Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.

Another thing I hated about "Travelers"

My daughter got married this morning.

Just got off the phone with dearson#2's therapist. God, the subtext of the conversations we have. Every single statement of hers seems designed to make me feel guilty. She has to keep going on and on about all the bad stuff that has happened to him and how unfair it is and how no one eve gave him a chance in life and how all he wants is to come home to the only family he ever had. And can't we bring him for another visit soon and on and on.  As if I don't know how much his life has sucked. As if  I think it's his fault.

The fact remains that love DOESN'T conquer all. Everyone here who knows ds#2 is terrified of him. Of course we can't know for sure who will end up becoming a murderer, but sometimes we can get a feel for the odds. Everyone who has dealt with him except this therapist he has now has felt the prognosis was lousy. Everyone here keeps telling me not to bring him back and reminding me how unbearable things were when he was here and my own brain tells me this is the scariest kid I've ever dealt with. More scary than the one the police broke my door down to apprehend because he was shooting a gun out the front window at 3am.  More scary than the one who tried to burn my house down.


But everytime I talk to her I am exhausted by guilt. I can't walk away from these conversations and go back to my life. She also tries to draw my son into these guilt trips, which doesn't seem that great for him.

And now I forgot my daughter's doctor appointment and I'm late.l Shit!!

Met with one of the kid's therapists to prepare for one of our many meetings.  The insurance company likes to waste our time with all these meetings because a lot of parents of kids with disabilities have like a lot to do and they can't keep up with all the paperwork and meetings and then the insurance company can drop your services.

 So apropos nothing that I saw in the discussion the therapist says, "You get along better with men than with women, don't you?" Which is very not true because I don't get along with anyone.

So I'm like, "Why do you ask that?"

And he says "You have a very masculine mind."

I often feel like English is my second language but unfortunately  the only language I know , because even though I know the meaning of every one of the words he used, I'm thinking that I have no idea what he just said,  or rather I have so many ideas of what he said I can't decide which one to respond to.

So with my usual lack of social aplomb I said, "We need to make sure CBHNP does not view our position as a request for an actual change of policy even though it's clear that's what we're doing because they will freak , etc etc"

And the moment when I could respond passed. Can someone transgender you against your will? Why do people talk to me anyway? I don't actually speak English and I'm pretty sure I'm not from around here.

 

Sometimes when I read a story that I really adore I don’t bother to comment because there’s already a billion comments and the story’s been around a while. I figure someone’s already said everything that can be said better than I ever will so what’s the point.

So even though I’ve read and reread all of cesperanza’s SGA stories I don’t know that I’ve commented on any of them.

Today I realized that I have this journal thing that no one ever reads and I can write anything on here that I feel like saying and it doesn’t have to be trendy or important or particularly insightful or even make a whole lot of sense. I can write exactly what I think and feel without worrying about offending or boring anyone or just getting it completely wrong. And I can sort out my thoughts as I go.

 

Oh, and just in case anyone does read this, there is sexually explicit material behind the cut.

So I can write as much as I want (how cool is that) about

 

 

Spent an hour on the phone today for a meeting about dearson#2. We discussed yet again his discharge plan and I flatly refused to bring him home without some sort of step down program.  Their position is that he will get upset and blow out of the step down program because he will be angry about not coming home right away. I feel if he can't control himself well enough to function in the step down program they have no business releasing him into the less structured environment of the community at large. They assured me again that we would have plenty of help when he returns. They are going to approve all kinds of stuff for us AND identify a provider to make sure we get these services prior to discharge. This is so much bullshit and we are so going to be left holding the bag for this very sick child. 

The agency that provides services for dearson#4 told me they know longer feel comfortable sending ANYONE out to work with him due to liability issues. So he has all these services on paper, but actually he is receiving no services at all. And the only reason I'm still sane (assuming I am, bit of a leap there) is because I parked him in front of the TV and the novelty hasn't worn off yet. Which is not really a very good plan.

On the other hand, dearson#1 has held the same job almost a year now and is heavily into marching  band plus he actually called the doctor and made an appointment to get his physical for soccer with no prodding from me. And he promises me he will be a good little student this year and not hide assignments he doesn't feel like doing.  We'll see how that goes. He seems to be maturing a little.

Took Quark and Pel to the vet to be weighed.  Since we brought them home May 1, Quark has lost 3.6 lbs. and is down to 20.2 lbs. Pel has lost 3.4 lbs and is at 19 lbs.  Pel is probably at a good weight now and is  running up and down the stairs, wrestling with the big dogs and looks like an actual dog herself. Quark still has to be carried downstairs and struggles going up, looking like he's doing a pullup on each step. Also, he still looks more like a toad than a dog, but the vet said he's making good progress. He'll have to get down lower than Pel because he is a smaller toad, uh, dog.

In the final weeks of my father's life he had an aide from hospice who came out to give us some respite from his care and spent about 10 hours a week with him.  She asked him loads of questions about his life and seemed genuinely interested in him.  This woman was very, very important to him, someone to know him, to be interested in him, to care about his life as it was ending.  So simple but how very important that was to him, and to us. Much more important than the physical care she gave to him. If there can be a "good" death, she gave it to him.

She probably should have been better paid but money could not buy this caring.

Everything that's really, deeply true in life sounds trite when I write it down.

So dearson#4 is outside waiting for the bus at 8:15 and they didn't come. Finally the camp director calls and tells me they don't feel they can adequately manage ds4's behaviors at the camp. The camp is not an "appropriate" program for him. I so wanted to scream at the camp director but, of course, it's not his fault. It's not any particular person's fault, but everyone is fine with sticking me with an impossible situation. After all, I am the parent.

It's nobody else's problem that my 16 year old  deardaughter#5 is in the hospital and just had some pretty major surgery yesterday and she keeps calling and calling me sobbing and wanting me to come in there with her. Because she was adopted as an older child, she has a lot of abandonment issues and she is definitely feeling that I don't care. And then she gets the nurse on the phone and the nurse sarcastically suggests I either bring ds#4 along or get a babysitter so I can spend some time with my daughter because she's obviously in a lot of pain and needs me there. I feel like telling her to get in line with all the other people who want to think I don't care enough.

A camp designed for mentally ill children where ds#4 has a personal aide in addition to the staff cannot manage him and doesn't feel they can safely transport him to and from the camp but I should be able to stick him in my car and take him to the hospital with me. Aargh.

On Friday ds#4's aide was supposed to take him out for 2 hours so my husband and I could spend a little time together. And of course less than an hour passed before husband's cell phone rings. Aide can't control him, we have to come and get him. On the way to pick him up I said to my husband, " Bet the police get there before us." And I was right.  Ds#4 made an abuse accusation against the aide and I had to talk the police out of taking it seriously. Aide is freaking out because abuse accusations can cost you your job and keep you from ever working with children again. I know how he feels, I lived in terror of this for many years, but I'm so burned out I just don't care anymore. If someone wants to believe some behavior disordered child's obviously false accusation they can just come in and take all my kids and try to find someone else crazy enough to take them in. My bio daughter has turned 18 and they can no longer touch her. (If you're accused they take ALL the kids, including your biological ones). And If I'm banned from volunteer work at the school and banned from working with kids, well, I hardly care anymore.

How could I possibly find a babysitter for this kid? My husband is out of town for the day, won't be back until late this evening and he cannot keep leaving work or he will get fired.

Last week the therapist at the residential facility for ds#2 says to me, "You and your husband are not willing to really give much time to helping this child, are you?" and I just lost it, said things I've never said to a therapist before. How dare she act like I don't care. They want to say that he can come home because they will have all this help for us. Aides to give us some respite time, a special education placement, summer programs run especially for mentally ill kids (Ha! The same program that just kicked ds#4 out) and this is just such bull. These are the same services he had before he went into residential. And the school  just kept calling us telling us to come get him because they can't control him and if we refuse they call crisis and an ambulance takes him to the emergency room and then we have to drop everything and run in there or be charged with child abandonment and then we sit in there for 6-7 hours til he calms down and then we take him home and next day we can do it all over again.

If that interferes with our jobs, well, our children really NEED us when they're in crisis.

Been there, done that, so tired of it. And the people in the emergency room will think we should spank them or we should love them more or we should SOMETHING, and hell if I knew what to do I would do it.

And everybody thinks that they could do better or we don't care enough, even people in the mental health field who ought to know better. I don't see any of them caring enough to try to be responsible 24/7.

Yesterday we had a restraint meeting for ds#3 and I waited around for it because I had said I would be available (didn't know ddau#5 was going to need surgery.  Then as I'm going to leave for hospital they called about restraint meeting for ds#2 and I just told them I couldn't do it. So they were annoyed that I didn't have "10" minutes (it's always more like 15 or 20)  for my son. We have to have a restraint meeting everytime ds#3 or 4 have to be in physical restraint which happens anywhere from 1-10 times a week. And nobody at the meetings ever has any new ideas about how to reduce the dependence on physical restraint, which is the point of the meetings. No, actually the point of the restraint meetings is to meet some requirement some agency came up with.

Ds#4's aide just called to tell me he quits because he doesn't feel comfortable working with ds.  So yet another aide bites the dust. Ha! I don't blame him, but I feel like quitting right now, too. Dear son's #2, 3, and 4 are well known to our agency and it's going to take a while for them to find another aide willing to give him a try. It will be somebody naive enough or arrogant enough to think they can handle him so they will probably be very condescending to us for a short time.

Family therapist says, " You know, if your child had cancer no one would expect you to treat him yourself at home, but because it's a mental illness you're getting blamed. " Even if mental illness is caused by bad parenting (which is doubtful) I obviously didn't cause it because, HELLO, they didn't spend their early years here and they were seriously mentally ill when I adopted them. If 2 families adopt kids with cerebral palsy and one kid leans to walk while the other spends their life in a wheelchair, I really don't think anyone blames the parent of the child in a wheelchair or says their child would walk if they cared more. Some of my adopted kids actually go to school, hold jobs and do not have police records, so how is that possible if I am such an uncaring parent?

OK, rant over, I feel better now. Back to rl.

Finished a few books, but since I start two for every one I finish I never seem to get my pile of books under control.

1. "Darkwater:Voices from Within the Veil " by W E.B. Dubois.  This is interesting from a historical standpoint only. Some bad allegorical fiction and some really bad poetry in here.

2. "Everything is Illuminated" by Jonathan Safran Foer This had some brilliant moments but overall I didn't care for it.  What can I say, I hate everything.

3. "Theorizing Fandom Fans Subculture and Identity" Despite the fact that I've been on the internet like forever I feel like I'm way behind in stuff about fandom,   I guess because I've been such a lurker up til now. In case it seems like I hate everything, I thought this was very interesting. Probably old hat to a lot of people, but all new to me.