Wednesday, August 11, 2010

A circus

Today, we had to sit outside of the courtroom and wait for our case to be called. It was quite an interesting scene.

There were lots of cases all being heard at the exact same time in the same court room. I don't understand the logic, but it means that you sit out on hard benches with a bunch of other people. You wonder if somehow they are related to your case or just there for another case. You hear a lot as you wait on the benches.

There was another normal looking couple there. Blonde, young. I figured they were foster parents for another case. But, they kept staring at us. Not just politely checking us out. Staring at us. Like boring holes in us. It was creepy. Patrick's grandma started to become concerned that they were related to our case and they were a surprise witness who would want to take our kids away from us. I told her that they were just paranoid that we were surprises witnesses who wanted to take their kids away from them.

Then, there was a dad who came in from prison. He was handcuffed and wearing a bright orange suit. When he came into the area, a police officer yelled for everyone to get out of the way. He was there for his children's case and had to be escorted in to a side door. Then, he came out and the officer yelled for us to get out of the way. That didn't feel very safe, to say the least.

Then, a younger woman came in for her case. She was talking to her friend about some program that she was being forced to enter. She learned from her friend that you get fed there and can bring a DVD player, but if you want snacks that you have to pay for them with your own money.

This was shocking to the young woman. Pay for your own snacks?

She literally kept saying this over and over. She said, "So, we have to pay for our food with our cash? With our own money? We have to pay for our own snacks?".

When her wise, experienced friend told her that it was true that she would have to pay for her own snacks, she was shocked. She told him that she would get back on her food stamps, but she couldn't even believe that she "had to pay for her food with cash".

While we didn't get the outcome that we wanted, we received quite an education today. The most important lesson I learned was that sometimes you gotta pay for your own food with cash.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow. That's just..... depressing really. The minds of people never cease to amaze me.

Sandy said...

Wow.
I am sorry you didn't get the outcome you wanted.

Lizzie said...

I'm assuming the Judge is giving mom, what 3 more months?
I really love how they do that. It's one thing when the parent is trying, but when its pretty certain its just not going to happen, the judge keeps giving more time, just making the children wait and wait...
In our state they recently changed the amount of time a parent has (for kiddos 3 and under) from 1 year, to now only 6 months to show they are doing something. However, we had Elijah for 18 months before we were granted TPR- even tho mom did NOTHING.
anywho- we are roughly 2-3 months away from our adoption now :)
I did have to laugh at your courtroom observances tho lol.

praying for your sanity- and for everything to work out the way He wants it to :)

beth said...

I guess I didn't convey it very well. But I found the scene completely hilarious! I guess I was just so overwhelmed by it all that I started to find it all funny.

We have another review in one month. I'm really confused cause I thought she would have 6 weeks til the next court case. I really don't know. I am hoping to hear back from a social worker today.