I have just completed my half of the marriage licence application which we picked up yesterday afternoon at the Sedgwick County Court here in Wichita. Now Erin just has to fill in her half and return it to the courthouse on or after Monday 12th January. We still need to arrange for a Judge to formally marry us, hopefully this can be arranged before the 20th when my visa expires as I don’t want to chance getting deported before we can tie the knot. I am excited about getting married but starting to feel a little nervous about it. That will no doubt get worse as we get closer to the actual day but that is of course normal. Sometimes I still expect to wake up and find that this is all a cruel dream as I never expected to meet someone truly special who loves me for who I am, let alone get married. For the first time in many, many years I feel truly happy and content with life and looking forward to what the future holds with Erin and Conner.
On Wednesday, Erin and I were babysitting for Erin’s stepmother, Althea, who is a foster parent. We were expecting only three kids but we ended up with all five plus our son Conner. To say it was a challenge keeping five under 3s in check is an understatement. But there was one child particularly that I got attached to, a little girl called Josephine. She is severely brain damaged because her asshole of a father kicked her in the head repeatedly when she was tiny. As I held her in my arms I went from feeling intense anger towards the father to feelings of sadness knowing that she’ll never have a normal life, she is never expected to walk or talk. Every time I that I had to put her down for a minute to try to continue cooking, she would reach out for me. It really breaks my heart to see Josephine like she is when her twin sister is running around like a normal two year old. I don’t know what happened to the father but I hope that he has been jailed and hopefully has had a hard time in there as I know how inmates feel about people that abuse children. Normally I am a gentle person who wouldn’t wish pain on anyone but in this case I am making an exception as that asshole deserves every bad thing that may happens to him!