Brain Can Not Hold All This Stuff!

WARNING! The following post is full of thought fragments and half baked ideas:

One thing I have been thinking about has to do with body image and how we (as women) seem to see ourselves physically, usually in a negative light.
There is a great blog out there called The Shape of A Mother
Go and look, it is quite wonderful and I won't go anywhere while you do.

Anyway before I even found it, I was thinking about what it would be like to not just have photos of real women's bodies but have them without identifying features. Now, that would mean without faces (or heads which sounds creepy, but I digress) and having things like tatoos, scars or birthmarks photoshopped out but that would be not to heighten the anonimity of the participants for modesty but because I want to know if we could pick ourselves, our very own bodies out of such a gallery.
Would we really know what we look like?
When I worked as a volunteer at Planned *Parenthood when I was a young thing, I was absolutely stunned at how many of us (women again) didn't actually know about all our own private parts.
Now I wonder, do we know as little about the rest of our bodies? Have we looked upon them with disgust or distaste or not looked upon them for the same reasons or because we feel somehow that it is wrong.
Therein lies the point of this whole thing.
Would I be able to pick my very own body out of a lineup of many other women's bodies or is my vision too jaundiced?

Something else, totally different.
I am so angry about what has happened with Obie.
It is like there is a cinder block of emotion sitting on my chest and it doesn't feel like it is going away.
The motel he was at? It is still an active John motel.
Children being warehoused in motels of any sort is wrong but the government that is their parent choosing the cost cutting measure of using places that are cheap enough that prostitution occurs regularly on the premises is beyond anything I can cope with.
My plan right now, once the adoption is finalized, is to do something about it.
Where I live right now?
It is a very rich place, has been for a while and will continue for a number of years.
There is NO monetary reason that these kids are being put into these places.
There is No monetary reason that there are so few treatment beds available for kids like Obie.
Somebody is going to tell me why it is like this.
Somebody is going to be accountable for why Obie was pulled out of my fingers.
When he was in jail and then in the hospital for his psychological assessment, when he was clean and well fed - he was ready for treatment. It was where he wanted to go next. He wanted a different life.
And it didn't happen because he was left in limbo too long.
Somebody is going to have to try and explain to me why that isn't going to be changed.

Sure, I know that even if he had made it into to treatment, he might have crashed and burned out of it - but now we won't ever know.

BTW, if you have read this far, and you were one of those who offered good advice or kind words - Thank you so much they are very much appreciated.

In other news, last night we had a recurrence of the "Mama-I-can't-sleeps" from Monkey.
At 10:30pm.
Fine. We talked, cuddled, reassured and re-tucked in at, a half an hour later.
Finally I was dozing off to sleep around 11:15 pm when I could hear someone playing in the bathroom. Water on. Water off. Water on. Water off. Etc.
I got up and sure enough the culprit was Monkey.
She had re-arranged her bedding, pushed all her stuffed animals on the floor, played with the fan all before to moving to the bathroom.
Now I was no longer wonderful, compassionate Mom, I was ticked off and getting way too tired.
There is being unable to sleep because of tough thoughts and feelings and then there is the I'm not going to sleep because I can come up with more entertaining things to do.
I told her that she owed to her own body to get some sleep to recover from the full day that we had already had (church/playing at the playground, 5 k walk with family, playing for hours on scooters out front), and that was what she was going to have to do.
This morning when she awoke much earlier than expected (thanks to Buddy her brother wandering into her room - which he is explicitly not supposed to do) I took a page from FosterAbba's book and had them both pay me back some "time".
It worked pretty well, because I didn't treat it like punishment. It wasn't retribution at all.
It was just that they needed to entertain themselves quietly in their own rooms, while we did things that needed to be done (Dad cleaning up the kitchen and me getting a run in) that we might otherwise have been able to do while they were sleeping.


Finally, and quickly, on Thursday of last week, Bunny was spending some time have adolescence all over the place and talked to me about not feeling as close to her older brother as she used to and also feeling that her younger siblings didn't like her particularly either.
This, after Buddy and Monkey had both volunteered to help her clean up dog poop in the back yard for which they declined payment so that Bunny could get all the money for a game she wanted!
Anyway, being the patient and brilliant parent that I am, I reminded her of that occurrence and then mentioned that she really was in the perfect position. Monkey adores Bunny and would love to do anything that would allow her to be in Bunny's presence (see above example).
I suggested that Bunny take advantage of this fact.

So, ten minutes later, Bunny asks if it is okay if she and Monkey go off to the library (5 blocks away) for an hour, all by themselves!
And they did.
And I cried and took pictures.
And they had a wonderful time.