Boomerific

Virtual Relocation

2005-12-20T13:19:00.000-05:00

It's official: I've made the move to WordPress. It's sooooooooooo much better than Blogger.

CLICK HERE FOR THE NEW BOOMERIFIC.

I'll keep this site and link to it on the new one.

WordPress

2005-12-20T11:08:00.000-05:00

Does anyone know how to transfer archives from Blogger to WordPress? I'm jumping ship but I want to keep my old stuff.

Nez Pierce; The Toothpick Diet

2005-12-19T19:57:00.000-05:00

Dear Gail,

The nose piercing did not hurt very much. It was like a hard pinch--nothing more. My piercer, a thorough, chill, and rigorously sanitary young man with well over 20 piercings in his own face, used a very very sharp needle (which he took out of its sealed package and discarded immediately afterwards) followed by the stud, which also hurt a tiny bit. My nose was sore for a day but only about as much as it would have had I scratched it. It hurt far worse to get my ears pierced.

The cleaning regimen and healing time is actually far more bothersome in the decision of whether or not to pierce. Healing takes up to 3 months, during which time it is advisable to wear button-downs and V-necks. You can really hurt yourself if it gets caught. Once a day you clean it carefully with liquid soap, and once a day you do a saltwater soak. It's not that bad. Also, you can't play with it and touch it all the time. It can get infected quite easily during the healing period. If you think you can handle the regimen and be careful not to rip your piercing out, you should so totally do it! Gail, baby, you would look incredible with a nose piercing. The picture I have of you in my head avec piercing is so natural, so YOU.

Be sure, of course, to go to someone CLEAN CLEAN CLEAN who has an autoclave or has all sealed and disposable equipment. The room I was pierced in looked more like a doctor's office than a piercing studio. Never, never, never let someone pierce you with a gun.

Oh, and they might not want you to have the piercing at your school. I'd look into that before going through with it. Of course, if you're doing it for religious purposes it doesn't matter. Even so, you can also get pierced with a flesh-colored stud.

Love,
sster

P.S. I'm pretty sure the piercer and his assistant were gently cackling as I walked away in my gray slacks and professional-looking sweater. Contrary to what most people assume, a nose piercing does not in and of itself make one rock 'n roll. Unless it's like your 15th piercing.

***

The latest in ADD intervention at Chez Boomerific is diet. I love my ADD; it's part and parcel of who I am and how I function, and I love the kind of work I do because of it. However, there are aspects of it I'd like to manage more effectively.

Specifically, I'd like to substantially reduce the peaks and valleys in my daily energy, so that I do not end up with one manic hour followed by two absolutely shitty, lethargic, apathetic ones. I know sugar makes every one have these fluctuations, but for me it's rather pronounced. Since refined sugars and carbs (which convert into sugar very very quickly) contribute to these swings, I'm cutting them out. Gone! Of course, there will be holidays and birthdays, but there's no need for wonderbread and white rice in the meantime. This evening we had our Monday curry with brown rice--yum. I have stocked the shelves with whole-grain pasta and oats, as well as honey and agave nectar (Honey is a sugar, too, but is more nutritious than refined sugar and processed by the body much more slowly, which is the key; agave nectar is also unrefined and has a low glycemic index, which means it's not going to cause those sharp spikes in blood sugar).

Here is a good site for natural refined sugar alternatives: http://www.healthychild.com/database/life_is_sweet_a_guide_to_using_healthy_sweeteners.htm

Of course, this is stuff I should be doing anyway. A diet of whole grains, no refined sugar, and as many veggies as you can get your paws on is key to fighting heart disease (family history here), diabetes, cancer, and a whole host of other nasty diseases and conditions. So I'm not concerned that there's not much research on whole foods and ADD. It's healthy anyway and there IS research on blood sugar hockey and refined foods.

The other day as I was flossing oatmeal out of my teeth I realized that there's an easy way to tell whether or not your diet is healthy: floss. If you come up with something between every tooth, you're probably doing it right. Think about it: everything you're supposed to eat--unrefined whole grains (looooooove my popcorn...dripping with olive oil, of course), veggies, fruit with skin on--is everything that gets stuck in your teeth. The bad stuff just slithers down your throat.

So we're flossing a lot around here.

A Week in the Life

2005-12-17T18:15:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the lack of substantial posting this week.

But, in the meantime, I've been

bathing the dog

hanging out with Attic Man

taking in good live music (dark star orchestra, mr. small's, millvale, p.a.)

and punching holes in my body.

more soon!

Twilight Zone

2005-12-16T08:15:00.000-05:00

OK...so I'm checking my morning bloglines and several of you are missing the last few days of posts...I reload and they don't come back...

Single Parent Adoption

2005-12-13T21:00:00.000-05:00

I need your help, oh adoption gurus. I just had a conversation with a WONDERFUL woman who is thinking about adopting in the next few years and is exploring the issues. I'd like to point her to some good adoption blogs. I will of course list all of you lovely people, but I also wanted to find some single-parent adoption blogs as well (specifically in which the person doesn't have a significant other or didn't have one when starting the process). I know they must be out there. Also, she wants to adopt an infant, so while I will be listing blogs of people who went through foster care, I'm really after infant adoption. Also, because I'm already being SO demanding, I'd like a few to be international. Sooooooo...whatcha got for me?

Apparently, I'm 'In'

2005-12-11T22:22:00.000-05:00

I have, dear readers, been 'tagged' for the very first time in my year-long blogging career. Many thanks to Cindy for bringing me into the world of memes.

Seven things to do before I die:

1. Go on a roadtrip out West
2. Learn Irish Gaelic for real in the Gaeltacht
3. Remember and send cards for all birthdays and anniversaries for at least one full year
4. Come to peace with every one with whom I have unresolved conflict
5. Live off the grid
6. Get tenured at a small liberal-arts college
7. (since this feels like the least likely, I'm listing it last) ADOPT A CHILD

Seven things I can (or will) not do:

1. Eat any meat other than fish and seafood
2. Complain about my mother-in-law
3. Name my children after pop stars or athletes
4. Stop eating chocolate
5. Live in a house without a basement
6. Stay above ground in a tornado
7. Fight in a war

Seven things that attract me to my spouse:

1. (censored)
2. (censored)
3. (censored)
4. (censored)
5. (censored
6. (censored)
7. (censored)

Seven things I say most often:

1. Off!
2. No!
3. Sit!
4. Drop it!
5. Leave it!
6. Do I look OK?
7. My students are amazing

Seven books (or series) I love:

1. Notes from Underground
2. Seven Pillars of Wisdom
3. The Secret Life of Bees
4. Far from the Madding Crowd
5. Knee-Deep in Thunder
6. Home Comforts: the Art and Science of Keeping Home
7. "Society Must Be Defended:" Lectures at the College de France, 1975-6 (Foucault)

Seven movies I watch over and over again:

1. So I Married an Axe Murderer
2. Romero
3. Christmas Story
4. Glory
5. Lord of the Rings
6. Ferris!
7. Good Will Hunting

Seven people I'm curious about that I'd like to join in:

1. Oween
2. Vindauga
3. Dot
4. Tamara
5. Angela
6. Dawn
7. AfrindieMum

(Shannon, you just did one, so I'll spare you)

ADD 'Brainstyle'

2005-12-09T15:15:00.000-05:00

I had a great idea for a subtitle for my blog, which I hope never to use: 'Boomerific...Waiting and Dissertating.' Really, if I have to wait until I'm dissertating for Boomer to come, I will just perish. But I'm feeling hopeful. There's been a lot of non-bloggable adoption madness lately, very stressful, very confusing, which Dawn, Afrindiemum, and Shannon have been coaching me through. Have I mentioned how cool this little adoption blogging community is? It's like just happening to stumble upon a support group, but one that is super cool. And you don't have to wear nametags and drink bad coffee. I spoke to Dawn on the phone yesterday--neat to put a voice to a blog personality--and she is WAY cool.

Speaking of non-bloggable subjects, I am with this post about to cross a line I had previously drawn for myself. Recently there's been a bit of a hubbub at the Chronicle about grad students blogging, something about blogging being public writing and worrying about the same things you would when submitting articles. Someone even mentioned that you should not post pictures of pets. Well, I am still blogging after reading said articles and frankly, I don't give them a lot of weight. First, this is not an academic blog. I talk about social issues from time to time, but the forum is explicitly not a professional one. The other blog, which I never update, is specifically designed for that purpose. This one is about adoption and the daily goings-on of a person who just happens to be in grad school and will someday want a job. I doubt anyone looking to hire me is going to look at this blog as anything more than mildly amusing, if that. What I write here has nothing to do with my professional qualifications, unless an employer is going to use illegal or unfair criteria for hiring.

So. That being said, there are still things I won't write about. I assume that everyone--family, friends, colleagues, and many more unknowns--reads my blog. I assume this because I've removed things in the past after discovering that people I never thought read the blog had stumbled across it (it wasn't mean, just stuff that was kind of private). I know that not everyone deletes cookies in the grad lab so I can assume a fair number of my colleagues read me. And really, I can't say I hold my professors in such high regard that I believe they would never google me just for fun. This age of blogs and technology is kind of new that way--it's hard not to be found, and harder still to control the parts of your life you want to keep separate. I'm rather resigned to that. So there are some subjects that I keep mum about, mostly so that I don't make public something that is private to someone else. I am fairly open about myself, but a person should have the right to determine what their own level of openness is going to be.

Until today one of my only yet-unblogged life issues (though I refer to it off-handedly) is ADD. I have hesitated because in a lot of circles ADD is considered to be a bonafide disability that necessarily means you won't be as productive in work and life. You can see my wariness: what if someone who is thinking of hiring me finds my blog and says, "whoa. we CANNOT hire someone who has trouble with follow-through and detail." But that kind of statement would reveal an attitude about ADD that's at the very least incredibly simplistic and in most cases just plain innaccurate.

And maybe it will play out the way I fear. I would like to credit my colleagues and future employers in higher education with more knowledge and understanding than this. But even if it does cause me a bit of trouble on the employment front, it's worth it. I am a successful grad student, just as I was an outstanding undergrad: My grades are top-knotch, my teaching is solid (God, I love teaching), and from what I understand my reputation is solid as well unless I am missing the announcements for the "I Hate Sster" campaigns held in the conference room each Thursday. I do need to work on publishing and conferences, but that is coming in its own time and I am not by any means in jeopardy of losing my career completely.

But. Lest you think I'm some kind of academic goddess, let me tell you: it is HARD. Freaking, freaking hard. On the one hand, having an ADD brainstyle (I'll talk about that at more length in the future) is incredible well-suited to the academic life. One of the things that allows me to do really good literary analysis is my ability to hyper-focus when I'm really into something, which works for my writing as well (would you believe me if I told you that my academic writing is much better than the stuff I do here? it is). Also, the fact that every semester, nay, every day is different works incredibly well for someone who is absolutely stymied by any kind of rigidity. In other jobs I've noticed I start to lose interest, and then focus, after about 6 months, and at a year it is just unbearable. Teaching and research is new every day and is dynamic enough to keep my attention. I need something that is a good combination of novelty and structure, and the university teaching life is about as good as it gets. (Of course, there's also the fact that I love literature and am into theory, but that stuff is for the other blog I never write on and this post is more about brainstyle and fit). In fact, from what I've read and my own observation, a pretty large number of people who are in the humanities in academics are on one end or the other of the ADD brainstyle spectrum. So I don't think I'm some kind of freak.

What makes ADD hard in academics is the part that is about developing your own projects. Wait: that is what makes it good, but also hard. Let me explain. On the one hand, being in charge of your own ideas is perfect for an ADDer. But being in charge of your own schedule is not. So here I am in a phase of my program in which I am in charge of the majority of my days--long, empty days full of paper--and it's hard to organize myself and get it done. I am doing it--and pretty well--but it's a struggle. And I want to be able to talk about that on the blog. I want people to read this and say, "OK. I'm not alone in this. And I can see someone else who works the same way that I do and IS getting it done." I want to talk about some of the ways I am trying to organize my professional life and struggling through that process.

The biggest piece of it for me was changing my orientation towards ADD. I have been 'diagnosed' in the last couple of years (just to make sure my forgetfulness wasn't some kind of early-onset Alzheimer's) but being 'diagnosed' doesn't help much. All it does is identify you as some kind of impaired person. ADD is NOT a disability in my opinion. It is a way of thinking, a way of approaching life and work that is at odds with a predominently linear-oriented world. And it's NEEDED. People with ADD brainstyles, instead of being methodical and mathematical, see connections between things, and see function where others see category. They are creative, and impulsive, and have an incredible ability to focus when interested. Their penchant for empathy--because of over-identification with others emotionally--makes them the kind of dreamers who start humanitarian organizations. They also make superb literary analysts because of their ability to think in terms of interconnectedness and metaphor. (A big help in orienting my thinking has been Lynn Weiss's excellent book on Adult ADD). I think that funny term 'differently abled' really applies here.

I hope that by writing about it I can continue to help myself get through this new phase in my program (because for an ADDer, DOING is the key, actually physically putting things down) and connect with others who have similar issues.

Line? Crossed.

!!!!!!!!!

2005-12-08T09:34:00.000-05:00

Line from an email from our adoption social worker:

"You can still finalize the adopt here, if you are not living here at the time of the finalization."

No extra fees. Just a little paperwork so we can have permission to take the baby out of state.

So relieved. We don't have to start over in Iowa and waste 6 months.

And there may be something in February.

Maybe.

!!!!

Yummerific

2005-12-06T09:41:00.000-05:00

One of our local Thai restaurants serves a wonderful, comforting dish called Winter Curry. It consists of squash, potatoes, cabbage, and other veggies in a scruptuous curried coconut milk. Last night I decided to take a crack at it. It turned out really well and I wanted to share it with you. It takes 30 minutes tops and is one of the best comfort dishes I've come up with.

Sster's Winter Curry

Prepare: 2 cups, or 1/4 head cabbage, chopped
1 potato, cubed into 1 inch pieces (unpeeled for nutrition)
1 cup peeled and cubed butternut squash
Handful of peeled and halved pearl onions

Put the rice on to cook. I use basmati, which should take about 20 minutes. Zerolio taught me to soak it 30 minutes before cooking to get rid of excess starch, but I am lazy and almost never do it.

In a big pot: All the veggies
1 large can (16 oz?) coconut milk
3/4 can water
1 large dollop of curry paste to taste. Last night I added another dollop at the end.
1 tsp. salt or more to taste

Heat to boiling, then cover and lower to simmer. In 20-25 minutes, when you can stick a fork through the veggies, it's all done! Serve over the rice. I find this amount prepares more than 1 cup of uncooked rice can handle, so either make a little more rice or put leftovers in the fridge.

***

We make dinners with coconut milk about once a week around here. My standard favorite procedure is to take whatever veggies we have on hand, sautee them for a few minutes, then simmer them in coconut milk. I add water if I have starchy veggies, but if not I like the thickness of the milk by itself. My favorite veggie combo has to be broccoli and baby portabellas. I usually put in a tablespoon or so of soy sauce and a dollop of curry paste. It's perfect and takes no time at all to prepare--just as long as the basmati rice takes. I have also served it over rice noodles. So healthy (the coconut milk is fatty, but in moderation it's a good fat) and so delicious! I encourage you to try it.

***

The other thing we're working on at Boomerific is getting rid of refined sugars. When I was in high school we had a family friend who was a chemist formerly employed at the FDA. He told us that refined sugar should never have been approved, that it should not even be considered a food. It's associated with a host of health problems, including diabetes and cancer. I don't know that I buy some of the more fringe arguments about sugar, but I do know that I could do without the mood swings and definitely without the extra pounds.

So this morning I made myself a little apple tart with whole wheat flour and honey instead of sugar with the apples. It was delicious! If anyone knows of a cookbook with sugar-free (no substitutes! I don't like those either) recipes, particularly baked goods, please let me know.

Hope you're eating well.

Good Things

2005-12-04T20:58:00.000-05:00

No, this is not a tribute to the robotic blond home decorator, felon, and queen of capitalism. It is a reminder to myself as much as anyone that on the very very whole of things, life is good. So, despite the fact that Lenny decided to snack on a package of newborn diapers today and the little shits in our neighborhood have new, cheap weapons a la the new season (snowballs), these wonderful little items more than make up for them. My apologies for resorting to the list for what seems like the ninth post in a row.

Our good friends Richard and Richard just got hitched up in Vermont. Hurray! They’ve been together a long time and we love love lovify and lovilate the fact that they can get some kind of official recognition and partnership benefits out of the deal.

In related news, our friends Don and Michelle now have plans to do the same as of Saturday night. I am pleased to report that Michelle had silky soft feet for the occasion, free of calluses and smelling of peppermint. She hosted a lovely Body Shop party on Friday night during which a roomful of boisterous and irreverent women accidentally dipped their noses in several flavors of body butter and sprayed rosemary and tea tree oil moisturizers into their mouths because they couldn’t stop talking long enough to let the mist dissipate.

Lenny fell asleep (yes, out of his crate! This happens so infrequently we take pictures of it) in a donut today. The donut is by far our favorite sleeping-dog position. Normally it moves us to make oochie goochi awwww ooooo noises and we have also been known to shed actual tears. Attic Man was in the attic at the time so I had to take a picture. I am not posting it here because Lenny (known also as ‘Darkness’) is so black that you cannot tell that the picture is of an actual dog and not a large abnormally shaped hockey puck.

Taco night! Inspiration from here and here.

Two new nieces or nephews by March.

LSATs are DONE and in a week, so will Attic Man’s semester.

Love winter. Love warm clothing, misty breath, the sound of the air, the glow of our neighbor’s lights.

So what’s good in your world? There’s always something, even if it’s I haven’t had to blow my nose or run to the toilet in two and a half minutes.

Happy Sunday.

On to Larry David.

Maybe I Should Explain

2005-12-02T23:32:00.000-05:00

So here is why I'm getting nutty over the adoption right now.

1. When we started the process our social worker said she couldn't imagine any reason we wouldn't be parents before the end of the year. Based on adoption rates in prior years, it was a reasonable statement for her to make. Turns out that minority adoptions are down everywhere, and no one knows why.

2. Holidays are harder for ANYONE who has any shit going on. Special stuff just tends to remind you of whatever you're missing. I would LOVE to be passing a baby around at Christmas. I would have loved it at Thanksgiving. I feel so empty-armed when we see family and friends, like a member of our family is missing.

3. Here's what's really going on: we're running out of time. In June or July we're moving to Iowa. Adoptions take about six months to finalize. If the baby doesn't come by January, we're looking at mucho extra costs to transfer the homestudy and for interstate adoption fees. We have enough saved up for the costs we initially thought we'd be incurring, not this extra stuff. Also, we could then start the process for Iowa (while living here), but again there are the extra costs. There are also the logistics of a long-distance adoption. Also, from a preliminary search, there don't appear to be many agencies in Iowa. I hope I'm wrong about this. So maybe we'll have to start again when we get there. Fine: but a year after we arrive Attic Man is starting law school. A year is not a long time to get the paperwork together, wait, and go through possible complications with failed matches and the like. We're OK with adopting after the first year of law school, but we just can't do it that first year. ...So our worst-case scenerio is that we will have to wait 2 more years. I'm trying to get my mind used to that possibility, and it just sucks.

I Hate It

2005-12-01T23:52:00.000-05:00

I hate it, I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.

Maybe someday soon I will have something fascinating and inspiring to write. My apologies to those of you who aren't really interested in adoption.

For the rest of you,

oh
my
God
this
blows!

Here's Where I Am

2005-11-30T19:50:00.000-05:00

I'm done with the latest round of ethical mindfucking and just want my freakin' kid.

On a Race Roll

2005-11-28T23:20:00.000-05:00

1. We are firm in our decision to adopt transracially. There is the temptation, I think, to seek permission from POC to adopt 'their' kids, but I think that's misguided. Racist even, because it assumes that the kid 'belongs' to a certain group of people just because they have similar physical characteristics. Sure, Boomer is going to be seen and treated as if he or she is black. We know this, thus the anxiety surrounding how best to raise him or her. But we're not doubting our right to parent Boomer. I wrote to Shannon today, "I definitely think you're right about hemming and hawing being potentially damaging for our kids. I mean, how awful would it be to see your parents doubting the right to be your parents? That could lead to you doubting you have the right to be in their family. And thatsa no good. I think that we (you and Cole, me and Attic Man) have to be strong in our RIGHT to parent transracially. To me it's downright racist to assert that we shouldn't be parents to black kids or that we are second-best when it comes to parenting. As if race is the only issue in parenting, right? Parents have to deal with all kinds of issues they can't possibly handle on their own. So they go outside to the community for help. Race, I think, is one of those issues. Obviously quite serious and with pretty dire consequences in a lot of cases, but really, what parent can be everything for their kids? Nobody. I have to remind myself that we are going to be Boomer's parents, that we have the right to be Boomer's parents, and that Boomer has the right to be our kid. "

2. Speaking of going outside of our own little families, I think that no parent is adequate to parent on their own. I'm serious about this. We have this western Christian belief (and I'm a Christian, so I'm not hatin') that the family is this self-sufficient little unit that can supply all of our needs. But it's not. As a kid I had a quirky personality and weird ideas compared to my parents and siblings. I needed a lot of time with adults and kids outside my family in order to navigate my maturation. My family recognized this need. My sibs did it too, and as a result we basically got what we needed as we were growing up, just not all from our parents. Now, I think race is way more serious an issue than anything I had to deal with growing up, but it's still a matter of recognizing that no parent can do it on his or her own. So what if I'm white? I will go to the ends of the earth for Boomer and his or her sibs to know black people, to learn about hair and skin care, to teach them about the code-switching and cultural signs the poster on the POC forum talked about. It's what any good parent would do. You consider what your kid needs and you go find it. I know we won't do a perfect job of this. (Attic Man said, sighing, "well, one thing we know for sure: we WILL screw up our kids and they will hate us for it." The universal truth of parenting). But I don't think we are uniquely unqualified to parent Boomer because of our race.

3. I had a very tense discussion--very brief, too--about the biological basis of race the other day. I was saying, look, there's none, and they were saying, look at sickle cell and hypertension. But I didn't want to get into a contentious thing over Thanksgiving pie, so I let it go. But I'm reading right now, and it turns out that scientists have been firm since 1972 that there is nothing more than slight genetic variation, attributable to environmental adaptions (that can, of course, persist generations past the original environmental imperatives, such as with sickle cell, a defense against malaria), between 'races.' Hypertension is a case in point. The study that was used to develop a drug specifically marketed for African-Americans didn't control for things like access to health care and socio-economic status. "...it was not the color of the skin that produced a direct causal outcome in hypertension, but that darker skin color in the United States is associated with less access to scarce and valued resources of the society. There is a complex feedback loop and interaction effect between phenotype and social practices related to that phenotype." When the study was widened to include people of African desent in other countries, the differences disappeared. Anyway, there are a bunch of excellent articles on this page that take up the debate and provide substantiation for what I've written above as well as some challenges to it. Be sure to read beyond the first one. There is a lot to consider.

P.O.C. Conversation

2005-11-27T00:16:00.000-05:00

Right before Thanksgiving I thought I'd put myself in the most uncomfortable position possible and posted on the Craigslist P.O.C. (people of color) forum about our adoption. I asked which term--Black or African American--people were most comfortable with. I wasn't asking anyone to speak 'for their race,' but was trying to get at how individual people identified. Here are some highlights from the ensuing discussion:

Keep in mind that you are falling in love with this idea, but when reality hits - your ability to adapt, stay calm, constantly re-evaluate, keep peace inside your self, be consistent, etc- will be as or much more important than the Warm Fuzzies you're feeling now. And my learning is secondary to his learning - he needs to adapt in healthy ways to this new and wacked-out society and learn to live and thrive.

I guess my point is that the gravity of the commitment, and the Warm Fuzzies, are related but different.

***

Don't assume that your child will be embraced by many communities. Chances are, your own community will reject them.

what then? that is the issue. How will you explain to your child that white society, which their parents belong to, is rejecting them because of race?

2. I think if you are adopting a black child, simply to adopt a black child, you have serious issues.

If you just want a baby to love and care for, and make a life long committment to, more power to you.

3. If your child is male, you have SERIOUS issues that you will need to confront in the future.

be open minded. Do not invalidate your child's experiences later in life.

4. let them be who they are. they are going to go through stages, and may totally reject white america, either for a time, or permanently.

Don't inject your own beliefs about black people on to them.

5. If you do your job right, your child will be confident, and have the self respect to call themselves what they want.

Black people are divided over terms like "african american" and "black", etc.

it's a big controversy that is completely irrelevant to you now, most likely. And when it is relevant, your child will be giving you the answer (or exploring it), not us.

6. Be ready to deal with the realities of racial profiling, discrimination, attacks on self esteem, and underrepresentation. be ready for negative stereotypes.

be ready to see things in yourself you SWORE to god were never there.

be ready to see the community that loved and nurtured you, reject your adopted child under a sleek PC veneer.

7. have the courage to face all of that head on. Don't dismiss it when your child comes home having been harassed by the police, or followed around a store, or treated poorly for what they feel are racial reasons.

if both parents are white (even within a ethnically diverse family), I would urge them to find mentors and extended family from the African American community. You cannot possibly provide meaningful ethnic associations for this child in any other way. No books, observations of holidays, dance classes. ie, "Adopt" a grandmother or grandfather for that child.

I have raised 3 African American children (i am not AA, but I refuse to refer to them any other way). If I had to do it again, I would have focused more on doing what I recommend to you. With my first two, I had limited resources outside of AA partners & their families. My youngest is better off as I have much more extended African American family, and she has two beautiful, proud African American siblings to look up to. On that note, you may want to consider adopting another AA child at a later date.

Don't hate on their desire to speak in the ghetto vernacular.

Do teach them to code switch.

Are you ready for the reactions of outsiders, when you and your kids are in the store, and they see that the baby is Black? To be possibly insulted by someone who is assuming that your baby is the result of an affair with a Black man? To have people judge you in a heartbeat by the color of your child's skin?

Basically, is your skin thick enough? Are you ready to become a Black family? Because, bluntly, when you run into a racist, your color becomes unimportant to them.

I have found that POC are way open to me and my kids. My White brethren are sometimes not. Or ask inappropriate questions about my relationships. Or make assumptions about me personally that are way off base. (OK, Exotic Erotic, maybe not all off-base LOL!!)

And please don't do that silly thing that most white people do. "My children are human, color doesn't matter..." or worse "My baby is white too, just as much as he's Black" (perhaps technically true, but...)

Durr, the minute that child steps outside the house, they're out in the real world where color does matter and people are judged by their color, their looks, their weight, their clothes, their house, their car, their neighborhood. Parents have a duty to prepare their kids for mean people.

You actually sound like you're on the right track. But remember, we peel like onions, every time we think we're cool, another layer comes off and we discover another whole stinky mess that needs to be dealt with. Of course, that's also a good thing. Those who think their stuff doesn't stink....

The road you've chosen is not an easy path. But all kids need forever homes.

It's not your job to place labels on black children, even if you adopt them.

This is an issue your child will explore on their own.

the best thing you can do is be informed, but not opinionated.

If your child feels that you misguided them in terms of them finding their identity, you could have a serious shit storm.

The reason why many black Americans say African-American is because most do not have the luxury of tracing back to a specific country or ethnic group with accuracy. Part of having a family history that includes up to 3 centuries of slavery means that the history before coming to America is hard to recover.

In fact, slave masters made it a point to make African slaves forget or abandon their cultures through various torture techniques and punishments. It was called the "seasoning process". Slaves would get severly punSo while many white, asian and latino Americans can pinpoint where their families came from, black Americans just know they came from "somwhere in Africa" usually West Africa.

Everybody living in America is the product of immgration, however blacks are the only forced or "involuntary immigrants".

For me personally, I think the term also represents the black experience in America. A black person can be born and raised in America and never step foot on foreign land, but for some reason there are times when a black person feels outside of things. Like perpetual immigrants. Africans in America. Not really accepted in America, and no longer having a connection to Africa. Just kind of wondering and hurting and tired.

This discussion was incredibly difficult for me to take part in (I'm leaving out my parts because they were awkward and badly worded--the important stuff is the response). But I'm glad I did. We'll have to revisit the topic of race over and over as our kids grow up.

Here's what I've been thinking about since I participated in the forum:

1. The discussion confirms my insistence that race will be an issue for my little family and for my kids, that being 'colorblind' is misguided in a world that is certainly anything but.

2. We will be able to help our kids with schooling, cooking, hygiene, romantic relationships, emotional health, financial responsibility, how to throw a football, how to sew on a button, how to fry a turkey and/or tofurky, good music, laughing so you don't cry, being independent but sticking with family, hanging a picture, and on and on. But there's only so much we can help them with regard to race. Now I know that we are smart and educated and will continue to read on the history of Boomer's birthfamily's background and culture. We will of course be active participants in the dialogue about race in this country. As Shannon has said, if you're American, the story of how black people came to this country is your story, too. We do not, however, have dark skin. We will NEVER know what it's like to walk through this life with judgments heaped upon us at first glance. We don't have personal stories of racial persecution to help our children navigate difficult experiences. What we can do for them is raise them to be intelligent, observant, emotionally healthy kids who can figure out how to get what they need to live this life. Issues of racial identity will be theirs, really, not ours. At some point we will have to step back and let them decide for themselves what being black or African-American or whatever means in their life and how that identity is going to shape their lives. I don't know that this process is markedly different from other parenting issues wherein the parent does his or her best to equip the child and steps back to let the child work it out, except that in this case we will not be able to model anything. So this is going to be Boomer's journey, and we have to remember that.

3. Which leads me to the importance of making sure black people are always in our kids' lives, for all of the things we can't help them with. It will be important for them at certain points just to know someone who looks like them and therefore walks similar paths because of those aforementioned judgments. In addition, there is some cultural knowledge our parenting won't be adequate to cover. If we want them to be able to move back and forth between cultural contexts, they need to have models for different ways of being--different ways of being Catholic or Baptist or Quaker, and different ways of being black. We're going to have to make some important decisions regarding the neighborhoods we live in and even the region in which we choose to ultimately settle.

3 1/2. We will have to be careful, just like we would with anyone we introduce our kids to, because we can't assume that every black person we encounter will have healthy attitudes about race.

4. And now I know we're definitely going to have to adopt more than one child of African descent. Having someone actually within the family who can share these experiences will be important (at least I think so at this point) for Boomer.

5. One of the things we will work hard on that we might not have if we were planning to parent white kids is what to do in legal situations. I mean, I don't reallly know search and seizure laws or when it's time to lawyer up. Our kids will have to know this stuff. Hopefully Attic Man's future law degree will come in handy. Because at best, Boomer will get pulled over. At worst...well, Boomer's going to have to know this stuff. It's scary shit.

But we want it. Lord help us...the people on the P.O.C. forum don't get why we want it, but we do.

Fanksgiving

2005-11-26T14:05:00.000-05:00

A belated Happy Thanksgiving, bloggers!

Before we get back to business, a few highlights from our snowy central PA holiday:

The night before, the preparation begins with some of us chopping apples for pie...

Others of us chopping onions to be carmelized...

And others of us chilling out in the dog's cage.

After Thanksgiving Mass, we start the holiday with a trip to our local state park for donuts and coffee while the turkey roasts...

Where we snuggle by the fire...

have snowball fights...

Run with the dogs on the beach...

Throw snowballs into the water for them to hunt...

And large sticks for them to fight over.

At home, we begin the mammouth task of cooking for 20 people,

And of course making sure everything turns out OK before we throw it to the masses.

Finally it's time to sit down for: Oven roasted turkey, fried turkey, tofurky, turkey gravy, veggie gravy, white sauce, traditional mashed potatoes, mashed red potatoes with garlic, candied sweet potatoes, green bean cassarole, collard greens, scalloped corn, waldorf salad, canned cranberry sauce, homemade cranberry sauce, turkey stuffing, "commie" (vegetarian) stuffing, Stovetop stuffing, carmelized onions, mashed turnips, baked beans with apples, and probably quite a few dishes I have forgotten. We eat this all in one small room packed with people and food.

Later we sit down for apple pie, pumpkin pie, and Italian pastries from Jersey (or, if you prefer, pink sprinkles).

Then, groaning satisfactorily, we retreat to our places of rest to, say, read up on ADD, talk to other family members, or wrestle on the floor. Or, for a traditional family pasttime, we take self-portraits.

The day after Thanksgiving is nephew Joseph's birthday. This year he is four years old!

***

And so ends another year, ever bigger, of Attic Man's family's unique Thanksgiving. Next year we'll be in Iowa and so not likely to attend, but I think we'll try to incorporate some of his family's tradition into our Iowa Thanksgiving, especially coffee and donuts by the fire.

Hope you all had similarly wonderful holidays!

Peace.

Very Good News

2005-11-22T15:05:00.000-05:00

Head over to Very Mom and offer Jess congrats on her first daughter!

My Little Champions

2005-11-22T14:34:00.000-05:00

I forgot to post that L & H passed their day at Camp Bow Wow. They had a BLAST. I watched them all day on the webcam (while I was writing, of course :)) and they didn't stop playing for a second. They were so exhausted that we have had superb behavior from both of them ever since.

The director--very gentle and kind to the dogs--took us on a tour of the facility and we were impressed. It is so clean and barely smells of animals. Like I said before, they seem to have a real knowledge of animal behavior and what dogs need to feel comfortable and happy. Their website is a little deceiving in that it gives the impression that you're overpaying for all kinds of bells and whistles that the dogs don't give a shit about. But actually, everything they do shows an understanding of dogs and their habits. For instance, they advertise a "Campfire Treat" for the dogs at bedtime. All this involves is a Kong bone with peanut butter and treats inside. Perfect. Dogs love to--and need to--chew, love the challenge of getting the stuff out, and are comforted by a good chewing session. It really calms them. After an active day, it makes a big difference. At home they tend to play all day and settle for a chew in the evening.

Anyway, they have been amazing since they came home and I have no doubt that they'll be in good hands when we go away. It's such a relief to find a good solution for when we need to board them.

I'm Actually OK

2005-11-21T13:47:00.000-05:00

I know the last post was a bit dark. I tend to kind of...well, let the posts run away with themselves. And I am working through some stuff. But not ready to jump off a bridge or anything.

I just had a nice conversation with a good friend and I'm getting back to me again, I think.

So it's alright.

Come Home...

2005-11-20T18:13:00.000-05:00

Today has been pretty rough. On the surface, not at all; all manner of weather and work and family have come together for a nice day. I have no real complaints.

Except that lately I've been noticing a lack of...fullness, of a sense of engagement with life. I read this lovely post by Susan and after soaking up its loveliness I got a little sad. It's not that she spent the day with children, and that I miss just being with children (whether or not they're mine), but that her day was so rich with opportunities for love and growth and just the pure enjoyment of living.

These days I've been kind of languishing here at the computer, getting a little done on my schoolwork--it's coming along nicely, actually, if not as quickly as I'd like--and doing a ton of laundry somehow. But the kind of passion I used to have for things like social justice is mysteriously waning. The other day I nearly bought a pair of socks without having a second thought. I stopped suddenly and remembered how committed I used to be about not buying sweatshop products. At one point we realized we could not afford to buy everything union made, but we did commit ourselves to shopping ethically whenever we could manage it. I realized that I could get socks and Maggie's and anyway I'm doing laundry all the time so it would be okay to put them back. Somehow that little exchange between the old sster and the slowly dying sster got me to thinking about how my light is starting to go out and how I have to do something, anything to get it back. It's all there for me: Attic Man, the puppies, amazing friends and family, an exciting academic project, a great city with a bustling arts scene, plenty of social justice projects, blogs to write, blogs to read (not just to check but to really be engaged with). I talk all the time in my profession about becoming immersed in the fabric of culture, but I am starting to lose the ability to do that in my own life. And this slipping into the cold, dead, capitalist abyss is not me and never has been. It will be if I do not pull myself back from the edge.

The other hard thing, though, the thing that's making it hard to get back to living intentionally, is that this baby is just not coming. I took a few pictures of the baby's room (I cannot bring myself to call it a 'nursery,' I guess because it's not themed or anything, because to me--and I'm not judging anyone else here--it would just feel creepy to have it all the way ready before the baby comes) and the one above is not the best one whatsoever. The others show the little dresser and the bassinet that will live downstairs when Boomer arrives, but this one best represents how I feel. I feel in the pit of my heart that there was a moment some time in the last few months when our adoption almost happened. And it feels like the moment is gone, that our baby is gone. I can't explain it. It's as if we lost a baby. Today Attic Man was flipping through the music video channels on cable, as he does at least once a day, and called me into the living room to show me a very cute and funny rap video featuring a ten or so year-old black rapper on the playground. It was cute, and it warmed my heart to see him beaming over kids that look like Boomer might, but it mostly just made me sad. He pulled me over to him on the couch. I told him what was going on, and after comforting me he said, "your feelings are wrong." I said, "this is not the right time to joke with me." He said, "I'm not joking. I'm serious. Your feelings are wrong. Every day we wait we're another day closer to Boomer. That's factually true. This is one of those times when the facts outweigh your feelings." I conceded. But you know, I'm still feeling it. My heart is having a hard time keeping up with my head, that keeps saying, "chin up! it will happen soon. Maybe not soon enough from this vantage point, but soon." I don't know why I'm having such a hard time keeping my hopes up. I guess it's just exhausting to be excited about the adoption every day. I'm just tired of it and want our baby.

So, Boomer...we love you and want you to come home.

Audition

2005-11-18T13:14:00.000-05:00

Today the puppies are at Camp Bow Wow auditioning. We will need to board them next month when we travel to see my family for Christmas, so we need to find a good place now. This one was recommended by our trainer. She, in fact, works as a behavioral consultant there.

We looked at places like PetsHotel and were quite put off. They charge the going rate for premium boarding, but all of their 'premium' services have nothing whatsoever to do with the dogs; it's just gimmicky stuff for shallow 'pet parents' who feel guilty about abandoning their dogs. Examples include lactose-free ice cream, phone calls from the 'pet parent' (which I can't imagine would do anything but freak the dog out, who can hear you but not see or smell you), and a Thanksgiving-themed meal over the holiday. I mean, really. The dogs do not care.

What the dogs DO care about (at least ours) is playtime. Most places keep the dogs in cages most of the day--which I don't think is cruel or anything, by the way--and charge out the wazoo for playtime. So for $20 less than we'd pay at PetsHotel, we get the boarding and all-day out time for them. They get a nap in the middle of the day, but other than that they are free to play, sniff, and socialize all they please. They also separate the dogs by size and temperament so the little dogs and the elderly ones don't get slammed by the puppies.

So here's the part that's a little embarrassing: they have webcams (click to watch our puppies! select Collieaut Lake or Cedar Pointers--they are going back and forth) for the play areas so you can watch your dogs even if you are in Tokyo. So...what do you think I've been doing since I got home (other than, uh, writing)? I think the cameras serve two purposes: one, so overly-attached owners like me can see them in action, but more importantly, so that we know they aren't just giving us lip service about the playtime. One place we used to board Lenny this summer would not let us tour the facility for any reason. There were no windows we could look in. So we had no way of knowing whether or not it was clean or safe. I asked to see the inspection records, and they looked good, but around here you never know who's in who's pocket and who's brother-in-law might tip somebody off about an inspection. I know this must sound ridiculous to you but some people will gladly take advantage of those who can't speak for themselves. They do it in nursing homes and also in dog kennels. You have to be really careful. And if you have a dog you know that they are neurotic and cannot intellectualize anything that happens to them, so one bad incident can absolutely ruin them.

I miss them. They drive me CRAZY when they are here but I miss their craziness today. At least I'm not worried about them.

Gosh...what am I going to do when I have to start looking at day care?? I'll be a wreck, I tell you.

If, that is, we ever get a baby...

Oh yeah--about the move

2005-11-14T21:34:00.000-05:00

Remember how I solicited opinions lo those many months ago about where Attic Man and I would settle? (Blogger doesn't have Permalink, but you can look in the August archives for the posts).

Well, we've decided. Next year, actually in less than a year, we'll be in...

Iowa City, Iowa.

Here's what we love:

it's...

-West!

-has a kick-ass law school for which Attic Man is more than qualified

-nearer to my brother (a casual morning's drive) than I've been to him since I was in Jr. High

-home of the University of Iowa, through which many, many good and exciting writers pass, and at which I may, if I'm lucky, be able to teach, maybe as an adjunct, maybe more if I write a stunning dissertation and they need an Irish Studies person, but probably not if I persist in run-on sentences, or perhaps if I do persist in them, which is something we academics have a fondness and also a proclivity for, and if you think I'm going to end this sentence with a preposition you're wrong, because the whole list is a sentence, and this is just an item

-has a comparable or even lower cost of living than Pittsburgh and from what I understand salaries are quite nicely matched with it

-is probably not as trash-filled and concrete-intensive as Pittsburgh (please note! this is just our neigborhood, and it's not that bad, really. There are some beautiful, huge parks in the city and overall it is a wonderful place to live. We're just SO READY to take a break from city life, to see some more trees [though more like cornfields], and live the small-town life again for a while)

So! I guess this is announcement, or something.

Love is a Learned Behavior

2005-11-14T17:01:00.000-05:00

So the house is really clean because I'm in the middle of a big writing push. In a few minutes I think I'm going to clean the living room carpet because we own two of the dirtiest dogs known to man. They play on wood and concrete and sleep in clean plastic crates, so I'm not sure how they get so dirty. Most of it is really hair. Twice the love, twice the fun...and twice the hair. Big, black tufts of it. I sweep every day now. Every day! Maybe the rest of you clean your floors every day and I am just late to the party. But I can make ENTIRE PUPPIES out of the hair I get from daily sweepings.

Speaking of the puppies, I have to say that Lenny, despite his many, many difficulties (he is now our fearful dog, scared of parked bicycles and most people) is undergoing a remarkable transformation. This is a dog who couldn't care less about us a few months ago. Sure, he cried when he wanted to be out of his crate, and the two times we left him at the kennel he acted genuinely glad to see us. But he never really seemed to live or die on pettting and mushy love stuff the way most dogs do. We learned to live with it and accept it and just enjoy his antics. Then Heidi came along, and I don't know whether he's maturing or whether he has seen how she gets attention just by sitting still to be petted, but something wonderful is happening to him. Usually when he wants attention he will do one of several horrible things: get on the counter, in the garbage, in the tub; grab a shoe, a blanket, a cantalope (this happened more than once); pee, poop, or vomit; jump on the table, the bed, or the couch; and so on. Now, in the last two weeks or so, he's starting to come up to us, press up against us, sit down, look back cutely, and ask to be petted. He will even abandon a rawhide to do so. I know this may not seem like a big deal to most of you who have normal, affectionate animals who will not leave you alone. I myself have a champion licker and affection whore. But Lenny is a special case (as he is with everything), and it is so good to be able to make him happy in terms we understand, finally. Now that he gets enough exercise from playing with Heidi and I think is in general calming down because of age, he is able to enjoy petting. And boy, is it therepeutic. Next we'll be working on his wariness of strangers and hyper children.

Some more stuff on adoption coming from a few posts I've read. Right now my soul belongs to Ireland in the 1980's.

Wholeness

2005-11-13T15:36:00.000-05:00

I've been talking a bit with another friend who's adopting about the delicate mental acrobatics I'm doing during this wait. The silence is deafening, and in it all I can seem to hear is the echo of my own voice (and occasionally Attic Man's) saying "what the fuck is going on?"

What I started to notice in these echoing thoughts is that I have begun to think of this adoption as IT. You know, as the Moment to Define All Moments!, that when it happens the heavens will open, choirs of angels will descend, and birds will braid my hair every morning. I have these beautiful fantasies of dancing around the house mopping with a perfect sleeping babe in my sling (which arrived yesterday!), gazing into his or her little marble eyes, being one of two who are the only ones on earth to be able to soothe his or her crying...

And that this baby will complete my life. Everything that I don't like will go away! I will finally be in community with other parents in the world. My schoolwork will have more meaning because suddenly I will have more of a stake in the world, and at least in reference to my degree, I will be working for someone other than myself.

What happens, then, when the baby arrives? The beautiful moments, surely, but also the bizarre and painful: the separation from Boomer's birthmother (her mourning, my mourning for her), the crying I can't seem to figure out how to stop,

(I can't seem to stop making lists!)

The point is that if I build up this time in my mind when reality sets in and I realize that I am not whole, will never be whole, and that this baby has nothing to do with whether or not I am OK enough to be in the world, I will have a mighty, ugly crash.

So right now I'm working on really living when and where I am. I am focusing on school the best I can, and enjoying the current composition of our family. The dogs are getting a lot of my undivided attention. Mostly I'm just trying to be content. When the baby comes, we will have a different sense of incompleteness, hopefully one that feels better. I'm ready for a different 'adventure.' I will not, however, expect the baby to do anything for me that I can't do myself. If I do, I'm afraid I will find out that in the mammoth act of giving that's required for little ones I can't seem to reconcile my need with my reality. In other words, I'm trying not to need the baby, trying not to require the baby for my current or future happiness.

I'm not sure how to do this. But I owe it to Boomer, I think.

Weirdly Accurate

2005-11-13T13:38:00.000-05:00

Sorry. I'm writing right now...

ellipsis
You scored 38% Sociability and 76% Sophistication!

Your life can be difficult because of your insecurities, but you should
know that it isn't your fault. YOU didn't ask to be thrown in around
thirty times per page in every bodice-ripper on the shelf! Those who
overuse you can kiss your . . . you know. You need to learn to hold
your head high and glory in your solitude. You really do have
excellent, scholarly tastes. You must never forget that your friend,
the period, will be there to support you at the end of every sentence
where you truly belong, and, if what is left out is as important as
what is said, why, then you are as vital as the alphabet!

My test tracked 2 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 24% on Sociability
You scored higher than 82% on Sophistication

Link: The Which Punctuation Mark Are You Test written by Gazda on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

So those extra 20 pounds ARE for the baby...

2005-11-11T00:12:00.000-05:00

Please stand by while Attic Man and I feverishly get to the end of the semester, survive holiday travel, and continue to do hurry up and wait for our adoption. Sigh. Maybe I'll have something for you soon.

In the meantime, I give you Karen for these justifications for my current behavior, particularly numbers 1, 2, 13, and 15.

Lenny's Tiny Brain Comes to Grips with Transracial Adoption

2005-11-08T21:15:00.000-05:00

Daddy, if you and Mommy are white, why is the baby grey?

(you may have had to be there for this one. right now we're both sick, stressed, and oh-so punchy)

Good Reading

2005-11-07T21:51:00.000-05:00

The other day I asked bloggers who have adopted or are in the process to post about their decision to do so. Their responses are confirmation of what I expected: that all of us come to adoption in very different ways. Still, as different as these stories are to mine, I find certain phrases ringing particularly true for me.

Enjoy! (and if I missed yours, let me know ASAP so I can add it!)

Shannon:

"One reason adoption fit for me (and I speak only of myself, not Cole) is that a main focus of my religious/spiritual faith is the concept of hospitality and welcoming the stranger. This is a pretty central concept in Judaism and later, in Christianity, and later yet, in Islam, so it's not any profound thing I made up. I am just exceptionally taken by the idea. It seems like something that flies in the face of the messages we get from capitalism to fear the stranger, to huddle together in the smallest, most homogeneous groups we can find and build big gates with guard towers all around them. I just think that reaching out to strangers, trusting the unknown and inviting it into intimate relationship with us is a consumate way to live in faith in something much better than anything we could ever buy or control on this mortal coil."

AfrindieMum:

"The list of things we worried about and struggled with was very long. Too long to list here. So we read, we researched, we went to seminars and trainings, we asked our friends with multicultural families how they teach their children about dealing with racism and we talked and talked and talked with each other. And I don't remember a moment or a day that we came to terms with these issues. But I do remember coming to a point, whenever it was, of understanding that not only could we do this, but really wanted to have a multicultural family. And I know this isn't any sort of massive realization and it's not some great resolution to all of our issues. But the important thing is that we realize these issues and we work every day to fight them. We will do this for the rest of our lives. And like I said earlier, I think we're better parents as a result."

Susan:

"One of the things parenting has taught me, time and again, is that the best decisions are difficult to explain to others. They are decisions that emerge from such a tangle of factors, and decisions that work for me and for us. They're not decisions that will work for everyone and I don't mean to be judging folks who have decided to be pregnant, or who have come to different adoption choices. This is all what worked for us, and I love reading the narratives of other choices. They show me possibilities."

Tiny Things to Make One Weep

2005-11-07T15:19:00.000-05:00

In a flurry of baby preparation that visits me periodically, especially in times that I find it hardest to wait (in this case, the holiday season, during which it would be nice to pass around a baby), I ordered a bunch of new stuff and the first of it arrived today: impossibly tiny fitted sheets for our downstairs bassinet. These sheets would make you weep, I swear, they're so adorable. I was not aware that fitted sheets could make one weep, unless one was doing so over the folding of them. In a few days we'll be unpacking two new bassinet matresses, one for the upstairs bassinet and one for the down (having two is result of a father and son team of thrift hunters), sheets for the upstairs one, and a crib matress and sheets.

Receiving said items has been and will be lots of fun. Buying them, on the other hand, was sheer torture. Did you know that if you don't buy the right kind of matress, your baby will DIE? Did you? Or that there are three sizes and FIVE shapes for bassinet matresses? It's true! But I'm done with it all now. As soon as the items arrive we will be ready to parent a baby sensibly and safely with the right sizes of everything.

OH! And the best item of all: the Kangaroo Fleece Pouch sling. Hurray! Good for walking dogs, doing dishes, washing your hands after diaper changes (a luxury I learned to miss when babysitting), and striding into church with a newborn.

Now with more altruism

2005-11-06T19:40:00.000-05:00

I was thinking more about altruism at St. Benedict, and it occurs to me that it doesn't really matter. What I'm talking about is the act of emptying yourself to God (or for some of us, the universe), and just availing yourself to whatever it is you are supposed to do in this life. It's an intensely private matter, and it's also the intersection of a lot of other forces and desires. Sometimes what we're 'called' to do is a radical break from how we've lived our lives up til that point, and sometimes it's an uncomfortable leap of faith. Sometimes it's the natural outcome of how we've been growing (and this is what it was for us, though with some of the leap of faith stuff, too). And it's not "look at me! I'm so good! I'm helping somebody" so much as a sensation of the wind picking up at your back, and the decision you make to go with it, to fight it, or to duck down until it passes. The act itself may be altruistic, but only in the sense that we have surrendered to that wind and said "ok." If it's 'good,' fine. It just doesn't matter.

A few more thoughts on altruism

2005-11-06T11:27:00.000-05:00

Some lovely posts have come out of my request for narratives of people's decision-making processes and adoption, many of them centered around altruism.

I continue to be amazed by the insistence of every adoptive parent I know that their motives for adopting are completely selfish. And I don't know if I really understand that. As I've written below, we began from a place of altruism and along the way our adoption plans became about so much more than that. At a certain level, though, adoption in the best situations is still altruistic. A family is still giving his or her hearts to a child, and however how unfortunate (clearly not strong enough of a word...), a birthmother is making a parenting decision that is ultimately altruistic. Of course, adoptive parents may come from a selfish place and I suppose a birthmother might also, but in the end, though everything isn't fixed, a child gets to be raised in a family that loves him and can provide for her. I don't think that the child should be grateful necessarily--no act of love should require gratitude--but he or she is blessed by adoption in a lot of ways.

What I CAN imagine is that once you become a parent--even from the first second--you are the child's sole lifeline. You provide his or her every need, and if you don't, the child will suffer. Most parents I know would give every limb for their children with hardly a second thought. So even if having children is ultimately selfish, parenting them can't be. Every parent comes to the other end of the day with a number of priceless gifts from the child, but parenting isn't about that.

Or so I think. I haven't done it yet, so I can't really know. But I'm just wondering if I'm some kind of high-and-mighty-acting person for thinking there's still some altruism in my adoption plans. I'm not saying that altruism overwhelms it (or even accounts for most of the decision to adopt), just that it is still an element. Am I missing something? Do you all hate me?

Conversations

2005-11-06T08:22:00.000-05:00

"I don't want tomorrow. Tomorrow is too hard."

"Ok, then. We'll put it in the toaster and go straight to Sunday."

"I don't want Sunday, either."

"Ok. We can put Sunday in the crockpot, but sooner or later we're going to run out of places to put them."

***

"I'll take care of the dogs this morning. You can stay in bed."

"You are the best husband in the whole world, you know that?"

"I know. I have a lot of practice, what with keeping three wives. That's where I am when I say I'm going to 'school.'"

"Whatever. If it gets me this, I don't care."

***

(from downstairs): "Are you OK?"

(from bedroom): "..yes..."

"Are you sneezing"

"No..."

"Are you coughing?"

"No..."

"Are you making any noise at all?"

"No."

"Hm. Must be going schizophrenic."

Waking

2005-11-03T11:54:00.000-05:00

Oh Lord, to see a light
but failing strength to follow
Sometimes it's hard to let it go

Oh Lord, to fail in heart
and each day grow more hollow
Sometimes I just don't wanna know

But the road that led me here
has begun to disappear
Sometimes I wonder where I am

Oh Lord, to hear the voice
but let it fade and wallow
Sometimes it's hard to let it go

Oh Lord, to find the words
but keep them in and swallow
One day the top is gonna blow

But the road that left me here
has begun to disappear
Sometimes I wonder who I am

Oh Lord, to stumble blind
for years without knowing
Sunrise has burned my eyes again

Oh Lord to crumble quiet
watching from the silence
Sunrise has burned my eyes again

It's a seven story mountain
It's a long, long life we live
Gonna find a light and fill my heart again

It's a seven story mountain
It's a long, long life ahead
Gonna find my voice and fill my throat again

"Seven Story Mountain" Railroad Earth/Written by Todd Sheaffer

Ewwww!

2005-11-01T22:28:00.000-05:00

Heeding the call

2005-10-31T21:20:00.000-05:00

Head on over to Afrindiemum for this post. I love finding my internet-sister-twins.

Choice

2005-10-31T16:38:00.000-05:00

Hmm. I had a productive day. My weekend put me a little behind my self-imposed schedule (a former roommate of Attic Man's showed up in our neighborhood, and we had a delightful visit) but I'm getting back on track. I think blogging is actually helping me be more productive. For awhile I thought it was just sucking my work time away, but I think it creates this space for me to write and process non-school issues so that I can clear my head for work.

So before the trick or treaters come for the evening and drive the already insane dogs insaner, a few thoughts.

I don't know about this word 'choice.' On the one hand, adoption is a choice. Unless your BC fails, getting pregnant is a choice. Eating a peanut butter sandwich is a choice. But in all three cases there is this interrelation of need, desire, resources, memory, ethics, politics, history, personality. I don't know if we 'decided' to adopt. Of course, we did make the call and pray and stuff. But I'm beginning to question the idea that all our choice involved was a rational weighing of ethical and practical issues. I'm thinking about how we both grew up and all of the circumstances that have lead us to adoption and have kept us there, and I'm more and more convinced that we made not so much a declaration but an announcement of something that was already growing and moving (like a pregnancy, I guess). There's socioeconomic status. There's my academic work and reading on race. There's Attic Man's work and his family growing up and mine. There are a host of personal experiences that make certain experiences either palatable or unpalatable to us. I don't think we could ever tease the whole thing apart.

I guess what I'm saying is that after this week of re-examining our motivation to adopt I'm even less clear about what it actually means and how it came to be, even as I'm more sure about the actual 'decision.'

Of Baby Shortages and Guilt

2005-10-30T10:39:00.000-05:00

EDITED TO ADD: A call to my fellow adopters: how about a post in the next day or so about what brought you to adoption and what ethical/moral/political/personal battles you have had to wage surrounding that decision? I'm looking for something more than "I wanted a baby," because we all want babies (see, I'm a little selfish too. just a little. you know.). Everybody's story is so different and interesting. Lisa V? Cindy? Shannon? Shelba? the various Karens? etc. etc.? So consider yourselves tagged, yo.

****

I’ve been sneaky this past week: I had an ethical dilemma and I have allowed other bloggers to work it out for me. Well, not really. Dawn has provided a lot of much-needed information and discussion on the topic of perceived baby shortages, motivations for adopting, and minority adoption, which has allowed me to anchor my thoughts long enough to make some sense of them.

It all began with a couple of impulsive, and therefore, rude remarks on this post by the venerable Karen at the Naked Ovary. I, unfortunately, kinda started it. Fortunately, the other temporarily rude party and I emailed each other immediately and apologized profusely. Turns out that it is possible for two nice people in pain to occasionally scratch one another’s eyes out, virtually speaking.

But it got me to thinking. How, as a possibly fertile person, can I justify building my family through adoption? I mean, given that there aren’t an unlimited number of babies to adopt* and so many people are unable to become pregnant, how could I put myself in line with those who ‘need’ an adopted baby while I just ‘want’ one? The other temporarily rude commenter, when explaining her decision to switch to international adoption by the apparent shortage of babies domestically, put me on the defensive in an instant. I didn’t have time to think before I reacted, and badly. Of course she was talking about white babies. Everybody knows that agencies scramble for families to adopt babies of color, and that if you want to adopt a Caucasian infant you must wait 80 years and pay $80,000, right? Turns out she was talking about a 2.5-year wait even after accepting all races and some disabilities up to four years old.

I hear adoptive parents say again and again that they don’t want to be heroes, that their reasons for adopting are all selfish and that altruism plays no part in their decisions to adopt. I have to be honest: ten months ago, it was altruism that brought us to adoption. Attic Man and I were devastated by news of the tsunami. Our reaction wasn’t shock, and it wasn’t new; the primary source of angst and depression in our house is that we can’t stop seeing human need and suffering and we can’t stop feeling like we’re not doing enough. We wince at every news story of a woman being beaten in her home or statistics citing a 50% child poverty rate in our major cities, or another black Pittsburgher shot by a police officer. New Orleans didn’t surprise us—it just opened the wound afresh.

Understand that this explanation is in no way an application for my sainthood. If I were really saintly I would be in Africa right now handing out medication or emptying out our house for Goodwill. If I could sustain a vision for poverty reduction or world peace I’d be doing it. The pain comes from every day confronting my own lazy ass and the realization that I have no right to preach or judge because I spent yesterday morning at the mall buying clothes made in sweatshops and spent an ungodly amount of money at the grocery store (I won’t tell you how much—it’s embarrassing) buying stuff that I don’t need. Big spending is, by the way, my way of telling myself that something internal isn’t right; I’m not giving myself something I need, so I compensate. Granted, I needed pants. My jeans had the kind of holes that are unwise to enter winter with. But the joy I got from the sales! and the attention from the women at Anne Taylor! and having NEW STUFF! was a bit over the top. And the grocery store. Lord, the grocery store. I was unstoppable.

The point is that once in awhile the man (who really does live a life of service, so I’m only really speaking for me here) and I make a good decision that does, in fact, connect with our ideals and is an actual attempt beyond lip service to mitigate the horrible things we see everyday, me through the news, and him through his job. Our immediate, gut reaction to the tsunami was “we have to adopt. We have to do it now. We can rearrange our lives to do it now.” All of the sudden that pregnancy that seemed so ill-advised at this juncture in our lives turned into an adoption that we could, if we altered our vision of what the next few years would mean, more than see ourselves undertaking. We realized with some surprise that neither of us was particularly interested in pregnancy. As we started to talk about adoption in preparation for a decision about whether or not to proceed, we examined our motives. We discovered that adoption was in both our hearts, and that it was about much more than just a knee-jerk emotional response to an international tragedy. It was where our lives had been leading up until this point.

Altruism was where it began, but altruism uncovered a host of other considerations for us: we don’t want to get pregnant; we want a multi-racial family; we aren’t particularly keen on passing on any of our genetic material, cancer, heart-disease and all; we want to have an expanded sense of what family means, and through our children be connected in a very real way to other communities; we want to be a resource for women who are facing difficult circumstances.

When it comes right down to it, through my own reading and the stats Dawn so painstaking put together at my request (thanks, Dawn!), there is no African-American baby that will go into foster care because a family can’t be found. True, there isn’t a real ‘shortage’ of babies of any race—by the time people get through the application process and individual stories start to unfold, there are far few people adopting than that ’40 families for every baby’ statistic suggests—but there aren’t rooms full of them waiting for parents (domestically, that is—I cannot speak for every type of adoption. Domestic is what I know). If we don’t adopt plenty of people will step up to the plate. Babies are not going without homes.

When first discovering that in fact there isn’t the kind of dire need I supposed at the beginning (and indeed, our social worker has to scramble for families to take African-American babies), and considered the very real pain those of us who are infertile, I had a momentary panic attack. Whither my altruism, if the need isn’t there?

First of all, our reasons for adopting are complex and not limited to altruism. If it were merely a kind of saving-the-world thing, I’d have jumped off the adoption wagon then and there. But it’s not; for the reasons listed above and many more too private to mention here, adoption is the right way for us to build our family. A lot of it is so deeply a part of how we think that we can’t possibly unearth all of our motivations. And really, we could say that God wants us to adopt, but we have no way of knowing that. All we can know is that it is in our bones. We feel as strong a deep-down urge to adopt as some people describe feeling drawn to pregnancy.

If there’s any saving-the-world stuff left in our adoption plans, it is to offer women as many choices as possible. We are not, of course, single-handedly going to change the face of adoption and abortion by putting our birthparent letter out into the universe. But the more families that decided to adopt, the more choices potential birthparents will have. And that’s the advantage of having a so-called ‘baby shortage,’ if there is one, according to Dawn: birthparents can hopefully have more families to choose from, so that if they want a Christian family, or an atheist one, or one with two mommies, or one that has a SAHM, or one that looks a little like them, or one that’s into sports or reading or windsurfing, or whatever, they can have it. I don’t mean to be flippant here. I mean to say that when those of us who are birthparents are contemplating handing over the precious child they have loved and carried for nine months, there should be a family that is as good a match as possible to how the birthparent feels that child should be raised. It’s not much of a choice when you’re thinking about raising a kid with possible mental illness or domestic violence; ending the child’s life; or placing the child with a family whose values and lifestyle absolutely don’t match up with yours or what you want for your child.

So at the end of this week of talking, emailing, and reading blogs, I come again to adoption. In this process I have made the decision to adopt about twenty times, each time renewing my commitment in new ways. And it’s still right.

----

*I’m not, of course, talking about kids in foster care. Plenty of them, and sadly probably always will be, for a number of complex reasons.

Sitting By the Phone

2005-10-28T09:55:00.000-04:00

Happy Feast Day of Saints Simon and Jude. My mother-in-law thinks we're getting the call today. Of course, if we do, we'll have to incorporate Jude into the child's name, which will make it even more unweildy. Observe: Charles Oscar Romero Jude Thaddeus Boomerific. Or: Althea Judith Dorothy Day Boomerific. Oh, well. The child is already destined by these names to be burdened with the task of social justice and communal sacrifice. Might as well tack St. Jude on there too.

Good News

2005-10-26T11:20:00.000-04:00

This is our news, and I swear to you it's good: Distant City potential birthmother has decided to parent. We were pretty sure this was to be the case all along, and we are so glad that she came to her decision before birth and before placement. I am actually pretty excited for her. This child is her first.

So, this wasn't to be our baby. And it's OK--it means we are that much closer to the one who is.

:)

Priorities

2005-10-22T08:19:00.000-04:00

I've reached Code Panic on my work, so I will be offline until Wednesday. I'll be sure to get back on if I have news. For those of you waiting for your own news, I'm sorry if I miss part of your stories while I'm away...but be assured that my thoughts are with you.

Peace.

Can I Just Say

2005-10-21T16:25:00.000-04:00

that big business WANTS you to stay in debt, wants you to pay double in interest for everything, profits mightily from your mistakes? Well, I can say that they want it for us. There's a very good reason that usury is not permitted in either Islam or early Christianity. It's pure, unadulterated evil.

The Non-Update

2005-10-20T08:40:00.000-04:00

On the adoption front, not much is happening. We're still waiting for Distant City Social Worker to meet again with the couple to find out which family they have chosen and how they stand on the thorny issue of taking the baby home for a month. The potential birth mother is due in November, so this can't go on forever. Our social worker has assured us that we will be considered for any other situations that may arise in the meantime. So we're not stuck with this thing necessarily.

Meanwhile, I have 50 5-7 page midterms and 50 2-page quizzes to grade, 2 chapters of Wheelock's Latin and 30 lines of Pliny to get through, as well as preparing next week's lecture (scary) and keeping up with my Project work. I don't have much time to worry about the adoption, frankly.

Heidi

2005-10-19T20:53:00.000-04:00

So the man was right: Heidi was a good choice for our family. Despite the fact that she apparently brought fleas home with her (thank God for Frontline), she has done wonders for our relationship with Lenny and our quality of life at home. Observe:

1. Lenny can now be out of his crate for more than 2 hours at a time.
2. Lenny can now have access to most of the upstairs.
3. Lenny need not be watched every second to make sure he isn't eating hairbrushes or books (although he made an attempt the other day at The Secret Life of Bees).
4. Since Heidi arrived a month ago, Lenny has only grabbed shoe for attention ONCE. This used to be a daily occurence.
5. Once so afraid of Liberty Avenue he shook with panic and refused to go within half a block of it, Lenny now crosses it with nothing more than mild concern. Now we can take him to the park twice a day. She gives him confidence like we never could.
6. Housetraining accidents still happen, but they are rare.
7. We no longer have conversations that begin with "why is his head wet?" or, "does it smell like shit to you, too?"
8. Lenny is happy, entertained, and content. Sometimes he even lies down in the evening.

I'm getting more work done with her here than I ever did with Lenny alone, and our family is much happier. Heidi is a miracle worker. Plus, when she wags her stump (which we refer to as "stumping"), she's really cute.

I've heard babies are cute, too. We should get us one of them, too.

Stupid

2005-10-17T22:26:00.000-04:00

The graduate student is a strange breed. Here you are, climbing to the apex of your culture: you are an intellectual, and will soon be certified as one. You are becoming an expert in something. Soon you will acquire silly letters for the end of your name that mean I am smart and privileged. You will not be monetarily compensated to the same degree, but you will get respect. Even while in the process of acquiring such a sought-after title, various members of your extended family and the secretaries at your temp job ask, “so what are you going for? A Master’s?” You reply: “No, a PhD.” “OOOOh, a P-H-DEE-EEE.” Eyebrows go up. A perceptible step backwards, averted eyes. All of the sudden it is not like, “hey! That’s pretty interesting! What are you reading right now?” It’s as if a great chasm opens up, with family/secretaries on the one side and the grad student on the other: you are the intelligentsia. You have special powers. You think you are better than everyone else, and of course you are a liberal. You think you are smarter. You do impossibly hard stuff they can’t dream of doing, it’s so hard. You’re nuts. No one can have a conversation with you, because you will speak in long sentences using big words and you won’t think what anyone else says is right anyway, because you’re going for your P-H-DEE-EEE and you know so much more.

I had a really happy early childhood in the hot cornfields of Illinois. We had an old farmhouse in the middle of town (pop. 3000) and school was within walking distance. I loved school—I could read before I arrived, and I must have run the whole way there the first day I was so excited. I suppose other kids looked at it as the end of freedom and playtime, but I couldn’t WAIT. Mrs. Buffy Heller (I am not making up that name) had sent us a beautiful, mimeographed letter welcoming us to kindergarten. My mother still has that letter. When we arrived at school, Mrs. Buffy Heller greeted us with an exciting and stimulating curriculum. I don’t remember any of the games we must have played, but I remember the letters and numbers we learned. She even started to teach us addition and subtraction to the tenths position, even though we weren’t supposed to get to it until first grade. Mrs. Buffy Heller had a soft spot for me. I was a troublemaker: I wouldn’t shut up. For some reason she took to me, and I was her pet. But secretly. She went to a conference in Canton, Illinois and brought me back a special shirt. I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone, and I didn’t. What I learned was that I was different—exasperating, even, if you read the report cards—but special. A maverick. I don’t remember any of my teachers from Illinois after Mrs. Heller. I do remember that I loved learning and that I read and read and read all I could get my hands on. And I couldn’t shut up. And I was in love with Michael Jackson and Joe Montana in first grade (and was so furious when Joe married Jennifer).

‘Different’ wasn’t so fun when we moved to Pennsylvania. ‘Different’ meant teasing to the extent that I am actually shocked that I made it to adulthood without some kind of major emotional disturbance. When schools recently started implementing anti-bullying policies I couldn’t believe it had taken so long. For the first time I also had the occasional teacher who didn’t like me. The first of those teachers, in third grade, was unhappy to receive a transfer student who had so much catching up to do. No bother; my mother set up a special reading program for me—she’s a remedial reading teacher—and I was up to speed in no time. But then in fourth grade there was math. I was in the lower class, probably due to the deficits I had from moving. And I wasn’t doing well. The other math teacher wanted me to move up to the advanced class, which infuriated my current math teacher. She was so ticked that she decided one day to say, audibly sniffing with disdain, in front of the whole class, that I had received a zero on the last quiz and that if I didn’t get an A on the next quiz I would be failing. IN FOURTH GRADE. In front of the class. It was awful. The advanced math teacher, who had an affection for me despite my incessant talking—he told my mother that I exasperated him but he couldn’t help liking me—rescued me and somehow got me into the other math class. Where, I might add, I did quite well. So—smart or stupid? In either case, I was separate, different, either to be mocked or be admired.

The next time ‘it’ happened was in 7^th grade. I had an ogre of a Social Studies teacher, and by what my parents considered to be a fluke, had been placed in the middle-track class. This man was insufferable. His idea of teaching social studies to the average kid was memorization of faded dittoed maps. I am not kidding. We had to memorize hundreds of town names and rivers. We did not learn about cultures or erosion or cartography. We just memorized. I was not good at memorization. I did poorly on his tests and he wrote awful things on them. One I will never forget: “I cannot tell whether you consider yourself to be above this class or if it is above you.” I promise you, I could not make up a better story if I tried. This time my father went in for a conference in his blackest suit donning his reddest tie, and explained to the man that his daughter had voluntarily put a map up in her room and spent hours inspecting our home globe. The teacher backed down and put me in the higher level, where we learned about cultures and erosion and cartography, and did innovative projects, and went to special smart-kid fairs. And I did just fine. So—smart or stupid?

It was at this point in my education that the “cream of the crop” rhetoric began. My upper-level classmates and I were told that we were the best of the best. We were told that we were the ‘leaders.’ We were encouraged to join Junior Achievement, which I did, to learn marketing because, you know, we were the future of the great capitalist state. I have to admit that Junior Achievement was kind of fun, but only because it was something to do and you could be goofy with other goofy kids who kind of didn’t buy the whole “cream of the crop” crap either. The thing that struck me even at that point was how incredibly demeaning it was not just to everyone else—that goes without saying—but how it pushed us into a life that wasn’t really of our choosing. We were to be special exceptions. And you know? That’s what high school ended up being. Who would be the valedictorian? Who would be homecoming queen? Who would make the ‘most’ lists in the yearbook?

But I couldn’t do it. In junior high and high school I started to find math and science to be impossible. My older siblings—geniuses that they are, and good at everything and all subjects—and everyone else told me that advanced chemistry was no big deal. Ha! It SO was. I only passed because of the brilliance of my lab partner, later to be one of our valedictorians, and now one of my closest friends. Math was similarly horrible. Again I was persuaded—boy, and they worked hard at it, too—to join the advanced classes, but this time I did worse and worse until I became the most cynical bitch struggling along back in the middle-level geometry class. So here I was, the cream of the crop, and I couldn’t figure out even the basics of Trig. The social teasing stopped in eighth grade when I found my core group of girlfriends, but still most of the “cream of the crop” kids were from wealthy families and saw each other at the Country Club or the Iroquois Club on weekends and they were mostly nice but I was never included. Always, always an exception. Always forced into situations and then promptly excluded from them on some level.

English classes were a different story altogether. I had begun to read Emerson well before I got to junior high, and most anything I could find from my parents’ old collection of college literature (through which I discovered Flannery O’Connor and Fitzgerald). Here was a place in which I could enjoy the privileges of being the “cream of the crop” and feel confident in that. Interestingly, though, all of the English teachers I had I know for a FACT were incredible teachers in the lower levels. I mean, they were superb. They talked to us sometimes about things the other classes were doing, but not in a “look how much more fun we’re having” way, but a “look at all the different ways you can learn” way. So I don’t know if it was the “cream” effect or the fact that they were really good teachers.

College solved my ‘stupid or smart’ dilemma for a while, because I could take what classes I wanted, and even if I did almost fail Physics, there were a whole lotta people there with me who were doing it for the requirement and hated it too. I graduated Magna with Honors and came out the other end with a 55-page Honors thesis and beautiful academic memories. One year I won an award for having the highest grade point average in my major.

But now there’s grad school and…well, here I am, again feeling like I have been separated out somehow, and yet in that context, feeling as if I just can’t cut it. I am so distracted, so scattered, so lost sometimes. Latin is like math all over again. I get frustrated so often. And I perceive my colleagues as having so much more than a clue. They look so confident and secure, no matter how much they tell me they aren’t. They are publishing already and going to conferences. People are talking about their work.

So I’m thinking a lot about exceptionalism and how it absolutely fucks with people and their ability to be confident and have a positive sense of self-efficacy. It makes me want to shake many of the teachers who brought me up academically. It makes me want to quit my career to teach my kids myself so they won’t be subjected to it (the kids of a professor??? Exceptionalism, here we come!). I know it matters what kind of exceptionalism you’re subjected to: it’s a different matter to be labeled ‘smart’ or ‘stupid,’ or to be regarded as ‘popular’ or ‘weird.’ But either way exceptionalism is treacherous.

Sad

2005-10-17T16:49:00.000-04:00

In a few minutes I'm going to the kitchen to cook up a warm pot of creamy carrot and dill soup and make a few tuna patties for the broiler. We need a good comfort meal.

I have come to dislike my own blog over the last few days. I have so many really good posts in my head--substantial ones that aren't just diaristic, but touch on social issues as well, which is what I want for the blog--but I can't seem to write them.

There's no news on the situation. The couple's social worker may be meeting them tomorrow if the potential birthmother has a prenatal appointment. Our social worker says that she doesn't envision a quick resolution to this situation. We are at the other social worker's mercy, because ours can't tell her what to do. And neither can we. What I want most now is for this situation to go away--seriously. I want to move on and I want a new, hopeful, exciting situation. I want to meet a potential birthmother/family that we click with and feel that spark of recognition and love.

And I am tired of waiting. I was tired of it the very first day, but at six months past the home study I'm starting to panic. We don't have a huge window of opportunity for this adoption before other life-transitions begin, and if it doesn't happen in the next few months things will get considerably more complicated. It's to the point where if we were to desire to try to get pregnant (and we don't) it would be too late even for that, even if it happened immediately.

I feel like the we and the birthfamily are wandering around in the darkness. The due date is getting closer and closer and we can't see one another, so we just have to hope to bump into one another, recognize one another, and hope everything comes together in all the right ways.

It's funny that until yesterday I didn't give much thought to what I desired in a birthfamily. I mean, all the focus was on what the birthmother would want in us. But I'm finding out that I have an idea of what I want her to be like, too. It's maybe not as well-defined as her idea might be. But it's there: we want to enter a life-long relationship with a sweet, strong, deep, and loving family who is ready to trust us with their child. We want to fall in love with them and have a connection with them. We are ready for the emotional complications of that kind of relationship. We believe it's worth it.

We just have to hope we stumble across it. Soon.

Silly Picture Saturday

2005-10-15T20:46:00.000-04:00

Welcome to the launching of Silly Picture Saturday on Boomerific. Because this is the very first one, I will treat you to several silly pictures.

Attic Man in Giant Eagle with $209 wheel of cheese. At first he thought, "hey, what a ridiculous joke it would be to put a $209 wheel of cheese in the cart!" Then he remembered that eating $209 worth of imported cheese was beyond neither his wife's capabilities nor her wildest fancies. He returned it, but only against sster's loud and vigorous protestations.

Our entertainment at the International Food Festival at Epiphany Catholic Church in Uptown. Mr. Capri stunned the crowd with his one-man-band variety show which included Dean Martin and Elvis Presley impersonations, as well as a dark and bizarre version of "Me and Bobby McGee" featuring a kaazoo-in-trumpet-shell solo. As our plates were piled high with plantains, rice and beens, collards, oxtails (you read that right), and ribs, we were happy to take in the, um, spectacle. ...Yes, that is a monkey. And yes, it did make an appearance during "Bobby McGee."

And finally, Heidi, demonstrating a skill many a child has strained his or her tongue to master.

Happy Saturday.

(no news)

October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month

2005-10-12T19:46:00.000-04:00

I'd like to take a moment of quiet for today on the blog to acknowledge parents who have faced miscarriages and infant deaths. I have no idea what you've gone through, but I want to extend my love to you and say, "I'm sorry." May peace be with you wherever and whenever you can find it.

...

WTF?

2005-10-11T21:19:00.000-04:00

Just in time for me to get back on track, another adoption nightmare rears its ugly head. I’ll itemize. Enjoy! Then comment the hell out of this blog—I need to know what you think of it.

In mid-September our Social Worker tells us that a couple in Distant City is trying to decide between us and another couple. They want to meet both families in person. We are to wait for details about the trip.
Three weeks go by. Travel proves too difficult to arrange, so we are to wait for their sight-unseen decision via email, then travel if they choose us. We are relieved not to be taking a possibly unnecessary, several-hour trek on a weekday. We wait.
This afternoon: SW calls to say that SW in Distant City (DCSW) mentioned to our SW that the couple is actually looking at a number of different families. They even met with one today. See, protocol for relations between our agency and the adoption program in Distant City is for the couple to choose one agency, and then the chosen agency handles finding families for the couple. At our agency, profiles are sent one at a time for a yea or nay. DCSW was working with at least one other agency, and did not let our SW know until today. Today. We do not know why the information did not become available until now. If the couple already met with the third family today, DCSW clearly knew before today.
Here’s the kicker: the potential birthfamily wants to take the baby home for 30 days before they place. I’ll just let that sink in for a moment ……………….

When DCSW asked them if they were having doubts they said that no, if they had doubts they would not be meeting families. From what I understand they are looking at the 30 days as non-negotiable.

Here’s where we stand: we are mad as hell that we didn’t get information about the other families and the 30-day deal sooner. We do not understand why we didn’t. We are concerned about the couple’s seriousness with placement, and about DCSW’s actions.

OUR non-negotiable: we will not, not, not work with the family if they request to take the baby home for 30 days. There is not one party that benefits from such an action. I cannot imagine placement being easier at 30 days than it is at 3—in fact, I imagine it would be much worse. It is certainly much worse for the baby. And last, it’s not good for us. Miss out on 30 days of our child’s life? Deal with the effects of separation from the first mother (which will be worse than at birth)? Wonder if they’re going to change their minds? Wait an additional thirty days after the papers are signed?

If they want to back off on the thirty days and pick us, we will be willing to work with them.

We should hear something soon, either Thursday or Monday.

How you like them apples?

Ahhhhhh...

2005-10-10T21:12:00.000-04:00

My head is back in my work.

Today I spent the morning doing a note-taking reading of a poem I wanted to write about. I knew I had to start writing by about 1. Fortunately there was enough to go on, and I was able to write. Hallelujah.

I'm trying to write a bunch of little papers that will either get me on track to writing my Big Long Project papers, or even better, become part of them. Either way, today's success leaves me for the first time since spring thinking that I will be able to do this. It's nice.

Otherwise, we had a smashingly successful barbecue yesterday, the puppies are wild, the man is working on learning football in preparation for Boomer, the laundry is moving along, I am ho-humming it waiting for this baby that supposedly is landing on our doorstep any day now. You hear that, universe? Any day.

Hope everyone is well.

Honey

2005-10-08T12:20:00.000-04:00

"There is nothing perfect," August said from the doorway. "There is only life."

I love Saturdays like this. Attic Man and I got up late and lazily when Lenny started crying to be let out. We were reluctant to slide out from under our wedding comforter, but once we did the day was there for us, overcast and crisp. We took the puppies to the park, then watched them wrestle outside and then in the kitchen while we ate eggs and Cheerios. They've been in their crates since 11 and I just had a nice Latin session. It really is getting easier, and as success builds confidence, I'm feeling less and less dread when I sit down with it. Earlier this morning I was able to work on a reading of a poem I'm preparing for my committee.--so it's a Saturday in which I feel both relaxed and accomplished. That feeling has been rare these days.

The longer I'm in school and the more criticism I do, the more cynical I become, and the more wary I approach claims such as the one I'm about to make. Understand that if I were writing over at Fire and Forge--which I rarely do, I know (that post about Critical Regionalism is coming, I swear!)--I would not write like this. But here it is:

I just read a book that is saving my life.

The past two weeks have been the roughest ones in the adoption process thusfar. I wish I could explain it, but it's confidential, and those of you who are going through it won't need an explanation anyway. There are a thousand different ways adoptions can get complicated and messy--dossiers, revocations, cancellations--and the situation I've been dealing with is just one of them. What all of them have in common is the extent to which they force one to confront issues that most of us let lie under the surface most of the time as we're paying bills and taking notes and making coffee. Those things that drive us, inform our decisions, direct our emotions, and turn our lives are the very things we tend to spend the least amount of time on. And there's a reason: it's hard. It can rip your guts out. What is a mother? What does it mean to either carry out or abdicate that role? What allows you to be totally smashed to bits and get up the next morning to make that coffee? What is the curve of a life and where do its footsteps fall? Where is/what is/how is/why is God/the universe/Mary/G-d/Allah/the air? How can we reconcile those parts of us that want to say "everything happens for a reason" and "we're waiting for our baby, not a baby" with those that are skeptical of an overdetermining narrative that directs the flow of history--and know the danger of that kind of thought?

By the middle of this week I had reached the point where the noise had to stop. I let the silence back in and tried to sweep my--need a better word in English--inner room clean or I was going to bug out. But I couldn't do it. It's hard to feel safe enough to let everything that's troubling and unresolved just go and be troubling and unresolved long enough to catch your breath. Why, think of what would happen! I mean, the earth cannot possibly keep from spinning off its axis unless I am personally there to monitor it.

I just couldn't do it on my own. By chance (or by divine intervention--there's the conflict again) I picked up Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees. We'll be reading it in a couple of weeks in the class for which I'm TAing. I'm doing one of the lectures on it on the week we'll be talking about motherhood in relation to children and culture. I figured I'd get a head start.

I think it was on Wednesday afternoon that I climbed to our sacred Attic space, where we've carved out a place in which is it not permitted to work or talk about money, crawled into the window well where we've set up lots of good cushions, and started to read. I read all afternoon. I kept reading when I heard the chirp of the alarm telling me that Attic Man had arrived and as he walked around the house looking for me. I kept reading. Thursday I had school and homework all day, but Friday afternoon I dove back in. Time stoppped. I made Attic Man wait, hungry as a wolf, so I could read the Climax in which All is Revealed before we headed out to dinner. I read last night until the words started swimming. And I finished today after my Latin homework. Sometimes I had to stop and breathe, and look out the window or cry a little. Sometimes the pages flew as I tried to get to each resolution in the book. I fought back the critic in me when the phrases were simple or trite and allowed the pre-critical response--which is essential to criticism, by the way--to run free and be one with the book.

You need to read it, whoever you are, so I won't give you a plot summary. But I will say that it is about mothers, and what it means to be one (and it's rather complex--), and what it means to be broken, and what it means to be a healer (did you know that one of the meanings of Althea is 'healer'?). What's remarkable about it is that the book itself becomes like a mother. For me it became a space, like a lap or a pair of sympathetic arms that didn't so much say, "there, there, it's alright," but just stood there letting me be, giving me a safe place to think about mothering and loss and the brokenness of the whole world that I can't seem to stop grieving. It doesn't say that everything's alright, and it doesn't say that people--especially parents--can always be relied upon. It doesn't say, as we're prone to say to children, and for good reason, that the world is a safe place. But there is the presence of the Mother in the world, and there are safe places within that world to be where one can rest up for awhile. I can't tell you how comforting it was, and now I understand catharsis.

And now I'm better equipped than I ever was to go through this walk with Boomer's birthmother and with Boomer him or herself. I am sending out a small, silent prayer for this book and for all of our mothers.

Every Clock is Right at Least Twice a Day

2005-10-06T21:22:00.000-04:00

You are Rerun!

Which Peanuts Character are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Coming Down from a Stressful Week, Sster Becomes Uncontrollably Verbose in Barbeque Invite

2005-10-05T22:55:00.000-04:00

Ms. [Unsuspecting Sucker on the New Friend Project List, onto which we plan to foist our irresistable charm]:

You are hereby cordially invited to attend a messy, informal consumption of barbequed meats with sster, her husband Attic Man (a.k.a. "The Sauce"), and their sexy and talented MFA friend, [Other Unsuspecting Sucker on List], the evening of this coming Sunday at 6 o'clock. The hosts regret that they misinformed you concerning plans to watch a Steelers game, and are sorry to say that because said game will actually take place on the following Monday, you will be stuck with their lame parlor tricks and aggressively affectionate dogs for entertainment. The hosts welcome any and all side dishes appropriate to barbeque (that is to say, any dish at all) should you have the desire and/or the knack. Napkins will be provided, though if you are more inclined, we shall avert our eyes whilst you employ the back of your wrist to remove Attic Man's incredible rubs and sauces from your, we will be so bold as to assure you, very happy face*.

RSVP when, how, and if you please.

[Guest replies favorably; asks for directions if we really mean it]

We really mean it. [directions given]

Once onto [our ugly street], we are the [ugly] house on the right, just past the pretty yard that's not ours and which contains a tiny yappy dog. Our dogs are very friendly, so you may not want to wear that mink stole and stunning evening gown I know you've just been dying to.

Our phone is xxx-xxxx. Call if you are lost or captured by a band of marauders. If the marauders happen to be our local gang of 10-year-olds, they are quite easily distracted by shiny objects and promises of adult beverages. You need not fear.

*I just realized that this sounds, like, really dirty.

***

I'm feeling better, thank you. I had a good meeting with my Committee chair today. So school anxiety has lessened a bit. The adoption stuff is still hard and stressful, but it is currently in a not-as-stressful place. There is a little might-be-something-might-be-nothing happening. We'll see. We're just hanging out, la-ti-da.

Gestation

2005-10-05T07:55:00.000-04:00

Yesterday my Latin professor referred to me as 'disciplined.' Remember the milk-spurting of a few posts ago? It was nice to hear, though. Latin is a pain but it no longer gives me the kind of anxiety it did over the summer. Anxiety is for other things!

I think it's time for a check-in on the Recovery Plan.

1. Sleep Schedule--check. What a difference.
2. Check blog and blogroll only three times a day--BONK! I slipped yesterday and checked about 30 times. I'm not sure why. I do know that if I don't get hold of this now I will have a bonafide problem.
3. Healthy eating--CHECK! This step has been key, along with the sleeping. It helps curb the comfort eating when I'm never starving. I'm not on any particular diet. The only thing I did to cut fat was switch to a butter-flavored spray on my popcorn instead of pouring half a bottle of olive oil on it.
4. Yoga--I've narrowed down a studio and am figuring out the right time. And I'm joining with a friend.
5. Flylady--Easing back in. I'm only doing a few things. It'll come.

***

I'm kind of afraid that people will read about how hard the adoption process is emotionally and shy away from trying it. It's not for everyone, it's true. One of the most poignant moments on the airbrushed show Adoption Stories is when an adoptive mother is holding her son, just five minutes old, and says, "it's a long road but every bit of it is worth it. If you're thinking about adopting just know that it's the most wonderful thing that will ever happen to you." I've seen the episode three times and it always makes me weep. Because I know it's going to be worth it. Not because our story will be the same as this woman's, but because it will be Boomer's story.

It's hard but when I take stock it is worth it even now, even before Boomer. There was so much I didn't 'get' before about family and race; while surfing about adoption I learned a lot about infertility and thus have a better idea what people go through to have a child--and I have a new level of empathy; I have met 10 or so amazing new people; I feel part of a community for whom adoption is a way of life. It's hard to enumerate the benefits in the list, because it's mostly not possible to articulate this way. It's that I've transitioned to a different way of being in the world. I don't like it all, of course, but it's who I'm becoming that's the most fascinating thing about this whole process. That place of being is exactly right.

...That person will be Boomer's mother. :)

Peter Pan's OK (Tinker Bell, on the Other Hand, is Quite the Little Bitch!)

2005-10-04T08:08:00.000-04:00

Interesting comments on the last post. I think I identify most with what cluttergirl wrote--I've always preferred children's literature that acknowleges the anxieties and fears and curiosities children have instead of pretending they're angelic little things who don't start worrying until their twelfth birthday, when they get their first relatively disappointing cheek-kiss from a boy.

After finishing Peter Pan, I conclude that it is a good book for most kids, both adopted and not, though I have reconsidered the age appropriateness of it and might wait until the kids are 8-9, depending on the kid. For one thing, it's a long book and you'd have to have a kid who's ready to listen to a chapter a night and can pay attention without pictures. For another, we're pacifists and there's lots of killing. I don't mind that, because it's essential to the story and to that empowerment effect Richard wrote about in his comment, but I'd like a few years to brainwash the kid with my pacifism before sending her out into the world of random slayings. I'd also like him to be cognitively at the point where we can talk about representation and language on some rudimentary level. I'll have to dust off my chid development books. Or more likely I will just wait for the kid to be ready based on parental observation.

One of the comments made me think that I may be misrepresenting myself here. I know that this blog communicates a lot of concerns about what it will mean to be the parent of an adopted child who does not share my complexion. It's important that I think about these issues before we bring the bambino home. But honestly, I'm way more freaked out about plain being a parent than anything. For me, though, just being a parent is something I've thought about for a long time. I've worked out a lot of my concerns while babysitting and interacting with children, and when talking to my mother and other mothers. I just don't talk much about it here. Boomerific for me is one place where I can talk about those things specific to this parenting situation, especially because the blogging community that surrounds me has some stake in it. It's a place I can ask questions and try out ideas so that I have some clue how others have done it.

One friend pointed out to me that it may sound on Boomerific as if the primary identification of the child will be that he or she is adopted. I think it may appear that way because adoption is all I talk about here in relation to parenting. But again, I have no real need to talk about parenting in general. I was not raised with adopted kids nor am I adopted myself. This family formation is a new idea for me and I need more than the family "you'll be great, it'll be fine" stuff (though I appreciate that, too). From what I understand from other adoptive parents, the kid's adoption story and complexion will be issues whether or not I acknowlege them. They might not even be difficult and overwhelming for Boomer. I hope they're not. I just want to be ready to listen and facilitate conversation if they are.

A Shadow Falls Over Storytime

2005-10-03T08:43:00.000-04:00

Now that we're adopting I'm reading children's books a lot more carefully. Certain things that used to be just funny make me wince now. Take for instance a passage from Peter Pan, which I'm rereading to teach this week:

"For a week or two after Wendy came it was doubtful whether or not they would be able to keep her, as she was another mouth to feed. Mr. Darling was frightfully proud of her, but he was very honourable, and he sat on the edge of Mrs. Darling's bed, holding her hand and calculating expenses, while she looked at him imploringly. She wanted to risk it, come what might, but that was not his way..."(8-9, Puffin)

What follows is an uproariously funny set of calculations (including "dot and carry the child") and a description of similar wranglings over John and Michael. Now I understand that this is comedy at its best, and satire, and a great example of the late 19th-century anxiety over turning people into commodities as capitalism extended its reach. It is a decidedly snarky dig at the Utilitarians, who liked children well enough but felt their role as workers was essential to the economy. I know all these things, and my students and I will discuss them at length. But I'd like to read this book to my 6-year-old, and if that child were, as unthinking people say, "my own," I wouldn't have given it a second thought.

One of the reasons people place children for adoption is financial hardship. Now, I don't believe for a second that in any case this reason acts alone. After all, while it sucks, we do have a functioning welfare system and programs like WIC (WIC being the only program that doesn't suck, really). A person otherwise ready for parenthood but dependent on the system would struggle mightily but would be quite fit to raise a child. I've seen it done. For some people, though, finances combine with other complexities to create a situation in which bringing up a child is unwise or unsafe. And frankly, whatever reasons those happen to be are a parents' own. I could say something about what conditions I would consider dire enough for me to place a child, but those are all tied up in my life and history, and nobody else's.

So what do I tell a child who isn't mentally ready for that complexity? Now that I've read this passage in Peter Pan, I know that I can't pin it on finances alone (and really, I don't know what Boomer's birthparents' reasons will be, anyway), although the financial explanation seems be the most straightforward. You know, it's not a good idea at all, because then perhaps Boomer will see the line on my forehead that appears when I can't seem to make the budget work and worry that he or she will have to leave. No. I can't do that. So what do I say before this child is old enough to really get the whole situation of his or her birth? How do I keep this passage funny?

Also disturbing is the WONDERFUL Lemony Snicket series, A Series of Unfortunate Events. In the first book, The Bad Beginning, the children's parents die in a fire. They are sent to live with the parents' friends and their disagreeable children, and then to an abusive and predatory relative. One part of my brain loves the smart and funny writing (and good social commentary at that) and the other part tries to imagine how my child will read. Will this be funny or painful? Will the child make a connection? What if Boomer feels it but can't articulate it? Do I bring it up or wait for him or her to ask? I'm inclined to wait--I'm letting Boomer take the lead for most things on the adoption and how we discuss it--but would this be one of those times in which a gentle guide is necessary?

These are not the only problematic books. It seems like every time I pick up a children's book I see how many of them assume that genetic connection. And why shouldn't they? The vast majority of children are raised by their biological parents. I wouldn't want J.M. Barrie or Lemony Snicket to change a word of their delightful books. It just gives me pause to how I might handle this with my adopted children.

Recovery Plan

2005-10-02T11:34:00.000-04:00

Thanks for all your encouraging words! I know you know how much it helps, because all of you have been in similar emotional positions. I don't think anyone can escape it entirely, whether or not one is adopting.

Anyway, the weather is gorgeous this weekend, and it has inspired me to get the fuck out of this rut and get back to the life I love. To that end, a recovery plan. I make it public here so I can't just quit.

1. Get back on a rigid sleeping schedule. From my sleep study I learned that I have horrible sleep hygiene (yes, that is a real term) and have very little margin for error. It's got to be 11-7, every single day. That includes 1/2 hour chill-out time with no TV, no conversation, NO INTERNET.

2. Speaking of internet, check blog and blogroll no more than three times a day. It eats up time and gets me stirred up about the adoption.

3. Eat healthy, regularly-spaced meals. No more feast and famine. My blood sugar has always been a big part of my mood. This morning I had a piece of whole-grain toast with low-fat cream cheese, a cup of melon (yum) and a container of mocha-flavored yogurt. Yum. And right now? Feeling pretty even.

4. Join a yoga/meditation class. I know myself well enough to know that I will not stick to running---especially on ugly concrete streets--or going to the gym (too much stuff to carry and keep track of). As for the meditation: for most of my time on earth I've had a rich, if contentious, spiritual life. Sometime in the last few years I've begun to lose it. I need my prayer life again. Going to St. Benedict really helps, but I need it every day. I need to be around other people who can help me to get it back.

5. Do my Flylady morning and evening routines. If I can count on having an outfit ready for the next day and know what we're eating for dinner, I can spend less stress on that stuff and more energy on school stuff.

That's enough for now. I'm tired of feeling like this. I'm ready to get myself back to my fighting strength, because I'm really going to need it.

Hard

2005-10-01T12:55:00.000-04:00

I wish I could figure out how to say this but I can't. I won't presume that other adoptive and waiting-to-be adoptive parents feel exactly the way I do, living in different places, times, and cultural structures, but most will have at least felt an approximation of what I do.

I've always had a fairly good emotional map for my life. Breakups will always crush me (though I hope to God I'm through with those!), pet deaths will devastate me, family conflicts will stress me, weddings will both delight and pain me. There's a good amount of public and ritualized conversation about such events. I've watched parents and friends go through a lot of hard and painful stuff, and a whole lotta stressful stuff, so for certain events and life-states I have good, hard-wired, predictable emotional responses. Always in our house, too, as my father was involved with addictions ministries, was ever-present check-list of stages of addiction, stages of recovery, stages of grief. When you went through them (though thankfully I've never been addicted to any substance except for food), there was someone to say, "oh, yeah. you're way in the denial stage. that's so normal. when you're in the anger stage, it's OK if you yell a lot. I understand." I'm not saying that these 'lists' are always productive or that they don't come with a whole truckload of complications. I'm also not saying that it's impossible to feel things that aren't on the lists, or to feel things no one else is talking about.

But the adoption wait is hitting me like an anvil in the stomach. I can't describe it any other way; a bomb is too sudden, a worm in the apple doesn't have enough impact. It's a dull, heavy, persistent, breath-sucking pain. And I can't figure out where it's coming from.

I'm already distractable. I'm already scattered. Now I'm 100 times more so. I am listless. I am comfort eating like the stores are going to run out of ice cream next week. I am obsessively blog-reading, searching frantically for anyone who has received a referral or passed their home study, or gotten THE CALL, or is smelling the sweet and fresh crown of their newborn's head. These moments are the only ones that bring me relief.

My work is suffering, and it's not like I can just say, well, I've got this great husband who can support me, so I'll just quit! Because it's work that I love. I am deeply committed to it and to my profession. So a lot of the pain is realizing that my head is not all the way in my work. I am afraid to write this on my blog. I'm afraid I sound like a whiny bitch who just doesn't want to do the work to finish her Project, who would really rather feel that sinking, buried feeling as she lays motionless on the couch with such high-brow gems as The Nanny and Little House on the Praire (oh, how comforting the latter is!). I am afraid to say that no, this isn't anything one can officially write up as an excuse; there is no diagnosis; there is no accompanying paperwork; there is no space on the CV for "gap in publication and/or extended deadline for work due to pre-adoption stress." And that makes me feel guilty, like that other people have shit too and they get it done, but me, I'm just not strong enough. I'm writing this now to get past that. I'm writing this now to say "I understand" to others in a similar position. I am so ashamed. I am trying not to be. There's a big lump in my chest. Then there's the not-so-helpful comment of a friend, who, when I said I might be leaving sometime after I pass my Prospectus so the man can go to law school while I write the diss, said, "everyone I know who did that didn't finish. Just thought you should know."

I am taking tremendous joy and comfort in the changing weather--Fall is hands down my favorite season--in the pups, and in Attic Man, who is weathering stress of his own, and a host of other things to remind me that I have a good life in almost every way countable.

But the crushing feeling--it needs to stop.

Reminder

2005-09-30T15:59:00.000-04:00

I've heard this twice in the last few days, once in a thrift shop around the corner, and once on the street when a very content man on a bike holding a paper bag between the handlebars crooned it to me:

O-o-h child things are gonna get easier
O-o-h child things 'll get brighter
O-o-h child things are gonna get easier
O-o-h child things 'll get brighter

Someday we'll get it together and we'll get it undone
Someday when the world is much brighter
Someday we'll walk in the rays of a beautiful sun
Someday when the world is much lighter

O-o-h child things are gonna get easier
O-o-h child things 'll get brighter
O-o-h child things are gonna get easier
O-o-h child things 'll get brighter

(Stan Vincent, 1970; the lovely Nina Simone singing)

I wrote a bunch today.

Just in Case You Were Wondering...

2005-09-29T20:14:00.000-04:00

...your friendly neighborhood ATM, you know, the one that holds your card as collateral in some sick little bank-machine game (ultimately, a lust for power) until your transaction is complete, when it does finally spit the card back out, will kindly wait a few minutes for you, or a shadowy neighborhood figure, to remove the card, so that you, or the shadowy neighborhood figure, can go on your merry way of teaching, playing fetch, and reading good poetry, or enjoying an afternoon of scamming people out of cash at the gas station, loading up on goodies at WalFart, or doing a little food-shopping at the supermarket with someone else's money.

Care to guess which adventure sster's ATM card went on today? Care to hear about how shockingly run-down and ramshackle the East Liberty police station is, and how the sight made sster want to buy posterboard to picket for higher taxes? (The guy didn't even have his own desk, and we were interrupted 18 times by people who had to rummage through their lockers to get guns and stuff).

Care to see what Blogthings said about your dear sster, in terms that made her spew all the milk she had ever drunk in her ADHD-hazed life out her nose all at once?

Your Birthdate: March 26

Your birth on the 26th day of the month (8 energy) modifies your life by increasing your capability to function and succeed in the business world.
In this environment you have the skills to work very well with others thanks to the 2 and 6 energies combining in this date.
There is a marked increase in organizational, managerial, and administrative abilities.

You are efficient and handle money very well.
You're ambitious and energetic, while generally remaining cooperative and adaptable.
You are conscientious and not afraid of responsibility.

Generally sociable and diplomatic, you tend to use persuasion rather than force.
You have a wonderful combination of being good at both the broad strokes and the fine detail; good at starting and continuing. This birthday is practical and realistic, often seeking material satisfaction.

What Does Your Birth Date Mean?

Peace

2005-09-28T14:24:00.000-04:00

This afternoon after a coffee meeting with a professor I was walking down Craig Street in Oakland. It was hot. The morning had been cool--which made for a lovely 7 a.m. walk with Attic Man and the frenetic dogs--but the day had turned bright and hot. The noise of traffic was tremendous. My head throbbed. Things have been hectic here, more mentally than anything. When people ask me what's up with the adoption, I say that there's been some 'static': activity that lets us know the process is underway, but with nothing more than a little vague information and distant possibilities. The waiting is already bad. The little bullshit kind of waiting-for-emails-and-calls and the maybe this and perhaps that offers its own kind of stress is also a rite of adoption passage. And it sucks.

I needed a breath--just a little one--so I ducked (literally) into the little (and heavily incenced) basement Tibetan imports store. It was like stepping out of my own life into a place where that life could become symbolic, where I could hold it in the form of a breathtakingly gorgeous hand-embroidered purse or lay it down in front of a tiny tea-light. And so I did. After a few minutes I drifted over to the necklaces and started to lightly finger through them. I noticed that one I had been eyeing had a duplicate. 6 dollars each. I had twelve in my wallet. I walked around the little circle once more and returned to the rack. Then I brought them up to the counter.

One is for Boomer's birthmother, and one is for Boomer. I will wear Boomer's until he or she is ready to take responsibility for his or her own relationship with his or her birthmother on his or her own terms, and then give it to Boomer to do with it what he or she pleases. I will tell the birthmother that she may choose to wear it or not, but that I want her to have it nontheless.

The necklaces are not elaborate or expensive and do not contain any symbol particularly appropriate to the situation. But they appeared at a moment I needed to get back to the root of why I'm doing this and what it means, cosmically, and it felt more right than anything in this process has.

Right now they're sitting in the bag together; right now Boomer and his or her soon-to-be birthmother are together. But they will always be present to and in each other, and I hope the necklaces can be the silent repositories of all those things we cannot say.

Mayhem

2005-09-26T22:32:00.000-04:00

I've been wanting for weeks now to write something substantial on Boomerific. You know, something that would fufill my original intent of talking about social issues through my everyday experiences.

Except that my everyday experiences are usually so cluttered, and I am usually so close to them, that I can't see my way out of them or through them. Most days I cannot contextualize them. The most I can say is that there is something wrong with the academy that grad students work their asses off but aren't really employees (hence no maternity leave), there is something wrong with our American progressprogressprogress acquireacquireacquire and (in my case) actualizeintellectualizefulfill way of life, that there is something wrong with our sense of economic and racial justice when greater numbers of people suffer every year while fewer eat more of the pie, and that the pain of all of this junk gets played out in that pile of stuff that I keep raking around.

Here is my pile of crap:

-a passage from Livy I just cannot seem to make sense of, despite 3-4 hours of hard work.

-a wonderful poem from Paul Muldoon's Moy Sand and Gravel ("As") that I love for its own sake but cannot seem to connect to my academic project, despite 3-4 hours of hard work

-endless laundry, dishes, dog toy debris, grading, bathing, cooking--all that stuff that is never 'done,' which messes with my ability to feel that I've accomplished anything

-the worried looks on the faces of my committee members that says I am going much more slowly than they'd like, despite the fact that I am working very hard on the Project

-two insane dogs trying to work it out, and I their referee

-an adoption process that has been nothing but false starts, strange leads, and bizarre twists. And silence. And I haven't gone through ANYTHING like what most people I've talked to have gone through. Adoption's no flippin' joke.

-juggling and maintaining family and friend relationships: trying to say the right thing, do the right thing, be there when needed and backing off when needed, trying not to misinterpret silence, and on and on

-weight. again.

But here's something cute, since I cannot seem to pull all of this together to say something that will rock your world:

The puppies have started to play tug-of-war with a rope we gave them and it is SO ADORABLE MY HEART HURTS.

Please Stand By

2005-09-26T17:13:00.000-04:00

Unbloggable shit going on.

It's maybe the adoption equivalent (just a metaphor really) of puking with a side of labor thrown in, as well as a dash of "your labor is not progressing. we seem to be in a holding pattern." Grrr.

In the meantime, meaningless quiz:

Your Blog Should Be Green

Your blog is smart and thoughtful - not a lot of fluff.
You enjoy a good discussion, especially if it involves picking apart ideas.
However, you tend to get easily annoyed by any thoughtless comments in your blog.

What Color Should Your Blog or Journal Be?

13 Things

2005-09-24T01:40:00.000-04:00

1. Attic Man and I rocked the house in Trivial Pursuit at a party tonight.

2. Said party was the most relaxing social event we've attended whilst in this fair city.

3. Weird meeting was weird but also OK.

4. This post is incredible (and refers to one of the eight babies I mentioned).

5. Occilating wildly between being totally overwhelmed and feeling OK. Minute to minute. Maddening.

6. I wish we didn't have names picked out already. At least then we'd have something to do (adoptionwise. plenty busy otherwise) while waiting and waiting and waiting.

7. There's no such thing as 'just adopting.' Really.

8. Boy, is it time for more babies! I feel incredibly blessed that three of them are (well, one to be) in our own family.

9. Got to snuggle an enormous 9-week-old baby this evening, and it was heavenly. He made all those funny squeaky newborn noises. Also, he had the hiccups.

10. Puppies continue to do well. Heidi is obsessed with not letting Lenny in her crate. Consequently, she spends most of her time there, nervously following his every move for signs that he might be interested in coming somewhere within the general vicinity of her crate, and going apeshit whenever he does. Lenny could not be less ruffled. It is nice when I am struggling through ablative absolutes and they are having a barkfest, especially because Lenny has chosen the high-pitched, piercing, ear-splitting bark for his part. Lovely.

11. There's also a new tatoo in the family, which brings us to two Celtic crosses. I am sad to say that there are no tatoo contributions from my side of the family. That I know of.

12. This little internet community is more interesting, more supportive, more incredible than I ever would have imagined. Sometimes it's what gets me through the day, and I don't even feel like a dork saying that. I mean, not any more than usual.

13. Mothers must be in community. Must. No more lonely, isolated, frustrated, unappreciated parents! Our children are all our children, and we are all one another's too. Let's start really supporting parents. There's got to be some relief for a 24-hour a day, 7-day a week job with no pay, no benefits, no social security, no bathroom breaks, and no vacation. Let's provide that relief for one another. Don't know any parents? Find one. Make a friend.

Gravity

2005-09-22T23:10:00.000-04:00

Everything is changing again. OK, so everything is always changing, but the impression of stabillity is leaving me once more. I could list all of the markers of this change, but overwhelmingly it's a feeling--like a different sense of the earth's rotation and gravitational pull--rather than a set of events. Coinciding is a profound feeling of aging. I told a friend the other day that I could actually feel myself aging that morning. I could feel the lines around my eyes actually deepening. Also I've come to realize that to a certain extent aging is a choice; we will all get old, that's for sure, but sometimes we can chose the rate at which that happens. Grad school is aging me. Marriage is aging me. The adoption process is aging me. Friendship is aging me. And I wouldn't have it any other way. Aging is the price I pay for these immeasureable joys. I'll never forget the first year I worked out of college--at an autism school, all alone on Long Island--when I got my first lines. Camp Adams (nother story, nother day) gave me my first greys. This year the color is starting to drain out of my face. This year, though, the signs of aging are the signs that I'm living. And I love that. Yes, that the signs of my impending (hopefully long-fully impending) death are signs of life.

Oh, yeah--and I'm really tired.

Tomorrow I have a weird meeting.

Babies babies babies babies babies babies

2005-09-22T18:52:00.000-04:00

So, like, I now know of EIGHT babies currently on the way. EIGHT, people! Six by Easter, and two hopefully before (ours and our friends'). Time to start knitting booties, people.

Sunshine? Check!

2005-09-21T13:16:00.000-04:00

Not only is a sunny but NOT hot and humid in Pittsburgh (double score!!), but y'all with your comments on the sunshine needed, please post have given me my breath back. Thank you! And keep 'em coming! There will never be enough.

Another one for me: the crossing guard at our intersection. She smiles every day and in every kind of weather, and is stunning even in middle age without makeup and when donning a hideous crossing-guard uniform. Plus she likes to talk about dogs with me.

Virtual Hugs (reader participation)

2005-09-20T10:42:00.000-04:00

Today I'm busy (no really interesting post to write, sorry), but feeling very, very grateful for the connections I've made over the last couple of years and the priceless friendships I've had the luck/blessing/privilege to make.

I'm lucky to know and love Ali and Richard, who are excellent colleagues and bosom friends, who keep secrets, make me laugh at inappropriate jokes (my favorite!), are not afraid to share their struggles, are as wise as serpents and gentle as doves, who bring with them their wonderful partners, who are examples to me personally and professionally, who consistently put others before themselves, who live intentionally. I aspire to them.

I also have the good fortune to have married well. And no one I know has in-laws as awesome asI do.

I'd like to open up this space for you to tell me who is holding you up right now. It doesn't matter that I won't know them. It doesn't matter why you love them. sster is in an angry and frustrated place and needs a little sunshine.

I don't care if this is maudlin and Hallmark-cardish. We all need it, yo.

So, who gives you sunshine?

The Constant Gardner

2005-09-18T15:39:00.000-04:00

I took a real emotional hit last night. Attic Man and I played happy little American consumers yesterday afternoon, arriving in the parking lot of the movie theatre with a trunk full of semi-necessary household products and dog treats, and stomachs full of overpriced Italian food.

There's nothing like a film set against the backdrop (which indeed becomes the foreground) of AIDS- and TB-ravaged Kenya and Sudan to sober up the happy materialist.

The timing of the film, from a humanitarian perspective, could not have been more perfect: never has it been more inescapably evident to a middle- and upper-class American public of the pervasive attitude of dispensiblility of the brown and the poor, and the brown-poor, as they (we) watch the receding waters of Katrina uncover bodies on the streets of a very poor brown city, and hear the pleadings of parent after parent looking for his or her children. I've written briefly below of how different it is for us now that we have decided to parent a child of color, and I just can't get over how the quality, as well as the intensity, of my emotions regarding the simultaneous exploitation and invisibility of brown people the world over has changed. These faces that cross the television screen are no mere 'neighbors;' they are family now. The biblical question, "who is my brother?" has new resonance. Do not be mistaken: saving is up to Jesus, not me, and the poor are more innovative and resourceful than almost anyone gives them (cringe at 'them!') credit; but my God! is it a different world when it is your world. I mean, this is a pretty nice place for me, class-wise and color-wise. It will be a much scarier place for Boomer (though with class privilege, if we remain financially stable), and is already scarier for Boomer's parents. See, that's the thing: we're not just plucking a little brown baby out of the crowds. We are entering into a familial relationship with a group of people from whom we've been, defacto-wise, somewhat (or maybe, significantly) distant. "I have a lot of friends who are black" is not the same. It just isn't, and now I know why.

The Constant Gardner is a gorgeous film. The cinematography is breathtaking. I wish I had a substantial education in film, because there's so much going on with color and lighting and angles and pastiche that I wish I could talk about, but my vocabulary is quite limited. But I can say that there is a quality to the film that is masterful and quiet at the same time, even when the camera is whipping around chaotically.

What's best about it, though, is that it manages to reach the depths of pathos without resorting to the cheap language of plight. Oh-those-poor-people-isn't-it-a-shame isn't the reaction the movie goes for. What it gets, from me anyway, is a deeper sense of burning indignation than I've had after a film since Romero. It's an action-suspence-mystery film that relies on ethics for its energy, not just to connect with the trembling lower lips of a simple-minded audience once every half-hour like in a Bond film (not to knock Bond, of course). Its conspiracy and the action that drives the plot are frighteningly plausible. The action does not merely exploit the situation, but is integral to it. It made me say, again, "My God. This is the world I live in."

and Boomer was in nearly every shot.

anyway, go see it.

La Familia

2005-09-17T15:40:00.000-04:00

So Mama decided to get bitchy on Heidi's ass (lots of "COME HERE NOW!" and "I AM THE BOSS!"), and the work is paying off. I think they're still working it out, and will be for the next few weeks or months, but overall we have two very happy puppies and two very happy humans.

Today we were able to take her to the dog park off-leash for the first time, as her spaying incision has healed sufficiently for roughhousing. The dogs had a BLAST. At first they were the only dogs present. It is so nice to be able to go to the dog park whenever instead of trying to guess when others will be there so your crazy dog will have a chance to work off some steam and later be able to lay down for just one minute while you study or go to the bathroom. So we know now that we can take them whenever and they will just play together. Awesome.

Then some other dogs came in, and we saw just how much progress Lenny and Heidi have been making towards a good pack-ship. Lenny, the rambunctuous and foolhardy puppy that he is, thought it would be fun to badger an older bitch. She was not amused. As soon as Heidi heard the commotion (not much--just growling and posturing), she came running from halfway across the field and inserted herself between Lenny and the other bitch. She did this twice more, and then the dogs decided matters were sufficiently settled and began to play. We were thrilled. She may not be into him at home, but boy does she know that he's hers. It's marvelous.

I have to say, though it has only been a week, that the move to add Heidi has been a major success. I suppose it's more work, but it's fun work. Lenny has really taken to her and is much happier having someone to watch and keep track of. He will also occasionally lie down even if we haven't been to the dog park in days. Honey, I tell you. And it hasn't actually cut into my schoolwork. At times it has even helped me get more done to have them occupy each other. We'll have more negotiations to work through, I'm sure, but for now we're one big happy pack. :)

All God's Creatures Have a Place in the Choir

2005-09-15T21:53:00.000-04:00

some sing low, some sing higher...
(I wanted to print this on t-shirts for us to wear to Mass when the choir at Attic Man's family's church kicked his autistic sister out for singing too loudly. Boy, I tell you--I can really hold a grudge. I'm STILL hanging on to this one).

So the puppies have been singing. The first night they waited until just after we feel asleep to begin barking, whining, howling, and droning in harmony. It sounded like there were at least 6 dogs downstairs. Attic Man laid in bed alternatively cringing and laughing hysterically, until finally I leaned over the banister and yelled "puppies! quiet!" Fortunately they have given us several entire nights of silence.

Today they devised a new game in which they sit nose to nose and bark. And bark. And bark. Heidi favors a low, guttural note, and Lenny an ear-spitting yelp, but their variety is astounding. They sound like they are involved in some important, intense negotiations (alright. I'll take the corner. you can have the best bones. no! I want the best bones! alright. you can have the gooey ones and I will take the sticky ones. but I want first dibs on petting. and on and on). This evening they carried on for at least 10 minutes before resuming their other game, Leaping and Chasing (barks, growls, and snarls thrown in for extra insanity). Lenny has been licking her chops (even when they're not covered in beef-flavored dog toothpaste), so I think he's accepting her dominant position.

So! It's crazy here.

Mental (as in, Postal) Notes

2005-09-14T22:06:00.000-04:00

Right now I'm writing several posts in my head. Sorry the following is mundane and bitchy. Sometimes a blog is good for that whole write-something-socially-relevant-crap, and sometimes it's good for that whole please-God-somebody-listen-to-me crap. I'm afraid today's post is the latter.

It's AAAAAAAAAHHHHHH here at Boomerific--the dogs are taking a lot of energy, as is my teaching, as is my Project work, as is the adoption stuff, as is, as is, as is. I'm feeling squeezed from every direction and even tea isn't making it go away (good tea always makes it go away. ok, until now.).

The dogs are doing well on the whole. Lenny has been an absolute champ with this transition. He doesn't act threatened most of the time, and when he does, he tends to respond by asking for more affection! This wanting-affection thing is new for him. We like it. I think he's disappointed that she doesn't really want to play with him.

Heidi is doing alright. She is totally housetrained, and for this we are very, very thankful. She also knows 'sit' and is learning 'down.' She also does not get into things or get onto the counter. Her main problem is that she has a tendency to guard--not just her own space, but several feet around her own space. Sometimes this means the whole living room. We've been working hard on redirecting them both when they get into a tangle over her growly-snappy-barky guarding. I spoke with our trainer this morning and she's very concerned about it. That, of course, made me very, very concerned about it, as well as worried, and stressed. Did I mention that I was stressed? Did I?

Attic Man is really holding up his end of the bargain. He gets up every morning to feed and walk the pups with nary a complaint. He also is taking the entire evening shift, which means I can work and rest (ha!) and not be responsible for their insanity. It's a lifesaver.

Speaking of which, the man is downstairs watching 'Over There.' I cannot watch this show. It is so incredibly disturbing to me that I can't even be within earshot of it. Does anyone else have this problem? Look, I know it's important for representations about the war to be circulating right now, and I'm sure there's a lot going on in the show that would be interesting to look at. But now, with the adoption on the horizon, suddenly everybody's somebody's baby, and I just can't do it.

P.S. Will--Heidi came to us with that name. We liked it just fine, so we kept it. Also, she already comes when called by that name. Thanks for asking! You're a cutey.

Familial Wisdom

2005-09-12T20:38:00.000-04:00

You know, the woman's got a point.

Good Times

2005-09-11T22:09:00.000-04:00

Florida and J.J., workin' it out

Attic Man and his #2 Bitch

Heart...hurts...can't...take it!!

Happy to be home and not in dog-prison

Canine-Americans for Kerry

Two New Links

2005-09-11T18:02:00.000-04:00

About 824 years ago on this blog I decided to embark on a mission to diversify my blog-reading (and hence, my blogroll). But lo, it was not to be; as soon as I announced our upcoming adoption I found myself buried ever deeper in blogs by parents. This burial is not at all an unfortunate thing. I am happily covered in mommy-blog essence. However, I would like to diversify my own writing here, so I'm once again embarking on the mission of 824 years ago, and present to you two excellent blogs:

Bitch Ph.D., which needs no introduction,

and I Blame the Patriarchy, which, among other things, is a superb (if quirky?) contribution to cultural studies. Your introduction to her writing should start here, in my opinion.

Fun, fun.

habemus Heidium

2005-09-10T16:04:00.000-04:00

Hi!

We're home now with Lenny and Heidi. I'm afraid to make any announcements of success this early, but things are going very well. So far it looks like Heidi is going to be dominant. Lenny lost the contest and actually doesn't seem to mind. In the meantime, we got in some good exercise for him. It's a good thing our couches are kind of shot anyway.

The major, major success story of the day, though, is that Lenny appears to be exponentially more confident with Heidi around. For a couple of months now he has refused to cross our busy street, which means we haven't been able to take him on long walks to the park. This is a dog who needs tons of exercise, so you can imagine our predicament. Not only did he make it to the corner today, but he made it across the street, to the park, and around two laps. He was too busy keeping track of Heidi to remember to be nervous.

And Heidi? She's an absolute sweetheart. Her personality is very complementary to Lenny's. We are getting a whole different set of benefits with her than with Lenny; Lenny is our crazy run and fetch dog, and Heidi is our lovey cuddle dog. So far, it looks like a really nice match.

I just hope the dynamic continues to stay like this. I imagine they will have a few more things to work out, but we're ready for it.

and Attic Man?...well, he was nearly in tears. When I saw that, so was I.

Lenny's hot date

2005-09-10T08:21:00.000-04:00

See, here's the thing about an equal-vote marriage: when you're at an impasse, when one of you is absolutely convinced of one thing and your partner is absolutely convinced of its opposite, one of you has to step out in faith that the other might be right. At the end of the day, Attic Man prevailed. After showers, breakfast, and a trip to the pet store for a new leash, collar, and food dish, we are heading to Animal Friends with Lenny to see if he gets along with Heidi.

Lest you think I'm some kind of pushover that just needs the right amount of cajoling to eventually cave, understand that this is something I wanted almost every bit as much as Attic Man--I just wasn't sure of the practical considerations. I'm still not. But after a long and much-needed conference last night, it became clear to me that Attic Man needs this. This morning, as if on cue, we got an email back from the landlord authorizing another dog. In the end, I'm letting his heart trump those practical considerations. When your partner says, "I need this," when it's more than, "I'd like this," I think you have to take it seriously. As for the inconveniences? I'll adjust. I always do.

Lenny, for his part, will be thrilled. As long as we are careful to make a good match, he will be one happy clam. The thing about Lenny is that he could sort of care less about us. Yeah, he likes 3 or 4 seconds of petting and rubbing, and he is insanely ecstatic when one of us walks through the door. But if he's into something else he likes, we are completely invisible to him. Honestly, although he likes people, he's a real dog-dog. This morning after his breakfast I took him over to play with Lola, the dog who lives across the street. I finally dragged him away after about 20 minutes so we could get on with our day, but he wasn't even close to getting ready to leave. He also loves the dog next door, a tiny little yippy thing (that he's gentle with, I might add--Lenny is not really a 'gentle' dog in general). And the other day he was excited to meet two little lab puppies a neighbor was puppy-sitting. I think he's going to love this.

Of course, there will be an adjustment period for all of us, and I'm sure that Lenny and whoever the new dog turns out to be will have to work out what's what. I am glad that we'll be doing this before the baby arrives (unless it's this afternoon--yikes!).

So the Boomerific clan is growing. Crazy stuff!!

Miserable Messenger

2005-09-08T22:22:00.000-04:00

I hope you never have to break your significant other's heart. It sucks. This evening I told Attic Man that I thought we should hold off on the second dog until after my exams (that we'd revisit the issue then). I don't want to add any more stressors to the semester.

Thanks for all of your wonderful insight--it helped! I especially liked getting to know those of you who have been hiding in lurkdom.

IF YOU LIVE IN PITTSBURGH, PLEASE CONSIDER ADOPTING 'HEIDI' FROM ANIMAL FRIENDS! Heidi is super-sweet, gentle, and incredibly lovable. I'm sad that we won't be taking her home. I hope someone will.

decision rollercoaster

2005-09-08T15:02:00.000-04:00

Thank you for all of your very helpful comments--keep 'em comin'. The decision has not really been made, so I need to hear more.

The last two days have been very stressful. I fluctate wildly between being absolutely sure I want another dog, and absolutely sure it would be a bad, bad idea. Notice that the alternative to wanting is not "not wanting a dog," rather, deciding that it is a poor decision at this juncture.

Every time I talk to someone or read one of your comments, I become sure again about whatever side the person tends to lead toward. Then I read another comment or talk to another person, and I'm back again. So here's what I'm up against, in order of importance:

Pros:
-we get another dog. we get another dog! we are insane animal lovers and it would bring us no end of joy.
-Attic Man gets to have a dog. I cannot stress the importance of this one. It is so much in his heart to get another one. Before we moved to a place that accepted pets, he said almost daily, with puppy-dog eyes of his own, "sigh. I want a dog." Dogs love Attic Man, and Attic Man loves dogs. Life isn't super-great for him at the moment, and it would be a real boost.
-Lenny gets something to occupy his attention. Lenny is bored. We take him on walks several times a day, play with him inside, talk to him, pet him, and take him to the dog park 3 times a week, and he still paces and gets into trouble. He loves to keep track of things, be they people or animals. We could get a cat, but we abhor litter boxes and would like outdoor ones eventually, which we can't do in the city.

Cons:
-We are really, really busy, and will get even busier with a baby. I am in school full-time and this is my most crucial semester (exams). Attic Man works full time at a job that stresses him out and goes to grad school part-time (one night a week of class and the Innocence Institute, which requires a nine-hour-per-week time committment). I'm not sure we have time for another animal. Attic Man has offered to take up all the extra slack.
-Twice as many pet expenses (Attic Man thinks we'll save on chews because they won't be bored)
-Possibly too much transition for Lenny with the baby coming.
-Lenny's behavioral issues are not yet resolved. A new dog may help, or may not. There's no way to tell.

Of course, the landlord may say no, in which case the whole question is moot. Still waiting to hear.

Attic Man, as you can tell, is gung ho. I want so badly to give him what he wants. I'm just not sure it's practical, and it's driving me crazy. My friend Tammy, who has three huge dogs, three kids under 7, two ferrets, and a full-time job (as does her husband) thinks I have to go where Attic Man's heart is. She says that I'm afraid of the unexpected and that like everything else, you just adjust. She sure has!

Our trainer didn't say we shouldn't, but cautioned us that it would be insane and take time and energy.

This is ripping me to shreds.

AAAAAAAH!

I Need More Input, Please!

2005-09-07T20:32:00.000-04:00

Calling all readers and lurkers: more comments on adding a dog, please.

This evening we took a stroll through Animal Friends, and met a dog named Heidi. She is 2-3 years old, about half the size of Lenny, active but not crazy, has lived with a family (was placed because of their situation, not because of her behavior), will be spayed tomorrow, is very affectionate. We can go back on Friday after her surgery. We'd of course take Lenny with us.

I just don't know, I just don't know...I feel like it's a gamble. She might be perfect and fulfill all the roles we envision for us. Then again, she might be more work and more hassle. Attic Man thinks more work but less hassle, as she will be able to occupy Lenny. I just don't know. I REALLY need to hear a lot of pros and cons and possible scenerios.

Better?

2005-09-07T14:16:00.000-04:00

Ah...so much better. I think this template makes reading easier, don't you? Those of you with Explorer--can you scroll down all the way now?

250-300 Katrina evacuees arrived in Pittsburgh this morning. I am so happy and proud of my city for being part of the effort.

*EDIT: evacuees to arrive today, but plane was delayed.

Once Again, Trusting You for Major Life Decisions

2005-09-06T21:53:00.000-04:00

So...Attic Man wants another dog. First of all, and most importantly, we both love animals (dogs especially) and just plain want another one in our lives. Incidentally, if we make a good choice--a young dog, not a puppy, 2-4 year-old female, laid-back, housetrained--Lenny might be easier to take care of. Attic Man is thinking that another dog might occupy the Lennster and wear him out a bit, thus taking the edge off of his bad behavior. At this point any bad behavior we get is mainly from lack of exercise. We get him to the dog park 3 times a week, which means he jumps on the couch and not the dining room table, but he could always use more.

What do you think? We have room--a three-bedroom with a deck and concrete enclosure, park nearby. I just don't know if this is the best time, what with a baby coming and us being busy and all. Experienced dog owners, parents? Lurkers? Other interested parties?

Justice

2005-09-05T21:45:00.000-04:00

I'm trying to decide how to blog. As far as I can see it, there are two options: write every day, or write whenever there's something to say, and you can say it well. Well, shit. The second is not going to happen any time soon, so I'm going with the first for now, until I can do the second better. In other words, I'm going to try to write every day until I have practiced enough to blog really well. You'll hang with me, right?

Which brings me to Katrina again. You know, I've been overwhelmed by it, as much as I was by September 11th. Mind you, I'm no longer shocked--2001 rid me of the ability to be shocked--but I am thoroughly absorbed. I don't, however, seem to be able to come up with anything intelligent or complex to say about it. That's what shock does to you: it robs you of the ability to engage in higher order thinking. I'm just a big ball of anger, frustration, and sadness, and I can't figure out who to listen to. My gut says, why didn't they get in there more quickly? if they knew that a storm of this magnitude would destroy the levees way back in 2001 (official government report), why didn't they fix them? more importantly, if they knew said information why didn't they send buses from every port--other cities, if necessary--to get the poor and infirm out? But rationally, I want to see more of the timeline. I want to know exactly what the government, both locally and nationally, was up against and what they did.

I want an investigation. I want an inquiry with hearings. If it were just a matter of a really big storm that killed lots of people, I wouldn't worry about blame--I don't need to blame someone every time lightening strikes. But this time, perhaps thousands of people have died or will die, and at the very least have lost everything, because someone dropped the ball. I want to know who.

Meanwhile, I'm up against another prolife conundrum: an appointee that is conservative on abortion, (and has an awesome wife who works with the rockin' Feminists for Life) but so scary with everything else, including our constitutional freedoms and matters like Guantanamo Bay. I'll never be a one-issue voter (like I get a say in this...) but it means that time after time I have to pass up prolifers because they're, well, not really prolife. Sigh.

Can I Get a Witness?

2005-09-04T20:19:00.000-04:00

I've had a really nice weekend: two trips to the dog park, a bad movie with Attic Man (but a nice outing), pizza, good weather, nice phone conversations. And church was so good today. Their hearts are where mine are right now, and that feels good. There was a baptism, too, which is always uplifting. During the kiss of peace the baby in question pulled my glasses off and tried to eat them. Heaven.

I can't stop watching the news. The funny thing is that I'm not watching the way you watch a train wreck--I'm not falling apart now. (Except when I see stranded dogs. First I was sickened by the people suffering, but now that I'm numb to that, I'm starting to mourn the suffering of pets). But I'm watching very carefully. I'm taking in every interview and photograph I can, searing the words and images into my brain. Sometime Saturday I noticed that I had stopped watching despondently and had started watching carefully.

I have become a witness. I can't look away because somehow I feel that it's my responsibility to watch. This is my country, and these are my people. What is happening to them is my business and my burden--when laws are passed, when there is hell to be raised, I will have been watching. I will be able to verify what is remembered because CNN and the grand old internet have allowed me to be there. On an individual level, I feel like if I can see those faces I can acknowlege them and say, "this is happening. this is wrong. this is a sin." There's nothing I can do right now except donate, but down the road refugees will undoubtedly be coming to Pittsburgh, and I want to be able to say, "I have been thinking about you and praying for you since I first heard of Katrina. I believe you that it was and still is as bad and you're saying." And then I want to put my arms around them, and I want to do it even if they aren't grateful and even if some of them are rude or otherwise not 'well-behaved.'

As for race: Look. A lot of people are saying that race was a factor, but it's important to emphasize that a simplistic explanation of racism is not adequate. Bush was not sitting on his tush saying, "oh, they're just black people. screw 'em." And as far as I know people were not rescuing white people and leaving blacks behind. BUT BUT BUT--do not be mistaken. The institutional racism that has been with us since slaves began arriving from Africa created a situation in which a disproportionate number of African-American citizens of the Gulf Coast are desperately poor. These are the people who couldn't get out. I'm sure you've heard this, but it's important to restate that it wasn't just a matter of not being able to afford a bus out. It was the threat of losing your job (some were actually threatened) or of leaving behind the few precious things you could never afford to replace.

And the classism--oh, the classism. Fortunately CNN has backed way the hell off on the looting and jungle-crazy criminal mayhem stories (if you're missing them, Fox will happily oblige), but I'm still seeing a hell of a lot of innuendo that the poor are not taking this like they're 'supposed' to. Like this post on a Craigslist Katrina forum:

I was at the astrodome here in Houston today, and I was very dissapointed when the majority of the evacuees only wanted to find out where the nearest Section 8 office was,how come they weren't taken to the 'projects', when FEMA was going to give them money to survive. A lot of these people were getting the 'royalty' treatment, just ask and a voulunteer will hand it to you. The poor will stay poor with this kind of behavior. A SAD REALITY.

In other words, it is their fault they're poor. It's going above and beyond the call of duty just to give them food, water, and a cot (what royal treatment, sleeping on the Astrodome floor with no privacy!).

Christ tells us that the least of these are Jesus in the flesh. It is not charity to help the poor. It's an entire way of being that regards the preservation of life as a way of life--not as an occasional action to feel good and superior that you're helping poor, stupid, morally depraved people.

...And I say, there but by the grace of God go I.

...

You Need to Read This

2005-09-04T11:18:00.000-04:00

Before I head to church and attempt NOT to hit someone else's car just to make a friend, I leave you with this link which brings together a lot of pretty damning information on how Katrina has been handled. The picture comparisons are the most shocking.

My addition: compare how long it took the Pres. to have a press conference for Katrina to how long it took him to have one for Renquist's death. Then think.

Sorry, guys...this is where my head is right now. I've been numb for days.

who the fuck cares

2005-09-03T00:48:00.000-04:00

about personal property at a time like this? Looting is not an appropriate word. To me, looting is what happens in a riot when people take advantage of a lack of control to steal material goods. When everything is destroyed, when you have no place to go, when you don't know when you'll be rescued, you 'steal' things. Sometimes you take non-food items because they can be traded for food, or sold later to buy a night in a motel or a Greyhound to a relative's house. Really--who's going to carry a big-screen TV (thank you, O'Reilly) through knee-deep water? I mean, like there's a living room to set it in?

OK--so everyone's a bit raw, me included. What's hitting me now--along with a whole host of other issues--is the insistence of the media on emphasizing the lawlessness of those left behind largely because they couldn't afford to get out, without taking into account the very real environmental changes that characterize the situation. You simply cannot carry over the rules and assumptions of a property-based economy (possession is nine-tenths of the law, after all) into a situation in which survival can be the difference between 'stealing' and just waiting for days to be rescued.

not that the continual struggle for survival is an unfamiliar state of being for many of the poor in this country...hurricane or not, hurricane or not.

Feeling Sick

2005-09-01T21:48:00.000-04:00

and impotent, and distraught over Katrina news. too far away to help, aside from Red Cross money that feels like throwing dust into the wind.

people are dying because they are poor, and black.

and in most places in the world, it doesn't take a hurricane, either.

Serendipity

2005-08-31T21:02:00.000-04:00

I have been waiting for five months to write this post. Today is the day! :)

Back in March we were in the throes of adoption paperwork. I was desperate to get everything out as quickly as possible. After all, I wanted to make sure I got it done in time for Boomer to come in the summer when it would be 'convenient' (snicker). All we had left was a consent form to sign so that my ADHD counselor could write them a letter saying that she didn't think I'd set the house on fire or screw up the kids too much. I received it in the mail one morning that I had to go to school for class or something. I was all ready to mail it when I realized I needed a witness's signature. Dammit! Attic Man and I were treating the application and homestudy the same way we would the first trimester of a pregnancy, just in case it didn't work out. Now of course I wanted to tell everyone I saw on the street (hi! I'm sster! I'm going to adopt a baby! I'm sooooo excited! wanna talk about race in America? you do? GREAT!), but I had to keep my mouth shut, especially at Attic Man's insistence. So what was I to do? I wanted to send out the paperwork that day, but here I was at school, which for me is work, so I didn't know what to do.

I was walking around the English department like a lost puppy, thinking, I've got to find someone who is discreet even unto death. I was circling our big grad-student cubicle room when I spotted A., a very nice woman I'd been in two classes with. I didn't know her well, but we had chatted from time to time in our classes, and I respected her intellectual credentials. Something about her demeanor told me she was the right person for the job. So I knocked on her cubicle wall with sweaty palms and made my very strange request.

"Um...hi. I know this sounds weird, but I have some paperwork that needs a witness's signature. I can't really tell you what it is, but I promise it's not bad. I'm going to put a paper over the top part, but if you see anything just pretend you didn't."

She looked at me, puzzled, maybe a bit wary, and said, "uh....okay...?"

After she signed we went back and forth (she hadn't seen what it was), me saying, it's good, it's really good, and sometime soon you will know about it, but I can't tell you, and her saying, I understand, it's OK, but it's good? Until it was just freakin' ridiculous. Then she said, mysteriously, "maybe sometime soon you can sign my secret paperwork." Finally I said, "I can't! My husband will kill me!...Alright. But you can't tell anyone. Not anyone. Oh, God. Attic Man is going to be so mad."

And then I told her about the adoption. Then she told me that she, too was beginning the adoption process, and that she hadn't told anyone! We had the best whispered conversation I've ever had in that room (and I've had many) about adoption, race, family, women in academia, religion in academia, etc, etc, etc. It was wonderful. We were instant friends.

Soon after, A. and her husband decided to adopt an African-American infant through the same agency we are using. We've had a great summer getting coffee, having dinner, and supporting each other through the process. I can't tell you how nice it is to have a colleague who's not only a parent but who will be adopting as well. I was a little worried about how all this would play out professionally, but now I've got someone there in the trenches with me. How lovely, this life!

I Dream of Boomer

2005-08-31T09:24:00.000-04:00

I got this lovely from Attic Man via email a few minutes ago:

"I don't remember if this happened last night or if I dreamed it, but we had a conversation in which you asked me whether I'd prefer a boy or girl, and I said it didn't matter. Then you asked me if it would be a boy or girl, and I said, "A boy, naturally. Geez." Now that I think about it, the conversation took place on the stairs to the bell tower of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, so maybe it was a dream."

2005-08-31T09:12:00.000-04:00

An emailed query:

There's a hypothetical posed as an ethical dilemma on Adoption.com. It really has me steamed. If she realized she'd made a terrible mistake, after revocation ended, would you "give the baby back." What if the birth mother realized she couldn't live with the pain of placement? At what point would you call it off? I'm angry because it intentionally touches on every paparent (and every aparent) nerve there is: knowing the adoption causes pain I can't imagine, our own fear of loss, etc, and it makes open adoption (because how else would you know?) even more panicky. I wondered what you thought.

Ah. This really is frightening. Not because I'm afraid of losing a baby, though. As I've said here many times, the only reason people have to fear of losing an adopted baby is if they don't do their legal work. What scares me is that a woman who has gone through one of the worst ordeals of her life, handing over the child she has carried for nine months, may wake up one morning and know (or feel) that she has made a mistake. How devestating... Because we'll be in an open adoption, we're probably going to get to know and love Boomer's birthmother, and I imagine that if the described scenerio were to take place we'd be devastated for her, too. My God! It is just awful to think about.

....however: adoption decisions have to be permanent. The child needs to stay in one home, with one set of primary caregivers, until he or he is an adult (not knocking divorced parents with joint custody here--it's not about location so much as it is about permanency) in order to have the best chance of growing up with a sense of security. The decision has to (after 30 days, in PA) be irrevocable. It just cannot be otherwise. So, even if it's hard, even if a birthmother wants to take it back, after that initial period it is not in the best interest of the child whatsoever, except in the most extreme circumstances of abuse and neglect.

Audience?

Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy!

2005-08-30T23:18:00.000-04:00

Our friends Ali and Kevin had their homestudy tonight, and after a few little pieces of paper arrive they will be

WAITING FOR THEIR BAMBINO!! With us! How cool is that! Internet love and hugs, lovelies.

For the rest of you, tomorrow's post will reveal the serendipedous encounter that led to two women experiencing adoption expectancy together. Please stand by.

...and try not to be too hard on me for that sentence while you're waiting.

Couldn't Resist

2005-08-30T18:02:00.000-04:00

Joining Richard's Silly Quiz Tuesday.

Pure Nerd
82 % Nerd, 8% Geek, 43% Dork

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 91% on nerdiness
You scored higher than 4% on geekosity
You scored higher than 77% on dork points

Link: The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test written by donathos on OkCupid Free Online Dating

Apples and Oranges (that nevertheless share a basket)

2005-08-29T17:00:00.000-04:00

Thinking through adoption issues is cyclical (as is the grief about their implications), and for the moment I am in a school-intensive cycle. While the two are not mutually exclusive, I'm just in a holding pattern until the baby gets here...or until I have a rough conversation with a rude or unthinking person, that is.

My friend A., on the other hand, is in a particularly intense cycle. It is her wont to think these matters through intelligently, as she did out loud with me on the phone today. A has provided me with some better language regarding the issue of "your own" biological babies and "your own" adopted ones, and I thought I'd float it past you.

A. was at a picnic and chatting with a woman she'd just met. The woman had three (biological) children rather close in age, and inquired as to A's plans for expanding her own family. A. has a little boy to whom she gave birth and who looks just like her, so the woman went on, assuming that A. was going to try to get pregnant. When A. told her that no, they were adopting, she indicated that she thought that was 'nice' and remarked that they were going to do that, too! after they were 'done' having 'their own' children.

I was horrified at this woman's assumption that someone else's path would mirror her own, but more dismayed by the deeply ingrained privileging of genetics it revealed. A. and I are adopting in a world that mostly sees adoption as second-best, or at least second in the chronology of family-building. We constantly find ourselves in the position of defending our choice, of asserting the adoptive bond as every bit as powerful as the birth-bond. It isn't easy; most people uncritically accept genetic primacy. It's not malicious, usually--it's a largely unexamined cultural norm.

I am tired of asserting and reasserting that adoption is Just As Good, Really! as childbirth. And I'm wondering now why I insist upon it. I think that until today I didn't really understand it, and A. helped me see why. A. has experienced maternity once. Because she believes life begins at conception, she believes she has been her son's mother since conception. Her motherhood to this child is inseparable from pregnancy, labor, and delivery. Their bond, beginning in the womb, is an intregal part of their ongoing relationship. Had her son been adopted, their relationship would not have been the same. Her experience of pregnancy was profound, gorgeous, painful, and utterly unique.

Adoption is not the same as pregnancy and childbirth. It can't be. It can't even compare--and that's where I've been tripped up. I've been so caught up in defending adoption that I haven't allowed it to be what it is: another way to build a family. That's it. Adoption, A. says, is not in competition with pregnancy, and vice versa. It is not more 'natural' or beautiful to give birth than to adopt. It is not 'easier' to adopt. It is different to adopt. Forget all of the comparisons you've been fed. When my grandmother tries to explain the beauty of carrying a child and then birthing, as she did eight times, as part of her confusion over why we're choosing adoption, she believes that we just don't want that. But it's not that, really; it's positive: it's not that we don't want birth, it's that we want adoption. Essentially, we're just like 'most' people, only backwards: we feel called to adoption, as strongly as some people have the primal urge to procreate biologically. It's inexplicable. As for birth? It's wonderful, beautiful, miraculous. But so is adoption, in its own completely different, completely wonderous and complex way. Maybe we'll get pregnant later. Right now, this is our choice.

Things

2005-08-28T15:24:00.000-04:00

1. Walking through the parking lot on our way to see Four Brothers, Attic Man started the conversation thusly: "I've been thinking about building our house. First, I'd have to learn how to weld." I will spare you the details, but suffice it to say that it involved shipping containers and bizarre angles.

2. Attic Man is, at the moment, cleaning all of the floors in our house. I am lucky to have married such a sexy houseboy.

3. Four Brothers is definitely worth a look-see. Its plot wasn't all that impressive, and its tone toward murder was strangely light and almost emotionless (they're all bad guys, after all), but its treatment of the relationship between the four adopted ruffian brothers is very interesting. Two are black, two are white, and all were adopted by a tough old lady committed to foster care. In fact, after one cop has described the exploits of the four brothers, including everything from brutal hockey fights to theft to intermittent jail time, his partner asks him, "if this lady [recently murdered] was such a saint, how come they're all such losers?" The partner responds, "Mrs. Mercer has ushered hundreds of kids through foster care into permanent homes. In thirty years she only came upon four cases that were deemed hopeless. If she hadn't taken them, you can only imagine what they would have become. They'd be monsters instead of hooligans." Or something like that--I'm paraphrasing. There are a few great moments in which the strength of their bond as (adopted) brothers is emphasized, though thankfully not in a maudlin way, that sster and Attic Man relished (one involving being asked, "so that's your REAL brother?"). Also of note is the strength of union ties in run-down Detroit. In the movie, they even trump gang ties. Watch for the climactic scene, a battle between the brothers and the drug kingpin (who is uncomplexly evil) in the middle of a large, snow-covered lake. The scene is utterly bare of any other scenery, a white space where the final action takes place, in which the kingpin becomes a boss-figure to be assasinated by disgruntled labor.

3. Lenny is almost housetrained. I mean it this time! I was so afraid to limit his water, but as Attic Man's been pushing it for months, and our new trainer suggested it, I finally spoke to the vet directly. She said that if it's clearly behavioral, it's fine to distribute water a little at a time, and to just make sure to watch for signs that he's well hydrated. Since we've done this we are able to take him out 5 or 6 times a day, instead of over 50 (I'm not kidding) and everyone is happier. We have the occasional accident, but now he's actually getting the idea.

4. Let me just tell you about some of the things we've been cooking and eating: samosas with filling from scratch (in storebought wanton wrappers), beer-can chicken, cornmeal-breaded catfish, all manner of noodles/veggies/coconut milk/curry/soy sauce combinations, crock-pot goodies from our vegetarian slow-cooker cookbook (thanks, Molly!), three pages of which the dog has consumed this week. We are eating well, people.

5. I've kind of been a spoiled brat about the adoption. Yes, we've been waiting, but I've got to get back to the original faith that our child will be right and will come at the right time. Frustratingly, Attic Man is not plagued by impatience. He's happy, he's ready, but he doesn't want it to happen before it's supposed to. That man. I tell you--he's simultaneously infuriating and the best thing going on around here. Did I mention that he's cleaning the floors today?

6. Lenny managed to pull down the shower curtain this morning. Rather than scaring him, it inspired him to race around the bathroom throwing down ninja moves and flapping his comically long tongue. Then we went into the bedroom so he could do his ninja moves on the bed where Attic Man was finishing up his Sunday sleep-in.

7. So I want to join the Gospel Choir at church but I'm scared. First, I loooove to sing in a group. Second, my favorite kind of choir is a gospel choir. They're not lame like the ones I grew up with, they have energy, and they don't hold their music in front of their faces--they know it. I love that. Plus, I want to start meeting people. But in a gospel choir everybody does a solo at some point. Everybody. At a church like Molly's, you can kind of hide because the choir has at least 1000 people (or at least that's what it sounds like on Easter Sunday). Our choir has just under 15. I do not have a solo voice. I have a very supportive alto, but I do not! sing alone in public, people! I've done it before, and now that I'm a grownup, I have the right to refuse to do it ever! again.

8. Speaking of meeting people at church! Today we met a lovely couple, Tracy and Adam, when I mistook the gas for the brake. It was humiliating, but their car, described by them as a "piece of crap" (see! we already have something in common!) sustained very minimal cosmetic damage. Plus, Tracy had a killer button on her purse: Rick Santorum's smirking face with a big slash through it. I think we're going to be friends. It would probably be better if I stayed away from their car, though.

Hope your Sundays are going well and that you've made no 'accidental' friends, or if you have, that they're as nice as Tracy and Adam, and that they have rockin' political buttons.

Our friends are up for their homestudy on Tuesday. Big prayers, OK?

Over-site

2005-08-26T08:44:00.000-04:00

When updating my blogroll the other day I completely blew over a blog that I've been reading for months now. Cindy is another amazing woman on the road to adoption. Like Cubbiegirl, she has me beat in the faith department (though this time of the spiritual kind). She also has a sense of joy and contentment that are refreshing in blog-land. Over here at Boomerific we're waiting and watching for her little ones to come home.

Enjoy.

Dear General Consensus

2005-08-25T17:41:00.000-04:00

Dear General Consensus,

I have a bone to pick with you. First you said that birth control would clear up my skin, but it didn't; it made it more pimply. Then you said long-distance relationships 'never work,' but I had one that did. Unfortunately, you also said that 'love is all you need,' but that wasn't true, either, so it ended anyway. 'Get a college degree and you'll get a better-paying job' was your next whopper. Attic Man thanks you for that one.

Now, I can forgive all of this half-truths (sometimes true, sometimes not), and I know which ones to avoid altogether, such as 'you'll never love an adopted baby as much as your own' (shudder). But the latest is unforgiveable. And really, I want to believe you! But here we are: no baby.

The only thing I can guess is that the great economic and social leveling has occurred. Now white babies aren't the most 'popular!' Even if they were, everyone who is getting pregnant is ready and willing to parent. Isn't that wonderful! I think it is. Everyone has access to the right resources, and mental illness, drug use, domestic violence, abuse and all other social problems are things of the past. There are also no women who simply don't want to parent.

That must be it. If it is, I'm happy! Really, I am! This is what I wanted all along. I don't want families to be ripped apart. I just want to be a resource if they do. If everything's perfect, just let me know and I'll try my hand at pregnancy. Whoops! I guess if everything's perfect I will get pregnant on the first try and there will be no complications. So this is a good thing!

'There are more African-American infants awaiting adoption than parents who are willing [can you believe that word?? I can barely type it] to adopt them. Your wait will be very short.'

That's it. I don't think we can see each other any more, General Consensus. Unless, you know, there's world peace now. Somehow I doubt it.

Love (not),
sster, childless.

2005-08-24T22:04:00.000-04:00

I know I haven't posted since Saturday, and I know you shouldn't even count that post, being that it's about too much caffeine and a movie I shouldn't admit I went to see. But anyway.

Life is in flux right now, but I can't blog about it, not really. Not one bit of it is bad, either--just not bloggable. I've been a pretty careful blogger. I try not to rant about people I know, I don't break personal or sensitive news, and I don't write much about my academic sphere (it being tricky and all, yo--I'll blog about that one long after I blow this joint, and not a moment sooner). So there's not much to write these days. I can blog about the adoption, of course, but as you can see, there's nothing to report. Nothing. No phone calls, no emails. And it's not like the social worker took the money and ran, 'cause we haven't given her any yet.

I'm also feeling rather low on the self-efficacy front, which is normal and healthy for a grad student at my stage. Unfortunately it tends to bleed into other areas, like blogging.

Here's what I can blog about: babies are not very good at showing up when they're supposed to. Boomer was 'supposed to' (by my internal schedule) show up some time this summer, so that when the semester hit, the semester in which I read a million books, write a million pages on them, take exams on them, take a Latin class, and TA a course, the semester everything I've been working on hinges on, the semester that determines whether or not they'll allow me to read a million more books and write an even bigger paper, we would have a several-months-old child with a feeding schedule and a trusted babysitter. Oh, yeah, and Attic Man is working full time and going to grad school, too. Sooooooo, it looks like we may be in for all of the above plus a newborn.

and I'm thinking,

---holy shit.

Hangover

2005-08-20T12:10:00.000-04:00

VERY WEIRD: caffeine hangover. Last night's last sip 'o the evil black substance will have been my VERY LAST, ever. This morning my mouth is impossibly dry and I am unsteady on my feet. I am also listless and grouchy. I finally fell asleep at 6 a.m., only to be awakened for Lenny's morning freak-out and feeding, to fall asleep again for a measly three hours or so.

The worst part? Caffeine does not keep my brain awake. It just makes it so that I cannot work and also cannot sleep so that I might be able to work better later. When I absolutely cannot avoid an all-nighter, food is really the best brain fuel. So last night I played so much solitaire my clicking finger almost fell off, and read a lot of blogs. I also googled a lot of people, which isn't as fun as it always sounds, because you really want to find out that people you went to high school are strippers or windsurfers, and all you get are county executive boards and geneologies. So no posting on Fire and Forge, Jon-boy. I do have an active work session scheduled for this afternoon, which means instead of reading until my eyes bleed like I've been doing I'll be looking over my notes and seeing what rises to the surface. So maybe I'll be posting soon? I hope.

Richard (and the rest who were curious), I am a little embarrassed to say that the movie was 40-year-old Virgin. It was every bit as bad as it sounds. The plot was contrived and unoriginal. The stereotypes were old and tired, and didn't do anything interesting or transformative. What was good, though, were the individual characters. Steve Carrell is hilarious, as always, and the guys who play his buddies are so appealing (as is his love-interest: rowwwwwr!). If you've been stressing all week about deadlines and moving halfway across the country, good Chinese food from Taipei and a really bad but really fun movie that will not tax your brain can be therapeutic. I cannot figure out how to spell that word. Is that right? My brain is melting away before my very eyes. Short assessment: Rental with popcorn for a silly night (sans teenagers who make whooping noises during the previews).

New Links Courtesy of Caffeine

2005-08-20T04:08:00.000-04:00

So for the longest time I was convinced that everybody read Dooce, because, you know, she's like the Queen Mama of all bloggers. If you haven't visited, run, baby, don't walk! Make sure to check out the "Feeling Guilty" archives. You will thank me.

Also new to the scene, but not new to me, is Very Mom, a dynamo of a woman with two very, very naughty lovelies and a few home businesses to boot. Also, she is Very Big with child. For a good introduction, read this, which convinces me more than anything that I am not the most socially ackward person on earth, which is saying a lot.

Finally, a woman whose sheer faith is unsurpassed in parentdom: Cubbiegirl, who a few weeks ago adopted a nine-year-old girl as a single woman, has just accepted a foster placement of THREE additional children, one in school, one a preschooler, and the other a newborn. Damn! Plus, she has a lot to say about adoption, abuse, and living really one day at a time.

Remarkable women, impeccable writing.

Enjoy!

Word to the Wise

2005-08-20T03:21:00.000-04:00

Insomniacs would do better NOT to drink one cup of chai and a value-sized soda (think SUV of sodas) at the movies.

you know, just in case you were wondering why, 357 games of solitaire later, I am still awake.