Demographics

Et tu, Walgreens?  I know I said that my childhood doctor thought I had a health history far more advanced in age than my actual chronological years would indicate, but I thought you knew me better.  I mean, I know you fill my prescriptions for asthma meds and even once, before a trip, tranquilizers, but a free AARP membership coupon with my purchase? 

I understand that the purchase was of hemorrhoid wipes and stomach acid reducer, but come on, lots of people my age have hemorrhoids and leaky esophageal valves.   Don't they?  

Parts

It's been said by mothers and fathers throughout eternity that good things start to happen when we stop looking for them or have, let's be honest, stopped caring whether they happen or not.  Well Mom and Dad, you were right.  Once auditions stopped causing me to gnaw my fingers off and wet my pants a little, I started getting work.  The scales of wisdom have tipped in your favor.

Five kinds of awesome.

Why did I eat that chicken salad? I knew it had been in the fridge too long, even though it smelled fine. I seemed to remember leaving it in the food processor on the counter for a few hours right after I made it, but I then refrigerated it and consumed some on crackers with no ill effects. So why did it turn on me so, causing vast digestive distress and dry heaving 12 hours after the final serving was eaten? Why, on top of a respiratory infection, did I have to get food poisoning? Because I'm apparently Homer Simpson, that's why. I could never stay mad at you, chicken salad.

Tragic and Unnecessary

Christian and I spent a while at the courthouse today, as we had to get fingerprinted for our adoption application, just in case we are hiding that we're international jewel thieves who need a third with really small hands to fit into those unreachable back corners of safes.  We had to wait for the fingerprinting technician and were sitting in the lobby when a young woman came in, pushing her shirtless two year old son in a stroller.  The lobby was for both the fingerprinting/gun permit office and for filing civil and small claims cases and restraining orders.  The woman approached the latter desk and spoke with the clerk, and attempted to communicate her story of an abusive ex-boyfriend and papers being served to her fraudulently, but, in her anger and frustration, she wasn't able to explain herself sufficiently to allow the clerk to understand and be of any assistance. She said over and over that she had been in a safe house when the papers had been supposedly delivered and that she was going to have to leave the state to escape her ex-boyfriend's violence.  She said that he was trying to get custody of his son, and she didn't know what to do.  The clerk kindly offered to call a detective to see if he or she could be of any help, and the woman sat down to wait.  

As this scenario was playing out, the woman's little boy had been playing with the rain cover of his stroller, to her intense annoyance. He hopped out of his stroller and was about to start pulling on his mother, so I started talking to him to distract him long enough to give her a chance to do what she needed to do.  I asked him question after question, and heard his answers around the thumb he was loudly sucking.  I said above that he was two, but that's because he told me that was his age, whereas he looked closer to four due to his size.  He and I spoke for a while about nothing, and, as I had my phone out, thought he might like to see pictures of the birds.  So, we looked at those for a while, and he was fascinated by the birds as well as the way the phone flicked through the pictures.  He came to my side at one point and wedged himself between my arm and my side, and I have no idea how he did it.  That a child that little wanted to attach himself to a total stranger and his mother seemed relieved to see it made me terribly sad. 

When she was leaving, she made an effort to tell us that she was going home to change her son into more clothes as he had had an accident with his lunch, necessitating his shirtlessness.  I shared that Shelly and I had taken the boys to the zoo and, when they both wet themselves to soaking, had dressed them in whatever we could find, so I understood insufficiently dressed little kids.  She left, and the kindly officer who was on front door duty, who we could see through the door but not hear, pointed at her son with a smile and she laughed at whatever it was he said.  Everyone tried to be so good to her, but I could see that the life she had made for herself and the choices she had been required to make had taken away her chances of normalcy.  

Upon seeing a girl like her, I couldn't help but think of how her life is laid out for her now, and how, unless she and her son are both incredibly lucky, he will end up exactly like her, or worse, his own father.  And how would they change their fortunes when they are obviously alone, without even anyone to go with them to the courthouse?  

Women like her break my heart and make me feel spoiled and selfish, and also make me wonder if what we've heard said is true, that the women who choose to keep their children when they become unexpectedly and unwelcomely pregnant are often the ones the least equipped to raise their children.  Were their mothers like them, insufficiently educated and taught that their only value is in what they can give to men?  

It does break my heart so.  I hope that our adoption will help break this cycle for one family, at least.

Deeply Hung

I have a massive Fair hangover.  Four Dr. Peppers, barbecue, onion burgers, fries, elephant ears, livestock allergies and a first prize ribbon!  

Eat it, acrylic whores. 

For he's my dear, my darling one...

Happy birthday to the only man on earth who could challenge Gene Kelly for the title of best backside in the history of asses. You are awesome in every way, not the least of which is how amazing you are with people of all ages, and kids in particular. You are willing to perform such feats as running incessantly up and down punishing sand dunes in order to entertain tireless nephews, and that makes you spectacularly cool, in my opinion and theirs. You never shirk at doing hard or tiring things if they will make other people happy, and you seem to derive great joy from seeing others having fun that you helped make. You're also so polite, and really think before saying anything to those who need to be handled a little more gently. Because of this, you make them feel as though they are respected, and that's more than they usually get in their daily lives.

Thank you so very much, too, for the incredible work you've done with Sasha. He's a completely different bird than he was a year ago, and that's utterly because of you. He's so happy and content and well-loved because you cared for him enough to make an effort, despite the very difficult times at the beginning. It makes my heart burst to see him raise his little foot to his neck and invite you to scratch it every night before he goes to sleep. You're a softie, which kills me. I'm sorry I make you occasionally watch Animal Cops. I just really like to see the bad guys get theirs.

So, my smiling and beguiling one, I hope that, despite having to stand in line at the DMV, this birthday is the happiest, because you deserve it.

All my love,
Suz

A Quote for the Ages

While seeing absolutely no irony in their own criticism of Obama's perceived inexperience, Republicans defending Palin's inexperience in the light of Democratic party comment about the same (from the Guardian) had this to say:

"Tennessee congresswoman Marsha Blackburn suggested that Palin's work on the parent-teacher association of her son's school gave her useful experience for the vice-presidency.
'Every woman in this room knows that if you can handle being a room mother… a PTA chairwoman, Girl Scout cookie mom, there's a lot of things you have the ability, the organisational skills, to handle. She transferred those leadership skills to the political arena.' "

Yep, that's exactly what qualifies a candidate for nomination to the Vice-Presidency, a mean hand with the Girl Scouts, those little bitches. So, apparently, all Obama would have had to do to prove his readiness for leadership was chair his girls' PTA.

We won't even discuss the hilarity of this same group of women calling for a moratorium on discussing Palin's family situation (both teenage daughter's pregnancy and husband's DUI) when Michelle Obama has been out and out called a racist by this same group because of her Princeton Master's Thesis. Oh pot, stop teasing the kettle.

Why's it so cold out here?

If this doesn't make you cry, you are dead inside.

Cracked

Poor Pierre. He struggled at the horrible breeder's house, where he never even learned to stand, he struggles at our house as he can't be with his lover at all times, he struggles at the vet where he is today, getting a fractured lower mandible repaired. He's just a tiny, fluffy blue ball of woe.

Fritz and Pierre love each other, passionately. However, they fight terribly when in the same cage, so they each have their own apartments. But, as we are terribly permissive parents (enablers), we let them sleep together. If they aren't separated before they fully awake, though, they fight. They must have had quite a throw down on Saturday morning, left together longer than usual while we lazily slept in. Fritz had a bite on his eyelid, but Pierre seemed fine. However, yesterday morning, I noticed that he hadn't eaten many pellets, and he seemed far meeker than usual. I took him off his perch and saw that the lower right portion of his beak had been completely broken in two unevenly sized halves and that blood had filled his mouth. I threw on my clothes and ran him to our vet, only to see that they were closed on Monday. I ran him to the emergency vet, where they charged me $255 to give him fluids and a pain killer, and then told me to go back to my vet today. I took him home, made a little incubator for him, fed him warm, mushy food and watched him try to understand why he couldn't use his beak properly. It was tragic to watch him attempt to preen but stop in confusion, and then shake his head, as if to try and dislodge whatever was bothering his bite.

He's back at the proper vet now, where they are wiring the two separate beak pieces back together. He could grow it out, he could lose the piece altogether, we just don't know. We simply cannot allow the little birds to be together anymore.

Wow, this is surprisingly like parenthood.

How old am I?

When I was about 20, a doctor told me that I had the health problems of an 80 year old. When I was 29, I had an appointment with the surgeon who removed the ute, and he said that I had the worst hemorrhoids he'd ever seen in someone my age. When I went to the doctor today to have my physical for the adoption home study, it was discovered, during the manual exam, that I apparently now have a stricture of the poop chute variety. I'm hoping that, by getting all of these absurd problems out of the way now, I'll be perfectly healthy as a 90 year old.

Acceptance

We were accepted into our agency of choice, so bring on the babies! Well, one baby. Bring him or her on! Not that we have a gender preference, so bring on the baby of either gender! And race! We don't care! Baby, baby, baby!

Responding in Kind

Ah, the internet.  The home of more inaccurate and spurious opinions and badly-stated personal manifestos than any twelve survivalist compounds could read in many lifetimes.  And now, I've found a whole webring of sites I wished had never burned holes in my retinas.  I knew that, when starting the adoption process, we would be forced to listen to opinions on co-sleeping and international vs. domestic adoptions as well as be an unwitting audience to horror stories of adoptions gone wrong.  What I didn't expect, but should have, was the huge number of websites dedicated to the desire to abolish adoption, and that any search for information regarding adoption would lead me to these innocuously named sites.  

These pages forward the opinions that every pregnant woman should parent, that adoptive parents are thieves, that agencies are human traffickers, that all adoptive children end up abused and suicidal and that these same children will never lead full and successful lives until they are reunited with their "real" parents.  And, I'm reading this all while starting to write our introductory letter to potential birth parents.  

I admit that I did write the webmaster/founder of one such website.  She did not quote one documentable source, one article or book published in the last fifty years, one traceable researcher or research project or any opinion that wasn't proffered by a frequent visitor of the website, to substantiate her raison d'etre.  Her primary sources seem to be those who found her site by searching for the best way to treat young, pregnant, frightened women like their choices are not their own, that because one woman was victimized by whatever unscrupulous individuals coerced her to surrender her child, all women who choose an adoptive family for their child are victimized.  

It's no wonder girls are confused.  They are being told that the sex is wicked and evil but that they should never think of or use contraception as it's going against God's will.  However, if they do get pregnant, their choices are limited to none, not even the choice to decide that their child might just have a better future with a family who not only wants that child, but can provide for and love him or her.

So, how do we know that the birthmother who chooses us is doing so with proper counseling and forethought?  How do we know that both of the birthparents are mature enough to make a decision like this?  I know that this is why we use an agency, why counseling is mandatory for any birth mother through that agency.  It's also why open adoption plans are vital, which I understand now, so the birth mother can continue to have contact with her child, if she wishes it, and know her child is loved and healthy and successful.  It will also enable parents to ensure that their child doesn't feel as though they are separated from their past.  I sincerely hope we are up to this, and that we and our child can make the relationship with the birthmother work, so we can all be the best family possible.  

The Funnest Parents

When did having fun become the raison d'etre for eschewing common sense, safety and responsibility? Have Americans always been such hedonistic assholes? Why am I suddenly sounding like a parent? I'll tell you why: today I attended a presentation on ATV injuries in children, and my response to that presentation is, "holy shit."

What kind of imbecile would reassure their intubated child, struggling on life support in the ICU, that he shouldn't worry, they'll replace his Artic Cat when he gets out of the hospital? And why do even journalists covering events such as this still, after visiting our Center to learn about the risks of ATV use by children and the need for helmet use if one persists in being foolish enough to allow their children to ride, still color their stories with their own personal beliefs that helmets impede the fun? Why does any parent put their own unfulfilled youthful dreams before their own child's well-being? Just because your parents didn't allow you to ride in the abandoned quarry on Toothless Joe's four-wheeler didn't mean that you should allow YOUR children to do so, and merely because ATV parks with jumps and water hazards exist, that is no reason to frequent them. Contrary to a widely-held belief, one does not have a child so one can relieve ones childhood, this time getting to do everything one didn't get to do the first time.

I know that parents have an extremely difficult task in determining what amount of risk-taking behavior is acceptible, and that a certain element of danger can prepare a child for facing real trials later in life. However, this does not mean that activities that are categorically hazardous and almost guaranteed to cause bodily harm should be encouraged merely because allowing them will make one "cool".

And right now I'm realizing that I'm making a mental list of non-allowable activities for our own child that will make me the most reviled parent around. But at least my kid will live to twelve.

The New National Champion

Congratulations, Christian! You're the new Master's Track and Field Shot Put Champion for your age group! Even though you were the only one in said age group, I'll only mock you a little. You wear that medal with a sense of accomplishment.

Nothing Like Expected

Our house has never been this clean, nor will it will ever be this clean again.  For the past week, all we've done is scrub and dust and vacuum and organize and scrape, and our house is utterly gorgeous.  Was it necessary?  Nope.  Our social worker said that everyone cleans, but that's not what concerns them, and the kind of people who ask for a home study aren't usually the kind of people who need to worry terribly what others will think of their home.  While I knew that, really, there's no way I could have gone into the home study any other way.  

Nancy came over last night to start the process.  It only took two hours and was considerably easier than what I expected.  As we've already started our agency application, much of the information she needed was already completed in our profile, and she only needed to ask us questions not covered or ones we hadn't answered yet.  We now must each write a comprehensive autobiography, detailing everything from our childhood impressions of our rearing to our employment history and how we feel about our own roles as parents.  All of this information will then be compiled, along with medical histories and our letters of recommendation, into one profile to be submitted to each state and our agency.  While our personal histories will only comprise about 3/4 of a page, we are free to expound upon our personal virtues and failings as much as we like, to be condensed by Nancy.  I actually feel a little guilty about how much I'll inevitably write.  I mean, what if I leave something out that I find terribly important and that the birth parents will latch onto as the reason for choosing us?  As Nancy said, we have to view the massive volumes of information we provide as it will be viewed by a young woman and, possibly, her mother, grandmother, aunts, siblings, cousins, brothers-in-law, everyone, so we'd better make ourselves as vibrant and transfixing as possible. While I have endless faith in Christian's boundless virtues, I will incessantly worry about my own.

  

So, it's a damn good thing our house is clean.  

Lucky Number Seven

Hi honey!  So, here it is, our seventh anniversary, the year of the supposed itch, at least according to Billy Wilder.  Thankfully, we don't live in an overheated, urban apartment where a sexy bombshell can sublet the upstairs while I'm vacationing away from the city for the summer.  That's next year.

As this will be the year of biggest change for us, I wouldn't be surprised if you did feel some kind of urge, maybe if only to flee from the stress of it all.  We're going to get a baby, dude.  I admit to feeling some apprehension about what a kid will mean for our own relationship, which has, up until now, been the sole most important thing in my life.  Of course, the best hope is that this child will make our love all the stronger, and give us another outlet for our boundless affection for each other.  That is my goal, and I know it's yours, as well.  This life we've made together, this little middle-class menagerie, is what we want it to be, and I think that this child, this person we can raise amongst our varied creatures, will be pretty cool because of this interesting place we've made.  I also think that, because we're older and have made it a point to embrace the things we love doing, we'll be able to provide this little chicken with some pretty fantastic experiences, whether attending the Track and Field Olympic Trials, traveling to all the Disney parks, seeing our beloved birds' cousins in the jungles of Panama, having clotted cream in Cornwall, seeing your mom sing opera or learning how to draw from your incredible artist dad.  And don't forget learning how to knit.  That will be of utmost importance.

And what family and friends we have around us, to give us the most encompassing love they have in their hearts.  We have both sets of supportive and loving grandparents within driving distance, and one set has HORSES, which couldn't be niftier.   And holy cow, can you imagine all of us in Disneyland, sharing that first experience together?  I think I might just burst.  What a gift it is to us, too, to have our child's aunts and uncle want to give our family the best love in their hearts, and share with us the three most perfect cousins our kid could have.  How lucky our sprout will be to have the coolest kids in the world be in their own family.  There's so much to look forward to.

Writing this all out is good therapy, and equally good practice.  I never say enough of how being married to you has made my life exactly what I want it to be, and how grateful I am to you for building it with me.  As I sit here on the couch, sneezing from cleaning the office last night, looking around at the house we've been working on over the years, I see that it's bigger than we thought, and it can hold whatever we bring to it.  I can't wait to raise a child with you, and see some of the wonderfulness that is you in that child.  You are the best husband, and you will be a extraordinary father.  

I love you with all my heart.

Suzy

Sudden Turns

I was shoved by teenage punks when emerging from the grocery store, and was consequently unutterably pissed until, when driving out of the parking lot, a young, aggressively groomed man in a lowered, pimped and bronzed Honda passed me and I caught his personalized license plate, which read "Fluffer". I don't think it means what he think it means.

Run, fat girl, run.

Was keep-away ever fun for anyone other than the hyper-athletic kids who had been playing soccer since conception and the regressive, vindictive gym teachers who enjoyed seeing the athletically-impaired be repeatedly denigrated every time they would attempt to get the ball from their snide, obscenely muscled peers?  

Christian and I were trounced in keep-away yesterday by two children under five, but this time it was because short ones are really, really quick and I'm old and fat.  Why can't we all just share the ball?  Oh yeah, because the need to kick the ass of those who are less skilled is deeply, deeply rooted in the human psyche.  Still, having your jiggly butt handed to you by a five year old doesn't suck so much when the little people are that cute.

Full of the canvassing love.

Love, and more love.  Also want.  

Things learned from the most recent Spokane trip.

1.  Spokane is hot in the summer.  Armpit of Hades hot.  Vile hot.  I-can't-sleep-it's-90-degrees-in-my-room hot, I'm-so-sweaty-I-have-to-change-my-clothes-four-times-a-day-hot.  I-remember-why-I-moved-hot.

2.  Five-year-olds' wrestling matches trump tee ball in terms of hilarity.  Nothing will ever be more adorable and comical than 400 skinny little chickens and a few husky bruisers in singlets. 

3.  Taking three children five and under to see Wall-e, even with four adults in attendance, will ensure that you will not see more than five minutes before being interrupted by the lapping toddler who can't decide if Mom or Grandma has the better popcorn.

4.  When entertaining outside in summer, wear as much Off or Deet as you can without inducing respiratory distress.  If not, you will wake up the next two mornings scratching your ankles and knees until they ooze.

5.  Don't start a movie you really want to see at 10:30 pm after having not slept more than three hours the previous night, especially if you want your parents to watch it, as well.  

6.  When you bring knitting you need to work on quickly, don't forget the pattern at home.

7.  Don't buy your nephew his birthday Star Wars Legos before you go swimming as he will have no interest in going in the water when an unopened At-Ap Pod Walker sits in the car.  However, buy them after, as having a precocious, blond muffin clasp his hands to his mouth and exclaim, "There are just so many wonderful choices!" when having to decide between four measly sets at Fred Meyer, is better than most anything.

8.  Make salad for your parents. They'll be so grateful that you spent the money on the steak and bleu cheese and bacon you're making despite high cholesterol worries that they'll do the clean up dishes afterwards.  

9.  Don't listen to Patton Oswalt in the car when driving home as you'll most likely crash your car when the hysterical tears blind you.  And if you don't crash, your abdomen will be in agony, you'll suck all the oxygen out of the car and you'll do damage to your steering wheel from the pounding.