Never a Dull Moment (Today's adventures in the Mortensen Family)

• Today Dimitri had his appointment with a neuro-surgeon regarding his back. It was been confirmed, he has a ruptured disc in his low back. We have two options, surgery to repair or time to let it heal on it's own. The doctor said it would heal that it is just a matter of time and how much pain Dimitri can bear. For now we are going to opt for time and will try to manage his pain with reflexology (which he had today and he is in less pain then he has been for weeks) and a few sessions of acupuncture.
• My doctor's appointment I had today to check and monitor my high blood pressure went well. My blood pressure is down some and the side effects I was having with the medication have lessened (dizziness, passed out twice). I am on a very low dosage so he would like to see me eat better, lose weight and exercise it lower it further.
• Our insurance company decided Monday's fender bender was 30% my fault and 70% the other driver. Of course that is our insurance company I'm sure his will see it differently. Regardless of how if comes out we have $1,000 deductible but if he is found more at fault maybe our rates won't go up as much.
• Victoria and I worked (volunteered) at the Horizon Christian High School girls soccer fireworks stand this afternoon. Very few sales but good bonding time with the assistant coach and I already have 8.5 volunteer hours toward the required 20 hours of volunteer time per family for the 2008/09 school year.
• This evening as we were sitting in the kitchen having our very late dinner there was a very loud knock at our door. A passer-by noticed our fence at the side of the house was on fire and had started to scorched side of the house. At this point this is where you have to remember the broken outside faucet mentioned in an earlier post. Still broken, I didn't do a very good job on Monday's to do list, I haven't yet called a plumber. The only other outside faucet is in the garage so as Victoria found a bucket and filled it with water and managed to extinguish the largest flame that was by now on the house. Doug and I were struggling with hoses and a faucet that was not working very well. I yelled for Dimitri to grab the shovel (which we just purchased a few days ago so we could plant the blueberry bush and apple tree the Teradas left behind) and go to the back yard and start shoveling dirt onto the fire. We finally managed it get a small amount of water to come out of the hose so between the dirt, buckets and poorly working water pressure we manged to completely put out the fire. Yeah for team work.

Now the dilemma and the hardest emotional part, why did a fire start in the first place? A stray firework? A tossed cigarette butt? Dimitri? I so do not want to believe it was Dimitri, however good chance that it very likely was. Since adopting him in 2001 he has started a couple of fires and was caught numerous times with matches and/or I have found evidence that he has tried to start a fire. Soon after adopting him he started a fire that burned a large section of fence and a row of the neighbors trees. The fire department was involved so Dimitri had to go be interviewed by the fire marshell (we had to hire an interpreter) since he couldn't speak English he didn't have to attend the classes. ($2,000 dollars worth of damage)A couple of years later I caught trying to start a fire in the neighborhood park. I knew something was up because he smelled like campfire and the way he was behaving. That time he was largely unsuccessful and no fire department was involved it could have been a disaster.

Off and on over the years I find matches in the laundry or in his room or back pack. ( I randomly search Dimitri and his belongings for this and other reasons). I have had to get rid of all butane lighters used to light grills or candles because he likes to play with them and I find them in his room. Soon after moving to this house I found a small pile of twigs and paper in the yard just waiting to be lit luckily I found it before he did start it because it was close to the house.

Nothing has happened in the past year to make be think he would light a fire but it seems every time I start to trust him something happens.

This afternoon Dimitri was home by himself for several hours and as mentioned above he wasn't hurting as much today as he has been so it is entirely possible he was at the side of the house playing with fire. It is the side of the house where there is nothing but a strip of bark dust several feet wide. There are no windows looking over the area and no reason for any of us to ever go there so he could go unnoticed there. In my haste to get the fire out I had Dimitri use the shovel in that area to put out the fire so none of us were able to see any evidence before it was buried if there was any evidence. I sifted through the mess a little but it was muddy by then and daylight was fading so tomorrow I will go investigate. So now I have nothing more than Dimitri's word but with his history of both fires and lying it's not much. Please pray for wisdom for Doug and myself as to know what to do. Please pray for our ongoing struggles with trying to love and parent Dimitri, it's not easy.