Picket Fence

Grandma Billie used to say, “Picket Fence!” whenever she saw a clock say 11:11, so I think of her whenever I see that exact time (which, in an ideal world, I notice twice a day). Today is November 11th, which is why I set an alarm on my phone last night so that I’d remember to see 11:11 of 11/11.

Yesterday was Grandma Billie’s 83rd birthday; it sometimes seems weird that she’s been gone for what feels like a long time; although, in reality, it’s been less than three years since she died. Now we also have another birthday to celebrate on this day, because yesterday was the day that one of my second cousins was born (bringing Grandma Billie’s descendant count to 37), which I thought was neat and I guess sort of symbolic; remembering life and death on the same day. It seemed like people were kind of giving off conflicting vibes, though; being both happy and excited for the new baby girl in the family, but also sad because of missing Grandma Billie.

 

And now, a brief rundown of what’s been going on in my life.

On October 26th, Mommy took Levi to a doctor appointment. I was home alone for the first part of the morning, but once I was ready (i.e. after I had eaten breakfast while watching an episode of WordGirl—which may or may not have been in Hebrew, since no one else was at home to be bothered—gotten dressed, and taken some Belladonna for a cough I had) I got to go over to Stephie’s and hang out there. Mommy and Levi actually came home quicker than I thought they would, but they let me stay for a while and play with Nathan and Simon anyway, which was fun. Simon was as cute as ever, and Nathan is always excited to show me the new Hot Wheels cars and crazy track setups he has.

On the 31st, we went over to Grandma and Papa’s in the evening, in case trick-or-treaters showed up (they live on the end of a dead end, gravelly road, so they pretty much never have anyone show up). I’ve never liked Halloween; as of now, not because I really have any really deep-seated theological issues with the celebration, but more because I’ve just never cared for spooky decorations and costumes (when I was little, my parents basically couldn’t bring me to any restaurants or anything like that during October, since even cheap paper bats would creep the heck out of me). We had a good time at Papa and Grandma’s house; they had turkey burgers for dinner, and we watched a Frasier marathon on TV.

The next day was All Saints’ Day, and Mommy took Levi and I to church for Mass in the evening. Mommy and Levi got to have confession (I was able to the Saturday before, since they let me go before them in line). The day after, Mommy had an EKG, and the next day I went to see the osteopath again. I’ve been seeing him basically every two weeks, and as of now I’ve seen a lot of improvement overall in the symptoms relating to my head injury. Also, it turns out he lived in Switzerland, and is fluent in German; so now I have someone to speak German with, which is kind of exciting (I’m planning on trying to tell him a German joke the next time I see him).

 

 

Last Sunday, we went over to Grandma and Papa’s to celebrate Clay’s birthday (which was actually last Tuesday). I played my first session of Dungeons and Dragons with Clay, Tami, Katie, and Levi (Clay was the dungeon master). Levi and I picked characters that we were given from standard sheets for the campaign, and developed them from there, while Tami and Katie made their own from the ground up. My character is a chaotic good elf named Soveliss Siannodel, and he’s a wizard and acolyte of Oghma. If I had designed someone from the ground up, I probably would’ve gone with a neutral good alignment, since that’s what I usually get when I take an alignment test; but having to role play as someone with a different morality and personality probably helps me actually improve my acting skills more than if I had a character more similar to me. We had a lot of fun playing, and Clay had a blast being the dungeon master (he was really good at it, too; he even had sound effects on his computer, and did different voices for NPCs). I’d never played Dungeons and Dragons, but I’m already looking forward to the next time we can play.

 

The following day, we watched Nathan and Simon at our house, so that Stephie and Clay could go out. We had Levi’s big firetruck (which he got for his birthday quite a few years ago) out, the turntable ladder of which Nathan instantly converted into a slide for the cars he had brought with him. Later, Nathan found the abacus by my bed, which he’s been fascinated with for a long time, and I showed him again how to count on it. Both Nathan and Simon love cats, and Nathan is very good and gentle with both of ours (much better than I was, even when I was a few years older than him); later, we watched cat videos on the big TV, as well as an old clip from Sesame Street that Nathan finds particularly funny. Mommy was with Simon the whole time, and he only cried twice (both times were pretty brief; the first was when something apparently scared him, and the second one was because he banged his on our sound bar) We had fun (although both Levi and I were a little tuckered out by the end, haha), but eventually Stephie and Clay came back to bring them home; although they visited with us for a little bit before they left.

 

Last Wednesday, Daddy took me to see Dr. Finch, while Mommy went to volunteer at a Healing Touch thing of hers. I told the doctor about how I’d improved in the past month, and how I was seeing an osteopath; he was pleased with my progress (although he admitted it wasn’t really because of anything he did), and said that we could reschedule with him as needed. The appointment went by really quickly, and the only unusual thing was that his stenographer guy wasn’t there this time. The hardest part was actually filling out the questionnaire beforehand; I tend to take and explain things pretty literally, so it’s annoying when the sections they have for symptoms are listed like “Not at all”, “Several days”, “More than half of the days”. Like, what about just part of a day, or a couple of days? I guess with those things you just have to go with approximation. The more psychological symptoms sound kind of depressing, too; things like, “Do you feel down, depressed, or worthless, like your life has lost all meaning, and you’ve let your family down?” No, but now I’m starting to! (Just kidding).

After the appointment, we went to get some Chinese food, and we brought some back for Levi.

 

 

Yesterday, Mommy had an ultrasound, after which she drove me to my piano lesson. My songs (there’ll probably be two) are coming together really well, which makes me happy and much less anxious about the upcoming recital. My teacher is very encouraging, but still good with helping me with mistakes. In the evening, Mommy and Daddy went out to see a play. Levi and I played Lego Worlds on the PlayStation, when Levi accidentally sat on his arm weird or something and made it pop out of place, damaging the nerves there. So, we had a lot of fun up until that point.

 

People around me were pretty down for what seemed like most of the day; I think the reasons were that Levi’s arm was still hurting him pretty badly, Daddy was frustrated about his diet, and Mommy was upset that Daddy and Levi were upset (and also missing Grandma Billie). It seems like it’s fairly common for me to be the only person in the house that isn’t upset about something, although I’m not sure exactly why; it’s not that I never get sad, I just seem to lack the emotional energy to be upset for long periods of time, whether or not I’m upset for myself or empathizing with someone else’s pain. I hope people understand that I do feel for them, even though I’m not always very good at showing it.

This evening, Levi wasn’t feeling well enough to go to church, so Mommy took me to Mass. I’m glad we got to go, and when we came home we had a big dinner that Mommy had been making for about half of the day. We watched a few episodes of The Big Bang Theory; and later Levi played a new game he got on the PlayStation, called Stardew Valley.

 

 

 

 

Well, that’s all for now, other than that I wrote a poem today, which I published here earlier this evening (you can scroll down and read it). Now I have to stop writing and go to bed.

 

 

 

 

Today’s Question: What’s something you’re really interested in?

 

 

 

 

Today’s Joke: I adopted a dog that used to belong to a blacksmith; as soon as I got him home, he made a bolt for the door.

 

 

 

 

-Isaac““

 

 

 

 

Post Script (11-12-2017 edit): I forgot to mention last night that I did eventually hear back from someone who works for my representative, and she was very helpful. If all goes well, I’ll be going to Salem on Tuesday to meet with the representative and tour the capitol building (which is exciting because that’s also something I’ve never done before).

An an unrelated note, Papa Jeff came over to visit the Tevebaughs, so we went over to their house to see him this morning. We initially planned to stay for about 45 minutes, but ended up staying about twice as long. We had a lot of fun playing with Nathan and Simon; and visiting with Papa Jeff was really nice, since it’d been quite a while since we’ve been able to see him.

 

 

 

 

Post the Post Script: Happy belated Veterans’ Day.