Week Two: my house

I told the foster mom that as long as Daniel wanted to include Jared it was fine with me. She happily met me at the door for my second visit hoping she could better introduce herself. If only there were more people in the world who are willing to give their all for a cause like she is. She is a little more eccentric about the environment and so she is a minimalist, which was a little hard for me or the foster kids (for that matter) to relate to, but on the upside she is empowered with self-sufficiency and it allows her to be so caring, positive, and able to discipline while raising children to become adults.

Daniel and Jared were more than ready to get away and eat some pizza, something not too common around the foster home. We were going to have a blind taste test. We first went to Dominoes for a five dollar pizza special and then we went to Little Ceasars. The test became more of whether or not they could guess which one was Dominoes, since that's the one they knew they liked better before the blindfolds went on. From pre-cut bite-size pieces they easily chose Dominoes. I took the test also and though I could tell which was which too, it did surprise me that the Dominoes one (regularly priced higher) was actually too salty and I preferred the sweet hot-and-ready compared to that. But I told the foster kids that I liked them both about the same. Yep, I gave into peer pressure, not wanting to be made fun of. Adults have feelings, too. :)

On the way home I asked Daniel when his birthday was. I realized that he must have forgotten how he had told me the prior week that it would be today. From the papers I received from the mentor program his birthday had happened a month back. He lied and said it was coming in a month, to which I laughed and pointed out how I thought he told me it was that day. That made him laugh because he could think of a quick recovery and fessed up. Now they knew that I was fully aware that they would be testing their boundaries. I told them how I knew they weren't as old as they had told me the prior week also. We were starting to loosen up as friends and connect. I was starting to be on the "in" where they would trust me enough to tell me the truth about these kinds of things, but only starting to get that way.