I cannot show you a picture of SP,but this is from the rhododendron species garden where we took her last weekend.

Shocker #1 – This post is going up ON TIME.

Shocker #2 – The reason my posts have been late for the last week (and why my life is suddenly very crazy) is that there is now a small person living in my house.

I cannot tell you much about Small Person (SP) other than that she is a girl and is about 9.5 years old, and is a foster child. There are legal limits, you see. I can also tell you that she is sweet, loves the dogs, and has more winter coats than you would want to shake a stick at. (You could shake a stick at all of them, but you would get tired doing so.) And this is for a child who lives in the Seattle area. It doesn’t even get all that cold here.

So, yes, my finances will be changing even more than I was expecting them to. I will soon be getting severance, unemployment, and a small stipend from the state. However, we will also have another (albeit small) mouth to feed, and perhaps some summer expenses- like camp. (Though we may be able to get that reimbursed). I expect we will also be getting a family membership to the local Y and buying a family membership to the Aquarium, possibly the zoo, too.

Luckily, we don’t need to spend a lot of money on stuff for her because the child came with a ridiculous amount of stuff. She’s been in foster care for a few years and has had generous foster families. She has been described as a fashionista, and looking at all of her clothes (and there are a LOT of them), I can believe it.

SP has been with us only a little over a week, and because of the circumstances under which she came into our care, we are not yet talking permanency with her, though C and I are both hoping that is where we go, as are all the social workers involved. But, it will take time, so time is what we will give her.

In the meantime, my life appears to be laundry and dishes, meetings with social workers and reading aloud at bedtime. I need to work in some time to apply for jobs (okay, I am already doing that), and get myself on a writing schedule for both blogs and fiction.

But life is good, crazy good, but good. Please forgive me if I am not the best blogging friend for a while, as we all figure out our new normal.