Tidbits

 Anna sent me this perfect picture of Tommy. What a good, photogenic boy!!  This picture is now my phone background. 

My life has become a big cycle of 12 hours on, 12 hours off. This group home is getting cleaner now that I’m cleaning it. The house supervisor refuses to do household chores (and also seems unable to) and the residents of the group home aren’t able to do much either. My Clorox wipes are finally not coming up so “muddy”. This place was gross when I started. Now we can walk in and not immediately smell funk. 

Every few mornings, I make the guys a big pan of scrambled eggs. They know how to do everything else breakfast related.  Except clean up after themselves. One of the guys helped me in the kitchen. I gave him one simple task at a time. Like, “find me a frying pan.”  “Get out the milk”. Etc. Then I told him to put a little butter in the frying pan, and he scooped half the entire tub into the pan. When I saw it, I was like ohhhh. No, just a teeny amount of butter. I showed him how much and dumped the rest back into the tub. A couple days later, the same thing happened. I asked him to put a little bit in, and he didn’t remember my little lesson about how much butter to put in a pan. Once again, he dumped half the tub out. 

That was eye opening. While this job may be easy, it’s still necessary. These people truly can’t live on their own. When I was a CASA volunteer, I worked with some teens that had “preparation for adult living classes” that taught them this stuff. They all caught on, as did my daughter whenever I taught her basic skills like this at home. 

I still have a lot of down time at night. I often doze off, and set my alarm for the top of every hour. This dozing causes me to not sleep much at home so I need to stop doing it if I want healthy sleep. So I brought my laptop, and I try to work on my writing. It’s hard, though, knowing that I was not believed in therapy about some key elements of my story. I just wish people knew that I am absolutely understanding of the fact that other women had different pressures put on them than me. When I told my cousin that my first boyfriend and I wanted 7 kids, she grabbed my hair and slammed my head against the wall. I got away from her and kicked her in the crotch and she grabbed my hair again. Then she forgot about the 7 kids and told me to cut my fucking hair or she would. At the time, my hair went all the way down my back. There was another time that she assaulted me that she spit in my face. That’s actually more disgusting than you think. 

What would eventually happen was that, of course, I would end up working at the child abuse shelter in Arizona. I would contract lice from the kids and it would be too difficult to comb them out of waist-length hair. So I cut it. It was also too infested to donate to a wig maker. With short “boy hair”, I was able to comb the lice out successfully. My major haircut was only a few days after the 9/11 attacks. I was watching rescue attempts at ground zero when my long ponytail was cut off. It was probably 9/14 or 15 😢. 

I wish I could be the type of woman who is believed and who “deserves” to be heard, etc. Then maybe I could go get help for some of my trauma responses. Writing my book, The Child Advocate has made me realize the astronomical amount of things I’ve been through working with children, elderly, and disabled people in precarious circumstances. I’ve absorbed a lot of *their* trauma as well. Normal people can go to therapy and unload this and be validated. I can’t. That makes writing hard. 

So I don’t know what else to do with my down time at work if I want to not doze and get healthy sleep at home. I do not want to bring any sewing projects whatsoever, because I’m afraid the nastiness of the house will embed into my sewing projects. 

The good news is I got an amazing paycheck and bought a couch for our living room with a hide a bed!!  I have a hide a bed couch at my mom’s house in Houston, but it was lest cost and hassle to just get a new one. Previously, there was no couch in our living room, just a table and chairs. Now when Anna comes, she can spend the night!  

Kevin reiterated several times that I never got a paycheck that big when I worked at his workplace. He does, because he makes a salary. (He’s a supervisor).  But I was hourly, and I reminded him that I did get paychecks like this when we had a lot of hours. I knew it was not what he meant. He meant that this is more steady. I know, and I’m honestly still jealous as fuck of him being on the Austin crew. The Austin crew seems so much more chill than the Houston crew. But not only are they fully staffed with my husband on board, but my husband is actually so extremely proud of me for other jobs I’ve had that aren’t working with him. He doesn’t really understand the astronomical amount of trauma and burden I uncovered by writing about it. 

So since I’m trauma blocked from writing on my down time, and the dozing interferes with my  regular sleep at home, the only other option is to doom scroll. I try to “positive scroll” but it inevitably turns to doom scrolling. 

I can’t wait for my next big paycheck. They’re a plus!!