Venting-Beware: NOT a happy post

Ever in one of those moods where it's a good thing nobody is around because you'd drag them kicking and screaming into your cloud of negativity? Yeah, that's where I'm living right now. I spent the last of my shift today 'running' a group of 5 angry adolescent girls. I put 'running' in quotations because I had little to no control over what took place in that room. I had defiance, fighting, complaining, and oodles of negativity, but I had next to no control. Was it a lack of experience? Perhaps. Was it the phase of the moon? Maybe. Was it the fact that I work in a facility that houses adolescents in residential placement who already have a repertoire of bad habits and then comes to live in a shoddy run facility with kids that teach them a whole new set of bad habits to add onto the old one? Yup, that's it.

When the direct care staff consists primarily of underpaid undereducated angry unionized individuals with bad boundaries who allow things like bullying to take place, I don't think the organization is helping the majority of its charges. I do believe that it is likely, in this scenario, that the organization does more harm than good. When a staff member does something like, say, SLEEP when they are supposed to be supervising developmentally delayed adolescents, they should be reprimanded...right? Except, when said emplyee's supervisor is too busy to address his ongoing problems, said employee remains employed and continues to influence already troubled developing minds. Marvelous.

I spoke with my supervisor a couple of weeks ago and told her that I question whether or not I'm helping or making and impact on these kids. Her response was "I think that you do a lot more than this, but, at the very least, you're being a positive adult role model. And as you know, that is something that these kids are seriously lacking."

Gaaa! So, I can keep working for an organization which I have been told is 'resume suicide' and try to make my measly 'positive' impact. Or, I can recognize that I am one damn person and there is only so much I can do. Do I leave the few kids that have a positive attachment to me because I think the organization is a joke, funneling funds out of programs where the money belongs, and I feel may do more harm than good? Or do I try really freaking hard to recognize that impacting a few kids is pretty damn important? For that matter, is my impact all that great? I tend to doubt it.

And frankly, the commute sucks.

Vent over.

This is Negative Nancy, signing off.

That is so NOT what I meant

Yesterday was a crisp autumn day. The temperature was just shy of the 50 degree mark, and the breeze was enough to penetrate my thick wool sweater as we stood on the sidelines at the kid's soccer games. The Boy was the first to play his game, so 2x4, The Girl, and I were on the 'parents' side of the field offering up encouragement to the team and laughing at the minimal attention The Boy was paying to the game.

We're a family of jokesters. We make jokes about random things that most bystanders would either; not find funny, find totally inappropriate out of context, or simply would not get. That being the case, when I saw a woman across the field carrying a child that was wearing a black hoody sweatshirt that was 2 sizes too big, making his arms look all gangly and making his back side appear very similar to the back side of a chimpanzee, I said to my family (as a joke!) "Look, that lady is carrying monkey!" Now, keep in mind all I could see of this child was the back of his oversized hoody, hood UP.

Neither 2x4 or The Girl laughed. In fact, 2x4 got pretty serious and stated, "You better be careful." What? So I explained the rather obvious long sleeve, monkey arm looking characteristics...and he remained silent with, that look. You know the look, the "I'm not saying anymore, figure it out on your own" look. Infuriating. Next, The Girl begins to explain to me that the woman carrying the child is the mother of a boy on the team. The African-American boy on the team, and that he and his little brother are adopted.

The light bulb went on.

Good Lord, the baby is African-American.

Crap.

I so didn't mean it as a racial slur. The woman was WHITE. All I saw of the baby was a sweatshirt!

Crap.

There is no getting this king sized foot out of my mouth.

Crap.