Sissy's Golden Ticket?

I haven't been blogging this week because it's been ridiculous. No, that doesn't even begin to describe the insanity. Think "Perfect Storm" then multiply that times three and that might begin to explain it.

The Dad has bruised ribs from coughing so hard with his flu. Wonder Girl is in a wheel chair with elevated legs because she can't be weight-bearing until the stitches come out next week. Sissy got a double ear infection and then had an allergic reaction to the Z-pack. And now I have what appears to be strep without the fever (thank you thyroid disease, for me a fever that includes the shakes and hallucinations begins at a temperature of 99.5. My core body temp typically hovers around the 96 mark). I've been sleeping on Wonder Girl's bedroom floor all week because she can't get to the bathroom by herself and sometimes she has night pain or get's her leg hung up while she sleeps and because The Dad needs to sleep upright in the bed and be as still as possible to minimize his chest pain.

Sissy recovered quickly from her reaction, I caught it early in the game with only one dose of the z-pack in her system. Her ear pain diminished quickly and her energy returned immediately. So did her lying, her manipulation, her sneakiness, her unrelenting defiance, her anger, all of it. And it's been exponential with each passing day as I've gotten sicker and The Dad has gotten more and more sore and we had a brief scare Wednesday that Wonder Girl was working toward infection despite my meticulous efforts to dress her wound properly and keep her immobile and elevated.

I've missed an entire week of work, my glands and face are so swollen I look like I'm having an allergic reaction to shell fish, The Dad can't move without wincing, Wonder Girl has to be carried to the toilet, it's been the perfect storm times three. Honest to God. And Sissy has taken advantage of it. OMG, has she been ruthless. She has worn us down to the nub. I'm not kidding, the child has literally walked into a tree and into a wall and injured herself, on purpose. You think I'm kidding? I'm not. She is that manipulative and that driven to get the attention. She's even faked us out with a pretend hearing problem so that she is shouting "WHAT!?! I can't hear you!" every time we ask her to do something. She'll even lean in real close like a deaf person would to hear better. But when we're on the other side of the house talking in hushed tones, she knows exactly what we're saying.

And tonight was the pinnacle of her shenanigans. I got a small burst of energy, enough to muscle myself through a trip to W.algreens to pickup the refill of Wonder Girl's antibiotic and the instant I walked out the door, she started her triangulation with The Dad. It's stupid really, I told her this morning that we would be doing a one cup rule after I did two loads of dishes because she uses 10 cups a day for two sips of water. I walk out the door, she gets a drink of water in a new cup, The Dad calls her on it and blammo. It begins.

The next three hours of the evening was one lie and manipulation after the other (including walking into the wall) until she got so angry that she purposefully stepped on Wonder Girl's ankle, in the middle of my redressing the wound. [1]

yes. you read that correctly.

In Sissy's anger, she put the weight of her heel on Wonder Girl's bare ankle, not a centimeter from one of the stitch sites, as she stormed off toward the bathroom to get her things after I told her 4 times to do it and she tried to fake me out with her "WHAT?!?!? I can't hear you? What did you say?!!?" game.

Wonder girl is OK. She's terrified, it took until 11:15 for her to fall asleep, but she's OK. I'm sitting on her bedroom floor typing this from the laptop, not a foot from her sleeping head.

We called the IFI team of course, to deescalate. Ms M, God love her, came over in a jiffy and spent an hour trying to wear down Sissy's resolve to get the truth. Sissy continued to lie and skirt the issues, Ms M kept catching her in the lies and calling her on it, on and on it went. Thank god Ms M not only heard Sissy's anger (from the street before she even got to the front door including Sissy punching the crap out of her bed) but was able to see through the manipulations.

Final call: Ms M will be discussing with "The Big People" on the IFI team. Ms M believes Sissy stepped on Wonder Girl's injured ankle on purpose, that it was not, as Sissy claims, an accident, that it WAS in anger, that our claims that Sissy injured Wonder Girl in the past are valid and that there is cause for concern for Wonder Girl's welfare. Ms M is going to open the discussion for replacing Sissy at RTC on the grounds that she is a threat in the home, that her anger will escalate and that we as parents have done everything we could. Ms M was quite clear. "Mom and Dad, if Sissy had stepped hard enough to pop open Wonder Girl's stitches, you'd be in the ER and the doctors would be pressing charges against YOU for failure to protect Wonder Girl when you knew Sissy was a threat. You have to consider that when you make a decision about the next move for Sissy."

Heard, Ms M. Loud and clear.

Sissy may have just won a golden ticket back to RTC.

Today marked two weeks since she's been home. I shudder to think what she'll be like in two weeks from now.

[1] how did that happen, you ask? My back is killing me from carting Wonder Girl around the house. She was already sitting on the floor with her foot propped up by a pillow, watching TV. I figured, she's distracted, she's immobile, now's as good a time as any to redress her wound not dreaming for a second that Sissy would choose to step on her sister's injured foot instead of WALKING AROUND EITHER ONE OF US. I can play the coulda-shoulda-woulda game all day with myself but it only serves to make me feel bad while ignoring the fact that SISSY made the bad choice, not me. Don't tell me RADishes have bad brain wiring. Any fool knows that you walk AROUND an injured person, no matter where they are. It's not bad brain wiring, it's incomprehensible, intolerable, insufferable, incorrigible and most of all, NOT MY FAULT.