I hope you come back and finish this, because I have what I think wouldn't be a threadjack (though about the problems of no money rather than excess) that would be nice to put in a JBS-free space. I mean, I'd like to read it for less selfish reasons too.

I've written off all the money I've "lent," though I could use some of it back these days.

1: You should ask heebie to lend you money. It works the first time!

Did the rest of you get emails from Heebie asking to borrow $800 like I did?

I've got related issues going on that I really can't talk about even anonymously, but that are bothering me a lot, and I've got literally no one in the combination of intimate enough to talk to this kind of thing about, but not personally involved in it, to talk to. I'm about to go dig a hole in a field somewhere just to shout complaints into.

Vent here! We won't try to fix you. Or we will, futiley, but at least you can air it out, and plus I'm curious.

6: May I recommend something like a curse tablet? Write your complaints on a teeny piece of tin and then chuck them down a well.

Empress:
vent away. or email and vent. no judging.

OT: There is a new danger to our youth! http://christwire.org/2012/03/vegetarianism-atheism-and-masturbation-the-new-threesome-youth-trend-threatening-american-morality/

7: Oh, man, there's got to be a market for curse tablets nowadays. Etsy? Something!

Sorry, I'm just being annoying. None of it is my secrets, meaning that I can't see any way to feel secure enough to vent other than one-on-one in non-written form with a confidante who doesn't exist. I just feel slightly better complaining that I have something to complain about.

Also OT: This is a great series of Doonesbury strips on for-profit colleges. http://doonesbury.slate.com/strip/archive/2012/8/6

OT: A colleague of my mine is looking to take a 5 week vacation in SE Asia (mostly Laos) and is looking to fly into Narnia (from NYC) and tells me that he thinks $1,000 a round trip ticket sounds a bargain. Is it? Does anyone who knows about these sorts of things think it will go higher in the near future?

Seems cheap to me. Having never bought a ticket to Asia.

It costs $300 or so to get to Omaha and Narnia is well past Omaha.

It sounds like a good price to me. It's only bout 25% more than a cheap flight to Europe. But lets wait till our resident Narnian shows up.

Maybe I should go to Europe instead of Omaha some of the time.

Just have all your relatives move there.

Seems very cheap to me, though that's not to say there aren't cheaper tickets available. The cheapest I'm seeing from a quck web search for a two week return to Narnia from London is GBP 850. Most are GBP 1000 or above. Even using flexible dates for a shorter trip, it's tough to find anything under GBP 700.

As this seems to be the OT thread, here's an article featuring a nasty photo of the guy whose face got chewed off by the homeless dude.

I had a friend who would write down bad things he wanted to happen to bad people and put the scraps of paper into a wooden box. Or maybe it was just their names. And then I found fivedollars.com in Wisconsin because I know there are interesting details to the story that I can't remember.

20: I'm glad you told us what the photo was before I followed the link. It sounds even worse than this.

Okay, now that I have time for my complaints, here's the first one. Colton, who decided against leaving his home state and being adopted by us, is still living in a tiny town in the foster/group home (one dad, ten boys, various additional paid caretakers who are I think the dad's girlfriend and a neighbor and older boys who were in foster care there) after turning 18 and was supposed to start community college this fall. Except when he and I talked about this yesterday I found out that he's not going to be able to start until he can buy a car and I believe the only job he's found has been part-time something at a nursing home.

He's being very frugal for an 18-year-old, but even though his college is going to be subsidized by the federal government, he's not going to be able to start on time and this drives me crazy. I think he's definitely college material and it's an outcome that he wants, but I don't know if it's going to come together. He'll still be counted as being in foster care (and thus, I believe, his foster dad can keep getting maintenance payments) as long as he's working at least 20 hours/week or going to school.

For some reason, this is just really depressing me and annoying me. I don't have the financial resources to help him and there's not much I can do with advice either because it just sucks. He seems to accept the situation as just how things are, but blech. He was so proud of himself for graduating and so excited about college and now he's not even sure if he'll be able to start by spring.

And I'll make actual blog posts about this for people who follow me there, but the other thing that's really upsetting me is that Val and Alex have gone back into foster care because their (semi?)custodial parent made a huge mistake and did something illegal, realized that this was a problem and confessed to the caseworker, but now is going to have to do a lot more work to get them back and their unhelpful caseworker thinks the kids will end up being adopted. The five months they spent with us will count toward the 15 out of 24 a child has to spend in care before the case goal automatically moves toward termination of parental rights, and it's unlikely that their parent could even get an acceptable apartment in the next 10 months while keeping up with all the other parts of the caseplan.

I'm really heartsick about that, because this was/is a good parent with some serious challenges. I understand why there are certain zero tolerance rules, but I'm just completely heartsick about this and don't think there's anything I can do. We certainly couldn't take the kids again, and I told our worker I'd be glad to do respite or talk to their new foster family if there were any questions, but there were no families like us that work directly with the state available and so they're in a private agency and I'll probably never hear about them again. And the kids were doing so well with their parent....

That's all heartbreaking, particularly about V&A, whom we'd all come to know a bit and were rooting for.

23: What about a used scooter for Colton? They're not the safest thing in the world, but if he's a responsible kid, will always wear a helmet, etc., it'd be a lot more affordable than a car in comparable condition.

And, yeah, both 23 & 24 suck.

Sorry to hear about the kids, especially Val and Alex.

Ugh, I'm really sorry to hear that.

Thorn, both those stories are heartbreaking. I don't know what to say.

Val and Alex are really good (and cute and white) kids and there are tons of families who are looking for kids that age, so I'm sure they'll have been placed with a preadoptive home and that will be the goal. Most of the private agencies here are even less friendly to birth family than the state agency, but I'm hoping the foster family will be the kind that tries to keep the kids in touch. I think they're out of relatives who could step in, though I'm also going to see if I can get in touch with their parent or at least grandmother and see if there's anything I could do. There's a cousin in our town who's Val's age whose family seems to be healthy, but I'm not sure if her family could afford to take on two more kids or pass the background check or anything. Just blech.

(And yes, this is a little bit hypocritical since I'm more-than-partway hoping that Nia will be available for adoption in another year, but this is just a hard job and I'm still taking her to see her grandma weekly and will do everything I can to support her going home if that becomes her goal. I'm also feeling a little guilty because what if we hadn't pushed for Val and Alex to go home when they did? That's still a stupid way to think because Lee wanted them out of our house and so they'd probably have been in another foster home rather than with family where one parent broke parole and the grandparent got involved in unproductive stuff and then they moved back with the other parent to the other grandparent's house and it's not as if that would have made the state more likely to push for reunification. Argh.)

Sir Kraab, I'll ask Colton about a scooter! I'd say he's very responsible for an 18-year-old boy, which I realize isn't much of a compliment, but hadn't considered the scooter option on country roads.

To clarify, their goal will technically be "return to parent" but their parent has a really unhelpful caseworker who does things like look at that parent's work schedule (or my work schedule, when I was in the picture) and then schedule meetings right in the middle of the busiest time and get huffy that she was supposed to pay attention to the work schedule in the first place. And their parent has been working full(ish)-time with an hourlong bus ride each way, no car of course, plus managing all the mandatory classes and things to convince the court that progress is being made. Adding more on top of that even while taking away the work of parenting kids full-time is just unlikely to be realistically achievable.

A blog friend of mine, who's foster parenting her adopted daughter's son, wrote recently about that daughter's struggles that overlap in some ways with what's going on here. The cruelty of the culture is just obscene and right now it's really making me sad.

31.last: He'll have to do some checking into what's street legal, whether he needs a motorcycle license, etc. (regulations vary by state and whether he needs a separate license may depend on the scooter's top speed). An electric bike is also a possibility depending on how far he has to go.

I don't really know much about either, but there must be some Mineshaft expertise that can be tapped (LHF) if he's interested.

32. GRRRRRR.

34: It really makes me want to cry. I dislike their worker so much. The first thing she ever said to me was, on the day the kids went into foster care, "The main thing standing between them and reunification is poverty," to which I responded in my sweetest voice, "That's great, then, since that's federally mandated as not being an acceptable barrier to reunification!" There have been plenty of wrinkles in the case since then, but the fact remains that the worker thinks kids are better off not having poor parents when her job is supposed to be helping poor parents access what they need to do a better job. I hope as she gets older and does her job a little more she'll get more perspective, but if she sees these non-abusive parents as bad guys (and I say that as someone who thinks it was appropriate for Val and Alex to be removed when they were) I don't know how she'll deal with truly hurtful parents.

Oh, this all makes me so upset and weepy. (The laryngitis/sinus infection/whatever I have going is not helping either, I'm sure.)

And thanks, all, for the support that I'm not being unreasonably mopey. That helps, though not with the laryngitis.

sorry to hear that about val and alex, thorn. I'm grateful that I have no experience with the system because it does sound heartbreakingly awful.

13: tell your friend to buy that ticket now, because it's unlikely to go lower. my mom scored sub 1K at one point but I don't remember how much...not a lot, I think.

If you are flying to Omaha on Southwest, being ready to hit the check in button exactly 24 hours before the departure time helps a great deal in getting early enough boarding to sit together.

Thanks for finishing this post, interesting.

You do sound like somebody with a high level of tolerance / appreciation for drama -- but not like you are trying to put yourself at the center of it.

And now we know...the rest of the story! (Glad you finished it.)

But in the end they resent me, even after they pay me back. They dislike me and disappear.

In my experience people who have been on the receiving end of extreme generosity (not necessarily measured in $$s as much as timeliness, extremity of need and how unconditionally given it is) almost always end up resenting the giver. Debts that "cannot be repaid" are generally literally that*. and you don't have to delve too deep into psychological speculation to see the self-image problems they generate for the recipient. The giver certainly does not "deserve" that response, but should go into any situation with eyes wide open about how it is likely to play out in the long run.

*Especially if there is continued close contact beyond the period of actual need. Going separate ways increases the chance for eventual rapprochement.