#7 WHOLE MINUTES OF PROF BUTT

[nerdstreak]

ah youtube you know just what i wanna watch

[canaryatlaw]

Omg I'm so tired. Today was good, it was just LONG. Very long. Sigh. I'm so dead but I still have a lot to talk about and decompress from (if you haven't noticed by now, these posts are my main way of decompressing from my crazy days). Okay. So alarm went off at 7, got up and went to work. I look through the file for today's hearing for a while, then my supervisor asks if I want to go down to court and observe some permanency hearings and I can take notes and such to see what gets asked and all that. So we do. First is a 17 year old girl who's there, and also her 16 year old sister who wasn't there, so after they do the first girl for confidentiality reasons they ask her to step out for her sister's part and the GAL and someone else (I forget) were like "oh will she be ok out there on her own?" and I was right there so I volunteered to go sit with her for like 10 minutes, so we talked. Nice kid, wants to be a cop and looks like she's actually gonna make it to college (this is an incredibly sad fact, but the percentage of foster kids that make it to college is like 3%) so that's good for her definitely. They didn't take too much longer, and then there was another permanency hearing that took for fucking ever, but it was interesting, just sad too. The kid was a 12 year old girl who was there with her grandfather who's the foster father right now and man, I just felt so bad for this kid. Her bio dad is incarcerated and apparently her mom married this asshole and had another kid with him, then he starts smacking the mom around and starts hitting the girl too and the girl is telling her mom but she won't believe her daughter and like, when the girl talked to the court you could tell that she was just so hurt by all of it. Like just so so hurt to feel like her mother betrayed her like that and now she doesn't even want to be in the same room as her, which are pretty intense feelings for a 12 year old. She was really bright too, definitely a smart kid. She really didn't want to do any therapy which I understand, but the judge pushed her into saying she would at least try a few sessions because even if she's not feeling the effects of the trauma now it could affect her down the road. And of course the mom has substance abuse issues and gave a drop that was positive for cocaine in January. I seriously just wanted to hug this poor kid. And the mom is also refusing to let the girl have visits with her little sister, who's like all of 18 months old, as long as she's not visiting with her which is like, so fucking slimy but because the baby isn't court involved there's nothing the judge can do to make that happen (I'm gonna see if there's any case law on that though). And then he yelled at the caseworker because they weren't monitoring the little girl, who only didn't get removed from the home because she was living apart from the mom with her dad at the time (so now she's living with her abusive mom and domestic violence committing father, lovely) so now that she's with them both they need to be watching that. Then there was a whole debate on the permanency goal, because the caseworker was recommending guardianship but as far as permanency goals go you have to rule out the better more permanent options before getting to the less permanent ones, so the judge wanted to know why adoption wasn't being considered, so that was a big thing but he decided not to enter a goal for today and just continue it to the next court date, which makes sense at this point. I did remark to the grandfather and we were walking out that she seems like a really great kid, and he just smiled and was like "oh believe me, I know" and it was really cute. Sometime during my morning I had realized I left my lunch box in my fridge this morning like a fucking middle schooler, so I had to go run out and get food for lunch and dinner because I had packed both, lol. Got pizza first for lunch from that bakery that makes the best New York style pizza I've had in Chicago (I know, a bakery selling pizza sounds ridiculous but this place is just awesome) then ran to the deli to grab a sandwich for later. I got back and started writing up my questions based on the notes I took, and pretty soon it was time to go down for the hearing I was doing. We spent a while talking to the foster mom, and I was alone with her for a good 10 minutes while my supervisor handled another thing. She was really just pissed at the agency because she felt betrayed by how the kids almost got taken from her over the whole heroin dealing boyfriend incident, and some of what she said had legit points but most of it was kind of nuts haha but she was ranting so I mostly just nodded and placated her, saying I understood but as long as the kids are in the system we have to jump through these hoops until they can get officially adopted (she was upset they wanted her to do a psych assessment) and she seemed to understand that mostly. She did bring up God a few times and we had a good little exchange on caring for others and the blessing he puts on our lives. It was good. And then, we were ready to go and I was set to do my first hearing! Ahh, so exciting. It was fine, very basic, though it managed to go on for over an hour (and my feet were killing me by the end). The judge kept kind of interrupting and going on tangents with the worker but he was cool about it like "I don't expect you to know what specific things I want more info on, so I'm sorry for interrupting" which was fine with me haha. But yeah, asked my questions and they mostly resolved the remaining issues. There was a lot of discussion regarding services the kids should be receiving, I know they both have some sort of learning disability/mental processing issue so they need to be dealing with that, and they all want the adoption to go through already because it's already been 2 years since the parental rights were terminated. But yeah, it was good. It was like, 4:20 by the time we got out, so I went back to my office and pulled up my LARC syllabus hoping I could see what reading I had for class tomorrow only to find out the syllabus says there is no class tomorrow, because we're doing individual conferences this week! I was happy to hear that, lol. I headed out a few minutes early to make sure I could make it to the gym for my 5:30 class on time, which ended up being a good call on my part. My job is like, one train stop west and a few blocks south of my church, so I can generally take the bus up the blocks, then take the train west, except now that entrance to the train station is blocked off for construction, and the other entrance is a full two blocks down the road and did I mention it was like 20 degrees out? Yeah, fuck that shit that would make me late anyway. So I called an uber haha and got there in time. For ready, then somewhat confused about which class I was going to because I thought it was Krav Maga when it was really more grappling, which I'm fine with but it is more or less the same class I broke my wrist in so I hesitated a few times with that, lol, but it was mostly fine. There were 6 of us, and I was the only girl. The warm ups and class itself kicked my butt of course, though I do feel good at doing like somersaults and shit because I'm always able to land on my feet with enough force to stand straight up and it works well lol. Then we practiced moves for a bit but it involved hooking an arm around your opponent's neck and kind of pulling them forward, and after a few of those my head started getting a bit dizzy from the pressure on my neck I think, so I bowed out of that a bit early so I didn't wind up like passing out and injuring myself again because I'm sure they are soooo over me getting injured there, lol. But that ended at 6:15, which gave me 15 minutes to get to my conference with my LARC prof because this was the only possible time I could fit it into my schedule, so I ubered again cuz that was the only real choice haha and it worked pretty well. The conference was good, she's an adjunct and doesn't have an office at school so we met in her office in the firm she works at which was cool. She was very encouraging, definitely picked out that I was having issues just organizing stuff because it's all supposed to be so precise, but she said she could tell I was a really good writer, which (as much as I know that already) I always like to hear. I had some time to get back to church for small group that started at 7:30 then, so I took the train instead of doing uber number 3, but this would prove to not be a good idea for reasons I definitely could not foresee. I'm getting off the train at the stop when my phone falls out of my coat pocket, dangles precariously on the end of my earbuds for a few seconds, then slips and falls into the gap between the train and the platform. I was literally just like "oh FUCK." Like ugh are you fucking kidding me???? So I get off the train of course and it pulls away a few seconds later, and thankfully it's on the side of the track and not on the track so it didn't suffer any damage from the train. There were two teenage girls who saw it and said they'd run and get the attendant, and were like "don't jump down and get it yourself!!!" which I may have been considering a little haha but I figured if I could avoid it I probably should, because that could turn out to be a really terrible move (there was like, amble space on the other side of the track so that if I was down there when a train came I could definitely get out of the way, but still, not preferable) though if I didn't have any other options I probably would've. But they get the attendant, who radios over to her supervisor (who's taller) who jumps down and gets it then is able to prop himself back up to the platform which I'm not certain I would've been able to do without help at least, so it's probably good I didn't try. I was very thankful of course and felt like an idiot, but the attendant was cool and was like "I mean, at least a phone is important, we get people wanting us to go down over gloves" so that helped me feel slightly less stupid. So I now ran back to church since I was now late (UGH) but got there quickly and of course filled in my new small group on my last minute adventure. It was nice, seems like a fun group of people. We did a like either or ice breaker game where you like stepped into the circle for the first thing or remained in your spot for the second, and I was wearing my batman t-shirt when he's like "batman or superman?" and every turns to look at me and I'm just standing there like....I like superman better!!! Haha it was funny. And then of course we talked for a while, the subject of the group is "knowing God and loving others," and while it was one of two groups that I could pick that actually worked with my schedule I liked the idea of that and it was pretty good! At this point I'm like, good at speaking theologically on things so it wasn't a stretch for me and they seemed to all like what I was saying. Ended a little after 9, train to bus and made it home and was soooo dead. But I did want to relax a bit and I considered rewatching this week's legends (which I'll definitely do some time this weekend) but I've had this week's flash podcast episode staring at me since Wednesday and haven't been able to watch the flash yet to listen to it, so I did that instead. Pretty good episode, though I'll probably keep my comments short because I'm tired. I'm glad they finally told Joe. I like the mentoring dynamic going on between Wally and Barry. CAITLIN AND JULIAN THOUGH. YESSSSSSSS. You better not kill him off or make him go evil though writers, because you need to fucking let Caitlin be happy, k? K. The whole phasing an entire train thing was obviously totally impossible even on a superpower level for so many reasons, but logic, I know (I did a full analysis of the medical reasons why Gideon was able to bring back Sara yesterday and everyone was like....uh, Rachel, you might've thought too he's about this....). And yeah, those are my basic thoughts and I'm finally done talking about my day and GOD am I tired. So goodnight pals. Happy fucking Friday.