We Go With Him

Up Down

ὁδὸς ἄνω κάτω. "The way up the way down." Heraclitus, who is possibly my favorite Ancient Greek philosopher (it is definitely not Plato), is said to have said this and reviewing the words for up (ανά) and down (κατά) in Ancient Greek can lead one to recall those words.

As can other things.

Charlie navigating quite qell the return back to school post-Spring Break and saying good-bye to my parents after a visit -- three fun afternoons of biking (12 miles Tuesday) and long walks each day, plus a rather rollicking, light-hearted Wednesday afternoon while Jim was at meetings and teaching late, accompanied by three tense nights with Wednesday including an extended utterance session of "doctor" and "doctor office" till past 1am. Not quite sure of the meaning; our interpretations have ranged from the obvious to the associative, as ever.

Modem breaking, washing machine breaking and spending one-third of Monday morning at the Department of Motor Vehicles to get a new drivers license after leaving my wallet behind at one of our routine stops, so that I was able to renew it (the license, wallet shall not be resurrected) early rather than in August which is possibly the worst time for me to do so as Charlie is home without school, summer school or camp.

Also, at the moment, we have no water because the street in front of our house is being dug up to fix the pipes, one of those post-Hurricane Sandy things. (Meaning that, it's obviously good the washing machine is broken because I just got back from the laundromat with a load of laundry instead of witnessing the machine sputter as the water went off.)

As Heraclitus also says, φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ, "nature loves to hide [itself]."

 

Boy. On. Bus.

We emerge from Spring Break MMXIII a bit tattered and having put in 20-something mile walk/bike days, and after a two-day onslaught of 'NO SCHOOL BUS,' and the above (not entirely foredrawn) conclusion.

Our Daily Amusements

In my exceedingly humble opinion, we have made it past the midpoint of Charlie's Spring Break reasonably well.

Waiting on the windy train platform. Striding across a windswept parking lot behind a CVS and a gym and rows of overflowing dumpsters. Driving throughout New Jersey. Only using emergency meds twice so far, two hours too late on Monday with a dent of a result. Writing, more writing (recommendation letters) in the interstices. Increasing our familiarity with all the other people who go to McDonald's too much. Wondering if the work crew who has been digging up both ends of our street will be digging our part next. Talking about Russian politics with Jim. Making coffee. Listening to any two of the following simultaneously because Charlie has commandeered two iDevices: R.E.M., the Wiggles, the Pogues, Toots and the Maytals, Disney stuff, Desmond Dekker. Answering my parents' technology questions. Making coffee. Laundry at any hour of the day -- actually, anything (probably not sleep) at any hour of the day. Writing.

Bike rides, but you knew that.

Saying 'dad' at 33-second intervals for several ten minute segments throughout the day.

(No, I never drink decaf.)

Who needs an 'amusement park' á là Disney when you've got the pageant we do?

Spring Break With Something Besides Spring Fever

Charlie's spring break began with a (figurative) bang Thursday night when he did not sleep, at all -- something that happened on the eve of another break from school. He still got on the bus at 7.25am with a bag of candy for his teachers in his bookbag after I had made myself lots of coffee and headed off for 8am Latin class.

In the evening after a bike ride, we went to see the movie Admission; I saw the opening few minutes after we had sat through thirty minutes of ads for phones and the Borgia tv series and five trailers and Charlie wanted to go. Charlie then requested a long walk of the five-plus mile sort into a neighboring town, past a small golf course, through a parking lot and over the freight train tracks.

Saturday Charlie woke at 7.15am (just in time to catch the school bus that won't arrive for a good nine days). For the first time since I went to California last June for my cousin's wedding and returned to most of the contents of the kitchen, dining and living rooms on the floor, it was just Charlie and Jim while I went to work in Jersey City for an Open House event. Charlie and Jim brought some big thorny branches to the town dump, stopped for hamburgers (Charlie didn't eat any) and got stuck in traffic while en route to pick me up after which we went to Liberty State Park for a short bike ride because it was really, really windy and the park is nowhere near recovered from Hurricane Sandy.

Two more bike rides and two walks later and it's another no sleep due to anticipation (of grandparents arriving on Sunday) night. Fortunately I don't have classes on the passive voice of 3rd and 4th conjugation verbs or the late Roman Republic to teach tomorrow morning.

Negotiating. And Ketchup

I got as close as I ever have last Wednesday night (Jim gone teaching after being home during Spring Break last week) to negotiating Charlie out of having a wall-smashing, desk-clearning 'behavior.'

(Now that is a euphemism!)

I'm very proud, via listening to what was said to him, that Charlie worked his way through feeling ex-treme-ly anxious at 7pm, with 2 1/2 hours more to go before Jim came.

Also. I ended up buying a huge bottle of ketchup and Charlie just used as much as he needed to drench one plate of French fries, rather than the whole bottle.

 

 

No To the New (Yet Again)

Charlie has a lovely new maroon bike!

We picked it up after a ride on the Jersey horse country trail was cut short on realizing Charlie's beloved, beat-up black bike had a front wheel flat. Charlie and Jim had picked out the new bike earlier in the week and we stood in the bike store (which smelled agreeably of rubber and oil) as Jim purchased it and also a new front tire.

Following several no's, Charlie sat on the new bike for about 11 seconds. Then off and back to his old, own bike.

I anticipate the usual slow process to him accommodating to anything new.

A Post About Progress Though Many Might Say Otherwise

 

On Friday morning, Charlie woke around 5.45am and he and I went on a walk. After a block and a half, the lights of a car flashed red, there was beeping, more flickering lights. Charlie uttered a little cry and hit his head on a tree trunk. He walked while I called Jim and we went another half-block and I asked Charlie if he'd like to wait for Dad.

'Yes Dad.'

Soon (very soon) the black car, and Jim in it, appeared and we three finished the walk in easy calmness. Charlie lay down on the blue couch afterward and got up for the bus and he had an up and down day and then a 12-mile bike ride with Jim, complete with a stop at the very good hamburger stand.

Saturday, though Charlie was feeling a bit under the weather and there was snow (wet and flurryish, but snow) for much of the day, he and Jim did a 3-miler by the river in Jersey horse country (horses inside today) and a 2-miler at home, into the snow on the way back. Then Charlie waited some in the brown chair and we saw 20 minutes of a documentary, Running in the Sahara, at our local cinema, with beautiful footage of camels, desert sand, west Africa.

We sit as long as we can before a big screen amid lots of talking and many images and leave when it is time.

We crash into trees and (without, as previously, grabbing, throwing oneself on the ground and banging more, screaming, biting, running towards people's houses and car trunks), keep walking.

EEG Read

Charlie's EEG showed abnormal brain activity. At a meeting Thursday afternoon with Jim and me, the neurologist and the nurse talked about what they saw from the 20-plus minutes that Charlie kept the electrodes on. There was one spike and then a slow wave in one region and "slow background."

Charlie's not having seizures but other things are going on. He had been on an anti-seizure medication and one that, among other things, has anti-epileptic effects, but in the past 3-4 weeks, we have been weaning him off it. So the meds were not likely to be suppressing seizures.

He has three previous EEGs, when he 2, about 6, 11. The second one definitely recorded abnormalities. No and not seizures. Something else.

We made plans for Charlie to have another EEG in the upcoming months after he is off both the meds with anti-seizure effects, plus some other tests, possibly. Certainly it was very helpful to have an extended, without-Charlie-present, conversation about his neurology.

Wednesday night had been one of those can't-sleep-at-alls, owing to grandparents anticipation anxiety (which peaks usually a week and a half prior to a visit); resulting stomach disturbance; weird disruption of Jim and I being on spring break and Jim being home all day Wednesday; barometer falling, a strong west wind, a temperature drop. And other inexpressibles. Charlie insisted on standing in the living room, got his book bag and walked round the house with it over his shoulder, drank lots of fluids, ate watermelon, looked through the kitchen and snacked, played the Beatles and Disney and the Pogues, lay down at three and was still thirsty and hungry then fell asleep around 4, got himself up at 7, was on the bus and had a sleepy school day, a short bike ride in the wind, plenty to eat, two walks, a tense call to et more that we talked him through to a smile as he turned on 'Go the Distance' then Pixies.

Then up to bed and it occurred to me, in contrast to numerous rounds of laundry Wednesday night, Thursday had occasioned none.

EEG Success!

 

I just wanted to note that Charlie, after pulling off the cap of electrodes and crying, sat for at least 20 more minutes to get an EEG yesterday.

While not wanting to go into Apple/iPad lovefest mush-mode, it is the case that the iPad the neurologist's office had was quite helpful and offered the chance to let others know that Charlie's musical preferences range from the Beatles to a touch of jazz to 'One Litle Coyote,' Wiggles version.

We also, after seeing Charlie point and intone 'this way' on an evening walk, went for a five-plus mile one.

Then everyone slept (well, for part of the night).

 

In which I maybe reconcile myself to Daylight Saving Time

(Charlie preparing to bike in Bayonne on Sunday.)

So usually I dread daylight saving time and the return to regular time and the clocks changing (automatically now, mostly in our house) an hour back or forth. Charlie's average waking time having been 4am at the latest in the past few days, the thought that he would now be rising at 5am was quite a welcome thought.

Not that clocks and time systems mean so much to Charlie who marches mostly to his own sense of things.

Monday he did wake at 5.30am and we were soon out walking, the better to admire the sun rising to the east over Manhattan. Back in our kitchen, Charlie watched me spoon rice into his lunch containers, told me not to add grapes to his lunchbox and ate a bagel and watermelon.

This latter point may seem ordinary but it is a bit of a change in the past week for Charlie to eat breakfast before boarding the bus. In past years, after a toddlerhood of starting the day with gluten-free waffles in three different flavors, he never woke early enough to eat anything. Now Charlie is the first on his bus and it must have been a long wait till he could eat the morning snack I had packed for him.

His school day was good till he became loudly, yellingly upset during A.P.E. Charlie stayed in his seat at the back of the bus and made a loud sound before coming inside and we thought of how he had, on Sunday, wanted to eat the 'yellow rice' - paella -- he had once eaten in a restaurant. We got some as takeout and Charlie enjoyed it but it must have settled strangely in his stomach. 

Moment(s) of distress and all rather than crawl back into the over-familiar for comfort, Jim announced that he and Charlie would go on a different bike ride than 'the usual local' one, in a different direction. Charlie seemed to pedal a little faster as he and Jim headed off on a nice tour of our town, resulting in the discovery of a newly paved parking lot at the nearby community college (nice pavement = smooth riding).

One walk, a bit of edginess pacing around and hearing the Beatles and Charlie fell asleep somewhere between 'The Word' and 'Michelle' around 10pm, waking up with 45 minutes to go before the bus appeared -- just enough time for what seems to be the new daily thing, a morning walk-with-mom (me), and then boarding the bus and looking back at us waving him off.