I never want to have a week like this again.
On Monday there was a huge blowup with Nat. It stemmed from a confrontation with a previous guardian in the parking lot at Lowe's last week, in which she came over and called Nat out to me for flipping her off last week on a school trip out in town...for which Nat retaliated by leaving a fake complaint phone call about her at her place of work. Which came back to Beth and me, of course. We confronted Nat about it and she didn't deny it, and was not about to apologize for it. When Beth told her that she had to go apologize to her was when the real fight started. By the end, Nat was trying to climb out her bedroom window and Beth was about ready to let her go. I talked them both back down and eventually things smoothed out a bit, but we felt we had to have Nat on runaway watch. Beth started feeling sick and within a day or so she was just about losing her mind due to the anxiety, to the point she felt like she was having a nervous breakdown. I had to leave work a couple times during the week to stay with her and get her to calm down enough that she could make it through the day. Nat's had counseling since then, and Beth has started seeing a counselor herself. She also shared with me that she has been very scared of Nat lately, after some very scary questions Nat asked her (would you be mad if I...sort of questions). The counselor seems to have a good connection with Beth. Beth also got some temporary anxiety meds  which seem to be helping a bit, although not nearly enough.
In other news, Alex had a robotics meet yesterday at Wawasee. We had to get up early, really early by our own standards, to get him to the school on time so he could catch the bus to Syracuse. His team did better this time, they didn’t finish dead last at least, but according to Alex they didn’t do great either. But more importantly, Alex had fun and enjoyed it. I'm really glad about that. This is something that I really want him to stay with.