Friends & sniffles & an anniversary...

Another whirlwind-seeming weekend...

It's definitely a challenge to find things Brendan would rather do than play Adventure Quest on non-school days. We monitor the time pretty closely & try to give him a break every hour to hour & a half. Yesterday we did have japanese lesson after lunch (Tomoko is doing all the final work on submitting her master's degree project, so she missed last week's lesson & pulled a couple of all-nighters this week). Brendan is still having trouble sitting through a lesson, due, I think, to there being less zoloft in his system. He's generally much more randomly active these days- hopping up in the middle of things, which is not his usual thing. But he did tolerate most of the lesson, which included a dialogue between InuYasha (dog half-demon), Kagome (schoolgirl), & Miroku (buddhist monk friend with a wind-tunnel in his hand). Brendan did both of the guy parts, which meant he was reading twice as much japanese as I was (I was Kagome), which was good because he's the one who needs the practise :) He had both Tomoko & me laughing with his wind-tunnel sound-effects. He's an amazing mimic... We also had fun just chatting with Tomoko about favourite InuYasha episodes, which was a good thing for Brendan to participate in because he still doesn't understand the flow of that kind of conversation very well yet & it's a skill he needs for interacting with other kids.

Within about an hour of the end of our lesson Brendan's best buddy E came over & they spent quite a while playing with the lego spybots before the lure of the computer overtook them :) Brendan started an Adventure Quest game for E & E shared some Club Penguin games with Brendan (at one point they asked to use my laptop & were on 2 computers simultaneously playing the same game...). Charlie & I had fun chatting with E's dad & introduced him to one of the Ice House pyramid games that I had gotten Charlie for his birthday last year. When E's mom came over after work we had pizza together. Brendan was definitely tired after his afternoon of constant play (& japanese) & fell asleep during one of the more exciting parts of Susan Cooper's "Silver on the Tree", the final book of the "Dark is Rising" sequence.

This morning we were up early for church because of an early choir rehearsal. We are getting ready for our annual choir holiday programme, next Sunday, so need the extra time to sing. Over breakfast Charlie worked with Brendan to solve the problem of how to overcome OCD tics about the church computer in the aftermath of last week's disastrous Sunday School session. Having so many unfamiliar kids playing on the computer gave him a tic & he didn't want to touch it, even though Adventure Quest is his favourite thing & how he's been keeping himself busy during choir practise for the past couple of months... They finally settled on wiping down the monitor & keyboard with damp wipes, & I'm convinced that it was imagining what would happen if the wipes were too wet (zap! zap!) that charmed him into accepting this solution. It was the same with his OCD-based worries about having nitrous oxide for his recent dental work- once we started getting silly about how "The Elegant Universe" would look when "on" nitrous he decided it would be ok to do... And the wipes worked just fine, which was wonderful. He did really well at church today & was quite happy to get back to his regular Sunday School classroom & teachers. I worked on the script for the mummer's play Charlie & I are organising on the 17th (featuring all the Sunday School kids, various adults, & a dragon) during Sunday School, since none of my kids were there & I had my laptop at church for a meeting after the service. Charlie had a meeting, too, but he & Brendan still beat me home, after stopping at the store for some fritos (to go with the veggie chili Charlie was making for dinner) & cheetos (at Brendan's request :). After I ate lunch I wrapped my gifts for Charlie (all in furoshiki cloths) for our anniversary today. We shared our gifts after one of Brendan's breaks from AQ, & it was just nice, relaxing, & fun. This whole day I've been reflecting at various moments that, no matter how stressful church stuff or Brendan stuff or pretty much anything can be, we really do manage to find enjoyable moments together. After 18 years of being married, we are just happy to find time together, share what we're thinking, share something funny. It's very comforting :)

Brendan has developed a sniffly nose throughout the day & sounds really funny now. We quizzed him over dinner, when he looked at his food & told us he wasn't hungry, to see if he had a yucchy stomach or headache. He couldn't tell us anything definite, but we decided that his tummy was definitely "off" & had him just have some milk since that's what he felt like. Brendan wanted to get back on the computer but we said no, so he sat on the heating register instead & warmed his butt & filled his shirt with air & giggled until we were done eating.

Charlie wanted to do something on the computer after dinner, so Brendan & I took a look at this neat clip from TV in Japan- little vignettes celebrating 30 years of "Supa Sentai" (aka "Go Rangers" aka "Power Rangers" in the US, sort of). Brendan is a Power Ranger fan & loved seeing brief clips of all of the series of past Go Rangers, introduced by a madcap group of japanese teens. He's had a bath now & decided he was hungry, so dad made him some veggie "no-chicken" soup (from a can) & we decided he'll have some tylenol, too, before bed. So... tomorrow could be exciting. Will he feel fine? Will he need to stay home from school? Only the morning will tell...