Rules...Continued

If my discussion of the house rules tends to get a little confusing I apologize, as I’m writing I keep thinking of information to add so I’ll probably be backing up occasionally. I’ll just move forward for now. I left off at the curfew rules. There was a curfew for children and adults. All children under the age of 18 had to be in their family’s room, or ‘off the floor’ as staff referred to it, by 9:00p.m. every night regardless of the day of the week or the season of the year. Adults had to be off the floor by midnight Sunday through Thursday and by 1:00a.m. Fridays and Saturdays.

The reason the children had to be off the floor was because after 9:00 was supposed to be quiet time for the parents. It didn’t matter if the children actually went to sleep or not, they just weren’t allowed to be out in the common rooms. As far as parents getting to relax was concerned, that was a bust any way we looked at it. Nobody got to sit and relax because our children were constantly coming out of their rooms to find their parents. See, in a shelter kids aren’t going to relax in their surrounding regardless of how long they’ve been living there. They all want their moms to be in the rooms with them. I guess the rule-making bozos never thought of that. I don’t think they put any thought into the curfew for the parents either.

I’m a night owl. I don’t generally go to sleep until sometime around 2:00a.m. unless school is in session and then I’m still up until around 1:00. I like to sit up and watch TV before I go to sleep but we weren’t allowed to have TVs or desktop computers in our rooms so the only place to watch TV was in the common room. Not only was there no TV in our room for the kids to watch to help them fall asleep but I had nothing to watch to put me to sleep. I’d go in my room and read which was a pain in the ass because I had to read by night light. There was only one light in the room, a sconce light that sat high up on the wall. I couldn’t turn it on while the kids were sleeping because I didn’t want to wake them, and we weren’t allowed to have personal lighting in our rooms because it was considered a fire hazard. Believe it, it’s true.

So I’d read and try to fall asleep but so many nights I was just wired and wide awake. I wasn’t even allowed to go out to the yard to have a cigarette. I started smoking again after I moved from MO in 2010 because the stress got to me. I’m not proud of it and I’ll quit again when the time is right. Anyway, there were a few of us who smoked but from 12:00a.m. to 5:00a.m. the house was on lockdown and residents had to be in their rooms. If I needed a smoke I was out of luck because we also couldn’t smoke in our rooms. And not that I would have, but I couldn’t even try to sneak one by hanging out the window because our room was at the front of the house and Staff had to make rounds inside and outside the house. There were residents who did smoke in their rooms because they were located upstairs and in the back of the house so there wasn’t much chance of being caught. They weren’t, I would have been.

What was just as bad was the “no food in the rooms” rule that I already mentioned. I couldn’t even have a late-night snack in lieu of a cigarette. As a matter of fact, there was no snacking after 10:00 because the kitchen was closed. I did make an error yesterday. The last dinner hour wasn’t from 9:00-10:00; it was from 8:00-9:00 and was shared by the two smallest rooms. Once they were out at 9:00 the adults were permitted to get a quick snack if they wanted but after 10:00 only parents with babies that needed to be fed or residents with a medical need were permitted in the kitchen. It sucked.

There were also rules that dictated that we weren’t allowed in each other’s rooms because of the possible threat of theft, we weren’t permitted to babysit each other’s kids, even for five minutes because of the threat of some sort of abuse or accident, kids were not permitted in the kitchen at any time without their parent present, and kids were supposed to be where their parents were at all times. Basically that meant that my kids and I were together all day every day, except for the hours they were in school when it was in session. They couldn’t make a snack or get a glass of juice without me being there. They weren’t even allowed to go in the fridge at all, I had to do it.

Even though I became very good friends with a few of the residents, women who I love dearly to this day, and with whom I remain in contact, I wasn’t allowed to run a five-minute errand without having to take my kids with me because of the aforementioned “no babysitting” rule. The reasoning behind that rule was that we were all strangers and we “shouldn’t” trust anyone with our children. I was being “should” on and I didn’t like it. All of us there were there for the same reason and there is no way in the world that any of us would have hurt the children of another. We residents thought it would be helpful if we could watch each other’s kids because it would have made errands easier but that wasn’t to be in Project Redirect world.

If my kids wanted to play outside, which they did a lot, I had to be outside with them; if they wanted to watch TV I was supposed to be sitting with them watching TV. If they wanted to play with the kids in the upper common room I was supposed to be up there with them. Are you getting the picture? Parents and children together at all times. Because of this asinine rule we parents were in a quandary as to how we were going to satisfy the other obligations that were put upon us but you’ll hear about those tomorrow. There weren’t a lot of them, but what there was wasn’t easy to accomplish and you’ll understand why soon enough. No worries, I’ll be back.

Until next time…peace to all.