Everyone's in sort of a blah mood today. We had a long weekend and perhaps it just took a toll. Lizze is struggling with her migraine and unfortunately, her hip popped out this morning as well. One of the health related challenges Lizze faces is Ehlers-Danlos, a connective tissue disorder. Her joints are very, very loose and it isn't a Monday if something doesn't pop out of socket. Gavin deals with the same exact thing. His hip and shoulder pop out all the time. It's very painful for both of them and the sound it makes when their joints pop out is horrifying. I'm moving a little slower today. The boys and I spent most of the afternoon yesterday, helping build my sister's new deck. It was a fun but…

We have a few important things going on this week above and the usual overwhelming list of important things we need to do. Just to give you a brief idea of what we're looking at, I list the big ones: I have my doctor's appointment this week. We're going to discuss removing a couple of medications I'm still on. I don't know when I'll pull the plug on them but I just want to be on the same page as my doctor and have a plan in place. Elliott desperately needs to get into Akron Children's Hospital for psychiatry. They begin scheduling for November on August 1st. I have to call just before 8AM to get an appointment. Also on August 1st, the boys have appointments with their pediatrician. This…

Things settled down last night and we were able to go to sleep without any further disruptions. I will say that our room is directly below where the raccoon trap is set and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a bit freaked out by that. As far as I can tell, the raccoon never came back last night. I thought I heard something moving around up there but I didn't see anything and the trap remains untouched. We'll have to see what tonight brings. Having said that, we went about 2 weeks between visits the last time. I'm not sure how frequently this thing stops by but it's certainly not every night. Unfortunately, we have no way to predict when it will be there so we're in a…

I'm having a really hard time falling asleep after what I shared in the previous post. I'm laying in bed, just getting more and more pissed off because I can't change our course right now. We can't move and I'm feeling like a complete failure as a result. As I'm laying there getting more and more frustrated because I can't sleep, I heard loud noises coming for our attic. I've been talking about trying to get rid of squirrels in our attic for the last couple of weeks. We've even placed a live trap up there but haven't heard anything since the trap was placed. Of course, tonight would be the night that the noises returned. The noise was right above our room and it was really loud. I brought…

I'm trying to remain positive tonight but it's not working out. I've mentioned over the years how badly we need to move. Our neighborhood is not safe and as time goes on, things get worse. It seems like there are periods of calm, followed by an increase in either violence or crime. The violence has been bad. We've been involved in a drive by shooting, where I was nearly rundown by the gunmen fleeing the scene and they threw their loaded guns out the windows of their car at my family as we were walking into the house. Shortly after that, a young male had his entire belly split open during an attempted robbery and he collapsed in front of my house. I held his organs in place with my…