150 Steps...In the Present Moment

Sorry, but not really. No controversy. Just said that to get you here. (What a horrible blogger I am...) I stopped visiting blogs written by the anti-adoption folks so there certainly hasn't been much controversial fodder for creating posts that have that "oomph" factor to them. And I've stopped asking all of the questions and expressing my anxieties and worries. I've stopped asking you and myself, "Are we doing the right thing?" Now we've just settled in to the waiting phase. And let me tell you, it's not very exciting - for you or for me - to continually write about the fact that we're just waiting right now. So, I've been writing less and less. I miss writing the daily posts.   But when it comes right down to it, what's happened is that at long last - after more than a year of mulling and agonizing and questioning and writing and processing - I have finally gotten comfortable with our decision. I'm letting go of tho...

A thank you to Kate and Stephanie: Thank you both for the great feedback to my  In the Face of Statistics  post. Your comments are extremely helpful as we think about how we want to proceed. Part of this reassessment has been driven, in all honesty, by our own sense of impatience and a need for slightly less delayed gratification. However, the choices we made also were predicated on our desire to protect and nurture the child who will hopefully be entering our lives, even if we don't know who that child or her mother are right now. Our initial placement profile with our agency, ANLC, included several highlights: open to any race preference for a girl (my wife says that she wouldn't have the faintest idea what to do with a little boy...I think she also likes little girl clothes better) no smoking willing to consider if the expectant mother had been drinking at some point (we figure that it's not unreasonable to expect that anyone might have a drink or two befo...

Is positive news that doesn't really change anything actually news or is it just a series of statements that find no anchor and have no impact? -- Chris (my husband)  I'm chatting with my dearest friend on the phone last evening. We've been on the phone for quite some time when she pauses and says, "I've been reluctant to even bring this up, but is there any news at all on the adoption?" Not really. (And there's no need for reluctance to ask us about the adoption - friends and family. Really. We'll be happy to talk about it.) Chris describes very well the most recent conversation with our adoption contact in his post  Dog Day Thoughts  so I'll suggest you hop on over there to take a gander at it rather than rehash it all here (it's a quick read.) The quote at the top of this post gives you a hint of what you'll find over at his post. I haven't had much to say about the adoption these days because there really hasn't bee...

"I had this really weird thought on the way over here," I tell my therapist earlier this week. She looks interested as I continue, "I didn't want to come here today because I didn't want to do the heavy work we've been doing." I pause. She doesn't say anything. Just looks at me with that calm therapist-y look she has. So I go on. "I just realized today that I am feeling very resistant to the heavy emotional stuff we've been doing because it's getting to be 'that time of the year' [my crazy busy season at work] and I feel like I have to pull everything inside of me. Kind of marshall all of my resources and gather the troops. Y'know what I mean?"  I ball up my fists and pull in my arms close to my body to demonstrate, "So when I was coming over here I thought to myself that I  just   can't spare the energy  to open myself up like I have been. I can't do the heavy emotional lifting. I can't do it an...

According to our client account manager, 80% of expectant mothers who work with our chosen agency smoke throughout at least part if not all of their pregnancy in part as a response to stress. Seeing how our initial profile indicated we hoped to adopted from a non-smoking mother, we seem to have narrowed the potential number of expectant mothers who might select us pretty dramatically. Our first client manager told us to consider loosening up on the “medical stuff” and accepting a child from a mother who is a heavy smoker because "really, the doctors we work with say that smoking doesn't really affect the babies all that much."  Our new client manager didn't actively promote this same change but she did make sure we understood the mathematics of the situation, recommended we speak with a pediatrician, and simply take this information into account in the event we decide to change our profile. I'm curious...have other people run into this same issue? Wha...

It's too darn hot It's too darn hot I'd like to sup with my baby tonight Refill the cup with my baby tonight I'd like to sup with my baby tonight Refill the cup with my baby tonight But I ain't up to my baby tonight Cause it's too darn hot -- Cole Porter The heat finally breaks last evening. Instead of stale, yet cool air conditioning in our bedroom, we sleep with the window fan running. It's heavenly. Feels totally delicious to have cool, fresh air in the bedroom. I don't do well in the heat. Actually, that's something of an understatement. I completely wilt in the heat of the summer - to the point where I feel like I'm going to pass out. Any temperature above 75 degrees is something of a misery for me unless I sit very still in front of a fan or condemn myself to extended periods of hibernation in our air conditioned bedroom. This past weekend Chris and I work on finishing our finished basement. The final stages of turning ...

It's been a while since I wrote. I keep finding other things to do or not to do as the case may be. Either way, I appear to have gone on hiatus. I didn't really mean to do so. It just happened. Things got busy. I got lazy...or apathetic...or I don't know what. The compulsion to write anything anywhere seems to have melted away in this god-awful heat and humidity. After we had our conversation with our  new client account manager  at the adoption agency, I thought I'd be all fired up to write about it. Hmmmm...not so much. The conversation was generally positive -- more info than we'd received in months, some positive feedback about the number of expectant moms who are looking at our profile, some thoughts on how we might want to consider altering our expectations to increase the odds -- but nothing is actually all that different on the adoption front. Is positive news that doesn't really change anything actually news or is it just a series of statemen...

I'm back at my desk. After several months post-floods, I am no longer perched on a drafting chair at a counter in the kitchen. My feet can touch the floor, the visual stimulus of the kitchen isn't reaching out to me at the corner of my eye. Instead, I am back in our restored basement at my brand-new desk -- not a door balanced on filing cabinets or a cheapass particleboard desk but an honest-to-goodness steel and glass piece of furniture, my first real serious new desk ever -- with my computer and a sense that I'm someplace where I can write again. Of course, it's so freakin' hot and humid, my brains are melting but the idea is there to write. After all, I invested in the desk. I should probably do something constructive at it.

I just finished reading a fantastic young adult fantasy series by Brandon Mull entitled  Fablehaven . If you haven't read it yet - you should. Really. The series is so incredibly engaging and entertaining.*  By the fifth and final book I was desperate to see how the story ended. Read late into the night until I couldn't read anymore, but tried to keep reading anyway because the story was so compelling. Love that! Brandon Mull - what a great writer. However, as I was reading this series it set me to thinking about my own writing. Kind of this nagging annoying feeling in the back of my brain. A feeling that I intentionally ignored because I was too busy reading and enjoying to start worrying about my own neurotic stuff. But now that I'm done reading the last book in the series, suddenly that feeling and all of its attendant thoughts and worries about my own writing that I had been squashing down and ignoring have bubbled right up to the surface of my consciousness a...

Therapists are tricky little buggers. I don't intend to go to therapy last night to talk about being an artist, but somehow that's exactly what happens during my session. What??? Through a series of conversational and therapeutic twists and turns somehow I end up "claiming my artist self. Huh???  And committing to submitting a piece of my artwork to a show (any show) by the end of this year. What??? How the heck did this happen??? It's that tricky therapist of mine. Oh, she's a wily one alright!  Darn her. The thing is that I know this is probably good for me. But it's also scary. I haven't exhibited a piece of artwork in a show in more than 20 years! This is probably how I let myself get railroaded into this situation...by mentioning that in therapy. And by talking about the fact that often I don't think of myself as an artist. It's always been a kind of "making art vs. being an artist" situation for me. I most...