Oh. My. God.

Seriously. Wow. I can’t believe this is happening! OD! ITS BACK! Im so excited! I know there are a lot of mixed emotions surrounding this for everyone else but I am just THRILLED. Now if I could only figure out how to download my diary… I’m not adjusted to the new interface just yet.

SO, what’s NEW in the last like… five years? WELL. Milo is going to be 7 tomorrow, Kasin will be 13 on Monday. Like that’s not enough to shock the shit out of you, right? lol.. anyways, I got my master’s degree in elementary education a couple years ago, graduated with my BA in 2014, moved out of Alaska to Idaho in 2015, taught 5th grade for a year there and HATED IT, seriously the worst decision I’ve ever made. It was a completely awful experience. I moved to Spokane after the school year ended, which is a couple hours away from where my parents are living. It’s been fun because we’ve been able to spend some more time together and the kids have gotten to know their grandparents, which is cool for them. My mom is coming to Milo’s Grandparents Day event next Friday at school. I had gotten hired to teach Kindergarten at a private child development center before we moved to Spokane, but it turned out to be a horrible job with a big corporation and I hated it. I would have stuck it out for the whole year to stay with my kids, but the management basically pushed me out because I was making more money than anyone else there and they couldn’t really afford to keep me. They made up other reasons for “letting me go,” but when I argued the points they made they conceded that I was correct. Ultimately they said that they couldn’t keep me because I wasn’t cleaning my room well enough, which is outrageous because a) I’m a teacher, not a janitor. and b) I had been constantly asking them for breakers so that I could clean, and they never gave me anybody to cover my classroom in order to complete the complete deep clean they wanted done every single day. They were expecting me to take lesson time away from my students and have them sit quietly on the circle rug while I deep cleaned the entire room, during the school day, EVERY DAY. Uh. No. So I was fine with leaving that position, tbh.

Then I spent a month looking for a new job and started at VOA. I was doing something pretty cool, but the management was severely lacking and I was constantly having conflicts with my supervisor, the director, etc, due to unclear expectations.. they also had a cancellation policy where I lost my hours if my clients didn’t show up, and because it was a social services industry position, a lot of clients didn’t show up. So I never had enough work, couldn’t pay my bills, my car got repo’ed, rough times. Luckily I was able to get a new (used) vehicle pretty quickly. I kept applying for various things but I wasn’t getting interviews. Then one day I saw an ad on CraigsList and I sent my resume to this company and I wasn’t even sure what the company did.. its a college support program and they needed an education coach. I was unsure what any of that meant but I got an interview and it went amazingly well. This was back in November now. They offered me the job the next day, and I said yes. it was a $5/hr pay raise, flexible hours, and the environment is PHENOMENAL.

So now I’m working at NWCS, LOVING IT, and SO happy. I’m doing better now than I have in like ten years. I also met a gal. Many of you may remember that I’ve always identified as bisexual, I’ve dated women in the past very casually, but never really had a solid relationship with a woman. Well. This all changed when I met the lovely Chanel at a foster care information meeting. She actually lives in California, and was in Spokane visiting a friend. She’d been thinking about moving here and she went to an info meeting to see if fostering here was any different than in CA. (spoiler alert: its WAY different) and we met there. We hit it off, added each other on facebook, and spent three or four weeks talking all day every day.. it was an immediate connection, and she was actually in a relationship with another woman when we met, they’d been living together for four years and had just adopted three of their foster kids (siblings) together. She told me she’d been unhappy in her relationship for a long time and that she wanted to leave. We kept our relationship strictly platonic until her ex moved out of their house, but it’s been a rough road with the ex getting very jealous and stopping by unannounced, talking shit about me and making the kids cry, etc. When they broke up, I finally quit trying to fight the fact that I was falling madly, madly, maddddlllly in love with Chanel, and just let it happen. She came out to visit me at the end of December and stayed for New Year’s, and it was a completely amazing long weekend. We both cried when she left and spent like two weeks crying afterwards.

Since then, I’ve gone out to CA twice to see her, met her kids, fell in love with them, fell more and more in love with her, and she’s decided to move to Spokane. Her lease is up on April 15th, so she’ll be moving out here that week. We’ve been looking for a 4 bedroom house where we can all live together, but I wouldn’t be moving in with my kids until August. She and her kids will be there for a couple of months, I’ll bring my boys and dogs over on the weekends so they can all get to know each other, and we’ll have some time to sort of play house and let the kids get used to each other, etc. Her kids are also TERRIFIED of dogs, which is GRRRREAT since I have two HUGE dogs. lol hopefully they’ll adjust quickly. I’m stressed about that. Overall, though, I really think it’ll be great. I feel like she was literally made for me, she’s perfect in every way and she makes me unbelievably happy. I think about her all the time, and we talk all day, every day, for going on six months now. I’m not one for catching feelings, and I tried to fight this SO hard, because it just seemed so impractical- she lives so far away, we have so many kids between the two of us, my parents are gunna have a SHIT FIT… but it just doesn’t matter. She makes me SO happy, and honestly.. the heart wants what the heart wants. So. There you have it. My parents still don’t know, and I’m not in any rush to tell them, because they aren’t going to understand or be supportive. The boys both know and they’ve met Chanel and they love her, but I have no idea how to break it to my parents. They’re gunna flip.

One other notable thing that happened recently- through the job I was doing at VOA, I came to be a foster parent. I had a sweet little girl living with me from July to December, and I actually was all lined up to adopt her when her parents showed up out of nowhere, three days before the court date to terminate their rights. Ultimately, mom and dad broke up and mom entered a family rehab facility, and was granted custody of my/her little girl. She also had another baby, before my little gal’s 1st birthday, even. So she now has two infants by herself in a rehab facility. I was/am heartbroken, and her mom had said she’d stay in touch but hasn’t really. She sent me pictures at Christmas, but that’s been about it. I have reached out a couple of times but she’s been very short with me in response, “ok I’ll give her a kiss for you” or similar. I’m kind of taking a break before I decide if I’d like to continue fostering or not, but I think I’m leaning towards no until after things settle down for Chanel and I. It was sort of an ordeal for her to get her ex to agree to let them all move out of state, and moving her three kids + my two kids in together is going to be an ordeal already. Hopefully it’s a smooth transition.. and then we can decide from there whether we’d like to add one more or start fostering again.