May 2011 ~ To Tell The Truth

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Tradition, Honor and Remembrance

Yesterday Mr. Sunday the kids and I made our yearly pilgrimage an hour and a half away to my parents’ home town for the Memorial Day parade. (That is not us or our kids.) My mom went there when my grandparents adopted her at 12. Memorial Day is a loaded Holliday. My grandparents’ daughter, my aunt drowned in a swimming hole on Memorial Day weekend. They adopted my mother and her sister soon after. I remember sitting in my mother’s parent’s yard and watching my father’s father march in the parade with the other WWII vets. There aren’t many left now. I started taking my daughter down to watch the parade the year before...

Where The Heart is

Momma’s Happy Place VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL Tecumseh, MI...

No Comment

Blogger is acting nutty…still…grr.. I can’t publish. I can’t comment… I swear I have been reading all of your blogs and had really great insightful and witty comments for all of you….but alas…to no avail…I have been defeated by Blogger. Fiddely-dee, tomorrow is another day. XOXO I hope they fix it soon....

Oh, No! She Made the Pom-Pon Team!

After the first two years of having my daughter in school and in completive gymnastics, I began feeling a lot like a pimp, or some kind of wrapping paper and pie pusher. …really I did. I started feeling like all of my friends and “family” were avoiding me and my latest super-duper fundraising order form. And who could blame them, who needs a $20 pie or a $15 roll of wrapping paper anyway? And honestly what does the school or organization get for all of that pushiness anyway? 5-10 percent? (Now Little Caesars Pizza-kits that is a different story, altogether….we love those…if you are selling I am buying…well, I would be buying if I had any money) I quit. When a fund raiser comes around I try to give a few dollars (which is highly confusing to the organizers who have no idea what...

After The Storm

After the initial night of hysterics, my oldest handled her consequences pretty well. Maybe she just needed to know we were going to hold her accountable? Since we are out $400 for a trip that no one took I also decided it was high time she started doing chores around here. I decided she could start loading and unloading the dishwasher and cleaning the bathroom. Mr. Sunday doesn’t “like” the way she does the dishes. I suppose he thinks that men are the only people who do things so poorly that you will never ask them to do it again. Unfortunately it’s just that they are only the ones who do not outgrow it with adolescence. Now let me just show...

Sun, Fun and Ice Cream

I think we can add sunscreen to the list of things that break Amélie out in hives. Thankfully she has Mr. Sunday’s coloring, Miss CoCo is not so fortunate. Grateful to see the sun at last, my little girls have been outside from sun up to sun down. CoCo likes to make shadow hand puppets, she is pretty clever. Can you hear Amé screaming for CoCo to get out of the umbrella from there? They are sisters… best friends. They will leave an indelible mark on each other’s lives… And backs apparently. The ice cream man came by the other day. So, Mr. Sunday asked me, “who took the picture?” Um, so those of you...

CoCo Speaks

img alt="" galleryimg="no" onload="var downlevelDiv = document.getElementById('d09ad452-c503-4017-ba6a-fbeb04ccb697'); downlevelDiv.innerHTML = "";" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw6aFRQCsmsskaFTYk6RCuN_tJTPqMQS1Dush1R7DL-Tr85AbTy7F-ylwgTM_Ri5SyjP2Vj182AVvJ_HomcSRiOVdWQTNutzODVeetVVUJs9PtiWRpb9i-IOGsFtk5qE7UYrrS2CmJJUc/?imgmax=800" style="border-style: none">Madeline is so happy she can finally come up with her name! And to think she didn’t speak at all until well after two....

Mad’s Poem about Coco

Coco Rosy cheeks flush in the warmth Her chubby legs move quickly and unevenly Trying to keep up with her mind Her head up with determination Blue eyes shining like jewels Her dimples flash as she smiles bright like Sirius in the night sky Though they disappear when you say "good night" Her cute button nose sits in the middle of her round face Her short blonde curls bounce as she walks Her words not always clear, sometimes squished together Her giggles fill the air as her sister chases her around the well kept yard She teeters on her feet and falls Salty tears stream down her face, but stop...

We Don't Belong To No One That's a Shame

John Rzeznik And even though the moment passed me by I still can't turn away I saw the dreams you never thought you'd lose tossed along the way Letters that you never meant to send lost or thrown away And now we're grown up orphans that never Knew their names Don't belong to no one that's a shame You could hide beside me maybe for a while I won't tell ‘em your name And I won't tell no one your name Scars are souvenirs you never lose , the past is never far Did you lose yourself somewhere out there , did you get to be a star Don't it make you sad to know that life is more that who we are You grew up way too fast and now there's Nothing to believe And reruns all become our history A tired song keeps playing on a tired radio And I won't tell no one...

Parenting Sucks Sometimes

My child is not In Chicago with her orchestra class today. All along we told her that her being able to go on this trip was dependent on having all of her work turned in for algebra. Wouldn’t you know, mom just had to check her grades yesterday morning on family access. How like me can I be? Because of course she had been doing so much better these last few weeks. That is right up until a day before the trip, when her teacher decided to enter the last two weeks of grades, forcing us to have to decide whether or not we would have to follow through on what we said. Sheesh! Why did I even look? Weeks and weeks of MUCH better effort on her part and two missing assignments, are you kidding me? We had given her chance after chance and she was so close. I even called the school and had her call...

Scars Are Souvenirs You Never Lose

…The past is never far. Warmer weather means short sleeves. Short sleeves mean exposing myself, my pain and my past to the world. It has been over 20 years since I put blade to skin, 20 years, since I have I have sought to relieve internal pain by bringing it out to the surface where it could be seen, and felt. 20 years and I still carry the marks of my past. My brand, my survivors tattoo, the sign to myself and the world that something went terribly wrong here, and I will never forget. And we should never forget. The pain you inflict on a child lives in them forever. The pain lives on, whether they wear in on their sleeves or carry...

No More Foster Kid Fairy Tails

Hey Y’all, I am guest blogging over the Declassified Adoptee today, please stop by and read my not so cheery thoughts on National Foster Care Month. I think it is time we stop selling our foster kids short with pipe dreams of happily ever after fantasies. What do you think?...

Helpin’

CoCo is finally starting to enter her “independent” phase. She took it upon herself to put the silverware away for me. ...

May is National Foster Care Month

I should be blogging about it. I am having a hard time coming up with a post. It all seems so sad and hopeless for so many of our foster kin. Especially for the older kids who flounder year after year, placement after placement, school after school in a system that is based on being temporary. There aren’t enough good foster families. We don’t do enough to support original families. There are not enough suitable families willing to adopt from this country’s foster care system. And for all of this it is the kids who suffer....

A Happy Mother’s Day

...

Amélie Asks Some Doozies

Amélie asked, “What did you buy your mother for Mother’s Day?” “Nothing” I said. “Why not?” What am I supposed to say to that? (she has only seen her a couple of times in her life.) “Well, honey she really didn’t take very good care of me.” What are we supposed to tell our kids? Exactly how honest are we supposed to be?...

Ugh, It Is That Dreaded Time of Year

…again. In honor of Mother's Day, I'm changing my profile picture to a photo of my mom until May 9. If you like this idea, please change your profile picture to one of your mom. Please repost this as your status so everyone gets the word, and let's see how many beautiful mothers we can get on FB Facebook That’s right, Mothers Day. Don’t get me wrong, I certainly don’t begrudge any of my friends having mothers that that they adore and want to honor. Heck, for that matter without some of those mothers I would have no clue as to what I am supposed to be doing here. But who would I be changing my profile to? Linda? Yeah,...

What’s For Dinner

I walked in just walked in from work and Amélie says, "Dad you need to make mom dinner!" Mr. Sunday says, "I did make her dinner, it's right there." "No, not DINNER - THINNER, her tummy is to big!"...

The Final Maze: Kicking a Foster Kid When She is Down

She is at it again. This time FosterAbba has decided to contemplate if a fellow foster care alumnus blogger would be better off dead: But I look at her suffering now, as an adult, and it seems so extreme. It's clear LT suffers immensely, and I sometimes wonder if the system would have been kinder not to intervene, and to let her die as a child, than to put her through that horror, only to subject her to even more emotional neglect, physical abuse and trauma as she was bounced around the foster care system. Is she better off for having been "saved" by the foster care system? I can't answer that question for LT. She's the only person who can measure the value of her own life. What I can say, though, is that I see many kids who are failed by the foster...

I Felt It Before I Saw It

Yep, that is a toad sitting behind the door handle of my van…I screamed…and jumped…and made my husband come get it. I am ok with frogs…and toads (goodness knows I have kissed quite a few of the proverbial sort, that is.) Blame my Reactive Adrenalin Disorder…But I HATE surprises…...

When I think back on my life and how I not only survived the darkness that shrouded much of my childhood and a chunk of my young adulthood, I know that it was that I was incredibly blessed by having many mothers and many moons that shown over me. This morning my family and I drove down to Corktown in Detroit to meet a couple of those moons for a nice breakfast. Friends I had not seen in many years. Too many. Sometime not long after I aged out of the foster care system I found myself at the doorstep of St. Peter’s Inn, a homeless shelter for young women ages 17 to 21 housed in St Peter’s Episcopal Church. I was young, angry and lost. I can’t...