This Old Blog

I have not posted a thing in months. I have not even read a blog in about three months. For a long time I did not miss blogging, but recently I have started to think about it again.

I have spent a lot of time on facebook recently catching up with students from the past. It has been fun, but it is my teacher face. Here I can be as flawed and unreasonable as I like, rant, rave, and be the entire me. Here I can interact with people I don’t know and learn so much more than people I already know can teach me.

It is odd, I can hardly navigate Word Press. I have not been gone a year and I feel very much like I am starting all over again. Maybe I should start a whole new blog? But, I’m still the same person who wrote all that other stuff, so the same blog will do.

I have a lot of work to do to fix up this blog. Links are out of date, I’ve read SO many books, and my weight loss info? HA! GIve me some time to get this old blog spruced up and then come back and see it. I hope it will be worth the click.

True to Holiday Form

I’ve been bouncing ideas around in my head for that annual form letter to send ’round to the more distant family and friends. You know the one, where you try to sum up the whole year in a single clever page? Usually goes something like this.

Hey Folks!, We are all Hallmark happy and fuzzy here.  Everything is a Kodak moment and we are all thinner, happier and better employed than ever before.

I don’t write a holiday letter every year.  But, I do actually enjoy getting them.  It is so nice to hear how well those people you knew (better, once) are doing now.  I especially like the ones with lots of photos of the kids.  Christmas cards are nice, they are pretty, you can hang them up so you can play “Look how many people care enough about ME to send a card.” with visiting neighbors.  But I prefer the letters, even a form letter seems pretty intimate compared to the flourish of a signature you only see once a year.  

Currently, the only person we get a card from that contains more than a single handwritten line (All the best in the New Year!) and a signature is from the woman we bought our house from more than 10 years ago.  She normally fills that whole left side of the card with a real hand written note.  She writes about the weather in Florida, what she noticed about our house the last time she came North to visit friends, just random, unimportant stuff.  But strangely I treasure those cards.  So, much effort just to say “Hi” to someone she hardly knows.  I guess that is I why I feel like a form letter is the least I should produce. Not to mention that maybe somebody else might be sappy enough to enjoy it.

I’m a bit more motivated to write it this year because I have real news to share.  But it is bad news.  Do I break the “Happy Hallmark” tradition and just put it all out there?  ”Adoptions in Vietnam have closed.  We are S.O.L and feeling too beat up by the process to continue on to other options.”  Or do I continue the illusion that tradition demands?  Those who know us well, know the situation.  Should I just send a cheery note saying “We are GREAT!  We are doing just GREAT!  No need to worry about us.”  and ease the minds of those who care?  But, that leaves the vague masses uninformed, and leaves me answering the “Are you still going to adopt? and Why not?” questions for a long time to come.  That may not seem like a bad option until you consider that emotionally those questions sound like “Hey, how’s that dead baby doin’?” to me.  

Realistically, I just need to pretend that all is hunky-dory.  That kind of news is just not meant for a Holiday Greeting.  But it sure would be nice just to unload that baggage because I am so tired of lugging it around.

 

What I am thankful for.

“When you are troubled and cannot sleep, just count your blessings instead of sheep.”

As I head into the holiday season, I am once again in the battle to remain positive. So in the spirit of Thanksgiving I am listing my blessings in no particular order.

• My husband, who is beyond compare, who has been by my side through thick and thin, who does dishes, laundry, cooks and knows that when I ask for “rocks for my birthday” I mean landscaping rock and NOT diamonds.
• My son, who healed my heart, makes me laugh and smile daily, and makes me want to be a better person each day.
• A home, my cozy house and garden that has been a nest for my happy family.
• A job that I love to do and an employer who has been tolerant of my families needs.
• An education paid for by grants not loans.
• Parents who taught me the value of hard work, and self-reliance.
• The opportunity to travel and see first hand how others in the world live.  
• The ability to cope with the things that are not blessings.

I know that all these things are cliché and unremarkable.  They are the same blessings that many of us have in common.  As I look over this list, however, the subtraction of anyone of these things would make my life very different, and in most cases much more difficult.  And so, for these things I am thankful.

Tag, I’m it! The Book Meme: Page 56, Nearest Book

Thanks to Sandwiched I have a post for today.
The rules for this meme thing are :

• Grab the nearest book.
• Open it to page 56.
• Find the fifth sentence.
• Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
• Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

My book is “Eyewitness Travel: Vietnam & Angkor Wat”

Was this the closest, no.  The closest three books belonged to my son and did not have a page 56.  I’m not sure if non-fiction counts, but there is nothing that says that it shouldn’t be.  So here we go.

“Today, Dong Khoi’s vibrance is unparalleled in the city, and it does justice to the city’s old nickname “Paris of the Orient.”

Dong Khoi is a street in Ho Chi Minh City, District One, close to the US and French Embassies. I agree with the description and hope I get to see this place again someday.

This book is put out by DK (Dorling Kindersley) who do beautiful travel guides.  My favorite feature is the bird’s eye view maps of areas suitable for walking.  My first DK travel book was for London, now I’m hooked.  They are the ones I always look for.  The Lonely Planet Guides are also excellent. Like having an knowledgeable resident in your pocket who understands that you are a westerner.  

I’m now supposed to ask 3 bloggers that I know of to do the same:

• airingdirtylaundry
  
• A Table for 4
• Artfulparent

Jump in if you want to, and leave a link with your comment. Enjoy!

Candy Clay Wrap Up

O.K so this is only about 2 months late.  But, I did want to do a brief report about my fabulous candy clay idea for my son’s candy theme birthday party.  It was not all I dreamed, but who could dream this?

I switched to colored melting disks made by Wilton.  (dumb.)  I thought it would be cool to have a lot of colors for the kids to play with especially since I was unsure about the ability of the food color markers to work on the surface of the oily candy.  So, in order to get a lot of colors, we had a LOT of candy clay.  I’m talkin’ pounds folks!

The only new and useful thing I have to tell you is this: when the instructions say to melt gently, them mean “uber” gently.  This stuff separated so badly that I was certain I would need to pitch it.  I spent a lot of time kneading the candy with my silpat mat to get it to come back together again, and was able to save most of it.

So the big Saturday arrives and I am well stocked with candy clay.  The day looks iffy weather-wise.  It has rained for days and there is only a chance that it will clear up.  I have mixed feelings about this.  On one hand, this means the clay project will take place in the dining room where I have nearly white carpeting.  On the other hand, I hate the carpet and have been neglecting it for years in the hopes that it will get so bad we will have no choice but to replace it.  This could be my big chance.

Party time, the rain stops.  The kids, who all have been cooped up for days due to rain and the start of school, go outside and play without giving the candy clay a second glance. (Who can blame them.)  The are all polite kids so they did give it a brief go.  I think only one kid actually completed some sort of sculpture, that he forgot to take home with him.  I was a little disappointed, but the rest of the party went really well, so who can complain.

The party gods were certainly on my side though.  That evening S started to complain of a sore throat.  Early Monday he was diagnosed with strep throat.  So my little project that would’ve meant lots of germ-my hands playing in moist candy to be eaten later would’ve been the perfect way to infect a group of children, except the great outdoors were a greater temptation. Huzzah!  No one who was at the party got sick.  How great is that!  (But I’m still stuck with this awful carpet.)

Another Month

Another month has gone by and where am I?  Un-tethered, adrift.  Mostly un-motivated.  I would say that I’m sort of sleep walking through my days, but that would mean I’d feel better rested, right?

Readjusting to work has been hard and slow.  It has a been a busy and tumultuous time there;  a challenge without the additional stress of our adoption woes.  I am dealing with it all pretty well right now, but I’ve noticed that I get flustered and stressed more easily.  And that I’m likely not to care when I should.  I’m normally pretty invested in my work, but not now.  And I just feel tired.

On top of it all I’m starting to have guilt over my sadness.  I have so much for which to be thankful.  What right do I have to be sad when there is so much real suffering in the world.  And still, I feel like I’m being cheated out of something I deserve.  I feel like I’m a really good parent.  Why is it I have to go without children I really want when there are people who have kids they don’t want, abort children they don’t want, or just ignore or abuse the children they have?  

I don’t have to go without though.  I have just lost the energy for the fight.  It is just so ironic to me that I have to fight so hard for what others come by accidentally. I can’t help but think that we are being cruel to our daughters by giving them baby dolls from the moment they are physically able to hold them.  Sure our daughters dream about being princesses and pop-stars and all sorts of impossible (or at least highly unlikely) things.  But after a time, they grow to see the impossibility of these things on their own.  And then, about the time they have cast off their tiaras, we reinforce the dream of motherhood by explaining to them that they are each capable of a greater miracle.  But we never once tell them that there is the possibility that becoming pregnant may be just as impossible as becoming a princess.  Yes, it would be hard to hear, hard for us to say, but shouldn’t they know?  

When I was working through IVF I had friend who was going through a difficult pregnancy.  Her life was in jeopardy as well as the child’s.  As I listened to another friend describe what was happening I suddenly realized that even if I became pregnant via IVF I was still not “home free”.  There was still the possibility that I or the child, or both might have complications or even die.  The reality hit me hard and suddenly.  I had to leave the room to compose myself.  How I wish that some one had told me or even just gave me something to read so that I could ease into that idea. Or just always have known in the same way that we are taught to tell our children about adoption from the time they are very young, so they just always knew.