03 July 2013

A Clean Home and Fond Memories

This last week was one of firsts. Happy and sad.

Last week we completed our home study . . . yay! For those of you who don’t know, that means someone comes into our house, interviews us, and makes sure the house is safe. This happens every year we want to be a Foster Parent. But the first home study is the most important. This would decide if they thought us appropriate for being Foster Parents. Granted they can always revoke our license later if something comes up, but now we are in the door.

During our Foster Care classes we heard multiple horror stories of people trying to pass the safety side of the home study. Some close friends had their licensor practically go through every cupboard and closet. When doing Foster Care there are specific criteria that must be met. If there are young children you have to have gates for stair cases and outlet covers (common sense). There is a realistic demand for window well covers. I can even understand locking up all of the harmful chemicals, such as gasoline, and medications. What I kind of dropped my jaw at was the fact that we had to lock up our daily vitamins and dishwashing and laundry detergent. . . okay. I can see the point behind those.

So here is what we learned. You can lock everything in the garage. Moose installed a dead bolt that requires a key from both sides. Now we can lock the garage with all of the power tools, chemicals, and other random items as the need arises. We installed a cabinet over our dryer that we can lock which has all of the household cleaners and our medications. This means there are two new keys on my keychain. This also means when we get children in the home, I have to keep my keys with me at all times. I mean what is the point of locking the stuff up if the keys are available. Our licensor was a little more laid back and friendly. He did not go through every closet, but I swear they were clean.

The other first was that I spoke at a funeral. I wasn’t very happy when I was first asked. I didn’t think I was the right person and I didn’t want any more stress. I said yes . . . Moose complains that I never learned to say no. I was to give a life sketch and read the obituary. I was really nervous. I haven’t been to many funerals and I wasn’t sure exactly what the audience would be expecting. I knew that many of the audience members have been to quite a few funerals. I just didn’t want to embarrass the family by saying anything wrong.

I wrote several drafts but none of them really felt right. The more I worked on it, the more I remembered the wonderful experiences I had. I would read through my notes as if I was at the funeral and just randomly add stories. It sounded terrible, even to me. I looked up articles about reading eulogies at funerals and the one that stuck out most was that I needed to have it written down. I stayed up until almost one to write out exactly what I was going to say. I practiced it multiple times for our cat since I didn’t want to disturb Moose. I finally got to the point where I felt comfortable reading it.

When I arrived at the funeral I panicked. I realized that my little life sketch was completely biased by me. I had more of my own personal memories and stories and not many that involved other people. I thought about trying to rewrite bits to include other family members but nothing came to mind. I came to the conclusion that it might sound self-centered but it was all I had.

I am pleased to say that it went well. I probably could have done better. I was happy people told me I did a good job. I probably developed a slight ego in regards to my writing ability. I just hope I don’t have to do it again for a long time.

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