A Bit About Shelter Life

I didn’t blog last night because I’ve been busy trying to get all my photos emailed from my phone to my email and downloaded and organized onto my computer. It’s a long process and I have a lot of photos. I’m just about finished, though, so I can move forward now. I’m also happy that I can now begin taking pictures and videos on my regular digital camera and downloading them rather than having to email them to myself. YAY!! But I’m off track. That’s me, though, if you remember. I tend to run off on tangents; it’s just my thought process. You’ll forgive me, I know.

So I was telling you about shelter life. While it’s not as bad as it could be, it could be worse. Aside from all the rules I, we, the kids and I, have to follow, communal living isn’t all it’s cracked up to be at all. First of all, all three kids and I are sharing the same room, as I’ve already said. It’s not easy at all. Try living with all of your kids in one room for a week and you’ll understand what I mean. We have no privacy amongst ourselves, we have very little storage space, and there isn’t much for the kids to do. We constantly have to pick up around the room, not only because it’s one of the rules, but because it’s a necessity just to make sure we aren’t tripping over things all the time. It’s cramped, and we get on each others’ nerves. We’ve learned to deal with it but none of us can wait to get our own place.

When we got here over the summer all five of the other bedrooms had families in them, people we would have to meet and learn to live with on a daily basis. My kids adjusted more easily than I did because there were kids here for them to play with, and they loved it. They took to the other children quickly. I met the other families – generally a single parent with kids – and we got along well in the beginning. My kids and I tried to just fall in with the already-set routine of the household, trying not to break any of the rules. That’s not so easy to do when all the staff members all have their own ideas about which rules can be broken and which ones can’t, and which families are permitted to do the breaking. That’s beside the point, right now, though.

I already told you we only get an hour for dinner, right? Right. I made sure, when we came here, that I had dishes, cups, pots and pans, utensils, etc., with us since Social Services (DSS) couldn’t tell us what to bring because they didn’t know where we’d be placed – it would either be a hotel or a shelter, blah, blah, blah. There are dishes and cookware here that I didn’t know about when I first arrived but I’m glad that I have my own things. With all the other families using the same stuff on a constant basis it feels kind of gross to use it for my family. Just think of how you’d feel if you suddenly had to live with five families you’d never met and were expected to use the same dishes and cookware not knowing how anybody else actually washes dishes. YUCK right? Well, that’s how I feel. Not only do they not always wash dishes well enough, they also don’t put anything away when they’re finished with it. They just leave dishes on the drain board and wait for whoever has kitchen duty as their chore to put everything away. Lazy, lazy, lazy. I cook and clean up after my family; I wash, dry, and put my dishes and things back in our room. Basically because I don’t want to leave it there to have anyone else use it, but also because it isn’t that fucking difficult to dry a few dishes. Try explaining that to the other parents here, though.

It’s the same with the shower but one of the rules here is that the tub MUST be cleaned after anyone takes a shower, by that person or parent of the child/ren, regardless of whether that bathroom is your chore for the week or not. I’ve actually gone to staff to have them ask the last person to use the shower to return to the bathroom to clean it because they’d left it in disgusting condition. I won’t even go into details about how bad; just suffice it to say that there is no way I’d put a foot in the tub after some of the residents have used it and not cleaned it. BLECH!! Besides, we don’t know who may or may not have any diseases or anything else and I don’t want to take a chance on anything. Trying to schedule showers for the kids and adults isn’t a picnic either.

Right now there is only one little boy who goes to school with my kids that we have to worry about. I’ll just usually wait until his family’s dinner hour and have my kids take showers, and I allot them about 15 minutes each. That’s not really a rule here, it’s more of a courtesy. Right now we have five families here, 14 people, and you never know who may need to use a bathroom. Over the summer we had six families, 19 people, and it was crazy busy at times with people trying to get kids bathed for school, and there was even one mother who would see my kids getting ready to take showers, or would hear me tell them to get ready, and would rush her two kids into the shower before mine – just because. She developed issues against me for whatever her reasons, making an already-tense situation even more tense. That’s another story for another post, though, along with the story of the one family here now that takes forever in the shower regardless of who may need get in there. We’ve already had a couple of close calls with kids needing to pee and both bathrooms being occupied by people who didn’t give a shit that other people lived here. Ugh!!

That’s how it is with communal living, though. There are families who try to work with everyone else to make things run smoothly, and then there are families who think they deserve privileges that nobody else does. We’ve had a few of those families here since June and still have two living on premises now. It sucks, especially when I have to explain to my kids that we have to follow the rules regardless of what other people do. “No, you can’t go make your own chocolate milk (or sandwich or cereal).” No, you have to be in our room by 9:00 and can’t stay out in the common room watching TV.” “I don’t care what the other parents are allowing their kids to do. I’m your parent and we follow the rules.” I feel bad for my kids but I’m not getting a write-up for letting my kids follow the crowd making the wrong choices. My kids don’t like it but that’s okay. I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do for us; and getting written up and discharged from the shelter is not one of them. They’ll get over it, I’m sure.

Anyway, I’ve shed a little light on my situation tonight, and I’ll keep giving you bits and pieces as I continue coming back here. I won’t write about it all the time because that would just get boring but I’ll do my best to keep you entertained in my own special way. No worries.

Until next time…peace to all.