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.

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.

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.

and, as has been our luck,

we’ll be on vacation.

Not that I believe that our potentially possible date will be made.  We just got our whatcha callits to see if we ever kicked kitties in any of the other states we ever lived in.  You’d think they’d have run those when we became foster parents.  You’d think.

So, we have to send those to our worker, who in turn has to send them to the states, who in turn have to return them.  I think it will take longer than 30 some days to complete.

Plus, our agency won’t put kids into adoptive placement until the last business day of the month.  They say it is because they don’t want us to lose funding.  And by us they mean them, because once a kid is put into adoptive placement the foster cashola goes away. That being said, all ducks need to be in a row before June 30.  Hahahahahahahaha.

So, here we are at the end of the process and it’s US that is holding things up.  Ironic.

Where do you keep your knives?

Out of reach.

I’m sorry, they need to be in a drawer.

That seems right.

“Where do you keep your fire extinguisher?”

We keep it where the FIRE DEPARTMENT told us.

“No, you can’t keep it there.”

Well, that’s where the FIRE DEPARTMENT wants us to keep the FIRE EXTINGUISHER.

Does the health department know you keep it there?

I cannot testify as to what knowledge the health department has.  But, they do, and I don’t think they care.  They care about HEALTH because they are the HEALTH department.  They leave FIRE department business to the FIRE department.

Then Skipper asks us if “there is a better place to put it”.

You seriously aren’t treating me like I’m a three year old?  Are you?  Skipper?  Seriously, you want me to think about my decision and brain storm a more acceptable way of doing things?

I put the FIRE things where the FIRE people tell me, if you’d like I can call the FIRE man over and you two can arm wrestle for control.  Otherwise.  Throw a Frisbee.

Where do you keep your meds?

In a locked cabinet, in a locked closet, in a locked room.

But your keys are hanging right there.

Yes, but I can barely reach them, there are 400 keys, and my kids are not only FIVE, but they do not have the manual dexterity, nor the attention span to unlock three doors to get the Nyquil that has a child cap on it anyway.  Plus, against minimum standards, we have told them ‘NO’  and so they don’t even bother.

But I will put the damn keys in my pocket if it makes you feel better.

“Hey Skipper?  I know you are dealing with important matters such as the temperature of my freezer, but you might be interested that my husband has been trying to get one of the orphans some face time with an entymologist, because he’s such a bug freak.”

No, not really.  We don’t care that you are cultivating their interests and disciplining them so that they have self control, we just want to make sure that your butter is all the way wrapped up.

Do you have a fire escape plan posted?

We did, but we made a copy for adoption and then I don’t know what happened to it.

Well, you need to have a fire escape plan posted.

Yes, because my five year olds will stop and consult it in case of fire.  We have taught them that in case of a fire, don’t first go outside through, preferably a door, but a window if necessary.  The first thing you must do, is consult the fire escape plan that is five feet off the ground in the hall, then go out the nearest exit and proceed to where the plan tells you.

I’m going to leave it at that, because I no longer have cigarette delivery to my house.  But if you are considering foster care…..don’t do it unless God himself is making you.

Because Medicaid clients have a high rate of no shows they want us to be early.  Fine.  I can be early.  I don’t have a problem with that.  What I do have a problem with is that even though I am early I have to wait for over an hour to be seen.  Sure, I can pick my doctor.  If my doctor of choice takes Medicaid.  My doctor of choice does not.  Because Medicaid clients have a habit of not showing up, I assume it’s because it doesn’t affect them if they don’t.  No one charges the “no show” fee that they are supposed to, I am assuming because they tried, many times and FAILED.

So, I do not get to choose my doctor.  I get to choose my doctor from the few who take Medicaid.  There are a handful.  Do you know how hard it is to get a freakin’ appointment with one of a handful of dentists when they only set aside a small fraction of their time for Medicaid patients, because in all likelihood, the patient isn’t going to show?  Hard.

We originally had our dental exams scheduled for February.  We had the plague.  6/7 of our family was wishing for death.  I had to cancel our dental exams, (I did so, days in advance) that were already a month late because I didn’t want someone aspirating on their vomit, just to get their teeth cleaned.  Their “next available” was May.

So, to sum up thus far.  I can’t pick my doctor, and I can’t get an appointment.

While I was at the dentist’s office, the dentist’s office called me to remind me that another orphan had an appointment tomorrow, and that I needed to call back before noon to confirm that I was indeed going to make the appointment or they would bump me.  I do not answer my cell phone in waiting rooms.

You’re welcome.

After listening to the voicemail I went to the front desk to confirm that I would be there tomorrow for my kids appointment.

“Usually, people just call.”

Yeah, but I’m still here waiting for my last appointment.

Six months ago.  THAT’S HOW FAR BEHIND YOU ARE.

Luckily I have Jesus.  I asked him what he’d do.  He thought it would be better to play Mahjong on the iPhone than to break a commandment.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m grateful for any and all help we get.  But I would’ve paid $200 to get out of there in 20 minutes.  The actual amount of time I was seen.

That delay threw off the rest of my day, I had to push back a doctor appointment for another orphan half an hour.  The little Princess didn’t get to practice her God forsaken “graduation” from Mother’s Day Out.  And I didn’t make it home in time to put away all the syringes before my monthly visitor came.

Guess I should ’splain that.

Princess has a heart condition.  When she goes to the dentist she needs to take massive amounts of antibiotic.  I had three of the kid liquid medicine dispenser syringes lined up for her this morning, she took them, we ran off to do our day.  I did not come back until after school, where I was greeted in my driveway by a CPS worker coming to visit the orphans.  Right there on the table, three syringes and a bottle of medicine not being guarded by a ninja.  The bottle was empty, and I hope they are over harshing on us for things that the rest of the world does.

Like not rinse out medicine dispensers and leaving empty bottles of meds on the table because I had to hurry out the door because I was going to be late for being early.

Speaking of Felpsy, he’s graduating from Kindergarten.  Hey sport, way to master the ABC’s and the 123’s which you already knew, and since buying a cap and gown for Kindergarten graduation would be STUPID we just need to go and buy you some “Sunday best” which is discrimanatory against heathens.  I’m not a heathen, “thank you Jesus” but we wear our swim suits to church.  A by-product of living in a coastal community and the possibility that someone may need baptizin’.

Now, over the years the school has compelled us to attend these stupid infant graduations by holding them DURING school hours.  We can’t keep our kids home from them or we’ll go to jail for intentionally allowing our kids to skip school where they (get funding) are learning (although the test is over lurnin is done).  So, if we don’t show up (skip WORK)  we look like horrible parents.  Even worse,  WE look like horrible foster parents.

So, we go.

Which brings us to the 5th grader, who is also graduating.  A bit more of an accomplishment, but I would rather mark it by tossing out all of the Sponge Bob undies than attending YET ANOTHER graduation.  But whatever.  I attended the orphans’ I will go to yours too.

The only kid still at home that is not graduating is Sk8rboi, our 17 year old.  Who is going to school, and doing as well as he ever does, and working 25 or more hours a week and doing it all without so much as a “get your arse outta bed” from me.  He’s accomplishing something.

I need to write the school board.

He’s going to feel left out and develop a complex and end up in a clock tower.

Dear school board,

It’s not fair that not everybody gets to graduate from everything.  4/5 of my children will be graduating this year and my 1/5 is being discriminated against.  Either cancel all graduations or include everyone.  It’s only fair.  Also, I would like to recommend that each year you change the colors of the caps and gowns so that I have a broad color spectrum and no one is subject to hand me downs.  I also think that $30 is a good price point to start at.  The end of the year is a good time to hit us with these extra fees, because the kids are also going to lots of field trips and such because, as you know, standardized tests are over by the end of April and teaching kids after that would be pointless.

I’m not trying to tell you how to run things, just a concerned parent.

Sincerely, Annie

Also too, dear readers, don’t tell me to homeschool.  I cannot homeschool the orphans and homeschooling my “real” kids would seem cruel and exclusive.  Besides, the only thing I’ve effectively taught them is the “f” word and even that, I got wrong.

Because why wouldn’t I?

Today Boog brought me a lizard hanging by his little lizard teeth off of Boog’s finger.  He needed a containment unit in which to put said lizard, I obliged by tossing him some Gladware from across the room.  I’m not so much big on the reptiles running loose in the house.  Which is why, when he needed to go to the bathroom, he left the lizard in the care of the Princess.  Who promptly removed the lid and had a lizard run up her shirt.  Princess, by nature, is prone to drama queenish behavior.  She fuh-reaked. Which is exactly what I would have done, so maybe it is nurture.

Anyway,

My glamorous life also includes statements like….

• Mom, I smell like armpips, can I take a shower?

and

• I’m glad people don’t pull on my penis.

whuh?

Boog explained to me that people on the tv were pulling on the cow’s multiple penises and (sigh of relief breathed) I explained to him about cow boobs.

Speaking of boobs and penises, it was the week of the infamous 5th grade segregated talk.

He was not impressed.

And speaking of cows, that fifth grade talk is a lot of bull spit.

Remember the girls talking about how “wonderful” becoming a woman was?

Not.

I have a fifth grade talk for you.

Your life is going to be a non-stop series of the following cycle.

• Grossness
• Nesting, in which your body is convinced, regardless of finances and cognitive thought, that you want to become pregnant.  You cook, you clean, you shake your tail feathers and try to get him to notice you, even though you threatened him with death not four days ago.
• Pregnancy is a possibility, you will want to do nothing but lie around naked and hope that someone notices.
• Your body realizes that you did not get pregnant, and now desires to stab any man who dare approach.
• Lather. Rinse. Repeat.  For the rest of your life.

Isn’t it beautiful?

Yeah, according to the filmstrip.

And you get to wear a bra.

My bra, btw, is trying to kill me.  Victoria’s secret is that she hates me because I’m beautiful.

Other people hate me because I’m smart.  I can use the Excel.  I will spare you the details, but needless to say I should get an honorary degree every time I have to explain to someone with multiple degrees how to use a program that has been around since, what, the 80s?

Mostly people hate me because I’m a bitch.

My Mother’s Day Celebrating began last week when Tech Support got me my present.  Cowboy boots. Or I guess cow “girl” boots, since I am in fact a girl.  Though the Census people had to ask.  Twice.  In case I forgot my first answer.

Also, my kids are white.  Who knew?  Not me.

Anyway….

I got cowgirl boots, and I rock them.  I picked them out in five seconds flat.  I was upset that I couldn’t get the right foot into the boot.  The left one slipped on without a problem, so I forced my wicked stepsister foot into that right boot.  All is good, but now I need my prince to remove my boot, and he usually tries to sneak a peek up my skirt.  How lucky am I?

The next day I got pudding cups from the twins, and cakes from the big boys.  We were on a bit of a sugar overload as we already had two cakes in the house from having friends over for dinner earlier in the week.  Yet, we managed.  Somehow.  We had to make sure we got rid of any evidence as we have a Shanda cake coming on Wednesday.

Anyways,

Friday, oMom showed up.  Well, I picked her up at the airport.  She took me shopping on Saturday.  The benefits of having a mother in law that only had boys.  Shopping.  I had to do it.  It would be impolite not to.  I ended up getting a couple of skirts and a jean jacket.  Tech Support did not realize the skirts were new, I have decided NOT to use this information to my advantage.  What can I say?

Mom was uber excited to get a biggish HDTV from the Chefs and we.  Too excited for someone who only gets three channels.

Turns out she was not excited about the TV.  Her puppy had kittens or something.

anyway

here’s your TV that we don’t really have because it’s at your house and you aren’t.

Anyway.

Then I took a nap.  I love naps.

Then we called Mama.  Felpsy told me that I was the best Mom ever, and wondered if it was ok if he told Mama that she was the best Mama ever.  I told him of course it was, he was super lucky.  I also thanked her for giving us beautiful children and assured her that she was honored in our home.

That is not to say that some of her actions of late haven’t frustrated me.  Like claiming a kid on her taxes.  That kinda messes ours up.  It is to say that just because the state can erase her name off a piece of paper does not negate her existence.  She is, and that is our reality.  You can’t pick your family, even when you do.

So happy belated Mother’s Day.  Hope you got a nap, or at least a steak.

Dagan.

It is barely 8:00 a.m. on Day 1 when she asks “So, after (2/4) of the small kids are in school, that’s about all?”

Yeah, even with the half assed job I do, you still got about 12-14 hours left in your day.  Welcome to my world.

It’s been a while, but I think the scorn means she’s not too happy.

Luckily, Tech Support has left the building.

He’s not a fan of the scowl.

So, I’m off to train the 19 yodd (year old darling daughter) how to be a mom to four small children and a teenager.  I think we’ll start by tossing the 17 yods room for contraband.

If nothing else, this will serve as a reminder that sex has consequences.