No Right of Return.

KidFour gets picked up this morning by her father. She spent most of yesterday packing up her belongings to a soundtrack of bangs and slams and crashes. She is due to return Monday evening. Tuesday she can go see her teacher at Independent Study. Wednesday she will go to her boyfriend's for a five-day spell to celebrate his high school graduation. She can return the following Sunday evening, as that Monday she has another appt with the psychologist and Tuesday is her meeting with her teacher. After that, she goes for good to her father's house. The poor stupid self-obsessed, self-absorbed, self-centered, self-destructive teenager.

Good things have come of the strife of the past few months and the ugliness of the past several weeks. KidThree has had an incredible opportunity to put into practice the coping skills she's learned in therapy over the past couple of years, and has even worked hard to try to share those lessons and skills with KidFour. That demonstrates such a marvelous, hard-fought development in maturity for KidThree. If that were the only good to come of all of this, it would have been worth it. Another positive outcome is that KidFour is now talking about trying for some kind of reconciliation with her father. He deserves that. His parenting hasn't been ideal and he is as flawed a human as the rest of us, but also like the rest of us he loves his daughter desperately and has tried as best he could to help her. KidFour's mother has also extended a sort of olive branch, telling me that KidFour was welcome to try again to live with her, if she wanted. KidFour will probably not take her mother up on that, but who knows? She might. She does miss the formerly close relationship she and her mother had. And for the mother to make the offer at all was a huge step for her.

As for me, I can't wait to get this little apartment back to the way it was pre-influx of extra bodies. KidOne hardly counts: she is grown, self-care, and not around all day. And, she does her part around the place as a matter of course and shares a room with me, not with KidThree. KidThree needs her sanctuary back. Me being me, I naturally have it all rearranged and redecorated in my head so that it is as accessible as can be to KidThree. I can't wait to get started on that project. KidOne will be around more once KidFour is gone; she has been staying at her boyfriend's a lot because of the unpleasantness around here.

KidTwo called several times this past week; she's been filling out paperwork for a job application and didn't remember certain dates or addresses or time frames. It was good to hear her voice. She maintains a 'livejournal' online, which I love to read and in which I can hear her voice so clearly, but to have her actual voice in my ear was even better. I love to hear that she is happy and enjoying her new life. Right now she is in a country that neighbors the one she has moved to. A new friend, whose father works with her father, routinely makes a certain trip and this time KidTwo went with her. I haven't had any panicky calls from KidTwo's father, so am assuming that KidTwo is alive and well somewhere in this hemisphere (she had warned me that there would be minimal to no communication possible on the trip). She had better be okay.

This morning I may actually make it to church. Services start at nine. According to their website, the church has a table in the entryway staffed by congregants specifically to welcome visitors and new members, so maybe I won't be entirely lost. Having been raised in one religion and only attending other religions' services for the occasional funeral, I have no experience with routine services from other groups and don't know what to expect. I'm looking for a welcome, for friendly, like-minded people, and for a forum from which to act and contribute. Fingers crossed. Of course if KidFour's father is going to come up right around that time, I will probably stay here to visit with him in person; church services will repeat next Sunday, I'm sure.

This afternoon I'm to babysit BabyJ for several hours so his parents can take in a matinee. That will be a nice break, and will earn me enough money so that I can go pay the auto insurance on Tuesday. After babysitting, I'm to take KidThree to the city so she can spend the night at her grandmother's house, visiting her grandmother and her sister and her niece. She usually also sees her bio-mother on these visits. They give me a little break from having to get up during the night, but I miss her when she goes and worry that the care is not all it ought to be. Too bad people don't come to order.

After today, I have three days free. During those three days, I hope to get the new bed for the living room assembled, and to have KidOne help me with finalizing the tv set-up in the corner. (That table needs the cabinets underneath it to be moved and then some legs strategically placed for additional support.) Once the bed in the living room is changed, the old frame will go in my room under my bed, enabling me to get things copacetic in there. KidThree's room will wait until after KidFour's 'visit' Monday through Wednesday of next week.

I'm looking for things to lighten up around here. Hope is such a good thing--where would we be without it?

A