— 1 —
ICE Training. My VBS kids had to do ICE training this week, as in what to do if ICE knocks on their door. Many were born in the USA and have parents who are citizens. Others have some level of legality due to DACA, and there are still others where I am choosing not to know their status because it doesn’t actually make any difference to me. In any case, I am furious that the political climate is such that they have to be trained in this stuff at a place where they should be going to sing songs, do crafts, play games, and learn about Jesus.
This is similar to how I feel about kids having to have school shooting drills because we grown-ups cannot get our [expletive] together.
— 2 —
Happier topics. My kids knew me a bit better this week, and singing silly songs with them helped them to warm up to me a bit. A few of them would always come and say “hi” to me every day, and there were a couple of them who would attach themselves to my legs when they needed something.
One of them came to me with their counselor today and asked for a snack. Last week, one of the mission team grown-ups had told me about storing the Go-Gurts in the freezer in case one of my kiddos needed a treat, so I grabbed one and gave it to him. His smile was pretty fabulous. 🙂 I also got to make a special PBJ for a kid last week with similar results.
— 3 —
Daniel update. My wee bairn starts intensive behavior therapy next week and it goes for 12 weeks. The promise of having an end to the ear-piercing screaming, slamming of doors, and hitting me if he’s mad is pulling me through and keeping me from trading him for a goldfish.
Hopefully, we don’t have 12 weeks of commutes from Seattle like we had on Tuesday of this week. It took us THREE HOURS to go 60 miles. But Seattle TOTALLY doesn’t have traffic, yo! [/sarcasm]
— 4 —
Whoa… I fell down a Facebook rabbit hole today and found this. Apparently, there is a serious plan in place for what will happen when Queen Elizabeth II passes.
— 5 —
Camp NaNoWriMo progress. I’m currently ~2700 words behind the pace, but I can probably make it up this weekend if I can get some consistent writing time. If you’d like to help me catch up by letting me kill you off creatively in exchange for a donation to help refugees, click here.
— 6 —
Racism. Unless you live in your own little bubble, you’ve heard of 45’s racist tweets involving 4 female Congressmembers. I am not surprised that he said it, but I am definitely disgusted. All four of them are US citizens, and three of them were born in the USA. (Ilhan Omar wasn’t, but she became a citizen at 17.) Two of them have parents from the USA (AOC’s parents are Puerto Rican and Puerto Rico *IS* part of the USA), and all four of them pledged an oath to this country when they were sworn in as Congressmembers.
— 7 —
Speaking out against racism. You don’t have to start yelling and making a scene. Seriously, you don’t. When we were at the Autism Center on Tuesday, there were two women of Somali descent and they were in beautiful abayas with their heads covered. They had gone into the quiet room with their son, and Daniel and I went to go open and close doors elsewhere. When we came back, one of the dads made a catty remark about the women, who were sitting behind him. I smiled and told him that they were just fine. I didn’t yell — I just made it clear that I was not going to trash them. The dad blushed and refused to look at me the rest of the time until we were called in to see Daniel’s autism specialist.
The younger of the women and I ended up having a lovely conversation about our kids, and she told me about living in Nairobi where she was born.
For more Quick Takes, visit Kelly at This Ain’t The Lyceum.
