Quiet, uneventful day...

Doug ordered the drywall for the ceiling today. It'll be here tomorrow. I'm spending the day cleaning the livingroom and prepping the work areas so we can put up the ceiling tomorrow. Yippie!

This week is flying past. Aside from the fact we were away Monday and it felt like a Sunday, which made Tuesday feel like a Monday... I'm confused. I realized that today is Thursday and I need to call some guy in California for the professor project at Salem State. The company whose services we are looking to use for the synchronous video/audio is changing their pricing structure and business plan this month, which could totally ruin the project. If it is going to cost us an arm and a leg, we can't pass the fees on to the students.

This could ruin the project, and all the work and planning she's done over the past several years will go right down the shitter. So I have to call today to see if they decided to let us ride through the fall semester for free, or pre-business plan change fees.

Jack has been a pretty good dog today, one house accident. He's starting to tell us when he needs to go outside, which is so cool. He's got Kinger playing tug of war with him, and seeing Kinger get into puppy mode on a daily basis is cracking my puppy lovin' shit right up. He's such a good dog... that Kinger. Glad to see him being a happy good dog.

Jack is sans collar right now though, due to the fact he ate through his up in Maine on the last night we were there, so another trip to PetCo is in our immediate future. Plus, we are out of doggie biscuits.

This afternoon, hippie farmer boy Geoff got a hair cut. Now he looks like conservative republican army boy Geoff.

Either way, hippie farmer or army boy, he's my baby and he's cute as hell. I love the fact his glasses are crooked in the Post Coif picture because it makes his left eye look smaller than the right, and the right eye looks maniacal. He's too cute for words, that boy. This morning he went out with me and the dogs, and we harvested black raspberries off the vine for pancakes. While we were away, the whole bush went mature, and so we've lost quite a bit of berries, again. Same thing happened last year while we were away in Arizona/Utah. So I want to get as many as I can now, and do stuff with them. Like bake.

We need a trip to the market, but I think I can stretch it out one more day. I'm feeling rather unmotivated to go there. Doug and Jessie are returning all our empty bottles and cans right now, I think I did it last a quarter ago, and it was a ton then. It's a ton now. Doug says "Jeeesh, how much beer do you drink!?" as he schleps the empties up the basement stairs.

Had a little help, honey.

The only other real news is we got back the report from the psychologist at the hospital who tested Geoff a few weeks back. Essentially, she recommends retesting him. I don't want to get too detailed into the report, so as to protect him somewhat from other people's opinions in the world... but the day of the test he was non-compliant so much so that his IQ came back as borderline (75).

She knows by working with him even for just a couple hours that it's a faulty result.

Her report didn't state anything I didn't already know, suspect, guess at, or feel in my gut. But it is helpful to me because it gives us really good guidelines on what to do and what we may want to consider (medication and therapy with a child psychologist).

I really think (and this is NOTHING against her, mind you, she's a very bright and wonderful person from what I can tell...) that she was really wimpy with Geoff. And we all know that being a pushover with this kid opens up the pandoras box of poor behavior. So I think that had a lot to do with his non-compliance on test day.

Someone more like the character of Dr. Emil Skoda on "Law and Order" (if you watch it) would have gotten better results with Geoff. I have no idea why wimpy, soft, mousy women go into child psychology. Geoff gave her little or no respect or regard when he was in there with her, because right off the bat he saw (and I saw) that she was a push over.

Dr. Skoda would have gotten him to comply easily. He's a great character, and I enjoy when he's on L&O.

No.	Yes.
Wimpy Psychological Counseling is bad, m'kay? Right Dr. Skoda?

But no. I get the "now Geoffrey, we need to use our respect voice in this room, okay" kind of doctor... not quite as ridiculous as Mr. Mackey on South Park ("Drugs are bad, kids. M'kay?") but still, not the strong hand he needs.

And the thing is, Geoff's going to run into this kind of soft authority figure in his life outside of this house until he does something really bad I bet. Then, he'll get his ass kicked, and by then, I would bet you a million dollars that he won't give a shit about consequences, repercussions, punishments. He'll end up like some singer of some thrash metal band.

Don't want to go down that route, ya know? So when it comes time to pick a psychologist, I'm looking for a man with a set of balls. No softies. No squishies. All about being understanding and tough with the boy. And I hope that it works. I'm not sure how I feel yet about medication... I think it would help a lot, but I feel as a culture we just throw pills at everything, and that perhaps Geoff's not nearly as bad as we think, he just needs some serious one-on-one teaching and training. Problem is, that isn't the case in daily life. I'd have to home school him and work with him constantly, which would bore him and piss him off. And public schools aren't equipped to deal with kids unless they take their meds.

Anyone out there with any real world experience or advice? Your own experience or that as a parent to a child with ADD with impulsiveness and possible hyperactivity?

Feel free to fire it over.

Anyway. I've got to get some more cleaning and work done before Doug and Jess get back. Have a super day. It sure has been here!