Insanity
This week, that is. To recap:
Thursday: Mum and Dad continue to consider getting licensed as therapeutic foster parents (they were the, uh, 'normal' kind for about twenty years, during which time Mum trained them for Washington State, so they're rather insanely qualified).
Friday: New foster child shows up. She's got RAD, somebody's trying to diagnose her as bipolar (a seven-year-old), and she's highly sexualised (which is evidently a new euphemism for molested), which is just what we deal with. She's also intelligent, articulate, and cute. After thirty seconds with her, I can only think "I hate people." People show up to get us licensed; apparently the reason they wanted us so much, for her, is half Mum and Dad's qualifications, and partly because they have an adult daughter in the house. This is apparently a wonderful thing because it means she won't have to deal with young siblings, but my presence makes it safe for my stepfather to be around her.
Saturday & Sunday: More people come, because there is - I kid you not - three different teams from three different agencies who, naturally, don't agree on very much. We get three different accounts of where she should go to school, what medicines she should take, and how her relationship with her brother should be conducted (A: Not at all. Keep them apart and above all, don't let them go to the same school. B: They love each other! He's her only attachment and they should get more visitation. C: Actually, let's put her in the same school. And the classroom a door down from his.). I spend half of the time trying to be supportive, and the other half hiding from the people and the noise in my room. With the cat, who is about as sociable as I am.
Monday: Holiday! Only, not really; people and people and more people come. I work on my math homework, which is painfully behind because the idiotic UPS driver left my math textbook at the wrong address and I only managed to get it back on Saturday. I have now proven that I know the difference between dependent and independent variables. Yay me!
Tuesday: The craziest day so far, literally. Am woken by the cat at 7 AM. Mum is ignoring a mild tantrum (by our standards - throwing stuffed animals = not impressive). Then I have to go - I kid you not - and get fingerprinted. I feel like a criminal until I'm informed that this is some sort of background check. "But I've never been fingerprinted before. You won't find anything." Then I feel like a criminal who's never been caught. Mother informs me that it's procedure and explains why. All is good, until I spend forty freaking minutes standing in line. Our city hall doubles as a police department, so it's very funny to see Certain People at the other window explaining themselves. Aside of that, incredibly boring until it's my turn. The fingerprinting woman twists my fingers around the ink, then spreads it around on the page, and has to start over again a couple of times. My joints, already protesting the cold, protest louder (SNAP!) and the open wound on one of them complains vociferously. Anyway, it's finally over, and she gives me some goop on a paper towel to rub around my hands. Even once the towel is completely black, it still takes the ink off my hands.
The miracles of modern technology. But I've still get little black bits around the corners of my nails. I'm regretting painting them pale pink two days ago. It's not a good look. Hints of the zombie, really.
Anyway, then I go home, grab some tomato soup while Mum conducts another interview with the Catholic Community Services people (very nice), and then I have my weekly appointment with my psychiatrist. He is very nice and very competent when I get him off the New Age stuff, but aside of the solid cognitive-behavioural stuff he's into energy work and goes on Spirit Quests and things. I don't laugh, seriously, because that would be rude and tactless even by Elizabeth standards. I just kind of wait him out and at another time mention that while I have theoretical religious beliefs, in practice I'm pretty much an atheist. Anyway, on this particular occasion we talked all about the week. Mum wanted me to talk about my felonious birth-father, but I actually forgot. LOL. Anyway.
I go home and watch my favourite Psych episode: something something Murder - it's the one where nobody actually gets murdered and Shawn solves the case not with luck or even logic (which frankly isn't his strong point) but one of his actual mad investigator skillz. Namely, total recall; he has a perfect photographic memory - and the shadows on the wall in the police photographs don't match up with the way he remembers them. For some reason, that's just one of the coolest clues ever. Shawn thinks so too, given that he shrieks and jumps and down before dashing off and counterfeiting another psychic vision. And then swooning onto a chair. I think he remarks on some guy's fashion sense and hairstyle while he's at it, too. (He is quite possibly the most stereotypically gay man on television. This is hilarious instead of offensive because he's straight.)
And then, since the Psychfic people are having their second year of awards, I check out the nominations. See, most Psych stories are, uh, not my cup of tea. Mostly because they ignore everything about the characters that makes me like them in the first place. Awards nominations are a good way to find the decent ones.
And while I read some good ones, and enjoyed them, I'm just wondering about something. See, with book fandoms, I have my own ideas of the characters and as I read, more or less tailor them to meet the story's specs. And given the wide, uh, divergences in opinions between stories, I'm constantly changing this or that and often getting rather dizzy ('so, there he is, tall, black - brown! - hair, green - or is it hazel? - eyes, and Elizabeth is short so her head - red? - is at his shoulder, and . . .'). But I do like to visually imagine as I read. Anyway, I had this strange delusion that TV fandoms would be more consistent, because, uh, the actors' versions are the only versions. It's not as if they randomly change height and complexion and hair and eye colour from episode to episode. And every time we flip into ShawnVision (about ten times an episode), the camera zooms in on his face. Like so:
http://i428.photobucket.com/albums/qq9/eburke86/psych-spencer.jpg
But no. I just read six different stories where six different Shawns had six eye colours (green, hazel, brown-green-hazel, viridian, "blue-green-hazel-whatever" - direct quotation, that - and grey). Even Juliet's randomly change between blue and green. (Here she is: http://i428.photobucket.com/albums/qq9/eburke86/psych-ohara.jpg?t=1232569633) Trivial little things, but aggravating. Is it just this itty bitty angsty fandom that does this?
*iz ignorant. and also a bit irritated.*
Thursday: Mum and Dad continue to consider getting licensed as therapeutic foster parents (they were the, uh, 'normal' kind for about twenty years, during which time Mum trained them for Washington State, so they're rather insanely qualified).
Friday: New foster child shows up. She's got RAD, somebody's trying to diagnose her as bipolar (a seven-year-old), and she's highly sexualised (which is evidently a new euphemism for molested), which is just what we deal with. She's also intelligent, articulate, and cute. After thirty seconds with her, I can only think "I hate people." People show up to get us licensed; apparently the reason they wanted us so much, for her, is half Mum and Dad's qualifications, and partly because they have an adult daughter in the house. This is apparently a wonderful thing because it means she won't have to deal with young siblings, but my presence makes it safe for my stepfather to be around her.
Saturday & Sunday: More people come, because there is - I kid you not - three different teams from three different agencies who, naturally, don't agree on very much. We get three different accounts of where she should go to school, what medicines she should take, and how her relationship with her brother should be conducted (A: Not at all. Keep them apart and above all, don't let them go to the same school. B: They love each other! He's her only attachment and they should get more visitation. C: Actually, let's put her in the same school. And the classroom a door down from his.). I spend half of the time trying to be supportive, and the other half hiding from the people and the noise in my room. With the cat, who is about as sociable as I am.
Monday: Holiday! Only, not really; people and people and more people come. I work on my math homework, which is painfully behind because the idiotic UPS driver left my math textbook at the wrong address and I only managed to get it back on Saturday. I have now proven that I know the difference between dependent and independent variables. Yay me!
Tuesday: The craziest day so far, literally. Am woken by the cat at 7 AM. Mum is ignoring a mild tantrum (by our standards - throwing stuffed animals = not impressive). Then I have to go - I kid you not - and get fingerprinted. I feel like a criminal until I'm informed that this is some sort of background check. "But I've never been fingerprinted before. You won't find anything." Then I feel like a criminal who's never been caught. Mother informs me that it's procedure and explains why. All is good, until I spend forty freaking minutes standing in line. Our city hall doubles as a police department, so it's very funny to see Certain People at the other window explaining themselves. Aside of that, incredibly boring until it's my turn. The fingerprinting woman twists my fingers around the ink, then spreads it around on the page, and has to start over again a couple of times. My joints, already protesting the cold, protest louder (SNAP!) and the open wound on one of them complains vociferously. Anyway, it's finally over, and she gives me some goop on a paper towel to rub around my hands. Even once the towel is completely black, it still takes the ink off my hands.
The miracles of modern technology. But I've still get little black bits around the corners of my nails. I'm regretting painting them pale pink two days ago. It's not a good look. Hints of the zombie, really.
Anyway, then I go home, grab some tomato soup while Mum conducts another interview with the Catholic Community Services people (very nice), and then I have my weekly appointment with my psychiatrist. He is very nice and very competent when I get him off the New Age stuff, but aside of the solid cognitive-behavioural stuff he's into energy work and goes on Spirit Quests and things. I don't laugh, seriously, because that would be rude and tactless even by Elizabeth standards. I just kind of wait him out and at another time mention that while I have theoretical religious beliefs, in practice I'm pretty much an atheist. Anyway, on this particular occasion we talked all about the week. Mum wanted me to talk about my felonious birth-father, but I actually forgot. LOL. Anyway.
I go home and watch my favourite Psych episode: something something Murder - it's the one where nobody actually gets murdered and Shawn solves the case not with luck or even logic (which frankly isn't his strong point) but one of his actual mad investigator skillz. Namely, total recall; he has a perfect photographic memory - and the shadows on the wall in the police photographs don't match up with the way he remembers them. For some reason, that's just one of the coolest clues ever. Shawn thinks so too, given that he shrieks and jumps and down before dashing off and counterfeiting another psychic vision. And then swooning onto a chair. I think he remarks on some guy's fashion sense and hairstyle while he's at it, too. (He is quite possibly the most stereotypically gay man on television. This is hilarious instead of offensive because he's straight.)
And then, since the Psychfic people are having their second year of awards, I check out the nominations. See, most Psych stories are, uh, not my cup of tea. Mostly because they ignore everything about the characters that makes me like them in the first place. Awards nominations are a good way to find the decent ones.
And while I read some good ones, and enjoyed them, I'm just wondering about something. See, with book fandoms, I have my own ideas of the characters and as I read, more or less tailor them to meet the story's specs. And given the wide, uh, divergences in opinions between stories, I'm constantly changing this or that and often getting rather dizzy ('so, there he is, tall, black - brown! - hair, green - or is it hazel? - eyes, and Elizabeth is short so her head - red? - is at his shoulder, and . . .'). But I do like to visually imagine as I read. Anyway, I had this strange delusion that TV fandoms would be more consistent, because, uh, the actors' versions are the only versions. It's not as if they randomly change height and complexion and hair and eye colour from episode to episode. And every time we flip into ShawnVision (about ten times an episode), the camera zooms in on his face. Like so:
http://i428.photobucket.com/albums/qq9/eburke86/psych-spencer.jpg
But no. I just read six different stories where six different Shawns had six eye colours (green, hazel, brown-green-hazel, viridian, "blue-green-hazel-whatever" - direct quotation, that - and grey). Even Juliet's randomly change between blue and green. (Here she is: http://i428.photobucket.com/albums/qq9/eburke86/psych-ohara.jpg?t=1232569633) Trivial little things, but aggravating. Is it just this itty bitty angsty fandom that does this?
*iz ignorant. and also a bit irritated.*