Just another day...

I worked 9 to 5 today, arriving home at last around 5:30. This was a VERY long day.

Beast and I watched the news, quite a novelty for me: I haven't watched the evening news in months (or years). It's a like a faint communique from a distant century. Beast had already mowed the lawn. Cinnamon and Buddy were banging around the cage a bit. It was nice and quiet, with Sparky outside chasing around with some of the neighborhood kids. Beast checked on them a couple of times, just to be sure that things were under control. We could hear Sparky issuing orders at 160 decibels every once in awhile.

The noise from the cage suddenly got much louder: I looked over and saw Cinnamon's feet in the air. That happens sometimes; his right side doesn't work and he tips over once in awhile. This time, however, his feet stayed in the air. I could see them from the couch. On top of that, he was literally banging into things, so I went over to see what was really going on. Cinnamon was in the middle of one of his seizures. I grabbed him and sat down with him.

Around that same time, we could hear Sparky yelling again. Beast went out back again, and then took off across the yard. I could hear him loud and clear from the front of our house, with the back door shut behind him: "Cut that out! What's going on? Stop it!" With Cinnamon twitching in my arms, I figured I should probably stay put unless the yelling continued. It didn't.

Once Cinnamon seemed to have settled, I carried him outside with me to figure out what was going on. Turns out, when Beast walked out the back door, two of the neighbor kids were fighting. Sparky had a grip on one of them and was trying to separate them, but I guess when they heard Beast bellowing, the jumped apart pretty quick.

When our nearest neighbor heard Beast, she came flying out of her house--one of the fighters lives there--to see what was going on. By the time I got there, JS was crying and JY was cringing in fear from Beast. JS was sent home by his mother, and Beast walked JY to his house and talked to his dad; Sparky talked to both boys and actually took some responsibility for letting things get out of control and for not modeling good problem-solving for the rest of the group (all younger than him).

Meanwhile, Cinnamon was doing his best to jerk out of my arms, in the throes of a huge seizure. We have dug out the Hospital Box and lined it with a towel. Cinnamon has been in there ever since. He's mostly been completely silent, but he did have another seizure (I thought he was going to fly out of the 3" x 6" hole in the top of the box) about 8:30. I think we'll keep him upstairs in our room overnight, just in case.

So yeah, just another day.