Ah Springtime

I haven't abandon my blog...spring is a busy time in the Boot household. To give you an example, since Monday (it is now sun.) I have officiated in 9 high school soccer games. 2 on Monday, 2 on Tuesday, 2 on Thursday, 1 on Friday and 2 on sat. On wed I was volunteering at a high school track meet. On Monday and Tuesday I had to drive 70 miles one way to get to the schools hosting the games. On Thursday, I thought I was going to have a break with a lawn chair game (a lawn chair game is a game where I can officiate the entire game sitting in a lawn chair at midfield) but nooooo...at 3 pm enroute to the game the assignor called and asked if I could do another game at 6:30! This second game was a game between two of the top teams in the district. There is no love lost between these two teams so I had to stay on top of the play. Did I mention I was the center ref for that game? You try to keep up with 16, 17 yo girls. The last 20 minutes of the game my calves started to cramp. So of course the game end in a tie and I had to get through 10 minutes of overtime. I could barely walk on Friday, forget running! Did I mention I had a game on Friday too? Sat was fun, got to do a girls and a boys game. Oh and later today I get to play in a soccer game. I would bag out but since we have someone on the team who is 63, I don't have much of an excuse!

People always ask me where did I learn to handle difficult teenagers? Well it comes from my experience of working with drunks (and other substance abusers) and officiating high school sports. Don't believe me? You imagine yourself in the middle of a field surrounded by 22 hormonally charged teenagers, with screaming biased coaches on the sidelines and surrounding by rabid parents fans! Now imagine if you lose control of the game and everyone is unhappy with you (and letting you know using very colorful language shouted at the tops of their lungs) and those hormonally charged teenagers are running amok on the field, sometimes violently. That one cop they have at the game will not be able to save you. And you always have in the back of your mind that youth sports officials have been assaulted. So a raging foster child...no problem

All of this occur at the same time that FS#2 was having a bad week. Let's see I got two phone calls from school and on the same day I may add. He went to the mall without permission, and conned a member of the village to take him. He got busted at school because of naked pictures of himself on his email account (phone call # 1, phone call #2 was to tell me he had to serve an in-school suspension for a completely different matter!). Which resulted in me spending a lovely morning reading every email, looking through every file, reading every chat and scrolling through every web page he went to. Part of the result of this was I requested a meeting with FS#2 team (mental health counselor, social worker and foster care worker) and got it the very next day! Where we planned out a safety plan to deal with a child who is emotional and socially 12 but is trapped in the body of a 16 yo, with a 16 yo sexuality. Ah springtime when a child's mind turns to sex love!

In addition, I am trying to get my garden in. I got one 4' by 4' bed planted with cool weather crops, but I still need to get a second 4' x 4' bed constructed and prepared for the first of the summer crops.

I think my next blog I'll talk bout how foster care is handled around these parts 'cause compared to some of the blogs I read I got it pretty good here.