First Day of the Last Year

I dropped Sophie off for the first day of her last year at school. I'd like to say that the years have flown by, but they haven't, and I felt choked up as I watched her aides wheel her inside. I don't know if it's sorrow or gratitude prickling at my throat, heavy. Am I weightless or weighed down, is the road straight or does it wind? Abide or endure?

I may lose at any moment through the play of circumstance over which I have no control, anything whatsoever I possess, including those things which are so intimately mine that I consider them as being myself.

Simone Weil 

Sophie Loo Hoo at School

I got this photo yesterday of Sophie working on a new spelling program, and it really just makes me burst with gratitude for her aide, for her teacher and for our good fortune that she has a life outside of this one, the one I often write about.

I also neglected to tell you that I think we have an answer to Sophie refusing, periodically, to bear weight on her right leg. It sounds very much like she has what's called Todd's Paralysis:

What is Todd's Paralysis?

Todd's paralysis is a neurological condition experienced by individuals with epilepsy, in which a seizure is followed by a brief period of temporary paralysis. The paralysis may be partial or complete but usually occurs on just one side of the body. The paralysis can last from half an hour to 36 hours, with an average of 15 hours, at which point it resolves completely. Todd's paralysis may also affect speech and vision. Scientists don't know what causes Todd's paralysis. Current theories propose biological processes in the brain that involve a slow down in either the energy output of neurons or in the motor centers of the brain. It is important to distinguish Todd's paralysis from a stroke, which it can resemble, because a stroke requires completely different treatment.

You can read more about it, here.

So, there's some gratitude and a hats-off to the Powers That Be. I'm not completely batshit crazy.

Cannabis Oil Question, #6

What do you do about Sophie's medicine at school and do you tell her school what she's taking?

You'll know later why I posted this daffy photo of myself that I took on hour five or so the other day that I spent in the Los Angeles airport, waiting for the Chicago airport to open. I loved those glasses, but they cost $65 which is ridiculous, even if they were vintage and everything's coming up -- oops, I don't want to give it away.

Here's what I do about Sophie's medicine at school. I don't give it to her at school but wait for her to come home to give her second dose. The first dose comes at 7:00 or 8:00 in the morning, about an hour or so before breakfast and before her other meds. The second dose comes about 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon, and the third comes at 10:00 at night when she's already asleep. That last dose is the most tricky, but so far we've been able to manage getting it in her mouth followed by a sip or two from her sippee cup and some gentle stroking of her cheeks to provoke the swallow reflex. She rarely wakes up.

Here's what I tell her school about the cannabis: nothing. I have told her teacher and aide, quite privately, that we're using it, but I haven't told the nurse or the principal or the vice-principal or the special education director or Oz Downtown because it's none of their business. You might raise your eyebrows at this, especially if you live in California and know about earthquake plans and emergency medicine supplies. I realized today that several months of the school year have gone by, and I haven't renewed Sophie's earthquake emergency medications in the school nursing office. To tell you the truth, I might have let the entire school year go by last year and not taken care of that either. That is wrong, I admit, and irresponsible. If there were an earthquake, and we were not able to get Sophie, she would be in deep shit without the regular administration of the two antiepileptic drugs that she takes, even though neither controls her seizures. Why is this? Because stopping these AEDS abruptly is very, very dangerous. Out here in earthquake territory, we are supposed to have water reserves for three days at a minimum and up to ten days. "They" recommend a week's supply of medication as well.

What does this have to do with cannabis? you ask. Here's the thing. I'm not worried about leaving cannabis with Sophie's school because going without the cannabis for a few days is unlikely to kill her. Yes, she might start having bazillions of seizures again like the old days, which is never very good, but she isn't addicted to the cannabis, and I can stop and start it with relative ease. Each dose is not harming her in unseen and obvious ways. That just struck me today, like an earthquake. I thought, too, about the questions I get from readers about how nervous they are to try cannabis, how they struggle with their disapproving doctors, how they wait for their doctors to lead their every single move.  I might get into trouble with this (not real trouble but more the kind of disapproval that some people have for those of us considered difficult, crazy or uncompliant), but I do what I think is best, and I don't give a flying foofoo what the doctor thinks (beyond the obvious). Twenty years has given me that confidence, and while I wouldn't ever tell someone to "disobey" their doctor, I seriously question the whole doctor says thing especially when it comes to cannabis.

Now, if I could only get up the nerve to do another wean of one of those AEDs, everything truly would be coming up daisies. In the meantime, I'm going to get those emergency supplies to the nurse at school. May there be no earthquakes when Sophie's at school, though. Please.

Other Cannabis Oil Questions Answered

# One
# Two
# Three
# Four

# Five

Cannabis Oil Questions Answered, #4

What are the side effects of cannabis on Sophie?


I have no idea whether that video will actually work, but it's of Sophie at school yesterday, smiling as she bounces on a giant ball. She smiles more and more often these days, and I am guilty of not celebrating that enough. Since she's been on Charlotte's Web, her seizures have not only been reduced dramatically, but she smiles more. The smile is a genuine one of pleasure -- even mirth -- and is not related to feeling "high," although even if she were high (impossible with Charlotte's Web), I wouldn't mind. It's funny what scares people, what throws them off, and certainly the psychoactive part of marijuana is what is causing the greatest uproar in our country. While this isn't an issue with Charlotte's Web and other high ratio cannabis strains, the fact that people are worried about someone like Sophie possibly getting a little high, frankly, cracks me up.  I've been doing this a long time -- watching constant seizures, spending thousands and thousands of dollars on drugs for those seizures, drugs that I have injected into, squirted down and even forced into Sophie over two decades. I've also watched her have the most debilitating side effects that you can imagine: screaming for hours on end (called irritability on package inserts or you just have to see what your tolerance is, said the  neurologist early on in our journey), agitation, constipation, constant moaning and rocking, dehydration, anorexia, sleeplessness (we probably didn't sleep more than 2-4 hours in a stretch for the first eight or so years of Sophie's life), rashes, fevers, extreme hunger, impacted stool (from the ketogenic diet), dizziness, lethargy, headaches, nausea/retching, extreme drooling, and the mother of all side effects: INCREASED SEIZURES OR NEW TYPES OF SEIZURES! However anecdotal (and Lord knows, we hate the anecdotal!), it's my firm belief that some of those twenty-two drugs we tried taught Sophie's brain to seize in different ways, sometimes in worse ways -- a sort of circumvention that her brain, ever more clever than the drugs, managed.

Other than some initial drowsiness that we noticed in the first few months of her trial of Charlotte's Web, which we realized is the result of being on a benzo, we haven't noticed any significant side effects other than positive ones, like better sleep, a heightened awareness, alertness and attempts to vocalize. While there are some reports of children and young adults trying cannabis and seeing very little change or not being able to tolerate it, from what I've read and experienced in talking to many, many people, is that our positive side effects are quite common. Sophie is smiling more often and more purposefully for the first time in well over a decade. It's easily the best side effect of medicine that we've ever experienced!








Other Cannabis Oil Questions Answered:

# One
# Two
# Three

First Day of School Traditions

As evidenced by the late hour that this post is going up, I've got nothing for you today. I've got nothing for me today, either, to tell you the truth. It was Henry's first day back to school, and I was the carpool driver, so I picked up two Cookies and Cream milkshakes for him and his friend. They were a welcome sight in the 90 degree plus San Fernando Valley heat, and it's that sort of thoughtful gesture that I believe makes me a good enough mother. Sometimes, we have to pat ourselves on the back, don't we?

No need to respond. These are, after all, the dog days of August.

Asking for a Winged Chariot

So, about six months or so ago, I began what I knew would be a long process to get a new wheelchair for Sophie. Those of you who know of these things will nod your head and probably don't need to read any further because you probably have post-traumatic stress disorder and what I'm about to write will probably trigger whatever form yours takes. Those of you curious about the small stuff with which we caregivers regularly deal should stick around for pure entertainment. Have I ever told you that it's the small stuff that can actually break you when you've been doing the care-giving thing for nearly twenty years? Along with God never gives you what you can't handle, and Sophie picked you as her mother because she knew how great you are, and There's a place in Heaven for you and a better life after this one, Don't sweat the small stuff is a very irritating adage. Honestly -- I've got the equanimity thing down, for the most part. I actually don't really sweat the big stuff. I can go to bed each and every night with the passing thought that I might find Sophie not breathing in the morning, a victim of SUDEP, and actually sleep just fine. I can watch tens of thousands of seizures and feel like I'm being stabbed in the heart every time but still manage to speak calmly and even negotiate how many Oreo cookies the "regular" children will get after dinner. I've talked to my comrades, and they all agree that sometimes it is the small stuff that makes us sweat.

Anyhoo. (New readers, please note that I despise this expression and reserve its use for posts dripping with sarcasm like this one.)

Sophie needs a new wheelchair. Even though she can walk, she tires easily, needs total assistance while walking and has a form of cerebral palsy that prevents her from walking long distances. Her old wheelchair is ratty and uncomfortable and a tad too small. She needs a new one, in particular, so that she can ride a bus home from school in it and avoid the precarious descent down the stairs of the regular bus which is a lawsuit waiting to happen. I began the process of getting approval for the new wheelchair about six months ago when a very nice woman visited our home and took measurements and helped me to pick out the chair that would work best for Sophie. After that, the trouble began. Sophie has private health insurance (thank you, Obama!) and secondary Medi-Cal, which is supposed to pick up anything that the private health insurance doesn't cover. I don't even know if I'm able to relate here, clearly, how complicated this whole process has become. The order has to be denied by CCS (California Children's Services), which Sophie does NOT have, before Medi-Cal will even review it, and that paperwork has to be filed BEFORE the primary insurance is even consulted. I keep smelling bullshit but not strong enough for me to do my usual smoking bread stick shenanigans (again, new readers -- I have a long history of dealing with insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies, during which I generally am on hold and smoke a bread-stick to calm down. You can go to the search bar on my sidebar and find these posts, if you're so inclined). The Neurologist had to write a letter stating the medical necessity of the wheelchair, but this couldn't be a simple letter. It had to have progress notes and all sorts of folderol, which I'm sure is necessary because of all the MediCal fraud going on and which I'm happy to oblige, but after six months or so, I'm really just sweating and sweating a lot.

You'd think I was requesting a winged chariot.

I'd use some rude curse words, but I don't want to alienate the Powers That Be or mothers or fathers who might be reading here, so I'm going to reserve those words for next year when the whole hideous election cycle gets going, and we'll be subject to the likes of Rand Paul and Sarah P and that guy from New Mexico and all those people who want their country back and want the gays to go back in the closet or the brown children to go back to where they come from and women to keep their legs closed and everyone to pray at school and have the liberty to carry a gun into Target to kill the people who threaten them. Where was I?

Oh, yeah. Sweating the small stuff. In the grand scheme of things, getting a proper wheelchair for Sophie is really not such a big deal, nothing compared to the seizures, the risk of SUDEP, financial distress, the great, black cloud of what we'll be doing when she turns 22 and can no longer go to school. Those big things, though -- I'll deal with them as I've always done. They actually enlarge me in the best way.

The small stuff? The making a medical case for a chariot drawn by winged horses? The process to get a prescription for Onfi changed to the liquid form so that I don't have to use the razor cutter to divide the dose for the next wean (a PTSD trigger for sure)? The going to another IEP to state that Sophie needs a wheelchair bus, not a regular bus but now still a regular bus because the winged chariot is not yet ordered?Not only does it make me sweat, but dealing with the small stuff also has chipped away at nearly everything by which I used to identify myself: being sweet and kind and graceful and yielding. I'm now a point, very, very sharp yet not quite broken.

Dispatches from The Schools of Humming, Tradition and Revolution***

Dispatch One - Revolution

Since we decided to pull Oliver from his public charter school and explore options, I've been reading a book called Deschooling Gently by Tammy Takahashi that has been enormously helpful in these early days. I realize that for the past year and a half, Oliver's experience at school has been increasingly stressful and that he broke down completely in the last month and a half of this school year when it appeared that things were not going to be an improvement over last year. I won't go into the reasons why here, but suffice it to say that it was a sort of perfect storm with no one person or institution to blame, but rather a confluence of factors (adolescence, dyslexia, unique personality) and a direction that our school is taking that I believe to be unfortunate. I looked at Sophie a few weeks ago, looked at Oliver and looked at Henry. If I'd been naked in a tub, I would have sat up and shouted, joyfully, Eureka! This is way too hard and life is too short and Oliver is too precious to go on like this! Literally. That's literally what I thought. So I put a stop to it.

Here are a couple of quotes from the book:

Deschooling is a process of getting used to learning as a family without the external control of a school system. Some call it a decompression time, or a vacation. Generally, it involves doing less schoolwork and more life work, less judging and more exploring, less have-tos and more want-tos. Deschooling is moving toward a life where everyone is happy and learning.

Deschooling is learning how to live without being in school, to fend for ourselves, and to provide our children with an appropriate educational environment. 

So, that's what Oliver and I are doing right now -- we're de-schooling. In the mornings, we sit down and listen to the Writer's Almanac. This morning we listened to some fascinating information about the history of Voyager I that led us to search for Carl Sagan's beautiful reading titled "The Pale Blue Dot." We watched a video on that, explored another website about Saturn and talked about what it means to be alive in the universe. We wrote in a journal online and set a goal for the rest of the day. The other day, Oliver particularly liked a poem by Anne Sexton that we heard on the Writer's Almanac, so we talked about metaphor and hidden meanings. That discussion went into the online journal, too. Oliver dictates and I type (remember how much I love to type and how good I am at it?).

Yes, I have plans to explore other options -- even other schools that cater to the dyslexic child. I've done and continue to do lots of research on homeschooling, though, and I'm already making connections. There's math to think of and science, of course -- there's curriculum and field trips and get-togethers. Every now and then I think I've gone completely insane, but then I pick up the book and remind myself that we're "deschooling gently," that this didn't happen in a vacuum and that Oliver is happy and silly and light for the first time in well over a year. I'll repeat that:

Oliver is happy and silly and light for the first time in well over a year.


***The dispatches from the Schools of Humming and Tradition will follow in the next few days.

Truancy

We got another letter from the Powers That Be at Sophie's school. Evidently, she has been determined to be an incorrigible truant, and we, as parents have failed to meet the obligation and may be guilty of an infraction and subject to prosecution pursuant to Article 6 (commencing with Section 48290) of Chapter 2 or Part 27. No matter the fact that her IEP determines that she is late to school nearly every day because of her disability and that she is absent, probably, due to seizures. No matter that after five years at this school, we have gotten multiple copies of this letter. Best of all is this fine sentence: With or without an excuse, children are missing valuable instruction when they are absent. Yeah, I get it. You've got to do these things in a huge city with hundreds of thousands of children and an abysmal record of high school graduation, but it leads me to believe that no one there takes an iota of interest in Sophie beyond the numbers (with the exception, of course, of her teacher and aides). That gets wearisome after a while, the constant effort of it all. I get tired and cynical and sarcastic. I will have to call the school tomorrow, after we celebrate Veteran's Day, and let them know that Sophie is not lollygagging around the city, drinking and smoking cigarettes, free as a bird. Would that we were -- free as birds -- and wouldn't also have to exult in the day that people had to fight to make it so.

Blue is the Warmest Color

Bathsheba at Her Bath, Rembrandt

That's the title of the NC-17 French lesbian movie that I'm going to see this afternoon, after I have coffee with a fellow de-schooler. I'll let you know how it is -- the movie, not the de-schooling -- whether I give up dreams of Javier Bardem in favor of the fairer sex. Here's a poem from the 16th century:

Bethsabe's Song

Hot sun, cool fire, tempered with sweet air,
Black shade, fair nurse, shadow my white hair.
Shine, sun; burn, fire; breathe, air and ease me;
Black shade, fair nurse, shroud me and please me.
Shadow, my sweet nurse, keep me from burning;
Make not my glad cause cause of mourning.
      Let not my beauty's fire
      Inflame unstaid desire,
      Nor pierce any bright eye
      That wandereth lightly.

George Peele (1556-1596)

Maybe I should have posted Sappho, but I loved this one, especially the line Make not my glad cause cause of mourning. I got a couple of sweet emails today from teachers at Oliver's school that have worked with him and with Henry, when Henry was at the same school. My eyes teared up when I read them. I also heard that the Powers That Be at the school were snarky when they heard we were leaving, and my ego bristled and my thoughts turned toward the negative, but I let it go, let it go, let it go, more links in the chain behind me.

Make not my glad cause cause of mourning.

The Entrepreneur, Halloween, Christmas and The House of Crazy

If I told you the past week chez House of Crazy was crazy, it would be an understatement. Raymond Chandler and Santa Anas aside, between the Seizing Marijuana Chronicles and The Teenager and The Dyslexic Entrepreneur, I've been hard put to remain not just calm but even somewhat collected. I won't even go into The Husband. I've been wearing sunglasses all week to disguise my tears and have walked around the house whimpering when they're all at school. I've told you over and over that my Italian grandmother used to do so all day, whimper, sigh and mutter under her breath pray that I die, pray that I die. Last night I made a valiant and last ditch effort to cheer the Dyslexic Entrepreneur who had finished a horrific week of school that included about 5,321,789 emails back and forth to The Powers That Be at the school and the passing, Santa Ana-induced thought of homeschooling. He had just climbed into the car after baseball practice and begun another historic rant of negativity, how I suck at baseball and just about everything and how I'm just going to give it all up and be a giant loser, I'm really not supposed to be in this world, and while my eyes glazed over and my ears dripped blood, the tiny thought entered my mind, the valiant thought that I then actually voiced:

Why don't we go to Cost Plus World Market and get you some stuff for your lemonade stand?

If you're familiar with Los Angeles on Friday nights, and particularly with our local outdoor shopping mall called The Grove on Friday nights, you'd know just how outrageous this suggestion was -- how it was more the last ditch effort of a dying woman (pray that I die, pray that I die) than of a reasonable or even good enough mother. We went. We nearly killed ourselves wrestling a giant Exxon Valdeez SUV for a parking spot, and we walked the Christmas decorated clogged aisles (pray that I die, pray that I die) until The Dyslexic Entrepreneur decided that he'd use some of his earnings from last week's lemonade stand to buy a cotton candy maker for this week's stand. And given that I was dying, had contemplated buying some admittedly adorable silver-flecked Santa ornaments and wouldn't be spending the money myself, since the Dyslexic Entrepreneur has actually made about three times as much as it cost,  I said yes.

What's really cool about the cotton candy maker is that you can throw candies in the top to flavor the sugar.In fact, that photo of The Dyslexic Entrepreneur was taken at about 10:00 this morning, and his product became his breakfast. In addition, we're going to start decorating for Christmas early this year at The House of Crazy by putting silver flecks on the pumpkins and draping spider-webs over the life-sized Santa Claus that's sitting on my porch, a "gift" from my parents. The weird thing is that I'm no longer praying to die but actually getting excited.

Reader, what are you doing?

The Old Gray Mare, Part 456

God, that's an ugly photo of me, isn't it?

I woke up extra early this morning and lay in my bed reading emails while simultaneously telling myself that I shouldn't lie in bed and read emails but rather go outside, exercise, meditate, bask in gratitude, do a devotional. I read the emails, finding a perverse pleasure in deleting, deleting, deleting, even the news, the expected news that the government was shut down. I heard through the grapevine that a beloved teacher at our school was fired, and I quelled the rising nervousness in my stomach, the uncertainty of the future -- the closed government, the powers that be in every institution, even our little charter school, mistrust -- the growing sense of futility I feel despite a bit of age and experience and, dare I say it -- intelligence? Delete, delete, delete. I texted a friend that I am particularly uninspired of late, and not even blogging, the daily practice of it that so inspired my off-line writing, is working for me. The old gray mare just ain't what she used to be. Ain't what she used to be, ain't what she used to be. Then I read this, by one of my favorite bloggers, and I'm up out of bed and onward.

Thank you, Pauline.

School

Forgive my lack of posting today, but I'm bogged down in reading aloud tracts about impetigo and other infectious diseases, courtesy of 7th Grade Science. The reading aloud is courtesy of Dyslexia. I would educate you on the finer points of blisters, crusty, moist scabs and the attendant itchiness, but instead I'm lying down, face-first on my bed while the violin plays plaintive and I restrain myself from telling the Big O that it's all a bunch of bullshit, that he should flee school all together and gather ye rosebuds while you may. Dinner tonight is tacos with all the fixings. A shot of vodka, too.

Thelma and Louise

Here they are, evidently escaping from school. Thelma is deliriously happy, as you can see, and Louise perhaps skeptical. I think what's happened is that Mr. Red Who is Purple tried to get them to make jungle animals out of tissue paper while taking turns, and they'd just had enough.

Thelma's mother and I will soon jump into the most fabulous restored Airstream that you've ever seen and join them in the desert. We won't be killing ourselves, by the way, just taking a break from the bullshit.

What my friends and I are doing now that our children are all back to school

especially for Sally M.

Kiki di Montparnasse, Therese Treize de Caro et Lily
Brassai, 1932

via dreamdogsart

Hallelujah.

Hallelujah.

Hallelujah.

I ask no questions

What do you want for your Going Back to School Tomorrow Breakfast? I yelled from my room.

Croissants! Oliver yelled back.

What kind? I asked and looked up as he raced down the hall.

Hold on a second! he shouted, a whir. I need to get a paper towel to wipe the spit off the picture on the wall where I missed.

I ask no questions.

I can't do this anymore

When Sophie's teacher calls and tells me that the speech pathologist, Mr. Red Who is Purple, is not going to recommend that Sophie continue receiving AAC services, I say What? but I think I can't do this anymore. There's a tightrope, a line, a balancing act, a cliche, and then there's I can't do this anymore. I spent much of yesterday sunk deep in my articulate thoughts, I can't do this anymore a banner overarching bullets of clarity. Oliver slept with me last night, his heart sick over our friends' moving away. When I got out of bed this morning, he was lying asleep on his back, his head turned to the side, chin up, his arm thrust out straight like a fencer, prepared. And when I hugged Henry before he walked away to catch his ride to school, I closed the door, and the sun muscled through.

Parenting and Summer Reading

So, I've got two kids in high school and one to go. Oliver will be entering the seventh grade after Labor Day, and he's the one who despises school, mainly because he has some learning disabilities and up until very recently, we didn't really have a handle on those. Conversations this summer around summer reading requirements have generally been the type where if you suggested that someone should perhaps start reading their required book and if you happened to be lighting a candle at the same time to mask the smell of another child's diaper, the whole house would have gone up in flames.

Anywho.

Last night I made a gentle suggestion that perhaps it was time for someone to start reading their required book (and to be fair, the first was actually finally finished three weeks ago!). The suggestion hung there in the dry and combustible air. Mom, I really hate basketball, and it's a book about basketball, he said fairly rationally from his perch on a stool in the kitchen. I confidently spooned beans into a bowl  for Sophie's dinner. I love basketball, actually, (because I went to the world's greatest basketball university which is another topic altogether) which is saying a lot given that I am utterly not into sports, completely nonathletic and verge on the irrational in my hatred of football. Well, it's not really about the sport, I said, it's about a boy who plays basketball, but it's really more about him. Someone frowned and squirmed on his chair. I scattered chicken on top of the beans and sprinkled cheese on top of that. Hey, I've got an idea, I said, as I put the bean concoction in the microwave. If you finish this book without grumping around and resisting it, I'll buy us two tickets to a Lakers or Clippers game. Someone stopped squirming and looked interested. How about the Dodgers instead? he asked.

Reader, if you're a young parent, don't let anyone tell you that bribes shouldn't be used in parenting. Consider yourself skilled if you get your obstreperous, extremely volatile offspring to agree to read about basketball (your favorite sport) in return for you having to sit through baseball (a sport that bores you to tears). Consider yourself a good enough mother.

Plus, your house doesn't go up in flames.

On the Eve of High School

Henry is going to high school tomorrow morning!

Good Lord.

Here he is last night, acting goofy and beautiful all at once.

You know how some people lament the passing of the years as their children grow up and out? Life with this boy has been such that I look forward to the man he is becoming. Yes, I miss that little whippersnapper who went to kindergarten ten years ago with an apple for the teacher and a tentative smile, but I have my boy still in this easy, lanky, good-natured, gorgeous kid.

Eighth Grade Semi-formal

Henry, oh Henry

Sophie, Seizures and Texts

So, I was going to sit here and update you on my continued wheelings and dealings with the acquisition of Sophie's anti-epileptic drug, Onfi. It was going to be titled Drug Mule, Part 347, but to tell you the truth, I don't have it in me. At least not today.

What I do have in me is a screen shot of a typical text that I might receive on any given day from either the aide at Sophie's school or her teacher. Don't get me wrong -- I love both of them, and they both do a kick-ass job of teaching and taking care of their students, including my daughter. What I wanted to convey is probably more my reaction to these texts which is a sort of nonchalance or resignation, and as my finger slides over the words or presses here and here to get a screen shot, I wonder if underneath that seeming lackadaisical manner is a suppressed hysteria.

And Sophie? This is what she looks like, despite the multiple seizures and near-constant agitated head-banging. Perhaps a bit tired, but pretty great despite it all.

And me? I believe you've seen a photo or two of me, but I took this one just a moment ago, and it perfectly captures my mood:

Reader, what did your day bring you?