Slowly Getting Better

I'm slowly starting to feel better. My mental state is improving a little at a time. Knowing that I'm going to be starting a new job soon is really helping. I've even started being able to view my current job objectively. I've got a ton of things to show other people, but I'm fairly well organized and have good notes anyway. As an analyst, I run lots of recurring reports for people, and each of those has an instructions tab as something that I learned as best practice long ago. So even if I wasn't able to finish the training, I think people will be able to figure it out. After recently going through the pain of figuring out how a former co-worker did her job because she didn't show us or leave documentation, I'm determined to leave my team in a better place with my departure.

My son is making some improvements at home and school. I think part of his improvement might be because we figured out that he wasn't consistently taking his medication. Now that we're managing that, he seems to be making better choices and we've received a couple of positive emails from teachers this week. The meeting at school didn't happen yet because of schedule conflicts, so now it's next week and hopefully it will be more collaborative and less adversarial if he continues to do better at school.

Now that I'm getting my mental house in order, I may finally be ready to start tackling my physical well-being soon. I haven't lost the desire to lose about 20 pounds, I had just stopped thinking about it for awhile because I had too many other issues to deal with. But now that we're making some positive, forward progress in other areas, it's time to start thinking about my weight again. I haven't devised a new plan just yet, but hopefully soon I'll have an update on that.

Now it's time to finish my Friday chores so we can ready to celebrate Halloween tomorrow!

Check In Part 2: The Difficult Stuff

I finally found some time and the emotional fortitude to write the second part of my check-in. My son's transition to middle school has been a bit of nightmare. If you've been following for awhile, you may have read my previous post about how difficult it has been dealing with son's issues. We got things to a manageable place in elementary school. He had a fairly successful fourth grade year because he had a teacher who had a son just like him and was willing to work with him. Fifth grade was tougher; that teacher had been teaching for over forty years and had some pretty old-fashioned ideas. But we managed and even though I don't think that teacher ever liked my son, he still got decent grades.

Now we're in middle school and we have several teachers that we have to work with, with varying degrees of success. His math teacher seems to have a major control issue and she and my son appear to have a major personality conflict. At this point they're both being intensely stubborn and I'm tempted to ask if it's possible to home-school for just one subject. I would look at another teacher, but with the inside knowledge we have from my husband working in the school district, I don't think there are any better options. We had quite the interesting email exchange with this woman yesterday, which made it abundantly clear that a student who is compliant is much more important to her than a student who is learning. I think one of my biggest frustrations from this situation is that my son has always loved math, and know he's saying he hates it. We're meeting with at least this teacher this coming Friday (and I'm hoping some of the others as well) and I think it's time to unleash my inner bitch. I've tried the calm, kind, patient, partnership mode and we're not seeing any positive improvement, so I think I'm done being nice. My son's education and his emotional well-being are too important to let this go any longer.

The rest of his teachers are frustrated because he doesn't put enough effort into his work. They all claim that when he's participating in classroom discussions he demonstrates very creative and intelligent thinking, but they can't get him to put any of that down on paper when it comes to homework and tests. He was placed in honors Language Arts with an excellent teacher and for the first time since Kindergarten claims to enjoy writing. But if he doesn't start putting more effort into his work, he's not going to get to stay in that class.  Aside from effort issues though, the rest of his teachers are dealing with him and not creating an adversarial learning (or non-learning) environment.

Part of the frustration we're experiencing is that once again, we're feeling judged and deemed unworthy as parents. Especially with this math teacher, who seems to think that we're not doing anything to address the issues. We're trying to keep the lines of communication open and we've been very forthcoming with our interactions with the psychiatrist and adjusting medication. We keep talking to our son about school and what he needs to do there. We are providing consequences and he's currently grounded from friends and electronics. Short of sitting with my son all day and making sure he's on-task, I'm not sure what else we're supposed to do. My daughter has never required this type of parenting, so these aren't skills we needed to develop prior to now. A big part of the reason I found a new job was so that I could be closer to home and have a shorter commute so I could be with my son in the mornings. We've read dozens of books* and the we're finding some promising information now in one called Smart but Scattered Teens which talks about the executive skills we need to help our son develop. We are doing everything we know how to do, and trying to find new solutions daily, but this teacher seems to think that if she just keeps telling us that he's not meeting expectations that we'll come up with some magic bullet to fix the problem.

If there was some magical solution that I could apply in this situation, does this woman honestly believe that I wouldn't have already done so? I don't want to watch my son suffer this way. I don't want to deal with his temper and outbursts every time we need him to do a chore around the house. I don't want to worry about his safety when he threatens to hurt himself or tries to run away. I was the girl and young woman who almost never cried, and lately tears have been almost a daily occurrence because I'm so worried about my son and how he's going to navigate life. I'm about 96% sure that we're doing the right things and once his brain development and maturity reach a certain point, we'll see a wonderful young man who can make unique contributions because he sees the world differently. But there's that 4% of me that worries that I'm raising my uncle. My dad's youngest brother and only surviving sibling is the most awful human being I've ever encountered. What if this is all genetic and my son grows up to be like that? That concern keeps me up at night and is causing me so much stress right now that I'm actually losing my hair. Instead of support and assistance from the school we're getting judgment and more stress.

My husband and the principal at my son's school were close friends in high school. We haven't wanted to call on that relationship to handle problems, but since we're about to go Falling Down on this math teacher, I think it's time to use this relationship to get some different results. We're going to go in with a list of items we need addressed and we're going to take the approach that due to my son's mental health issues, he needs accommodations from the school and his teachers. We are also going to investigate a 504 plan which will legally require the school to make some more accommodations.

If you've stuck with this long rant, thanks for reading. If your child has any issues with ADHD or other mental illnesses, know that you're not alone out there, and maybe the book I listed above, or one of the others below will help you. I'm trying very hard to get myself into a better mental place so I can be an effective advocate for my son, instead of just feeling helpless and frustrated. If I can help even one other parent, it will make this all feel more manageable.

* Some more helpful books:

• 10 Days to a Less Defiant Child
• Age of Opportunity: Lessons from the New Science of Adolescence
• The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook
• Boy Writers
• Bright Minds, Poor Grades
• The Cognitive Behavioral Workbook for Anxiety
• Don't Sweat the Small Stuff for Teens
• The Explosive Child
• Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key (this one is for the kiddos)
• Mindfulness for Teen Anxiety
• Mitten Strings for God (this one is more about creating space in our lives, but I found it helpful)
• The Motivated Brain
• My Anxious Mind: A Teen's Guide to Managing Anxiety and Panic
• Parenting Children with ADHD
• The Shyness and Social Anxiety Workbook for Teens
• Stress Free Kids
• Superparenting for ADD
• Talking Back to OCD

Totally off topic, just wanted to share a quick snap of the rain of leaves on this lovely fall morning.

Delayed

I promised part 2 of a check-in today, but I'm not emotionally capable of writing it at the moment. So instead I'm just going to share a few autumnal photos from a walk this afternoon.

Check In Part 1: The Good News

I have a pretty large check-in this weekend, so I thought I'd do it in two parts and start with the good news and the positive things happening in my life.

I was offered and accepted a new job. I will be just a couple of miles from home so I'll be home with my son in the morning before he heads off for school. I had to take a small pay cut, but not as large as I had anticipated, so that was really good news. I'm going back into the restaurant industry which is where I "grew up" professionally and am better value-aligned. Giving my notice wasn't very much fun, but my boss handled the conversation very well so it worked out alright.

Yesterday I went with my husband, mom, and in-laws to watch my daughter's high school marching band perform in the state quarter-finals. Her school made the cut for the quarter-finals for the first time in 17 years. The kids thought it was pretty cool to march at CSU's stadium.

My son's middle school hosts an annual 5K called the Spooknology for Technology race. They raise money for technology for the school with the race. My daughter was never interested in doing it, but my son wanted to so this morning while it was still quite chilly he and I headed out for the race. It warmed up rather quickly and ended up being a lovely morning to be out walking and jogging.

We took the kids out to the pumpkin patch and the Halloween store today. My daughter wouldn't get out of the car while we were picking pumpkins because of our solution to the muddy fields due to the rain we had earlier this week. We put plastic grocery bags on our feet, which did look ridiculous, but we were the only people not scraping our shoes back at the car.

Tonight my husband and I are going to see Crimson Peak at the theater. I'm super excited to get to see what is supposed to be a beautiful (if predictable) horror movie, and have a date night with my husband. The pictures below are from a walk I took yesterday afternoon with my husband. The image quality isn't great since these are all with my phone camera. It's just about time for a new phone, and camera quality is going to be a deciding factor in the model I choose.

That's the good news, and I'm glad I wrote it out because there's actually lots of good stuff going on. Tomorrow I'll write about the not-so-good stuff that's been happening of late.

In a Mood

I'm...in pretty bad shape these days. My emotional state is extremely raw and fragile right now. Things aren't going at all well with my son. Work has been extremely busy and stressful. But rather than write a dumping post (other than this small opening), I decided to share some nice autumn and Halloween photos.

My son decorated the front yard, and with the leaves it looks sort of cool.

We also got some of our indoor decorations up. These are my favorites.

My son and I went for a walk this past Sunday afternoon and I was able to get a couple of nice fall shots of the creek behind our house.

Our tree and our neighbor's tree have just about hit their prime colors for the season, and have littered our yard with beautiful colors.

It rained all night last night, so today the leaves were kissed with raindrops.

Ashes, Ashes

Apparently this year we had the ideal combination of moisture and temperatures for the ash trees as all of them in the area are stunning right now. They're such lovely trees and when they change colors we get purple, red, and yellow all in the same tree.

Our neighbors have a different variety of ash tree, so their tree just turns yellow, and it looks lovely next to our ash tree which is mostly purply-red.

My maple trees, on the other hand, are looking pretty bedraggled. So I guess whatever combination was good for ash trees wasn't so good for the maples. I'm just happy we're getting some nice color in the area because the meteorologists had predicted that we wouldn't see much this fall.

Deep Breaths

I really wanted this week to go better, and overall I've done a better job of managing my emotional responses. Work is starting to get slightly less overwhelming as we've gone through most of our firsts since the "co-worker who didn't leave process documentation" quit. Home has still been pretty challenging. My son still isn't doing what he's supposed to do at school, and yesterday he didn't forget to take his medication, he threw it away. This isn't good because a) he needs the medication (clearly); and b) it's really expensive. I'm sitting here holding my head and shaking it.

Our IT department asked me to be a guinea pig because I was told my name came up as "someone who was fairly technologically savvy and had a high tolerance for IT disruption." Thanks...? I now have a thin desktop machine and only remote into the server, I don't work on my machine any longer at all. I think in the long run this setup will work better, but it didn't work so well at home this morning. I got a new laptop yesterday with a 10-key on the side. The screen resolution was awful (and couldn't be adjusted, which I've never run into before) and it wouldn't recognize my other monitor. I know this is a first-world problem, but I really can't work on just one monitor any longer. So I gave up on that and just used my personal laptop. Which worked fine, until our internet went down. So I packed up and headed downtown into the office. I brought my old work laptop back home tonight, our ISP is back up, and everything worked just fine this evening. Which is good, I desperately needed a win.

The one thing that's providing me some comfort right now and helping me not to get too angry is a quote I read in the October Dreams II book (which I finished this week.) It's attributed to Harlan Ellison, but I'm not finding it on the internet. I did find a Carl Sagan quote which conveys the same message in more formal language, but I still like this one in a story by Nicole Cushing.

"The universe is neither benign or malign. It doesn't know you're here, kid."

I know some people, like my mother, would be mortified to know that I'm comforted by that thought. But I think we all need to make our way through this life in the way that works best for us. Knowing that there's no reason to be angry, and no one to be angry at, makes me feel better. So I'm going with it.

Here's to a smooth ending to this week, and a brighter beginning to next week. I sure could use it!

I got to take a walk with my husband tonight and did enjoy this beautiful view.

This One Time, at Band Camp...

Well, it's actually a band competition, but I couldn't think of a movie quote for that to use for the title. Our entire Saturday was consumed by my daughter's band competition yesterday. We got up at 5:15 to get her to school and drive 40 miles south to a band competition. My daughter's school performed at 10:00 AM, and then we had to just hang out the rest of the day, in the direct sunlight in 85 degree weather. Side note here: I want to know who authorized the return of summer temperatures in October. Sheesh!

These kiddos are improving pretty dramatically each week they perform. (Which may be why their band director signed them up for a competition every...single...weekend.) This isn't just a biased maternal opinion; their score has gone up 11 points (out of 100) since their first competition. So of course they made finals last night, and actually got the 2nd place spot. Which meant they played again 9:00 PM. So we didn't leave the competition until after 10:00 PM and didn't get home until almost midnight.

I had a different (somewhat obstructed) view of the band yesterday from field level.

My husband and I signed up to work on the pit crew yesterday since our parents couldn't come to the performance. It was hard work, and even though I didn't have time for a regular workout, I still think I get some credit for pulling a trailer loaded with props and equipment which probably weighed about 300 pounds. There were even hills, and we had to sprint with it to set up for the performance, because they only get 3 minutes 15 seconds to get all set up and ready to play.

Since I was working the pit crew I finally got an opportunity to take a picture of my daughter in uniform in the staging area. Which was good because she told me yesterday that I could just wait until her senior pictures. (She's a freshman).

The kids ended up taking 3rd place overall after finals, out of 28 bands. This was really exciting for a band who until last week hadn't even made it into finals. I'm glad they're working hard and improving, I'm not so glad that their improved performance means I'm losing all of my Saturdays during my favorite month of the year. On Friday night we watched Monster House with the kids. My husband thought it was too early, but I told him we weren't going to have as many opportunities to watch our family Halloween movies together, so we had to get started.

All of this activity so far away from home yesterday meant that I lost an entire weekend day to get caught up on chores. But I pounded through them this morning so I'm feeling better. The dishwasher is running and the hand-wash dishes are sitting in the drying rack. The laundry is in progress. The mail is sorted and the bills are paid. Now I intend to relax (other than taking care of laundry as loads get done) until we take my husband out to dinner for his belated birthday celebration with his parents, where I fully intend to have a margarita!

My yard is really starting to look like autumn.

Challenges

a.k.a. "What a Week!: Round 2"

Unbelievably (at least to the me from last weekend), this week was more challenging and difficult than last week. Last week at work when I was figuring out how to do the job of the recently departed co-worker, at least I knew what we needed to do. This week we found that there weren't even any notes left on what needed to get done. So not only did I have to figure out how to do the work to train someone else, I had to figure out what the work even was.

My son promised his teachers he would just do what he needed to do this week and see how he felt at the end of week. The only successful day was Monday, then it was downhill from there; worse than last week. But I do see a light at the end of this tunnel. We're almost through with new work that my former co-worker used to do, so that really should start to level off. We talked to my son and realized that he had been forgetting to take his medicine. Well, "forgetting" might not be the correct word here. He said his alarm to take the medicine was going off at an inconvenient time so he was ignoring it. So we reset the alarm and bought him a weekly pill container so we can make sure he's taking his medicine.

We knew that the transition to middle school was going to be tough, but I don't think we were fully prepared for exactly how tough it was going to be. The part I was the most worried about, him being home alone in the morning, has proven to be the most problematic issue. But I'm hoping that a solution will present itself soon. I may have some news soon and will keep you all posted.

Emotionally it's been a tough week. I've spent so much time feeling overwhelmed and frustrated, that I eventually hit my factory reset and my default emotional response of anger was triggered. Yesterday I was dealing with impotent and useless rage which made me physically ill. Today it turned into much more productive anger. I know that sounds like an oxymoron, but my whole life I've experienced this particular type of anger which gives me strength and helps me to focus and accomplish things. My parents used to set it off on purpose when I was younger and needed to get something done.

I am working to make some lemonade out of these lemons. While I've been crazy-busy at work and somewhat...okay, maybe it's more accurate to say extremely, frustrated at times, I've proven to myself that I can persevere and figure things out. While my son's behaviors have been exceedingly frustrating, my husband and I are learning a great deal and finding new tools for our parenting tool belts. I intend to make next week a better week, one way or another.

The moon and Venus this morning.