Sometimes I have the best job. Many times, often in the same day, I bemoan the fact that people can be so terribly cruel, especially to children, but then sometimes ... just sometimes ...

I get to watch the wee ones on my caseload take swimming lessons. (And knowing these wee ones, they might have wee-d in the pool, but when you're a four year old little boy ....) After my step class, coming down the hallway of the Y, I spotted one of my foster moms watching through the pool window at her borrowed boys splash, kick and blow bubbles for the first time ever. I watched them shiver and shriek and push their little tummies out ... and then I watched them look up and search anxiously for their borrowed mom, and relax when she and their borrowed dad laughed and waved to them.

One of my foster moms always tells her adopted kids, "I had my other babies in my tummy, but I had you in my heart."

I couldn't imagine not being in the kid business.

(For those of you who know from before ... last September I left my dear teens in detention ... and yes, for all their rottenness, contraband hiding, sprinkler head breaking, cell flooding selves, they are so dear to my heart. I left to co-supervise a program that utilizes highly trained volunteers to monitor dependency [foster care] cases and be the voice of the child in the courtroom. I'm so blessed to be able to actually get paid for this. I love supervising my volunteers. I love having normal work hours. But more than any of that, I love being in the kid business.)
O, I tried. Several times, in fact, to go back to the MSN page. But somewhere in the past two years, I've lost the desire. Heaven's sakes. I even tried to go back through ALL of the old posts to delete anything that had to do with the former life ... but that was so many posts ... And then, of course, I realized that I didn't want to delete everything that had to do with my former life.

I couldn't face the images on the page ... the fonts .... the title. But now I get that that's ok, and the only person that makes me do things ... is me. I {am} a slow genius. And then I started to get all brave on the inside - and I look at the fabulous examples of Chelle and Fairlight and Meg and Jungle Mama and I thought maybe, just maybe, I could just switch. Start over.

Sometimes you just don't know the things that are going to weigh you down.

And I just can't let something as {ridiculous} as this weigh me down. ;)