Reporting

We survived Diva's visit. The whole thing was slightly surreal.

Since she's been gone we got an Xbox. She was excited about that, and Sproing taught her how to use the controller to play a couple of his games. He was very patient with her. They got along very well, as I mentioned in my previous post.

When it was time for dinner everyone came into the kitchen to eat. We had two tables set up, one of them a door set on saw horses. That's always fun! It means Thanksgiving to me. Anyway, we all came into the kitchen, got plates and served ourselves. Except Diva. She sat in front of the TV in the living room. We had to call her again, then she came in and sat down at the last available spot at the table. She just sat in front of the empty plate with a creepy blank look on her face. I said "Honey, take your plate over and get some food." She stared at me for probably 30 seconds before getting up. She got one thing then came back to the table. I suggested she go back and get some more stuff, and Superman helped guide her through the decision making process. She ate what she got, and expressed a liking for the sweet potato casserole when Sproing put up a fight about eating the 2 tablespoons of sweet potato I gave him.

I napped for an hour after dinner, then got up to go with Superman to return Diva to her rightful place. 70 miles 4 times in one day is a pain in the ass. He and I had a very nice time together on the way home, and an even nicer time once we got home.

Diva is crazy. She often does not show emotion, or if she does it's inappropriate to the situation. She has what psychologists call flat affect (a'-fect; n). It is one symptom of schizophrenia, as is command auditory hallucinations, which she's had. That's when she hears voices telling her to do things (like kill us in our sleep). She's not been diagnosed with schizophrenia, and she may be too young (will be 13 next Saturday) to qualify for that diagnosis. I won't be at all surprised if we hear that she is schizophrenic.

It was stressful having her here, and I think we won't do that again. C and N both recommend that she not ever come back here. They went out after dinner in order to get away from her presence, as both of them were very uncomfortable with her in the house. I locked the doors to my bedroom and office while she was here, and asked the charge nurse at the facility to check her for contraband when we took her back. After we left her, Superman visibly relaxed. He didn't realize how guarded he was until he no longer had to be.

In other news, N wanted to hit the Black Friday sales today. C, who isn't a big fan of that sort of thing anyway, had to go into work and make donuts to keep the citizens of Greenwood fueled up for their power shopping. Since N doesn't have his drivers' license yet, I got up early and took him shopping. We left the house shortly after 6:00 and were gone for 2.5 hours. We hit Wal-Mart first, then went to what passes for our mall. I got a couple of Christmas gifts for Sproing and N bought himself a few garments. I got up really early. I can feel a nap approaching rapidly.