Friday August 24, 2007 9:27 PM

So I have more energy now and here's the camp story....

Jimmy's been going to Liberty Lake Day Camp up in Columbus. This is his second year. Last year Jimmy thought it would be fun to hide and the camp had to go into lockdown mode until they found him. I wasn't that crazy about the place because I didn't feel they really had a handle on how to deal with little kids and I didn't think the counselors were really watching them well. I think they spent most of their time socializing with one another while the kids ran amok, but since Jim was sick this year I didn't have time research another place so I sent Jimmy anyway. I could tell the director didn't really want Jimmy back but my money is green so he shut up about it. He was happy to take my $3900.00.

Now, Jimmy is 6. He's not a hitter unless someone hits him first. At the beginning of camp while Jim was in the hospital for his c-diff I get a very indignant call from a counselor asking me if we've taught Jimmy that hitting isn't right. Duh. What did she think? I told her, look- three guesses and the first two don't count...I'm at my husband's bedside in the hospital and I don't have time for this silliness. I found out the next day that the "incident" she was referring to was when a kid stole Jimmy's Harry Potter magic wand he made in arts and crafts and Jimmy grabbed it back and hit the kid over the head with it. The summer's been fraught with several incidents of this nature, and Andy's had a real attitude with me. Then I find out that Andy brought in professional wrestlers. Professional wrestlers? Oh, THAT's gonna help the hitting thing a whole lot. The piece de resistance was last week during Ugly Shorts Day. At the end of the day they set Andy's shorts on a flagpole and lit them on fire. Jimmy saw the ashes and was scared to death because he thought they set the shorts on fire with Andy IN them. Now, I thought the burning of the shorts was funny, and I'm sure the older kids did too, but Jimmy was so traumatized he wouldn't talk to me the whole evening. I called the camp to tell them that Andy needed to go see Jimmy the next day so he'd know Andy was o.k., but they had no respect for Jimmy or his feelings. They just acted like Jimmy was a "weird" kid. The last straw was early this week when Jimmy got punched by another kid and he punched back, but Andy calls me loaded with attitude and gives me a hard time about Jimmy. Well, I blasted him with a tirade. Andy has made remarks to me in the past about it being too "hard" for his counselors to use any incentives for good behavior. Well, one of the things I told Andy was, "You want an EASY job? Go fry french fries. YOU chose this profession. Boo hoo hoo." And then I told him to lose my phone number. The next day, Jimmy's walking with his friend Gabriel when an older kid comes up to them and starts whaling on Gabriel, punching him many times until Gabriel's nose was bleeding. Jim crawled between the big kid's legs and socked him in the stomach, and told me, "I showed him what it feels like to get punched." I asked Jimmy where his counselors were when this happened. He told me they were playing "Nuke 'Em", whatever THAT is. You know damn well that if the big kid got in that many punches before the fight was broken up then no one was watching these kids. Needless to say, Jimmy's not going back there next year.

Now for Jim. He went to the otolaryngologist in Philly today. Dr. Spiegel's not going to do an alternate test in place of the manometry that didn't work. He's just going to do Jim's throat stretching surgery. He goes for his pre-op testing next week, and the surgery is scheduled for September 6th. Jim was practically skipping home. We both can't wait. But Dr. Spiegel did warn him that he may never be able to eat everything he could before all this happened. He says, though, that he has an 85 percent success rate with this surgery.