Child Advocates Reading

It will be another couple weeks or so until I will be able to take on a case as a child advocate. In the mean time, I am preparing by doing some reading. One book I have already finished is Beyond the Best Interests of the Child. This book is part of a trilogy, and while the other two are good, this one is the most pertinent to what I will be doing.
After I finished "Beyond", I started to read the other two books in the trilogy, but decided against it. Another book I had in my library that is a relevant pick for this is called A Child's Journey Through Placement.




This book is about precisely the title. Unlike most "social work books", these books are completely centered around the child's perspective.

On Wednesday night, the 29th of July, there will be a talk at the Child Advocate's office between new advocates and more tenured ones. I'm looking forward to this as well. Mostly, though, I can't wait to meet "my" kid(s).

My last day 30

Tomorrow is my birthday!!! I'll be 31 flavors!!!
I worked today for the first time in a week. I'm happy to announce that my nightmarish back pain is no longer a "Sharp Pain". It's graduated to a "Dull Soreness." But, it still twinges to bend over. I never realized before how much I bend over at work. I didn't think I did, and told the doctor that. However, I bend down to talk to kids on their level. I bend over to constantly pick up toys from the floor. And- I pick up Annalise a LOT!!! I never realized how much I carry her around, even though she's two now. However, she's pretty cool about me telling her "No, sweetie, Mommy's back hurts" when she holds up her arms. There is no traumatization. I seriously think I read too much attachment parenting stuff before she was born. So much of that stuff has proven to be nonsense.

On a happier note, I am going to try and get Annalise's daycare a free field trip to the children's museum where I work. There are 12 children and 6 staff, including the owner. Of the 12 children, there is 1 six week old baby, 2 one year olds, Annalise is the only 2 year old, and everyone else is 3 and up. If there is anyone I have to pay for after my membership (I can get a lot of people in for free, but not sure how many- two and under doesn't "count" towards the total), then I'll just pay via payroll deduction. I really want to make the field trip a donation. The daycare is very inexpensive, very good, and Annalise loves it and is learning a lot. I would say I feel like I'm getting more than my money's worth, but I don't want to jinx it.

Wordless Wednesday

More back pain drama

I'm taking these heavy doses of pain pills, and I'm still hurting. At least this morning, it's better. I hope I can say that in a few hours. It hurts to sit, and feels better to be walking around. You'd think it would be the opposite.

I'm starting to get annoyed with the doctor. He was pretty much non chalant about it. "You have back pain" was all he seemed to concur. Thanks, asshole, I thought to myself. I KNOW. When I told him, "It feels like muscle and it feels like bone," he told me, "That's called musculoskeletal back pain."

Yesterday, I swore it felt like something was broken, or sprained, or strained or SOMETHING. He gave me the pain pills to overcome pain, but they just made me in pain and loopy.

It occurred to me that maybe doctors see a lot of people who lie about back pain. It's one of the most common reasons for doctor's visits. Maybe doctors are used to people wanting to sue their work places, wanting disability, wanting the drugs, or just wanting sympathy. You cannot prove pain. If it's a symptom of something else, you can prove that something else, but pain in and of itself is unprovable. People know that, and they whip it on.

I'm not one of those people, though. It seriously feels like there's something wrong with me. I don't want prescription pain pills any more than I want a colonoscopy. I actually do want to work, and I am not looking to sue anyone.

Hopefully, this won't still be going on by the time I see the doc next, and if it is, then I want an X-ray

Finances in order

Ever since I've been under insane pressure to hurry up and buy a house, my finances have been all over the place. I can't even tell you how or why. But, now that we decided to wait on home buying, I actually got the chance to sit down and fix all of it. Before, the house fund was money that I was "not allowed" to consider money that I "had". Now, it is. I transferred a good amount of it into my checking account and also got paid this morning.

All 5 of my credit cards had balances on them. I paid them all off. I paid two months' rent, and now don't have to pay rent until the first of October. I paid all the insurance premiums. Then, I started to replentish our emergency fund. That has been non existent lately. The house was an emergency.

When we went to the home buyer's education class, there were "budgeting lessons", as if we were all too stupid to balance a budget. They showed a pie graph of what your budget "should" look like. Your housing payment "should be" about a third of your income. Then, he described all these other "shoulds", and finally said, "You should have about 10-15% of your income left over to do whatever you want with."

I disagree. I think people should have 100% of their income to do whatever they want with... People should be able to decide their own priorities. Do you think we would all live better lives if we could learn to not worship the house so much? And if the size and splendor of the house was really important to one individual, then why wouldn't they be able to spend 50-60 or even 75% of their income on it?

At the children's museum, we used to have this traveling exhibit called Moneyville. It taught kids about money. There was one budgeting game in which all the different expenditures were in the form of cubes. The housing cube was at least two times bigger than all the other blocks. We learn from an early age that the house is king over everything else. I wonder if I'm the only one who has wondered if it doesn't have to be that way.

My back pain nightmare

I have been having lower back pain since last week. I shrugged it off as a result of sleeping on nothing but a box spring at my parents' house when our AC was out. (My mother thought it would be a good idea to put the mattress next to the box spring to make a king size, and have us sleep with our heads on the mattress part and feet on the box spring part.)
But of course, John and Annalise ended up on the mattress, and me on the box spring. I thought that was it, but it wasn't. The pain got worse and worse with each passing day. On Saturday, I was dying to sit through that home ownership class. On Sunday, I started to drive to work, and could not handle sitting in my driver's seat, so I turned around and went home and called out. Today, I was in excruciating pain. I got an appointment for 10 am tomorrow, but could not wait another day. I called the doc back and weasled my way in for today. He gave me two prescription drugs- Naproxin and some other one with a big ass name.

I'll take these for 10 days, and see him again on the 23d. I was literally in tears this morning. I started crying and said out loud, "This is worse than labor". Even though no one could hear, it helped to say it. That's when I knew I had to see the doc right away. There's a lot of helpful info about back pain on WebMD. Now more than ever am I ever glad that I am not being pushed to the brink to buy a house.

What ever happened to "Thou Shall Not Kill"???

I was laid up in bed today, because I have a herniated disc. This is one good reason to be happy we decided to wait on home buying- I'm seeing a doctor this week about it, and would have been ravaged with guilt over a medical bill.
Anyway, there's not much to do in bed except read, so I started to read the Bible. I haven't read the Bible in ages, and figured it might be time to do so again.

First, I read the entire book of Esther. I read it several years ago, but forgot the story. It never ceases to amaze me when I realize for myself that a character in the Bible was an advocate. Moses was an advocate, and as I realized today, Esther was, too.

In the beginning of the book, her husband, King Xerxes, is kind of an asshole. He puts his first wife away for the dumbest thing ever. As the book goes on, though, Xerxes seems more and more likeable. He seems like he really wants to have all this power, but doesn't seem to know the right thing to do, and also wants people to like him.

When Mordecai and Esther succeed in their quest to save the Jews from Xerxes' decree, it's really a triumphant story. It really could have ended there. But, Esther and Mordecai are not finished. They go on to mass murder thousands of people- all the people and their families who would have turned against them if the decree had been carried out. It was pretty much a situation of, "Become a Jew, or you die."

I then flipped the pages and found another story. In this story, the prophet Elijah is going at it with over 400 priests of the pagan god, Baal. He has them pray to Baal to see if Baal can set an alter on fire. As the priests pray unsuccessfully, Elijah taunts them. He says something to the effect of Baal must be jacking off, or on the shitter. Mean, but funny. Elijah then prays to God, and God sets the alter on fire immediately, even after it had been doused three times with water. The 400 pagan priests are humiliated.

End of story, right? God wins? But no- Elijah had to rub it in even further and go and KILL all of the priests. I couldn't help wonder- why was that necessary?

So, I put the Bible down and rested a minute. I picked it up again and said, ok, this time I am going to read something that has nothing to do with mass bloodshed. I can do it, really I can.

So I opened it and came to a place where the prophet Jeremiah was asking God for vengeance against a bunch of people who wanted him dead. God responds that all those meanies's children will all starve to death. "All of their boys and girls will starve to death", God promised.

I put the Bible down for good that time, and got out the Everything Quilting Book. I read the history of Quilting in America. It was so much more peaceful.