hmmph, well from my limited knowledge, those particular titles/achievements do not make one a necessarily thoughtful and caring person, so you can do much better. I SAY SO, IT IS SO!

Thanks, msbelle. You're still the best!

And yes, I *love* the breaks from real emergencies for bizzarre requests

Heh. As I posted on FB earlier, I have the local police on my twitter feed, and they post about all the incidents. Someone (unclear if the SAME someone or different someones!) called at 2PM, 3PM, 5PM and 4AM about a "suspicious person" hanging out in the 1-2 block radius of my house. I don't know if there's one SUPER sketchy person being called about by multiple people, if it's a dispute, if it's one paranoid person calling about lots of folks, or if there's LOTS of sketchy people wandering around, suddenly!

(ETA: Also, hugs, hairpats, warm fuzzy blankets, and yay surgery done!)

It's not at all uncommon for the same person to call about the same 'suspicous' situation every hour on the hour and try to make it sound like they haven't already called 4 times on the same non issue that the first responding officer found not at all suspicious. I'm also constantly shocked at how many people call 911 for a 'suspicious person' and the only thing suspicious about that person is the color of their skin. Because of course anyone with dark skin MUST be a drug dealer or Up To No Good. *sigh* Makes me really sad, and I do give an awful lot of lectures along the lines of "being homosexual does not equal being a pedophile" and "having dark skin does not make someone a drug dealer".

The shifting demographics in my neighborhood have made Hispanic folks less suspicious to the righteous white folks, but God help the black person walking down the sidewalk by himself.

I'm home! They let us go right in time for rush hour traffic. TCG is making me Trader Joe's mac & cheese and a cuppa for dinner.

Glad it went well and you're home and being fed, sj!

Ah, emotional issues. I'm still trying to dig out from under mine enough to figure out exactly what they all are. Triggers suck. I learned that if I'm in bed in the dark and I hear someone walk down the hall towards my room, I freak out. This is one reason I want to always have carpeted floors.

In so many ways, I am still frozen in time as an abandoned 3 year old.

Yeah, me too. That sad little kid is always going to be part of me. The more I look at my childhood from an adult perspective, the more appalled I am at the way my family behaved, not only towards me.

Aims, high five for dealing with a nasty trigger in a rational and adult manner!

In so many ways, I am still frozen in time as an abandoned 3 year old.

Oh sweetie. Come here, my frozen-in-time 10 year old self will tell you stories about finding keys to doors that lead to a magic kingdom where we can find the answers to fix our problems. And then I'll bake cookies.

At least I now recognize where some of my coping strategies come from?

Sending love and hugs to all. Glad you all are here and so sorry for what people had to deal with ( and still do )

In so many ways, I am still frozen in time as an abandoned 3 year old.

Oh sweetie. Come here, my frozen-in-time 10 year old self

And my default age, if I'm ever referring to myself disparagingly, is 12. Not like, "Hurr hurr, dick jokes, yeah I'm 12." But like "Part of my brain is stuck at 12, without the adult reasoning skills to realize that when your mother says she's a GREAT mother (without a trace of irony) because we have a roof over our heads and food to eat and she doesn't bring home men who beat us, maybe she's wrong about being GREAT."

Where did I learn the idea that I shouldn't ever expect to be treated well, or with any kind regard, that I should take whatever passes for "affection" and be grateful for that? Hmm. Let's think. Maybe the woman who thought that the bare minimum to keep CPS away was great parenting, and if I asked for any attention, I was being demanding and trying to ruin her life.

Parents, man. Philip Larkin was right: [link]