hot hot heat

so laura and i have decided that there is no ideal weather for working at nativity house. one week ago people were bitching about the cold and rain (myself included) and this week it's been a battle against the heat. honestly, we were just as busy yesterday as the temp topped out at 91 degrees as we were when it was snowing. the only difference is everyone that comes in is sunburt and i couldn't be more jealous. if i remember correctly, at this time last year i was sunbathing on a beach in mexico, more tan than i have ever been in my life. this year it hasn't been warm enough to lay out, except on days that i'm stuck inside working all day.

this week has been particularly challenging as a one of the women who have been coming by recently is trying to figure out what to do with her four young children. i admire the idea that she believes her children should not be on the street, however the means in which she is trying to remove them from street life is very disheartening. everyday it seem like her children's very presence is harboring her time to socialize. when she does interact with the children or their father, people always end up crying and yelling. from what i understand the solution has come down to putting the kids on a greyhound to california to live with their grandmother, the catch being the grandmother won't know the kids are coming to live with her until their are already on their way so she can't refuse them or the other option, which would be to drop them off at the police station to be put in foster care.

it's been really difficult to see the children who are brought into nativity house. it's hard to watch children be subjected to some seriously heinous and violent adult behavior. not to mention the language, sexual activity, illness and substance abuse which these children witness. it's quite sad to practically be able to foretell the type of individuals these kids will turn out to be as so many of our guests have become frequenters of nativity house, consequences of a childhood with striking similarites. and the way the children are watched after would give most mothers high blood-pressure.

on a lighter note, one of our guests, who no one had heard from or seen in months came in today. apparently there are many good 'tricks' to turn in seattle, so that's where he had been residing in the recent past. i particularly like this guy because we always compare our jewlery from Claires and talk about furry coats.

king center

the city council meeting to review funding for the king center (the main shelter in town) was last night. pretty frustrating meeting for a variety of reasons. to begin, yesterday on the front page of the newspaper, there was a statement saying the meeting had been cancelled, which was only half true. the meeting was not cancelled, only they pushed back the decision for the king center to next week, only slightly coincidential is the fact that next tuesday is the national homeless coalition meeting, so many advocates will be out of town. either way, about 50 tacomans went down to the meeting, sat through all of the agenda items, until the citizens forum. there were many people who stood up to defend the necessity of emergency shelter, including some of the guests who 'live' at the king center. the meeting ended with the city council promising that they were not intending to shut down the king center and leave the homeless with nowhere to go, without providing an alternative. though i must say, their arguments weren't very convincing. it seemed like an 'it's not my fault, it's their fault' defense. everything that was being said was contradictory to what i know the homeless are experincing. i can only hope and continue to argue that the city needs to take responsibility to limit gentrification in downtown tacoma as well as provide for it's most vulnerable citizens.

old friends

i have created this blog as a way to share stories from my work as they occur (the long emails have become quite the task). so, enjoy the absurdity that is my life.
it has been quite a long month. the weather here is finally starting to get to me. there will be one day of nice weather, followed up by four ugly days. although, yesterday and today it has been really beautiful outside, i can only hope that the weather holds up for my upcoming days off. i must say though, when the weather is nice here, it's really beautiful.
life at work is ridiculous and entertaining as always. i'm really starting to feel at home at nativity house, in a way in which i feel comfortable with most all of the guests, therefore also feeling a stronger sense of authority when a situation calls for such. because of this, i have decided to stay on as a staff member once my volunteer year is up. i have found that i have become so involved in so many of my guests lives, i'm just not quite ready to leave and no longer be involved with them. in addition, the local shelter that houses most of our guests over night is most likely closing for good on july 1st. there are a handful of us that are trying to be proactive about this decision by the city to deny funding to the king center and i'm curious to see the developments that will take place over the next year.
it's amazing to me how many people come through the doors of nativity house. laura and i were talking last night and realized there were so many guests who we no longer see and had pretty much forgotten. even though many guests no longer come around, we are still full everyday. it would be very interesting to be able to go back to my first day of work and notice who was there then compared to who comes now. there was one guest inparticular i can hardly believe i forgot. his name is jason, and these days i have no idea where he is or what he is doing. jason is pretty mentally ill and he had a pretty big crush on me. i would catch him staring at me on a daily basis, which wasn't very hard to do seeing as how he would peek behind a corner 2 feet away from me and stare for a solid amount of time. the biggest, reoccuring problem we had with jason was him using our phone to call the ambulance. the converstation would go something like this. 'jason, why are you calling the ambulance' 'because i've had too many beers' 'jason, you shouldn't call 911 just because you are drunk' 'but i just can't stop drinking beers'. my favorite memory of jason is one day while he was staring at me, i asked him what was up. he replied that he had figured out why i didn't like him, it was because he is white. jason is not white. i looked at him a moment and said, 'jason, you aren't white'. he insisted that i didn't like him because he was white with the families and the grandparents, so on. i replied, 'okay'.