Congrats to Tom! I didn’t think he had it in him and I didn’t think he could or would glare at anyone. Well, those couple of 6 or 7-year-old white boys came to visit last Sunday, yesterday and today. Today, I went out there and asked if they knew those people (at the house), and they said no, just as I figured. I said they shouldn’t play there and they left. But cuz kids of today aren’t taught to listen very well and they came back with another little friend of theirs just as Tom was getting in, he told me on the machine, and he glared at them and they left. Naturally, the rude kids had the nerve to come back for a little while for the third time, later on. Tom also said there was a little girl playing alone at one point, too.

Next time will be it, though, cuz I’ll scare them off for good and remind them that trespassing is illegal.

Got a message from Marla who mainly talked about two things, which were Shelly and older pregnancies. She said that yes, it’s common and very possible for older women to have babies, but that age can be our worst enemy and that the difference between 3 years can be like 300 for the baby-making percentage of the eggs. I don’t buy it. I think that’s mostly hype, cuz our society encourages young pregnancies. I think eggs are eggs and that due to the fact that a woman’s sexual peak is from around ages 35-43, I’d think that that’s when a woman’s more fertile. Even Tom agreed to this, and I told her that I’d be around the same age she was when she started her family at age 38.

I told her that my trustworthy, smart, responsible, logical husband will do what’s best for us when it’s best for us, and to please tell Linda that the reason why I haven’t called her (Andy said she still wants to talk to me), isn’t cuz I don’t give a shit or cuz I have anything against her, it’s just that she can’t tell me anything we don’t already know or that we can’t find out ourselves. Tom looked in his employee handbook yesterday and most fertility services are covered. We won’t have to pay all of the costs.

I told her about Shelly and how we met and she said the following about it:

I was absolutely appalled reading about the women whose foster home you were in. The part about moving you in the night and telling Shelly you had hung yourself is - reprehensible, to say the least, and most likely criminal. At any rate they should NOT be providing foster care. God Jodi, if you have these horrible life experiences you have done a tremendous job of turning out so normal despite them and I admire that. But PLEASE pull the information from your journals (if you were keeping them back then) or write it down from memory and send it to the authorities who administrate foster care so they will KNOW and ACT if they have to.

Jodi, perhaps you should write a book about your experiences in foster care. It could be chronological for those three years you mentioned, describing what you were going through emotionally and physically and the “caretakers” the state placed you with. It could encompass relationships you had with other “staties,” the people whose care you were in, your relationship with your family at that time. People need to know about this stuff, that it happens every day, that some people DO hang themselves because they are too fragile to survive it. At any rate it would probably be very cathartic for you and a reality check for the powers that be. It sounds like you walked a tightrope over hell. Write it so people can’t close their eyes and make it go away. Write it rugged and rough. Spare no details. Document the horrifics and sail with the surmountable. Start by making an outline of the period you want to write about, don’t worry about having it perfect, just get it down. When it’s all down, then you can re-write and get it the way you want it. Follow the Nike mantra and just do it! I’m really glad you found Shelly and she, too, is a survivor. Enjoy the communion!

Well, Marla’s not the first person to suggest I write a book, but again, it seems so overwhelming and the way it works is kind of confusing to me. How would I get this information out there? And where do I get it to? And what if someone tried to sue me for something I wrote about them, cuz I would want to use my real name, other’s real names and tell the truth. And I wouldn’t want my family to know about this, either. It’s easier to just let someone else speak out about the system that won’t change, anyway. They all protect their own, so complaining to the proper people, wouldn’t do any good.

She doesn’t know the eighth of my childhood ordeal, so when she mentions all those that DO hang themselves in the midst of all the hell they endure, I thought to myself, wait till I tell her I jumped out a window!