Woah, you're actually interested in fostering?

I caught the attention of someone on the subway today when I got snippy about the HUGE CROWD OF PEOPLE right by the door when there were many many open seats. People should realize that sitting is sometimes a good-thing-to-do, just as standing for someone who needs a seat is a good-thing-to-do. So I barely was able to get on the train, then stepped on a guy's bag nearly falling into the crowd of people, and then said a little louder than I meant to "there are seats, why is everyone crowded by the door?"

It turned out that I actually know the person whose attention I caught. Well, let me rephrase.

She knows me. Her boyfriend lives in my building but more to the point, I've met her at shul. Apparently. Still haven't a clue but we had a great conversation about how she's having 17 people over for Shabbat dinner tonight and I'm having a 17 year old over for Shabbat dinner tonight. (If she comes home. Last week she didn't get home until after I left at 6:30; I thought she'd be home by now, but she's not.)

Well, after she expressed shock that I have a 17 year old (in casual conversation I call her "my 17 year old" as opposed to "my foster daughter"--if I can avoid the fawning over how wonderful I am, I'm a happier girl), and I explained that she's my foster daughter, and she did the requisite fawning, she said that she wants to be a foster parent!

Her mother died when she was 16, she didn't have a relationship with her father, and until the last minute no one in her family was willing to step up, so she almost ended up in foster care. It turns out that the relative who did finally step up stole her social security* so she thinks she would have been better off if she had been in the system. And now she wants to be a foster parent, too. If I ever figure out her name, I'll have to keep an eye open for a two bedroom apartment for her.


* As I type this, I wonder if the relative used that money to pay for the added expenses of raising a teenager. But probably not, given how the story went.

A Meme

I don't normally do the meme thing. Especially since they extremely very much often have nothing to do with the subject of this blog.

But hey, "7 deadly sins"? Talk about NOTHING to do with the blog. I've heard that the 7 deadly sins have something to do with one of those branches of Christianity. Or maybe all of them? Dunno.

Anyway, this looks particularly self-absorption-inducing and I love me some self-absorption.

I think it's "supposed" to be one sin per day, but let's just throw them all out at once:

Day 1: Pride - 7 Great Things about Yourself

1. Me? I've got mad skillz at hating myself.
2. I am the world's worst granddaughter. I could win a prize. Really.
3. According to the people I know in real life, I am the world's greatest humanitarian, single-handedly saving the world for all the poor kids with sucky parents.
4. I sleep very well.
5. I get lots of great ideas. It's the follow-through that's the problem.
6. I make a killer lime cheesecake.
7. I'm very good at data entry.

Day 2: Envy - 7 Things You Lack or Covet

1. Yarn. I mean, I have some. But I want it all.
2. Good friendships. Or the ability to have good friendships.
3. Self-confidence. Or was that not obvious already?
4. A house. (As in, I want to own a house. With a sunroom with tiled floor, and with a yard.)
5. Goals.
6. Athletic inclination.
7. Clothes that fit.

Day 3: Wrath - 7 Things that Piss You Off

1. People who stand by the door of the subway at rush hour when there are seats available
2. People who are obviously walking slower than me who cut me off in crosswalks having caught up to me at the light.
3. Needing to go to work.
4. People at work who call multiple times with the same question.
5. Not enough hours in the day. I need more hours, people!
6. When my coworkers don't answer the phone and I have to.
7. Stupid people.

Day 4: Sloth - 7 Things You Neglect to Do

1. Dishes.
2. Vacuum.
3. Wash the kitchen floor.
4. Change my car's oil.
5. Review my credit report every year.
6. Go to bed at a reasonable hour.
7. Invite people for Shabbat meals.

Day 5: Greed - 7 Worldly Material Desires

1. Shoes. If I go to the mall, I will undoubtedly come home with shoes that I didn't intend to buy. (I went yesterday for a specific pair/function of shoes; came home with those and another pair. Not my fault, though--Odessa made me go to the extra shoe store!)
2. Yarn.
3. Books.
4. DVDs of my favorite TV shows.
5. Earrings and necklaces.
6. Craft supplies.
7. I need a new mattress and I love to sleep; can I count a mattress as a "worldly material desire"?

Day 6: Gluttony - 7 Guilty Pleasures

1. Cola. I don't actually have a brand preference though I gravitate towards the one whose initials are CC. This is reason number 1 why my clothes don't fit.
2. Dunkin Donuts coffee with cream and sugar. This is reason number 2 why my clothes don't fit.
3. Grey's Anatomy and West Wing. And Glee. And Private Practice (a season and a half behind, no spoilers please).
4. Twitter.
5. French fries. Or spaghetti. Not together.
6. Cheese.
7. Anything made with ground beef. (Have you noticed that most of my guilty pleasures involve calories?)

Day 7: Lust - 7 Love Secrets

1. See: April Kempner from Grey's Anatomy. Though I guess that while this is a secret, it isn't so much a sin.
2. Oh dear G-d I have to come up with 6 more?

Race and Consequences

Odessa is now quiet after about thirty minutes of very loud cursing and then a phone call with one of the many adults in her life who care about her. She had the phone on speaker for the phone call so with some effort I eavesdropped. The best line from the woman she was talking to was "cable is not a life or death thing. When you're paying your own bills, you can have cable."

[That I don't have cable is a huge thing in our house. Apparently, there is nothing in life if one doesn't have cable. I hear quite frequently when Odessa is on the phone with friends that there is nothing to do here because we don't have cable.]

Okay, so here's what happened.

Odessa had a great day at school today and I ruined it. She did not get suspended for fighting (a relief) but in my adult, parental-role opinion, I thought we needed to talk about problem solving and not punching people. I brought it up over dinner, where I learned some new vocabulary ("popping off" is swinging at someone, "I stole her" is "I punched her") and explained that I understood why she felt that she needed to preserve her dignity after her (now former) friend swung at her, but that punching someone isn't the answer. I addressed her safety and the consequences that she could potentially face if she punched someone out of a school context.

And she said "look, we're not like you. White people are calm and s***. I ain't racist but we ain't like that."

To which I responded, "It sounds to me like you're saying that black people solve their problems by hitting each other."

Yep, that's what she thinks. So from you, my loyal readers/friends: how do I respond? How do I recognize and acknowledge and celebrate differences in our backgrounds while not allowing her to think that violence is acceptable?

I know that one thing I should do is to make sure that I socialize with Odessa in situations where there are African Americans who are as calm as I am. This is a problem as we don't go anywhere together and I don't have friends over ever.

Other advice, please?

Anyway, after the part of the conversation above, I told Odessa that there were going to be consequences for fighting. I said that I was proud of her for telling me what happened and for telling me the truth, and because of that the consequences are going to be less than what they might have been. Before I was able to tell her the consequence, however, she started yelling about how "I didn't even get f***ing suspended" and "I'm done talking about this" and she stormed off to her room where she did just what I do when I'm really upset, which is to curse. Very loud.

Lots of f*** this and bit** that.

Then she called a friend and kept up the cursing. It was a lot less stressful for me with her in her room cursing. My favorite line of that first phone call was "What the fuck you gonna consequence ME for? I didn't even get fucking suspended, bitch!" Still not sure why she raised her voice and directed to me "You can call the police if you f***ing want, I ain't do nothin' man!"

So this was our evening.

(The consequence, by the way, is an evening without getting to use my/the computer. ONE evening. But not until she lets me tell her what the consequence is, so she extended it a day by not letting me tell her what it is.)

Discipline

This morning Odessa knocked on my door (while I was being my typical adolescent hitting-snooze-and-fighting-waking-up self) to explain why she was in a nasty mood last night (more on that later, perhaps):

"I might be suspended."

Why? "My friend stole the money I was going to use to buy my bus pass out of my purse so I had to fight her, so I might be suspended but I haven't gotten the papers yet."

"Well, we'll talk about fighting later [keep in mind I was just waking up] but do you have enough money to get to school?"

So I gave her the money I had in my wallet (meaning that including the advances on her allowance that I gave her last week so that she could get to school*, I've given her $100 so far this week). It's not her fault that her friend stole her money and I'm not going to penalize her for it, though I do think that she would have had better luck getting the money returned if she hadn't responded by fighting. (The only conversation I can imagine in my head now is "I shouldn't have fought but she started it by stealing my money and she should have to pay me back.")

If she does get suspended, she's coming to work with me. I can find lots of scanning she can do for me so she isn't bored--and also isn't on facebook all day.

*Regarding why it sounds like she needs to use her allowance to pay for her transportation to school: where we live, there is a student transit subsidy. If she gets the card, she can pay $30/month to get to and from school. I give her that $30 at the beginning of the month. (This is the money that was stolen, though since I didn't have any $10 bills, I actually gave her $40.) If she chooses not to get the student card to buy the student pass, her transportation to and from school totals about $7/day ($35/wk vs $30/month) which comes from her allowance. She then complains about not having money from the FORTY DOLLARS PER WEEK that I give her to do things like get her hair and nails done, though we worked out her allowance together, and the $40/week was supposed to cover things like hair and nails if she used the money responsibly.

Teenagers and a kosher kitchen

I got a request for more blogging about kashrut (kosher-ness). And since I just came back from the grocery store with kosher beef and a package of frozen shrimp (not to mention some other very not kosher frozen items) now seemed like as good a time as any to do so.

In eleven months, I never really figured out what Sabrina would eat. She was only with me for 4 dinnertimes a week, ate lunch at school, and ate cheerios for breakfast. Plus, she was hungry when I picked her up from school and then when we got home at 6:15 post-snack and I still needed to cook dinner, she was no longer hungry (thanks to the snack).

But I actually need to feed Odessa. Like, multiple times a day. She won't eat school lunch and is with me every day including weekends (this confuses my friends who got used to Sabrina being at her dad's on the weekend--they now think that all foster placements are for weekdays only). And she's old enough to fend for herself.

This last is really the problem.

So I've given over the microwave to her. She can have whatever she wants heated in the microwave, as long as she uses paper plates and plastic silverware. (I'm just hoping that my complete freak-out when she used a real plate in the microwave made her understand the severity of not following that rule.)

Even so, she complained to her social worker that she doesn't like what I cook. She eats what I cook, happily, so that was news to me, but it was more that I don't cook what she wants. I explained to the social worker that yes, there are rules about what can and can't happen in my kitchen and that is why Odessa isn't allowed free rein, but that I let her use the microwave, etc etc. I think that satisfied the social worker.

Well, Friday night Odessa started in on one of her mumble-the-same-thing-over-and-over-until-I-want-to-tell-her-that-if-she-says-she-wants-XX-one-more-time-she'll-never-get-it patterns, this time "I want shrimp." After about the 15th time I apologized that we can't have shrimp in the house. She got pissy, as she does frequently (she IS a teenager, after all!), and I don't want to reward that behavior, but...

I told her I would buy some not at all kosher frozen items for her and while I was in that aisle, I noticed that one of the shrimp things was on sale, so I bought it for her. I can't imagine that microwaved frozen shrimp scampi is any good, but I think that if I can get her to realize that I DO do things for her, she might be more willing to ask me to do things for her, which will make me better able to do things for her.*

*Earlier today she was on the phone with her cousin and said she couldn't go to her cousin's son's birthday party because she didn't have money to get there by public transit. (She was sitting next to her allowance, but setting that aside...) She told her cousin that she wasn't going to ask me for a ride. I was sitting right there to hear the conversation. When she got off the phone, I asked: "You're not going to ask me for a ride?" Odessa: "No." Me: "Is that because if you ask me for a ride and I say yes, then you'll be mad because you can't say that I never do anything for you, and if I say no, you'll be mad because I'm not giving you a ride?" Odessa: "Yes." The conversation then turned to how I need to be psychic. Not gonna happen. So she needs to get more comfortable asking me for things.

Language suggestions, please!

Yesterday was the first day of new classes for Odessa (block scheduling). She came home with some things that I needed to sign but she got home rather late (evening credit recovery classes plus public transit problems) and was very tired and said "I'll give them to you in the morning."

It turned out that one was something I needed to sign (fine) and two were page-long "parent/guardian survey"s. As in, lots to fill out.

And it turned out that one of them was supposed to be done by today. Odessa had given it to me maybe five minutes before she needed to leave for school. So I filled out the basics (contact information) and said that I would email her teacher.

Here's the question: I don't want to completely throw Odessa under the bus for not giving me enough time to fill it out, but I don't want to place all the blame on myself because if she had given it to me last night, I would have finished it.

What should I tell her teacher?

Teenagers.

I really ought to be blogging more about my experiences with Odessa. I'm taking a few moments right now to do so, even though I yikesreallyneedtobegettingreadyforwork, because there's no way I can vent/record this morning's interaction in only 140 characters!

Yesterday morning we had this conversation:
Odessa: Do I get my allowance today? or tomorrow?
Me: You get your allowance on Sundays.
Odessa: Well, I'm getting my hair done tomorrow so I need money.
Me: You get your allowance on Sundays. You need to think about whether you are going to have money before you make plans like getting your hair done.*
Odessa: She can't do it on Sunday because she won't have time to do it all.** [Walks away in a teenager-y huff.]

Last night I got home from work to be greeted by this conversation:
Odessa: Can you take me to the beauty supply shop?***
Me: Not tonight, I'm sorry. You have homework due tomorrow and I need to go to the grocery store and cook for tonight and tomorrow.
Odessa: It's just extra credit; I don't need to do it. I just want to.
Me: I'm sorry but I don't think we have time tonight.

a few moments later... Me: I'm happy to take you to the beauty supply store on Sunday.
Odessa: You don't need to take me anywhere. I'll get there myself.****

Last night, disaster with her extra credit assignment. I can't even begin to share how it went, other than that it took HOURS and involved quite a bit of cursing on Odessa's part. Frequently because I was unable to answer a question when she was the one with the computer in front of her to get the answer. Things were not improved by my refusal to write excuse notes for her absences from her history class that were either 1. before she lived with me or 2. she lived with me, but she wasn't absent from school on those days...at least not as far as I knew.

So then came this morning. I checked in with her when I woke up (she gets up before I do!) and she was still very clearly peeved with me. As in, she wouldn't answer my questions. She did, to her credit, turn down her music when I asked her to because I don't want it bothering the neighbors through her wall. She has a half day today, and it's Friday, so I was particularly interested in what she might be doing after school. And when she'll be home. So I asked:
Me: Do you have plans after school today?
Odessa: I ain't have no money so I can't go anywhere.
Me: Then I will see you when I get home from work. I'm going to go get myself ready for the day.

I went to my room and went to the bathroom. (TMI? It's relevant to the story.) There was a knock on the bedroom door while I was still...indisposed. I said "hold on a minute," finished, washed my hands, and went to open the door. There was an angry knock as I got to the door. (my interpretation? "why aren't you opening the effing door?") And then we had this conversation:
Odessa: I only have $5 on my [public transit fare card] and it's $6***** to get back home so I need $2.
Me: Okay, hold on just a second. [after rummaging in my wallet, gave her $2. Did not explicitly tell her that it is coming out of her allowance next week.]
about 45 seconds later I realized that I needed to add to the conversation:
Me: Hey Odessa? I don't always have cash on me, so it would be helpful if you could think ahead if you're going to have a problem getting to school.
Odessa: I tried to get my allowance yesterday.
Me: That wasn't my point. Yesterday when you got home, you knew you only had $5 on your card. If you had let me know then, I could have gotten cash when I went to the store if I didn't have any. [Not to mention that if I had been in the shower I wouldn't have heard the knock on the door.]
Odessa: [No response.]

I'm telling you, she's going to drive me to drink. :-)


*I didn't say quite so many words. I don't remember exactly how the conversation went. It was something like this, though.
**No, I have no idea how a weekend day has less time in it than a school day.
***Quite possibly the first time she's asked me to do something for her instead of "I need..."
****I still haven't figured out how she's planning to pay for the hair she intends to buy. Hair care is part of her allowance.
*****There is a student fare that is $30 per month. Or she can spend over $30 per week if she loses her student card. I give her $30 per month on top of her allowance; if she loses the card, she has to pay for her transportation to school out of her allowance.