Kids Day Out

Recently we’ve been enacting a mandatory “Kids Day Out” at the day center, the reason being that many of the moms sort of sit around at the day center all week. Their kids are forced to stay with them at all times. Our center is in the basement of a church, and while we love children and want to do all we can for them, Mary’s Place is not a daycare. We’ve been trying to get our moms with small children to take them to (free) daycare provided by DSHS and other government agencies. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes moms don’t want to walk ten minutes to the bus stop, because they’re pushing a stroller or have multiple kids under the age of five. While understandable, it’s not enough of an excuse to not do what’s best for your children.

So we have to exercise a little tough love, like saying that they can’t be at the day center unless they take their children to daycare. Many of the moms are supposed to be using this free daycare as part of their Individual Responsibility Plan set up by DSHS, so that they can look for jobs full time. If DSHS hears that they are not following their IRP, they will cut their benefits.

It’s important that we get moms moving. As part of this mobilization, we have a weekly “Kids Day Out,” where all the moms with children who aren’t in school either get to take part in a planned field trip, or take the day out. The field trip is something fun and usually educational.

Yesterday we sent the families on a tide pooling expedition with mentors from the Seattle Aquarium. We sent them with everything they needed, including bus tickets and lunch/snacks. Apparently they had a blast and the kids came back exhausted and happy (hallelujah).

There were a couple moms who refused to take their children on the field trip because they were indignant about the fact that we were making them take their children out for a day. I try to focus on the families who went and had a memorable, formational experience.


Yesterday I was holding an 8-month-old in my arms, and smelling her head (which smelled like coconuts and love). I was thinking, shouldn’t I want one of these? Shouldn’t I want to be a mom? Why don’t I feel a pressing need to start my own family?

I mother a dozen high energy/attention-craving children part time. I like being able to go back to my childless apartment. I like not having to change stinky diapers. I like having time for me. And if ever I need a reminder, my downstairs neighbor has a 6-year-old, who stomps a lot when he has tantrums. As I sit eating my salad and drinking tea, listening to the rampage occurring the floor below, I say a little prayer of thanks that he’s in that apartment and not this one.

“This is your life. Do what you love, and do it often. If you don’t like something, change it. If you don’t like your job, quit. If you don’t have enough time, stop watching TV. If you are looking for the love of your life, stop; they will be waiting for you when you start doing things you love.”

Kids

Working at a day center for homeless families makes me not want to have kids. Not because kids are annoying, messy, rebellious (which they are, of course)…

I just get the feeling I could never have kids as cool as these kids.

“Nobody likes to clean up somebody else’s poop.”
Jean
expatintraining: Quay Street. #galway #ireland #busking #home #travel

expatintraining:

Quay Street. #galway #ireland #busking #home #travel

“The visitor from outer space made a gift to Earth of a new Gospel. In it, Jesus really was a nobody, and a pain in the neck to a lot of people with better connections than he had. He still got to say all the lovely and puzzling things he said in the other Gospels. So the people amused themselves one day by nailing him to a cross and planting the cross in the ground. There couldn’t possibly be any repercussions, the lynchers thought. The reader would have to think that, too, since the new Gospel hammered home again and again what a nobody Jesus was. And then, just before the nobody died, the heavens opened up, and there was thunder and lightning. The voice of God came crashing down. He told the people that he was adopting the bum as his son, giving him the full powers and privileges of The Son of the Creator of the Universe throughout all eternity. God said this: From this moment on, He will punish horribly anybody who torments a bum who has no connections!”
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five
connexus: toutes nos pensées

connexus:

toutes nos pensées

“The flaw in the Christ stories, said the visitor from outer space, was that Christ, who didn’t look like much, was actually the Son of the Most Powerful Being in the Universe. Readers understood that, so, when they came to the crucifixion, they naturally thought… Oh boy—they sure picked the wrong guy to lynch that time! And that thought had a brother: “There are right people to lynch.” Who? People not well connected. So it goes.”
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five

fatbertt:

From a little trip to the UN headquarters in “the Heart of Europe” at the Palais des Nations.

Geneva, Switzerland. July 2010

 missing geneva

“The visitor from outer space made a serious study of Christianity, to learn, if he could, why Christians found it so easy to be cruel. He concluded that at least part of the trouble was slipshod storytelling in the New Testament. He supposed that the intent of the Gospels was to teach people, among other things, to be merciful, even to the lowest of the low. But the Gospels actually taught this: Before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he isn’t well connect. So it goes.”
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five