One of *those* days...

Dinner was in the oven and I was trying to quickly pick up around the house, while I mentally made a list of the things I'd planned to do today... but hadn't gotten done.

Realizing my list was not making me feel one bit better, but only making me feel more stressed and hurried, I shifted gears and started mentally making a list of things I had gotten done. The list started great... but deteriorated quickly.

Here's my list:

`

`1. got dinner made

2. got a little school done

3. fed the animals

4. got a shower taken

5. brushed my teeth

6. got my hair combed

7. got the toilet flushed (the kids sometimes forget)

(yes, I was getting THAT desperate to think of things I'd gotten done today)

`

`Hmm... it was definitely one of those days.

Playing hooky

R''s yearly review for DD services was yesterday, and once it was over and our service coordinator left, we should have headed right into the classroom to get school done.

But the warmth of the sun was so inviting, and the forecast for today is for a high in the low 40's (compared with yesterday's high in the 60's at least) and possibly some snow.

So, since it was likely to be the last warm day for awhile, we decided to play hooky instead and spend the beautiful afternoon exploring a walking trail near our house (we'll have plenty of time for school when it's cold and snowy out!). We've driven past this trail countless times (it's just over the hill from us) but this was the first time we actually took the time to follow it to see where it went.

A little side trail off the main trail... there were lots of these... probably made by deer.

The view from the trail. The area the trail runs through is a funny mix of natural prairie surrounded by huge expensive homes (McMansions).  The sky was just a brilliant blue...

I love the old cottonwood trees. I love the shapes their branches make, the huge trunks, and wondering about their history... What the land looked like, what was going on here, when they were just saplings.

~

After walking about a mile we found this little old building. It looked like it was made from old stone and bricks mixed with some kind of cement or plaster.

There was old balled up barbed wire and broken fence posts outside and, not far away, what looks like an old livestock chute...  M was hoping the little building was the one-room schoolhouse that used to be out here. Apparently it was just a 1/2 mile or so from our house, but many years ago, shortly after it closed, someone moved it and no one knows quite where it is now...   There are a couple of scary/sad blizzard stories connected to that lost schoolhouse and M's wondered for years what might have become of it. I had to tell him that no, this wasn't the "lost" schoolhouse... but we'll keep looking.

Another half mile or so brought us to a neighborhood and this nice little park... where R showed us that she can still hang by her knees (and M stressed... sure she would fall!).

On the way back home... R on the trail, heading toward the little stone house... with the big houses that surround this area lining the hill above it.

colors of autumn

Not long ago Leigh (Five Acres and a Dream), wrote about the beautiful colors of October on her acreage.

Well, October is over,  and it's been so dry here that most of our acreage is yellow/brown...

... but I have been loving the colors on the smoke tree this year.

It's right outside the kitchen window, and during the Fall it's beauty just seems to brighten the whole kitchen.

I like it so much I keep a "bouquet" of it's leaves on the table.

The leaves are starting to curl now, and I'm guessing it won't be long before it's bare...

... which make me appreciate it all the more during these last few days of autumn.

It must have been a slow day...

... at the sheriff's office yesterday.

I think every deputy and sheriff in the county spent the afternoon out behind our back pasture fence.

They walked around... discussing and gesturing... hung yellow crime scene tape, and took pictures of my neighbor's barn and the areas behind and to the side of it.

They stood around with clipboards, writing on papers that fluttered in the breeze.

They called the coroner, who showed up in a big black SUV with darkly tinted windows.

The neighbor's back pasture looked like an overflow lot for the county... filled with marked and unmarked county cars.

Once the coroner got there, they all stood around some more... writing on their clipboarded papers, leaning on the hoods of their cars, and sometimes wandering over to the fence to watch my neighbor's horse eat.

I could see my neighbor from time to time... which was a relief with the coroner's car sitting out there.

They never called an ambulance, and judging from the lack of urgency (and the coroner's car) I guessed that whatever was behind the neighbor's barn was already dead.

After several hours of doing whatever they were doing, they rolled up the yellow police tape, and one by one all the cars drove out of my neighbor's pasture and left to do whatever deputies and sheriffs do on sunny Saturday afternoons when they aren't in my neighbor's pasture.

After they left, I saw my neighbor outside and walked back to the back pasture fence to make sure she was ok, and find out what had happened.

Here's what she told me...

Her husband had been doing some fencing work and had been digging a post-hole by the barn, when he dug up a large bone. He thought it was probably a deer until he dug up what looked like a knuckle bone...

That's when they decided to play it safe and call the sheriff's office.

The county deputies came and dug a little more and found a rib cage... and it looked human.

That's when the deputies called the coroner...

...and my neighbor and her husband were asked to wait in the house.

Before long, someone came and started questioning them about how long they'd owned the house, who had owned the house before them, how could they contact those people, etc.  When it was time to feed her horse, my neighbor had to be escorted by a deputy as she got the hay from the barn and carried it out to feed.

As the afternoon passed, the neighbors continued to wait at the house while the deputies, sheriff, coroner, and everyone else who was out there (about 15 people by that time) leaned on their cars, wrote on their fluttering papers, and took turns digging ever so carefully to reveal more bones.

After hours of picture taking, digging, discussing, and leaning on cars, someone finally dug down far enough to find the skull...

... of a very large dog.

With that the crime scene tape was wrapped up, everyone wrote a little more on their fluttering papers, and they all left.

My neighbor was a very good sport about the whole thing, but her husband was a little cranky about the wasted afternoon.

The only thing he was happy about is that the deputies had finished digging the hole he'd started...

... and they'd taken all the bones they'd found with them. :)

Psychiatrist, "Concrete" Children, and Other Oddities

Thanks to those who sent good thoughts and prayers in response to my "note to schizophrenia". Please know that my primary emotions in writing that were anger (ANGER!) and frustration at schizophrenia, my ever elusive nemesis... and how much is has taken (stolen) from M and from our family as a whole.

Since the onset of M's sz, back when he was just a small child, our lives have been a series of battles against his symptoms... a never ending war waged to keep M alive and healthy, and to preserve as much of his quality of life as possible.

Sometimes anger helps fuel the fight...

I saw M's pdoc last night and we decided to increase one of M's meds. Before the appointment I'd gone back through my notes for the past few months... looking at new symptoms, M's connection to reality, daily functioning, etc. and it was plain that the past two months have brought a definite worsening in terms of symptoms, connectedness, and functioning. So even though I'm always very reluctant to increase anything... what must be, must be, I suppose.

Our "new" pdoc (he's treated M for about the past year) is a good guy... but seriously quirky... and conversation, at least in my experience, is not his forte. I was pleasantly surprised last night though, that despite kind of an awkward start... the appointment went well, and we seemed to be on the same page.

With M so unstable, school time has gotten more complicated. I never know from day to day, if me telling him it's time to do school is going to set him off or not...

But despite the tension around school, R made me laugh out loud yesterday during spelling...

We've been doing Sequential Spelling this year, so basically each of the kids has a spelling test each day. I'm not going to try to explain the program... it sounds weird but both kids like it and seem to be learning to spell more complex words.

Because of the daily test format, both kids are used to spelling whatever words or short phrases I dictate to them from that day's lesson. I watch them write, and if a word is misspelled they fix it right away, then write it several more times to practice it correctly.

The last word on R's test yesterday was "prettier" and I watched as she spelled "p-r-e-t-t-e-r" , and I said "drat", because she'd left out the "i" and up until then she hadn't misspelled a single word...

Without missing a beat, she carefully wrote "d-r-a-t"...

She's such a concrete thinker, if I say it during a spelling test, it must be a spelling word...

a note to schizophrenia

Schizophrenia,`

you are a thief.

`

You steal my child's rational thoughts,

and replace them with paranoia, panic, confusion and anger.

`

You rob us of our sense of connection to the world...

leaving us isolated behind towering walls of hallucination and delusion.

`

You steal my child's trust in himself,  in his thoughts... and in our love.

`

You traumatize him... and us.

`

You steal our hours and days,

leaving behind only the tattered remnants of what might have been...

~

...had you not brought the hurricane of psychosis with you

to shred our hopes, plans, and sense of well being.

``

Schizophrenia,

you are the lowest of thieves...

you steal the irreplaceable from a child.

*~*daybook*~*

FOR TODAY

November 1, 2010

Outside my window... it's still dark, and quiet... not even Tucker is up yet.

I am thinking... that I need to call today and make a bunch of appointments. M needs to see both the psychiatrist and orthopedist this month, I need to set up a yearly review for R, and there are a couple other more minor appointments that need to be made.

I am thankful for... the fun the kids had yesterday trick or treating on Main Street, and that R heard, "Thriller", the song she'd been waiting to hear (they had big speakers set up playing various "spooky" songs), and was so happy she danced to it right there on the corner of Main St. and Pine! :)

From the learning rooms... school is going well, except when M's instability gets in the way. If I can get him over the initial hump of transitioning to school time, he does ok... some days though, he just can't manage the transition and falls apart. I hope we don't have too many of those days this week.

From the kitchen... the kids have recently discovered that they love bagels. A couple of months ago I found a bagel recipe I've wanted to try... With the kids new bagel fixation it seems like a good time to stock up on cream cheese and make some bagels.

I am creating... I've picked up my knitting again for the first time in a year or so. I've done a little knitting during that time, but just simple stuff... dishcloths, etc. I'm working now on finishing the two unfinished squares to the knit-along afghan I started ages ago. I've also been playing the guitar more... It had been seeming a bit stale (just strum, strum, strum...) but then I decided to pick up a book on finger-picking that I bought six months ago or so. At the time I bought the book it just seemed impossible, so I set it aside (and forgot I had it!), but now I'm having LOTS of fun working my way through it.

  

I am going... to make an appointment to talk to M's pdoc without M there. I need to know what, if anything, he plans to do about the increase in M's symptoms and instability. I'm not looking forward to this... I think M's pdoc is very difficult to talk to... but in all fairness to him I should talk to him about my concerns before deciding to try to find another pdoc.

I am reading... Their Eyes Were Watching God...it's a good book, but I'm finding it difficult to get through because the dialogue is written phonetically (tuh for to, etc.)... so I'm having to really think about each word as I read.

I'm hoping... that B's (dd#2) semi-permanent move to KS, MO turns out to be a good thing.... that the move goes smoothly, she finds a nice place to live, and work she's doing, opening a new office, goes well... and finally, I'm hoping she'll be home for at least one of the major holidays coming up.

I am hearing... the rhythmic slosh, swish, gurgle of the dishwasher,  and Emma's very low growl-ly way of telling me she wants to go outside.

Around the house... no new projects... I've been working outside instead, taking advantage of the beautiful Indian summer we're having.

One of my favorite things... laughing with my kids, spending time with them. Each of my children is such a blessing...

A few plans for the rest of the week... setting up appointments, trip to the stable, blood draw, friends over for dinner, dog training class, and school of course.

A picture I'm sharing....

my nosey animals watching the neighbor working with her alpacas.

Visit Peggy's blog for more about The Simple Woman's Daybook