Sistah Pat

DH’s birthday is Saturday.  I don’t know what to get him.  I knew he’d appreciate a break from the chaos so I made a reservation for tonight at Horseshoe Caseeno.  Caseeno is a dirty word on 3FC.  If you use it, they block the entire post.  Weird…I can write butt, boobs, crap, shit, ass, and any number of other “questionable” words and everything’s okay but you can’t say caseeno.  We want to leave the minute DH gets home from work at 3:00 so I gave him a pencil and paper and told him to make me a list of whatever I needed to pack for him or pick up at the store and any errands I needed to run so we could walk away the second he comes in the door.  I just looked at the list he left.  It says:  peanuts, beer, Slim Jims. 

Anyway, it seems like DH doesn’t get much respect on his birthday anymore.  I told the kids they’d better not forget it this year.  His birthday isn’t for a couple of days but my free room is only good from Monday through Thursday so we’ll have to go tonight.  That means I’ll still have to get him something for Saturday.  So what do you get the guy who doesn’t have everything but doesn’t want anything?  It’s not that I forget anyone’s birthday.  It’s just that I can’t ever figure out what to get them.  Maybe I should just get: peanuts, beer, Slim Jims.

I’m going to call the social worker in a few minutes.  I talked to DS last night and told him I was really worried about her making recommendations without having done her homework.  I’m going to call her this morning and ask her if we should bring documentation and witnesses on Monday.  I know she’s going to say “no” but I want to make sure that she’s put on notice that we have them and she still hasn’t talked to them or gone over a lot of the documentation.

One of the items the social worker hasn’t seen is the psychological profile done on both DS and DIL from four years ago.  I have a copy. It’s 22 pages.   Excerpts follow:

The natural mother has bi-polar disorder and is medication non-compliant.  She presents as pleasant, engaging, attractive and attentive.  She is talkative and articulate. 

Ms. ____ reports that she lived with her grandmother who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia.  Ms. ____ reports being exposed to strange behavior and violent mood swings.  She said that her grandmother regularly heard voices, engaged in fanatical religious talk, screamed and yelled, and was physically abusive.  Ms. _______ reports that grandmother’s sister had similar psychiatric symptoms.  Ms. ____ regards her grandfather as being the soul source of kindness and assurance.  Ms. ____ expressed regret that her grandfather was subjected to regular physical and verbal abuse by her grandmother.

Ms. ____ reports a maternal uncle staying in the basement of the home.  She said, “Something was not right with him.  He was paranoid, he isolated himself.  Another brother of his mother developed drug problems.  Ms. _____ own brother later developed a problem with addiction and excessive use of alcohol and drugs.  Ms. ____ reports that the drug and alcohol abuse is indicated on the paternal side of her family, as well.

The report goes on for several pages to describe how DIL began to experiment with drugs as early as seven years of age and was heavily into the drug scene by the 7th grade.  By 17, she left home and moved in with a series of men until she became pregnant and married her first husband at 21.  She says he was not a drug user and she kept her own drug use a secret.  She said domestic violence occured  and there was an episode of her wanting to suddenly leave her husband and take her children with her.  The police intervened and the children were placed in his custody.

I could go on and on.  Like I said, the report is 22 pages long.  The final conclusions state:

A caution is that Ms. ____ , while seemingly well intended, has a formidable history to overcome.  This history includes termination of all parental rights with her first two children.  She is not participating in inpatient treatment.  Clinical impression is that Ms. ____ may, albeit unintentionally, manipulate others into thinking that she is functioning at a much higher level than she is in reality.

Hello!!!  Ms. Social Worker!  Have you bothered to read this report?  It is, afterall, from your office.  When DS met with the social worker, he attempted to give her this report as well as court transcripts in which DIL admits to being arrested for prostitution and having a string of domestic violence charges against her former boyfriends and husband.  Ironically, none of the boyfriends or husbands had any history of domestic violence before they met her or after they left her.  The social worker refused to look at it.  She said she would be making her recommendations based solely on the material she has in her files and her own personal observations.  All I can say is that I hope she has this report in her files and has read it.  It’s a psychological report from a psychiatrist that social services chose that says exactly what we’ve been telling her.  That is….DIL is unstable.  She has a history of falsifying domestic violence charges and has shown time after time that she is unable to care for herself or her children.

The same psychiatrist did a psychological profile on DS.  Ironically, it’s only five pages.  Not too many problems there.  It says that he admits to having experimenting with drugs and alcohol during his early twenties but has not used drugs in years.  He admits to drinking on occasion but says his “partying” days ended when he became a parent and DIL backs this statement up when she states that “he changed after the kids came.  He didn’t want to go out anymore or have any fun.  All he did was work and I was left with the kids all day.  When he came home, all I wanted to do was get out of there and spend time with my friends.”

My God!  I’ve been blogging for two hours.  Sorry to ramble but it really does help me to think things out when I write (obsess?) about them.

9:15 - Called the social worker.  This woman is making me crazy!  All the other social workers in the past were very open with discussions about what was going on.  This woman is so tight lipped it’s ridiculous.  I told her I just wanted to touch base with her about the meeting on Monday.  She said, “No, it’s Tuesday.”  I said, “Are you sure?  I don’t want to make a mistake but I wrote down Monday when we spoke on the phone yesterday and repeated it to you before I hung up and you said that was correct.”  She said, “No, I have several cases going on right now and I might have been thinking of another one.  Your meeting is on Tuesday.”  I said, “Okay, I just wanted to clarify a couple of things with you.  You said we’d be meeting to hash out the allegations and talk about what you would be recommending to the judge on Thursday so should we bring witnesses with us and documentation about the allegations?”  She said, “No, it’s not anything like that.  You can bring someone with you for moral support but it won’t be like court or anything.  We’ll just be talking about what I’m going to suggest to the judge.”  I said, “Well, is this a temporary thing then until you finish doing your investigation?”  She said, “Well, if I recommend custody for you and your husband, it would be temporary until we decide about the parents but if I recommend custody for one of the parents, it would be with regard to permanent custody.”  I said, “Well, I don’t know what you’re going to recommend but I know that we haven’t had much of an opportunity to meet or discuss the situation.  I know David has only met with you once for just a few minutes.”  She said, “Well, this conversation is premature at this point.  We’ll discuss all of this on Tuesday but I feel like I have enough information to make a recommendation.”

I can only hope she’s taken the time to look through all the documentation social services has because she sure hasn’t talked to any of us enough to be able to make a recommendation.