The Sad State of Foster Homes and my Working Life

For once I haven’t started a new book without writing the review of the just-finished book yet. Amazing.

White Oleander – Janet Fitch
Again, I wish I had read the book before I saw the movie, because the book was so amazing! Although if I had read the book before seeing the movie, I would have been really pissed about the movie and hated it. Meanwhile, I mildly like this movie, because in my mind they are two different things. Mostly because the only thing I got out of the movie was depressed, and while the book was depressing, it didn’t consume you like the movie did. There were other lessons to be learned.

For instance: you grow from the people you meet along the road of life. How touchy-feely of me, I know, but I actually think it’s true. Negative or positive, you learn something from pretty much everyone you encounter. I would give examples, but I’m way too classy of a person, so let’s just leave it at that.

Also: people are selfish. This is quite obvious, I know. But when you look at the actions of others you might not right away recognize them as selfish. I can only guess that the reason that most of the foster families that took Astrid in were doing so because they were selfish (wanting a live-in slave, wanting assistance with their thrift-store-ish business, wanting to receive tax relief, wanting company so as to not go insane). Otherwise, I have no idea why any of them, with the exception of Claire, the woman who wanted company, would want to take in foster children because they seemed to hate kids and be constantly annoyed by their foster children. Which makes me sad about the current network for foster children. I know it’s a huge problem in this country, especially since a lot of the families that actually do adopt children adopt from other countries so they can have the cute babies, but seriously, people. There are 118,000 kids in this country that are in foster care waiting to be adopted. 118,000! I understand that there are kids in other countries that need to be adopted, but it seems that people just forget that there are kids right around the corner from you that need help too. If I wanted kids, I would most definitely adopt them, and probably from this country.

This number is also a direct result of people not knowing proper birth control methods. On the drive down to North Carolina two weeks ago, I passed a billboard for abstinence. A billboard! Needless to say, I flipped out, while driving. I was speechless. Abstinence is a great practice to teach the kids and all, but it shouldn’t be their main form of birth control. Are you kidding me, southerners? I don’t even believe I should have to explain this. And I won’t, because I assume anyone reading this has enough brains to understand why it doesn’t work. After that billboard, we promptly passed by a Phillip Morris building in the shape of cigarettes and I knew we were taking a time warp. And oh was I right…

…because when we stopped for lunch at Aunt Sarah’s Family Restaurant (doesn’t it sound so awesome!) and had the first of our few delicious and cheap southern lunches, the server brings over the check, slides it across the table right to Nick and says, “Here you are, sir.” Nick found this hilarious, I found it repulsive. So I go to pay the check while Nick is in the bathroom, and the server rings me up, and as she’s taking the check and cash from me she says, “How did you get this?! I gave it to him!” Granted, I think she was just being a little too cute for my taste, but lady, this will not fly. Then we get to Raleigh…

…and find this really awesome southern cafeteria-like restaurant that was a god-send because I was about to pass out from hunger. We get in there, and this man takes us to our seat, where he proceeds to pull out the chair. Which is just unacceptable. But to make it even more hilarious than me not wanting that chair is that Nick is walking in front of me and goes to the chair that the man pulled out. So the man goes to the other chair and pulls it out for me and pushes it under as I sit. Ugh. So formal and unnecessary.

So I got a little off topic, but who cares? I enjoyed this one. You should pick it up from your local library. In the even that you live in LBC (Lower Bucks County), you can use Lindsay’s Library.

The Well-Fed Writer by Peter Bowerman

I don’t need to say a lot about this book except for it’s really helpful if you want to start being a freelance technical communicator. It was recommended to me by someone who took this survey I was administering for my independent study (which is done next week, thank god, I can return to normalcy) who said it was really informative and really to the point. Was it ever. It was step-by-step, everything you need to think about and consider when becoming freelance. Actually freelance anything could use it, you should just ignore the specific examples of gigs he gets.

I was reading this book on the back end of my vacation and it made me really depressed to go back to work: 8-5, boring office job where I get to do an exciting project for like an hour a day if I’m lucky. Also I hate the commute. I’ve had an exciting bonus the past few days, though: I’ve been working from home while the union moves our boxes back into our newly renovated office. My commute has consisted of walking the two whole feet from my bed to my computer. I’ve had a stress-free Friday and Monday, and will have a stress-free Tuesday. Ahhh I can’t wait until I can freelance write and bake full time. Those will be the days.