B the Go teacher :)...

B had another mellow-ish day today- hooray! School started off just fine, & when Cherie remembered that they wanted B to stay a bit longer today to teach his class to play Go, he said he'd be glad to :) So I said I'd be back to get him at 2:15 instead of 2:00...

I saw my wonderful chiropracter next, who once again tried to remediate the stress & distress of life that goes straight to my spine. Then I went back to the grocery store & bought more tofu :) Thanks to Kristina & Mum is Thinking's comments & suggestions yesterday, I was able to fry 2 lbs of tofu without putting my life or the kitchen in danger... Thanks!!! I decided to cook it all ahead of time & refridgerate it for later meals (I had some on toast with cheese melted over it for lunch- yum!).

When I went to get B from school he was intent on a game of Go with a classmate whom he'd just taught to play. Another kid was watching them play, & B didn't even realise I was there, he was so involved :) I chatted with his teacher for a bit, then noticed that the classmates had started a game which B was watching. Finally their teacher signalled that it was clean-up time & B put the Go set away, amid thanks from his friends for teaching them. B has been wanting Go partners & now he has them! I am really psyched :) For the first time in weeks we left the building tic-free. B was so relaxed & mellow, happy to discuss his day in the car on the way to our weekly McDonald's treat. It was lovely. Good thing, too, because the McDonald's was no longer running the bionicle promotion -they stopped it after 3 weeks of an 8-week promo :( B was really disappointed & angry, but he handled it well. He decided he'd tell everyone he knew what had happened & encourage them to boycott McDonald's. I thought it was a pretty good strategy, myself, & must confess to very mixed feelings about it all. I was glad that the weekly trip to McD's was something for him to look forward to, but a full 8 weeks of it was not my idea of fun...

When we got home we ordered a birthday present online for a school friend, then I suggested that we look at the newest newsletter from the Pokemon Daisuke Club that arrived by email this morning (Daisuke means "I love it!"). This is a Japanese pokemon club that our Japanese teacher found for us online, & helped us to register for. There's a place there called the Pokemon Garden where your little virtual person (that Tomoko also helped me to configure, since I couldn't read all of the forms) wanders around & chats with other little virtual people & has fun with pokemon things. B hadn't checked out the garden yet, so we spent an hour virtually wandering around in there. We couldn't read all of the conversations, but most of the areas were labelled in katakana, which is usually phonetically rendered english (japanese-style english, with "r" instead of "l", etc.) so we had fun deciphering where we were & what there was to "do". After about an hour of computer stuff together I realised that I'd better get him transitioned to another activity because I needed to get dinner started. Friday night is usually Grammie night (& sometimes Paula night, too), so I like to make something nice. I decided I wanted to make a tomato curry base for the tofu cubes I'd fried this morning & serve it on rice. That way B could have tofu cubes & rice with soy sauce for dinner, along with the salad Grammie brought for greens. Getting B transitioned was not easy, though, in keeping with his recent difficulties, & we sat together on the sofa for quite a while, B with his head pushed into my side. We finally decided he'd play one of his Spy Fox computer games & I'd sit with him for the first few minutes until he felt ok by himself, & that worked pretty well. B's psychiatrist called about this time, too, & I was glad to finally hear from him. He said that some of his patients have these sorts of problems with the SSRI's. He told me that the dosage of the SSRI determines what part of the brain it affects, & that some people never can tolerate the higher dosage because of this. :( I asked him to keep thinking about other ways to approach our goal of getting B off the seroquel so we could talk about it at our next appointment. He said to keep B at the reduced dose of zoloft until we come back in, then we'll talk further. Sigh.

When Grammie came over B said hi, but kept playing, & I explained to her that he needs to be distracted these days so she & I chatted rather than her visiting/playing with B as she usually does. We had a nice curried tofu dinner- C, who's not terribly fond of tofu, said he liked it! B was delighted with his tofu cubes :) He told Grammie proudly that he'd had tofu for lunch, too. He ate pretty quickly & wanted to get back to his game, so we adults had time to chat & catch up on family news (Grammie just got back from celebrating Canadian Thanksgiving in Ottawa with her sister & family) & look at new family pictures. B was scheduled for a bath this evening but talked dad out of it, so he & Grammie sat & chatted about his pokemon stuffies for a while :) After Grammie left, C played bionicles with B for a bit, then asked me to tag-team because he needed to make his lunch for tomorrow (he's on call this weekend) & B was having tic-troubles. So I went up & decided it was time to organise his pokemon cards again, so B & I worked on that until bedtime, when I continued reading "The Dark is Rising" to him. We've been having fun discussing the book over breakfast lately, so I'm looking forward to his take on it tomorrow morning...

The days when B is less affected by the anxiety & tics are very precious & lately fairly rare, & I am glad that B is getting a break!