When I say, light the house on fire, that's an exaggeration, but he knew better and it was dangerous. He kept pestering me as he watched the fire in the fireplace to put paper in it, even though the logs were burning brightly. I told him no and told him to just leave the fire alone...about 17 times. I went upstairs to finish my work day. I came downstairs a while later to find paper ashes on the tile in front of the fireplace. There's not a lot of space between tile and carpet, and there wasn't too far for ashes to go. Russell's response was, "I didn't know it was going to do that." Oh, my little pyromaniac...how little you know and how quickly you forget. Remember that $11,000 apartment fire?

I went up one side down the other of him about how dangerous it was, how he could have killed us all, and how we'd never be able to afford a house if he burned down this one. Then I discussed with Mike how I didn't think that teaching Russell to light a fire was at ALL a good idea and how I'd just shut up about it when he first did it, but in light of Russell's fascination with fire that I didn't want Russ lighting the fire any more.

Mike agreed. Mommy is always right.

Russell has been ranging from apathetic to defiant for several months. When I told him we couldn't help him any more and that he might have to go live some place else because his behavior was too wild and dangerous for both us and him, he cried. He threw himself on my lap and sobbed. I felt like the most evil witch in the world, but Mike agreed with me. Things couldn't continue to be this crazy.

I know it sounds mean, but nothing else was getting through. His reaction to every thing we did was to escalate his behavior...really verify those boundaries, and where do you escalate from kicking and hitting his dad and screwing around with fire? Places I don't want to go with an 8 year old or any other age for that matter.

If he was feeling that dangerous, then I was thinking maybe he needed to be some place safer than here. My primary job is to keep him and his sister safe and well. He was neither, and identifying that for him, seemed to have made all the difference. He's now in a counseling class at school; we're in the process of obtaining family therapy; and we've been all working hard at being attentive. We know that there's a lot going on in his life and that it's really possible that he's just now starting to cope with being molested.

I also blew off the prospect of an xmas job, but I'm making an effort to do other things. This weekend, I got to do a prayer labyrinth. And when I got all done, I realized that the single thing that's been depressing the shit out of me is that I feel somehow responsible for what happened to Russell this summer. It's a daily process of giving it over to God and grieving. The labyrinth process brought me a lot of peace and serenity.

Of course, Russell is a sensitive enough child to probably sense that feeling, so he probably thinks he did something wrong with me. Hopefully, the family counseling will allow us to broach that appropriately because I feel at a loss to do so myself.

I'm also going to start church choir on Thursday nights. It'll be a welcome break each week, though I'm going to have to record "Charmed."

My whacko kid has had a much better week. His grades were up to A's & B's again. He's smiling more and having fun. I've wanted to hug him about 17 times a day lately, much to his chagrin. ("Ew, Mo-om!" "Ow, you're squeezing too hard!" -- Can you say obnoxious 8? I knew you could!)

But thankfully, I can feel the love for him again. It's not the dark abyss of being grateful for getting through each day without strangling him. Of course, having to do his boyscout project right after school could make me start building a yardarm -- for myself.