Mikey's Dr Visit

Well he gained a pound and grew half an inch. That's in the last 4 months and made the Dr happy. Seriously though he needs to stop growing up and start growing OUT or he's gonna be A) wearing pants that barely cover his ankles or B) wearing pants I need suspenders to hold up.

I told the Dr I felt like these meds were beginning the road to wearing off. I remember the signs from last time which were very inconsistent and over time grew to be a real problem. She said there are some kids whose bodies just adjust over time no matter what and meds need to be switched out every 4-6 months or so. I am not sure that's a great idea unless maybe it was the same two meds. I said I wasn't too concerned now and we'd see how he was at his next appointment in May.

I also mentioned some anxiety issues I have been seeing in him. Things like freaking out over a hair being on him (even if one isn't), covering his mouth every time you open a door outside cause a bug might fly in his mouth (he doesn't do this outside), and general overreaction to things that may not even really be a possibility.

She said that was often a concern with autistics and could be addressed with .. you guessed it.. more medication. I told her it wasn't that bad now but if it got worse we could see then.

She also wanted another IQ test done on him. She said there was no way the one that was done a few years ago could be right (its pretty low) and was more than likely the result of someone testing him who did not know HOW to test him.. you know, they tested him like every other kid, not someone who may need things worded differently or gets easily overwhelmed when you ask too many things in too short of a period and then shuts down.

So I am gonna talk to his teacher about it, see if they can test him in segments (maybe 20 minutes one day, 20 minutes a few days later) and knows how to ask him questions where he understands but it doesn't give away the answer. His Dr mentioned gifted classes but I don't know how I feel about that quite yet. I think he needs social skills more but it's all moot unless he was tested properly anyways.

If there IS a proper way to IQ test an autistic..

Anyways, overall good visit!

If you dont play Wow

You won't care about most of this post. So I will post the non WoW stuff first and you may feel free to disregard :P

We've been sick. Heather first. It started with some sneezing and coughing. It led to me tricking her into medicine (those melt on your tongue strips.."Here baby close your eyes and open your mouth I got candy"... she hated me..).. This was towards the end of the week.

Saturday I woke up with a sore throat like you wouldn't believe. Sifting thru two shelves of medicine.. all childrens..I finally found some generic theraflu and nearly swallowed it whole. The baby was up on and off a few nights, I felt like death warmed over.. Mikey coughed but otherwise appeared to suffer no ill effects and Jason never gets sick so.. whatever.

Mikey's report card was all B's..meanwhile he is writing programs on his computer I don't even understand.

And WOW... ok.. Kynsie.. (my 2nd toon but for the most part my considered 'main') hit 80 back last year... I dunno.. December. I have two other 70's.. Karielle (my first ever toon) and Kaimara, my rogue whom I love because PvP rocks!!

I started working on Kari mainly cause.. she gets my herbs and makes my pots/flasks/elixirs for raids. You had to be 77 to get 'cold weather flying'and the epic Northrend flying stuff.. so I pushed her there that way I could herb more.


Then I went back to Kynsie.. I finished all her Northrend Quests so she could make the Deathchill Cloak (which.. btw.. Kari needed). Then I went back to Kari.. and finished her up.. my pretty mage.

And the same night (and next day).. I pimper her the hell out. Any crafted item that could be made I got or made for her.. one drop I bought on the auction house. She's sitting at almost 1400 sp, over 20% fire crit and shes never run a heroic till today (Wintergrasp... I got nothing).

No she won't be my main. Kynsie is discipline, only one in our guild. I am a MT (Main Tank) healer and I love it. Yes, I am usually last on the healing charts. I have one.. maybe two people to heal. Thats all.

Plus.. Disc is about mitigation. I prevent incoming damage.I shield, I Divine Aegis, I use Borrowed Time, I use Grace.. my Power Word:Shield glyph heals but it doesn't show up on the damage meters.

So I am usually last. But my tanks don't die. Unless it is a wipe or I am being killed.... my tanks don't die. It's a hard road. I am fortunate to be in a guild that understands my role and doesn't pew pew that I am not top healing meters.

And I love Disc. So I stick with it. Yes.. I can two heal 10 mans with a shammy.. YES.. I can single heal 5 mans..what do you know. When dual specs come out, I'll be rocking it holy for heroics and going disc for raids but until then. I am making it work.

If you aren't sure how.. ask me.

And for your viewing pleasure.. HELL YES.. who doesn't love Nyhm.

Bringing Out The Autism

So in my guild on WoW there's constant trash talk. It gets sexual.. it gets stupid.. and occasionally offensive. I tend to ignore the 'haha you retard,you ride the special bus and lick windows' comments because they aren't personal. Noone means anything by it, it's silly talk.Only a few people in the guild know about Mikey because frankly, it's a place to have fun and play, not draw on your issues.

I actually had a conversation with an officer a few weeks back about why they would shut down anyone who said anything like "This is gay" or "You homo" because its offensive. But I dont think thats any different from 'retard' comments and again, they don't offend me but if you are gonna come down on one, why not the other? He vaguely agreed with me at that point but I don't think he understood why I was asking.

So tonight, while questing and working towards Kynsie getting the Deathchill Cloak recipe, someone blurted out in guild chat "GOD, does this person have autism or what, wtf"

I sat there for a moment deciding whether to respond. I did.

I said "Why would you say he has autism?"

"Well, its just how he's acting, its so stupid, it's driving me crazy"

"Ok, how is he acting? And do you personally know anyone with autism?"

I think at this point he realized he'd crossed a line. He backed off, saying he hadn't meant to offend but this person was so dumb....

At this point our Guild Leader said her cousin had autism. And I said "Ok well, MY son has autism and he is smarter than half this guild. So please don't ever say anything like that again"

In Class Leader chat (<-- Priest class lead bitches!) the GL said "YES HE IS!!" and someone else with a nephew who has Asperger's thought I was coming down on him for various "His parents spoil him"comments tried to apologize but it wasn't to him.

The officer whispered me that NOW he understood my conversation. I said I generally don't take offense at general comments but when someone brings out autism like that I have to say something. He said 'And from now on I will back you up" :)

And in other news.. Mikey started a blog. It won't be interesting or amazing.. his first post alone is a tutorial on something I don't even know how to do. But he would love readers. He would love comments.

I am not gonna put the address out there but if you would like it I will send it to you!! Make my baby happy :)

The Kid's Christmas Pics

Long story short I had these done and they were to be ready December 23rd but they didn't end up being there till January 2nd. Yeah, I got half off and supposedly some free coupons for more pictures but I haven't gotten those yet.

So anyways, with all my computer issues I hadn't been able to scan them yet but Dad scanned them for me.

Nightmare Computer

So.. as mentioned in my last post.. computer issues.

We got a new video card. I stuck it in.. and same thing.. computer didn't show anything.

Then I read the manual. I recommend this to anyone.

"Disable the onboard video card before installing this one"

Oh and hey you MIGHT wanna put your monitor cord DOWN HERE instead of the regular monitor hookup spot.

/facepalm


Anyways.. did that. Got it going. Installed WoW on the other hard drive. Play beautifully. But you know....

other issues. Like.. every time I restart my computer all my passwords, bookmark settings, default setting were removed. Like I just turned on the computer for the first time (except Yahoo Messenger.. go figure).

I had corrupted user profiles, programs I couldn't install and on and on. I said "You know what... I can access the internet and play Wow..I am g2g"... I redirected people to my gmail account and figured once we got tax money I would take it to a computer place and have it looked at.

Then I got thrown a wrench. A diamond plated wrench but I didn't know it yet.

See.. I reformatted Mikey's computer too. I even installed an antivirus program. Mikey is the devil. I think shortly before I got the program installed he got something. I thought it was taken care of but apparently not.I had done my OWN virus scan, 4 hours of of scanning thank you, hours before this happened.

I was on WoW.. about to log off.. when pop up windows appeared out of nowhere.. that STUPID Antivirus 2009 bullshit. I tried to cut it off and immediately began running my virus scan again but stuff kept popping up right and left. I left my scanner going and went to bed.

I woke up to.. Task manager disabled and an inability to start programs running with an .exe format. Pop ups everywhere. A message to restart my computer from AVG.. my only saving grace? I had left Mozilla up.. I would not have been able to start it but since it was there I could use it to look stuff up.

I could.. pull my hair out trying to figure out how to re enable .exe, edit my registry and do a bunch of other inane shit or..I could reformat again.

Reformat currently = terrorized as far as I am concerned. Last time it nearly cost me my computer. But here I was, unable to do ANYTHING anyways. I considered removing the video card first but in the end I figured if it didn't work I could always retry it sans card.

So.. I took the plunge.. inserted the disk.. and started the reformat. then I went to lay down with Heather, watch cartoons and NOT think about my situation.

See last time.. the reformat went through then it would start installing software... it got to 4/49 and restarted every.single.time. In retrospect.. that was most of my problem. Nearly anything was actually installed. I am lucky I HAD internet. As for my virus scanning, it was 4 hours of scanning nothing I assume.

So this time.. when I got that part.. I almost couldn't breathe... "go.. go.. 4/49...ok.. 5/49 omg woot.. wait...pause.. hourglass.. 6/7/8/49 YES... wait.. whats this.. no no go go go go please????"

For like.. 20 minutes. But you know what? It all went through. My computer came back up good as new. And I am currently installing anti virus/spy ware programs as we speak.

But its been a nightmare.. and I am touchy. I haven't let Mikey have internet all day. I have to reformat him AGAIN and find something strong enough to keep that kid from downloading stupid shit.. he just doesn't get it. He is convinced a laptop or a mac will solve his problems. I say, until he can manage THIS computer responsibly.. he's not getting anything else.

Christmas was good..

then it went downhill.

We did have a good Christmas. I don't have pics at the moment which I will explain in a bit.

The kids got considerably spoiled between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. We had lots of family, lots of food and lots of psycho kids with too many new things haha.

Unfortunately a few days later I got some bad news. My Mom called me Monday early and told me my Aunt was in the hospital. She had started having trouble breathing shortly after midnight and they had called an ambulance to come get her. Her heart stopped twice and they were able to revive her. My Mom said it was some bacterial infection that came a from a flu the whole family had had (she lives near my Uncle and his whole family). She wasn't expected to live through the day.

She died around 2 pm. In this case her heart didn't stop, she just stopped breathing. She was only 53. That's scary as hell, since that's my Dad's age and my Mom is only a few years older. She had been healthy as a horse at her checkup not long before this and it was completely and totally unexpected.

We were unable to make it to the funeral. Neither of our cars could have managed the trip, nor did we have gas money and my Mom couldn't have gotten time off work. I was worried for her but she said she was fine. Funerals were for the living, not the dead and her sister would understand.

I know my grandfather made it up there and is hopefully making sure everything is taken care of. I have been sad, but in all honestly, she's probably happier now with my grandmother than she was here.

Today also sucked. I decided to reformat my computer. I had been having some issues with viruses I couldn't get rid of (my fault for not keeping my virus scanner updated) and it was causing problems in various areas. I copied all my programs I wanted kept onto DVD's and used the reformat CD.

After completing everything and setting it all up my computer would just continually restart over and over. I reformatted again.. same thing. By now I am starting to panic. I can't figure out what I am gonna do and it looks like I have no computer.

I decided to try Mikeys computer. I used to play Wow on it before so I knew it could handle it. Only problem.. it didn't have a DVD drive. Jason got into both computers and moved my dvd player to his computer.I almost moved my video card too but it wouldn't fit (mine is much better). I had a few more problems reformatting his computer but I got it done.

It was basically several hours of me seriously stressed out between the computer, the kids and who knows what else. Jason really stepped up and helped me out and I really REALLY appreciated it.

WTB better video card though. This is horrible to go back to after what I had...