My juried show entry “has not been accepted for this year’s exhibition”, according to the form letter I received today. So unless someone out there wants to make an offer, I guess Pop has a new decoration for his office. Oh well. Once my ego recovers I’ll have to just go back to doing what I’m good at. What was that again?
I don’t often indulge in political commentary on this blog, but I’ve got a couple of political ponderings churning around in my brain of late, and one or two of them may spill out here at some point. Some things I’ve been chewing on for a while now are these:
What is with all the name calling? When did ”At least I’m not him, so there!” become the best both major political parties could come up with as a reason to support their candidate? If your political ideas are so all-fired wonderful then why do you feel compelled to misrepresent and exaggerate the other guy’s point of view in order to get people to agree with you? Is the American public really so mentally somnolent that we believe a bumper-sticker slogan to be an actual plan of action, and mistake showmanship for depth of character? Even if we accept the notion (which I don’t, though recent evidence is certainly not in my favor) that you have to be mean-spirited and dishonest to be a politician, does that mean the rest of us have to drag each other through the mud too?
Why can’t we disagree without being so disagreeable? Does the other guy have to be “evil”? Can’t he just be “wrong”? Or, hard as it may be to imagine, merely have a different perspective? Or, stretching credulity a little further, an equally valid opinion? Can we not respect anyone who does not agree with us on everything? Whatever happened to the ability to agree to disagree? Or better yet, to set aside differences and look for the common ground? Live and let live? Or (gasp!) even try to UNDERSTAND the other guy’s point of view before slapping a one-size-fits-all label on it, lighting it on fire, and tossing him out on his tailbone in the street?
What? You don’t agree with me? Well, then you are obviously a racist / baby-murdering / Bible-thumping / tree-hugging / sexist / kumbayah / homophobic / pot-headed / war-mongering / socialist / gun-toting / elitist / red-necked / hypocritical moron and I’m not going to give you a chance to explain yourself because you’re obviously evil. Otherwise, you’d agree with me.
I know it’s EASIER to pidgeon hole and label each other than it is to, I dunno, LISTEN to each other maybe? Name-calling certainly keeps us from having to THINK much. And it makes dehumanizing one another an absolute breeze! But as convenient as it may be, I’m seriously getting sick and tired of it. Aren’t you?
Don’t you grow a bit weary of this childish game of “good guys” versus “bad guys”, in which we all gleefully throw rocks at each other, without regard to the fact that we’re all standing in the same boat, and that rocks are not particularly conducive to flotation? Aren’t you a bit fed up with all the “neener neener“, and the choosing up sides, and the ”Nuh-UH! We’re the good guys! You guys are the bad guys! No sir! Yes way! Well, you’re not invited to my birthday party!”
When are the grown-ups going to step up to the plate and send the little kiddies home for their naps?
Finally got a call back today from that other state. Social worker says she put a call in to our RFC on Monday (which we have heard nothing about). A different family was chosen for this child. Are you surprised? I’m not. Disappointed, but not particularly surprised.
And rising, evidently. One of the anticipated arrivals in my previous count has also turned out to be twins, and a new one has joined the ranks, although technically that one is just outside the two block radius.
Strangely, I’m ok with sixteen. Fourteen was the breaking point. Anything beyond that is not salt in the wound, just happy news for a friend and another good reason to laugh at myself a little.
Also, if by some miracle I should actually become pregnant myself (hey, it’s unlikely but it has happened twice after all), I figure my chance at having twins is pretty good. More than half of the sixteen are twins. It’s like an epidemic or something—in a GOOD way. Doesn’t that up my odds?
Twisted A)
My son had a panic attack, hyperventilating, cringing in fear, and all that, over an addition problem today in which he was supposed to add together three many-digit numbers. Once he calmed down and we resumed math class, we skipped that problem and moved on—to a problem in which he was supposed to multiply two three-digit numbers. Now….when you multiply two three-digit numbers, you’re going to wind up adding together three multi-digit numbers in order to find the final product. So WHY did he greet this problem with enthusiasm and complete it without complaint after just having had a panic attack at the idea of having to only do the addition part? Why does making things more complex make them MORE appealing to my son? (This is true of things other than math as well, btw.) It will never make sense to me.
(On second thought, adding three numbers is something that he encountered during public school, whereas multiplying multi-digit numbers was not. Last year the school psychologist commented to me that she suspected post-traumatic stress disorder in him, and I’ve seen symptoms too, though we have not pursued an official diagnosis. This may be related.)
Twisted B)
There were no suitable new children on the adoption exchange for weeks and weeks and weeks. Then our caseworker was told she couldn’t send our paperwork out of state; she’s getting more information on that, but in the meantime we can’t have it sent. Since then, there have been five or six new girls posted on the listings. What do you want to bet they’ll be gone just about the time we could do anything about it?
Isn’t it funny how just about the time you’ve had it up to HERE with your children (we won’t discuss how the tater-tot casserole got in my ARM PIT!) they go and do something so dang cute you just can’t be mad at them anymore?
Tonight there were “hologram-it” seeds in the fruit salad. (That’s six-year-old for pomegranate.)
Grrr! Stamp! Aaaaaaaagh!
Ok. I’ve heard stories about working with DCFS—around the campfire at midnight in the spooky woods with the wolves howling in the distance and the hair on the back of my neck standing on end. And you know what I’ve decided? They’re probably all true. A smoothly operating well-oiled machine they are not. And, for all of you who think socialism is the way to go, take note; this is how the government runs things.
(FYI: A home study is the official government documentation describing a family and their home and lifestyle thoroughly so that social workers can decide whether you’re worthy of having a child placed with your family.)
After having our home study sent to agencies in several states for review, as well as meeting with the regional adoption committee in our state, we have received several comments and/or questions about the contents of said document that made us wonder about the accuracy of some of the information contained therein. We asked our RFC (Resource Family Consultant—aka family caseworker) whether we could review the home study document for accuracy. She evidently had to go through some red tape on her end, but was able to bring a copy for each of us to read through (and return, because we are not allowed to keep a copy lest we try to take action with it independently). As it turns out, there were some factual errors, including a statement that our first child was born a month after we were married (it was ten months), as well as some fairly innocuous, but odd, interpretations of our lifestyle, such as that we all have a deep and abiding love for bugs. Ok, I’m not freaked out by them, and I have encouraged Cricket’s Aspie-level interest in them, and allow a number of specimens to be kept in my house, but frankly I can take them or leave them. I have no deep affinity to things with multitudes of legs. The document also contained a statement that the school psychologist recommends that we should do only short term foster placements or respite care so that Cricket can adjust to the idea gradually. There is, however, no mention of why we think that is not a good idea. Cricket has trouble adjusting to change. He can do it successfully, and is willing to make the effort to do so when he sees a good reason for it. Now, the primary reason that we are not willing to take children who are not legally adoptable at this time is that it’s a recipe for disaster. Asking Cricket to adjust to one major, permanent change, one time, and be done with it, is a very different thing from asking him to make multiple drastic changes to accommodate people who aren’t even going to be around anymore in a month. Having constant changes in and out, back and forth, would be nervewracking for him, and I doubt if he would see any point in making any adjustments or accommodations for anyone who may or may not ever become a member of the family anyway. It just would not be pretty. But there is no mention of our position on this in the home study, just the recommendation from the school psychologist who used to see him for half an hour a week, and thought he couldn’t tell that she removed her (sensory overloading) cinnamon air freshener from her office only on days that he was coming.
Now, if you were looking to place a child, would YOU place her in a family with that in the home study? Probably not, if there were other options. (It is entirely probable, btw, based on what we were told, that it was this paragraph that lost us that first little girl.)
Our RFC is going to try to have the worst of the factual errors corrected, and attach an addendum explaining our position on temporary placements–which, when we’ve explained it ourselves, has been met with much enthusiasm and agreement by a couple of caseworkers and/or committee members who were nice enough to actually speak to us about it. Our RFC has no qualms about placing a child in our home permanently and says she’ll happily discuss the issue with children’s caseworkers and put in a good word for us where she can. But it has to get that far first, and generally they start out with a stack of studies and start eliminating all but the best prospects. So we will appreciate the addendum.
So that was Tuesday of last week. When we met with her then, she told us she had been contacted by the people in that other state about attending the meeting, which was taking place Friday, not Thursday as I had thought, by conference call. She was trying to work it out because she technically only works on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but she was very enthusiastic.
Thursday we received an email from her stating that someone higher up in the DCFS bureaucracy had informed her that she is not to be sending out our home study to any out of state agencies, but that she had a call in to an even higher-up bureaucrat for clarification, since this was evidently news to her. It’s also contrary to what we had been told in training, and to what the guy who did our home study had told us, which was that as long as we were working with kids in foster care, we could have it sent to any state. We’ve been working with the two main web listings that were recommended to us by these sources.
Today we received an email from our RFC (nice of her, since it’s Monday and she’s not technically working) to let us know that she’d heard back on her inquiry and that the clarification was that no, she is not allowed to send our home study out of state. She has contacted the bureaucrats at the state level for further input. She also let us know that she waited around for an hour on Friday for the conference call from the other state, but then had to leave, and evidently the call came shortly after she had left. We’re wondering if time zones were a factor.
Pop placed a call today to the trainer in our area to see if he could gain any further insight into the whole interstate morass. She said that it depends on who “owns” the document, DCFS or the licensing office—which is questionable due to the fact that the person who normally does home studies is in the licensing office, but was out for surgery and farmed us out to someone at DCFS.
So at this point in the game we have no idea what the outcome of the out of state meeting was (we have left a message with the contact in said state to try to ascertain this), but we suspect it was not favorable for us. And we also are currently unable to pursue any other leads, as there are no new listings in our state, and we cannot have our paperwork sent out of state until this whole mess is cleared up, if ever.
I think I hear the wolves howling and the campfire crackling.
***UPDATE*** State office lady is out of town for several days. 
This is one of my favorite poems. I read it to my son the other day (red hats came up in conversation). He says I must be getting old.
WARNING
When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people’s gardens
And learn to spit.You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickles for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.—Jenny Joseph
Facebook. ‘Nuff said?
(Before you ask, no we have heard nothing about the results of that out of state meeting. Our caseworker is only in the office on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so we don’t expect to hear anything until at LEAST Tuesday. Yay.)
This is the other art project I’ve been working on instead of my quilt this month. It’s for a juried “Small Works Exhibition” at the college from which I obtained my art degree. It’s a yellow garden spider with the poetic sounding scientific name, “Argiope Aurantia”, which is common in the state where the show is being held. I chose the subject because it incorporates several facets of my current life–quilting (the abdomen is crazy quilted and embroidered), getting up close and personal with creepy crawly things (due to Cricket’s ongoing Aspie obsession with them), and learning to notice and appreciate the beauty in little everyday things.
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