Math Sucks

I knew "Math Night" sponsored by Maddie's school was going to be interesting from the get-go.  Clearly, the teachers talked up this event to the kids to the point where my daughter actually uttered the words, "This is going to be the best night ever!"

I personally have never used the words "best night ever" and "math" in the same sentence.  Just ask anyone who has witnessed me doing math homework.  Throw in my other arch nemesis, grocery shopping, and I knew someone would be in tears by the end of the night. My bet was that it was going to be me.

The day started like most where I had to pick my battles especially where Colin was concerned.  I was calm when he refused to wear his gym shoes and insisted in wearing rain boots. I was calm when I had to coax a truck out of his hand on his way into preschool. I remained calm when he screamed at me when he wanted Skittles and we didn't have any. Then he whined for more juice when he'd already had one Capri Sun. Later in the day, he banged on the keys to Maddie's keyboard and despite me telling him at least ten times to stop, I finally got to the point where I hit my breaking point and had to yell at him.  The only reason I got that far in the day before losing my cool was because I forked over an extra $20 to have him stay at school for Playhouse that bought me an extra 3 hours of sanity.

I had to rattle his cage to get him to go potty, put his shoes and coat on and get out if the house in order to get to Math Night at the local Dominick's. Maddie was anxious to leave for the event and if it were up to her, we would have skipped dinner and just opened a bag of chips from the aisles to snack on instead.

When we walked in the door, Colin seemed into it until he saw the boy next door and began throwing a temper tantrum because he wanted to be with him.  My neighbor agreed to take him with them, but then he cried because he wanted to be with me too.  They calmly walked away from us and were done with Math Night before we even finished our first problem.

I coaxed him with a snack that I would have gladly ripped open from the shelves. I offered Fruit Ninja on my phone. Instead he laid down on the floor in middle of the aisle. Then he started asking for the cart that has a car where you can sit and watch cartoons. I tried to hold him off as long as possible until he bolted towards the coral of carts.  I got Maddie and our current "boring gray cart" (his words) and was willing to succumb to his request just to getthrough the rest of our excursion when I realized they were turned off/out of order. I tried to explain that they didn't work to Colin, but all he saw was red as he tried with all his might to pull out the cartoon cart against the iron clad brake locking it in place.  

Maddie jumped in and tried to get him to "step away from the carts," to no avail. I finally told her to ignore him and walk away.  Her face was about as flushed as mine from the spike in blood pressure.  She and I clenched our jaws simultaneously. Soon Colin begrudgingly followed us back to the aisles to finish our math problems, but continued to scream and cry at the top of his lungs.  Maddie told me this was not how she thought Math Night would turn out and that Colin was completely embarrassing her.  Poor kid.

I promptly texted Tom to find out what his ETA was at math night was because Colin was shattering Maddie's math night dreams and aspirations. Mind you, it was Tom who was adamant about Maddie attending Math Night.  I’m not sure who was more excited, Tom or Maddie.  Not that he is a math wiz by any means, but because he not one and really wants to make sure our kids excel in math since neither of us do.  He uses it every day and wishes he was better at it.  He told me the other night that “Maddie has a long way to go” as far as math is concerned.  My response, “Of course she does…she’s in kindergarten.  She has twelve years to go, actually.”

Tom was disappointed because he had a meeting that ran late and wasn’t able to get there until the tail end of the event.  Of course he walked with a cool head and took over. I don't know what he bribed Colin with, but Colin accepted his phone within 1 minutes and didn’t mentioned the damn cartoon cart until we made it to the car out of earshot of Tom where he yelled at me once again for not getting the cart for him.

After my experience at Math Night, I’ve come up with some grocery stores based math problem for you...

Problem 1:

Annoyed, frustrated and bewildered mommy is moving at a rate of 80 steps a minute. The liquor aisle is 400 feet away. If we know that there are 100 steps between each aisle, how long does it take for said mommy to get to the liquor aisle?

Problem 2:

How many glasses of wine does it take for mommy from problem 1 to decompress after a school organized event surrounding math, grocery shopping, a kindergartner and a crabby 3 year old?

Problem 3:

How many minutes does it take for DCFS to arrive after a child has been beat?

Target-ed For Disaster

This sums it up pretty well.

Sick as it sounds, I sometimes use trips to Target purely to get out of the house…even with the kids.

Since Target is essentially my second home, there is some sense of comfort and entertainment I get from going there.  When I go without the kids it might as well be a beach vacation to Tahiti for the amount of peace and tranquility it gives me.  If I bring the kids, it isn’t quite so Zen, but I can usually bribe them with a treasure from the dollar bins and maybe even some Pizza Hut pizza in order to get through the trip.  My friend and I have even used lunch and a shopping trip at Target as a play date.  We realized quickly how bad our judgment was on that call when our three- year old sons started racing each other up and down the aisles pretending they were dragons.

Yesterday was one of those days where I felt like between waiting for Colin to poop (which he finally did) and sitting around watching cartoons, we needed to get out of the house for a bit.  Besides, I needed ground beef, bananas and waffles.  So, off to Target we went.  Mistake number one: I let the kids hit the dollar bin first.  Normally I purposely park at the opposite door from the treasure trough of crap so I can hang it over their heads’ the whole shopping trip.  Maddie got some Easter egg decorating kit and window clings for her room and Colin got a rubber football and this obnoxious claw-like thing that looked like what my 4’10 grandma used to get things from shelves higher then five feet.

From there I wanted to head to the children’s clothing section to do one of my most favorite things to do at Target…hunt through sale racks.  I get a warm fuzzy feeling from those bright orange tags on their merchandise and my excitement only grows when I move from the 30% off rack to the 50% off rack all the way to the 70% off rack!!!  My sale-rack-buzz was immediately killed when Colin ran off into the racks of clothes and gave me flashbacks to the kidnapping of Adam Walsh in the early 80s. (son of John Walsh from America’s Most Wanted).  He is the namesake of “Code Adam” and was kidnapped from a Sears store in Florida. He was only a few years older than me as his case left an indelible impression on me for the rest of my life. 

We scored some deals for Maddie and even some Wonder Woman/Super Girl/Bat Girl underwear before moving on to the boy’s section.  Colin desperately needed pants pj’s that didn’t make him look like he belonged to the Hillbilly Pit Crew from Cars since most of his pj’s were Cars themed and two inches too short.  We thought we hit the jackpot with a Power Rangers Samurai shirt on the sale rack until we discovered it was the wrong size.  Colin was soon disengaged from the hunt for deals that also had his favorite characters and ran off into the toy section conveniently located right across from the boy’s section, but just out of my line of site.  I decided to give up my hunt for discounted clothes for him and just grab whatever shirts and pants I could find in his size.  In the midst of my screaming and yelling at Colin and one full-blown temper tantrum, I found a Sonic the Hedgehog shirt for him.  That was a major accomplishment until I had to wrestle a $30 set of Cars from him which ended in temper tantrum number two of our shopping trip.  

He was screaming and crying walking behind me as I made my way to the grocery section of the store.  He then fell into lethargy mode where he claimed he was hungry, thirsty and tired.  I remembered I had a Capri Sun in my purse and despite the fact he had two glasses of orange juice mixed with Miralax earlier to stimulate bowel movement, I gave in and threw him in the cart and shoved the straw in his mouth.  It kept him occupied for a whole 1.5 minutes until he picked up that claw thing and began clicking it incessantly.  Maddie tried to help out by taking it away from him, which sent Colin into a tizzy and then she started clicking it.  I gave it back to Colin just as we entered the frozen food section and he grabbed each handle of the freezer doors as we went by.  I lost my temper and grabbed the damn toy away from him and tossed it below the cart. 

I headed for the yogurt section and could barely focus on the brand I usually get when I heard someone call my name.  Oh crap.  It never fails when I am screaming like a banshee at my kids, I run into someone I know who probably knew I was in the store 20 minutes before she saw me by the antics going on in the kids’ clothing section.  Luckily it was a friend from high school who has three kids of her own.  She told me that they had just gotten off a run of illnesses that wreaked havoc on their entire house and that was the first day they had gotten out.  I’m hoping they were just so happy to be out of the house they didn’t notice how idiotic we looked and sounded. I’m also hoping the fact that they seemed to peaceful and serene compared to the flames shooting out of my kids ears was because they just didn’t have their energy back. Initially I was a little worried about getting too close to them for fear we’d get sick until I remembered I had just used Colin’s stuffed animal to wipe his nose when he sneezed and he had licked the counter at the gym earlier that day.  I think we were well on our way to our own plague.

I grabbed the last few things from the aisles before I went to the produce section.  The kids insisted on looking at the catalog of birthday cakes at the bakery section.  I let Colin out of the cart and they proceeded to rifle through the binders all while managing to unhinge the pages leaving them all mangled.  I tried to put the pages back in their rightful place in the first book and was working on the second when Maddie opened the binder rings back up and the pages I had just put back and then-some came falling out again.  I got her away from the display before any more damage could be done and made sure Colin didn’t jump over the counter and start putting his finger in any cake frosting.

I got the remainder of my produce and headed toward the checkout line.  At that point, Colin had opened the little mesh bag his football came in and ripped the tag off his grabber claw thing leaving the checkout guy instantly annoyed with me.  Meanwhile, Colin was in the empty checkout line next to us launching a car off the conveyor belt.  I warned him three times to knock it off before his car (the kind you pull back and then it goes forward at Mach 3) crashed into the bagging area.  I finally grabbed it from him just as the checkout guy held up the stuffed animal Colin brought with him that he had also put on the conveyor belt.  This twentysomething might have gone to get an emergency vasectomy after he encountered us.

As I left the store an hour-and-a-half after entering it, $187 poorer, set off the security alarm and without the syrup on my list.  I patted Colin down to make sure he didn’t lift a Matchbox car and we were on our way.  At that point, I felt it necessary to vent to my Facebook friends.  “Longest. Trip. To. Target. Ever.”  My mother-in-law saw one of my follow-up comments that this “fun trip” cost me $187, and she immediately called me to see if Colin shoplifted, broke something or we were fined in some way.  Apparently she doesn’t spend that much on her typical trip to Target like we do.

I guess the only thing that could have made this trip worse, besides my three-year old getting arrested for shoplifting, was if Colin’s Miralax hadn’t kicked in earlier that day and he would have had to sit in the bathroom for an extra 45 minutes trying to poop.  It’s all about the silver linings.

Shit Happens...

I’ve been on a bit of a hiatus from writing lately, but there is nothing like a good poop story to drag me out of my writing lull.

Let me start by explaining why my writing has been hibernating this winter.  I have found since the untimely death of my laptop, that finding time to come up to my computer that is now safely situated in my bedroom away from the dangers of the kitchen table is extremely difficult.  We opted for a desktop computer versus a laptop to ensure we didn’t face any water-spilling mishaps.  I thought I had found a solution to this dilemma when I bought a new case for my iPad that had a Bluetooth keyboard, which meant I could use it to write as long as I downloaded the application Ever Note.  It is much easier to work on my writing downstairs where the kids are playing otherwise they follow me upstairs and act like assholes jumping on my bed or stare at me and ask a million times to print something out, play DisneyJunior.com or SprountOnline.com while I trying to concentrate.

Then, on New Years Eve I found myself closing out 2012 with one last Apple product mishap.  I taught cycle that morning and afterward the kids and I grabbed a snack in the café at the gym.  Once we finished there, we were headed to go grocery shopping, so I had the kids go potty before we left.  We headed into the family locker room and I purposely brought my purse and iPad into the bathroom with me so I would not leave it laying out for someone to take.  Colin went first and then I did and while I was going to the bathroom, Colin opened the door and ran out.  I hurried up and finished before some dad who had just taken his kids swimming saw me peeing, jumped up washed my hands and in my rush to run after Coin, grabbed my purse, but left the iPad sitting on the counter next to the sink.  It wasn’t until I returned home two hours later that realized I had forgotten it. 

I ran back to the gym immediately and not only was it no longer sitting on the counter, but whoever picked it up had a case of “finder’s keepers, loser’s weepers” and took it as their own.  I tried to track it with the “Find My iPhone” application to no avail.  It seems that the culprit had already changed the Apple ID to their own, so I couldn’t track it.  Bottom line, it’s a goner.  I filed a police report so I could claim it on my homeowners insurance, but as luck would have it we have a $1,000 deductible, and that is more than the value of the iPad and case.

No, I haven’t been sitting around with--pardon the expression--my thumb up my ass.  Instead, I’ve had it up Colin’s. 

It seems just when I thought having poop cleanup be number one on my list of responsibilities was coming to an end, it only got worse.  Colin has been potty trained since the summer, but was still having issues with going poop.  He was suffering from a very common ailment that many boys his age go through called “anal retention.”  And I don’t mean his need to keep his socks and underwear in perfect alignment in his drawers.  This Freudian term is defined as children who experience conflicts during the anal stage and may develop "anal" personality traits, namely those associated with a child's efforts at excretory control: orderliness, stubbornness, a compulsion for control.  If you know Colin at all, it is his stubbornness that is to blame for this compulsion.  In simple terms, he was holding his poop.

He could and would go for days without going despite several moments where he would stop dead in his tracks, his face would get red, his eyes would tear and I was sure he was going to crap himself.  On several occasions I would run him to the bathroom only to have him sit there for long periods of time and not do anything.  Unfortunately, this usually happened at the most inopportune times like in the middle of DSW show store, at the grocery store or right before we had to leave the house.  I would sit in the bathroom with him, read to him, set up my iPhone on the counter so he could watch a Netflix movie or even let him hold on to me much like a woman in labor would do while giving birth without pain medication.  If you saw what eventually came out of him, you might think he did actually give birth.  That’s what happens when you hold poop in you for days. 

There were several occasions when we sat there for so long, we would end up being late for things, like school, a meeting with my boss at the gym or I’d have to miss things all together like meetings for the 5k committee I’m on.  Thankfully they were all things that could be missed and/or with people who I know well enough to say, “Sorry I was late/missed that.  My son was trying to take a massive poop.”

I knew full well that it was a vicious cycle.  He would be afraid or too stubborn to go for whatever reason and then the longer he waited, the more poop built up and he knew how much it would hurt (as it would anyone with 4 days worth in them), and that would make him even more fearful to go.  I would try to wipe him to try and stimulate that area as well as to wipe away and residual poop that was ready to escape at any given moment.  I even tried using the wipe to press on his butthole or went so far as to put the rectal thermometer up his but with some Vaseline on it to get things moving.  Never in my life did I ever expect to spend so much time with my finger or other objects up a boy’s butt.  Ever.

Tom would yell at me that he would go when he had to go.  He didn’t understand why I was so stressed, but he also never experience a trip like the one to the dollar store where Colin stopped dead in his tracks and grabbed his butt.  He didn’t have to drag Colin into the bathroom along with Maddie and peel off all the layers of winter clothes to get him on the pot.  Then worry that all of our belongings were lying on the filthy bathroom floor of Dollar General.  You would think with all those reasonably priced cleaning products they would use some of them on their own bathroom, but I digress.

Meanwhile, Maddie is having a panic attack because she has developed a fear of being in a small, enclosed bathroom that is about a thousand degrees while we wait 45 minutes for Colin to poop.  Meanwhile, Colin has a large skid mark on his underwear where said poop has touched cotton and each time I wipe him, the toilet paper is not clean.  That’s how I know he has to poop.  Did I mention it had been 4 days since he pooped?

These marathon sessions would occur several times over a day or two until he would finally give birth, I’d plunge the toilet to rid it of the man-sized turd and we could go about our day.

The other fun aspect of this phase is that as he would have the sensation to poop, he would also feel like he had to pee and in most cases could only control one bodily function at a time and end up peeing his pants or if he did happen to be sitting on the pot, he’d push so hard he forget about his wiener and he’d pee on the floor, the wall across from him and if I didn’t get out of the line of fire, me.

I finally broke down and bought some Miralax to give him hoping it would encourage healthy bowel movement so a) he’d HAVE to go and b) when he’d go it wouldn’t be so hard. It started to work until he ended up with an ear infection and I was worried that the combination of antibiotics and Miralax would do a number on him.  Within a few days, the magic of antibiotics had him pooping like a champ and he’d even go on his own without me sitting there and being his birthing coach.  Unfortunately, he wasn’t so good at asking for help wiping, so he would end up with residual poop on his leg that we wouldn’t realize was there until later in the day when it was bath time.  Oops.

Overall the situation has improved, and Colin has overcome his fear of “dropping the kids off at the pool.” He did have a rather large man-poop the other day that had me not only plunging the toilet, but using a hanger to break up the poop and then fishing it out of the toilet. Meanwhile, I ended up dipping the end of the scarf I was wearing into the toilet water that was dangerously close to overflowing over the top of the toilet seat. I swear some times my life is just one long episode of “Dirty Jobs.” Of course, when I’m not dealing with my own children’s feces, my darling dog enters the picture….but that’s a story for another time.

Safe and Sound

Today, I put my daughter on the school bus just like I have done every day since her first day of school in August.  But today was different.  Today, I felt a tug at my heart and a pang of fear, lack of trust and paranoia come over me.  I realized that I will likely never put her on the bus the same way I did before Friday, December 14, 2012.

The school shooting in Connecticut is not the first where I have found myself watching the news reports with tears in my eyes and jaw dropped open at such an atrocity.  But this time it hit a little closer to home since this is the first school shooting that has occurred since one of my own children is in school.  Not only that, but the children that were killed were only a year older than my daughter.  When the shooting occurred, I happened to be volunteering in Maddie's classroom.  I spent time with each of the students playing word games with them in the library, three students at a time.  I love working with the kids because I get to see all their personalities, get hugs from them because they know that even though I'm not their mommy, I'm still a little piece of their own mommy with them at school.  I love to hear their stories about "this one time...my mom took me the store and I wanted a toy and she said no..." or "this one time...my dog took a giant poop in the backyard and I stepped in it and..."  or whatever the story may be, I am a captive audience and their little voices, little expressions and even little runny noses make me smile.

I think about my time in the classroom and how the same kinds of things were likely going on at the same time when tragedy struck.  Smiling faces, young minds at work and giggles all interrupted and violently brought to a screeching halt.  I cannot even wrap my mind around it, yet I can because I can vividly imagine what would happen if a gunman entered my daughter's school.  It gives me nightmares. My heart breaks for those families and those left behind with the painful memories and loss.  There are so many questions, opinions and a new awakening of fear that may have been put at the wayside between now and the last school shooting we had to hear about.

Then I am shifted to a different time in my own life when going to school meant a constant underlying fear and paranoia.   When I was ten years old, my parents split up due to my father's overall inability to provide a stable, healthy environment to my mom, brothers and I.  Prior to his departure from our day-to-day lives, he exhibited erratic behavior that prompted not only my mom, but my dad's brothers to step in and try to get my dad into some sort of psychiatric program.  Unfortunately, despite his history of violence against my mom and brothers, emotional abuse to all of us, inability to hold a steady job, substance abuse and a long list of manic behavior, the best he ever got was a short stay in a psych ward.  See, because family members cannot force their loved ones into treatment.  My dad would agree to go in, check out the wallpaper and then check himself out.  That's the way the mental health system works.

He was even free to roam the streets freely after the event that lead to my dad to ultimately get kicked out of my grandparent's house where we lived, which involved trying to run my brother over with a car in front of our house.  I remember feeling a sense of relief that the day-to-day drama was over, but that just gave way to the kind of trouble my dad caused once he was out of the house.  It started with him trying to break into our house, vandalizing my mom's car, stealing my mom's car, sitting out in front of our house and calling the house constantly like a bill collector.  We would call the police and they would come to the house to question my dad who likely would be parked out front.  He would show them his driver's license with our address on it and they would be on their way.  We ultimately changed our phone number and my mom sent my one brother and I away to my aunt's in Pennsylvania for the summer hoping the worst of it would be over by the time we returned.  That just made him more angry and fueled his erratic behavior.  It meant more mean phone calls to my mom at work, threats, keying the word "whore" into her car and more stalking in general.

Once again, the police were no help because until my dad actually hurt one of us, he was not seen as a threat.  Once my brother and I returned from Pennsylvania to start the school year, my dad started showing up at our schools.  We were never sure what his motive was, our biggest fear was that he would kidnap or hurt us in some way.  His mental state left a lot of questions of what he was capable of.  We certainly knew violence was part of his M.O., we just didn't know how far he was capable of taking it.

I was supposed to move from the Catholic school to public school in sixth grade, but it was clear that staying at a smaller school where everyone knew our situation was the safest bet.  Around the same timeframe, Laurie Dann, a mentally unstable woman, entered a school in Winnetka, IL, and shot several students, killing one and injuring several others.  Winnetka wasn't that far from where we lived and it sent up red flags to many schools to increase safety and security.  As luck would have it, it prompted my school to lock the doors and install a doorbell so guests had to check in at the office.  This meant that if my dad showed up, the women in the office who knew him could immediately take action.  Of course, in retrospect, I'm not sure what they could have really done if my dad really wanted to enter the school and cause harm.  Much like the school in Connecticut, the doors were locked and when the man broke the glass and entered the school, the people in the office tried to stop him to no avail.

Even when I entered high school, he would show up occasionally and it was more difficult to explain to my counselor as well as the police counselor why I felt so threatened by my own father.  I also worked at the church rectory when I was in high school and he would call me there and sometimes he would just want to talk to me, while other times the calls were threatening.  He even showed up at the rectory a few times, but once again because most of the parishioners and priests knew him and our situation, they were able to get me out of there safely.

He showed up at my high school graduation uninvited, and I saw him as I turned the corner inside the school where I was lining up with the rest of my class.  I had to dodge him by going through another part of the school to avoid him.  I think of all those instances and what his intentions were, but more importantly how much damage he could have done.  I want to think that he was just trying to see me, but there are a lot of things "you would think" a father would want for his children and he certainly never did those things, so who knows where his mind was at.

Luckily, he got his hands on an article from the local newspaper that stated I was attending Northern Illinois University even though I had ultimately decided to attend Illinois State.  We continued to tell my dad I was going to Northern knowing full well if he knew I was at ISU, he would be on my doorstep much like he did to my brother while he went there.

I lived in college feeling relatively safe until my junior year when I received a phone call from my brother who told me not to leave my apartment.  My dad spent a lot of his time in Central Illinois even after my brother left ISU due to some family members from that area.  My brother found out that my dad was at the student center at ISU and was worried that our paths might cross.  Of course, it had been several years since my dad and I had seen each other face-to-face, but since I lived only blocks away from the student center and walked the path right past it several times a day, there was a good chance we'd end up finding out exactly what would happen if he did recognized me.

I hid out in my apartment for several hours while my brother drove to ISU to pick my dad up and took him to another city where he was ultimately trying to get to.  That same year my dad showed up at my brother's wedding uninvited and had to be escorted out by my uncle.  Again, another seemingly innocent appearance caused most of us to pause while our hearts skipped several beats unsure of what would happen next.  It is a scary place to be and not something I wish on anyone.

Ultimately, my dad continued to live on the streets of several different cities abusing the system and prescription drugs in the process.  He was finally arrested in Florida for laying down in the middle of traffic on a busy road and was committed to a mental institution.  After years of sampling mental healthy facilities, he was finally forced to stay, evaluated and diagnosed with schizophrenia.  Of course, this wasn't the end of his trip.  He was eventually released from that facility and to be honest, I'm not real clear on what his exact path was from there.  I just know it involved a trial and error process of medications, programs, facilities and jail.  He sent a slew of incredibly strange letters with over-the-top religious rants, newspaper clippings with rambling notes written in the margins and random phone calls to whomever he could reach.

As the year's passed, his lifestyle and physical health led to his inability to walk.  It was at this time, he was put into a nursing home for both his physical and mental ailments.  It wasn't until he was in one of these homes completely unable to get out, that I finally went to see him and was able to forgive him.  I wasn't sure to what extent I could have him in my life after all of the horrible childhood memories and fear I lived through, but I needed to come to terms with my relationship with him.  I knew that I had to be careful, because I knew full well that when it came to my dad, if you open the door a crack to help him or let him in, he would swing it wide open and take advantage.  I kept distance, but forgave him in my heart.

Over the years I have continued to struggle with my relationship with him.  It will never be a "normal" father-daughter relationship.  His health continues to deteriorate and he has moved from one facility to another.  Luckily, after years of tinkering with his psychiatric medication, he seems to be relatively "even-keeled."  However, this past year I also found out that based on one of his antics and run-ins with the law in the past, he was placed on the "Registered Offenders List" making it even more difficult for him to find a quality facility to take care of him.  On one hand, I try to justify his behavior based on his mental health, but can't ignore the deviant, unpredictable and downright evil things he has said and done, even to members of his own family.  The biggest lesson I have learned is that there is difference between forgiveness and reconciliation.  I can forgive, but will likely never reconcile.

I wonder if "The System" was different, how things my have turned out differently?  Would we have been able to get him into a program that truly treated his mental illness earlier so that he could have been put on proper medication from the get-go?  Could he have been a functioning member of society and our family as a result?  "The System" certainly didn't make it easy for any of this to happen.  I try not to get political, but I can tell you "The System" is broken.  The policies in place don't work to treat patients with such mental illnesses properly and certainly don't protect their families.  The current state of affairs leaves the decision up to the patients themselves, which seems counter-productive since, in most cases, they aren't in their right mind to make a proper decision to begin with. 

And stalking laws have improved slightly since my dad was sitting outside our house and schools, but it still takes a whole heck of a lot to prove that there is a valid threat until it is likely too late.  I'm not sure how to fix it.  I'm not sure how to help the people who need help or to assist their families to either work and live with mental health issues, or protect them from those with mental health issues.  What I do know is that the world is full of sick people who do horrible things and it is clear that there is something seriously amiss with their mental state. On one hand, every where you turn people are taking anti-psychotics, but as someone who takes anti-psychotics myself, it doesn't take much to have them prescribed.  I had several doctors offer them to me without even knowing any detailed information about my personality, issues with depression/anxiety or family history.  All I had to say was that I "struggled" a bit and they were ready to put me on whatever drug their pharmaceutical rep brought in that day along with a tray of sandwiches for the whole staff.  I was fortunate enough to eventually find doctor who knew not only my health history, but asked the right questions to ensure she prescribed me with a drug that was the best fit for me.

Of course, my case is far more mild than what we are dealing with when it comes to my dad or Adam Lanza, but my point is that there is a clear disconnect and lack of true understanding of how serious mental health issues can be.  I can only imagine what Nancy  Lanza went through raising her child.  Reports indicate that he was always shy, awkward and had a hard time fitting in and that he had a Aspergers, a form of Autism.  He was removed from mainstream school and partially home schooled.  His dad gave more money than his attorneys suggested in order to provide adequate services for his treatment.  Clearly, these parents went above and beyond to help support their son and his disorder which is not technically considered a mental illness anyway.  Aspergers Syndrome alone does not explain his violent act, however what more could have been done to help this boy in order to prevent this from happening and how can we help other troubled individuals whatever their issues may be in order to prevent this from happening in the future?  I don't know the answer to this and I wish I did.  I don't know what more my mom and my dad's brothers could have done to get him the treatment he needed.  I don't know what any family members of any of the other people who have been charged in previous school shootings could have done.  Chances are they were left scratching their heads, frustrated that there were no real answers, no real help or treatment to help with their troubled children much like the lack of resources available when we were dealing with my dad.

Either way you look at it, we are once again looking over our shoulders.  Whether it be 911, Columbine,  the movie theatre in Colorado, Northern Illinois University or any of the other random acts of violence our nation has endured, we've become a society riddled with fear.  All I can do do is hold my babies close and hold my breath each day until they arrive safely home from school. 

I'm thankful that I made it out of my childhood alive and as much as I hate to say this, I am thankful that my dad's physical ailments made it possible for him to be in a nursing home where he can never leave.  It is one less thing to worry about these days.

Happy Hanukah!

Today's trip to the grocery store went something like this:
Colin: Mom, I want one of those birthday candle things for Hanukah.
Me: they are called menorahs and I'm not buying one because we aren't Jewish and we don't celebrate Hanukah.
Col

in: Yes, we are Jewish!!!
Me: no, we believe that Jesus is the son of God and Jewish people don't.
Colin: (screaming) I don't believe in Jesus! I'm Jewish and I want that menorah!!

Hence, our latest purchase along with some gelt. Happy Hanukah to you and yours'.