All in a day’s work

I am copying my friend, Kallie’s blog. She did a great job re-capping the craziest, most hectic, indescribable day. It literally was just unreal. 

Kallie works day time (8-6) and is generally at the house alone with about 5-15 kids at any given time of the day. I think she is the most incredibly patient person I know! I am also copying her blog because I only became involved in the chaos when I arrived for lunch duty at 12:30.

I walked into a house that looked like a powdered sugar fight had just occurred. EVERYTHING was covered in a layer of white powder. I mean everything. The pictures don’t do it justice. It was embedded into the carpet, in the kitchen drawers, on top of the refrigerator, in the cabinets, everywhere.  Meanwhile, I couldn’t find Kallie to see what the hect had happened.. I finally found her outside talking with a female resident who about 15 minutes before was horse-playing with some of the male residents. Apparently the horse playing got a little outta hand, and a particular male resident ended up actually hitting her, and pretty hard in the leg. She was crying and upset by the situation. She was held down by 2 other male residents while this happened, until they realized how hard she was actually getting hit. Kallie was trying to figure out what had exactly happened and whether or not charges needed to be pressed on this particular resident (which did not happen).

After Kallie finished with this situation, she explained to me that this same particular resident who did the hitting decided to prop a fire extinguisher on the top of a half closed door, so that when the door was opened, the extinguisher would fall onto someone’s head. Well, Kallie happened to be the person that opened this half-closed door. Luckily another resident saw what was about to happen and held Kallie back. Instead of Kallie’s head cracking open, the fire extinguisher exploded. I much prefer the powder to Kallie’s head, but holy cow. wow.

I had to clear everyone out of the house so this particular resident could work on cleaning up this mess. Turns out we had to hire a professional cleaning team, or else…he would probably still be cleaning!

Lunch went smoothly and then I went home for 30 minutes.

During out 2:30 meeting (where the staff meet and discuss the kids, their plans for the day, etc), we get a call from a detective asking if “particular resident” (PR) is there. We say yes, and she asks which house he lives in. We then hear police noises in the background and the detective hangs up. Nik, my teammate, then goes outside to ask “particular resident” (who is sitting on the curb as part of punishment) to go to the office to talk to my boss, Kevin. PR responds that “they can come get him from there.” He was, of course, referring to the cops. Nik, trying to affirm PR that we haven’t called the cops and he isn’t going to jail, tells PR that the cops aren’t coming…just as 2 cop cars pull up. Nik wasn’t lying. We had not called the cops. Turns out the PR had actually called the cops on himself, reporting suicidal thoughts/plans. The cops talk with PR and eventually call and ambulance. He is police escorted to the ER.

After all of this, we start work crew and setting up for the 75 people that will be eating with us on Thanksgiving. We had to get out tables and chairs and set them up. This is no short, easy task amidst the craziness of the afternoon. Plus, we aren’t allowed in the house because of the cleaning crew…so we are trying to keep up with kids and do this at the same time.

Around 4 that afternoon, PR’s ex-girlfriend arrives home and finds out about PR. She freaks out and is yelling at the girl who got hit by him, thinking she is the reason all of this happened, and that he will go back to jail, and etc. etc. etc. Another resident, a good friend of PR, breaks down crying because he is fearful that PR will end up in adult jail, which is no joke.

At about 5 that afternoon, the female resident who was terminated about 2 weeks ago, shows up wanting her things. She is wearing booty shorts in the freezing weather. She is walking around flaunting that she can’t feel the cold because she is so “fu**ing high.” Cool.

The cleaners finally left around 6. We are allowed back inside to start the process of sanitizing the thousands of dishes that we have that were covered in extinguisher powder.

We also had to figure out dinner. Since Kallie was not allowed to be in the kitchen, no dinner was prepared…Thank God, yet again for Chic-fil-a. We took all the kids there and had a nice little field trip! :)

It was an exhausting day. Nothing that happened was funny, but I just had to laugh at it because, wow. That is just crazy.

All in a day’s work…at least here at the dale house!