annieology

The other night I was watching a program on Niagara Falls.  Why?  Because it was in HD and everything is interesting in HD.

I learned that the first person to survive going over the falls in a barrel was none other than an Annie.

Not only did she do something no man had ever done, she looked sharp doing it.  Now I doubt that this is the dress she wore, but come on….stunning.

We share more than a name.  After her daring stunt she was reported to have said that she would rather stand in front of a cannon and let it blow her to pieces than go over the falls again.  Which is how I feel about foster care.

I used to liken foster care to Chinese Water Torture, and if you saw the Myth Busters episode on water torture you know how quickly in can stress out people, even in a controlled environment.  Now, I’m adding Chinese Water Torture, while simultaneously being eaten by 42 fire ants.  It’s stressful.  It’s annoying.  It hurts.  But it doesn’t kill you.

As if four years and seven months hasn’t been long enough, we were given a window of four to eight additional months.  CPS can complete an adoption in “about four months” but “with Christmas coming…” because as you all know, Christmas is four months long.  Then it’s spring break, and Easter, and then Arbor Day, and “Talk Like a Pirate Day” and before you know it, Christmas is coming again.

Yes, I am with agency that is supposed to help.  Haven’t seen them since May.  They are still raking in the per diem and siphoning off a chunk before forwarding it to me, but I haven’t seen them.  I get annoyed at them asking me how the case is going.

CPS is useless.  Mama signed her rights over to us.  The Department retained their rights they were granted in 2006.  All CPS has to do is sign a waiver of their rights to the children and we’re done.  But they want it “done right”.  Yes, let’s ignore the law for 4.5 years and then in the final hour grow a freakin sense of ethics.

We should totally hire an attorney to help us with this.  Yes, we have and the only thing she has done is cash our checks and add another level of stress to our lives.  We hired this particular attorney because she was willing to travel to the jurisdiction where our case is heard.  Several other attorney’s declined to do so.  So, until we find another attorney willing to take our case we are either stuck with no or poor representation.

I will save you the platitudes about how foster care is a beautiful thing.  How it gave me my family.  How it changed me as a person.  Right now it’s driving me insane.

One.

Drip.

At.

A.

Time.

While simultaneously eating away at my very being.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 9:10 am and is filed under Fostering, Kindle, Legal Crap. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.