It's Not Over Yet

They continued the unemployment hearing. We were about 45 minutes into it when the judge realized she hadn't allotted enough time to cover the issues. The state has to produce some documents for her and I have to subpoena everybody I have ever met in my entire life. Well, not really, but close.

Gotta say that even though I'm not upset or anything by the continuance, I am (hours later) still so tense, jumpy and anxious after having brought everything back up that I truly believe I have PTSD after everything to do with B and this job. My BP is through the roof and my fibro pain is yelling a big ol' howdy. Sigh.

Even though that's not where I go, I wish the Catholic Church 5 miles away had night hours-I could use some time kneeling at the altar right now.

Gotta run send a knee-mail to God... toodles,

Sarah

What Do You Mean You Want An Update???

Okay, okay... for all (one) of you that have been pestering me, I'll post a short update. And in a few weeks I'll post a more thorough one, after my unemployment appeal hearing is held.

Yes, I got fired. No, I still can't find a job. It's been very hard to deal with and I'm working through a whole lot of stuff right now. On the other hand, it has not been all bad. (Though if you feel like donating to the 'keep electricity in Sarah's house fund, by all means feel free. Okay, I'm mostly kidding about that.)

I'm hoping to feel like writing again soon, if for no other reason than to actually finish a project. I don't know that this blog will ever have anything to do with parenting again, of any kind. Funny, I was told by the adoption agency that when I healed from this and was ready to come see them about finding me another child. A younger, better fitting child. I wanted to know if they had posted a 'Lost' ad for their missing sanity yet, but strangely enough they did not find it as amusing as I did.

Thank God for my sense of humor, stalwart friends both new and old, and thank God for God. (Is that redundant?)I did not find God on the corner of First and Amistad, but I did find Him. I was baptized on Easter Sunday. Whatever faith you practice, I've seen some amazing things happen in my life recently. And I wouldn't be here now if I hadn't; I was so close to giving up completely.

I know He's breaking me down to rebuild me the way He wants me to be. Right now, however, I feel about as together and 'with it' as Mrs. Potato Head. I wonder if I can get UPS to deliver a Mrs. Potato Head to Heaven, to see if it will satisfy the apparent urge to move my ear to the middle of my forehead and put a hair bow where my mouth should be located? On the other hand, since I don't know what's going to come out of my mouth lately any time I open it, perhaps the spare parts box is where it should be anyway.

Stress wreaks havoc on your lucid moments. If anyone asks you why *my* chickens cross the road, it's to help me figure out where I left the car keys.

Toodles,

Sarah

No, really. Please just shoot me.

I just got put on leave. I only have a week and a half of vacation time, after that it's unpaid. The investigator assured me this morning when I spoke to her that she would close this as soon as she could since it was so open and shut.

I was just getting my head back together and catching up on all my work, too. I truly believe that they will fire me even though the allegations are false. I was careful to let the managing attorney who put me on leave know that I already had a lawyer involved, so maybe I'll get lucky.

This makes the situation with Cowboy look like a walk in the park. I have never been more miserable or felt more hopeless in my life. The only bright side to the situation is that if I lose my job I can surrender my rights to B, put her back in the system and keep that family from having her.

I need some hugs and I need some prayers. I am not doing well.

Sarah

Somebody please just shoot me now.

So, the FP and B have spent the last hour hanging out in the lobby of my DCF office. First they needed her SSN and then they weren't sure what they needed and where they needed to go to get her 'licensed' and/or screened. God bless the PI supervisor in my office, he handled most of it for me after I got them her SSN.

But the upshot if it is that I was warned several times (and she even said to the super) that if this wasn't able to be taken care of it today she was done. She was tired of putting her family out, blahblahblah. Mind you she said all this in front of B so that B now will feel like the system kept her from a family that really loved her, again.

So I'm opening up a betting pool. Who wants to guess what day and time this week they call me and tell me to come get B? Any takers? The investigator thinks they are going to send her back, too, if that helps your decision.

Sarah, who would very much *like* to get off this merry go round now, thanks so much.

Pins and Needles

So. Foster mom did not return my call at all this weekend, the one where I said that 'as agreed, I'm calling to arrange a time Saturday to bring over B's things.' My attorney had agreed to go with me (she's such a great friend) to be safe, she figures if they were willing to lie that much they were willing to lie again to have me arrested for showing up. And I have been advised at this point to just keep the stuff and wait to be contacted further. "If they want it, they'll come get it." So I will do as advised and have also let the investigator know that they didn't return the call so I'm not trying again as advised by legal counsel.

I want to clarify something that looks kind of bad when I wrote it last post. The part that said rather than bring B home next time they want her gone I will still take her to a shelter. My writing friends (and the few family members that read this) need to understand that this foster family is (well, was) a (licensed) therapeutic home. I'm not a therapeutic home. If B is failing in a therapeutic home, it is not in her best interests to be returned to a non therapeutic home where failure would be guaranteed. Particularly since she has stated that she will call in abuse reports again. If she is calling in abuse reports because I am abusing her, then she is not safe in my home. If she is calling in abuse reports because she is angry at me for something and doing so for revenge, then I am not safe in my home. B needs something that I cannot provide for her in my home. I have my doubts about the foster family being able to provide it for her, but the plus side is that without other kids in the home she can have all their attention.

I am certain that I have not heard the last of this. I gave the supervisor that they also blame for the loss of their license a heads up this morning about them calling in the abuse report. See, the adult daughter works in this building. I have some professional contact with her, but not much. Supervisor has lots of professional contact with her. I wanted to make sure she was on her guard. Anyway, she says that they will have it in their heads right now that if they can prove me an unfit mother then they can be foster parents again. So I'm supposed to be ready for things to get very ugly. Lovely. Just lovely.

Anybody in NW FL willing to sell me a small farm cheap so I can move?

Sarah

Bad Things Do Not Always Happen To Good People

And for once I can lump myself in the good people category.

The *&^*^!(*#&%*(%*!*(#^%*(!% foster parents called in an abuse report on me. Yesterday. BEFORE I met them to cash the subsidy check. No wonder they were so insistent that it be done yesterday.

Fortunately I had all the paperwork I needed to prove I had not abandoned B, copies made for the investigator, and the information that this was just retaliation for them losing their foster license. Investigator found that very interesting. Never actually *said* it was them, but was completely satisfied and said I had nothing to worry about. They are putting 'me' on a tracking status for the purposes of prosecuting further false reports.

They even made the bizarre claim that I had told B I wished she would break her leg and break her jaw and get it wired shut so I wouldn't have to listen to her anymore. WTF?????

The only thing she was concerned about was how long I thought the placement would last. Said on their part, if they never get another foster kid, it will last until B turns 18. But that I expected B to be unhappy in about six months. Told her I would 'agree to take her home with me' and instead take her to the shelter to avoid the kind of drama we had the other night and she thought that was fine.

I still have to take her stuff to their house tomorrow. :-( Any of you guys feel like coming to FL to witness for me? I don't have anyone to ask, really, I'm considering the possibilities of a deputy, but I don't know that they'd agree to go. Suggestions there?

Sarah

The (Hopefully) Last Update About This Family Stuff

So, last I posted, the family that has B had been avoiding my call right up until they called me on Sunday night to tell me it wasn't working out and I had to come get her. I was told that B didn't want to come home, so I made it clear that I would need some time to find her an alternative placement. I made it very clear that B would not be returning to my home under these circumstances. The mother claimed that while B had bad attitude they could deal with it, and though she admitted that the sister had told the truth when she said that B was trying to talk the current foster placement out of being adopted at all (much less by the identified family she's been visiting with for three months) that these were not the reasons that they were asking she be removed.

Oh, just to be clear, this is a private situation between us even though they were at one time formally B's foster parents. I did my pre-adoptive visits while B was with them.

So... the reasons boil down to there not being enough space in the house and that B was in a room normally reserved for foster care. Not only that but another adult daughter had moved back home with her toddler - again - and they were sharing that room with B. That B was sleeping on a cot and though B didn't mind and didn't want to come home, she just couldn't bear to see B live like that. And the main reason was that the mother was just laboring under too heavy a load, that she was exhausted and her husband was sick and etc., etc.

So, fast forward to Tuesday when I have managed to secure a bed at a shelter facility B has been to before. We would attend therapy together weekly while she was there and she could be placed in Job Corps or another program out of that facility or come home if some miraculous breakthrough was had. I notified the only people I could reach mid-morning about the bed and that I needed to pick her up that night. They *still* took her to a city about an hour away and kept her out till 10 that night. After calling and calling and calling with no answer to any of the three numbers I had, I showed up at 8:00, where the adult daughter who had not been answering the phone had apparently been home all night. I refused to leave. I didn't want to lose the bed.

When they got home with her at 10:00 p.m. and I notified the mother that B had a bed at this house where we would have therapy and she could go to Job Corps from there, she refused to release B to me. If I was going to "throw her to the streets without a family", then they would just keep her. I told them that it wasn't up to them, to have B pack her things, she was indeed going. That she had told me she physically couldn't handle it so how I could I believe that this would be the best placement for her? Then B refused to go. I told them all that if I called the sheriff a deputy would put her in the car and transport her for me. "If that's what you have to do," B said. B knew I would do it.

Before I go back to my car to get my cell (the battery was low so it was charging, unfortunately) the family started grilling me in the most horrible way about obviously not loving B and what was my definition of love and what had I expected adopting a therapeutic child and why did I bother to adopt anyway. It was horrible. (And btw, what they define as unconditional love is demonstrated by allowing your thirty year old daughter to move home whenever she wants rather than stand on her own feet and take care of her son herself. Personally, I call that enabling. Oh, well.)

The mother said if I took B to the shelter she would call in an abuse report. I asked her if she really wanted to go down that road with me, because it would be a false report since I was making appropriate therapeutic arrangements for my child, and that she would *know* it was a false report since she is a licensed foster parent and knew all this as a matter of course. She said she didn't care, that to her it would be abandonment since I had an obligation to provide a roof and food and clothing to my child, not turn her over to someone else.

Eventually, rather than deal with the trauma of a law enforcement call, the very real possibility that B would run away from the shelter and faced with the reality that B was still happy there and still wanted to stay-not to mention the fact that they'd efficiently and in a very practiced way verbally destroyed me, I agreed to let her stay and gave them the custody agreement. I left the house at nearly midnight and, of course, immediately fell apart. Called my poor mother on the way home and woke her up. Was incredibly, incredibly upset for about twenty four hours. Wednesday I cried to friends at work, and remember that I work for CPS so I was crying to a caseworker, a supervisor and a system lawyer.

So, is there any good to come out of this situation at all? I think so. I think that B coming into my life taught me that I'm not really cut out to be a parent at all, no matter how much I truly love B. I think that since I 'lost' to the foster family after B had seen me fight and win many battles on her behalf, I think she believes that they will be strong enough to keep her safe and will love her no matter what. Mind you, she won't be able to handle that in a few months but I don't know that she'll call or anything.

I think this situation with the foster family happened so that the foster parents would *finally* get caught in their web of lies and policy violations (not abuse, just blatant disregard of the rules and some laws) by the system and lose their foster license.

Because that happened yesterday. The only reliable information I have about it is that they were without foster children for a long while due to problems with their inability to follow rules and policy and that they were given a second chance with a few short term placements. The foster child B was trying to talk out of being adopted was the only one left after the others had reunified. They failed to add their adult daughter to their homestudy, they failed to add B to their homestudy and then lied to the worker about B living there. Claimed she lived with a neighbor (possibly the only adult daughter they have living out of the home, she and her husband are next door).

And apparently the Cymbalta has kicked in because I'm not feeling at all smug.

Toodles,
Sarah