Do You Realize?

Photo Hunt Saturday--Candy

Looks like I took a hiatus this week. Totally unintentional. Youngest is cycling again; there have been four separate therapies this week for various combinations of family members, as well as a huge medication change. Luckily, the medication change seems to be working; I even tested his boundaries tonight by telling him something he did not like and did not want to hear, and he didn't come unglued... success, however temporary, is a beautiful thing with bipolar children.

Now, on to the Photo Hunt! This week's theme is:  Candy. I took this photo in July 2007 while visiting Portland, Oregon. This was one of the most amazing doughnuts I've ever put in my mouth. I'd read about this little local place called Voodoo Doughnut, which makes weird original doughnut flavors (like Pepto Bismol, or Nyquil doughnuts, neither of which are still available because they might taste like ass for some weird reason). This is a Grape Ape, which is a glazed doughnut with vanilla icing, grape Tang-like drink powder, and purple candy sprinkles; sounds absolutely disgusting freaking amazing, huh? I have no idea what possessed me to pick this over, say, the chocolate glazed one with peanut butter Cap'n Crunch cereal, but I'm glad I did. If I close my eyes and concentrate really hard, I can almost taste this little jewel again... mmmmmmm...

I think I'm a fake liberal.

Anyone who's spent a goodly amount of time around here knows that my politics lean pretty far to the left. I'm even pretty socially liberal. Or am I? My social liberalism has recently been tested by a situation in our neighborhood. I'm a fake. A sham. A freakin' NIMBY, for pity's sake!

We live in a nice, established neighborhood. The houses were all built 20 or more years ago; there are a few families with kids, but not a lot. Often, we leave our front door and our cars unlocked. It's usually pretty quiet, despite our across-the-street neighbor, who is a lawyer with an obnoxious, drunken twentysomething-year-old son.

Long story slightly shorter is this: We have relatively new neighbors with a young son (hereafter called "K.") who has begun taking liberties with other people's boundaries. In the span of a week, he's taken toys that don't belong to him; walked into our fenced-in backyard & jumped into our pool after being told he could not, as adults were not home; walked into our unlocked front door when no one answered the doorbell; walked into another neighbor's unlocked front door under the same circumstances; gotten into yet another neighbor's vehicle uninvited; and hauled out our garden hose to play with on several occasions. He does not leave when asked or directed, even by an adult.

Here's where my fake liberalism shows up. Through the grapevine, I've heard that a local church is buying and/or renting houses in town, then setting up underprivileged families in them, sometimes even putting a couple of families together in a larger house. This is how K. and his extended family (I've seen at least five different cars in the driveway) allegedly came to live in this house. A truly liberal person would think that this is a fine charitable thing that the church is doing to help the lower class families in town to get up on their feet to make a better life for themselves. Is that what I'm thinking? Well, yes. But, I'm also thinking that maybe it's not so wise to scoop someone up out of the 'hood and dump them, ever-so-benevolently, in a 4000-square-foot house in a quiet neighborhood with obviously very different expectations than the ones they seem to be accustomed.

I soothe my wounded progressive pride by telling myself it's a good thing we're not hard-core Second-Amendment-or-bust types, or K. might be pulling some buckshot out of his ass right about now.

Photo Hunt Saturday--Funny Signs

I've had this week's photo picked out for a couple of months now, anxiously awaiting the time I could share it. This week's theme is: Funny Signs. We found this sign in downtown San Francisco. We thought it not simply funny, but quite hilarious. The accompanying, um, stains add to the effectiveness, no?

Manic Monday--Bipolar Teenage Decision Making 101

Scientists have discovered that two pathways exist in the human brain to the final destination of a decision. One is the limbic system, which controls emotional decision-making, along with other "gut reaction" activities, like the fight-or-flight response; the other, the parietal and frontal cortices, which are in charge of planning and rational decision making, among other things.

In the above mentioned study, normally-functioning people were found to have both pathways, and that even they were torn (as shown by brain activity via MRI) between a choice involving some sort of immediate gratification and one involving a more logical one which would provide an even greater reward after a short waiting period (in the study, somewhere between a month and six weeks). Using my admittedly limited scientific knowledge and my slightly more efficient common sense, I've come up with a reason for Youngest's inability to make even the easiest of "right" or "good" decisions, if not a way to combat my extreme anger and frustration regarding those decisions.

I posit that, because a bipolar person's limbic system activity is often elevated and his/her fronal lobe regional activity is suppressed/delayed/otherwise fucked up, this makes their ability to make rational decisions very, very difficult, to say the least. Further, as Youngest is only just now reaching some semblance of adolescence, the cerebral fibers in his frontal lobe are still not finished developing. So, in layman's terms, his brain's road to a crappy decision is wider and well-paved, while the road to a good decision is a one-lane dirt country lane.

Last night, one such decision-making session played itself out in a fashion equally fascinating and frustrating. For a couple of weeks now, Youngest's best friend (BF) at school and Youngest have been planning for Youngest to go home with BF after their early release day this upcoming Friday. It's a bigger deal than most trips to a friend's house, because BF lives an hour away, so these trips are pretty infrequent. As personal hygiene is currently low decision on the totem pole, we've been using this trip to BF's to encourage showers. His decision to take a shower or not on school nights will directly be tied to his ability to go to BF's; more, if he chooses to miss a shower, he will have to explain his decision to BF all on his own. Until last night, he'd been doing fine. (I suspect his not having to shower on the weekend further lowered his motivation to actually get back up on that horse.)

Despite my trying to get him to shower earlier than usual, to combat the particular situation that occurred, and despite the fact that he was happily awake up until the very point of decision-making, he decided he was "too sleepy" to take his shower. He was not too sleepy to argue with me in huge, convoluted circles, mind you, but four fucking minutes in the shower was too much to ask. We tried every bit of logic and every bit of emotional impetus imaginable, but nothing was budging him. His limbic system just wanted to lay in that bed and not do a damn thing if it wasn't fun. His frontal lobe was on the picket line... "Hell no! I won't go!" Eventually, I sat on his bed and told him that since he couldn't seem to make this decision, and that BF was that important to me if not to him, I would sit and talk enough that he wouldn't be able to sleep anyway. After letting us know exactly how much he hated us for trying to sabotage his friendship with BF (WTF?!!? Delusional, table for one!), he took his shower. He spewed vitriol for about 10-15 more minutes before passing out mid-sentence. Ahhh, the fun-filled roller-coaster ride of bipolar disorder.

You Learn Something New Every Day

While considering plants for our large outdoor pots, we were thinking sago palms in one set and replacement Rum Runner hibiscus in the others. Then we remembered Marshmallow's tendency to snack on everything she can get her teeth on (yesterday she ate cotton burr compost like it was cereal) and decided maybe(!) it would be a good idea to check toxicity of these plants for dogs.

A quick Internet search ruled out sago palm; even a small amount of this plant will cause swift renal failure in dogs. But hibiscus is a different story. There are conflicting reports. Some lists of poisonous plants have hibiscus included on them, some don't.  And so it was that I sat on the phone for fifteen minutes with the ASPCA Poison Control Center. Nevermind that we had already purchased the hibiscus online. According to the ASPCA vet I spoke with, the hibiscus will cause some pretty severe gastrointestinal upset, but it is not life-threatening to dogs. We decided to proceed with the planting and place some chicken wire around the plants until they no longer seem like a novelty to Destruct-o-Dog.

So, that's what I learned yesterday. That, and hard manual labor outside with only dogs for company is not nearly as much fun as with a friend, with, say, speech capabilities and opposable thumbs and an innate revulsion to caprophagia.

A Tuesday Ten--Google Edition

I'm always amazed at some of the things people Google, which lead them to my blog. Here's a list of ten of the strangest/funniest/dumbest. (Warning: I'm feeling a little salty today. Appropriately sailor-ish language ensues.)

1.  "Chiggers"--- Damn it, people. If some science geeks don't get out there and write some interesting shit about chiggers, I'm going to go crazy! (On the other hand, it would probably steal half my damn traffic.)

2.  "Bedbugs"; "dead bedbugs"; "baby bedbugs"; "evil bedbugs"--- The Internet must have a shockingly inadequate amount of information about bedbugs, because if a Google search for the little fuckers leads these people to my piddly blog, the online world is doomed to an unfortunately misinformed existence!

3.  "Concert groping" --- I'm not sure whether these people are looking for a Concert Gropers Anonymous meeting or a survivor's group or what. I can't help you with either. Get over it. When you go to a concert, you are often in embarrassingly close proximity to others. You may get touched, even on the boob. It's not necessarily purposeful. Unless, of course, you're a hot bitch, then maybe it was.

4.  "Anesthesia politics cunt" --- I can't even imagine a situation in which those three words could be fit together. Whatever it was, I don't think they found a solution here.

5.  "can Concerta make a child start cursing" --- No, but inadequate parenting can. Self-flagellation is a must. Cursing is the worst thing a child will ever cook up in his/her devious little damn brain. (/sarcasm)

6.  "take kids to Edgefest" --- One word. Yes. But they will get groped. (See #3.)

7.  "beautiful pictures of Texas's dessert [sic]" --- My desserts don't hang around on my damn plate long enough to take a beautiful picture, people.

8.  "the cost of Six Flags" --- Your soul, fuckers. Sign on the "X."

9.  "how to get rid of pleas [sic] and chiggers from your house" --- I've got nothing of importance to offer here. However, my kids can give you quite detailed instructions on removing "please and thank you" from your home.

10.  "what to do when husband calls you a cunt" --- I'm not sure exactly why this person felt the need to seek advice from Google on this, but if you haven't found the advice you're looking for, here's a hint: A packed bag and a weekend at a luxurious spa on your turd husband's dime comes to mind, as does dumping all of his shit on the lawn, turning on the sprinklers, and changing the locks. Oh, and maybe a marriage counselor, if none of the other shit works.

Frisco

Last week, I mentioned to my therapist (who is actually a psychoanalyst) that our family therapist has made the comment a couple of times that I exhibit a lot of signs of someone who has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and that she had asked if I'd ever talked to him (my regular therapist) about it. My therapist replied that, yes, indeed, he thinks I do. All of this stems from my first marriage to C. (Remember him? If not, you need to go here. And here. And here.) Honestly, that thought had never crossed my mind. I never really think of myself as a "victim" of anything, only sometimes an unwilling accomplice in some things; I believe in accountability, and I take responsibility for a lot, even things for which others would say I am not to blame. Things like Frisco.

C. came home one day with a surprise for the kids. (I don't know where he had been, but it couldn't have been a job; I didn't ask a lot of questions before we got married, and now I realize it was because I knew on some level I wouldn't like the answers.) As he pulled out this minuscule gray fluffball of a tabby kitten, tiny enough to fit in my two small-ish palms. Eldest's eyes sparkled like a diamond in sunlight. "His name is Frisco," she declared. We spent the next several hours playing with Frisco at my parents' house.

Then I had to leave for work. Oh, how I wish I'd never left. I tell myself, even today, that hearing about an atrocious act is different than seeing it happen, and that if I'd seen it happen, maybe my life would have changed for the better.

It was a weekend, I think, because I remember being able to talk for a while when my mother called me at work to tell me that Frisco was dead.

"How?"

"C. killed him." She was, understandably, distraught.

"What happened?"

And this is what she told me:

C. was watching the kids in the living room. All the other adults were in other rooms of the house.

Middle (again, at that time he was Youngest, but you know him here as Middle) was in his playpen, one of those contraptions with fabric mesh for walls. He had a particularly endearing habit of leaning his weight, face-first, into the mesh, contorting his cherubic little face into all sorts of hideous but adorable shapes.

Eldest was still playing with Frisco. She was in love. Frisco was digging Middle's playpen, a vehicle on which to propel himself with his little kitten claws.

What happened next will never be completely known, since the only three people in the room were C. and two toddlers, and a 6-to-8-week-old kitten. What we do know is that within seconds, this picture-perfect Norman Rockwell scene would transform forever. Frisco would lay bleeding and convulsing at the base of a nearby wall, where C. had thrown him.

C. insisted that Frisco had attacked Middle, and that Middle was crying and bleeding. (For the record,
Middle had a scratch on his cheek that was one quarter of an inch long, and my parents said that when they walked in, he was not crying.) C. reacted quickly, simply wanting to save Middle and get the cat off of him. He didn't mean to slam it into a wall.

What I believe to have happened is another story. I've played this scene out so many times in my head, I feel like I was there, and sometimes I have to stop myself from actually thinking that I was. I suspect that Middle had mashed his face into the side of his playpen at the very same time that Frisco decided to climb up the very same place. C., who was probably not watching very closely, heard a commotion, grabbed the vile, vicious kitten, and hurled him into the wall, killing him.

As with some of the other things I've related about C., I wish I could tell you this was the end. But it wasn't. It was only the beginning; we hadn't even married at this point. Why did I stay? Because I thought I was damaged goods, a young woman with two small children, and I thought my possibilities for a mate had diminished to the point that maybe this was the best I could expect. Why do any of us do things at the ripe old age of twenty that will later cause us to cringe with remorse? My fuck-up was just more grand than others.

See how blurred lines can become? Will we ever know C.'s reason for throwing that kitten? No. I've tried to tell myself time and time again that C. hadn't grown up with cats as I had, that he really thought the kitten was hurting Middle. I told myself that because the alternative was too painful to consider. What I do know is that I was expecting more than one tiny scratch on Middle, and that I was expecting some remorseful behavior. I got neither. To the bitter end, C. insisted he'd acted as a hero with quick instincts.

They were killer instincts, anyway.

Thirteen Things...

...that I'm thinkin' 'bout on Thursday...

1. ...winners from my Blogiversary Giveaways! Congrats to Jeff at Biking Duluth (Greenies & Pet Promise dog food sample), Caroline in NH at Fiber Arts & Furry Critters (Bush's Last Day keychain), Hootin' Anni (CD of ten of my photographic images), Andree at Meeyau (Feline Greenies & Pet Promise cat food sample), Molly at RedMolly Picayune-Democrat (a copy of Diane MacEachern's book Big Green Purse), and Anonymous Mom at Tenuous at Best (handcrafted journal)! If I don't hear from each of you within 24 hours, I will contact you. I'm asking until next Saturday (hopefully won't need that long) to get everything ready to ship.

2. ...my complete and utter domination at the art of oatmeal. I have mastered my "perfect oats." No extra liquid, but not too dry either. MMMMM.

3. ...philosophical subjects like evil and faith. I've determined that the basis for one's faith in an idea or entity is a positive and memorable event that the person attributes, whether correctly or incorrectly, to that idea or entity. For example, my husband sees, on a regular basis, the healing and saving of lives. He attributes that to the science of medicine; his faith, therefore, lies in the scientific.

4. ...suicide. Not mine, no. The book I'm reading, Jodi Picoult's The Pact, is about a failed teen suicide pact, where the surviving teen is charged with murder.

5. ...how terrible I am at poker. Some friends of ours have bought a table at a local "Casino Night" fundraiser and have graciously asked Hubby & I to go. I know not a damn thing about poker, but I will throw down with the best of them when intoxicated, I'm sure.

6. ...Texas's crazy caucusing. We voted early to avoid voting day crowds, but then had to go out anyway for the caucusing portion of the night.

7. ...how terrifyingly easy it is to imagine Youngest as a drug addict. He has a very addictive personality anyway, and a bipolar individual's risk of addiction to drugs or alcohol is much higher than that of a normally functioning person. At thirteen, his drug of choice is Runescape or the Playstation 3; he will do anything, self-destructive or otherwise, to get his fix. Seeing his desperation while in Austin last weekend with limited Internet availability was truly amazing.

8. ...our freakish weather. It's snowing again. Hard. Remember, I was talking about the weather yesterday?

9. ...how hitting an already-dead, but still fresh, skunk on the highway is very, very bad. Very bad, indeed. I also discovered why so many of them seem to be hit on the road. Nearly impossible to see until the last minute. Poor buggers.

10. ...organ donation. My mom is down in Florida at a post-transplant checkup. She's doing amazingly well!

11. ...photography. I mentioned it's snowing again, right?

12. ...the Project Runway season finale last night. As I fully expected, Christian kicked ass. His clothes, while not designed for the everyday woman, were exquisite concoctions, full of ruffles and feathers. His runway music killed, too (created and arranged by Anonymous Mom's not-so-anonymous talented son). Way to go, Christian! I just want to eat him up like a cookie, he's so freakin' cute.

13. ...how I SO don't want to do the laundry and mop the floors.

Edited to add: I drove for six hours to accomplish what would usually take three.

Wordless Wednesday

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Come on, now. Did you really think I could pull off NO FREAKIN' WORDS? Okay, some days, maybe... just not today. So not totally wordless... I guess I just cheated.

Sunday, it was 82 degrees here. Monday, we had six inches of snow dumped on our little part of Earth. Tuesday? Back to almost 60 degrees. But, according to the climate change naysayers, there is nothing wrong with our atmosphere that could be causing this; this is completely normal. Yeah, right.

Edited to add: I'll be drawing for my Blogiversary Geiveaways tonight, and notifying winners tomorrow. You still have time to comment on any posts from this week!

Photo Hunt Saturday--Party

Before we get to today's Photo Hunt, let me remind you of my Blogiversary Giveaways. Today, I’ll be giving away a CD with TEN of my favorite original photographic images that you can use for your computer desktop or screen saver. A few will probably be ones you've seen on a previous Photo Hunt Saturday, and a few others will be ones you've never seen. But, you can be assured, they will all be lovely! Remember, you have to comment to be included in the drawing.

Today's Photo Hunt theme is: Party. I love this photo of the little impromptu party that Sapphire decided to host... hehehe. She definitely has friends of all size, shape, and color, just as we all should!