150 Steps...In the Present Moment

Let me just say first and foremost that in 42 years I have never actually been through a major natural disaster that involved major damage to my home. Until now. Less than a week ago 6 inches of water "seeped" into our basement through our foundation (can you really call it "seeping" when you get 6 inches in less than 5 hours?) because the water table is the highest it's been in years due to record breaking rainfall in Rhode Island this February and March. Numerous others I know shared similar stories. Our basement finally dried out over the weekend (with the aid of a shop vac and a submersible pump and a lot of back breaking labor by my amazing husband) and we cleaned up. Only to have another record breaking torrential rainfall hit yesterday evening. At midnight when we collapsed in bed the basement was dry. By 3:00 a.m. another 6 inches of water had made its way into our home. By 7:00 a.m. there were between 8-9 inches of icy cold water forming

Last night, as I drove home from work, I sat in my car with a feeling of dread about what I'd find in the basement. It started raining again yesterday and after our flood last week, I'll never look at rain the same way again. Stunningly, the basement was dry upon my return home. Much relief all around. Heading to bed at 11 PM or so, the basement was water-free. Then our neighbor's gas generator fired up at 3AM, waking us up and a good thing, too. There was more water than yesterday and it was rising fast. Even the efforts we'd taken to move items to positions where they'd be safe were about to fail. So we scrambled to haul stuff upstairs, emptying filing cabinets and CD racks, carrying futons up the stairs and dumping them in the guest room. Moving the power cords and new surge protectors to the tops of desks or the entertainment center. There was no way our utility pump was going to handle this. A dawn run to Home Depot when it opened at 6AM bore no fruit -

The skies have opened up yet again here. Rain forecast for the next THREE DAYS. The ground here is already completely saturated (hence our flood...apparently the water table in our town is at an all time high. One of our neighbors who has never - in 28 years - had a flood, flooded on the same day we did because of the water table. There is just nowhere for all of that water to go!) We just finished clean-up in our finished basement family room/offices from the flood we had last Wednesday. I'm dreading coming home this evening to find yet another 3 inches of water down there. (Granted - I feel really bad for us, but I feel even worse for folks in other parts of our state that have had to deal with many feet of water in their homes as several rivers reached and exceeded cresting points...) Argh . As we were cleaning up the other day Chris says to me, "Well, think of it this way...At least we don't have Plus One right now." So true. I can't imagine clea

com·pas· sion  (noun) sympathy for the suffering of others, often including a desire to help I am continually astounded, shocked and saddened by the world that is the  blogosphere . Not the entire  blogospere  - there are many, many wonderful writers out there in  Blogland  - writers that I adore, who are wonderful and kind and loving and compassionate. Writers who take my breath away and whose blogs I look forward to visiting each and every day. But there are so many others in  Blogland  so full of hate and vitriol...especially in the world of adoption, loss and infertility. There are blogs I visit in an effort to continue educating myself about the issues in the adoption community...but sometimes this is so very hard... A First Mother blogger recently referred to prospective adoptive mothers as "evil barren slobbering leeches." A Prospective Adoptive Mother blogger referred to First Mothers in any number of posts as "breeders." (She indicated in a late

With the passage of the health care reform act earlier this week comes additional welcome news for adoptive families: The maximum credit was increased from $12,150 to $13,170 The credit is extended through December 2011. Apparently, it's also rather complicated so I guess I'll be reading up on the details and hoping that Turbo Tax can help out.

Feeling a little sheepish about my earlier post. I'm OK. Really. Went to the gym and did 30 minutes of weightlifting and 45 minutes on the treadmill and am feeling MUCH better. Much less pitiful. And just a touch embarrassed to have been wallowing so much in my own pitifulness earlier today. Bahhh.

...of my 43rd year on the planet. And the sun is shining. Thank goodness!! We'll be able to open the bulkhead doors to let our basement continue to dry out. Still feeling a little sad today, but hoping that the sunny day will get me out of my blues and out of my head. How likely is this? Not very. This week I have been obsessed by all things adoption. Obsessed to the point of complete distraction - even with the flooding of our basement. I've even skipped over reading some of my favorite "other" blogs - very unlike me - in favor of only reading those that deal with adoption. My mind seems to be full of all things "baby" and all things "why aren't we parents yet?" It surprises me (although it probably shouldn't...) that I am feeling this incredible sense of  urgency  about becoming a mom. When? When? When? When we first started this journey a year ago I was kind of like, "It'll be wonderful. We'll be pa

Day 2 of my 43rd year on the planet. And it's raining. Again. Under normal circumstances I'd probably be excited by all of this rain knowing that it's going to help our gardens grow lush and beautiful. But given our basement flood of two nights ago, seeing the rain this morning makes me wonder what we're going to find in our basement this evening when we arrive at home. Chris says, "I've never looked at rain before with quite such a sense of dread." The grey and the rain sort of match my mood today. Feeling a little grey myself. Blah. I sit here wondering if anyone has called our agency to express any interest in us. And I KNOW that it's stupid to be sitting around wondering this. If anyone expressed interest and there seemed to be a possibility of a match, we'd get the call. No call = no match for now. I know this. Really, I do. But I keep seeing the hits to our profile pile up and I think to myself, "What's wron

It's my birthday today. 42. I am now the same age as the answer to all of life's ultimate questions... (if you have no idea what this means, you are obviously not a geek. Refer to Douglas Adams'  The  Hitchhiker's  Guide to the Galaxy .) I should be happy, right? But I'm feeling rather grumpy. Not really about my birthday. (Well, maybe a little.) But I think it's more because of yesterday's flood in our basement. During the whole day I was actually very calm and worked with Chris (when I could - became very ill in the middle of the day and was out of commission for a few hours) to clean up the disaster that was Lake Watson. No hysterical raging fit or crying about how awful it was. Nope. I coped. Quite well, if I do say so myself (and Chris is very thankful that I didn't have some kind of meltdown yesterday. Over dinner last night he tells me that he could not have coped with a flooded basement and an hysterical wife at the same time.)

"Wow, the family room floor looks mighty shiny this morning." 7 AM today and that's what went through my head as I stood at the bottom of the stairs looking into our basement family room (aka our home office space and TV room). Sadly, the tile-polishing elves didn't come in the night to buff the floor and make them all pretty. That would have been much more welcome. Instead, our basement flooded for the first time in the five years that we've owned this house. Sure, during the summer we run dehumidifiers down cellar to deal with the summer humidity but that's nothing compared to what I saw as I trooped downstairs for a quick look at the morning news on my computer. There's nothing to wake you up like seeing 2-3 inches of water across virtually your entire basement. A quick visit to the circuit breakers and I minimized the risk that computers or TVs would blow up or that I'd get fried as I sloshed around. (Side note -- thank god we had an entire

OK, I admit it...I've really poo- poo'd  "The Biggest Loser" for a long time. But, then again, I generally poo-poo reality TV... I'm generally not a fan of reality TV because I find so many of the shows to be down right mean-spirited (with one or two notable exceptions..."Project Runway" & "What Not to Wear") and I usually avoid them, but tonight I'm flipping through the channels and I land on  TBL . I'm not quite sure what makes me stay, but I get sucked in. All of the contestants in tonight's episode have been sent home from "The Ranch" for a week to give them an opportunity to spend time with the families that they've been missing for two months. And also - of course- to see how they'll do back in Reality Land. Will their old bad eating/self-destructive behaviors rear their ugly heads? During their "vacations" the contestants are all expected to eat well and to exercise. The  TBL  produ