Not done with this but may never finish or publish it.

This was from June 2004- I'll update the story later

I am going to take a deep breathe and then it's one long run on sentence for everyone
to decode. This is not another faux transvestite story. I really don't know where to begin and since that is the case I will begin somewhere totally unrelated to the actual point and get there eventually. When my Aunt Lindy passed away my grandmother gave us her horses but before them I really never had a pet that wasn't a gold fish. I enjoyed watching my fish swim around in little circles in their tank. I stared at them and studied them and knew every mark and color on their little fish bodies. I named each one acording to it's personality. This is what you do when you are 11 years old and do not have many friends and your uptight mother will not let you have a cat. Atleast this is what I did. I spent a sick amount of time in my room for a variety of different sins that I had committed. Goldfish do not last forever so I would periodically find myself at the pet store in search of a new friend. I would always take great care in the selection of my goldfish. The one that I would pick would always be special, somehow different from the others. It would be the speckled one when the rest were solid colors or it would have a black head and gold body. On one particular fish finding mission I spotted him and he was perfect! I made the guy chase him all around the tank I wouldn't let him give up even after he tried to convince me not to get my fish because he had only one eye. He caught my one eyed fish. "Are you sure that you do not want different fish?", he asked. That was a stupid question what could be better than a fish with one eye? My mother often says that Lydia always picks the one eyed fish.

It was Blaze's first day of pre-k when I met Julie and her two children Justin and Aramana. I noticed that she would bring Aramana to school on the city bus and she seemed to always be arriving late. Some times I would see them walking and in late August it is still pretty hot here. I am not really a terribly outgoing person but I left my phone number with Blaze and Aramana's teacher for Julie and offered to bring Aramanna to school. Soon after this I was bringing Aramanna to school early for lunch because her mother needed her to eat lunch at school as it was free and she was not doing well financially. Half the time I would just bring her to my house and she would eat with my kids.
Just by looking at Julie you can tell that something is not quite right. I have never been one to regard someone solely by appearance but in the the case of Julie just a glance would tell you that something was not quite right. Her eyes moved constantly, darting back and forth and at first it was a bit distracting. I don't know that any of this is relevant really. I want to make a long story short but at the same time I want to make a long story long. Okay do over.
Aramanna is a beautiful blond wisp of a girl with a face full of freckles and a little dent on the tip of her tiny six year old nose. She is cheerful, outgoing and a lot fun. Aramanna has had a rough start in life. She was born to a mentally ill mother who was and still is poorly equipped to function in society let alone raise Aramanna and her younger brother. She is often neglected and unsupervised. My mother says that I always go for the one eyed fish but honestly if it were not for Justin and Aramanna I would have nothing to do with Julie. I had a rough time last week. I do alot of little things for Julie's children, drive them to their Dr's appointments. Check up on their mother and make sure that she is feeding them and that they have their basic needs met. I could be writing a book here which is certainly not what I intend to do. I could never be a social worker. I would probably cry myself to sleep each night. This is going no where! This is how I feel. I am really pissed off at Julie because she is failing her children. She has the means to provide them with everything that they need and yet she does not. It was rough last week going into their home and seeing the place crawling with roaches, I swear they were like ants. Things have to be pretty fucking scary to gross me out being that I am the self proclaimed worst house keeper. I'm the person that actually has roaches living in my truck. ( I just think of them as pets) There was not even any food for the children in Julie's house. Kelly is always ragging on me whenever I vent to him about Julie or my mother for that matter. He'll say something like, "Lydia why do you expect mentally ill people to act normal". Maybe I'm mad at myself for not realizing sooner that Julie cannot handle the responsibility of herself much less the lives of two little ones. She clings to them so that she can give herself a reason to wake up in the morning but what exactly are they getting out of all of this. Not three meals a day. Not encouragement. Not adequate supervision. She teaches them her dillusional beliefs. She tells them not to trust anyone and that the world only wants to beat them down and that people are out to get them. If I sound pretty angry it is because I am. Because more than anything I wanted to see this woman beat the odds and raise her children to be happy healthy human beings. I know that nothing I can do will make a difference in this familys life. I am praying for Julie and her children, I imagine at some point I may have to call Child Protective Services. I do not want to do this and I will not if I can possibly help it.