And the hits just kept on coming!
Well Monday was merely an extension of the calamitous misfortune of the prior weekend.
I had no idea that allowing your children to play in the yard was potentially considered neglect. Oh yes folks for those of the astute I bet you know where this is going!
Child Protective Services in their never ending search to maintain their budget through the investigation and intimidation of helpless families by searching for the most inane of circumstances paid us a visit on Monday.
Let me set the stage.
On Sunday, in an attempt to entertain the children we had picked up one of those dollar store inflatable pools. We live in a simple single story ranch home. In this house the kitchen window looks out upon the driveway and walkway so we placed it under the window near the exterior spicket. Also, about 15 feet away (also in clear view of the kitchen window) sits a lovely shade tree. I and all the kids went outside, inflated the pool, filled it up and jumped in. We had place Miranda (the baby) under the shade tree in her saucer so she could be a part of the fun, and we spent the afternoon splashing, having water fights, water balloon tosses the works. Momma (being mothers day) enjoyed some much deserved quiet time watching one of her Twilight movies inside, while occasionally coming out to watch the fun. As the afternoon wore on Elijah and Kaleb drifted inside as momma had relinquished the TV and was now updating her Facebook with pictures of the fun and they laid claim to the TV and video game. Around four I decided it was time to start Mothers Day dinner and at the kids insistence allowed them to stay outside and play some more, and as Miranda was enjoying the fresh air and realizing I was mere 15 feet away and in clear constant view of them all from my kitchen window as I both prepared and cooked food there would be now harm in allowing them to continue.
Boy was I wrong!
As Logan, Owen and Rozlynd frolicked about Miranda joyfully watched in rapt splendor (at this point Izzy was inside napping) someone had apparently witnesses young Miranda "alone" in her saucer and reported an "abandoned" child.
Now let me emphasize she was less then 15 feet away from me, separated by a doorway (the door was left open). When she and her sisters are playing or sleeping in their room and I and my wife are sitting on the sofa we are about
forty feet away. So applying that logic each night we put them to bed we are "abandoning" our children! Oh my GOD! What about when they go to the BATHROOM! At that point they are 45 feet away! It's like we left them in the cold cruel world to fend for themselves!!!!
But this situation presented CPS with another excuse to justify their budget, and given the conditions and situations it must have been mouth watering to them, as it clearly offered minor effort with maximum financial gain!
Jaded? Me?
Look. It's a Federally funded institution. It's annual budget is based on the amount it spent the year before. If they don't spend it (and justify it) they don't get the same amount the following year. And given the amount of Lexus's, Mercedes, Cadillacs and Porches that fill the parking spots at the local home offices I would have to say they are all doing pretty all right!
Besides, folks like us are easy pickings. No emotionally or physically scarred children requiring "
real" help. No difficult, absent or belligerent parents posing a challenge. They don't have to visit a roach infested, filthy crack house. It's like a walk in the park for them! They don't get paid anymore cash for hazard pay going into a potentially volatile situation so it stands to reason that thy put their effort into the easy cases and leave the hard ones that really NEED help, alone. That's why you hear so much about children who were in the system being left with drug addicted violent offenders, left to starve chained to a bed post because actually HELPING a child like that is WAY to much work! In the end NOT financially beneficial!
Look, compare it to what I do. If I have 20 bikes to work on and 5 of them are a simple refurb, they get done first. Minimum input, maximum output. But if five of those bikes are in rough shape posing a real challenge, and requiring allot of parts and labor, and in the end I'm not going to get anymore out of them then the easy ones I usually end up just parting them out and scrapping them.
In other words, discarded.
Sound familiar?
So they pay our three elementary kids a visit at school, to question and inspect them. They are supposed to be at the shop by three pm, as the school sits a quarter of a mile from here. By 3.05 PM they weren't here and I was in a panic. I could not raise anyone at the school, and they had not gone to the house. Just before 3.15 I was preparing to leave the shop and go look for them when I got a call from the house informing me that the CPS agents had sent Owen home ALONE!!!! to deliver a note to my wife stating that they would be sending the children to the house ALONE and be coming over to investigate the house, and that NO Elijah could not come and get them!
What the FU$@!!!!
Since WHEN do THEY get to determine OUR children's safety!!! I mean, the closest they come to traveling alone is the 1/4 of a mile they travel to the shop, and that is ONLY because there are SIX crossing guards from here to there each within eye shot of each other. They travel on the same side of the road AND have only ONE small road to cross!!!! In traveling home ALONE they have NO crossing guards once they leave the school, pass by TWO apartment complexes with QUESTIONABLE tenants, and TWO heavily wooded areas!!!!! All without the benefit of their brothers, or parents protection!!!
Forgive me but what kind of FREAKING IDIOTS ARE EMPLOYED BY OUR FREAKIN MORONIC STATE TO PROTECT THE WELFARE OF OUR CHILDREN!!!!!
I mean DAMN!!! (yes I would REALLY like to use stronger language right now!) They couldn't pick up that new fangeled invention called the TELEPHONE?!?!?! Let two terrified parents know that their children were OK? Instead of putting a 10 year old at risk to play errand boy!?!?!
To top it off I have to close the shop, loose money we need to SUPPORT our children to come home and fill out a questionnaire about why I allowed my children to PLAY!?!?!
True, I needed to be there to keep Elijah in check. 6'3", 250 pounds of intimidating pissed off teenager! Sorry, they may nit pick and argue, but put his siblings, parents and family in harms way and you have a juggernaut of unbridled teenage righteousness requiring dads intervention. I didn't want there to be a massacre!
Of course they had to grill Angela as to whether or not she felt "overwhelmed" and why doesn't she utilize daycare to help with the children!?!?! She's a stay at home mom for Chrissakes! Since when did it become such a burden to raise your own children? I mean does the state think that parents are that inept that they can't take care of the lives they bore?!! Are loving, capable organized families THAT much of a rarity nowadays? That we HAVE to put them in an institution where more often then not there innocent babies are exposed to illness, neglect bullying or head lice (yea...I speak from experience! ) because we are SO incapable of the care and feeding of children! I mean, they kept trying to push 60 day vouchers for child care on us! Like when you get the "Free 30 day trial membership" at the local 24 hour fitness in the hopes that when you use it you'll sign a one year contract. I suspect that they must get some kind of a kickback from that symbiotic relationship! And inevitably, after three hours of interrogations and inspections, and us comforting terrified children they announced that there was no cause for concern!
NO F*K(I&N $#!T!!!
Of course they did take me aside at the end and tried to push the daycare thing again.
FUC&@R$!
So now you know why I didn't blog yesterday. I frown on using profanity in our blog and given my state of mind I might not have been so restrained as I was today.
Here's some pics from the "Day of abandonment" (At this point dinner was in the oven and at the insistence of the children I rejoined them in the pool. Miranda was napping at this point and the older boys "reluctantly" put down the game controllers to join the photo opp. Please note the location of the open kitchen window I had earlier "abandoned" my children to occupy while preparing the chicken.
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