annieology

Little Miss Sunshine gets to stay home with me on Friday.

One problem.

It’s Thursday and she has no concept of time.

Even AFTER I picked her up from camp she was asking if TODAY was her special day.

No, that’s tomorrow.

Today?  This day?

No, tomorrow.

Today is not tomorrow?

That is correct.

Commence the wailing and gnashing and the what not.

In a futile attempt to stop the wailing and the gnashing I had a surprise.

Wanna go see Mama?  At Chuck E. Cheese?

Which we did.  And her sisters, and Mama’s mama.  Who’d I’d seen before, but had never been formally introduced.  Let’s say, for the sake of anonymity, that Princess’s given name is Princess Mustard Foster.   We have submitted the name change to be Princess Pickle Awesome.  Turns out g’ma is named Mustard.  How did I go 5.5 years without this information seeping into my brain?  It’s not her given name, I know that to be the case, but I did not know that she went by Mustard.

In addition to learning that today is not tomorrow, I learned some other very important lessons tonight at the Cheese’s.

1. Stay away from Meth.  Far.  Far.  Away.
2. I have sexy feet.

Seriously, while using the facilities someone in the next stall commented on my sexy feet.  OK creepy and all, turns out it was one of the sister’s.

OK then, I’m just gonna go back out there and feel even more awkward, if that’s alright with you.

So, how did we end up at le Cheese with Mama?  Today at lunch, in a very noisy place, I started getting many phone calls.  All from Mama.  First, I don’t answer the phone when I’m with people, and second, the place was very loud.  I ignored it, and again, and again, and again.  Finally, what?  She was halfway through the three hour drive to see us (go to the beach) and wanted to stop by and see the kids.  That’s all well and fine, but set it up before you drive 90 minutes.  I told her the kids were at camp and had a field trip today, they’d not be available til 6ish.  OK fine, and we decided on Chuck E. Cheese, but she probly wouldn’t be done with the beach until dark.  Sigh.

I spent the next several hours contemplating the importance of a decent bedtime and seeing Mama.  Luckily, she decided that 6ish would be fine.

Now, when the babies were babies, we did not have visits.  As she was hiding the fact that she was already pregnant again from CPS.  So, until the twins were 10 months old, we had one visit where I “told on her” and CPS said she wasn’t pregnant, that some people just stay poochy after twins and I told them to have her pee on a stick  and I found out that would “violate her rights” and that’s the last we saw of her until we got the phone call that she had had a baby.

To say we had gotten off on the wrong foot, would be fair.  Me telling on her, because CPS was too dumb to figure out that pooches aren’t firm and move of their own accord.  Anyway, we had a visit at 10 months then not again til the twin were 13 months.  It happened to be Felpsy’s 2nd bday and I had gone to lunch with another foster parent when she got a call to “return to the office immediately”.  And I didn’t.  I went anyway and was stopped at the door.  I could see through the window that all “my” kids had been stripped naked and people were taking pictures.   OH HELL NO.

And the person stopping me was a CPS worker who very reluctantly had placed other kids in our home and did not like me.

Seems while we were gone, Mama was trying to get the oldest to say, on video (which is verboten to have video cameras brought in) that he had seen me hit the babies.  1 year old twins and a just this day 2 year old.  Well, after 45 minutes of watching it play out and Mama throwing a fit, they called in an investigator to take pictures of all the “bruises” – at which point I was thanking Lord baby Jesus above that I had made the pediatrician CHART every single Mongolian mark on the babies (which he thought was stupid).  And that all involved had fax machines.  I mean come on.  Mongolian marks are not bruises, and this part of the country should know what a freakin Mongolian mark looks like.

Mama and I did not get along well after that.  For years and years and years.

I have tried to not hold it against her.  I mean, what would I say or do to the woman who had MY kids?  But tonight, every shared whisper spiked the old paranoia meter, just a bit.  I’m happy.  I want them to have happy moments and shared secrets and what not, but still havin your babies stripped naked and photographed lingers for quite awhile.

Things seemed to go well tonight, but me and my sexy feet still took the long way home.

Do you remember back in April, when Tech Support and I ran away to London, without permission from CPS (our parole officer) leaving the orphans in the care of unlicensed professionals (sister and grandma) and while I was gone I missed a class and then Tech Support got stuck there because of a volcano and we were out of compliance and I was no longer allowed to administer two puffs from an inhaler to an orphan?

Then, because of the volcano we had to cancel our romantic getaway to Oregon Wine Country because one of us wasn’t going to be in the country?

So, we spent a couple hundred dollars changing our tickets, and a couple thousand buying tickets for the many small children and turned it into a family vacation?

Do you remember this?

And all along, I was hesitant to go to Oregon, had a bad juju feeling about the whole thing.

So, we rescheduled, and AFTER 5.5 years in foster care we were given an adoption date.

DURING THE MIDDLE OF OUR VACATION????

So WE had to pass?

WELL, GUESS WHAT HAPPENED TODAY?

Jury duty.

FEDERAL JURY DUTY.

Right smack dab in the middle of my Oregon vacation.

Oh yes, I checked the box marked many small children and returned it.

Got a letter today and I misquote.

“Too bad, so sad, get your ass in here, (we’ll still excuse you, we just need you to bring birth certificates {that don’t have MY name on them}) and NO, we will not deal with this matter via phone.  You can deal with it on the web, but when you click the button you will only see a message that says “your session has timed out”.

p.s. – WE MAY DECIDE THAT WE DON’T NEED YOU BUT IT WON’T BE UNTIL 6:00 THE NIGHT BEFORE SO PLEASE CALL THE HOTLINE

Throw a fuckin frisbee?  What?  You want me to show up so that I can excuse myself, but you reserve the right to change your mind 14 hours before I get there?  uh uh.

I’m sure it will all work out.

BUT

right now?  Kinda ticked off.

Not that we’ve been granted permission to take the kids out of state anyway.  That being said, if we have to cancel our vacation, again, because I have to appear to be excused from jury duty, and we’d have been here anyway for a court date that we passed on after begging for one for FIVE years, I’m going to take a picture and send it to Alanis, because that my friend….is irony.

Throwing political correctness to the wind, I will admit that there are differences between the children who came out of my body and those who grew in my heart.  Some things that love cannot overcome.

5 something o’clock in the morning is one of those things.

I don’t want to say they are genetically flawed or anything, but oh. my. hail.  I was not designed to wake up at 5 something o’clock in the morning.  Ever.  Let alone summer.

Does that mean I love my genetic kids more?

Yes, yes it does.

They have the decency to sleep until the sun comes up.  Or more importantly, not start fights at 6 a.m. over who had the best night sleep and blah blah blah. I think there is some sort of biblical law against being too happy in the morning.  Or at least there should be.

Thank God for caffeine and the iPod.

Now, off to make sure they don’t wake up the rest of the neighborhood.