barefoot

a dream dies

today, it's officially over. i got a refund on the fee i paid to the adoption agency about 3 years ago.

after we sold our house in wisconsin, i immediatly took some of the money and sent in an application to the adoption agency. i was so sure we would have a little one from ethiopia in no time! then we started the homestudy process.

that was our first snag. mike has a felony on his record, and that became a big problem in a hurry.

we finally semi-worked through that (enough to move on, anyways) and had an appointment to get our fingerprints taken. that's when we hit snag #2.

not a snag, exactly. we found out i was pregnant with sariah. the adoption agency we were working with would not allow us to proceed with the process until the baby was born and 1 year old.

when i contacted the homestudy agency to tell them i was pregnant, i was left with the impression that they were not interested in working with us any longer.

so, sariah turned a year in november, and i was kind of hopeful to revive the whole adoption process again.

then, recently, i got a note from the case manager from our adoption agency wanting to close our case. since we never completed a home study, we get a refund of (one third of) the fee we paid. i got the check in the mail today.

so uninspired

this very closely describes how i'm feeling right now:

"Now it's over I'm dead and I haven't done anything that I want

Or, I'm still alive and there's nothing I want to do"

It's from a They Might be Giants song.  What can i say, sometimes things just pop into my head.

butter and poop

today i stayed home from work because calah's tummy hurt. she thought she was going to puke, so i couldn't in good conscience dump her off on my sister.  i always second guess my self, i feel guilty for not going to work, especially if she's not really sick.

turns out i made the right decision. cal's been puking all day. and, everytime she pukes, she poops. yes, the lovely diarrhea accompnied the puking today. lucky me! i finally told her (after the 3rd pair of pant and underware) to sit on the toilet everytime she has to puke. i gave her a bowl to throw up in.

sariah is just fine, though. doesn't seem to have caught anything. however, she has pooped (normal poop) about 4 times today, and she needs another diaper change right now. (yes, i am mom of the year, blogging instead of changing diapers. no worries, the stink will soon overwhelm me. i can only hope to finish my train of thought by then...)

since sariah is the only one that's eating, i kept it simple for lunch, and gave her a piece of buttered bread.  she promptly rubbed it all over her head. mmm, delicious.

to make everything better, mike is working late and will not be home until 8:30 or 9. yay! 16 hours of puke, poop and butter all too myself! how lucky am i?

now, off to change another diaper.

my morning

who stole the cookies from the cookie jar? Mamma! Mamma stole the cookies from the cookie jar! Who me? yes you! couldn't be! then who?

Calah! Calah stole the cookies from the cookie jar! who me? yes you! couldn't be! then who?

Sariah! Sariah stole the cookies from the cookie jar! who me?(answered by calah in a high squeaky voice) yes you! couldn't be! then who?

Zoee! (the dog) Zoee stole the cookies from the cookie jar! who me? (a deep voice from calah) yes you! couldn't be! then who?

Mamma! (repeat above. over and over. and over. one more time. ok, again.)

oh yeah, and i found a bag full of tighty-whitey men's underpants on the dining room floor.  not mikes. possibly clean (i didn't really check that close). 

hope springs eternal

this past sunday, we went to church for the first time in about 18 months. we heard about it through the friend of a friend. we checked it out on line and almost didn't go because their website sucks.

we did go, though, and kind of liked it. much to the surprise of both of us, i think.  it was pretty ghetto. and in the ghetto. perfect. the people were very friendly (almost too friendly) and there is a nursery and a kid's church.  the head pastor is nice, but kind of a nerd. the youth pastor and the other pastor are tattooed pierced freaks so we fit in pretty well.

the church is pretty heavy into community outreach, they work weekly with pads (the homeless assistance program in our county), a food pantry and have community classes weekly. they are very multi-ethnic and multi-cultural.

so, sunday was kind of like going to a bar with a friend and "running into" someone that they're trying to fix you up with. the set up was a moderate success, so we took it to the next level tonight.

we went to their board meeting. they announced it yesterday at the service and said it was "open to everyone" so we figured, hey, why not? it's a good way to kind of feel out the people who are the decision makers and get a behind the scenes look at what happens on not-sunday morning.

it was like your first date after a really bad divorce (i imagine). it went ok, and now i'm really stressed. we just got so trampled at the last church. i'm hesitant to go somewhere and get involved again. do i really want to commit to another church and open myself and my family to all that potential harm again?  the things that happened at the other church have already tainted the way we look at this church.

i guess i can't live my life being afraid of getting hurt, but i'm afraid of jumping into bed too soon. ...and that's where the metaphor ends, because i just don't think i can take it any farther without getting really confused.

overwhelmed

i am ready to jump out of my skin. i am overwhelmed by the sheer volume of stuff we have packed into our tiny house.

i know it was just christmas, and new presents take up space, but this extends beyond that. before christmas, we packed away 3 (three!) big boxes of toys. 2 to go to good will, and one to rotate later  when we get tired of the toys in the playroom. yet i am still completely overwhelmed by stuff.

some stuff i asked for. some stuff just accumulates. some stuff was bought with blatant disregard for my wishes and i am pissed about that.

honestly, i don't know what to do. the main perpetrator is my grandmother, although she has accomplices.  i ask her specifically not to buy something, there it is wrapped up with a bow. i ask her generally not to buy anything, there it is anyways. i provide a specific, detailed list of what to buy or not buy for christmas for the girls, oh, big surprise, look who ignored the list.

now i get to be the bad guy who returns the christmas presents and throws out the junk that gets bought because it "was only $1, $5, she really liked it, etc".

what? you want some examples? let me provide them for you.

exhibit a: a doll that we already own, complete with clothes, toys, shoes and hair accessories that are a one year old's dream smorgasbord, and my personal night mare of choking hazards.  please don't re-buy the doll. we already have it. it's in the basement, with the other toys waiting to be rotated. i'll make a special trip through the boxes to find it. yes and her shoes, yes , also that outfit. do not buy it for her again. found it! and most of her accessories (the ones i didn't throw out when we first got it).  what did we open on christmas eve? oh, you guessed it, that doll. yeah, the one with all the choking hazard accessories. great. now i'm the bitch who yelled at grandma on christmas, and the mean mommy who returns christmas presents.

exhibit b: i'm looking at it right now. it's a kid's meal toy, a poorly conceived "puzzle" that doesn't really fit together at all and is totally inappropriate for a 4 year old, much less her exhausted mother to try to figure out.  what makes food and toys go together? can't we all just decide to go green and recycle the millions of tons of paper and plastic that are wasted on crappy kids meal toys? do they all have to come live in my house? then i have to sneakily dispose of them. then i'm (again) the mean mommy for throwing away her toys.

and lastly, exhibit c: how many more nail polishes and cheap lip gloss can i really be expected to keep on hand? a four year old has really tiny nails.

i don't know if it's just me, or what. maybe i really am the bitch that stole christmas.

thoughts on underground (or, they were broken when we found them)

latley, we've been thinking about making a change. or, rather, i've been daydreaming and mike has been dragged along, somewhat unwillingly.  the big hangup to making a change is, of course, underground. (underground is the youth church that meets in our basement. it's made up of a few church kids, but mostly neighborhood teenage boys who seem to have adopted mike in place of their absent father figures)

i wonder, is underground making a difference in any way at all? certainly not an obvious one. under our tenure, we have had 3 drop out of high school, one get caught shoplifting and may go to jail (it his millionth offense). 2 have been banished forever due to drugs, theivery and general inablity for us to trust them in our home.

mostly, going over this list makes me feel like a failure. haven't we had any impact at all? or possibly a bad impact? maybe by gathering all the deliquents in one place, we've provided a breeding ground for all sorts of creatively illegal activities?

sure, there are some successes. rare glimpses of thinking outside themselves, caring for others, participating in the wide world.  but mostly i cannot take any credit for these things.

now, don't get me wrong, i really care about these students. (not as much as mike seems to, i guess). mostly they are good kids in their own ways. they're polite to me and the kids, they watch their language around the girls ("dude, don't f"*@* swear around the kids"). some of them actually seem interested and curious about God and spiritual things.  they have potential. 

they just mostly waste their potential, peer pressure eachother into drinking, drugs, whatever illegal activity is popular at that moment, and lay around playing video games.

this frustrates me to no end. wasted lives, wasted potential. on the road to following in their alcoholic/absentee/crappy father. continuing the cycle of shitty lives.  i don't know if i can handle watching them flush their lives down the toilet anymore.

jogging

today i was folding laundry and watching tv.  i caught the last part of a movie, starring a beautiful, skinny star.  there was a scene that showed her jogging.

jogging! when does she have time to jog? she (in the movie) has a demanding job that she must work many hours per week at. i know she has to work a lot, because she owns an expensive, beautiful, ginormous lake front condo. how could she possibly have time to jog? during daylight hours?

i mean, really. as a health care professional, i know the benefits of exercise, but who has the time?you know the drill: get up with the baby, feed and tend her, then the other kid wakes up, she needs food and attention. shower, eat, clean up the toys (several times), make lunch, make dinner, go shopping, fold laundry, have a (relatively) quiet minute to myself, sleep, work, pay bills, run errands, talk to my husband, worry about my 401k. when in the heck am i supposed to go jogging?

how can i be held to that kind of standard? these beautiful people, they're everywhere. perfect hair, perfect skin, great body, and she jogs. gawd, i might as well just kill myself right now.

wishes

i have been sitting infront of the tv since the kids went to bed, half watching, half surfing, looking for a new job for mike in a new state.

it struck me suddenly that i spend alot of time wishing things were different.

i search websites looking for a new place to live & a new job (not for me, for mike. i wish i didn't work)     i spend alot of time wishing i did not have to work, wishing i was skinny, wishing, wishing, wishing.

i wish it wasn't winter. i wish i liked winter. i wish we lived in a place that it wasn't winter.

i wish i was skinny. i wish i was healthy. i wish i could sleep at night. i wish i had pretty clothes.

maybe i spend too much time wishing and not enough time doing. i should do something about my wishes, i suppose.  somethings i can change, for others, wishes are all i have.

i can't move, because mike does not want to (and i do not wish for a divorce).

i can't quit my job, because i do not wish to live in a cardboard box.

i feel discontented and irritable. i wish i could fix it. but i don't exactly know what's wrong.

i wish i had the answer.

social (in) justice

well, it's been a while, i kind of ran out of steam and didn't have the energy to post, didn't have anything interesting to say, was just blah.

but, if anything energizes me, it's injustice. i gives me that unsettled feeling in my stomach and it niggles in the back of my mind until i do something, or make it go away by inaction (which then starts it's own cascade of guilt, feelings of ineffectiveness...etc)

i don't know if anyone is going to read this, but at least it will be out there (on the INTERNET--ha, ha) and out of my brain.  tonight is just one in a long line of incidents i have wittnessed where people in power have abused their authority.

tonight we took the Underground students to see a play at the high school, because one of our students was in the play. (just in case you are reading this, and don't know, underground (or UG) is the student ministry my husband runs out of our basement. we do accept donations, so feel free...ha,ha). most of the students in UG are delinquents. they get into trouble with the law, at school, at home, pretty much everywhere they go. they have earned their reputation, granted. but we must have really set off some alarm bells when we entered the school auditorium because we warrented a visit from the vice principal himself. 

now, we had given strict instructions to the students before hand, and they were all being pretty good. however, the play was long, and a little difficult to follow (even for me, a fine arts buff), so there was some messing around and playing with cell phones.  well mr. VP decided he would be a bad ass and came over to us.  he and one of the students proceeded to get into an argument (during the play, no less) where f-bombs were exchanged by both parties.

now, while our student was clearly in the wrong, (his cell phone should have been shut off), i think mr. VP over-reacted. alot. he tried to confiscate the student's phone, throwing around the f-bomb, and pretty much forcibly removed this student  from the auditorium, and then continued to yell and threaten. 

i was personally present for all of the above except for after he left the auditorium.  i have personally seen these kids be yelled at and abused by pastors, cops, parents, and now teachers. it's no wonder they're delinquents.  everyone treats them like they're bad, so no wonder they act bad.

it really pisses me off. maybe i'm over reacting now. what do you think?