The Average Blogger

Exercise in Bureaucracy

Today we went to see two, count them, two psychiatrists.

Good news first: The private-sector psychiatrist was great.  We are on track, we have a road map, by next week we will probably have medication, a therapist schedule and further evolving strategies to help lengthen the kid's focus and fuse.

And thennnnnn there's the public sector.  The school district psychiatrist. A woman who has never met the Young Prince, who apparently had "a file," although she didn't show us what was in it, and who wasted absolutely no time in being abrasive and offputting to all three of us. 

I didn't expect this meeting to be pleasant. I didn't really expect it to go well.  But I didn't expect the government flunkie to go out of her way to be uncooperative and hostile. But there she was. 

Here are the top five instances of things she did. 

1:  She wanted to talk about a situation the YP did not want to discuss. He got sullen. I got irritated that he was sullen and remonstrated that he speak when spoken to.  She sent him out of the room, and told me "I sent him out because you were getting frustrated. I know you are anxious to get through this, and we all want to hurry up and be done."  Well, no, I wasn't frustrated because he was wasting time. I was frustrated because he was being impolite.  And I told her so.

2: We have an outside diagnosis from another doctor of ADHD. (A diagnosis resulting from a costly, three-week-analysis of 4 hours of testing and surveys from us and teachers.) In this 20-page diagnosis (which this woman looked at for all of 2 minutes, tops), there is a sentence that says "these dificulties do appear to contribute to feelings of anger/frustration, a low sense of self worth, conflicts and noncompliant behavior."  The outside doctor who delivered this diagnosis went over it with us for two hours.  We were all very clear that Difficulties A were the cause of Feelings B, and that dealing with Difficulties A would in time have a mitigating effect on Feelings B.  This woman INSISTED we were wrong, that Feelings B were, in fact, the real problem, and that Difficulties A are "part of the bigger picture, but not the primary problem to address."  We asked what led her to this conclusion and her response was that  "it is written in that document," citing the afore-quoted sentence.  When we questioned this, her response was an infuriating "As a PROFESSIONAL, reading another PROFESSIONAL'S opinion, this is what it says." Really? I read for a living. Comprehension is a pretty big requirement of my job. But apparently I'm not a PROFESSIONAL. 

(For the record, we asked the second-appointment psychiatrist to interpret the same sentence when she saw us.  She looks at it and goes, "Difficulties A lead to feelings B.  Deal with A and B is likely to fall into place." I wonder if the private sector doctor qualifies as a PROFESSIONAL?)

So all of this is a big windup to District Witch insisting that he is Depressed, that ADHD isn't a problem at all, that we need to address his Sadness.

3: The YP came back in for another try at talking to her with us in the room.  She immediately poked at him again about past transgressions that he is embarrassed about without really explaining to him why she was asking.  He said, "I don't understand why you are asking that. We aren't here to talk about that." I said, "Well, no, we're here to talk about whatever she wants to talk about. And I guess she wants to talk about all of it. So, you ready?" He said no and left the room again. The woman looks at me and says, "I know you say you don't see it, but that is what Sad looks like." 

You guys know me. I'm sure you can imagine how I would have reacted if I were the one lacking impulse control.  As it was, I gaped at her and finally said, "I'm not quite as dense as all that, thank you. I see what you see. What I'm saying to you is that what YOU are seeing, right this second, is not the norm."   No answer to that, just one of those "Welllll, if you SAY SO" kind of disbelieving looks.

4: Eventually she gave the adults a bunch of forms to fill out (which we did without even looking, as they are duplicates of forms we have filled out twice already,) and she took the kid off to interview him alone.  This was his description of what she said to him:

"So you had problems with a kid at school?"
"Yes.  I wanted him to leave me alone, and he wouldn't, and the only way I could think to make him was to threaten him."
"So you wanted to be left alone?"
"Yes. I prefer to be left alone when I'm trying to do things at school."
"By everyone?"
"Yes."
"Even your parents?"
"What? No. You know that's not what I meant."
"I don't know what you meant. You need to say what you mean."

Before we got the details of that conversation, she comes back to tell us that he raised his voice and "alarmed" others in her office. Well, if that's what she said to him, I'm glad he "alarmed" others, because I would have been alarmed if he hadn't reacted that way.

5: So the upshot is that based on a mystery file, a misinterpretation of an outside diagnosis, and god knows what other flawed reasoning, she has determined that he is unsuited to be part of a regular-size mainstream class because he doesn't have a firm grasp of how disruptive he is.  We ask her what that means -- if he's not going back to his class, where is he going? And she says she doesn't know, because she isn't aware of the resources the school has to offer.  Then she says "There is a program called Rebound, but I don't know if they have any openings."  Basically,  her recommendation is a sort of classroom NIMBY.  Big help, that. And then she seemed baffled that we were frustrated with the lack of a clear direction on what to do next.

Fortunately, this woman's report is not the definitive ruling on what gets done.  She just files her opinions on the matter and the principal and superintendent discuss the next step. So I'm not down and out yet.  Tomorrow I am going to go see the school principal and lay all this out with her.  I'm trying to figure out the most diplomatic way to say, "Hey, you know what? That woman was a bitch, and since my kid is not an idiot, he responded to that." 

The hard part is that I'm feeling torpedoed. An unhealthy part of my mind is conjuring conspiracy fantasies that this woman and others of her ilk are in place solely to serve as impediments to Difficult Parents of Kids Who Are Hassles. I find it disheartening that nobody seems at all interested in this kid ever seeing the inside of a classroom again. I mean, yeah, OK, that's fine with me; he's learning more at home than he does in class, and in about half the time. But if they're going to make me live in this public education bureaucracy they've created, shouldn't they at least be consistent in their conviction that EVERY child is entitled to that education? Because I don't really see it manifesting here. 

With Apologies to Veronica

Tomorrow, I'll be kissing my company's paycheck-dispensing ass, but tonight, let me dream of a world without work, a world where I am free.

I miss my life, y'all.

L-7

In the past month:

The YP didn't get into a play he auditioned for.

I didn't get a job I interviewed for.

NYAB and I went to a casino and while we didn't lose all we'd allotted, we didn't come out ahead, either.

But here's the thing.  Doing all that stuff?  Way worth the loss. Sure, a different outcome would have been nice, but things are pretty good as they stand, and the experiences were educational and heartening.  Getting there was more than half the fun.

I'm having a harder time remembering that about the everyday aspects of living, I'm sorry to say.

The kid's school experience is just full of peaks and valleys, but the valleys seem a bit deeper now. We get fewer reports of problems, but what we do hear about is more extreme. Like he saves it all up and lets fly with one really horrible day, as opposed to one or two daily mishaps spread over the course of a few days.

Meanwhile, my job is less volatile, but I think I'm under sea level more than I'm over it these days, and that makes it harder to stomach the really bad things when they pop up out of nowhere. Fortunately, most of those really bad things spring from areas where I have no control and/or the impact on me is minimal, but it's still just more noise to deal with.

And at home? I'm trying to figure out what to do for my birthday. Originally I was supposed to spend my birthday in a leadership training seminar at work, but it got rescheduled. I suppose pretty much anything will be an improvement on that. NYAB had one plan that got a flat refusal from other quarters, and I'm sort of all over the place about it. I understand, but I'm irritated. I'm not surprised, but I'm disappointed for NYAB, who basically had his first effort at doing this sort of thing stomped on. I'm probably a little relieved as it lessens the impact of future criticisms from those quarters, but I'm also overreacting in my internal insistence that it'll be more fun without them anyway. So, yeah, I don't know where that lands me overall. Oh, well.

On the plus side, my birthday is also is a harbinger of warmer weather, which considerably brightens moods around here. So glad February is out the door as of this evening!

Blah, Blah, It's Been Said Better Elsewhere

But that doesn't stop me.

I may have mentioned before that I run a department at my place of employ.  One of the perquisites of this vaunted position is that when stuff happens on a weekend, I get to fill in as muscle and tissue on our otherwise skeleton crew. This basically means that from about 5 p.m. Saturday until 5 p.m. Sunday, I was immersed in the news out of Arizona, reading file after file about what it meant for various pieces of legislation, what it meant for Congress, what it meant for ... well, just about everyone except, you know, the people who actually suffered in the event.

 And the theme that kept coming back, over and over -- we should not be surprised that this wackjob opened fire in a grocery store parking lot. Why not? Well, because of the inflamed level of political rhetoric.

 Of course. How foolish of me not to realize.

 Because, see, to me that's about as silly as blaming his parents for bad genetics. Or blaming Giffords for not voting the way he thought she should. Or blaming that 9-year-old girl for being in a bad place at a bad time.

 Don't get me wrong, I do think political discourse has reached some ridiculous extremes. I think the anonymity of the Internet isn't always a good thing. Second only to religion, politics is a case where it is really sickening to read what people will post when they aren't worried about the consequences.

 And I suppose if there is a way to make some good come of this horrific event, this is as acceptable an avenue as any. I'm a big fan of anything that goads our generally savage natures into being a little more civilized and polite. I think we all -- and I do mean all: politicians, my colleagues in the media, and most of all the Great Unwashed Commenting Public -- would get a lot farther in getting things done if we could just say, "Hm. You know, from where I'm sitting that argument doesn't really hang together, and here is why, let's figure out how to fix it," than when we do things like, say, compare our opponents to Hitler, or throw bricks through their windows, or start talking about how such and such a policy is the worst thing since forever and we are all going to die.

 But that's sort of the point. Most people don't throw bricks. Most people don't buy a Glock and rip into a crowd of bystanders. In a face-to-face exchange, only those brimming with vitriol who have zero interest in results bother to bring up Hitler.

 My husband is fond of saying that we don't write highway laws based solely on the way Gary Busey rides a motorcycle. I'm pretty sure we should not rewrite our mores based solely on the way Jared Loughner might have interpreted something someone said some time.

 Everything I've read about Loughner pretty much tells me that he was every bit as likely to have looked at his bowl of Cheerios that morning and seen dozens of cross hair symbols floating in the milk. 

 Or, you know, maybe the neighbor's dog gave him a gentle nudge toward the Safeway.

 So if you are one of those people who thinks that this shooting never would have happened if Sarah Palin had just left those dang cross hairs off her campaign site, I'm sorry, you are simply part of the problem, looking for a way to advance your own agenda on the back of a terrible situation.

 If you are one of the people who thinks this is what Giffords gets for voting against Pelosi as minority leader, I find you genuinely disturbing.

But if you are someone who thinks this was a terrible thing and that perhaps the blame lies somewhere other than Mean Words, that perhaps we should be trying to figure out how this looly got himself a gun and that we should maybe be a little more cognizent of the general mental state of those around us, well, you're the person I want next to me on the bus.

If you are a rational human being, one of the Rest of Us, someone who thinks the Internet is awesome as long as you don't read any of the comments under the news stories, who always -- always, no matter what is going on -- wants to see this country trying harder to do better than it already is, who chooses to believe that most people in public office aren't in it as some kind of malicious plot to bring down the other side, who cares about your family and who aches when things like this happen, you are the person I want to know. You are the person I want to vote for.  

Blogging While Taciturn...

Doesn't really work.  But that's where I'm at.  Stuff's happened, I'm tired, talking is overrated.

The party was great.  The kids had fun, the laundry room haunted lab was scary but not too scary, the pizza was late but the kids ate it up. Takeaway lesson: Fake blood is a huge hit with the second-grade set -- even the girls, which kind of surprised me. Of course, there was that one kid who barfed when he saw it.  Oh, well. It's not a party til someone gets sick, I guess. I was more dismayed to learn he didn't know his phone number to call his mom to come get him.  (Scuse me while I enjoy this fleeting moment of smug superiority.)

The election ... ran its course.  No partisan speaking here.  The resulting work week seemed generally tolerable for everyone -- except me, which I guess is how it's supposed to go.  I'm not happy about it, and I'd be happier if I had any kind of faith that the solution for next time wouldn't again be "AB works more 40-hour workdays" (yes, literally, 40 hours for one of them -- the rest clocked in anywhere between 10 and 13,)  but for now I'll be happy that it only happens every two years, and that I did find a couple of things to suggest that might make the next time smoother. This week is another stunner, with Veterans Day looking to clock in at 16 hours in the office. Yay. I'm starting to think I need to find a new job. 

In other news, I'm almost done with my Christmas shopping/preparing.  And in two weeks, my good mood will be restored as I haul out all the winter decorations and prettify the house.

Not Your Average Blogger has asked me for my Christmas list.  Here is what I have on it so far: A laptpop and a Swiffer wet jet.  I am pathetic, y'all.  What do you think I should ask for? Give me some better ideas!

Blue meanies, black dogs, blah.

I haven't taken any pictures in ages. I don't know what's come over me, but every time I think about lugging out the camera and doing anything with it, I feel this overwhelming lethargy and desire to switch to Plan B and go back to bed.

Same with blogging here, for the most part.

Maybe it's because I'm busy with the other blog, which is going nowhere, by the way. No comments, no Facebook chatter, no Twitter followers.  I don't know how much longer I'll persist with it. Bleah.

Maybe it's because every time we go out with the kid, there is resulting behavioral drama -- on both sides -- that drives me way more insane than it should. It's hard to want to take pictures of things you'd rather forget.

Anyway, maybe it's time for an attitude adjustment. There's one more week until the kid is out for summer break. That seems like as good a breaking point as any, no?

Blizzard, Birthday, Bailout

You can be a child of God, or a child of rage, but this child of mine is apparently a child of snow.
I've mentioned before the snowstorm the night he was born -- and the worse snowstorm the day he was going to be inducted if he didn't make deadline. 

There was snow for his first birthday, but not a big deal.

There was no snow for his second birthday, but there was also no plumbing. And we had 20 people at our house.

There was heavy snow when he was 3, and we watched as the entire town descended on Chuck E Cheese when we did.

There was some snow and bowling when he was 4, a little snow and a party when he was 5, and no snow, but lots of ice at a hockey game when he was 6.

And then there was 7.  Great goshamighty.

All week the forecasters were sounding klaxons and flashing red lights.  Lock down! Get food! DO NOT LEAVE YOUR HOMES AFTER FRIDAY MORNING!

Friday morning, I went to work.  It started snowing juuust as I got on the interstate.  I kept an eye out the window all day. 

Eventually I had to go out.  The Young Prince had requested "White frosting! From a can! Not that stuff you make, the whippy kind!" and I had neglected to get any.  There was also a mixup with some birthday gifts, so I had to do some last-minute shopping on that front too.

It was still really warm -- I left my jacket undone. Snow wasn't sticking yet, and it was early afternoon.  I found the gifts, bought some lunch and headed back to the office.

Without the frosting, of course.

So I went back out at 3, and although the ground was still clear, it was getting colder. Plus, the wind was pretty crazy. You could turn any direction and it was still blowing snow smack into your face. I was unhappy to find that the first drug store only had chocolate frosting. I went to the one across a diagonal block, and bought the Last. Can.  -- blinded the whole way by big fat flakes bashing me in the eyeballs. 

I left work at 4:30 or so.  I got home with McDonald's for the family around 5:40.  This is because the interstate was deserted and the road was quite clear -- but once I got off the interstate the roads were terrible and visibility was quickly decreasing.

Error Number One: I call home and tell Not Your Average Blogger that I'm going to park at the top of the driveway. "Oh, don't do that. The plows will just come by and bury you."  So I park at the bottom, in the usual spot.

Error Number Two: Power outages were predicted.  In a display of hubris, I was sure if I baked the cake Friday night for Sunday consumption, we'd have power galore.

Still Friday night was nice. We watched a movie, I frosted the cake, we all went to bed.

8:30 next morning, we heard "Hum, click-click-click" as our cable and Sleep-Number bed informed us the power had gone out. This was quickly followed up by the YP barging into our room and announcing the lights were out.  Error Two deployed. 

The power magically returned at 11:30.  We scrambled to wash dishes, crank up the heat to 75 so the house will be warmer when the power goes out again, and throw some snow-soggy clothes in the dryer.

Error Number Three: NYAB decides to put pork chops in the crockpot instead of flash-frying them. 

Annnd, the power goes out again at 1:30.  

For whatever reason, NYAB decided to pass the time by reading aloud from the book he's currently working on. About the Donner party.  This was not helpful.  All that cold imagery and descriptions of 30-foot snowdrifts did nothing to warm my soul.

We moved up the kid's birthday celebration to alleviate powerless boredom. Fortunately, none of his gifts required electricity.

After another couple hours, we concluded that huge amounts of food would be ruined if we didn't do something, so we dumped the contents of our fridge on the deck and the contents of the crockpot into a cast-iron pot and threw that in the fireplace. 

Dinner was fantastic, though we took no photos. Error Three corrected.

The cake was a success.

Once it started to get dark, we dragged all our bedding down in front of the fire, lit some candles, told stories, and entertaine ourselves til it was the kid's bedtime. 

We brought in buckets of snow to melt for non-drinking water use, watched as the first snowplow of the night took a first pass at our street, and went to bed. 

Next morning we woke up early and started digging our way out. We only have one snow shovel, so we took turns -- not a huge rush, just to get started on the job.  I went to see if the neighbors had a spare, and was told it might be Tuesday before we had power. 

Well.  I had to be online for work at 4:30 Monday morning. That wasn't going to do.

So after that, we shoveled a bit faster.

At about 1 p.m., we were halfway up our driveway.  The kid came out and rolled some snowballs, but he wasn't a lot of help and we sent him back inside to watch the fire and make sure the house didn't burn down.

At 1:30, some guy with a snowblower showed up and did our neighbor's driveway.  As he was trundling it back down our street, I stopped him.

"How much??"
"To go all the way down?!?"
"Nah, just to where the car is. Halfway down."
"Oh. Twenty bucks?"
"SOLD!"

I gave the guy $30.  And he did in 15 minutes what would have taken us another 3 hours.  Talk about having the right tool for the job -- and he cut a path to our mailbox.  Best $30 I ever spent.

After that, we packed up, buried the food in a bit more snow, inhale a bit more smoke from the fireplace -- the whole house reeks -- and decamped for a hotel. With power. And wifi. And a pool.

And a jacuzzi.  My shoulders were shot last night but they feel muuuuch better today. 

The YP has dubbed this, "the birthday of Lights Out."   I call it, "the Donner Birthday Party." 

Of course, upon arriving here, I heard from a neighbor that our power had come back on a couple hours after we left.  We'll go back today to see if we have cable/internet/etc., or if I will be putting in another early morning shift at the hotel.

Regardless, nobody will be picking up our trash for a while.

Plan ahea....d.

Things I want before the next snowstorm (which will be Tuesday, apparently):

-- a snowblower

-- a drying rack for sopping wet snowy clothes.

-- snow boots

-- a snowblower

-- a generator

-- a snowblower

-- Waterproof pants, jackets, gloves, etc.

-- an extra snowshovel. Or a snowblower. 

Full coverage tomorrow.

Is It Still a Party if Nobody Shows?

I wouldn't know the answer to that actually, since all my hale and hearty neighbors did show up for our annual cookiefest last weekend, but  this is as close as I've ever come to having the game called on account of anything.

What got in the way? Well, first, the Senate decided to be a bunch of prideful twits and convene a jillion weekend sessions.  Then Mother Nature decided to be a prideful twit and dump 2 feet of snow on us.  So between those two things, it's hardly surprising that nobody ventured to make the 40-plus mile drive out on Saturday afternoon.  Even if they had, our road didn't get plowed, so they would have had to walk at least the last half-mile or so.

As it turned out, this was a good thing.  For one thing, I wound up having to do a number of things for work while the poor woman on call tried to get home before the subway closed. Then the YP and NeighborGirl went out and flopped around in the snow for a bit, and then the kid came in and went promptly to bed -- getting out of it only to throw up intermittently, and to come down and wanly say hello to the neighbors when they showed up for the evening portion of our party.   On Sunday he was still barfy, and the house was so, so quiet. It would have been enjoyable if not for the niggling urge every four minutes or so to go up and see if he was still breathing. NYAB and I took advantage of this relative peace to slalom the car up the driveway and to watch a few movies.

Turns out his bug was a doozy -- he was still sick Monday, so NYAB took him to the doctor while I went through another round of Senate votes. Doc said he was dehydrated (really? Go figure!)  and that if he continued to barf he would need to get an IV stuck in him.  NYAB brought him home and we tried to pump him full of Pedialyte, which of course didn't work as I only remembered to go up and tell him to drink every 40 minutes or so.  When he threw up the second time that afternoon, I handed off work to another colleague and went upstairs and monitored so that he took a sip every 5 minutes. That did the trick, he went from cracked and pale to flushed and irritable in a little over an hour.  Meanwhile, his malady ... moved south. Ugh. Still, easier to deal with than barf.

It is now Thursday and he is only now beginning to resemble his normal self. Yesterday he was still somewhat cranky and rather weepy, and wound up crashing for a 6 hour nap at about 4.  Though perhaps he was worn out by the excitement of the Christmas tree trying to commit suicide -- twice -- by toppling over and smashing several lights and ornaments, including some we'd had since I was at least 3, and possibly had been in my -- dad's? mom's? -- family longer than that. Apologies to whichever parental unit's memories just got destroyed.

Meanwhile, it is Christmas Eve and I was up at 5:30 for what I hope will be my last morning of work for a week and a half, and after I update the site one more time tomorrow, I'm done done done.  Since I've worked in some capacity every day for I can't even remember how long at this point -- it feels like Thanksgiving was the last day I didn't touch anything office-related, but that's probably wrong -- I'm ready.  I hate the Senate. I really do.

So tonight I will wrap a jillion presents and go to bed late.  And tomorrow we will get up way early to see what Santa hath wrought.  And the next day we get up before sunrise to go to the airport. And then, weather and travel gods willing, we will wing our way to Hawaii by way of Atlanta and Salt Lake City.  Part of me is sorely tempted to just spend the entire time there sleeping, but I have a feeling once I get there and see vistas with no effing snow, I will perk right up and get moving.

Is it terribly wrong that I am sincerely hoping that the BlackBerry won't work there?

See you in 2010, y'all, when I am tanned and rested.  

My Epitaph: