Hello Friday --- Another Adventure in Craftyness

I get to tell you one more of my secrets............................

I am guest designing over at Freckled Fawn all month long!!!!  Eeeeeeeeee!  Yes!

You all know how I love Washi Tape.  This has got to be the very best fit in the history of the scrap world.  At least it is for me.

With that in mind, do pop on over to the Freckled Fawn blog and have a look-see at what I created as my first project.  Here's a sneak to wet your appetite.  But make sure you come on back and read some more of my story.

I'll be creating lots more fun projects for Freckled Fawn so make sure you keep checking back.

And now, a bit more history.

I left off with all the students staring at my mother in her prone state smack in the middle of the parking lot.

While it was horrifying for me in terms of humiliation, it did help my teachers and school principal to realize that I'd been telling the truth.  So Child Protective Services were called. The men in white coats were called.

I hadn't counted on CPS being involved, nor would I have had any idea what that meant any way. At any rate, I hadn't counted on being removed from my mother's custody and placed into the care of strangers.

In my mind, I'd be allowed to stay with my friend Celia and her family until they could determine what needed to be done.  Her mother and father would parent me indefinitely.  They'd already offered to adopt me were my parents to agree.  I was certain I'd have a safe place to be.

However, that is not quite how it worked.  'They' took my mother to the hospital in Clearwater.  The school day wore on and I continued through PE, but as we were out in the field tossing around the soft-ball, some police cars rolled in and with them, the friendly folks at CPS.

When you are a child, no one asks you if it is OK with you if they take you away from everything  you know and place you with complete strangers.  They don't even consider what you might request.  You can beg and plead with them to allow you to stay with your friend and her family.  You can tell them that her father is a pastor.  'They' don't care.  They don't care AT ALL. Ask me how I know.

Instead, they take to a home that is so far from where you live and attend school that you don't even get to go to school.  They take you to what is called a 'foster home'.

Now foster homes come in all different shapes and sizes. Some foster homes are pretty darn wonderful. They come equipped with a mom and a dad and sometimes even some sisters or brothers.  These people will love you like you were their own child.  Since they know you are coming into a strange situation in which you are terrified, they will do everything they can to make you feel at home and to help comfort your poor broken soul.

On the other hand, some foster homes are equipped with money-grubbing, selfish, hateful people who's only reason for opening their home is the extra income that they can 'earn' by doing so.  They offer you a spot in a smelly bed, but there is no place for any belongings you may have.  They throw one hot dog on a plate at dinner time and call that a meal.  You'll get a half a peanut butter sandwich for lunch and a single bowl of cold cereal for breakfast. There will be no one around most of the day to take any kind of care of you.  Their children will think you are their personal punching back or insult receptacle.  Under no circumstances will they carry you to your school, after all, no one is paying them extra for gas.  They won't talk to you any more than they have to.  They won't try to help you to understand what is happening to you.  They are simply collecting the cash for providing a roof over your head and three 'square' meals a day.

You can guess which kind I got.  Yep, it was the second one.  I was there for about two weeks.  I actually think I might have preferred being home with my crazy mother. Not sure though, the jury is still out on that.

After two weeks, the case-worker came one day and told me I was going home.  I panicked.  Was my mother OK? Was she going to be normal?  What had happened?  Where would we stay?  How would we live?  Did anything get 'fixed'?  Had there been a diagnosis?

I got no answers of any kind from the case worker.  None.

We arrived home, I was told to bring my stuff inside.  Mama and the case worker spoke briefly and then off she went, never to be seen again.

Mother wasn't normal, but she wasn't as bad as when I'd returned home.  We'd just have to settle back into something that I hoped would approach normalcy.