wow.
there is so much to say, i am not even sure where to start.
i suppose the place to start is with the thing that is uppermost in my mind right now. my son was supposed to leave for the army and bootcamp today. yesterday at about 10:30am, he got a call from the army saying "you have two hours to organize your life, we want you to leave today instead, be at the armory by 12:30pm". it was pretty stressful. his poor girlfriend did not even get a chance to say good bye to him because she's a college student so she was in classes and working yesterday. his mantra yesterday was "what a difference a day makes..." because there were many loose ends that needed to be tied up that will now be done by me and his dad. my baby now belongs to uncle sam and it's depressing as hell. truly. the good news is that i waited until after he was gone before i cried. it was actually when i saw his girlfriend and what a mess she was that i lost it. the rest of the day was colored with this sadness. i was supposed to go to a bellydance practice last night, but with all that was happening, by 5pm i was completely emotionally exhausted and just wanted to curl up into a ball somewhere and sleep. that tells me i was stressed!
in other news, little more than a week ago, i got my hair braided. i think i've mentioned in here that in june, i am going to paris. it will be my first time out of the united states and i am exceedingly excited. there is more to the story than i think i've written here, but that will be for another time. in the ensuing time, i have been paying for this trip, but i paid it off earlier this month! now, barring something catastrophic, i am going for sure! anyway, i don't really want to deal with international plugs and blowing up appliances and such, so i thought it might be easier just to braid my hair. so far so good, with a few exceptions. i, apparently, have a lot of hair, which means i have a lot of braids. i think i will ask her to make the braids a little larger next time because all this hair is HEAVY!! in general, though, i love it.
so, while i was getting my hair braided, the lady who does this for me is a foster parent. she currently has three, i think, under the age of five. one of them is SO adorable! he is the sweetest little boy and his chances for adoption are slim. he has a cleft pallette, and will require some more surgeries for that to be fixed and some other issues from his mother making poor choices before, during, and after her pregnancy with him. his name is noah. he is three. interacting with him made me realize how sad our system is. noah has some siblings, but none of the bio families want to take him because of his disabilities. the foster mom is afraid to take him because she knows he will have some medical challenges and her health care status is tenuous at best...adopting him could break her with medical bills. i thought to myself how sad that this little boy is going to be shuttled around a system that's so inadequate. what are his chances? i began to think perhaps i could help this kid. my kids are grown. he deserves better. i thought and thought about it. when i mentioned it to my husband, he accused me of looking for a replacement child because mine are grown and one was getting ready to leave at the time of the conversation. part of me wondered if i wanted a "do over". it would be very hard to "start over" and have a small child again. is this what i really want? then again, it seems almost selfish not to do this for this awesome little boy. i know i could handle his challenges. i just don't know. it would be amazing, and at the same time, do i want to go back to that place? he's 3, so there would be no diapers, but there would be day care, special ed services, iep's, and dealing with his other issues. too much? i just don't know. i am agonizing over this stuff....what do you think?
i am very excited because the ladies i bellydance with are finally getting to the point where we might be ready to form our own group. we've been coming together for the last couple of years to dance beyond what was done just for class. i think our name will be "hipswitch". i am very excited about this too.
things in the fire world are also exciting. the fire arts festival will be in july, and things are rolling along with that.
those are the things which are currently on my mind....now i need to post this in a lot of different places =)
peace.
