The effect of endless rain on the adoption process

The weather has been beautiful for the past several days. Absolutely lovely (plus some oppressive humidity, but let's not look a gift horse in the mouth). I've been out doing yardwork. Yesterday, Husband'o'mine and I drove up to Chatham to see KJ, writer of the blog raisingdevils.com, and we stopped at several yard sales on the way. A stunningly beautiful day.

On our way home, we stopped at the supermarket and saw... mums.

Chrysanthemums.

After only a week of summer weather.

My sense of seasonal time is all messed up right now. I'm not the only one, although I may be particularly susceptible to it. You remember how, sometimes, when you were a kid, you'd have to stop and think about whether it was spring or fall? Whether you could look forward to Christmas or the end of school? Remember those brief bursts of seasonal confusion? I still have them. I even have to stop and wonder whether it's morning or evening sometimes. I'm just not so good at keeping a running tally of time in my head.

Which is good, because clock-watching stresses me out. I find it unnecessary to be under that much stress.

The mums make me wonder, a little bit, whether getting seasonal confusion has affected my ability to cope with waiting. Whether, perhaps, it has helped. We've been stuck in an eternal spring. We were disappointed to learn that we wouldn't be traveling to China in June - oops, that estimate was too early. The wait times for each step turned out to be longer than our agent first anticipated. Now we're hoping and praying for a travel date in September.

(KJ assured me it wasn't too late to get a September travel date. I ride my wave of hope a little further. Of course, KJ's reassurances do not actually affect our travel date - that's wholly up to China - but they affect my sense of hope.)

September... it's coming up fast...

But my sense of seasonal time is still in June.

If it weren't, maybe I'd be waiting a lot less gracefully. If my brain were in August, maybe I'd be unable to avoid a full-blown panic.

I still hope to travel in September. If we get pushed back to November, then the weather will get cold again, and my illusion of being stuck in June will shatter. I can't articulate how much that would break my heart, and I'm sure people will discourage me from talking about it anyhow, because they won't want to know. My delay wouldn't quite be a true misfortune. It would just be another month or two lost. And that's not such a big loss, except to me, my husband, and my son.