the characters in our blog

so we may be botards when it comes to blogging but just give us a while and we will master the skill! this is our first posting and ben is talking in my ear as i'm typing (he does this to drive me crazy & try to distract me from whatever the task is i'm doing at the moment...i love this fella!). ben has come down with some random type of poison ivy that is continuing to spread everyday. so he has been lubing himself up with calamine lotion and has been taking 1 benadryl to try to keep the itching down. this husband of mine has been taking BATHS in oatmeal because apparently it's supposed to help dry up the poison. however we don't have oatmeal oats on hand so he has been using our instant oatmeal packets and comes out of the bathroom smelling like his flavor for the day...apples & cinnamon, cinnamon and spice or maple brown sugar. back off ladies, he's all mine. so there's this lovely-smelling pink creature laying next to me in our bed rattling off all of the ernest p. worrell (ernest goes to camp character) movies that he has seen in his lifetime. i continue to be amazed by this pink itchy man who after almost 5 years of marriage, i realize i can learn something new about every day.

which brings me to the title of our blog for the first entry...since we are the managers of a group home for troubled teens, we have signed a contract of confidentiality so their names need to be anonymous. so here are the characters in our story.

we begin with ernest p. worrell ("hey vern!") who we will just lovingly call ernest. this kid is 15 and is the true and living ernest if there ever was one. here is an example of something he said to ben today...(imagine a slow southern drawl, similar to forrest gump's)

ernest: "ben, you know that place with the airplanes? kidney stones? "
ben: "ernest, what in the heck are you talking about?"
ernest: "ben, you know, that place where the first airplane took off? it's called kidney stones?"
ben: "you mean, kitty hawk, north carolina? where the wright bros. flew their first plane?"
ernest: "no, i'm pretty sure it's called kidney stones. well anyway, i went there once."

this is just one small example of what he says to us on a daily basis. one day i came downstairs and looked at our grocery list and saw scrawled on the list, "mental spatula." ernest was standing there while i read it.

me: "mental spatula? who wrote that?"
ernest: "i did. ben needs it."
me: "ben needs a MENTAL spatula?"
ernest: "yup, he was makin us eggs and said, "boy, i could really use a mental spatula instead of this plastic one to flip yer eggs." so i wrote it on the list for him."
me: "ok well you're going to need to come with me because i'm not sure where i'll find a mental spatula in walmart. maybe by the helmet section."

(side note: i will save the "gay-walking" episode for another blog but i assure you , you won't want to miss it)

next character:
we will call him carrot top although he looks absolutely nothing like that strange guy who walks around claiming to be a comedian. picture...hmmm....a taller male version of the bumblebee girl in the blind melon video "no rain." taller and with a crazier look in his eyes that that bumblebee ever had. carrot top is 16 and is our off the wall kid who has a great sense of humor and also has an affinity for putting holes in the walls with whatever his weapon of choice is at the moment. bamboo stick, a broom he's just broken in two, or just his freckled fist balled up in a fit of not-so-funny moments. tonight he told us at dinner that he wished caleb were his son. we're not quite sure how the logistics of that would work out but when caleb sang "i'm so glad when daddy comes home" tonight, i think i detected a bit of a tear in the corner of carrot top's eye. carrot top is our loose cannon so we do our best to use what we call the 'distraction technique' which goes a little something like this...

carrot top: "i'm so mad! i hate everybody here! (freckled fists balling up at this point, you can almost hear the walls say, here we go again)
ben: "holy cow, carrot top! have your walls always been this color??!?"
carrot top: "what?" (quickly looks around his room staring at all of the walls, fists unclenched)
ben: "weren't your walls a light green yesterday?"
carrot top: "no, you're crazy. they've always been blue." (eyes continuing to dart around, still unsure)
ben: "oh, okay. well come and eat some dinner."
carrot top: "okay."

phew! sometimes we are not that lucky. such was the night two weeks ago when ben got to follow carrot top around for about 1 hr. while he took his weapon of choice, a crutch, and scratched up the company van and beat a bush up outside to the point that it now looks like a patch of misguided weeds. ben actually had to restrain him, our first time so far, for almost 20 mins. until the cops showed up and he eventually went to jail for threatening to kill everyone. carrot top is not a slight fellow and i was so proud of ben for being able to handle it. i must say there was a point where i had to help out for a second, pinning down carrot top's legs when his kicking got a little out of control. he came back the next day and acted like nothing had happened. that's the crazy thing about the job, we do our best to have them come back and finish the program with us. to see things through with them and not give up even when that is the very thing we sometimes want to do.

final character:
homeboy. i won't write much about him for now because he ran away 2 wks. ago and hasn't come back. but this is the little white boy that thinks he's black. he dresses like it, talks like it and i think somewhere in his mind, actually believes it. he is a really cute kid and the ladies know it. he's only 14 but also acts like he's 25. he has lived a tough life and has enough street smarts to make 50 cent look like he grew up with paris hilton. which is why he ran away. he has done several illegal things since he has been here and has violated his probation. the time for reckoning was approaching and he knew it so he took off. where oh where has our homeboy gone?

well it's late and this will probably be the longest blog in the history of blogs but the next ones will be shorter, i swear it. we really do enjoy our life here although there have been tough moments, tough days and even tough weeks. but we have a really good support system here, our co-workers, our bosses & the other couples who have been through what we are going through....some of them have the craziest stories.

caleb is doing well, he loves the guys and they love him (maybe a little too much, papa carrot top?). he is growing up and is sooooo much fun! he talks so well and memorizes books and songs after only hearing them a couple of times. he has memorized some church hymns, some of them with all 3 verses! he turned 2 in may and started walking the day after his birthday. he loves to be outside, wrestle, sing, play with cars and trucks and loves curious george. i'll try to post some recent pictures of our beach trip ASAP. unfortunately there won't be any of the other kids so your imagination will just have to do.

we miss everybody! write us when you get a chance.