!Summer storms
 --- 
agk's diary 
03 July 2023 @ 17:29 UTC
 --- 
written on GPD Win 1
in living room with jin jun mei tea
 --- 
First daughter's asleep in her room, Evy asleep
upstairs before night shift. My back and shoulders
ache. My tea's nice.

Last week Evy performed at Pride, two rope shows in
the 18+ area. The first a solo aerial show with 
three stunning drops to unexpected new positions as
she undid exploding uplines. The second a sexy,
skillful, funny aerial show with a friend from a
nearby city, an hour long, billed as "lesbian rope
suspension."

At work I was assigned to one of our dangerously
violent 17-year-olds the first day the two of them
were moved onto their own dedicated unit. The other
has sent three nurses to the hospital this stay, 
one overnight. She's tall, built like a powerlifter
and they've both lived more than half their lives
in institutions.

I was straightforward. I made a schedule with them.
They may not get another chance to work on recovery
intensively with someone like themselves for many
years. They can understand each others' total abuse
histories, explosive blackout violence, splitting
between the institutional world and the community.

They're temporarily not having to program with
girls who broke up with their first boyfriend and
thought they could overdose on melatonin. Time's a
wasting. I blocked out two hours for them to watch
Pittbulls and Parolees, but we spent the rest of 
the day working through groups from Lisa Najavits'
Seeking Safety curriculum. They'd done enough DBT
skills, I wanted them to encounter something new.

They did. It was a good day. The next I was assign-
ed to the child unit, but an hour after the end of
my shift I learned one of the 17-year-olds was 
throwing 65 kg sand-weighted psych-safe chairs at
staff in the gym. I responded. I'm one of the few
women in the facility who can dependably get her in
a hold.

Summer time is abandon your foster kids so you can
go on vacation with your real kids time. The upside
is we can get some weight on a severely undernour-
ished child, inculate a love of singing and folk
music in another, recognize another's behaviors as
entirely stemming from the supervised visits his 
birth mom (who burned and beat him) has just been
granted.

I stopped by the units of my 17-year-olds after the
end of my shift last night. Their staff hasn't
stuck to the schedule. They're just watching Twi-
light and counting down the days til they start
living in jails. "Y'all want to hear the best bar-
fight in the history of American literature?" I
asked.

"You know I don't read, Ms. Anna," one said.

"I said *listen.*"

They muted Twilight. I read to them from Cormac
McCarthy's Suttree. They listened.

Later in the night branches littered the courtyard.
Two trees came down in the fabulous summer storms.