on the lines.

On the day of the meeting, my wife and I were both dreading what we would face. We were expecting an inquisitional tribunal, a star chamber that would pass judgment and pronounce sentence upon us.

Instead, they were very positive and interested in helping Michael succeed in his school. They worked with us to exchange ideas, discuss options and create a plan for both school and home that would help Michael in the best way for him. They asked our permission to work individually with him at school to see what might be causing him so much stress, why he sometimes acts with no thought for others, and how he might learn coping skills and self control.

The meeting went well, and my wife and I are encouraged now. We are hoping that with a concerted effort, we can help Michael grow out of the negative behaviors we’re used to and into mature, positive behaviors we know he’s capable of.

It will take time and work, but being encouraged is huge step forward.

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Posted in inscrutable, michael, parenting, stress

Random Stuff

Posted on September 29, 2010 | 6 Comments

The last few weeks have been, as they say in the old curse, “interesting.”

As I’d mentioned some time ago, our dishwasher broke. It’s still broken. Sears said they put an “emergency rush order” in for our part, which means it only takes two weeks for it to get here instead of seventy. When challenged with the concept that in this day of FedEx and overnight shipping I should expect a part to be available much sooner than that, they told me (in so many words) they don’t care. I now am certain of where we won’t be shopping for our next major appliance.

Michael’s been having some difficulties adjusting to his new school. I’ve been getting calls from his principal on pretty much a daily basis for one thing or another, including fighting with another student or random acts of misbehavior. In the morning when I drop him off, he cries, citing various reasons as to why his “feelings are hurt” when I leave. Today’s reason: “I don’t like it when other mommies and daddies are in your way.” It hasn’t helped that there’s a cold bug going around and we’ve all fallen prey to it at one point or another.

Yesterday I had to see the dentist to have a filling re-done. He’s a competent dentist, but having dental work done is never a picnic. Things went okay during the drilling phase; as okay as it could ever be hoped for. It was when the rubber dam and clamp were installed that my sinuses decided to deliver unto my throat a bolus of phlegm. My uvula responded by swelling to the size of a Buick, effectively blocking my airway.

Immobilized and prosthetized I could neither spit nor swallow. My only other options were to silently drown or use my epiglottis to continually juggle the wad of goo until the ordeal was over. The hygenist must have noticed my eyes rolling back up into my head because she mercifully prodded the slurp tube down behind the dam to clear things out.

The weather has been unseasonably hot. Like, making the tomatoes regret having dropped their leaves and spurring the spiders into an unprecedented frenzy of web construction (their favorite venue is always the front walkway, at my face level). To misquote Mark Twain, “The warmest summer I spent in Portland was just after autumn began.” It makes it difficult to really concentrate on Halloween preparations, particularly when venturing into the attic to retrieve six boxes of decorations renders one weak, dehydrated and drenched in perspiration. But work progresses, and next week I should have a decent update to present: seven new tombstones and a new ghost effect for the front yard, plus a sneak peek at next year’s plans.

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Posted in family, life, ponderings, stress

On Keys and Tears

Posted on September 17, 2010 | 4 Comments

I lost my keys this morning.

I don’t mean “Whoops, I dropped them… where did they go?” kind of lost, I mean I made them vanish into non-existence. For a short time, anyway.

It was because my mind is elsewhere, either hiding or trying to solve some dilemma that really has no solution.

Upon leaving the house this morning, I nearly forgot to give my wife a kiss goodbye, which is not like me at all. Michael chattered all the way to the car as we got in and buckled him in place.

As I was getting in the driver’s seat I noticed that I didn’t have my keys with me. Whoops.

“Just sit tight, Michael. I’ll be right back.” I shut his door and ran back to the house, and knocked on the door urgently. My wife ran to the door and unlocked it.

“What’s the matter?”

“I don’t have my keys with me!” I said, frantically.

We did a quick search of my standard key landing spots but turned up nothing.

“Here, just take mine,” she said, and handed me the spare set she keeps.

“Thanks, sweetie. See you at lunch,” I said, and kissed her goodbye again.

About halfway to school, my mind delivered to me a startling bit of logic: ‘If you didn’t have your keys, how did you get in the car in the first place?’

Suddenly I remembered having them. I remember pushing the button on the fob to open the door. I remember taking them out of the cubby by the front door, and I remember holding them as my wife gave me the requisite pout for nearly forgetting that goodbye kiss.

So I had my keys. Somewhere in the car.

I did find them, eventually, tucked underneath the center console. How they got there I have no recollection.

This is the issue: where’s my mind? What’s consuming my brain cells?

I believe it is worry. Or at least, a buried anxiety concerning my little boy and his brand-new school career.

He’s been having some difficulty adjusting to going back to school, and having to leave his home and his mommy. She hasn’t been having the easiest time with it either, and I think he picks up on that to some degree…

It’s that critical point where I walk him into school and then give him a hug and say “go and play” before turning on my heel and leaving; it’s then that we both have a sense of discomfort. He looks up at me with his big blue eyes and earnest expression, searching my face for reassurance, looking to confirm that it’s right for him to be here. And I have a hard time delivering on that. There’s a big piece of me that wants to scoop him up and take him back home.

The few times his mom has brought him to school were more difficult. He’d cry, which would make her cry, which would make him cry more… luckily the teachers and the principal are right there, and being entirely used to that scenario, will cheerfully whisk him outside to play with the other kids.

It’s difficult for us. Not that we don’t think he’s ready or that he shouldn’t be going to Kindergarten. I just think we’re having trouble adjusting to the fact that he’s really there, and that he’s taking his first real steps along the path that will eventually lead to complete independence.

To help him cope with his own uncertainty, I’ve reminded him many times that mommy goes to work, daddy goes to work and his sisters go to school – so we all have places to be. And I remind him that he’s a big boy, and big boys go to school. He hasn’t entirely bought into this yet, though. He told his mom that he wants to be a little boy again and not go to school.

Am I worried about him? No. Every day it gets a little better, and he has an easier time with the farewell hug before running off to play. He even announced this morning that he wants to ride to school on the bus.

Growing up, getting bigger, leaving behind baby-hood; these will all come easier to him as the weeks pass. He’ll make friends and start getting into the groove of being an elementary school kid.

I’m not sure it’s going to be as easy a transition for his mom and me. We’ll just have to do a better job of keeping it to ourselves.

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Posted in frustration, parenting, ponderings, stress

TGIM

Posted on April 5, 2010 | 9 Comments

What a weekend.

Friday I came home early, having contracted whatever plague Michael had brought home. The disease we’d shared was characterized by an unrelentingly stuffy nose. He suffered through his bout by continual, vigorous sniffing. This of course served no useful purpose other than to annoy his older sister; it did not provide any relief for his symptoms. Since Oregon doesn’t allow the OTC sale of Psuedoephederine HCL, there was little to do but just ride it out.

And there wasn’t much rest to be had on Friday anyway as there were many errands to be accomplished, for which I volunteered to be chauffeur. Fortunately I got something akin to rest for the half hour that sister S had her physical therapy appointment. Michael and I sat in the car in the parking lot. I attempted to allow myself to dip down into a lower state of consciousness briefly while Michael peppered me with questions from the back seat regarding the movie he was watching (Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs).

The real fun began at midnight.

Michael woke up because he heard the downstairs phone loudly declare its rapidly declining battery life. His manner of dealing with this crisis is to report it to his parents immediately. And that meant crawling into bed with us. I tried my best to remain inert, but my alleged snoring was found to be disturbing to Michael’s mommy, and amusing to Michael. I was asked to roll over. Instead I got up and went downstairs, first and foremost to grind that annoying phone into a fine powder put the phone back on the charger, and then to curl up on the couch where I wouldn’t disturb anyone. My absence proved more disturbing than my snoring, so I was soon joined by my wife and son. We watched “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” yet again.

At 2:30 I put Michael back to bed, and his mom and I tried to recapture our sleep.

At 7:30, Michael comes bombing into our room, chipper and fresh as a daisy, ready to greet the day.

I opted against decaf coffee that morning.

We got a few clean-up and preparation projects accomplished, and took Michael to “The Chicken Nugget Store” (aka McDonald’s) as per our standing agreement: if he has a good week at school, he gets a treat on the weekend. This week he picked a trip to McDonald’s for chicken nuggets and playtime on the indoor play structure.

Naturally he spent his hour playing on the videogames there instead of crawling, sliding and climbing on the play structure.

Fortunately he did nap. It was a requirement that he do so, or his mom and I would shoo the Easter Bunny off the next morning. My wife and I attempted to catch naps ourselves, though that was difficult with one absent teenager choosing that time to provide sketchy text information regarding when her impromptu visit with her friend would be over, and when and where she’d need to be picked up.

Sunday started rainy again. I had vowed that after Church, I’d finish working on the hot tub. The week before I’d refilled it and started it up, only to find that rather than starting up and running, it would merely emit an ominous buzzing sound. After shutting off the power, I pulled open the spa’s electrical control box to discover that the GFCI was not wired properly. I’d need to repair that. To compound this repair job, I thought it would be smart to disassemble the jet diverter unit as well, since over the years the jet control knob had been getting increasingly difficult to turn.

I learned a valuable lesson right then: do not attempt to undo plumbing in a system that is currently under a great deal of water pressure.

So this weekend, since the hot tub had completely drained itself, I would fix the diverter and the faulty GFCI. Fortunately the diverter was easy to fix: a little smear of vaseline on the o-ring and it was perfectly happy. The GFCI was a different matter. The one in the hot tub was not wired right, meaning our beloved hot tub had been a potential death trap for as long as we’ve had our house. Code states that the GFCI be in the breaker at the main box, so I bought one online for what I knew to be a great price.

Sunday afternoon I shut down the power, and attempted to remove the electrical panel. It was then that I discovered that the shelves I’d put up in the garage included a brace that was covering three of the screws securing the panel.

Brilliant.

I had to cut holes in the brace to get the screws undone.

With that complete, I peeled back the panel cover (which had been left open). I was greeted with a black spider the size of Rhode Island, a critter that had been happily living under the electrical panel cover, and who was only millimeters from my fingertips at one point.

I am not a lover of spiders. I must have given out an involuntary scream (yes, I confess – they really bother me that badly) because my wife called out “Tom! Are you okay? What happened?”

I met her at the garage door, still shuddering.

“S- s- sp- spiiiiiider!”

Michael of course had to see, so I led him outside to view. Once he got within eight feet he ran inside and cowered under a blanket on the couch. I dragged out my favorite spider-slaying device, the trusty Miele vacuum.

Once the spider was devoured, I was able to move on to replacing the hot tub circuit breaker.

After pulling out the old one, I discovered that my low-cost, sight-unseen internet purchase was the wrong type.

So here I learned another lesson: be sure you know the manufacturer of your electrical panel before buying circuit breakers.

After all that, I could not finish my project. This weekend warrior had been defeated.

I hate when that happens. Makes me glad for Monday.

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Posted in family, life, night, stress

Trouble. With a capital “M”

Posted on February 26, 2010 | 10 Comments

Upon picking up Michael from Ms S’s yesterday, I was for the third time this month presented with The Book.

I do not like being presented with The Book.

It is unpleasant. It is distasteful. It is wearying.

I lightly skimmed the words in the book, wincing at reading the narration of Michael’s unprovoked aggression toward his classmates. It was more than I could bear to read just then.

According to the book, and Ms S who was standing right in front of me relaying a more thorough account of the day’s meanness, Michael had found a piece of sharp plastic and brandished it against several classmates, scratching a few of them maliciously. When asked why, he gave no reason nor did he express remorse.

Later he was witnessed throwing a toy at another boy, claiming that the boy was “the new kid,” implying that he was establishing his dominance as an upper classman.

He was also overheard telling a little girl that she’s a loser, making her cry.

Reading that just made my heart sink.

If there’s anything I cannot stand, it’s a bully. And evidently that’s what I have here. Michael is exhibiting the behavior of bully and coward.

It scares me to think how this could progress, if it were to continue into his teen years. It scares me to think what sort of adult he could turn in to.

At home last evening, instead of getting choice time or after-dinner treats, he and I had a discussion.

I explained to him that what he’s doing is not only wrong, it’s hurtful and mean, and I won’t tolerate it. I told him I would not let him veer off course. He said he wants his friends to like him, and I told him that the best way to make that happen is to be a good friend to them. Being kind, giving, loving, generous, compassionate and sympathetic are the keys to winning friends.

Honestly, I’m at a loss to explain his behavior: where he learned it, what provokes it, why he continues it.

And I’m at an utter loss as to how to address it.

I just hope and pray that God gives me some insight, and that we can get him back on the right track.

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Posted in frustration, michael, parenting, stress

Spare a Quarter?

Posted on January 25, 2010 | 13 Comments

I really need to buy myself a sense of humor.

The fact that my wife laughed at my irritation this morning is a clue upon which I ought to ruminate at length.

You see, I was in a rush to get out the door. This is my normal operating mode on any given weekday.

I knew Michael was up, as I practically tripped over him as he lay there on the stairs, enrobed in every blanket he owns, like a giant, pulsating parasite drawing nutrients out of the carpeting.

“Not a good place to be, sport,” I said, stepping over the multi-hued mass and continuing on my way. I heard him bump down each tread on his way to the landing. He crawled over to the chair in front of the computer to watch the screensaver as I prepared a simple breakfast for his mom and myself. She was on her way out as well, having an early doctor’s appointment.

“I’m going back upstairs, Michael,” I said, but he remained at the computer.

My wife and I dined in our room while watching the news.

“Is Michael up?” she asked me.

“Yes. He wanted to hang around downstairs and look at the computer. He’s probably shutting it down or something,” I said.

We finished our breakfast and I took the breakfast tray downstairs, passing Michael as he came up.

“I need to get you dressed, little man. Then you can have breakfast so we can get you to school,” I told him. He did not say a word.

In the kitchen, as I took the dishes off the tray, I heard the bedroom door shut.

This is not a good sign. When Michael gets into our bedroom, he thinks he can set himself up to watch his favorite channel, Sprout, without restriction of any kind. He knows the rule on weekdays is that he has to be dressed and fed and completely ready to go to school before he can even look at the TV.

I went upstairs to investigate, and our bedroom door was locked. I heard Michael moving just on the other side of the door, followed by his quick retreating footsteps.

“Michael! You unlock this door!” I tried the knob a few times for emphasis.

“I’m watching Sprout, daddy!” he said, gleefully. He needed only add “neener, neener, neener” to complete his taunt.

Seething, I went to fetch the door lock pin from its secret hiding place (in Michael’s room – shhh, don’t tell him), and after trying it, remembered that the door lock to mommy & daddy’s bedroom doesn’t use that kind of lock. I’d need to go all the way to the garage to get the jeweler’s screwdrivers to open it.

I shouted again through the door: “Michael! Open this door!”

This time he answered, and unlocked it. I think he knew he wouldn’t ultimately win this battle.

I immediately turned off the TV.

“Get downstairs now, mister. No TV for you at all this morning,” I said.

From the bathroom I heard my wife say “I told you you’d get in trouble, Michael.”

She’d been in there the whole time.

It was only later when I explained that Michael had locked the door that she laughed.

I’m glad she found it humorous.

I’d hate to think my irritation was for no good purpose.

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Posted in frustration, morning, stress

Why I’m In A Hurry

Posted on June 8, 2009 | 11 Comments

Sunday. 1:30 PM. I’m rushing to the grocery store for the second time in two hours.

Rushing. Hurrying. Again.

As I’m driving, I begin to ponder upon my nearly constant need to hurry.

So many people have said, for so many years, that we as a people need to slow down; that our pace is killing us. I believe that to be true. I’ve long lamented the fact that in this age of amazing technological advances, we have less leisure time than ever. The 1950’s lied to us, claiming that science and industry would give us more time to enjoy ourselves and live richer lives.

But still, I’m rushing. I’m well aware of the fact that my driving like a maniac and passing cars (in a relatively safe manner, of course) will probably net me 45 seconds to one minute of reclaimed daylight.

And in my measured opinion, I do in fact need those 45 seconds.

For in my mind I have resolved my need to rush just now, and can extrapolate this situational need to nearly every other rushing situation I’ve experienced as a dad.

Let’s back up a bit to the start of the day.

Things really began just before church. My wife was at work for the day, meaning I was solely in charge of three teenagers and a five-year-old. I’d already taken one teenager to the zoo, where she’s a volunteer. She’d be staying there most of the day.

When I got back, I got Michael and myself ready for church. Michael’s remaining sisters were not up to going to church, and I was not up to fighting with them about it. Instead, I left them a list of chores. This is our standard practice: go to church, or do good works.

On the way back from church, I stopped at the store to get a few things. One daughter had volunteered to make sandwiches for dinner, which sounded fine to me. But while at the store I realized that my wife would have had a sandwich for lunch, and I can’t abide meal repeats. So I decided to make pizza instead. Michael asked for a kid-style TV dinner (one that has chicken nuggets and pudding with sprinkles) for his lunch, and I obliged.

Upon arriving home, I see that the girls have done their chores, but only to about a C+ level. I give them a quick review of proper vacuuming and dish-washing procedure, and begin unloading the groceries.

At this point, the race began.

I realize that I have a short amount of time to make pizza dough, because it takes half an hour to get going, and four hours to rise properly. Timing is everything. But first I have to make Michael’s lunch.

The phone rings, it’s my wife, asking me how things are going. Michael wanders over to one of his sisters and picks a fight. My wife doesn’t need a direct answer to her question, as she can hear the rather thunderous admonishments I have to deliver.

I turn over Michael’s lunch prep to other sister while I get things ready for pizza dough making. Have to clean the stove top. Have to clean a few more dishes. Daughter and I are trying to avoid each other in the kitchen.

I get the yeast started, and then discover I’m out of flour.

Not good.

I have to get flour, NOW. There is no alternative.

I’m left with a big quandary: leave Michael here and be more efficient at the store, or take him with me and risk the possibility of being so distracted by his continual stream of questions that I come out of the store with frozen peas and wart remover instead of flour.

To further complicate things, I have to go to the store that’s farther away because I also need to pick up a prescription that cannot wait until tomorrow.

Time is of the essence. I decide to leave him home. I can be back in fifteen minutes if I don’t have any hindrances. And I’m going to need every blessed second of that time in order to get the dough finished on time so that I can put Michael down for a nap at the right time and get to the other projects I have to work on, then pick up my other daughter, fire up the oven, prepare the ingredients, make the pies and serve them up on time.

The day is essentially schedule-driven. Miss a step, and chaos reigns.

“I’m going to the store,” I tell my daughter L. You two keep an eye on Michael, please.”

Her eyes get wide as saucers. I understand her fear. When he finishes his lunch, he’ll be a free radical, flitting through the house causing untold mayhem until I get back. There’s no telling what he might do to them, the house or himself while I’m gone. When he’s tired and bored, Michael is a juggernaut.

Which is why I need to hurry.

NEED to hurry.

And as I do, I naturally get behind every slow driver in Portland. It’s as if they have some sort of cosmic twitter feed that alerts them to a man in a rush, and guiding them all to congregate in front of me on the street that I need to traverse.

Get to store. Get flour. Get prescription. Hurry. The checker at the store noticed that I didn’t have Michael with me.

“Left him at home this time?”

“Yes, with his sisters. Which is to say I don’t have much time.”

“He sure is a ball of energy,” she says. My son can officially claim infamy.

I made it home after seventeen minutes, with flour and prescription, and fortunately Michael had been good for his sisters.

And while I was able to pick my schedule back up and forge ahead, the rest of the day went similarly, most notably when I was in the midst of actually baking pizzas and had to keep checking in my zoo volunteer daughter as her pick-up time moved from 4:30 to 5:30 to 6:00 to 6:20, keeping in mind that we all had to be finished with dinner by 7:30 so two of my daughters would be ready to head back to their mom’s by 8:00.

Such is life, and why throttling back is not an option.

And even though many may opine about its pointlessness, or perhaps even wag at you the finger of reproof, every mom and dad out there understands exactly what I mean: hurrying is an inescapable aspect of parenting.

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Posted in family, parenting, stress

Friday Fragments

Posted on June 5, 2009 | 9 Comments

A few random, short things worth mentioning, since other topics I have in the works are not ready for prime time:

Medication
Michael’s getting weaned off of his anti-seizure medication. Just recently I posted that his EEG came back normal and that the doctor would be letting us know whether or not we could start easing back on his daily medication. A few days ago Michael’s Mommy met with the doctor and came back with a weaning plan.

He has been taking Depakote in the form of “sprinkles,” which basically means you take apart a capsule of the medication and dump the contents on something he can eat in a spoon, like yogurt or ice cream. The plan we have now calls for 1/2 doses. Meaning, we take apart a capsule and then halve the contents. Over other, more unscrupulous methods, I’ve chosen to do this on paper using a paring knife, and dump half the contents on the spoon and the other half back in the capsule. No rolled-up $100 bills needed, not that we have any.

The other really fun part of this weaning process is coping with the possibility of Michael having a Grand Mal seizure, which is French for “Really Bad Seizure”. While remote, it may occur at any time during and for some time after weaning. And if this does in fact happen, we have some additional anti-seizure medication. It’s a suppository. I think the drug companies do this to us just to test our level of dedication to our children. Or maybe they just need a laugh. Every time I picture cramming a waxy wad up my child’s butt while he’s in the midst of flopping around maniacally and potentially swallowing his tongue, I get a little anxious.

I’m really not too worried about it though.

Storm
During the last few minutes of my work day yesterday, one of my co-workers started loudly announcing over the cubicle walls that they’re predicting penny-sized hail. I popped up like a prairie dog, as did so many others, and listened more closely. A big storm was headed our way, 60 mile-per-hour winds, lightning, hail. I looked out the window at an ominous dark cloud moving slowly toward us from the southeast. I shut my system down and headed out immediately.

As I quickly walked into the stair well, I looked out the side windows at the scene toward the north. I wasn’t sure what I was looking at, but the horizon was a greyish-brown haze. In the ten years I’ve lived here, it’s never looked like that.

Coming out the front of the building I was greeted with a hot wind and a cloud of dust. The trees in the parking lot were bent over at various angles, and various sorts of litter were being blown high into the air. My eyes watered over instantly as the dust blew in at high speed.

I got in my car and hurried home as quickly as I could, dodging flying tree limbs and debris. I called my wife to let her know that she should stay put. She reported that the rain just started. Then suddenly a tree fell over onto the road about two cars ahead of me, and we all jammed on our brakes. Almost instantaneously, fifteen people piled out of their cars and ran to the tree and heaved it off to the side.

By the time I got home, the rain was coming down in earnest. I pulled my car into the garage, then hurriedly brought my wife’s car in as well. It was parked right next to a birch tree that is famous for tossing large branches even in the slightest breeze. I figured in this gale it would detonate like a bomb.

Then the lightning and thunder came, over and over. We hunkered in our little home watching the news intently. Reports from all over showed downed trees and power outages, floods and injuries from lightning strikes.

Then, as quickly as it came, it was over. The power of God’s creation in a very small way displayed, as a reminder of who is sovereign.

Owies and Bedtime
The other day Michael tore up the bottom of his foot. Not even sure how, but he got some good scrapes. Required band-aids, of course.

But for some reason, Michael is heartbroken that these wounds are healing. A few nights ago he could be heard up in his room bawling over the fact that his owies were going away.

“Make new ones, daddy!”

As tempting as that sounded, I had to refuse. “Michael, owies are bad. We want them to go away. God made us to heal to keep us healthy and safe.”

“No! I want my owies! I don’t want to be healthy!”

So for nearly a week now, we’ve been going round and round about his owies. And we’ve been fighting the bedtime routine as though it were a new thing.

Thursday one of my daughters informed me that she had a choir concert that night, which completely rebooted my plans for the evening. On my way home I had to scramble to come up with a new game plan, since my wife was working until midnight and I had to take care of three teenagers and a preschooler by myself. One of them would be going off to her daily tutoring session, one I had to take to her concert, which left one teenager available to be babysitter to Michael. She agreed readily, and Michael was just as excited.

As the concert was nearing its conclusion, my eldest daughter called me to plead with me to hurry home because Michael wouldn’t stay in bed.

Sigh.

So once the concert let out, we beat feet home. By that time, daughter number 2 had come home from tutoring, which meant she could stay with Michael while I ran her sisters across town to their mom’s house.

Michael was in bed and quiet by this point, but I knew it wouldn’t last.

“If Michael gives you any trouble, just let him get up. Don’t fight with him,” I advised.

“Okay,” she said.

Sure enough, when I had finished my taxi errand and returned for the night, I found Michael sitting squarely in front of the television.

“Off to bed,” I said. He quickly obeyed and ran upstairs. I put him to bed and admonished him to go to sleep.

After a few bouts of crying and giving random reasons for it (including his sorrow over his healing injuries), at around 10:30 he finally stayed quiet and went to sleep for the night.

So far, five is proving to be a very interesting age. Not that he has been dull up to now… but it’s a different sort of interesting.

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Posted in life, michael, stress