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.

We are suffering the after effects of the time change, and by suffering I mean suffering.  Every day has been marked with someone taking a nap at a clearly inappropriate time.  Currently the five year old is fast asleep, drooling in a pile.  We haven’t had dinner.  What we had was lots of cookies because we were hungry, but it wasn’t dinner time so we had a snack that got out of hand, and now he is full of cookies and napping.

I hate the time change.

For that and there is always a clock that gets left out, and you spend way too much time wondering if it is really that time, before deciding to go check another clock only to get distracted by something shiny or whiny and another day passes and it never gets changed.

That and

are you supposed to change your smoke detector batteries on fall back or spring forward?  I forget so I do it on both, yet the time between fall and spring has gotten significantly shorter so it seems a waste, but if I don’t do it both I will never do it.

Speaking of which, I think it’s time for a fire inspection.

Which means it’s time for a health inspection, which means I have to buy outlet covers, yes my kids are beyond the need for outlet covers, but golly, they cannot be taught not to touch them.  As we know kids cannot override those tricky outlet covers.   Once again gov’ment knows best.

Speaking of which, I heard today on the radio, which is a reliable source of news, that California is dealing with their illegal immigrant problem by busing their “detainees” to Texas to a town of 4200.  Every day they bring 94 detainees and deposit them in said town until their hearing on whether or not they can stay in the U.S. even though they entered illegally.  So, where does a town of 4200 house said detainees until their hearing, they can’t.  So, they have to release them with a citation and hearing date, any wagers on how many of them show up for their hearing?  So instead of busing them across the border where they entered, they put them on a bus, travel out of California, through Arizona, through New Mexico and dump them here.  Now they are a bazillion miles from their family in Mexico, in a town that has not the resources to house or feed them.  Welcome to Texas.

While listening to that I saw a guy walking down the street openly carrying a fire arm.  Which is super sexy to someone whose favorite Amendment is the 2nd.  I pondered on FB which was sexier.  Concealed or open carry.  But that’s like asking what’s sexier, a man in uniform, or out of one.  Completely redundant.

I had my first opportunity to assess our winter clothing needs.  We are covered in 17 of 49 categories.  Probably more I need to go through a few closets yet.  Unfortunately I do not need a new coat.  I mean I so rarely get to buy one.   Truth time.  We once discussed my desire to buy a coat in counseling.  Yes, can you tell Tech Support and I have been through rough times?  Fighting over whether or not I should buy a $79 coat.  So trivial.  We don’t fight about things like that anymore,  most of our fights are about who’s a dork and who isn’t.  Nobody wins that fight.

The twins decided today that they wanted to go on vacation and ride a donkey.  Better yet a donkey/dragon hybrid like in Shrek.  Yeah, that would be awesome.

I went to Chic-fil-A for lunch.  Ours has a very jacked up lunch time mess.  They have people in the parking lot who take your order and call it in on their cell phone.  That and their parking lot was designed by a monkey.  So, that aside, I was placing my order and reading blogs on my cell phone and the order taker said she had the same phone as I did.  Cool.  And as if to prove it to me, I guess I looked shocked that SHE would have a phone like mine.  She dug through her pockets to show it to me.  OKaaaay.

Tech Support went to school today to volunteer for the whole day.  I did not kill his dog.  Yes I’m the very model of self control.  He left 15 minutes ago for a meeting and the dog is already barking non-stop and will continue to do so until the man returns.  He may not be so lucky tonight.

I feel it is time to feed myself.  I, contrary to the prevailing thought of child educators, must take care of myself.  I know, I should be a martyr and kill not only myself but my marriage to make sure the littles and the bigs have only the best of everything.   Sorry, not buying it.

Big Boy is mooing.  I should really go check that out.

We are not going to court on Monday.  We are not adopting the children on Monday.  Our case has been moved to a different court.  And thank God Almighty I happened to get a phone call from CPS informing me that they were not allowing us to do so because our freakin’ attorney had no clue.

No clue to case had been kicked to a different court.  No clue that there is a different date already scheduled.  No clue what that date is.  No clue as to whose responsibility it is to sign off on the position the department holds on the children.

I so freakin hope she tries to charge us for all the paperwork that she has filed with the old court on a case that no longer resides there.  To top it off a tiny bit, the County Attorney that was dealing with our attorney on this matter didn’t inform her that she was not longer the attorney assigned to the case, since the case she was working on (the termination) was closed and the adoption is a new case and not her department.

Did I mention that I’ve already booked our Christmas vacation?  Under the childrens “to be known as” names.  Because up until an hour ago, Monday was a done deal.  Did I mention that we don’t have permission to take the kids out of state and that the last time we attempted to get permission to take the kids out of state, it took them seven months to approve our request?

So are we supposed to ever get these kids?  If not, please take them now, this is fucking torture.