things are not great here. we have a lot of kids who just stay over because their own dysfunctional families are no better than ours, but we at least have some food. my wife defends the feeding of whoever is around as it's only right, and besides, they're only kids. two of them, their grandmother just passed out; she's old, she has cancer, i took one home and his grandmother was there passed out on the floor. he called the right people and had her taken to the hospital, but then he was home alone, so he called us, and we went and got him.

they aren't too much trouble. they try to not get in our way; they sometimes come downstairs hoping to grab a snack or a bite to eat when they can do it unobtrusively. And we've told them this is ok. in my book the best way of keeping kids out of jail is feeding them and getting them to school if at all possible. but we can't adopt five kids; we can hardly feed the ones we've already adopted. and they each come with a host of baggage which, when they move it in, will be a little overwhelming.

one of our problems is that we have a young fifteen-year-old girl remaining in the house; she has a boyfriend; they are reasonably stable, and she's willing to go to school every day and just live her life. She's not crazy about having a bunch of older boys around (what was one, turned into two, and now more like three or four guests). too many boys. they're all respectful to her; some even treat her like a younger sister. it doesn't matter. it's something she and i and even sometimes my wife don't seem to be able to control. it's what one daughter calls "pathological inability to say no."

last night, in her sleep, she gave permission for one other boy to come and stay. he turned out to be the fourth guest. A third was staying without permission but i thought he had permission. this made five boys in the room on a school night. it turns out that all of them are going to go to school except my own eighteen-year-old who won't go to school in any case. they want to go to school. even he does. the fact was, he couldn't make it; he couldn't do anything they wanted. he couldn't wake up in the morning. but he knew he needed it and he's sorry now that he dropped out.

the rest are getting up and going to school. last day before the holidays.