Just ducky days... :)

Here are a couple of pictures of the Pythagoras Switch-inspired, Rube Goldberg-type contraption that Brendan & Ck made last week.

I was particularly inpressed by the row of dominoes that climbed a block staircase in order to push a Thomas-train down the track & launch the lego projectile-thrower through a hoop :)

"Just ducky" is a pretty good description of how things are going lately. We've had 3 "Camp Ck" days so far & the guys are having a great time. Today they visited the science museum in the morning & took apart the old printer in the afternoon (I have yet to look at Brendan's room, but they did do the take-apart on newspaper, at my request, so hopefully there will be no maternal screaming when I do go up & look :).

Over the weekend Brendan & Charlie spent a lot of time together. Charlie is borrowing a boat from a fleet member who can't sail this summer (having sold his right before we left for Japan & not found a replacement yet), so he went to get it on Saturday morning, to take it to the club & rig it & get used to it. Brendan originally wasn't interested in going with Charlie, but when the idea was offered of fishing down at the club while dad worked on the boat, Brendan went for it. He hasn't been fishing since we got home from Japan & was ready to get out there (the fish are trembling :). He had a pretty good time, according to Charlie, even though the fish weren't biting. Of course, there was a side-trip for fries & a shake, which always sweetens the deal :) Later, when Charlie detailed the day to me, he mentioned that Brendan did spend a fair amount of time sitting in the car, which surprised me a bit. Basically, when the situation turned social (while picking up the boat, etc.) Brendan opted to sit in the car. Charlie said he seemed perfectly happy in there, & his anxiety when out of the car wasn't very difficult to manage, so I suspect that letting Brendan choose when & how to be social (as much as we'd love him to increase social contacts) is teaching him more about self-regulation than just upping the social expectations would ever do.

They had so much fun on Saturday that Charlie proposed a fishing trip in the boat for Sunday morning. This was no small undertaking, seeing as we're talking about a 15-foot sailboat (not a motor boat) that's built for racing, not for leg room :) Charlie managed to stow not only Brendan's tackle, but lunches, snacks, & an anchor- pretty darned good. They had a nice sail & then anchored in a cove for fishing. The only problem was that Brendan is accustomed to casting while standing up, & Charlie wasn't quite sure he'd manage to do it standing up without falling out of the boat... He did (manage it). He was also wearing his life jacket, & is a deep-end, Y-certified swimmer to boot, so the potential for disaster was minimal. Brendan was happy to catch 2 little perch before they sailed back to the club.

I am finally caught-up enough with coming-home stuff that I actually found myself at loose ends on Sunday morning. I was too tired to go to church & had a nice veg instead (Charlie pointed-out later that I'm allowed the occasional veg... :). It felt weird, & it made me realised that I'm a bit at loose ends. Before we left for Japan I managed to finish a lot of projects, which leaves me facing a creative void right now. It's not a comfortable feeling at all. I've been playing around with the origami books I got in Japan & also making lavender bottles- an old-timey craft in which you take an uneven number of fresh lavender sprigs (with long stems), tie them together right under the flowers, bend the stems down over the flower-portions, & then weave ribbon around the stems to capture the flowers inside. They end-up as lavender sachets when dried. I had given my last ones away in Japan & wanted to make some more but over the past few days, every time I decided I had a few minutes & went to collect some lavender stems, it would start to rain. Really, it became pretty funny. On Friday I finally got to do it, although it did sprinkle on me as I collected the first bunch for weaving. I continued bit by bit on Saturday & Sunday & have a bunch drying now, ready to be gifts in the future :) It's really hard for me, though, when I don't have a project in the works. I've realised over the years that I get the most pleasure out of life when I make things (particularly gifts), so I need to get my act together & start planning.

Sunday afternoon Ck came over so Charlie & I could go to our sailing fleet picnic & it was fun to share pictures from Japan & chat with folks. Charlie & I arrived in our yukata (cotton kimonos) from Kyoto which was pretty funny. Brendan & Ck went out for pizza among other activities & Brendan, of course, had a great time. When Brendan is with Ck, we've noticed that his anxiety is much lower & much better controlled than when he's just at home with us. Charlie & I have been discussing this (& Brendan & I saw his psychologist last week, too, & discussed this phenomenon with him) & we feel as though this is a break-through sign. Brendan is definitely better able to handle anxiety since we've been home from Japan. Perhaps it's because we brainstormed so many new & different ways to deal with it while we were there, & now he has an even bigger repertoire of coping strategies than ever before. Maybe it's just that we were out of our rut & could see the world (including anxiety) in a different way. Brendan definitely still suffers from the anxiety, but it's a lot more predictable. He has trouble leaving the house without a context or specific motivation. If we plan to walk in the morning, or walk to a restaurant for lunch, he can do it. If we decide on the spur of the moment to take a walk after dinner, he can't. he says he needs advance notice, so we're working with him & trying to do just that. At home, he's most susceptible to "fleas" (OCD thoughts) in the morning when he wakes up & in the afternoon, between 4-6:00 (always the "witching hours" for him). Sometimes we can set a ki barrier & he's fine & sometimes he's paralysed by anxiety & literally needs a push (gently :) to get moving or do something distracting. Yesterday he couldn't get rid of them until he was eating dinner & then they were gone like magic. That said, after waking me up a couple mornings ago because of "fleas" (needing my help to cope with them) & then apologising afterward for waking me up, the next morning he told me that he'd had fleas again that morning, but he was able to take care of them himself. This is the biggest change we've seen yet, in dealing with the OCD. He's been able to find strategies to deal with them, with our help, & then much more quickly than ever before, learn to use them on his own. It feels huge. I feel like I'm holding my breath, too, hoping that things will continue in this way. Pretty amazing- & another good reason to go out & see the world :)

Yesterday morning we had our walk after breakfast (it's still been pretty cool here, after last week's horrid hot days) & then had a tough time working on our weekly schedule. Neither of us was motivated... We decided to read together one of the Kamen Rider/GekiRanger magazines that we picked up in Japan & call it japanese practise :) We also decided that it would be a good day to go out for japanese for lunch, since we have both been missing the great food in Japan. We walked to our fave restaurant, just about 10 minutes away on foot, & had a lovely lunch. On the way back home I noticed that it was getting cloudy... by the time we were a block from home it was sprinkling, & we sprinted that last few houses, Brendan giggling like mad because he's faster, & me yelling "choto mate!" ("wait up!" in japanese :). We'd left the japanese magazine on the dining room table & so we decided to spend the afternoon doing one of the projects that came with the magazine- construct the Kamen Rider "Climax Form" belt & cell-phone-shaped activator. Many manga & kid-oriented magazines in Japan come loaded with "omake", free gifts. These are sometimes actual toys & stuff, but also have cleverly designed cardboard pop-outs to construct into working toys. They come with everything but glue or tape- this one came with the bits of velcro, rubber bands, & other odds & ends needed to make the toys. We had a great time working together & the belt can actually be worn (there's a cardboard buckle that attached to the rubber bands on the belt). Brendan, who usually doesn't like craft projects, was very motivated to participate in this one, so it was a lot of fun. We chatted while we worked, on a project we'd started thinking of that morning- making a wall hanging out of the dragon pictures we took in Japan. He likes the idea of printing the photos on inkjet fabric & then piecing them together (choosing a co-ordinating fabric) into a hanging for his room. I got a walking foot for my sewing maching a few months ago & have been wanting to learn to use it. Looks like a good creative project to get me back on track :) Brendan has been wanting to sew again, & since it's all straight seams he can do a lot of it. We'll let you know how we progress :)

Rediscovering our rhythms...

Well, we seem to be more than halfway through our jet-lag adjustment, although it still hits at unexpected moments (with sudden exhaustion or ravenous appetite attacks). Brendan, I think, has done the best job of readjusting, with Charlie coming in a close second- but then, he had 2 days to get his act together before going back to work last week, so it was kind of necessary, poor guy. Unfortunately, about the time we all felt like getting out & getting some exercise this past weekend, it started to rain, then the heat kicked-in. I thought that southern Japan would have gotten us acclimated to summer heat, but that wore off pretty quickly. The past 2 days it's been close to 90 degrees (or over) outside, so we've only been venturing out for necessary trips in the car :( A good thing was that Charlie convinced Brendan to go swimming Sunday afternoon, so at least they've gotten some exercise. (Brendan has become somewhat agoraphobic since coming home from Japan, so this was a big deal.) My brand-new bathing suit is on the slow boat from Mizumaki to our town (jettisoned as unnecessary baggage after our trip to the onsen), but I've promised the guys I'll go swimming with them when it arrives. The other fun thing that happened Sunday afternoon was that our college-age friend Ck came over to dinner so that we could plan "Camp Ck" together...

Most summers we have "Camp Mom" interspersed with 2-3 weeks of summer camps for Brendan- computer camp or the programme at the science museum. For various reasons, all of them seeming quite reasonable to us, Brendan didn't want to do any of the summer camps, but this left us with the dilemma of finding mom-time throughout the summer. After we brainstormed ideas, we decided to ask Ck, who has been a favourite sitter of Brendan's since Ck's freshman year of high school (& whom Brendan missed very much this past year, Ck's first at college) to do "Camp Ck" 2 days a week. He had been looking for summer work & decided that this would be a good start :) so this week saw the beginning of both "Camp Mom" & Camp Ck". When we discussed the summer plans with Brendan before leaving for Japan, he became decidedly "moofy" at the thought of yet another summer with a daily schedule of activities. He, of course, would be perfectly happy to play Adventure Quest & Dragon Fable all day, interspersed with movies & lego-ing. We started the daily summer schedule thing 4 or 5 summers ago, at the recommendation of Brendan's psychologist, to help him learn to self-regulate & to give us both a sense of accomplishment over the summer. It's ended-up being summer homeschooling, really, & I have felt very good about doing it. He's always retured to school in the fall with little loss of skills & the transition to a school schedule has never been a problem since we've kept to one over the summer. In fact, Brendan basically learned to read over the summer he was 8, since that's when his visual abilities really kicked-in, & thankfully we were ready to jump in & facilitate. We've done so many fun projects over these past summers, too, which has made the time really memorable. Two summers ago I taught Brendan to weave on the small loom & he wove scarves for his dad & grandparents as Christmas presents. Last summer I taught him to use the big loom & we wove a blanket!

Needless to say, I'm convinced that continuing with this summer scheduling is a good thing, but Brendan... took some convincing. It wasn't hard to get him to agree to reading every day (especially when he realised that he was behind on his manga reading :). And, when we came to actually plugging things into our weekly schedule on Sunday evening, I acknowledged that he's older now & can handle more free time. So we put in more free time, such as half an hour before lunch & from 4:00 to dinnertime, & that seemed to satisfy him very much (I think that the acknowledgement did more than the actual extra time :). While Ck was over to dinner on Sunday we brainstormed a list of things they could do together (including field trips, since Ck drives). In the evening I typed everything to post on the fridge & Brendan & I set our schedule for Monday, Wednesday, & Friday of our first week. It probably helped that we had appointments first thing Monday morning & at the end of the day as well (been away 3 weeks, you know!). Brendan participated in the scheduling with little sign of "moofiness" about it all.

So yesterday, after a bit of misunderstanding about what each of us thought the words "come down now & eat breakfast" meant (I could hear obvious sounds of playing upstairs...), we were both on track for my first-thing (& much-needed) appointment with the chiropracter. Brendan does really well when we visit her office & we brought one of our japanese magazines (featuring the Kamen Rider & Geki characters) to read to each other in the waiting room. It was fun to tell her about our trip, too :) Then, since we were out, I planned to do something we've never done before... take Brendan shopping for shoes. (Did I ever mention that we left Brendan's sneakers in Tokyo after our first week in Japan? We didn't even notice until we were packing for Kyoto, & he was outgrowing the sneaks, anyway, but it's left him without anything but sandals to wear...) It didn't hit me until afterwards that Brendan had never been shoe-shopping before. Until recently I could just buy them through Land's End & it was a pretty good chance that they'd fit. But he's now at the very end of the youth shoe sizing & has a wide foot as well, so I didn't think we were going to get away with the long-distance thing any more. The main hazards I envisioned for shoe-shopping were the strong smell shoe stores often have, crowds, & his being triggered by various people in the store. So, we got there just after they opened to avoid crowds, which worked. He didn't seem to notice a smell, which was a bonus. However, I forgot the "desecration" factor, sigh. Anything made of dead animals is "desecration" to Brendan & he was instantly repelled by the first "genuine leather" verbiage he saw on a shoe box. I assured him that many of the shoes would have no leather & we looked specifically for that sort of shoe. It took a while, & some false starts (he has depended on the loop on the back of Land's End's kids' shoes for years to pull his shoes on, & most of these shoes had no loop) we ended up in the men's shoe section (he's official now) & found what he was looking for. Skate shoes with some blue on them (very important :) in size 6.5. Hooray! Our reward for getting through this was a trip to the manga & anime store to get the most recent "Hikaru no Go" manga & dvds. We drove home for lunch in a very good mood. Success on our very first trip to the shoe store!!

After lunch we had our quiet reading time (Brendan started catching up on past issues of Hikaru...) & together reading time (we're still working our way through "Eldest"). Then we tackled his room, partly because the house was being cleaned today & you couldn't find the floor, & partly because he couldn't set up his new nezumi incense burner on his dresser until we could find the top of his dresser. No joke... Charlie had donated the biiiig box he'd brought home from work last week, with all of his vacation mail in it, for us to put cast-offs in. We really needed it, too. In the end (after clearing & wet-sponging), the InuYasha & Gundam action figures, his incense burner & crystals, & the necessaries like light, fan, & alarm clock, are all that remain on his dresser. It's amazing :) Next to tackle (another day...) is his desk. After a quick trip to the orthodontist (changed wires, asked about Japan :) we were home & finished cleaning his floor for vacuuming pretty quickly. Then we finally watched our Pythagoras Switch dvd, purchased in Japan (I have Brendan's computer set to region 5, so we can watch anything from Japan on it). It is absolutely awesome- 20-some minutes of Rube Goldbergs, many of which we'd never seen before on YouTube. There's an accompanying book &, at this moment, Brendan & Ck (having watched the dvd this morning) are working on their own Rube Goldberg contraption in Brendan's room :)

This morning Ck arrived a little early (very kindly) so I could make a regular appointment with my therapist. They've been having fun with the solar energy kit I bought, playing Incredible Machines on the computer, & now, after lunch, they're making their own. I showed Ck the fridge calendar & list & they worked on it over lunch. Brendan is obviously having a great time with Ck & I am actually updating the blog. A recipe for success, so far...!