I’m getting home late from hanging out with friends, and I’d love to just skip my blog post for today…but I accepted a blogging challenge, and I’m not ready to fail at it so soon.
So today has been an interesting day.
It started out mundane enough. I spent all morning reviewing a performance task written by someone on my team. The first few ideas she had had were duds, but she finally got an inspired idea and I told her run with it. All in all I’m pretty happy with how it came out.
Then I had to go to court.
*dramatic pause*
My husband and I are foster parents, and today was a court hearing for our current foster placement, a 2 year old girl. We’ve had her for 6 months now, and as a foster-to-adopt home, we would be thrilled to adopt her. She is amazing and I love her.
Unfortunately, foster care cases tend to be pretty complicated, and they don’t always have the happiest of endings. I was anxious all morning waiting for the court hearing because of the nagging fear that the judge could suddenly decide to remove our foster daughter from our home to place her with mom, dad, a relative, anyone but us.
No one involved in the case even hinted that a change in placement was going to occur today, but that didn’t stop me from worrying. After having a baby we brought home from the hospital (our second foster placement) taken away after 5 months, I’m not at all looking forward to experiencing that grief again.
When I became a foster parent, I naively thought that my 8 years of experience of saying good-bye at the end of each school year to my students I’d spent all year bonding with would prepare me to say good-bye to a foster child. I was absolutely, completely, and utterly wrong.
So, the court hearing is over, and our foster daughter is still with us, but the case is murky and it doesn’t really feel like a win. It’s just another step on the crazy path of a CPS case. Don’t get me wrong, I am relieved that an adorable 2 year old is sleeping in the other room right now, but I yearn for the day this case is finally resolved (preferably in our favor).
To top off the day, I had a most interesting experience driving to the grocery store tonight. As I drove through an intersection, I was annoyed because the car in front of me was driving much slower than everyone else. I happened to see something as I was looking at her car, and I thought to myself, I must be wrong.
When the opportunity presented itself, I moved to the other lane and made sure to get a good look as I passed her car. I could not believe my eyes! This driver was driving on a 45 mph road with a hardcover novel propped up against her steering wheel so she could read while driving!!!
I ended up in front of her, and I checked in my rear view mirror periodically to see her still going slowly down the road, meandering along, not doing the best job of staying in her lane.
I was just floored. I’ve seen folks do that in heavy congestion when traffic isn’t moving at all or only creeping forward, but never in regular traffic like that. A friend told me I should have called it in, and it did occur to me a little too late that I totally should have written down her license plate number and called the cops. Hopefully someone else was more thoughtful than me, and hopefully she made it to her destination safely.
4/30
Teaching to the Beat of a Different Drummer 