Okay, I'm still here. I didn't drink the kool aid or anything. Hub is home, my present was fabulous, I'll post a picture sometime, but it is a vintage Murano paperweight sold by a little old man who retired from AVeM many years ago but still has boxes and boxes of glass work. Hubs said there were many lovely pieces, but he was scared about getting a bowl or vase across the Atlantic and across his connections, so a paperweight it was.

My in-laws called us a few days ago and said, "We're four hours away! See you in the morning!" They live almost 2000 miles away. Surprise!

So. Anyone who's had inlaws pull a drop-in, you'll feel my pain here. Add to that the way things were left in November, wherein I was the crazy bitch hell bent on ruining their son's life by forcing him to adopt a crack baby because I couldn't be bothered to quit drinking for nine months and didn't want my breasts to sag, and you've got a recipe for a GOOD TIME.

Dudes, my breasts are big, and they're real. They're already sagging. Like I give a shit. I told Hubs before I married him that I'd require a breast lift by 35 to keep the chassis in shape. Full disclosure up front, baby. (By the way, the only reason we've given to Hub's parents for Huck being in care and available for adoption is the evasive "His family couldn't take care of him." They're just making up their own story, which to me is better than sharing specifics, cause then they'd be all over my ass. And I drink about once a month on date night.)

In the meantime, I've also been gearing up for a big festival thing in the town we used to live in. Even though we're over an hour away now, I'm still involved in the planning and coordinating. I dated the son of one of the chairs in high school, and I got sucked in back then. It is fun, exhausting, and even though the parades and parties and events are wonderful, I'm so glad it is over for another year. I should have just said no this year, but I didn't want to give up that part of my pre-RAD/PTSD/alphabet life.

Yesterday my MIL taught Huck a fantabulous new game called "Hide From Mommy!" because Mommy is a scary beast, and running away from me hand-in-hand with Grandma BitchFace is FUN! Whatever. She's being nice to him, so that's an improvement. At least I only have to deal with them when they're in town, which is only once or twice a year.

I'm 97% sure that everyone who reads this will already know, but just in case you haven't read the big, huge, goopy, wonderful news over at The Open Window, Margaret was matched with Slugger today! I feel like dousing her with Gat0rade, or cracking a bottle of champagne on Slugger's future bedroom door or something.

My mother doesn't know it yet, but she's gaining two houseguests tomorrow.

I've menioned this before, but the difference between Huckle when I'm the only person around and Huckle when he's with others (Private Huck vs. Public Huck) is pretty severe. I think Public Huck might just be a kid I can parent for the next few days, whereas Private Huck might spend the next four days in timeout.

I fel asleep putting Huck to bed, which means I've had a 6 hour nap, and now at 2AM I'm wiiiide awake. I'm thinking of dyeing some new alpaca and wool yarn while listening to podcasts. And arming and disarming my spanking new security system. I like it when the woman's voice says, "Front Door Open. Zone Three Window Open." Activating the thing from a key fob in the kitchen is fun too.

Well, it must be 100 hours since Hub left me and Huck alone, cause I just lost it. I'm totally on track.

About 8AM this morning, I figured I'd snap around 8:04, having just discovered that the dogs had been locked in my bathroom all night, and thus had tried to tunnel out under the door. The carpet? Every fiber in a 2x4 area pulled out. The doorframe? Chewed to smithereens. Stressful, yep, but I held it together.

The rest of the day was full of the normal Mommy and Huck dance: I love you, I hate you, here, let me hurt you. But just now, after three days of poop and pee going anywhere but the toilet or diaper, when he walked over to me while I was washing the dishes and peed on my leg, I considered walking out the door and not coming back until Monday.

I did yell. It was a shock to literally get pissed on. The first three words out of my mouth once i realized what was going on were very loud, followed by a directive of "Don't. Move. An. Inch."

Bedtime is coming soooo early tonight. Then Mommy's going to break out the emergency pack of smokes. Hear that, Texas? Foster Mother Will Be Smoking Marlboro Lights In The Garage By 8PM. Suck it.

Why is that called ketchup?
Why don't I have shoes on?
Why do I have to go to bed?

The "whys" have started.

Developmentally speaking, I'm high-fiving myself (which is sad and difficult and a bit strange, to be sure, but when your companionship is two dogs, a hateful cat, and Huck, you must give yourself the props you may or may not be due). However, spending fifteen minutes explaining the reasons why Hub's slippers don't fit Huck's feet gets a leeetle beet trying.

But the being proud of my Huckle is much bigger and goopier than the side of me that thinks "no more questions. no more questions."

Yay for you guys. I'm so glad I'm not alone in the whole "she's a crazy bitch" line of thought.

I did let our SW know about it after it happened. Her response was basically, "Whew, aren't you glad he doesn't live with her?" And I do consider Huck's balls-out running away to be normal little boy behavior -- My brother was born when I was 11, and he was the kind of kid that, each day, you'd thank the stars that he survived another one. Huck is just as high energy, but not as terrifying as my brother was.

As I mentioned, the whole ass-chewing happened about six weeks ago, and at the time I was scared to death. I have only been back to the school three times since then, since right after it happened Hub started working from home and since then he's been in charge of the to-school-and-back action. For whatever reasons, it is no big deal when Daddy brings him to school and leaves him there, but it is traumatic and horrible when I do it. So that change has worked well, and at the same time it has kept me from physically assaulting the SDC.

I am going to the auction, though, mostly because I decided to donate about $500 worth of items and I want to see how they do. See, this goes into the part of my mind that is twisty and manipulative -- I'm furious with SDC, I want her to know how upset I am eventually, but first I want to become someone they'd love to retain at their school next year, so that I can hurt her a bit more. Yeah. To feel like I'm screwing her by leaving, I have to make her like me or something. Not too proud of that, I don't pull this sort of thing often, but I'm quite bitter about the whole situation.

The whole thing just sucked. Mostly because it plays into my vulnerability as Huck's mom, and into my notion that I'm somehow at fault for his resistance to me.

First up, Belgium. What kind of a gift should I request from said country? Not chocolate (I don't really like chocolate. I think my distaste for Cathy comics put me off the stuff.). This gift will be the first hubby-travel gift in two years, and will follow a looong stretch of single-parentdom on my part, so it can be good.

Next, school auctions. They usually serve alcohol there, ya? I have one coming up, I will be alone (the above-referenced hub travel), I will have a babysitter, and I will need a drink or two. Think I need to bring a flask? (Joking. Kinda.)

At the end of February, I was ten minutes late picking up Huckle from preschool. It was a traffic problem, I didn't have my cell, whatever, I was late and I apologized and was embarassed and everything. Huck had wet his pants through, and I was informed that he'd been in wet clothes for hours (there was a spare set of clothes and pullups there, but the teacher's aide didn't find them or didn't look or whatever). The director of the school pulled me aside as I was trying to walk Huck toward the front door, she blocked my path, started talking about how my lateness and Huck's wetness was unacceptable. I told her three times that I was sorry, that he had pants there, but that we really needed to leave. She said, "No, we need to sit down and talk about the problems you are having." Right about then, Huck wiggled out of my grip (I was worried about hurting his wrist, I loosened up because he was struggling and trying to get away, he was wired and worked up and wanted to run), ran past the director, out the hall door, up the ramp, opened the front door (I heard the bell chime), and took off into the parking lot. Still, director won't let me past her -- I was in panic mode as soon as he took off, she didn't notice anything out of the ordinary, like my child running away from me. (By the way, Huck ran past three teachers/school staff to get out the front door, no one stopped him.) So I run out the hallway door, up the ramp, out the front door, and see Huck in the middle of the parking lot, doing the crazy 3 year old run and jump and scream thing, and even though there aren't any cars moving in the lot, and even though the road the school is on is about 100 feet away and not too busy, I am still freaked. the. fuck. out. because I know Huckle well enough to know that the only way I'll be able to get him is to actually chase him down and catch him -- he's in his head, he probably wouldn't even hear me, so all the screaming of his name and the "Come back!"s aren't getting through, and goddamn can this kid dodge and duck and oh holy crap here comes a minivan. So by the time Huck falls down and I catch him, I'm sobbing from fear and relief and general exhaustion (I went to school exhausted already). I pick him up and say, "You cannot run away from me, you just cannot, you have to be safe," through my tears, but by that time he's totally disassociated. He's got the "Huckle has left his body" thing working, as we refer to it around here. So I stand there holding him and rocking him, in the middle of the parking lot, and I whisper to him that he's okay, Mommy has him.

That part sucked a lot, it really did, I was scared and angry. But the kid running away happens to everyone, and I don't beat myself up over that, mostly because my little brother spent 5 years pulling the same sort of stuff on all of us, starting with the time he could walk and continuing each time his feet hit the floor.

Anyhow, once I was holding Huckle, school director makes another appearance. She proceeded to yell at Huckle, telling him how naughty running away was, demanding that he apologize to me, and when he didn't respond (still staring the thousand-yard stare), she said, "Wow, he is totally disrespecting you. You don't have any control over him at all. He never behaves this way here at school. You really have a lot of work to do to be any kind of a parent. He doesn't have an respect for you at all. How do you think you can even keep him safe?"

So. Ten minutes later, I knew exactly what I should have said to her. At the time, I mumbled, "Well, he has a lot of anger and mistrust for his mother, and it comes to me now." Then I said goodbye to School Director Cunt, put Huckle in his carseat, and drove three blocks down from school and had a bit of a meltdown on a side street.

Why didn't I just tell her to shove her disciplining of Huck and the observations that followed right up her ass? I'm still pissed at myself five weeks later.

I do know why. She scared the shit out of me. She knows that Huckle is my foster son. She could initiate an investigation. She could tell people that I can't keep him safe because he doesn't respond to me. Huck's resistance to me (and his happy feet) is well-documented with the professionals involved in his case. If there was even the slightest chance that my telling her to go fuck herself would result in Huckle leaving our home, I was going to keep my mouth shut.

I'm still hating her on the inside, though. I have a daydream about unloading on her after finalization. When it happened, Hubs and I discussed removing him from the school then, but I was worried that another change would hurt his (fledgling) sense of stability, even though at that time he was still crying every school day and begging not to have to go.

I do think I'll enroll him in another preschool next year, though. Every time I see SDC now I want to slap her face, and knowing that Huckle would be in her class next year is too much for me to handle. (I wouldn't actualy slap her face, but the wanting to is bad enough.)

So I know this whole story presents me as a crappy mom, but I do think she was way out of line. Am I alone in feeling that way?

PS: continued in comments

Thanks for the lurve on the last post, y'all. Since Hubs has been working from home, I've had more time to work on things that make me happy, and it makes all the difference in my attitude. That, and I've adjusted my sleep schedule so that I am not awake the whole time Huck is awake and asleep when he's asleep -- a three hour shift forward (I'm a nightowl, I can easily stay up all night long) that has me in bed from 4 am till 10ish is giving me the alone time I've been lacking. And it turns out that, with a Hub and a Huck around all day, every day, I go a little nuts.

Between the Wonder Pets, Diego, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and Futurama, I sometimes find my grip slip sliding away.

On therapist news: Yay! We love her! I'm sure there's a time and a place for open ended, patient directed, stream of conciousness type therapy... Not so much for us. We needs us some freaking help. New Therapist asked questions, wanted to know about his behaviors, listened, and gave us feedback. And we talked the entire time we were scheduled. Such a relief compared to Old Therapist, the one we were told had a relationship with Huckle but didn't, who talked to us for ten minutes, played with Huckster for 15, then scooted us out the door saying, "We've got Mommy issues, I see," even though we'd blocked an hour and a half of time.

New Therapist made some guesses as to diagnoses, and even though labels don't change our boy, I'm so glad to have her opinion, even at such an early stage. Something I've found with professionals during the last few months is how accusing they can come across, from Old Therapist who kept saying, "And what do you do about that?" in a smarmy way, to the doctor's receptionist who lectured me about how I can't expect to keep taking advantage of the state's free health insurance if I can't even notice that I've brought last month's card, which expired the day before, and that I'd better get down to, "You know, where you signed up for welfare," before she'll let Huck see the GP.*

Whew, got a little angry typing that... Enough digression. New Therapist is comforting, engaged, and seems to have an attitude of "It is what it is" which I greatly appreciate. I seem to be surrounded by judgemental people wherever I go with Huck, Old Therapist included, and New Therapist just... accepts. And wants to help. And that's awesome.



* So the receptionist reeeeally pissed me off. I said something like, "There are many reasons why people are on assistance programs, and many different assistance programs, and even though you seem to think you know what my son's situation is, I assure you that there is no need to speak to anyone with that attitude, whether they are on welfare or not." (I can get very formal and clipped and proper when upset) Then I "accidentally" nudged my new fancy purse over the half wall between me and her desk, and looked aghast when it landed on her desk and spilled her bottled water all over her lap. (I also get really bitchy and have good aim when I'm upset.)