Me, Myself, and What's-His-Name

I so don’t feel like being at work today…I’m so glad it’s Friday!!

I’m such a journal slacker lately too….so I’m going to be lazy and I’m going to copy and paste some snippets of emails that I’ve sent Missy the last couple of weeks or so…for some reason I’ve typed these long emails to her lately and then not felt like journaling...anyways…here are some snippets…. I added a few comments as well and in my nerdiness, additional comments are denoted in brackets []…. I have to tell you all that a few weeks ago Jimmie and I were trying to determine how old our puppy dogs are and I remembered that I’d wrote about getting them in my handwritten diary…so we were reading through there and this might be the first time I actually read a lot of my diary to Jimmie…and we were giggling at what a nerd I am…one day though, someone is going to read that diary and be fascinated because I do try to include all kinds of like current events and my thoughts about them…”for posterity sake” as I like to say….good grief I’m a hopeless nerd!! Lol….not that there’s anything wrong with that…

Anyway…here’s my slacking journal entry…..


From an email typed 10-22-07…..
I'm all philosophical and in touch with my feelings because of these classes we've been going to...

They are very emotionally draining...when Jimmie and I come home from the classes we usually discuss whatever was the topic of the day...and this week I just really needed to decompress and not talk about it...but of course we did talk more and I just can't explain it but it's draining. This past week at the end of the class we sort of got in to this discussion of like if a child comes into your home as a foster child and totally destroys your property, does the State have insurance to cover that or are we just s.o.l.? I think Jimmie posed the question, because our first week there, a foster father was sharing a story that one of his foster sons carved his name on the hood of the guy's mint classic car. That got us to worrying about like Jimmie's tractor etc. Well so other people were saying that the state should cover that kind of damage and it even says it in the handbook but the social worker leading the class said that she didn't know of any program like that and basically it's our responsibility to cover that kind of damage. So there were several people voicing their concern about this and one of our classmates spoke up and said basically we're all here because we care about kids and if your birth child did that damage you'd have to cover it so you shouldn't expect any different from these kids. And Jimmie really felt that she was sort of singling him out and he said later that he felt backed into a corner so he told her that he disagreed with what she said and shortly after that the class ended and we left. And so among other things that we discussed on the way home, this was a topic.... I mean, I know ultimately they are just preparing us for worst case scenerios but realistically we have to think about like what if we get a child that acts out like that and destroys things...how would we cope...I mean, ya can't spank em, ya can't make em do strenuous stuff...does repairing whatever they broke constitute as strenuous stuff? The good news is that you can be picky and specify what sort of child you can or cannot handle...the bad news is when the social worker calls at 3 am and asks if we can take Joe Bob James, she might not know that 2 weeks from now he might burn our house down. And so especially Saturday we were sort of in freaking out mode. It's extremely overwheling and confusing and worrisome...can we do this?? So I was watching a movie (Pursuit of Happyness - excellent, by the way) and Jimmie was in the kitchen watching football on Saturday night when the phone rang...it was the lady from our class calling to apologize to Jimmie and he apologized to her (even though I don't really think it even appeared that they were arguing in class?!) but anyway, she explained to him that she had two adopted siblings and they did have trouble out of one of them and he just told her that he'd seen some horrible things in his life too and he's dealing with all this the best he knows how...I was only listening to his side of the conversation but when he hung up I was just in tears...because I just thought it was sweet and I can't even explain to you how much this whole process has just been a growing experience for both of us but particularly, I never knew how it would affect Jimmie. It's just very cool and awesome and I'm typing a book but I just feel like typing all this out....Anyway...so that was Saturday...Yesterday we went to church...Sunday school was about DON'T WORRY ABOUT STUFF THAT HASN'T EVEN HAPPENED and then just in case we didn't get the message in Sunday School, the sermon was on the exact same scripture passage (I think it was Phil 4 maybe?) – [I heard it twice, you’d think I would remember it huh! Actually, it’s funny, because the next Sunday, we usually listen to Southeast on the radio while we are getting ready for church and that sermon was also on the exact same topic!!] Anyway...it was also about don't worry about stuff that hasn't even happened yet! So to sum it all up....I think if they will let us, we are still going to go for foster/adopt at this point. We figure if we foster first we'll be able to see what we can or can't handle. We may find that we're not the parenting type...who knows... speaking of singing, there's a community choir here and I joined it last night...Laura Polston made me go...and we're singing a Christmas cantata....do you know how long it has been since I've done that! We had so much fun last night at practice and I brought home my cd and book last night and sang til I was hoarse. They desperatly need some more men though...there were like 20 women and 3 men...I kept asking Jimmie if he learned his part while I was playing the cd last night... and he would sing at me in his best off-pitch opera voice – so I think that was a no….lol

I'm really looking forward to next Saturday and having absolutely nothing to do. This past Saturday was the last class. Our first home study is scheduled for October 30. I think they do 2. And then they have to write this huge report, which I think is supposed to be done by sometime in January. And then we'll know if we're approved or not. I know that whatever happens, we're not going to accept placements until after our cruise in February...look how perfectly that was "planned"...a nice get away before we possibly become foster parents. Just from the mere smoothness of everything...I'm feeling like this is the direction God is leading us...I guess we'll just keep walking through the doors that He opens...


October 24, 2007
ok I better get to bed...tomorrow's court day and there is a fill in Judge (my Judge is in Germany) so I know it's going to be a little more chaotic than usual....did I tell you about court last week? Some knuckle head brought his 10-year old son to court with him to his sentencing. He had drug charges and he came to court under the influence of cocaine. So Judge had to take him into custody and the whole time the guy was crying about his son being in the courtroom - umm we didn't ask ya to bring him dude! But anyways, so the boy had to give us phone numbers of people to call because dad didn't want to give out numbers cuz he wanted Judge to let him DRIVE THE BOY HOME UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF COCAINE....knuckle head...but then my foster lessons kicked in and I thought - this is the kind of knuckle heads that we will be "co-parenting" with...ugh...lol...but so we all just sort of focused on the boy...poor little guy....when I looked at him I just saw Isaac in a few years....he was just a little bubba boy...I felt so sorry...you could tell he was just trying to be all brave....but anyway, we took him up to the play room and he picked out a movie to watch so he and I sat and watched Elf [he knew most of the movie by heart so we just ate some goldfish crackers and giggled at the movie]....it was a weird court day...there was also a practicing vampire that testified against her ex-husband. She said that she caught him several times sneaking into her back yard in the middle of the night...later, one of the sheriff's deputies and I were talking and we were wondering why in the world some dude would sneak into his practicing vampire ex-wife's yard in the middle of the night....and anyway, how does one practice to be a vampire?? weirdness....there was also a yelling match between two women....and then we had a defendant named James, he said people call him Jim...for some reason someone asked what his brother's name was....his name is also James...but people call him Jimbo....umm...mom didn't want to remember very many names did she?? lol anyways...sorry...for some reason I just ramble at you lately....I really should focus some of this rambling into a journal entry but for some reason I just haven't felt like journaling....probably cuz I type too much to you!! lol....

October 31, 2007 Re: our first home visit…..
Anyways, the social worker, her name is Amy, got there about 5:00 and left around 7:00...so it was long! But she said that there didn't seem to be any issues, other than we may want to put some sort of screen up in front of the fireplace in the breakfast room...but she was also concerned whether or not it was hot to the touch and it's not so that was good..umm... but that was about it. She has to write a huge detailed report about us and so she just needed to clarify some of the things we had written in the many questionares we had to fill out during the classes. But after not very long at all she felt very comfortable with us and we with her so there was a lot of giggling and cutting up...Jimmie was in rare form, I guess that's not so rare though really huh....but one thing we really need to work on is to examine what we can and cannot handle as far as behavior issues and abuse levels, etc. because the ultimate goal in foster parenting is to move the children around as little as possible and so we need to know ahead of time if we can handle certain things or not rather than being open to trying anything to see if works...which makes sense but is really hard to know how you handle hypotheticals until you are confronted with it...Sunday when we were working on cleaning up the pink bedroom upstairs, it hit me that if we need that bedroom for a child, all that stuff has to go somewhere else...and so I was freaking out about losing storage space...so I have a new found appreciation for why you all throw away so much stuff (although I think it's still wasteful!). At least when they start out as babies, you have time to prepare for that kind of thing, but if we get like 3 or 4 at a time, we won't have that luxury...so there's just so much to think about....I'm really working on just letting go and going with the flow more...and I always thought that that was more my strength...but I'm finding out that I'm not near as laid back as I think I am...lol...that makes no sense...but whatever...by the way, I'm working on a journal entry but I'm being lazy and taking snipets of emails I've sent you...lol


So umm…there’s my lazy journal entry….I’ll try real hard to be better…our lives are actually back to normal for a little bit anyways…