Peeking Out from My Hiding Place

I’ve written this blog post four different times.  Seriously.

I hadn’t posted here for a long time, and I felt like I should.  I also had closed down my little online shop, and I felt like I should get it open again.  I’d stayed away from Facebook, too, and people were starting to ask where I was.  So I started writing up a blog post, but I scrapped it.  Again and again and again.

The first time, I thought it sounded too negative.  Too much of a downer.  A few years ago, I used to blog more often about more fun things – activities we were doing, funny stuff the kids did.  Then, starting a couple of years ago, things started getting really difficult.  When I looked back over my blog, I noticed that more and more I’d posted about troubles, and I didn’t want to make another post like that.  I wanted to say something upbeat, something positive that was going on.  So I tossed out the post I’d written and decided to mull it over a bit more.

There just wasn’t anything positive going on.

I tried again.  That time I thought I just sounded fake.  I’d tried writing about my current situation, but sugar-coating it a little with an “I’m keeping my sense of humor” spin.  Ugh.  I have never been a good liar.

My third attempt was just boring.  It sounded like a list of medical procedures and perhaps a commentary on the healthcare system.  It also sounded – I thought – like I was possibly complaining and hinting that something like Obamacare should swoop in and fix my problems.  I’m not and I don’t.  And I have no desire to get political on my blog.  So, I scrapped that one as well.

Now here I am at my fourth try, and I’m determined to get this posted.  I need to do it because I need to get my toes back into the water, so to speak.  I need to get back in the game, at least to some extent.  I’ve isolated myself, and I need to TALK. But not too much, not just yet.  Because if I talk too much right now, it’s going to sound like one of those first three attempts, and I will end up tossing this.

My situation just isn’t good right now, and there’s no sugar-coating it, so I won’t.  But I also won’t blather on and on.  Fear of being a “downer” has kept me quiet, but maybe being quiet has just made things worse, made me even more of a “downer”, and I think I need to start turning that around.

 The truth is I’m ill, and I’ve been unemployed since 2011, I can’t work (I’m really not hire-able with this condition), I’m uninsured, and I’ve sold off everything I can to pay doctors.  I even sold my car.  The truth is I have tapped every resource available to me, and there’s no more money to pay any more doctors.  The truth is it took almost two years for me to get an accurate diagnosis (which still isn’t “official” on paper because there is a test I can’t afford, but my doctors know what I have), and now I can’t afford the treatment anyway.  The truth is I will probably qualify for Medicaid under this new expansion that came with Obamacare, but the truth about THAT is that I am really struggling with having to accept something to which I’ve been philosophically opposed, and I’m struggling with accepting that I am not capable of self-sufficiency right now.  The truth is that without a car anymore, I am isolated in my house most of the time, and I spend my days trying to figure out how to keep the lights on.  Sometimes I have to choose between food and filling a prescription for pain medication, without which life is intolerable.  The truth is that, although I’ve finally cleared my house of homeless kids (it wasn’t easy and it took a lot to convince them all that I just can’t do this anymore for now), I miss the bustling home I’m accustomed to and the silence is killing me.  The truth is it bothers me beyond words that I can’t help my kids with anything right now, but rather I have to ask them to help me.  The truth is this sucks.

There.  It’s all out on the table.  This is where my life is, for now.  I would get into talking about my medical condition – it’s not like it’s a secret – but that would just turn this post into more than I wanted it to be.  I just wanted to get back into feeling in touch with the world out there.  That’s all.  So, I will talk about that later.

The truth is I will figure this out.  Posting here was my first step toward that.  So thank you for reading and for hanging in there with me.  I really do appreciate it.  I can’t tell you how much.

Down to One... For Now...

About a month ago I was all ready to write a post here about how I'd finally gotten my house emptied of "strays" again, and I was all jazzed about getting back to that "me time" thing.  Well, that situation didn't even last long enough for me to type up the post.  Before the dust even settled I had one back.  But at least it's just one.  Sigh...

I don't know what I'm going to do with this 16-year-old girl.  I really don't.  Not that she's a bad kid - she's not.  It's just that her needs are far, far more than I am equipped to handle right now.  I had found her a place to live; well, actually, she found a place to live, with a friend of her family, and I just helped set up arrangements with them.  I provided them with info and resources to help them with the issues (enrolling in school without any documentation or parent's signature, for example) that come along with taking in a kid whose parent won't sign any papers.  And her mom will not sign any papers.

That living arrangement didn't last long, though, before her mother "lured her back home" (those were the words of the family friend who had taken her in) and then promptly kicked her out again.  From what I've observed, I think the relationship between this girl and her mother is one of those "I don't really want to care for her but I don't want anyone else to have her, either, because that makes me look bad" situations.  In any case, I had her back at my doorstep in a matter of weeks.

This girl has lived so many places - bounced back and forth between parents, relatives, even Child Protective Services.  I don't want to go into great detail, though, since I try not to do that when talking about a specific kid here (you know, privacy and all).  I've probably said too much already.

I don't know where this is going, but I'm still working on trying to find her a stable, long-term home.  Everyone involved in her life - her mom and dad and different relatives - seems to have a different story or a different excuse every time I turn around.  It isn't clear to me at this point who even has legal custody of her, or who even has the right to sign certain papers or give certain permissions.  I never know who to believe, either, since everyone I talk to says something different about everyone else in the scenario.  The one thing that seems to be consistent, though, is that her mother is a bit... Unreasonable?  

I'm still reaching for that metaphorical oxygen mask for myself, but it seems to just brush the tips of my fingers and then fall away...

"Just When I Thought I Was Out... They Pull Me Back In!"

Okay, I confess:  I haven't actually seen The Godfather Part III, but I did watch The Sopranos (lol), so that famous line from Michael Corleone came immediately to mind when I got up the other morning to realize that every available room in my house was filled with teenagers, and there was even one sleeping on the sofa to boot.

I posted here recently about taking some time for myself this year, but distancing myself from the role of on-call, stand-in "mom" has proven tricky.  Since making the decision to take some "time off", I have been good - really, I have!  I've spent my time soul-searching, re-evaluating, focusing on myself (or at least trying to learn how to do so), healing, tending to my medical issues, reading (lots and lots), rediscovering my own individual self, and letting bedrooms in my house stand empty.  Like a cat lady determined to break a habit (at least temporarily), I have not taken in any more strays.  I re-arranged and organized my "spare room", turning it at last into the personal library I had intended it to be many years ago when we first moved into this house.  I spent some money on myself (gasp!), bought some clothes and colored my hair and got my eyebrows waxed.  I started riding a bicycle, getting some exercise, taking my newly-purchased bright coral book-bag / satchel on little adventures of my own where I would find quiet and peaceful little spots to sit and read or write.  I began to learn about gardening.  I went on outings to museums.  By myself.  Free time, just for me.  And I'd just started to get used to it.

But...

Recently, my "semi-strays" gradually began to transform into actual "strays".  If you don't already know, the kids I refer to as "my strays" are those whom I have taken into my home over the years, but of whom I have not had any official or formal custody.  A while back I jokingly coined the term "semi-strays" when referring to a slightly different group:  They have homes and they don't live with me (in the sense that they don't - at least typically - sleep here), but they spend every waking hour at my house and I definitely serve as a mother figure to them.  Most of them (all but one, actually) have no mother in their lives, primarily due to drug or alcohol problems on their moms' part.  They live with single fathers, all of whom drink heavily and don't - if you'll forgive me for saying this - seem to know their head from a hole in the ground when it comes to raising their kids.  The only one who does live with his mother has a terrible relationship with her in which every conversation of any nature seems to erupt into a shouting match, and his estranged father is dying of cancer.

So, those are my "semi-strays" in a nutshell, so to speak.  As I was saying, though, lately the "semi" part of that title has become less and less applicable.  Someone's kicked out of their house after an argument, and here they are.  A young man brings home his homeless girlfriend, and then one night his dad gets drunk and throws them both out; there they appear at my door.  And before I know it, like the old story of the frog in boiling water, I wake up one morning to realize that I'm out of clean bedding (gotta catch up on that laundry!), there is no empty and quiet space in the house for me to sit down with my coffee and a book, I have a mile-long to-do list (this girl needs feminine hygiene products, this boy needs help getting a copy of his birth certificate so he can look for a job...), and the stash of personal necessities that I used to keep stocked on hand (toothbrushes, new socks, etc.) has dwindled to an alarmingly low level (I had stopped adding to it because I didn't think it was necessary anymore).  I look around me and I feel a sense of "flashback" to the "old days"; there was once an almost-two-year period of time when the house was so full that I slept on the sofa every night myself.  I was perfectly content with my full house back then; it was inconvenient and difficult and stressful, but I felt a sense of purpose that made all those things okay.  Now, though...  I don't look around the house and feel that same thing.  Now I just see it creeping up on me and I feel... Tired?  Maybe a little resentful?  Not at the kids, but at the parents.  Why can't they take care of their own responsibilities?  Why do they keep putting me in this position?  Why does throwing their kids out of the house seem to be the only tool in their "parenting a teen" toolbox?  I shake my head and grumble under my breath, doing my best not to let the kids detect the shift in my attitude.

My heart is not in this right now.  I don't want it, not for the time being.  I want my time.  But it isn't their fault, these kids with nowhere to go.  They aren't bad kids - they really aren't.  I am so torn, so conflicted.

I have no idea what I'm going to do, honestly.  This blog is more of a diary, a journal, a place where I tell my stories and vent; it's not a manual, so I won't claim to have answers when I don't.

Ah, what a spot I'm in...  :-/

A Spontaneous Rant...

I'm posting this on the spur of the moment, as they say.  I just needed a place to vent and rant, so here I came...

My son just called a little while ago.  He called to tell me that he had just finished his last test as a high school student.  He's graduating now, and with a 4.0 GPA.  I should be happy.  I was happy.  For a few minutes.  And then something hit me out of the blue that I hadn't expected to feel, at least not on this level.

See, my son attends one of those out-of-the-ordinary high schools, one of those where the students work on computers and progress at their own pace.  That's why his graduation comes at such an odd time, just mid-day on a Wednesday, without much advance notice.  At his school, when you're done - you're done.  It's just like that.  Snap, you're finished.

He didn't always attend a school like this (not that there's anything wrong with the kind of school it is - there have been many benefits).  He used to attend a regular high school - one with football games and "spirit weeks", school dances and social scenes and all that jazz.  And the superintendent of the district for that high school was a woman who had been my best friend for 31 years.

My son is mentally ill.  I haven't talked about that much here; I may have alluded to it, but honestly I don't remember.  He only recently gave me permission to talk about it publicly, and I haven't done a blog post specifically about that issue yet.  Some of you know about some of the other things he's been through in recent years, but I haven't touched much on that being an added weight on his shoulders.

I just had to throw that bit of info in, because it's relevant to this story and why I'm feeling the way I do today.

I feel angry.  Bitter and resentful and betrayed.  It will pass, but I feel it right now and that's why I needed to vent.

Originally, my son attended the same high school that my daughter had attended, as had several of my "strays".  It was a place I trusted, and it was run by a friend I trusted.  She'd known Jeff (my son) since he was born - obviously, since we'd been friends for 31 years.  She knew he had issues.  She learned of them, basically, just as I learned of them.  It all developed over time, as discovering mental illness will, and she'd been there every step of the way.  She knew my son well, and by the time he reached high school, she knew of his worsening fragility.  She encouraged me to entrust him to her school; they'd take care of him there, she said.  They'd look out for him.  She'd look out for him.  He'd be safe there.

That was all well and good until she promoted a certain man to the position of principal.  I was on the school board at the time, had been for about five years, and this certain man was someone with whom I took issue.  His ethics were problematic for me.  We'd sparred in board meetings, and when he became principal of the high school, he saw an opportunity to get back at me via my son.  His harassment was subtle and slick, but my friend - the superintendent, his boss - she saw it.  She knew.  But here was the problem:  This guy was getting a job done that she wanted to see done - he was weeding out the problematic students (technically illegally, but getting it done) and he was making the school fit the image she'd wanted, an image of a superior school filled with excellent students.  This was accomplished by hassling parents and students who were in any way difficult or needed special attention, but this man was not going to let a pesky little thing like ethics get in his way.  If he (or my friend, the super) wanted you out, you were out (I was actually asked NOT to attend an expulsion hearing once, being told, "I want this kid gone and I don't want you here to talk anyone out of it.")  This left the school with just the students that were "wanted", and it gave the appearance of success.

I digress, sort of.  The thing is, once this shift in attitude took place, my son became a target.  And in December of 2010, my life and the life of my entire family changed forever when my son came home from school and put a gun to his own head.  I had a SWAT team at my house that night.  I don't want to tell the whole story right now, I just want to say that from that moment everything changed.  

And here is why I feel anger today:  My son never got to go to a high school prom, never took a date to a homecoming dance, didn't get to engage in any high school socializing, and won't even have a yearbook.  He lost most of a year to hospitalizations, and after that he had to be enrolled in an alternative style of school so that he could catch up.  Today, although I am so proud of him (he actually graduated early after everything), the finality of it hit me.  He will never get these years back.  He started out high school as a football player and a national-award-winning cheerleader.  He loved his school, and he especially loved cheer.  He lost all that.  No, it was stolen from him.  To this day he refuses to even go to a store in the neighborhood of his old school, because the feeling of loss is too painful.  He cannot look at the building.  He rarely logs on to his own Facebook account because he can't bear to see all his old friends.

I realize this blog post has probably rambled and been all over the place.  There's so much more to this story than I can get into now.  I just needed to rant for a moment, and I appreciate anyone who's "listening".

I'm proud of my son.  Have I said that more than once?  I am so proud of my son.  He is an Eagle Scout, a pianist, a volunteer firefighter, a certified life guard who works at a Boy Scout summer camp and will be promoted this summer to working at the camp's medical facility.  As I said, he's a 4.0 student.  He is amazing.  Amazing!

But I'm just hurt today at the unfairness of all he's been through.  Life isn't fair.  I know.  Stuff happens.  Everyone goes through bad things.  But he's had more than his share, and the fact that so much of it could have been prevented, should have been prevented...  I'm just going through this right now, that's all.  I will be okay.  He will be okay.  We will all be fine.  It's just this moment, this feeling I didn't expect.

Thanks for letting me get it off my chest.

The Year of the Oxygen Mask

I don't typically "do" New Year's resolutions, but this year I did.  Why bring up my New Year's Resolution in April, you may wonder?  Well, because my resolution has a lot to do with why I haven't posted anything here since last December.  No, not the resolution itself - I didn't resolve to abandon my blog - but rather the fact that my resolution was something I thought I should talk about here, and at the same time I didn't know quite how to approach it.

See, I resolved to spend this year taking care of me.  Me, myself and I.  But I don't want to give the impression that I am "quitting" this whatever-it-is-I-do, this sort of vague and unidentified job I have undertaken for the last couple of decades, where I fill in for the role of "mom" whenever a stand-in is required. No, it isn't that I am quitting that job, just that I'm taking... A reprieve?  A respite?  An opportunity that happens to present itself just now, this year, at a time when it just so happens that I need it.  I need it for me, of course, but I also need it so that I can go back to taking care of them, and be better at it.

My daughter, now 23 years old (the eldest of my biological kids), moved out on her own a few months ago.  My foster son - who won't speak to me right now (of course I still love him), but that's a whole 'nother story - is out of the house and working through his senior year of college.  My original "strays" have all gotten their own apartments or houses, started careers or families or both.  There is a new generation of "semi-strays" who do spend most of their days at my house and turn to me for mom-related services, but none of them live here full-time and none are in a position where I'm responsible for them.  And my son, my youngest, will both graduate from high school AND turn 18 within this month.

Thus, the opportunity for some "me time" presents itself, and it is an opportunity I must take.  Years of taking kids to doctors but never taking myself to one culminated in my finding myself (predictably) a physical mess.  The discovery of some of my own medical issues actually started a few years back, once I went to the doctor myself for the first time since the day my son was born over 15 years prior (yeah, I didn't even go to the follow-up appointment after his birth), and more problematic discoveries have been made since.  It's time to take care of all that.  Decades of making sure the kids had good breakfasts and lunches that were packed from home with care, but paying no attention to my own diet, left me unhealthy.  Years of making sure every kid who came into my home had everything he or she needed, but not receiving any payment (no child support for my own kids and no money from other kids' parents, or from the state for my foster son - money which I refused, but again, that's another story) left me financially devastated.  And all the drama - the drug problems and pregnancies, legal problems and emotional baggage, issues with schools, medical and mental illnesses - those things that came to me strapped to the proverbial backs of all these kids - they left me emotionally and psychologically drained.  For about ten years I lived by a rule that I would not wear anything that cost more than a dollar, and of course after enough time, that left me looking like a homeless escapee from some institution.  And my house...  I won't even get started about my house.  Suffice it to say that if something broke, it just didn't get fixed.  It started to feel like the old Little House on the Prairie days around here, with me hanging laundry on the line and... Oh, I said I wasn't gonna get started about the house.  Ha ha.  Anyway, it's time to take care of all this, time to take care of me, because I can't possibly take care of any more of them until I do.

One of the things that I am working through as a part of this "taking care of 'me' time" process is the issue of what that even means.  It's a very basic question, but more complex than I once would have thought.  Some pieces of the puzzle are obvious:  I have to address my medical problems, I have to get physically healthier, I have to repair things around the house, etc.  Those are easy matters to identify.  But beyond that it gets a bit hazy for me.

Plenty of times in my life someone-or-other has said to me, "You need to do something for yourself once in a while!"  Or they've said, "You should take some time for you!"  In the face of these well-intentioned suggestions I would usually smile and nod and sort-of-agree, but in my head there was always this thought:  I don't know what that means for me; I don't even know what that would look like.  Does it mean buying myself stuff?  But I don't really want stuff.  Doing more things that I enjoy?  But being a mom is what I enjoy.  I could think of little that I would actually want to do that didn't involve cooking someone's dinner or helping with homework, cheering one of the kids on at a game or watching them skate at the skate park, helping them plan for college or sitting up late at night discussing what they had learned that day.  I love that stuff, and I could never think of things I would want to do that were "just for me".  Even if I saw an amazing piece of art or read a great book, I would only find myself dying to share it with them.  What would I like to do or have if there were no "them" around?  I had no answer to that.  But I was always able to push the question off to be re-considered at some non-specific point in the future, because there was always some more pressing matter at hand.  Well, that non-specific future point has come.  It's now.  It's time to do some considering.

In any case, whatever direction this takes me, I'm thinking of 2013 as "The Year of the Oxygen Mask".  All of you who have traveled with children, you know the rule on airplanes:  If the cabin loses pressure, you're to put on your own oxygen mask first and then your child's.  And that's because you won't be able to help your child if you're passed out from a lack of oxygen yourself.  It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that this concept applies to parenting in all sorts of ways.  I can't live up to my best "mom potential" if I'm not healthy.  I can't help them get their lives in order if my own is in chaos.  I can't give them advice on living a happy life if I haven't found my own happiness.  And more importantly, I can offer them no reason why they should listen to anything I say unless they are first convinced that I'm someone worth listening to.  Who wants to turn for answers to someone who hasn't found their own?

So, I'm going to be taking this blog in a different direction for a while.  Two different directions, really:  A bit backward and a bit forward.  For my own theraputic purposes in writing about it, and also for the purpose of opening my life up to some external and objective examination (from you all), I will go back and share some stories of how I got to where and whom I am.  And I'll also take you all along on my journey as I move forward.  Maybe it'll be helpful to some other moms of grown kids out there.

Oh, and I'm sure I will throw in some current daily anecdotes from time to time with regard to the kids.  I'm certain some things will come up in that arena.  After all, I'm still "Mom".  None of this means I'll stop being "Mom" to all my kids, even if they're older now, nor does it mean I'll simply ignore any kids I encounter who need a little help.  It just means I will try not to move them into my house like a crazy cat lady who doesn't know her limits (no offense to the cat ladies, but you know what I mean).

I've been working on this for a while, since New Year's, obviously.  But from this point I'll start sharing more about what's happening with me.  I hope you will all continue to stick around and share your thoughts and input.  I'm looking forward to it.  :)

A Calm and Laid-Back Christmas :)

I didn't do anything special for Christmas this year, which actually is something special at our house.  There was no Christmas project like I've done in years past, no pressure, no stress-inducing obligations.  Since health issues have impacted my life and my daughter's life this year, and since my son has been in the habit of reminding me lately that this would be my last Christmas with him (my youngest) being a "kid" (he will be 18 in April), I decided this year's holiday should be low-key and just... nice.  Relaxed.  Just us and our close friends.  I absolutely refused to let anything bother me.  And it's a good thing I kept that attitude, because there were a couple of - ummm - bumps in the proverbial road.  But nothing we can't all just laugh about later.  See how much better it feels when you look at it all that way?

Christmas Eve went well.  I'd wanted to get all of my decorations unpacked and out on display, but that didn't happen and I didn't let it bum me out.  So far, so good!  I'd also wanted my house to be cleaner than it was, but I did what I could and then said, "Aw, heck - these are our friends, they've all been here before, and they don't care if there's a stain on the carpet or some dust bunnies under the sofa."  I wiped the lipstick off the milk jug (just kidding - I don't wear lipstick - hahaha) and just let things be.  Got myself into the kitchen and started cooking, because that's what really matters.  Goodies.  ;)

If you follow my Facebook page, you may have seen the recipe for Chocolate & Peanut Butter Pretzel Cookies that I shared recently.  Well, I made those; here they are, ready for the oven:

See all that salt on the tops of them?  Yeah, that's too much.  Just letting you all know.  If you try these, go lighter on the salt than I did.  This was my fault; instead of sprinkling it on like you're supposed to, I put the salt in the palm of my hand and pressed the cookie dough lightly into it.  I did that because I couldn't get the salt to stick at all when I sprinkled it, but it any case, it was just too much.

Here they are, all done and pretty:

You can really see the over-salting in this pic, I think.  But all we had to do was brush off the excess and then they were super yummy.  I highly recommend giving these a try!

Also a little idea that I saw (and shared) on my Facebook page, really just a simple but clever thing, was to put veggie dips into hollowed-out peppers instead of bowls.  I'm terrible about having the camera ready and taking pictures when I should, so I didn't get a shot of my little veggie platter while it was still pretty and no one had dug into it yet, but here it is mid-foodfest:

Since I am, as I said, pretty bad about having the camera ready, I don't have a lot of photos of me and the kids being our festive selves.  But here's a pic of my son being goofy.  It's a horrible picture of me, but I'm willing to humiliate myself and show it for the sake of showing you all how charming and fun my little Jeff is.  :)

Gawd, I have so many chins in that pic.  But hey, a tree on your head makes up for everything, I say.

Here's my good friend Kathy and her son Justin, just hanging out and having some laughs with us:

Yes, the tree hat-thing made its way around.  :)

And that was that.  A few friends, a few drinks (Kahlua comes in gingerbread flavor!) and some good food (I made cranberry-chili meatballs, jalapeno poppers, spinach dip, and my super-famous chicken-enchilada dip).  Christmas Eve, done.  And without a single stressful moment.  Ahhh...

So, I thought things were going pretty smoothly, and I anticipated an easy Christmas morning.  No last-minute stuff I forgot to do, no high-pressure or fancy-schmancy plans.  Coffee ready to go the night before, requiring only that I flip the switch to "on" when I woke up, and a blissfully easy morning was ahead of me.

I did head straight for that coffee pot when I casually rolled out of bed at 10 a.m., feeling cool as a proverbial cucumber.  Then, just as I passed by and saw it go down out of the corner of my still-sleepy eye, this happened:

I heard the glassy "thud" just as my head turned instinctively toward the suspicious movement I'd caught in a glance.  And down it went.  See that innocent-looking puppy dog there?  Well, truth be told, she really was innocent.  It was our beagle who did the deed.  So, do you know what I did?  Nothing.  I just smiled and kept walking toward that coffee maker.  I turned it on and then headed toward my office, just to check the news online while I calmly waited for the percolating to finish and for the aroma of pumpkin-spice coffee to waft through the house.

That's when I encountered this:

I've cropped the photo to spare you the gore, but those are feathers (and the occasional beak piece or bird-toe) all over the floor.  It seems our sweet little kitty cat, Tiny, had gone all Kill Bill during the night and had a fight-to-the-death with not one but two birds in my office.  I had left the back door open the night before (this is Arizona - it's not that cold), and apparently she took this as an invitation to show off her ninja skills.  Being less than entirely graceful in her massacre, she knocked absolutely everything off of my desk and every other available surface in the room.  Then she proceeded, as far as I could tell, to spread her own kitty-cat version of holiday cheer (i.e. bird bits) from wall to wall and ceiling to floor.  Meowy Christmas to me!

And once again, I did nothing.  I looked over the crime scene, smiled to myself, left the room and determined to clean it up later (those birds weren't getting any deader).  The evil forces of the universe were conspiring to stress me out, but I was having none of it!  They would not win!

A couple of the neighborhood boys who frequently hang out at our house helped me straighten the tree back up, by the way.  And only one ornament was broken.  One!  And it was one I'd never really liked, anyway.  Take that, forces of the universe!

I got the kids up, my parents came over, and the gift-opening frenzy began.  I didn't get any pictures of the frenzy itself (I told you I was bad about that), but here's the aftermath:

I think that shot sufficiently shows that we had a generally good time.  And I don't know why my daughter is staring at the door there in the corner, but she reminds me of that guy at the end of The Blair Witch Project.  Nevermind.  Lol.

Next we were off to the movies.  We'd never done that before - gone to the movies on Christmas.  I know some people do it, but we always had some big, stressful plans to keep up with.  Not this year.  We all went together to see Les Miserables (awesome) and chow down on popcorn in-between sobs.  (Yeah, it's a tear-jerker, but if you know Les Miz, you know that already.)

Anne Hathaway is amazing, by the way.

Then we headed back to the house to quickly warm up our respective dishes (my daughter made her potato casserole, and I made my almost-as-famous-as-the-chicken-enchilada-dip pineapple-cranberry upside-down cake), and we were off to my parents' house for dinner.

We had prime rib, which was a first for our family's Christmas dinners.  And asparagus with Hollandaise sauce.  And some kind of high-falutin' mushrooms that my dad said took him nine hours to cook (I don't know what they were called, but they were worth the time).  And my parents were nice to me, which is unusual (that's a whole 'nother blog post, which I'll probably never do).  Everyone was in a good mood, nothing went wrong, and if anything did, I ignored it.  The evil, stress-inducing forces of the universe were foiled again.

After that I have no idea what everyone else did, because I crashed on the sofa.  Hard.

And that, my friends, was that.  Christmas as it should be, I believe.

And to all a good night.  ;)

Disturbed

There are a lot of reasons why I don't post here to my blog as often as I'd like.  I get tied up with working and taking care of the kids and the pets...  There's all that, but there are really two primary issues that tend to keep me "quiet" much of the time - issues that, when I first started blogging, I didn't realize were going to be such problems.  The first one is the matter of discretion with regard to the kids in my life, deciding what I should or should not say or talk about.  The second issue is really just not wanting to sound like a "Debbie Downer" too much of the time.  Sometimes, and often for long stretches of time, things in my world can be so difficult that if I blogged about what was going on every day it would come across as depressing.  And sometimes it is depressing.  While I try to keep a positive outlook and "keep my chin up" as much as possible, the truth is that sometimes the crises are so intense and come at me so fast...  And sometimes the happy stories I could post here are so few and far between...  Well, sometimes it's just that way, and I don't know how open I should be here.

Anyway, this post is going to reach just a little bit into both of those areas:  Talking about a young girl that I've never mentioned here (I was protecting her privacy while she lived with us, and I will still do that now) and talking about some rather ugly issues.  I suppose the reason I feel like "talking" about her is to point out something I've come to realize, and that might surprise many people.  Or maybe it won't - perhaps it is I who was more taken aback by this fact than others would be.  I'm talking about the fact that there are some young people who truly don't want their lives to be better, who are so drawn to the harshness and suffering of life on the street that they would actually rather be homeless than be comfortable and cared for.

I'm not talking about kids who, in the immaturity of their youth, simply see the "street life" as glamorous, only looking at the perceived "benefits" (freedom to do as they please, living with no rules or constrictions, taking drugs and partying) and not yet having experienced the negative consequences that go along with such a lifestyle.  I'm talking about a young girl - and she is surely not the first nor the last - who has experienced all the pain and difficulty of living on the streets, and yet she gravitates toward such a life in spite of any attempts to help her.

This girl - I will call her "Willow" here instead of using her real name - was sixteen years old when she lived in our home for a few months late last year and earlier this year.  I had known her for a while before that, as she traveled in the same social circles as some of the other kids who spend a lot of time here.  I remember it was Thanksgiving night when the kids and I came home from a family get-together and I found Willow sitting alone on our back patio (kids often come and go from my home via the back yard gate) with puffy red eyes, a few bruises, and wearing a hospital bracelet.  There had been a fight at her family's Thanksgiving dinner and she'd ended up in the emergency room.  Then she'd run away and parked herself on our back patio.  We weren't home, so she waited.

I fed her.  I made sure her mother knew where she was (although her mother wasn't concerned enough to even ask for an address, and my over-the-phone introduction as "Jeff's mom" was sufficient for her to trust me with her daughter).  I made up the spare room bed with clean sheets.  I took her to Walgreen's and got her a contact lens kit since she didn't have hers.  I got a new toothbrush out of the stash I keep.

For the next several months she stayed at our house, and I did everything I could to help her and to get through to her.  But she would lie.  And lie, and lie, and lie.  Even when it was totally unnecessary.  Even when I totally knew she was lying, and I'd give her every opportunity to come clean and she knew I wouldn't judge her.  The lying I could deal with, though.  I'd seen kids like that before.  But then came the times when I caught her using my son's computer to post ads on Craigslist and exchange messages with men on adult sites.  Offering herself in trade for things she didn't need, because I would provide them.  And she would start fights with the other kids around the house, fights that were so unnecessary but she just insisted on having an environment that was chaotic.  As if she couldn't stand it any other way.  Then she'd cry and cry and cry that no one liked her.  And I would try to talk to her, and she'd lie some more.  Anything I offered - advice, suggestions - anything that would make her life easier and actually solve the problems she was constantly lamenting, she resisted.  She didn't want them solved.  I don't mean that in a snide or sarcastic way; it was clear that she truly didn't want anything to be better.  I know there are teenage girls who thrive on drama, but I'd never seen anything this severe.

Some of the neighborhood boys came to me one afternoon and told me that Willow had just been arrested at a nearby convenience store for panhandling.  Begging people to buy her food.  But she had food, readily available at our house, as much as she wanted.  I was baffled, and I said to the boys, "I don't understand.  Why would she beg for food?  There's food here!"  They just shrugged.  

The police released her to her mother that night, or perhaps it was the next morning, and she was right back at our house within a day.  I tried to talk to her, tried to make sense of her actions or gain some insight, but she just denied she'd been panhandling at all.  The police, the store clerks, everyone just falsely accused her, she said.  Of course.  I wouldn't have believed her story anyway (for all her practice, she was not a good liar), but the boys had witnessed her approaching people and begging, and they told me so.

I know it happens, but personally I'd never seen a kid so desperate for attention and love as this girl, and yet so unwilling to accept it when it was offered.  It was as if she only wanted the attention if it was gained by negative behavior.  All I could do was shake my head.

Then she stole $250 in cash from my son's drawer, and I had to draw the line.  I had to make her leave.  Interestingly, she didn't even ask me why when I told her to go.  I simply said, "Willow, you've got to go."  And she gathered her things in her arms and left.

She went to her boyfriend's house, which was in our neighborhood.  I made sure her mother knew, not that it mattered to Mother-Of-The-Year.  It was just one of those times in life where I had to accept that I can't help everyone, I certainly can't put my own family at risk for everyone, and even though I knew her mom wouldn't really live up to her responsibility, this girl was, in fact, her responsibility and not mine.

And that was that.  I haven't heard from her since.

But then a couple of days ago my attention was brought to some videos that were... let's say "circulating".  Videos of Willow, looking ragged and with dead eyes, with men clearly much older than her and smart enough not to let their faces be recorded.  And then yesterday one of the boys told me that he'd seen her walking the streets downtown, in a very bad neighborhood nowhere near ours, "looking like she was working it".  

I wish I was shocked.  Instead I'm just disturbed, troubled, saddened.  I'm no psychologist and I really have no insight as to why the Willows of the world are the way they are.  I just know they are.  And I wish it weren't so.