Sometimes my volunteers surprise the heck out of me. One girl, maybe 13, has been coming off and on for the past two years. Today as she was being picked up, she came dashing back with her little sister, maybe 8. They had a pretty wooden box and started talking about lemonade selling, and for a moment I thought they were going to ask me to contribute to girl scout cookies or something. Then they said that they were raising money to donate to the arb, and opened the box to reveal an assortmant of dollars and coins.
I was floored.
I took them over to the donation box and me and their dad got lots of phone pics of them stuffing their money in.
Whether they came up with the idea on their own or their parents prodded them, every now and then I get a glimpse of how much this place to means to the folks around here and I get all over mushy and never want to leave.
my a/c is broken. I hate everything.
How did people live, let alone survive, before air conditioning? This week I've wanted to just wander the neighborhood and assault contractors with plastic cups and a 5 gallon jug of iced water.
Holy crap, just heard the older foster kid (7) next door screaming that she wanted to kill herself, followed by a smack, and the door slamming.
Okay, so what makes you feel like someone punched you in the larynx? Because I'm sitting here, unpunched, and my throat keeps firing off like it's in extreme pain
but nothing is happening. This is fucking weird.
Holy crap, Juliebird and ita_! I don't have answers for either of you.
That sounds awful and panicky. Are you having any trouble breathing?
It hurts to breathe, but I can do it. The pain is coming in waves and I can't even work out if it's muscular or trachea or oesophagus. I've made my peace with migraines, etc, but this pain needs to have a good excuse.
As long as I'm breathing and not puking I'll call it tolerable. It's not interfering with function.
Ouch, though.
I talked to the foster parents just now. Seems it was drama over kiddie pool priveledges being revoked after five warnings to play nice or else.
And apparently after the declaration of suicide, the foster mom offered the kid a fucking knife and said go for it. I kid you not, this is what she said she told the kid. Then the kid cried that she didn't want to kill herself, and foster mom said "then don't say shit like that or we'll have to go to the hospital (psych ward as per the children's service rep's advice). And then there were screams about how she hated my neighbor and wanted her real mom.
It scares me that they're so casual about how they admit the things they do and say towards their wards. Yeah, this kid obvs has issues, but holy shit. I'm sure they wouldn't have actually given the kid the knife, and hopefully would have boogied her off to the psych ward if she'd expressed legitimate interest in the weapon, and maybe calling her bluff in a tough-love way was the right choice. But, so fucking frightening to witness and then hear about.
I'm going to ponder lemonade stands and awesome volunteers and why I keep wanting to type "lemonade" as "lemondae".
