I am not good at waiting

I have hit the point where I am no longer hoping the agency won't call.

I've realized that no amount of time is going to allow me to get back all of my confidence. I didn't like that I could not give Frankie what he needed. I don't view it as a personal failure, but I am sad about it. I would prefer for it not to happen again. My family really doesn't want it to happen again. So I am nervous about being called. However, I don't think that is going to go away until I am actually providing care again.

I am also, for some reason, really struggling in my efforts to get all my work done. Part of me is bewildered. I wasn't this busy previous winter terms. I'm not teaching more than I was last year. Of course I have 24 students instead of 12 in my class, meaning I have twice as many papers to grade every week. I also have replaced journals with required participation in on-line forums, so instead of 12 or 24 journal entries I have 100 or more forum posts to grade each week. I am also on a major committee, have car pool responsibilities, and am chairing the department during a self-study year. And there are those two diligent students doing independent studies who each come in twice a week to talk about their work.

Okay, so maybe there is a good reason why I feel like I am running to stay in one place.

I know that if there was a new kid I would find the time and the energy. I always have and I would again, but I am not wanting a new kid and can't figure out at what point I would feel like I had time and energy to spare. But I also can't imagine that I am done. Being done has implications that I don't want to deal with. Am I making sense? I don't have any particularly strong desire to have another young person come into my life now, or even in the near future. However, I am feeling ready and willing, or almost ready and willing, if I am needed. I've moved from "oh I hope they don't call until after the holidays" to "well, if they call it would be okay."

And I want the impossible. I want to be told that they won't call until the summer, or that they are going to call next week. I want to know if it would be wise or silly to spend money and energy fixing Andrew's room so that he can share it with Evan. I want for them not to call until the middle summer and to know that they aren't going to call until then so that I can plan accordingly, or I want to know that they are going to call in a couple of months so that I can get busy and be ready.

Maybe it would be easier to be one of those houses that just takes the next kid who needs to be taken. The sort of place where an empty beds just don't stay empty, instead of being one of these strange homes with a weird commitment to a particular group of kids. Sometimes it feels wrong to be committed to a particular group of kids when there are so many other kids who need homes. I know that if a GLBTQ kid comes along I will be so very glad I waited, and the longer one doesn't need us the more I will question waiting. Roland won't by the way. It would take an event with the metaphorical impact of a hurricane to budge him. No mere sense of guilt and/or responsibility to children he does not know will budge him. A dozen kids needing homes is a reality that he does not like but accepts as just the way things are. One queer kid being quietly regarded as an abomination by the people who are supposed to care for him or her is intolerable.

Oh but back to me.

I'm a planner, an organizer. I want to have a basic idea of the shape of my life over the next few months. I don't have to have all the details but having or not having an extra teenager living with me is not a minor detail. I don't like not knowing. I don't like waiting.

Part of me thinks the solution is to put it all out of my mind, really. Just assume we are done until we are not. And then I wonder if I would have to put the blog on hiatus to do that.