Listening Circle, My Foot

I received an email yesterday (10/9) with an invitation to "join the rapid response team to give valuable feedback" about how better to serve Foster Parents. The "listening circles" as they are being called are scheduled for 10/14 from 9-11 or 11-2.

I shot back an email to the person who sent me the invite- "it would be great if there were times when working foster parents could attend."

Seriously, on top of all the time off I have had to take off for court and ACRs not to mention umm mothering 4 kids who could easily eat up a week of vacation because the share all their germs with each other....now I'm supposed to take a 1/2 day to participate in "a listening circle" with 5 days notice? Seriously who has all this free time? And I need like 2 weeks notice for meetings like this- I need to dig my sit-upon I wove in girls scouts out of storage.

 I desperately want to give feed back but this is just silly. Makes me think this is one of those - we offered you a chance but made it impossible for you to attend scenarios. 

You want to help foster parents- make these meetings meaningful. Give us an actual chance at providing you with some great ideas. I have a long held believe that foster parents and their resourcefulness could solve a lot of the problems in "the system" if given a chance. But I can't do that if you schedule meetings 1) at the same time my children have to be dropped at school and I have to be at work or 2) in the middle of the day at an office nowhere near mine. Have one in the evening and when I say evening I mean like 7 PM not 4:30pm because that doesn't solve my problem. Oh and have child care there. You have all of these extra drivers and visit supervisors, pretend I'm a bio parent and give me some extra help. (A little mean spirited but the gazillion chances and the exceptionally high standard I'm held too are making me kind of salty.)

I'm going to email the organizer anyway. You know in my free time....

Right before the deadline...

You know how when a court date is coming up and a bio parent does aome stuff to make it look like they are working their plan but they really only did the stuff so that they can point and say "I'm making progress! I did x! (Because there is no y or Z. Let's be real.)

Well the Department did that to me this week. We had our Administrative Case Review or ACR which is where a 3rd person looks at the case plan and rates the progress on each action item as satisfactory or unsatisfactory. They happen every 6 months and at our last one the reviewer was like why don't you have an adoption worker yet should have been assigned 6 months ago ( I'll do the math for you- that's 12 months from today).

I've been blabbering on about no adoption case worker for a while. Everyone was like- I know? So slow. Shrugged their shoulders and promised to follow up. I believe they did follow up because following up means no more blabbering on from me....

So we had the ACR and just as I'm getting ready to tell another person about no adoption case work, I'm informed one was assigned in the last 48 hours. 

Just in the nick of time where the Department was going to have to rate themselves unsatisfactory....

We scheduled the next ACR for the end of April. The hope is it gets cancelled because the adoption should be finalized.

Who wants to take bets? 

Stella

My Mom took Stella and Smiley shopping for pants yesterday. They came home with some cute things and as my Mom laid the items out in the couch to show me, I was struck with an unbelievable sadness and yearning.

The jeans looked so big.

A reminder that the kids grow a little more every day and I feel like I missed so much of Stella's childhood. I feel like she missed her own childhood and I started to cry. She is going to be 11 soon and I just feel like we got short changed. 

Forgive Me, My Face Hurts

I have not written as frequently as 1) there isn't as much foster care/adoption related stuff to report 2) the kids are doing pretty good (shsssh don't tell the Universe that because then it will come back and bite me) 3) my face hurts.

My autoimmune issue has flared up with a vengance in recent weeks and my latest symptoms go beyond the nerve head pain and have spread to my face. My whole left side of my face feels like I've got really bad sunburn. My hair brushed my cheek today and I almost cried. The neurologist prescribed some medication but it's the kind that makes you incredibly drowsy. It's also a mood stabilizer so maybe not all bad....

I can barely keep my eyes open at times and have gone to bed at 9:30pm this week which is VERY unusual for me. I'm hoping my body will get used to this medicine but my online research tells me most people experience this level of tiredness for 6 weeks or more. 

The kids have been really great. Tonight there was a social event at school but a parent had to stay with them. I came home and the kids were like- it's ok Mom I didn't really want to go. I got pretty lucky in the awesome kid department!