Okay, do you all remember the journal entry I did called "Early Intervention and Overdue Upgrades"? Well, we're gonna go back and revisit that just a little.

My son, Liam, has officially been diagnosed as autistic. Relax, he's not a total Rainman - in fact, with enough hours of various therapies and special education, he'll be indistinguishable from a normal child by age 13. Mind you, that's a LOT of hours of therapies and special ed, enough to keep Eva and I jumping all day long for years to come, it'll involve us making some lifestyle changes (and what the hell is a normal 13 year old? I've never met one of those before.), but what can you do? He's our son, we love him, and we'll do what we have to so he'll have a happy, healthy life. That's how parenting works, the kid comes first.

As for the Overdue Upgrades part of this thing... well, put it this way: I'm writing this entry at my office workstation for a reason. So far that new PC has had to have its power supply, RAM, and motherboard replaced. It's the most technologically sophisticated paperweight you can buy for under 2 grand. It has to be a powerful PC... it's kept me off the internet for weeks at a time, even with Windows ME my old computer couldn't do that. Seriously, it should be a fairly powerful machine once we get all the parts to work. Maybe. In theory. Um... does anyone have a Commodore 64 they're not using or something?

Okay, are you ready for the really big shock in all of this?

Are you sure?

I'm dealing with it. I've actually got it in perspective. I'm still not a mature adult, but for once I'm actually handling things as if I were. I expect I'll have to do so a lot more often as time goes on, but don't worry - there will always be a warped and demented lunatic underneath. Promise.