Wellllll amazing babysitter was short-lived. Turned out to be kind of a psycho then went AWOL before I fired. Friend from the org I worked at when we first moved to the country just got fired (by the jerk who was our jerky boss, who then got fired for firing her) and is going to help me w/ the kiddos a bit. I love my new (not so new anymore, 2.5 mos) reentry/ comms job, work a ton (too much, should lower the bar, but it’s fun and I like it), and have a v full plate— returning to grad school to finally finish my MFA and it was a real cartwheel trying to schedule my 4 hours/month of (virtual) grad projects meetings. A will be working 24/7 til mid-Oct, some weeks somewhere a few hours away. M is coming back to home school (she tried the local little pub school last year, was adored for being the awesome smarty pants she is, decided it’s too easy/ too full of republicans, decided she was over it) + has forest school one day a week (half hour away) she needs to get taken to/ picked up from, zooms throughout the week (piano, Spanish, math) she may need adult assistance navigating and sometimes I have work zooms at the same exact moment. Little guy (who is almost 3, HOW) is starting a preschool coop 2.5 hours, 2x week he’ll also need to get taken to/ taken home from (also half hour away, thankful for the existence of the high-end hippie town to the west). Not sure how I’ll be in 50 places at once so my work friend having time/ desire to be our part-time caregiver/ lifesaver is incredibly helpful (plus I love her and love having her around; I didn’t love having the not-actually-awesome-AWOL-sitter around, I’m antisocial and don’t like having many around, etc).

This is a really boring update; everyone’s busy, blah blah blah. I used to use this space to process, share about deep shit, connect. When I first started posting here, after lurking a while, I was a (sorta, somewhat, at least by NYC standards) young (ish) single mom who’d been through the systems’ wringer, grappling with aftershocks of said systems involvement while living with the ongoing impacts of A’s, he was still in prison and we were kinda romantically back together but not always totally yet. It was enlightening and fascinating to me to be able to share experiences w/ other women, other moms, also in some way navigating the child welfare system, from different vantage points— foster parent, adoptive parent, professional in the field, foster parent and professional, etc. I went through the family court world and I went through the criminal court world but demographically I am not the typical person to be on the defendant side of those worlds; though I experienced and struggled with many of the things the “bios” experience and struggle with, demographically I was more like the foster moms in this online community. I’d read the foster mom perspectives— generally well-meaning, well-off, well-educated, cool liberal ladies— and sometimes I’d cringe at the lack of empathy for their foster kids’ moms & dads, the absence of acknowledgment of how horrendously horrible it is to have your beloved children snatched from you (even if you did something wrong), the occasional desire for kids not to go home, the wish for someone else’s baby to be their baby.

But because I connected with these humans in so many ways, related to and liked them, I was able to see and hear the different perspectives, which sometimes I agreed with and sometimes I didn’t, but it was a special and amazing thing to have this weird digital space where we came to be honest and vulnerable together. I hoped that by being honest and vulnerable too, I could also share a different perspective, like they’d entrusted me with their different perspectives, tell what it was like to be on the other side of the court room, articulate things that maybe the parents of the kids they were caring for might also be feeling but might not be able to, or have opportunity to, say, or might not be able to say the things that needed saying in a way that could be heard.

Over the years my life has changed a lot; over the years everyone’s lives have changed a lot. While the trauma and PTSD of systemic involvement is still very real to me, I no longer relate in the way I once did to the role assigned to me during that involvement. Some of the people here I was so drawn to, so invested in, are no longer posting; most are no longer fostering; everyone has moved on in one way or another. Over the years I was so privileged to be granted a window into experiences, and to see perspectives shift— people here thinking deeply about the system, reevaluating their place in it, realizing that so many times so much pain could be avoided by just giving people money instead of the state spending tons of it tearing families apart to spend buckets more trying, supposedly and ineffectively, to velcro those same families back together via absurd hoops in a Kafka-esque vortex of a dysfunctional legal system, people here living through various versions of it with various details, and learning more and seeing more and sharing stories and heartbreaks here, grappling with big questions of equity and family and future here.

I firmly believe that the child welfare system is the most fucked up and flawed of all the fucked up flawed systems in this country. Even before defund the police, defund CPS. Abolish it, burn it down, build something vastly different, it inherently can’t and shouldn’t be salvaged. I believe it’s a system that causes massive amounts of very real trauma taking kids from parents to prevent possible or suspected or unproven trauma, that the needless damage inflicted far outweighs the needed interventions, and I believe these things far more now than I ever did then when I was at its mercy. Having glimpses into other people’s experiences with this system, elsewhere and here, but especially here, carried me to this conclusion. I appreciate the trust and care and reflection and vulnerability that lived in this space, as so many of us struggled with the meanings of this system that so many of us were touched by in so many varying ways.

What this place used to be isn’t what it is anymore, for me. Maybe it’s that so much of my life has changed. I feel like when I come here now it’s to talk about the weather: childcare challenges, is it cove or is it flu, what should I make for dinner, and that’s not what I loved about coming here. Anyway. I think my Tumblr time has ended. If you want to see pictures of what I ended up making for dinner, follow me on the Insta.

It’s been real, ladies. Love many of you lots.

Having a babysitter has been life changing.

Well this is life changing! For the first time in Little Guy’s life, I HAVE CHILDCARE. I left my food bank job for a few reasons (primarily: shift to wanting the dept in office 3 days/wk) & got a new one, in the criminal legal system space, writing-based & better pay & fully remote & I’m excited. A has multiple projects going right now but tries to schedule them Fri-Tues, so he can watch LG (not to be confused w/ LG little girl, who is going to be off frolicking in forts/streams/woods w/ the neighbor kids all summer like she is off frolicking every weekend) Wed & Thurs, so we’d only need childcare 3 days/ week. The 1 licensed daycare center in town (as opposed to the several licensed & unlicensed area home daycares, the good ones are always full full full) is also full full full & has been since we got here. The director said she’ll have a spot in Sept & suggested I snag it…but they switched to only doing full-time, & I don’t want him somewhere 40 hours/week at 2 (now) or 3 (fall). I wish there was a preschool here for the fall, like a 9-12 / 3 days a week thing, but that doesn’t seem to exist here. The daycare here is very affordable, figures out to $3.50/hr. I’ve always paid sitters $15/hr (+ now given the price of gas will do a tank of gas/week) & I do need to get my spending under control (want to spend on glassing in the useless front deck this fall to make an XL mudroom), but decided to go the sitter route. Which left the tiny little prob of finding a sitter, which we have been attempting, on and off, since we moved. Care.com was fruitless here (sparsely populated—> wide radius so anyone would pop up—> responses like “I’d love to but live an hour and a half away”) so I finally tried area FB pages. Got a handful of very nice people reaching out who, for various asshole on my part reasons, weren’t ideal fits. A young mom who wanted to bring her multiple young children— which I am all for in theory but our house is small and it’s hard enough working w/ 1 toddler here let alone 3. A very kind senior citizen who said she’d be happy to hang out indoors w/ him— the post stated my desire for someone to wear out him & pup running around outdoors. A perky 15yld with a bustling babysitting biz— but I want someone who can drive LG to the supermarket when I’m slammed. Etc. And then, I met The One: 19, just completed National Guard /EMT training, lives 15 min away, loves dogs & cats & kids & art projects & playing outside, totally flex weekday schedule until Feb. She was great on text, great on phone, & great hanging out in our chaos for over an hour today w/ all of us: huge puppy jumping, LG spraying everyone w/ super soaker, legos dumped everywhere, carrying on 3 conversations at once, ice cream meltdowns, etc, she partook & didn’t flinch. I cannot believe I found her, it feels like a miracle (& she’s triple vaxed— some of the few Care.coms were unvaxed). My job is based in SF so we are starting w/ 3 afternoons/wk, 12-5 pm est; I won’t have zooms before 9am pst, can handle working a few quiet morning hours w/ LG, & while I may have some calls/ meetings after 5pm est, it’s reasonable for me to have a kid around at dinner time, they knew before they interviewed me that I live in NY & have kids. So, yes: This was a very long post, w/ no para breaks, simply to announce in nitty gritty detail that I found a babysitter, & could not be happier/ more relieved about this long-overdue development. She & I both start on Monday.

Melissa Lucio, a Mexican American mother, is facing execution on April 27, 2022, in Texas for the murder of her 2-year-old daughter Mariah — a crime that never occurred. Mariah died two days after accidentally falling down a steep flight of stairs and Melissa has maintained her innocence on death row for more than 14 years.

But Mariah wasn’t murdered. She tragically died after an accidental fall down steep stairs, and Melissa, like nearly 70% of exonerated women, has been convicted of a crime that never took place (events that were actually accidents, deaths by suicide, or fabricated).⁠

⁠Melissa is a survivor of sexual abuse and violence that she has endured her whole life beginning at age 6. Her history of abuse makes her especially vulnerable to coercive tactics and falsely confessing. On the night her youngest child died, she was interrogated and intimidated for five hours, until she finally said, “I guess I did it,” to get detectives to end the interrogation. ⁠

⁠Melissa was a mother of 12 when she was arrested. She was also pregnant with twins she gave birth to in jail and had to give up for adoption. The State of Texas presented no physical evidence establishing that Melissa ever abused Mariah or any of her children. In fact, thousands of pages of Child Protective Services records show her kids never said she was violent with them.⁠⁠

We have less than 20 days to #SaveMelissaLucio.⁠

Please, add your name to the petition, then share with your networks: https://innocenceproject.org/petitions/stop-execution-of-innocent-melissa-lucio-texas/

Very specific need: anyone happen to know of a trauma-informed hair stylist fluent in textured hair who would be willing to go to my childhood best friend’s apartment just outside Portland to help her cut her hair, which she didn’t care for in the pandemic (past pandemic cuz i heard that covid thang’s like totally done right), and the hair is now what she‘s taken to calling a rat’s nest, and is making her feel too ashamed to see anyone and too scared to go to a hair salon, so I have decided to find someone very kind and very non-judgmental to come to her, which she has consented to.

Such a nice few days of delicious food and laughter that felt like pre-pandemic normalcy, only so much sweeter now after living in a vacuum for so long. A went to the city Fri to get some work materials, see his mom, retrieve one of his best friends to come visit. I had a nice quiet time (except for a few hour span of many work zooms and climbing toddler) home alone w/ the kids (school canceled for ice- I love that the snow day is definitely not dead around here). Sat AM I spoke to the director of the MFA program I went awol from 12 years ago; I reapplied and got readmitted, they’re honoring most of my old credits and I can finish most of it within a year mostly from home. We will all spend summer 2023 in Chi so I can do the workshops on-site that I can’t do remotely. She was so nice and amazing and encouraging and I am so excited to have that creative community again.

The dudes got home Sat afternoon & it was so fun to get to be a hostess again, cleaning & cooking & conversation with a very smart very hilarious friend. We ate very much and very well: elaborate salads, chocolate cake, lots of green veggies, frittatas, steaks on the grill, etc etc etc. Sunday A took him to see a cool project he landed, it’s something super historic and excellent for his portfolio, with a very tight timeline (the next month will be hectic, but immediate $; these quick, intense projects work much better for our current schedule/ lack of childcare than him having a FT job). We stayed up late with friend every night laughing and telling stories then A and I stayed up way, way late every night after friend went to bed, talking about my writing ideas, problem-solving his work puzzles, brainstorming the micro & macro of our house plans and projects (there are many to do over the next few years: expanding the living room, putting in gray water system/ garden room off our bedroom, building out the kids’ bathroom and a green roof, digging into a hill for a garage). We are very sleep deprived but as a couple we need those expansive expanses of time to talk and hang out a few times a week or we start to get at each other’s throats.

Friend slept in little guy’s room and my kids both camped out in the living room, they were so cute snuggled up tigether on the pull-out couch with the cat and dog. A and I took turns sleeping in; Sunday I slept til 11, I never sleep til 11! Monday the guys spent all day outside tromping around our forest and then today we all hightailed it out of country wonderland after brekky to bring friend to the airport in the city an hour away (not to be confused with The City, NYC. I thought it was odd that friend was flying to NYC instead of driving but flight was very quick and only slightly more $ than a tank of gas). Then we went to Carmax to sell A’s car and I was shocked that the price they gave was the price they’d quoted online. It’s a fancy make but 100k miles, some big dings (not even dings actually and not even dents- the car is legit fucked up), and a can of white paint once spilled in the trunk, and there’s something wonky with the suspension and the brakes; I was not counting on getting this much for it and it’s a very happy surprise to be able to replenish our savings account & pay off a big chunk of credit cards. We can’t share my Subaru forever & will need to get him another car, but we can share for a while, while he waits for a decent old cheap truck to pop up in a cornfield (one of the probs with fancy car was it’s computer controlled so he couldn't work on it himself, frequent very costly trips to the dealership for big & small repairs, but something older / simpler he can have fun rebuilding/ fixing up).

Then we went to the children’s museum which was SO crowded (for around here) but it was still fun, would’ve been stressful though if we didn’t have a 1:1 ratio. The kids/ all of us were so happy to be out in the world engaging with new things/ people, something we used to totally take for granted. Every time we spend time with people aside from the people in our family little guy makes speech leaps and today he was melting my soul zooming around with the “packpack” he brought full of cars, it was so fucking cute and we really need to get him out into the world more the way I did with M when she was a toddler. Many people were maskless at the museum and he took his off after a few min and I just tried not to panic aka not to think too much about it and to just let him have fun. We joined this museum when we moved here and though this was only our 2nd time going it’s one of those things we’re membership pays for itself if you go more than once so we didn’t feel pressure to stay for eons, we did it for 2 hours and when it got annoying to carry coats & tantrums started we left. A says he wants to bring little guy back on a quiet weekday when M/ all the other big kids in the area aren’t on vacation next week. Oh! And little guy used his first public restroom with a scary automatic flusher today! He consistently pees & poops in toilet at home & at A’s parents’ house when we go to the city for a weekend, but if he goes out diaper-less near our house we are either just walking around our woods or the neighbors’ and he drops trou outside, or on the occasional diaper-less trip to the supermarket he pees in the parking lot before we go inside (I’ve really embraced the whole IDGAF rural lifestyle). Today we had him in a diaper but when I took M to pee at the museum he said he had to and he did! I swear cloth diapers have been the key to his uncharacteristically drama-free success in this area. Then we picked up over-priced but very good sushi, (sushi is not something we can get near home), drove back to the county in the rain, and picked up Rusty from daycare. I figured better to spend the $25 and have him playing with other pups today vs tearing apart the house I just cleaned. He’s generally a good dog now (A still has not fenced the yard but it doesn’t matter anymore because Rusty will run off and play in the woods right around the house but doesn’t bolt too far to hear us or go down the road) & much better than he was in the heyday of hellion puppy era of a few months ago, but he still is a paper shredder, a wood eater, and goes nuts pulling dishes out of the sink and chewing them up if we dare leave him home alone with dishes in the sink. And then we watched movies and kids stayed up too late again and camped out on the couch again. I am so fucking glad I took today & tomorrow off work. Have an epic to do list tomorrow but it’s all fun stuff or at least fun-ish. Our family friends w/ 2 kids are coming to visit in April and I’m so looking forward to having guests around again!

Combo of under 5 vaccines delayed AGAIN, mask mandates being tossed, not getting dream job (but they want to work with me on a project, honestly I’m like fuck off), spending $1100 for work on a car I want to off load (but can’t, because months-long DMV delays on getting title to us from when we bought it), fight with A, and the bat being back in our basement = shitty shitty day.

Little Guy’s antibody test = negative. Wowza. So maybe we didn’t have covid. Or maybe we did but tested too early or late (though we did test many times). Or maybe only M did but no symptoms and didn’t spread, and the rest of us, all except for her, concurrently had a cold but not covid. Either way, we have been doing a little more socializing recently and it has been amazing and wonderful and I need to be able to see friends and family and live like a human and yes even go to restaurants and even go on vacations. I was really hoping he did have antibodies and just had a very mild case, but actually, why? I know many people who have gotten it more than once, many vaccinated people who have gotten it more than once. We are living in strange times with few right answers.

Plate is feeling a wee bit full today. Woke up at 6 in Little Guy’s bed because he was bouncing off the walls til 11 and I fell asleep before he did. Took M to school. Work. During lunch break helped A with a bid for his biz. More work. A picked M up. I took her to Dr appointment (she reported to the Dr that school is too easy and home school is better. & today told me she is worried that kids in her school who are 12 don’t know what she learned at 6, and she doesn’t think they teach enough for kids who want to go to college. I predict she chooses to come back to homeschool by spring break.) Drove home very slowly in snow storm. He started dinner, I finished it. Now finishing his bid and prep for my nonprofit’s board mtg/ packing lunch / dishes/ laundry. Then board mtg while he puts kids to bed. Then I have to upload dmv shit for car we bought from his dad. With all these goings on you’d think I’d appreciate my easy job but nope. At my 90 day review I demanded more work (& a big raise and title change) & they’re working hard to deliver but I’m squirrelly. Interview for dream job on Friday.

M back in school today. Her teacher is lovely and keeps telling me that she’s an amazing student and so wonderful. I wanted to say “yeah I know she is why do you think I’m trying so hard to lure her back to MY school with incentives and a sign-on bonus?” Instead I said thanks.

ETA: I know that our homeschool happiness comes from immense privileges of generational educational opportunities, flexible careers, and $ to pay for zoom piano lessons & Spanish class, and that the pandemic lack of schooling era has been an immense horrible hardship to so many children & parents. With all the resources that made it possible & fun for us, M thrived and we miss having her here, hate having to haul ass out of the house early, she learned tons more here, and I’m hoping we get to homeschool again.

M’s school is closed tomorrow for a “snovid day,” as in primarily closed due to sick staff, plus the issue of snow clean up. M was learning a zillion times more home schooling than attending school school, which she hasn’t attended very much at all given quarantine & snovid. 2022 is not exactly feeling like the “year shit normalizes!” year I’d hoped it would.

A foot of snow is expected here and (if we don’t lose power) I am so into getting a few more days of the cozy lifestyle, books and baking and dvds. I hope school is canceled Tuesday.

Mine & A’s second pcrs from friday came back: neg. Walgreens had a fast turnaround time with ours, hopefully M’s second pcr from yesterday won’t be delayed by the storm. If her second test is neg, I’m guessing her first test was a lab mixup or false pos. If her second test is pos, I’m guessing vaxd asymptomatic M just didn’t spread to us, and we concurrently randomly had a cold. Or maybe viral load was so low that tests weren’t accurate. (A friend recently had a similar circumstance where she had many negative rapids, very light symptoms, a pos pcr followed by a neg pcr and everyone else in her boosted household also had neg pcrs.) I’m determined to get to the bottom of this though and am going to take little guy for an antibody test in a few weeks.

ETA: lol the health dept finally just called me re contact tracing. 6 days after M was confirmed exposed at school/ 6 days after her test. I think the only way forward in endemic era, esp if tests aren’t super reliable now, is mandatory covid vax in all settings where other vaxs are mandatory (ie school), ASAP vaxs for under 5, if you’re sick with anything stay home til you’re better, shortened mandatory school/daycare quarantine times, more paid sick leave, oh and nationalized free healthcare, & student loan forgiveness for all healthcare workers (but actually really for everyone).

A’s pcr from Monday finally came back. Or rather it didn’t, the state testing place never sent his results so I figured out what lab they use and went straight to the source. Negative. WTF. To recap: M (vaccinated), had a slight runny nose Friday. Rapid test neg. Her runny nose went away, totally symptom-free since. Over the weekend me, A, little guy started having cold symptoms. Rapid tests neg. Sent M to school Mon. Mon afternoon her friend’s mom tells me her kids (one of whom M ate lunch with Monday, and every day since starting school after winter break) tested pos on rapids at the nurse‘s office. Did more rapid tests on us Mon afternoon, neg. Then Mon eve me, A, M got pcrs because I didn’t trust the rapids. (The state place wouldn’t test little guy, 4+). By Monday night little guy had snot face, me congested & a slight sore throat, similar for A. M’s pcr came back first, pos. We‘ve been quarantining from the outside world but not at all from each other- sharing beds, sharing food, the usual. I was so sure we all have it. Shocked when my pcr came back neg the other day. Was more shocked when A’s did today. Went for follow up pcrs today for me & A (Walgreens won’t test little guy, 3+), though by now little guy is totally better, I’m better, A has slight cough. This lack of reliable home testing is fucking bullshit. As is the fact that pcrs are a gymnastics trick to get and take days to receive results. I have to admit I am really hoping our second pcrs come back pos. I want certainty and confirmation that we all had it so we can loosen up even a little bit, until the next wave. By loosen up I mean being able to go into a store without panicking, seeing friends and family more than once in a blue moon, etc. A theory of this saga could be that M’s test was a rare false pos, but we know she was definitely exposed. Another theory could be that she had it, asymptomatic, and the other 3 of us truly just had colds, but it seems unlikely that she wouldn’t have gotten our cold. This is all such total and utter bullshit. To date the school has still never notified me of her exposure. I keep notifying them, but continue to receive calls/texts/emails about her unexcused absences.

Plot twist: my pcr finally came back, neg. M, asymptomatic, confirmed pcr pos. All rapids have and continue to be neg. I made a follow up pcr for myself tomorrow. I may have tested too early (or late? or test was wrong? who the f knows). I am certain we all have it and I really want it confirmed because I really want to stop living in fear of getting it, if only for a while. I also want this to be it because if this mild nothingness is Omi for healthy vaccinated people that is a huge relief (for me personally) (& I know that is ableist, assholey, Republicany, not societally conscious, but just being honest about where I’m at now and my desire to stop living like a hobbit). Oh and her school said she could come back today. I laughed at that. No thanks we will continue to quarantine.

It’s official, we’re in the covid club. Rapid tests have all been negative. Positive PCR. Cold symptoms ranging from nonexistent (M) to a cold (little guy). Hoping it stays this way. Thankful for vaccines.