What's happening?????

Well, lots really. Some recap stuff from the past several weeks, pictures to help tell the story.....

Well, I know I promised pictures of the sand sculpting contest, so here are a few, slideshow on the way:
Brandon on the beach on a cold Sunday morning:


Not the most elaborate castle I have seen there, but still amazing detail.


Lots of "statements" with the sculpting this year:










The pictures do not really do the sculptures justice. It amazes me how much can be done with sand.

For the squeamish I highly recommend you skip the next picture.

Brandon was bitten by a spider, just under his eye a few weeks ago. It also happened to get a bacterial infection. MRSA? No one would really say, but considering he was already nine days into a ten day stint of Amoxicillin, it could have been. He had to go on cephlex to help with it.





We had two emergency room visits, two family doctor visits, and a visit with a plastic surgeon over this. He also managed to have a sub-cutaneous hemorrhage just after the last picture, which made it even worse.

Brandon is playing soccer again...so in the middle of the game Brandon is yelling instructions to me about when to take pictures of him. "Get this one dad", "Get me just as I am kicking it", etc.


A spider we found in the garage:



Susan sponsored a team for the Race for the cure two weeks ago. Due to my world record procrastination, Brandon and I were photographers for the event. All of us had a great time.








And Susan carried her son the last mile....no kidding...


Susan and I went to a costume party this past Saturday.
See if you can guess who I went as...
I can't believe I'm going to show you this.....


Oh, and there is more....

Hint: "I would say I'm sorry if I thought that it would change your mind"


Tuesday this week was the start of piano lessons. Brandon's mom may actually pay for half, yet to be seen though. Brandon was very excited. Heck, I'm excited. I've always wanted to learn. I've been looking at electronic pianos for a long time, and two weeks ago I got one for a half to a third of retail. At Sam's club no less. We were in there to get one of Brandon's prescriptions for his spider/bacteria experience and I decided I would just "look". 15 minutes later I was wondering how it was going to fit in the car. :-) Hey, it was that good of a deal.

Ok, so Sam Hain, All Hallows Eve, Halloween.
Brandon lost his mask at his lockin with the YMCA, so we had to make a quick stop to get another this afternoon. We also needed candy. Brandon had carved his pumpkin on Monday so that was already set.

All that being done, Brandon announces that he wants to go get candy with his friends, the neighbors. Now that hung me up. My mind is doing the parental unfounded fear thing. He is ten. Should I let him go with his friends? What happens if they get in trouble? What if he gets hit by a car, and on cue, sirens blare in the distance (not kidding, they really did right at that moment). My heart rate jumps. What if.....a thousand horrible things. Meekly I speak, "Yes, you can go." He jumps for joy, does cartwheels, etc, until I start spelling out rules. Have to be back by 6:30 (it is 6:15 at this moment and not even dark), Have to stay on this street, have to ...., have to...., have to.....

Poor kid. Seriously, I was freaking out.

He goes across the street. I walk inside and close the door. I can do this...he can do this....

I walk back out, across the street, and tell him a few more things....come back and close the door.

I do this exact same thing six times in all. Yes, six times. By the sixth time, his friends are tired of seeing me. Brandon says, "I KNOW dad!!!!" He knows, but will he use that knowledge?

So I say to him, "Under no circumstances are you to have ANY fun. Do you understand me? Having fun would mean you are breaking some rule, and I won't have it." He cracks up laughing. :-) And yes, I did say it to him. He knows dad is destined for a padded room with nice people to hold him down.

In the end he spent a half hour with his friends handing out candy. when they didn't make any moves to go get candy, he came home to ask if I would walk with him, and I felt a prayer had been answered. So we walked the 'hood, he collected his bounty, and I actually let him have a little fun. He even remembered all the rules, and was very polite at every house he went to.

Here is a picture of his pumpkin:


And the boy that carved it:

A jumble of things....

Well, the school year is in full swing, but Brandon is off to a great start.  Almost two months in and I am wearing down though.  I've been the full time parent for six years now.  It is pretty much the same every year.  After a couple of months, my son and I get pretty tired of each other.  Even though this year I pretty much had the whole summer to myself and crammed in everything I could, I am starting to wear down again.  I am working hard to keep from getting where I was in the spring though.  I have changed my work schedule this year to be home when Brandon gets out of school.  Now he can play with the neighborhood kids in the afternoons and evenings.  He does his homework, gets a snack, and goes out to play for a couple of hours.  I get some time to get things done around the house, make dinner, etc.  Brandon and I are also playing various sports.  He does soccer, and I am doing volleyball, kickball, and softball.  I also have three babysitters to call on, though I don't do it enough!  I also have an amazing girlfriend that lets me vent and offers up a lot of encouragement and support.  I just do not really get a lot of pure adult time where I do not have to be responsible for anyone and can really just let loose.  My job is extremely demanding during the eight hours I am there each day.  Getting to and from work is  pretty mentally demanding as well.  To get anywhere around here you need to cross a bridge or a tunnel, or a bunch of them.  Traffic is just tremendously tedious.  At home I'm trying to stay one step ahead of a ten year old boy that pushes every button and limit far beyond the acceptable.  Plus, I never really know what report from either school or day care awaits me.  Most of the time the conversations with those institutions start with "Mr. Dad, can you come into the office so we can talk about Brandon."  Any energy, spirit, or hope totally drains out of me at those words, and I hear them a lot.  I have had to take my son to several different doctors, emergency rooms, etc in the last two weeks.  He was bitten by a spider, had a bacterial infection, multiple emergency room and family doctor visits for the bite, normal counseling appointments, plastic surgeon for the spider bite (family doctor was being overly cautious), and a new psychiatrist (praise God).  My medical insurance at work has changed and I am in the process of just getting my own insurance.  It is actually cheaper than the NEW High Deductible Health Plan.  You see, a single parent of a special needs child is the worst case scenario for this new insurance.  GRRRRRRRR.  There is the constant threat of vomiting when my son takes his evening and morning meds as he shoves the offending pill down his throat, halfway to his stomach.  I don't know why, because when he throws them up, I rinse them off and hand them back.  Ok, not really....well, once, but it was the anti-biotic and he needed the full regimen of that.  Hey, I had to pick through the vomit to get it....

Enough griping though....on to other things....

Two Saturdays ago was the Pub Crawl that benefited Parkinson's disease.  I got a babysitter and had a plan.  I don't drink often...if ever.  Many of my friends don't know that I drink.  It isn't that it is a secret, I just don't do it often.  You see, I am a single parent and I normally have my son with me.  I don't take him where there are a lot of adults drinking, and I don't drink around him otherwise.  We had a great time and it was for a great cause.  I also found some great new German pubs that I did not know about before.  :-) 

Two Sundays ago we (my son, my girlfriend, and I) went to Church, did a few hours of rock climbing, had a social at California Pizza Kitchen, and then played a couple of hours of volleyball with my league.  OMG, Who knew Volleyball could be so much work?????  Twenty some years of playing basketball has been a huge disadvantage to me.  Volleyball is nothing like basketball and I'm unlearning a lot of things.  I really like the exercise and I am learning to like the game.

Last Wednesday we had an awesome kickball game.  We won a game!!!!!  And not by forfeit!  Susan, my girlfriend was the MVP of the game.  She has several outstanding plays and kicks.  For once everything just came together.

My son has been playing soccer with the YMCA.  He loves it and is learning to love running.  This past Saturday he nearly kicked a goal in from half field!  In the air no less!

This past Saturday was also the Wine Festival.  Unfortunately, I only got to some sweet reds and whites, but they were good.  I love Chianti, Cabernet, and most of the other reds.  Susan and I had two groups to meet up with, and I forgot about the third (which I hope they forgive me for).  Susan and I ended the night with buffalo chicken sandwiches and friends at Hooters. 

So in all, I have made an effort the past two weeks to get out and get some Mike time...and give Brandon a break from mean ol' Dad.  It has been a difficult two weeks with work and doctors so I really needed the breaks.

Halloween parties coming up this week.  :-)

Have a great week everyone!!!!

PS: Transformers is a kick ass movie. If you haven't seen it, you should! There is one scene where they talk about masturbation so if you have children that will ask, you should know...



~Mike
--
"Until you forget what you think you know and what you think is possible, you will never know what is truly attainable."

So my son proves me wrong....on occasion...

I keep telling Brandon that the claw machines you see everywhere are a rip off. They are, but not as much for him. "The claw decides who will go," the LGMs say. Well, it is probably Brandon operating the claw. He has a knack for it. He spent $5 the other night and pulled out three stuffed toys. He even gave one to a little girl that was passing by....

~Mike

I feel pretty honored right now...

Monty is playing a picture game and I have become a part of it! For a Different Kind of Girl recently wrote about her one year anniversary as a blogger and wrote a lot about what the blogging community has given back to her. I started blogging sometime in 2005. Sort of like Hygiene Chronicles and probably a lot of others, it was an experiment that I never really expected to go beyond a couple of posts. It is a bit addicting though. :-) I really started blogging a lot in the first part of 2007. I was hurting in a way that I did not think I would recover from and I was looking for help. I found it reading all of YOUR blogs. I found COURAGE and HONESTY and a willingness to be TRUTHFUL. I found people SEARCHING and I found some ANSWERS. I found STRENGTH and I found WEAKNESS, and I found PEOPLE willing to share their STRENGTH with those who were WEAK. I found ENCOURAGEMENT. In part I know it is the semi-anonymous nature of the Internet, but I found people will to lay aside inhibitions and EXPRESS themselves. While I would love to return the favor to Monty for her including me in her game, there is a person that has been on my mind and in my prayers for several months now. I chose courage as the word to describe her and search on. Funny thing is that the first two pictures had to do with jumping off a cliff.

So here is my submission for the game:

Her name is Jules from Theater of the Absurd. I feel she embodies so many of the characteristics above, but with all that she has been through, and what she did over the summer, COURAGE is what immediately comes to mind.

COURAGE



PS: Something I ran across while doing an image search on most of the characteristics listed above in one search.

The Shape of a Mother

I feel pretty honored right now...

Monty is playing a picture game and I have become a part of it! For a Different Kind of Girl recently wrote about her one year anniversary as a blogger and wrote a lot about what the blogging community has given back to her. I started blogging sometime in 2005. Sort of like Hygiene Chronicles and probably a lot of others, it was an experiment that I never really expected to go beyond a couple of posts. It is a bit addicting though. :-) I really started blogging a lot in the first part of 2007. I was hurting in a way that I did not think I would recover from and I was looking for help. I found it reading all of YOUR blogs. I found COURAGE and HONESTY and a willingness to be TRUTHFUL. I found people SEARCHING and I found some ANSWERS. I found STRENGTH and I found WEAKNESS, and I found PEOPLE willing to share their STRENGTH with those who were WEAK. I found ENCOURAGEMENT. In part I know it is the semi-anonymous nature of the Internet, but I found people will to lay aside inhibitions and EXPRESS themselves. While I would love to return the favor to Monty for her including me in her game, there is a person that has been on my mind and in my prayers for several months now. I chose courage as the word to describe her and search on. Funny thing is that the first two pictures had to do with jumping off a cliff.

So here is my submission for the game:

Her name is Jules from Theater of the Absurd.
COURAGE

Careful what you write about....

My last post talked about how things were going great with my son. Well, not so fast. I have been punished for my optimism! Ok, not really. Last week was a not so great week and I'm still recovering. There were several events that have upset my balance. It is even more disheartening when I get a progress report for him that has 2 A's, 2 B's, and a B+, all S's, all strengths, and no areas of concern. A first to say the least. His grades are always this good, but the S's and no areas of concern are cause for global celebration. So one bad week shouldn't bring about such a shadow, but it does. Many of Brandon's issues are cyclic. I am praying this is not the start of a downward and depressive swing. I can't really take full blown temper tantrums in Target from a ten year old anymore.

He has seemed to bounce back this week though.

He gets to see his mom for a little bit Thursday!!!!

It's an acorn year. All day, all night, acorns drop onto my roof, bounce - bounce - bounce - bounce, rrrrrrrooooooolllllllll, and launch into the yard. They are about a foot deep...or sound like they should be. The squirrels will be FAT next year for sure.

:-)
~Mike

My son got caught....

Doing good!!!  Four times this week in fact.  He is also leading the school in Accelerated Reader points.  Nice to have things going well for a change.  :-)  His attitude and behavior has dramatically improved and he is doing so much better at pulling out of his anger/tantrum episodes. 

We started Soccer this week.  It has been fun to watch him run around the field.  He tries really hard to do tricks and things, always looking for oddball ways to get around obstacles.  :-)

Annual sand sculpting contest is this weekend!  Pictures will be coming soon.  They have artists come from all over to compete.  What they can do with sand is simply astounding.

Have a great weekend!

~Mike
--
"Until you forget what you think you know and what you think is possible, you will never know what is truly attainable."

Internet Security Tip:

I am a network security engineer. I love my job as it provides me new challenges every day and it is pretty rewarding for me. I love puzzles and I get plenty! My job has made me fairly paranoid too. This week I ran across something that you should know about. If you think that your security tools, like anti-virus, are protecting you, you could be very wrong. I found a website this week, a legitimate church site, that had been hacked. The thing was that no one knew it. It was hacked and altered but not in a way anyone would notice. All the pages had a javascript appended to them. You could not see it, but it ran every time you went to the site. It was a trojan and your anti-virus programs would not have stopped it. Why? Because there were no signatures for it. Malware authors can obfuscate most code, and often in an automated way, so that Anti-virus vendors cannot keep up. Sometimes you could get a different version of the trojan every visit to the website, as that trojan is modified on the fly. The major anti-virus vendors did not recognize the trojan, nor did they stop the follow on programs, such as a key logger. The key logger waits until you go to a bank website, then it sends your credentials back to the criminal. The criminal may then empty your account, or sell your accout for $400-$1000 US cash. Hacking is a lucrative underground business. What used to be for fun is now for profit, and the payoff is huge.

How do you stop this? Well, you are not going to like the answer. YOU are the only way to prevent this. That is right, YOU are the answer. The first thing to do is to make yourself two accounts. One account is for everyday use. This account cannot install programs, or make system changes, etc. If you run malware as this user, the malware cannot do much of anything with the system, if anything at all. The interesting thing is that neither can you. If you want to install new software or make system changes you will need to login with your other, administrator account. Once you are done, log out and log back in with the normal unprivileged account. This is a pain, but it goes a long way to making sure your system stays yours, and that your personal or financial information is not stolen.

Just because some website says you need a plugin, do not install it. Plugins are hackins. Plugins often do not update themselves or even notify you of issues. If you are browsing with admin privileges and you have plugins, then hackers that hit those plugins will get administrator level access to your system.

More later...I'm going to bed. Volleyball kicked my ass tonight.

~Mike

Three weeks of school...

have flown by. My son said the other day that his behavior has been great in school, and his teachers second that. He says it is because he doesn't want to get kicked out of the Math and Sciences Academy (MSA). The MSA is a special program that has limited space and elementary school students need to compete to get into. Last year my son expressed an interest and was accepted. His behavior/emotional issues can be extreme at times and we were told that if the pace was too fast or too stressful that he can move back to his other school. He said yesterday the reason he is trying so hard to behave in class is that he doesn't want to get kicked out. This is one of the first really big items he has really fought for.

I changed my work schedule in a big way to try and make other accommodation's for Brandon this year. My goal is to give him the very BEST environment for him to succeed this year. While we unfortunately need to be out the door at 5:45 am to be at day care by 6am, I am getting home by 3pm. This allows me to get him home to play with the other kids in the neighborhood, get dinner ready, get to practices, and just spend more time with him in the evenings. So far it has been a template for success. He has had a few blowups at home over homework and some other stuff, but none of it has been too bad. He is a great kid and he is doing better with his tantrums and stuff.

Soccer starts for Brandon this week. He gained quite a bit of weight over the summer, nearly 20 pounds. Soccer is going to be quite interesting this year.

Home stuff....We don't spend a lot of time at home, or at least we didn't until the change in schedule this year. Correspondingly, I haven't spent much time putting up pictures, looking at buying furniture, etc. I have furniture, it just never occurred to me that I could add other accessories or even replace some of what I have with some better or more functional items. My girlfriend and I were talking several weeks about about how she would like a pub/bar/counter height table. There are such things? So I started looking, and what do you know? There are! Being a tall person this is pretty appealing to me. I love the tall chairs and stools anyway, it just never crossed my mind that I could get this at home. I now have a counter height cherry wood table! It is dark and it makes me feel at home, stable, comfortable, at ease. I love to sit at my new table. I'm there now, watching the sun come up, sunlight dancing through the leaves, leaping off the early morning dew, squirrels racing at breakneck speeds, and sipping coffee. Which leads right in to the next item. I have new dishes. :-) Jade Moon from Target. They were on sale last week. They are dark on the outside but glazed aqua blue in the middle. They go great with my table and are just awesome to look at. To put this in perspective, I'm still using the plates and things I got as wedding presents in 1990. That is a lot of perspective right there. My son says it feels like we are eating in a sushi restaurant now. Sushi being one of OUR favorite things, he is right, it does. I have also been hanging pictures. I have a number of painting and photographs that I haven't put up because I didn't think I would be here for that long. So funny how way leads on to way, or sometimes doesn't. So here I am, and some of my pictures are now up. I'm playing with some of the photographs. I sent one to Sam's to make a poster out of it. 11x14 first. It turned out well. I had a frame for it, but the frame was broken (trivia: name the group, the album, and the year for an album name that mentions broken frames...of course that is enough for a google search right there). I'm also playing with some of my photographs, changing some to brush strokes and other special effects, and then getting prints of them. There are several online photo places you can send your pictures to and pickup prints locally. My favorite is SAMS. One hour pickup for up to 8x10, reasonable prices, and good quality thus far.

We had a great night last night over at Susan's with some friends. Brats, beer, and Battle of the Sexes game. We were supposed to go camping, but the weather looked like it would turn bad and we decided to cook out instead. Still a great time. Maybe camping and scuba diving next weekend in the outer banks. We'll see!

We're doing a Battle of the Sexes Meetin event at Lasertag on October 2nd! Come on out! We start coed indoor volleyball this week too. I still have a lot to learn at volleyball, but I have a lot of fun playing.

Nothing earth-shattering here, no deep thoughts, nothing to add to the four noble truths, the golden rule, or anything else, just life on a daily basis.

~Mike

Random stuff....

Sometimes my son is so disappointed in me, and for good reason. Last year he and I were at an unfamiliar house and I went to make him some cereal. I grabbed an unmarked Tupperware type container of a white granular substance which looked like sugar to me. I've seen it stored this way before and it made sense. He started eating his cereal and promptly spit it back out. "SALT! YUCK!" :-( I felt so bad.

This weekend I made some waffles. Last week I made garlic bread. I like a lot of butter on both. Apparently the butter was cross contaminated with garlic...my son walks by me through the kitchen muttering under his breath and shaking his head, "garlic, waffles, syrup...DISGUSTING." He was right, but I ate the waffles anyway.

Several years ago, my son, his mom, and I were in a restaurant. There were fake sharks hanging from the ceiling. Being the not so great father I am, I made a remark that they feed misbehaving children to the sharks. My son pipes up "Those are not real children." I am befuddled by the statement, so I look up to see what he was talking about. Just above us, a great white shark had the South Park kids stuffed it's mouth. Brandon's mom said, "Those are bad kids." And they were both right.

Stuff from Church today:
"The Truth will set you free." Yes, it will. Something I got from the book "Emotional Unavailability" several months ago is that Honesty is not Truth. Neither is Sincerity. If you need to rationalize a decision, especially when it can deeply affect another person, are you sure they are not rational lies or manipulation? I love you, I adore you, I trust you are things that are not said or practiced enough in our society.

Something you should know about me if you are ever inclined to invite me to some sort of trivia event. I know almost nothing about pop culture. Seriously. People in the office start talking about this show, or that person and I am likely to say "What is that? Who is that?" I have no idea. I like movies, but I couldn't tell you who was in them. I may recognize them from some other movie, but that would be it. There are only a few TV shows I watch, but those are on DVD or off of itunes and I never watch them on real tv. The advertising kills me. I don't know anything about any of the people behind the music I like, I wouldn't recognize them if they showed up on my door, and I'm not likely to even know them if they introduced themselves. I may not even recognize the group name if they tacked that on. They would probably need to start singing or playing before I caught on. I remember Jack Johnson telling a story about his wife once. Apparently their toilet was stopped up, he was not home, and she was waiting on a plumber. The door bell rang and she answered the door with "Are you the plumber?" The man at the door said yes, and came in and tried to fix the toilet. The man was Jimmy Buffet and had stopped by to see Jack. I would have been the same way. My friends and my family are my superstars. They are the ones I want to hear each day. They are the ones I want to see and take pictures of. Even the fellow bloggers out there, I look forward to reading what you have to say, sharing in the triumphs and the obstacles you go through. Real people. Real lives.

The weather here has changed, and for the better. My son and I walked out this morning to get bagels and I was electrified. Autumn is coming. The air was crisp, humidity free, and slightly cold. The sky was so blue it dazzled me. My lungs gulped in the air and all I wanted to do was spend the day outside. After Church we did just that. We packed a quick lunch, some wine, snacks, and headed for the beach. Not the tourist area, but a wildlife refuge between Virginia and North Carolina. :-) It was awesome.

We went rock climbing Saturday. That is always a blast. It has to be great for Brandon because dad never says "No, you can't climb that!" Susan and I also got to go out Saturday night to a Meetin party. Even better news is that I now have three babysitters to call when I need one!

Photo montage coming, playing with some other packages....












You can see the effect the erasers had on my son's face in this one.

~Mike