Creating my future, one miracle at a time

Well, it was exhausting!  We spent most of it in the car.  —The rental car.  Shelby was already here, there were transportation problems, so we brought him home with us last night.  So he was here for breakfast, which he thought I was going to cook for him (ha).  But he found food and ate.

We took Thomas to class, and then Shelby and I went to look at a 1980 Cutlass Supreme.  It was grand!  Back when cars were still cars.  You could have put 4 people in the back seat, and they wouldn't have had to touch each other.  Bench seats in the front, gears on the column, it was just fabulous.  Shelby really  really wants me to buy it, but I'm not sure.  It's cool, and I just want it to drive when I don't have any other car, but I remember how hard it was to park my 1975 Chevrolet Caprice Classic, (I had it in college, early 80's) and in those days parking spaces were bigger than now.   We stopped at a gas station to get Coke and Dr. Pepper, and Shelby got peanuts and put them in the coke bottle.  It was a flashback to my past.  My dad did that too.

We dashed home to pick up Thomas's best friend, Matt R.  He's bowled with us before, and everybody just loves him.  By then it was time to pick Thomas up and get over to the bowling alley.  Shelby just fit right in with Thomas's Asperger's group.  It was a big group this time.  12 of the young adults, and 5 of us parents.  Then Cheeburger, Cheeburger, for heartattack on a plate burgers.  Thomas got his food early, and he and I had to leave while everyone else was waiting for food.  Leaving Matt & Shelby with the group,  Back to the restaurant, to take Matt home in time.  Back to UAH to get Thomas.  Finally home for a rest.  Or not.  Shelby was still keyed up and talkative.  He's high energy, that kid.

Saturday we tried to catch our breath from Friday.  Then Shelby wanted to go out for chinese buffet food.  I agreed, because I can actually afford to feed two giant teenage boys there.  My vet was there, and he knew about Shelby and came over and introduced himself and shook hands with him and Thomas.

After lunch we went to the thrift store to drop things over and Shelby found an old reel to reel projector from the 60's - 70's.

We also went to the KIA dealer to check out this buy a minivan get a Rio free.  Well, the van is grossly overpriced, and the little car has no airconditioning and no radio!  I told the sales boy that I was sure it was illegal to sell a car in AL without air.  Besides that, the boys couldn't even get IN the back seat!  Thomas squeezed into the driver's seat, but his legs were crunched up to the steering wheel.  He has to have legroom.  He's so tall that when he crashed the Versa, the airbag didn't even touch him, he was so far back.

I fed them spagetti for supper, and met Shelby's emergency foster mom to give him back.

I NEEDED Sunday to recover.  This is one unbelieveably high energy kid!  Really sweet, and eager to please, but horribly immature, and not well educated.  I'll comment on him more later.

My darling was gone for all of this, he left Friday AM to go to North Carolina to hang off of a cliff.

I guess I haven't mentioned that we're taking in a foster child.  Not something I ever thought I would do, honestly.  But this specific child, well, it just had to be. 

I found out about him through someone at DHR who found me as a contact in this area for Asperger's.  She'd been looking all over for a "placement" for this young man.  His name is Shelby, He's 19 (In fact, his birthday is one day after Thomas's), and has Asperger's, and is over 6' tall, like Thomas.  It seems that it's harder to find a placement for a big teenage boy.  I sent the info and request out to my lists, and such. 

Then I started thinking about how really, we were the perfect place for him to be.  For various and sundry reasons.  (our experience with AS, we knew what it was like to have to teenage boys, and one of those was completely out of the house now, so we had the room and all, etc) I approached Mark, and somewhat to my surprise, he was immediately on board.  Then, of course, I asked Thomas how he felt (and if had had the least amount of negative feeling about it, of course it would have been a no go).  He thought it was fine, might be fun, he could be the big brother, etc.  Thomas is much more socially/emotionally advanced than Shelby, since Thomas has had intervention and training and support since he was a baby, while Shelby was undiagnosed until later, and then there has been all that being shuffled around in the system.  so maybe he could be mentor.  And since Shelby is the "talky" kind of AS, he might bring Thomas out a bit.

Yes, we've met him.  All three of us went over there (the county next to ours) and we met at DHR.  He's a really sweet kid.  yes, quite tall, and big, and he has light red hair.  He seemed to like us, and thought he'd like to be our foster child. 

So now, we are in the process of 11 weeks of classes, having our fingerprints sent to the FBI and the ABI, and being checked out in the Child Abuse Network, and trying to get our house to the safety standards necessary to be foster parents [if everyone had to do this to be parents, there'd be alot fewer babies born, and no need for DHR], and filling out paperwork, paperwork, paperwork, and taking pictures of the house and all the pets and things, so that Shelby will have an idea of what he's getting into, and vaccinating all 4 house cats, and I'm going to have to replace my lost Social Security Card, so they can have a copy on file, and on and on.  And I have to clear out the bedroom I'm giving him, which is not Mat's, I didn't want Mat to feel to replaced, but is that room where we put things we can't find a spot for, or are "temporarily" there for say the last five years... and get a bed/mattress/etc. 

Since Shelby's still classified as a child, I have to make my home safe enough for a 5 year old.  There's only one set of standards for children (another for infants), so that's what I have to go by.  Things you wouldn't think to do for a teenager, like locking up all the cleaning chemicals.  The minimun standards book is only 69 pages.  In the end, all this cleanup and lock up won't be a bad thing, it'll give us an excuse to go through things we'd been avoiding in that extra room, and get stuff out of the garage and thrown away -- like maybe 15 cans of paint, each either completely dry or with an inch of paint in the bottom, and many of them moved from our previous house!

So, speaking of all that kind of stuff, I better get on with it.  I promised myself I'd get a lot done this weekend.