Just to clarify:

My son is staying with his grandfather for the next couple of days. :-)

No hang over this morning, it took almost three hours to consume the bottle. :-)

I did sleep well though. Certainly didn't want to get up. My run will have to wait until this afternoon now.

And good news: Saturday evenings through the summer, the 31st street stage has a jazz group starting at 7pm. Sitting out in the little park next to the beach, enjoying the last of the summer sun for the day, letting the evening breeze off the beach cool you off, and just chilling to some good jazz is a great way to end any Saturday.

Yesterday was a killer day for me at work. Today has got to be better.

~Mike

Nothing like....

A bottle of Chianti to make the world a little brighter.

A whole bottle.

Enough to make me wonder what the hell I'm typing here.

I'm definitely buzzing right now. My teeth are purple. I'm ready to confess lots of things...just ask. :-) LOL

I ran this morning. Going to run again tomorrow. I listen to the Fray, How to save a life the whole time. That is my theme song with my son. You should get it too.

I recommend Da Vinci Chianti. Should be able to get it anywhere, but definitely at Kroger. Delicious. Only $12 a bottle here. So, I drank $12 tonight. I wasn't planning on drinking the bottle, just a glass or two.

I put a contract offer on a house tonight. I doubt they will take the offer. $40K less than what they want. But I am a single parent, one income, it is what I can afford. We'll see. They leave at the end of the week for Ohio. The house has been on the market since January.

Ok going to bed now, have to get up tomorrow and run, but need to run one more lap than I did today. Today was an awful day at work. So much to do, lots of emergencies.

Over and out, will write tomorrow, but not inebriated. It's too hard to read and type at the same time....the damn screen keeps moving.

~Mike

stuff in the empty spaces...

I am the apothecary. I have a very large assortment of drugs in my cabinets now. I really have to take time to read them when I need to pull the various ones out for me or for my son. I actually have two sides, one of prescription drugs, and one for over the counter.

How do you teach a child the value of hard work and a job well done? How do you teach them to review their own work and be able to judge when it is done well? I've spent over four hours now going in and out every five minutes telling my son that the leaves that needed to be raked in the backyard are not done, that there is nothing to be frightened of, showing him how to rake under bushes, re-instructing every ten minutes or so, and so on.

What do you do with the pain of the empty space left by the betrayal of someone you put your hopes and dreams into? What do you do with the pain of seeing your child deal with the loss and total abandonment of someone he dared to hope would be his mother and five siblings? What do you do when everything around you reminds you of this person and the colossal failure of the relationship, and the utter uselessness of all of the sacrifices you made for them? Yes, this still haunts me everyday. Especially on days like today where there are outbursts when there weren't the first part of the year, and he had a Family to draw strength and reassurance from. If your family abandons you, what hope can there possibly be? If your brothers and sisters can no longer speak to you or see you, what do you do?

All about choices...

We all like to have choices. We just may not always like the choices we have. My son is having a hard time learning that given a set of choices, if he doesn't choose one, one will be chosen for him. Should he choose to fight that, then all choices will be removed from him. His failure to follow directions also leads to a loss of choices. He did not bring home a sheet of paper that allowed him to make choices for lunch this week. As the cafeteria is closing out for the summer, they had to know ahead of time what the students would be eating. Because Brandon didn't bring the sheet home or make a choice, the choices were made for him. He did not like the choice that was made and exploded on impact. He hit, kicked, and bit his substitute teacher. He had to be forcibly removed from the cafeteria. He was so violent that his shirt ripped and he now has bruises on his arms. This is a pretty typical Brandon explosion. So I was called to leave work to come get him. He is now not allowed to come back to school the last few days of the year. He will now miss his end of school parties. His dad is not very happy with him. His choices went from plenty to nil because he could not follow directions. Such is life.

~Mike

Shitty Blog Survivor game! Task 1

The contest has begun. I think everyone considers me an underdog, which I am! But it will be fun while it lasts. :-) Check out the link on the right column below. I am probably out of my league with the other fantastic people that are participating so check out their blogs!

Journal for week 1 and Slogan!

Shitty Blogs Club: It is real. Reality ain't pretty, it's shitty. :-)

Looking at some of the other blogs, and blogs around the net, I find that there is a bit of honesty and truth out there that isn't readily evident when you are with most people face to face. We tend to be a bit reserved in person. But reality isn't so polished for most of us. I think most people have a bit of turmoil, doubt, fear, etc in their lives. We also get to share our victories, real or imagined, our hope, and the great things that happen to us as well. Reality is just messy, an amalgamation of good and bad things that make up our lives. Our ups and downs. Our successes and mistakes.

Mike

This past weekend :-)

It was a sort of busy weekend. We were geared up to go kayaking Saturday afternoon, and then chill out at the beach to a live Jazz band right on the boardwalk. And that is exactly what we did. The kayaking was supposed to be out in the ocean, but the wind kicked up and it was too choppy. So we went up Owl Creek, by the Virginia Aquarium (or whatever it is called now). As you can see from the picture below, Brandon just laid out and napped. :-) I should have worn a hat as I got a little sunburned on my head. Brandon said "I'm glad I have a full head of hair." Yeah, laugh it up fuzz ball. :-) The jazz band was great too. A few people from the kayaking group met us out there. Sunday morning we thought about trying to get out in the ocean again, but it was kind of dreary. We did some chores, watched a few episodes of the Avatar season 2, and then headed to dodgeball practice. I got a haircut in between. Dodgeball was a lot of fun. It looks like the league will be too. The rest of the afternoon was spent doing chores.

We had our first volleyball games tonight. Beach Volleyball. We did pretty well. We went 3 and 1. Brandon got to jump in the water, and he and I spent a little while playing stickball with a stick he found and a raquet ball we brought with us. Not a bad end to the night really.

Maybe ocean kayaking on Saturday morning before his mom gets him? We'll see. Have to see what bands are playing this week too.


As you can see we had quite a large group. This armada was actually missing two kayaks. One stayed back to help another.

Words

My son's new favorite game is Scrabble. Tonight was kind of cool because I was building a word a little at a time and getting ready to nail one that would give me two triple word bonuses...Okay, not really sure what the official rules say about it, but it was exciting for me to think of multiplying the large word score by SIX! Brandon was stuck though. The word was reviews, and all I needed was a 'P'. Brandon knocked his letters over and I saw he had a 'P'. He was a little frustrated at not being able to create the words he wanted, and he wasn't really seeing his opportunities. So I mentioned that he could put one letter down and make the grandaddy of all scores. He looked around and he found it! 96 points for putting down one letter. He was thrilled. I had to help him on a few others. When we stopped, he was definitely ahead. We actually used all but one letter a few nights ago in a game. I have a huge dictionary that we use to look up word meanings and stuff too. In all it is a lot of fun. It is one of my favorite games, Boggle is another. Sure, neither are super exciting, but putting things together, puzzles, etc, opportunities to stretch my brain a bit...I'll take them, especially if my son is in for it too.

Sleep with the fishes...

Or at least swim with them. Scuba diving is a new thing for me, at least since the fall of 2004 when I got certified. I did this CRAZY thing of finishing college classes, working full time in Maryland, and getting PADI Open Water, Nitrox, and Advanced Open Water certified all at the same time. The idea was to dive the Spiegel Grove in Key Largo in January 2005. Which we did. So, Scuba became another activity. Once you get past the constant fear of exceeding some limit or running out of air, it is actually a lot of fun. The fish pretty much think you belong there and treat you like one of them. It is the oddest thing to be in the murky mid atlantic next to a wreck, and these fish just look at you almost like they are curious. I've had a few even try to use me as shelter. To which my next thought is, where is the bigger fish that is supposed to eat them, and do I look like I might be on the menu? In Cozumel once, I saw a school of fish like the shape changers from "Finding Nemo". My first thought was, it looks like a buffet, where are the dinner guests, and I don't want to be here when they get here.

So I got an underwater camera in the fall. I'm still working out the kinks, but this is the first time I have really used it underwater. Lake Rawlings is a cool spot just south of Richmond that many dive shops use for certification dives. It is enclosed, well supervised, and is a fairly safe place for your first dives. The lake is populated with various structures specifically designed for your certification. It makes it rather ideal for cash strapped folks that want to brush up a bit on their skills without traveling to far away lands. The opening scene from "The Replacements" was filmed there. The lake was a rock quarry that was used for building part of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. During the digging they sprung a leak, opening the aquifer, and the pit filled with water.

A friend from work just got certified and has only been on one dive. I'll dive anywhere just for the experience, and I was itching to use my camera! So the middle of last week we said, "We're going!" And we did.

Brandon wanted to snorkel. It was raining off and on as the remnants of some tropical depression rolled through. In between dives I got him out there to snorkel. He was pretty scared. He did pretty well, but the fish kind of freaked him out. I don't think he expected them to come right up to him. He has heard several stories of fish bites, etc, so he was really afraid of them. Not to mention the water was pretty cold.

So, a new thing to do on a rainy day!

Today....

Got up at 5am. Made coffee. Woke up boy. Picked up friend. Drove to Lake Rawlings. Made two dives. Drove back. Looked at houses with real estate agent. Adjusted pictures from the day. Too tired to write anything else! More later.

You can see all of the pictures from the dives (179 of them) at my picasa web album for this trip.

IEPs, outbursts, and more....

Well this morning we had the meeting for the IEP. More behavior charts, daily visits, etc. Brandon threw a pretty big tantrum this afternoon though. He pulled a girl's arm, kicked over a desk, screamed, all because he wanted to use the computer. They called me to come get him. Good thing I was almost there anyway. He is suspended for Monday. Time to get him to mow the grass with a pair of tweezers I suppose. Two more weeks....I am so not going to make it.

His vice principal did a phenomenal job of talking with him while I was there. I was awed. He was very responsive, which is unusual for Brandon. I was glad to see that.

He took a nap when we got home. I wanted to as well, but I had phone calls and such to make.

We strapped the kayak to the car and went kayaking at the state park around the corner. That was awesome. Another amazing evening. We saw a few Ospreys, a few Blue Herons, and an Eagle. The Eagle was huge. Brandon touched some barnacles, we raced a few boats, and we met some more great people. Brandon also managed to find an oyster, which we have to break open to see if there is a pearl in now. :-) Have to remember to do it first thing tomorrow, otherwise it will start to stink.

We went to my softball games after that. I so wish we had gone to Huey Lewis instead, but I was obligated. Tomorrow is running, biking, prepping for scuba Sunday, and Butter/better than ezra/sugar ray concert at the beach, shrek 3, and dinner. Something like that. If I fill my days up with stuff, maybe I won't feel so depressed right?