My Daughter Now Has a Social Life

Last night Keith and I finally made the trip over Grayback to Oregon to go shopping. We left just before sunset and returned after dark, listening to Art Bell's hour-long Kreskin exposé. Oregon was a change of scenery - something I really needed. Still lots of trees there but different stores, different streets, different people. We also got a lot more groceries than we usually get here with the same amount of money.

I was hoping for a UFO sighting on the way home over the mountain, but all we saw were stars and planets. Lots of them. Back when we lived in the Bay Area there was so much light and smog, we were lucky to see 20 stars in the night sky. Here, we can see them all... it is so beautiful out there. I thought I'd be most likely to see a deer, and more likely to see a UFO than a Bigfoot. As it turned out we didn't see any of those. Oh well... there's always next time.

As my kids are getting older I'm seeing less of them. My daughter in particular is developing a teenage social life for which I should be grateful. Yesterday she put on a dress and went to M.'s 8th grade graduation and dance. When they called here at 11 it made me feel good that she still feels like she needs me. When I pulled up in front of the school to pick them up, she ran out to greet me. Cool. Then M. was telling me about all the guys she danced with and how my daughter wouldn't dance with anyone and turned some guy down and made him feel bad. Oh well. If my daughter doesn't want to dance with guys that's fine with me. She said she was dancing with herself and she sounded really happy about that decision. That sounds good to me, really. Safer that way.

M. had an amazing new full-length satin dress on for her graduation. I kept telling her she looked like a Barbie doll. Really. When I was a kid, they first came out with Barbies, and there were blonde and brunette Barbies. My sister got a blonde to match her and I got the brunette to match me, so M. looked just like my childhood doll. Then she said, "No, I look like M.." So I was thinking of a great new M. doll. That would really catch on, I think.

Well, I took them to M.'s house and they went on the bus to Yreka with M.'s mom and younger kids today. It is so quiet here without my daughter! Our neighbor is replacing broken windows for us today and Aaron is playing with Nintendo (quietly thank God)... Keith is spending money, paying bills (I love that he does that for me)... and got us each a new shirt downtown.

Teen Foster Child in SF Turned to Prostitution

I had such a quiet day today. Just what I needed. I stayed home all day except for taking my daughter to her hiphop dance class and picking her up afterward.

I spent a lot of the day researching news about child welfare. San Francisco's Examiner has a really depressing series this week about a girl who was in state custody who became a prostitute. She was living with her mom in SF when that started, and when mom found out she took her daughter to another town where they were staying temporarily in an old hotel. Child welfare workers didn't think that was good enough, so they took the girl from her mom and took her back to SF. There, the girl ran away from the fosterincarcerators and entered the prostitution world full time, at the age of 13.

She was refused re-entry into a foster custody situation after six months. Whenever the police picked her up for prostitution, nobody ever bothered to call her mother. Instead the police just dropped her back off at the dept. of human services, and she would walk in the door, out the back door, and go back to her pimp.

This is all sick enough but at age 15 she was found dead in a lake... that's why she's being written about in the paper. The paper is accusing the city and social service meddlers of being responsible for her death as much as the actual murderer, who got away with it. I agree - they made a good call on that. So anyhow, I went through a terrible depression over that this afternoon. ::sigh::

Okay... so then I had to rest in bed for a while to get over it. Now I'm up again and listening to an old Art Bell show from 1997, about Atlantis. I decided to make another graphic..... this one is called, "Something's Missing."

Keith likes this one...... he said it would make a great CD cover. My daughter prefers a different one.... strange... well, the graphic she likes (Pink World) is really too strange for me. My favorite from this week is Leaves.... I made that one into this week's desktop wallpaper, and when I get ready to put up my design website, I'll be putting my wallpaper online for free use. That's the plan.