Still wondering

I continue to take classes, read books, read blogs by other foster parents and wonder if we will ever get a call. Are there kids out there that need our help? Are we capable of helping them? On the upside, I am CPR certified and learning all sorts of new stuff.

Changes less or more

Grumble grumble. My latest frustration with myself comes from my half-assed attempt of losing weight. While I am more active, and I am not gaining, my weight stays put. I don't have lofty goals; losing 10 pounds and maintaining that loss is my goal.

I recently received a mass e-mail from my contact from social services, announcing that she is leaving her position for a new role. The e-mail arrived in time for the long weekend. I sent a congratulatory e-mail response and asked who my new contact will be.

This was the woman who said she would keep her eye out for us. Hm.

Losses that I wish for

I am trying to teach myself how to eat well, and eat to live. For years now I have yo-yoed, and unfortunately my love of beer and pub food has left me in a static state of weight. I am growing to love running, but haven't dropped much weight because I have managed to talk myself into thinking that I could eat anything because I was exercising. Wrong.
One website I have found so helpful has been Can You Stay for Dinner? Andie is living the experience of losing a major amount of weight and has kept it off. She is real and realistic.

I want to eat real food. I want to be healthy. The health issues of my parents scare me. I want to live for a good long while.

Needs

If the need is there, why do they never call? Why do we look like the crazy stalker girlfriend/boyfriend, reminding the Department that we are here and available? Is it no wonder that good foster parents cannot be recruited or stay?

Try, try again?

I received an e-mail from the agency whom we fostered through, about an upcoming event. The event was an opportunity to meet children available for adoption. We were unavailable for the event, but I wouldn't have attended anyway. We had been to one before and I likened it to a gang bang. Craft tables and games were set up. Pizza and soda was served. Adults would crowd kids they were interested in, leaving others to play alone. I found it artificial and humiliating. I wanted to leave immediately.

Anyway, I responded to the e-mail and the woman wrote back:

"I am glad you responded I have wondered if you would be interested in another placement and if so what age range and gender you would be interested in."

Punctuation was hers not mine.

I took a day and wrote this:
"[we] are still interested if it's the right fit for us.

Do most adoptive placements start as just fostering?

We would like a girl or boy (siblings would be fine), ages 3 to 12. A teenager might be work in the right circumstance. Our last placement was at therapeutic level and still placed with us and we realized that we were way in over our heads."

She suggested that we look on a photo listing website, but there are always the same kids listed and I can't help but hope/wish that there are more kids available. I asked but she did not answer. She did say this:

"Most adoptions do come out of foster placements...Thanks for letting me know and I will be in touch if a kiddo comes along that seems like a good fit."

I don't expect to hear.

Our plans

The plan:
1. Finish some house projects.
2. Heal.
3. Become a couple again.
4. Attempt to foster/adopt again.

These are our immediate plans. I wax and wane on my feelings about being a parent. At times I feel renewed, and other times I experience that drowning feeling when I was a foster parent: utterly helpless to what was happening before me. Maybe I just suck at this parenting thing. I found myself saying things and acting the way my father did, and I didn't like that. I felt like I had reactive detachment disorder. I couldn't help but feel that our foster son's attachment to us equaled ours to him. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

It makes me feel sad, and guilty, and selfish.

Out of loss comes life

When you work in a public facility you see many different people. We are deemed a safe place so we also get a lot of caseworkers who bring their clients in, some for supervised visits. It's really sad to me, since I've been on the other side of things. My kiddo's mom's parental rights were long since terminated, so there were no visitations. I can't help but wonder if children in foster care become the lost children. Are they too damaged to succeed in family life?

We were feeling a little lost here last week with our dog dying. My husband hated seeing our other dog so listless. He looked for his brother all around the house, and he wasn't eating. We also were feeling lost.

So, what did we do? We got another dog.

What the dog saw

This is the title of a Malcom Gladwell book. It's also a reflection on the past 7 years.

Our Great Dane died about a week ago. He was an elderly dog, but still it hurts pretty badly to lose him. I sat beside him on the bed and watched his heart stop while I stroked his paw. We all feel a little lost at home now.

In the past 7 years he saw our 2 households move in together which includes another great dog. We eventually added 2 cats. One of us changed jobs. We had several cars. My mother experienced cancer twice, and was diagnosed with a chronic illness. We added a foster kid.

In the past month I have seen changes at work and changes at home, and I struggle through it to come up feeling okay. I reminded myself of something I once heard before: never make any major decisions after a traumatic experience. My mind reels with questions about what the next 5 or 10 years will look like for us.

Not quite waking

I awoke at 4 a.m. this morning to a muffled sound. I thought it was our elderly Great Dane, fallen from his futon but it was the sound of a cat entangled in some blinds. I shooed the cat away and shut the door. I still had an hour plus before my alarm went off. I managed an hour more of sleep, woke up again and launched into our normal morning routine: Lift dog off bed, walk him outside to relieve himself, return him inside to eat his specially prepared food. I also fed our other dog and the cats. We had one more round outside and then I laid down again, telling myself it was only for a little while and then I would get up and run. I slept for an hour and ten minutes more, awaking from a terrible dream where my foster son was standing in the kitchen, covered in coffee ground and muck, waving a sharp knife at me. We has dressed like someone I had seen on The People of Walmart (ie ass hanging out of some hideous pair of nylon shorts). It was definitely time to get up.

I will be processing this loss for quite some time. It even visits me in my dreams.

All these things

Quilting. Sewing. Knitting garments. Reading a book through; these are all things I would like to accomplish this year. I have a hoard of fabric, yarn, knitting needles and books waiting for me. Since the death of my Grandmother I have amassed lots MORE yarn and needles. It seems fitting to honor her by using them. I also wonder if I would feel better having completed something more purposeful than just emptying a bottle of wine.

Running back to our lives

This year I ran a 5k. I am becoming more comfortable with being a reluctant extrovert, and yet I now retreat this weekend to breathe a bit and process the end of a nearly 2 year relationship with our first (and maybe only) foster child. We were hopeful; we were naive; we thought we could make a difference but time has shown us that this is goddamn hard work, highly unsupported and bewildering. A team of professionals are there, working in an unsynchronized way to support the child; we only had each other. And the man-child has emerged as a reptilian like person who feels nothing: no empathy, no care and no boundaries. It is easy to fantasize the fantasy of being a parent, but the reality leaves us wondering.