Monday: My first day on duty started out not completely horrible. The kids went to school without a hitch. Then after school everything to seem to take a turn for the worse. We were sitting down to work on study time and our youngest girl worked on her homework just fine which has been a first for quite awhile. Now if they still have homework after study time they need to work on it after dinner and she knew that. Well after dinner comes around and I was playing Phase 10 with two of our other residents. Well my co-staff asked our youngest girl how her homework was coming, and she said it was done. So like any other day she asked to see her completed homework so that we could verify that. Well the girl said "No, trust me it is done." She asked again to see her homework because we didn't want her to get in trouble if it wasn't done the next day again. Well she slammed her books down and said "No I am done! Now I am going to play the game too. I will deal myself in." She proceeded to deal herself in and I told her "No you need to show us your homework is complete before you can play." At this point she threw her hand of cards down on the floor. So my co-staff asked if all the other residents could please go downstairs to play even though it was inconvenient for them. Well at this the younger girl began to protest to which one of our older girls had to speak her mind and say "Why don't you just do your homework and stop acting like a child." Well of course that didn't go over to well with the girl and she threw the entire deck of Phase 10 cards at the girl's face. Well she react of course by trying to reach for her, but she stopped herself. But instinctively Becca reached her arm in front of her to stop her in case. Well the youngest girl took off down the hall. We asked the other girl to go downstairs to cool down but before we could the youngest ran outside. So I followed her all around town and ended up at the park where I found her on top of the slide sitting. I tried to talk to her and figure out what was the real problem behind her reacting that way. She simply asked if I was mad at her. At that time the program manager showed up at the park after being called. She asked the girl what was going on and she went "The other girl attacked me!" Well we tried to talk to her and reason and see what was going on before that happened. The girl climbed down the ladder and said "She is gonna get what's coming to her" and proceeded to pick up a big stick and start walking towards the cottage. I informed Becca to lock the doors at the cottage and we ended up chasing her back to the cottage since she was running full speed at the door. After not being able to get in the program director, manager and I followed her to the park where we ended up talking with her for a good half hour or so and getting to the bottom of the real issues and calming her down enough to return to the cottage. She went to bed simple as that after being worn out from all that had happened....Happy day one for me! It was probably the craziest day I had ever had here at Grace. I was so overwhelmed by the time I got back to the cottage at 9:00pm that I just couldn't comprehend what all had just happened. It is that moment that you feel drained and just want to crawl into bed. Thankfully Becca was willing to help with a lot of the paperwork while I was out, and the other girl had calmed down and all the other girls had gone to bed by the time I returned. It was that simple thing that made a huge difference to just talk with Becca and our program manager about what had happened and simply just go to bed.
Tuesday: Well Tuesday came around and after the night before we decided to move bathroom arrangements around so that those two girls weren't sharing a bathroom anymore. Well after school we decided it would be best for the two girls, along with myself and the two program managers and the program director to sit down and discuss and process what happened the night before, how we can make it NOT happen again and how they can work on controlling their anger issues and ways we can help them go cool down. I think all in all it worked out well, it is just a matter of if the girls actually took it to heart. Which usually here it is all what can I say in order to leave this meeting or what can I do in order to go home sooner. So I don't really buy into it 100% until they can prove it. Well we get all the kids into bed and Becca and I go downstairs to go to bed. Great! Well 11:30pm hits and I am woken up by this beeping alarm noise. I laid there for a few minutes trying to figure out what the heck that noise was! Well I look over to see my alarm clock is out which means the power is out. So naturally the only thing that could be beeping is the Fire Alarm Box. So I climb out of bed grab my keys and my phone and get into the staff closet. And let me tell you trying to find the alarm box keys in the dark and then unlock the box and turn the alarm off with only a light from your phone is not that easy at all! So finally I got the box shut off and Becca and I sat down in the hallway in the basement trying to figure out what we were going to do next. We decided that since the power was out and there was no heat then that we would grab our blankets and go sleep upstairs on the couches since it was warmer. Well leave it to me my only pair of sweatpants were at my off duty house so here I am in my basketball shorts and a tshirt. Well Becca loaned me a pair of her sweatpants, but since she is taller than I am they were slightly bigger than me so I ended up pulling them over my shorts as well. It may have looks silly but man were they comfortable! So we ended up going upstairs on the couches.
Wednesday: Well it is now 1am and Becca and I were still up trying to come up with a plan in case the kids didn't have school that day due to the power outage. All the while it was hailing, snowing, pouring rain and thunder storming outside! It was the craziest storm I had ever seen! Not to mention that with the power out all over town it was pitch dark outside so it was super creepy out! We thought this is surely what it would look like when the Apocalypse happens. Well we decided we would get a few hours of sleep in case someone needed us and we were no good when we were dead tired. So we fell asleep, her on one of the couches and me on the floor. Well next thing you know we both wake up at 3am at the same time. It is like that feeling when you know something is out of place but you can't place what it is. Well a few minutes later we laid there listening and one of the girl's doors opened. Well she started walking out towards us not seeing us and so I flashed my phone light on her before she stepped on me. Well scared the tar out of her! We explained the power was out and that if she needed to use the bathroom let us know and we would give her light. Well she goes "Yeah isn't this the bathroom?" And we were just like....uh no this is the living room...kinda far away. Needless to say, whether she slept walk out into the living room or she snuck out to get something to eat but heard a noise from coming our way...you can decide. So I got up led her to the bathroom and she went back to bed. Well now Becca and I are completely awake. Even though you can't really survive and function well on only 2 hours of sleep you would be surprised at how awake you are. So it is now close to 4am and both Becca and I are wide awake! So what do we do? We start planning. We decided we should move the milk outside since it is colder out there and it won't spoil then. Then we were trying to figure out what to do for light in case the power didn't come on for quite awhile and the kids still had school. We hadn't heard anything yet so we figured they did. Well then I remembered that I had an emergency flash light in my truck outside. So I bundled up and went down the deck steps to my truck...the entire town and ground was pure ice! Everywhere you walked it was "crunch crunch crunch" from ice. My truck was COVERED in ice. The only way I could get in thankfully was the back but other than that there was no way I would be able to open my truck. Well you know that feeling when your mind gets the best of you? Well it was 4 am, I was tired, it was pitch dark out and nobody and nothing was out it was pure silence. Well of course due to all of that my mind got the best of me. So as I was digging in my truck I kept looking over my shoulders and my first thought was "Great this would be the perfect opportunity for some serial killer to come sneak up behind me and kill me and nobody would know who did it!" Of course I bolted back up the stairs inside after that! I normally wouldn't even think of something like that so I just blamed it on the lack of sleep and the bizarre things that have been going on the past few days. So we get all of that taken care of and decide we better get some sleep before the kids wake up in case they do have school so we would have to get up at 6am. So we fall asleep and at 6 am we contact our program manager to see if there was any news about school since the power was out. Well they had a 2 hour late start so we got up and told the girls that the power was out, school was delayed and we would wake them when they needed to get up since they had no alarm clocks. Of course they are always pleased to have more sleep so they didn't mind. So we went back to bed for a little bit. We then got the notice that school was cancelled as the girls were getting ready for school. They were less than thrilled but what do you do when there is no power. You make the best of it and go on. Well the power ended up coming back on later that morning. So a few of the girls and I went out and sprinkled salt all over the sidewalks and porch since everything was ice. We then spent the day playing cards, having manicures and pedicures and after lunch we baked cookies and have dinner since it was cold out, youth group was cancelled and it was a special occasion we had some tea and watched a movie. Normally they only get a movie on Fridays but given the odd day we figured it would be a nice change. Thankfully the power stayed on again and we had heat and went to bed worn out and ready for a fresh start on Thursday.
Thursday: Well the kids went back to school and that gave us the opportunity to get some paperwork and much needed work done since we hadn't been able to the day before. Well we get to school and one of our girls decided to yell at another one of our staff and tell her to mind her own business since she wasn't her staff. Well that is not okay so she got in trouble. Because as I told her, regardless of whether or not you like the staff, we are still staff, it doesn't matter if they are the cottage staff, or another cottage staff. You still need to listen to them. Well, she didn't like that but didn't do anything else either.Then the youngest decided to throw a fit because of consequences she had and walked out again. So I followed her once again. Thankfully it didn't last very long. She walked downtown as it was snowing out after yelling at me to go away. When she found out the program manager wasn't there...since most people close offices after 5 and go home. She simply walked back to the cottage, stood outside a few minutes and walked back in. The shortest one yet but none the less my patience had worn out when the power had gone out the night before. I was hanging by a thread and wishing break would come because I was simply done with this week. We ended up having to call the program manager to come over, then the other came over to hangout and deal with her because she wasn't cooperating at all. So finally they got her to go to bed.
Friday: Day five for me. I am completely exhausted, more than the typical I am on day five and drained. I was just completely checked out physically, emotionally and ready to go on break because of all that had happened this past week. I just wanted one normal day. Of course that didn't happen. I received a call from the program manager at 11:00am to find out that our youngest girl got pulled out of history class because she wasn't cooperating with the teacher and wasn't working. Needless to say she had to do an ISS and figure out how to cooperate with the teachers before she would be allowed in school again. Well, she threw a fit so she came back to the cottage and we told her she was going to do homework, work on projects and consequences all day because she is supposed to be in school so it wasn't going to be "let's hang around all day and do nothing". She did her homework fine and then when I was out doing errands she threw a fit during projects with my co staff Hannah and wouldn't listen. So I get back to the cottage to find her in her room. She comes out and asked to see her consequences. Throws another fit about how many she had and tore up her behavior chart and threw it in the garbage. Well we just decided to ignore her because we didn't want to give her our attention with her fits. So she threw her folder in the garbage as well along with the cottage consequence journal. We ignored her, but she ended up having to dig them out later. She then proceeded to tear things up at the counter including pens. Well I turned around to get some water out of the fridge and she starts throwing paper and pen pieces at me. I swear it took all my strength not to turn around and get after her. Let me just make it clear, it takes a lot to break my patience. I am a very patient person but after the week I had been having, I almost snapped. I think I need to start picking up running or something to focus that on. Then all of a sudden she turned around again and had a great afternoon. She accepted that she wouldn't be doing movie night that night and worked upstairs, helped make dinner and went to bed that night easy. We think it was because she got to spend Saturday branding cows with one of our program managers and she didn't want to ruin that opportunity. But hey I will take what I can get.
Saturday: Day 6...went really well! We spent the day hanging out. We played Eight base with Girl's Cottage, which is basically kick ball only you hit with your arm instead of kicking it, and you can run to either 1st or 3rd base instead of just running to 1st base. We dressed up in ridiculous outfits, which I will post pictures of Hannah and I only since for privacy reasons we cannot show you our girls. But needless to say the girls dressed up just as silly as we did. We ended up having a great time, then we went fishing with Girl's Cottage. Coming back and watching a movie that night since we were just worn out. It was the best day of my entire shift and a GREAT way to end my week and go off on a good night!
Sunday: My first day of was super fun. I got to spend the entire day in Grand Island with Caitlain and we took one of my girls to buy her prom dress! IT was a great opportunity to go out and just have fun, shop and of course Starbucks! IT was very refreshing but tiring once we got back around 7pm. The rest of my break is consisting of tons of sleep and just hanging out. I had my Foster Parent Training Class today so that took up some time and I am helping out tomorrow so I come on early tomorrow instead of tomorrow night. So I will be relaxing the rest of my break and preparing to go back on duty. Thanks again for all the support you all continue to give me, along with the prayers, they have been especially helpful and needed this past week. I look forward to continue sharing my adventure with you all! Miss you all tons!
Love,
Ashley
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