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First, I'd like to publicly thank Nitecruzr, who noticed my desperate plea for help on the Blogger support forum and helped me think of reasons why my feed wasn't working. I don't know what the final solution was, but something worked. I now have a feed from Blogger to Livejournal. Also, my new blog entries, which weren't showing up on my friends' blogrolls, are showing up again. Some of you may have noticed that "The Solar Eclipse of the Century" appeared to be my last post, and that was from way back in July. In fact, I've been posting this whole time.

Secondly I'd like to thank my friend Euphrates, who set up my RSS feed to begin with, and then when that one wasn't working, she set up another. Now they both work! My blog posts are everywhere. :)

And now I'd like to mention one of my accomplishments for the day. This morning, when I woke up, I looked like this:



However, when I go to bed tonight, I will look like this:



My husband has nice, silky, black hair. Now, I do too. (Except the nice silky part.)

I still have blue eyes, but other than that, I'm ready to go to Asia!

(There's nothing unusual about me dying my hair black. I'm a blue-eyed, mousy-haired Italian in a family of mostly dark-haired Italians (with a few notable exceptions, like my great-aunt). There have been times in my life when I wished to be more swarthy, just to fit in. I dyed my hair just before I got married, so that I'd look more Italian in all my wedding pictures. Ironically, I've hardly looked at my wedding pictures since then. The only thing in them worth looking at sits across from me at the dinner table every evening and comes to bed with me each night.)

9/11 Anniversary

It's been eight years since the terrorist attacks. Time to do my annual list of ways in which I was not involved.

*I was not in NYC at the time. I was 5 miles away, across the Hudson Bay, in Bayonne.
*I had quit my job that took me through the World Trade Center twice a day 5 months before the attacks.
*I had no reason to leave Bayonne, which was important. The only way off of Bayonne was over one of several bridges, and all the bridges were closed for 3-4 days afterward.
*My husband's school was close by - again, no bridge-crossing necessary - and he made it home without a problem.
*Not a single person I knew died. Not a one.
*We could see the plume from our neighborhood, but our apartment had no windows facing in that direction.
*I artfully avoided watching the TV footage for years. In fact, earlier this year was the first time I saw it. I watched Bowling For Columbine this past summer, and it contained the footage.
*I artfully avoided visiting Ground Zero until my friend dragged me to it the following January. She needed closure. She'd been visiting us the weekend before, and we'd all gone into the city to do touristy things with her. In the evening, I was tired, so I went home alone while she and my husband went to the very top of the Empire State Building. So I didn't have the experience of "being on top of a skyscraper mere days before 9/11" and she did.
*I no longer live in NYC. Nobody is going to attack Cape Cod. Unless they go after Otis AFB. Haha, good luck with that, man. Otis is equipped and ready.

There we go. I was reasonably nearby when it happened, but I was not personally involved. I do have some sense of loss, though. What do I miss the most? Under the WTC was a big sprawling underground mall. It had a Barnes & Noble, a Gap, and a gourmet bakery, among other stores. I'd walk all the way through it, on my way from the A train to the PATH station, and pass a privately owned deli. And sometimes, if I was really tired and thirsty, I'd stop in and get a Snapple or a lemonade. And sometimes a cookie.

I miss that deli.

Aw. Now I have tears in my eyes. In my defense, though, it was a nice little deli. I wonder if the owners survived. The whole mall was destroyed, you know, although it didn't happen immediately. They were able to get the trains out of the subway stations at both ends of the mall before the stations collapsed, thereby saving the lives of the people on the trains.

I don't know about the people waiting for the trains, whether they were evacuated in time. I don't think about it very much anymore. What happened, happened. Can't change it now.

Adventures in China prep

We are making progress on the Almighty To-Do list. Our recent accomplishments include the following:

*We set up the crib. (I think I already mentioned that.)

*We made arrangements with the petsitter and the builder.

*We made housesitting plans with my parents. (I still have to review the instructions and write new ones where necessary.)

*We now have a ride to the airport (5AM limo service!) and home from the airport (Thanks, T&D! You're saving us a harrowing late-night drive home after flying with a baby all day.)

*I'm completely done at work for the rest of the month! I don't have to worry about work until October. The last two days were pretty chaotic, and I wasn't exactly Ms. Attention Span for much of it, but it's done.

*We have flight reservations and hotel reservations. We also signed up for an abridged version of the tour of Beijing. The standard tour is 4 days long. Ours will be 1.5 days. Trust me, it's better that way.

*We have gifts to give - Cape Cod baseball caps for the gents and mini-totes with bottles of nail polish in them for the ladies. We have red wrapping paper.

*We have Skype. I had some errors while downloading it, but when I tested it, it seemed to work.

*We have good news from this friend and this friend - they have made it to China! Only a few more days till they get their kiddoes!

*We have super-good news from this friend. Ready for it? Actually, go look at her blog and find out for yourselves. *grin*

(The bits of news weren't on our To-Do list, but I was excited for them all, so I had to share.)

My husband's first day of school is tomorrow. I'll have the house and the To-Do List all to myself until he gets home. I hope it'll be another productive day. All these To-Do List filled days are getting tiresome, however. I wish we were leaving to get AwesomeCloud right now. Although, if that wish were granted, I'd have to add the caveat that I also wish we were finished packing!

Pre-China dreams

I've been having dreams... dreams with themes. In some, my husband and I are finding ourselves in bizarre situations and we have to pretend they are normal.

There are also quite a few male authority figures on the periphery. I don't interact with them very much, but they are there. This may only be because I've been reading a lot of Scienceblogs lately. I like to see what all the latest research results are. (Some of the Sciencebloggers are female; in fact some of my favorites are women. But for some reason, I don't dream about them as much.)

We set up the crib with the help of Brother-in-Law and family. It's in our bedroom. I suppose the plan is to leave the crib in our bedroom but still make up AwesomeCloud's bedroom just for him. We'll get a toddler bed to put in here, and when he's good and ready to sleep alone and in a toddler bed, he'll do so. Meanwhile, he'll have time to accept this room as his personal space, full of toys and books and colorful paintings all for him.

It's not much of a plan just yet, but I can't make a fully-formed plan until we've had some time to get to know him and figure him out.

Meanwhile, we've lined the crib mattress with bits of bubble wrap to deter Trixie from peeing on it. She hasn't gone inside yet, but if she does, she may try to claim it. And if she tries to claim it, she'll try to mark it.

She's sitting on my lap right now. Yes, sweetie furry thing! I'm typing about you!!

So... 8 days before we leave for China. I should make some phone calls, but first I'm trying to get my work done. And then I would like to go shopping. I've thought of a long list of odds and ends that we need to get before we leave.

10 days

Our schedule changed slightly. Now we're leaving on Sept 16.

Today is Sept 6. 10 days!!! Eeeeep!

I was so busy entertaining family, attending the wedding (which was really nice, BTW), and working on my To-Do List that I completely forgot to count the days till we leave.

And now I'm seriously sick to my stomach and I don't know if it's nerves or a flu bug or what. I barely ate two bites of anything last night at the reception, except the clam chowder, which was Cape Cod delicious.

There are many reasons why living on the Cape full-time is wonderful. The ghost-town winters are one of them. The chowder is definitely another. The environmental conservation opportunities and the huge wealth of ecological information to pass on to my son is a third. When each phase of global warming occurs, we'll see it here first. The rest of the country can sit in their air-conditioned inland houses and wonder what the fuss is about. I will definitely need to convey to my son that the Cape is special, and by living on the Cape, our family can also be special.

But I digress.

So. In ten days we head to the airport, and 17 hours later we meet our guide in Beijing. We get a day of rest - Tienanmen Square is only a few blocks from our hotel, so we can walk over and see it in a relaxed fashion anytime we like.

Then, hopefully after adjusting a little bit to the jet lag, we get a 1 1/2 day organized tour, just the two of us, and then it's off to Wuxi, where our child awaits.

I still have some pretty important things left to do before we go...

CA: 9/29, Departure date: 9/15

We got a consulate appointment. This trip to China is FOR REAL! For real, yo.

We are really going. We are really getting our child there, and really bringing him back, honest to God, I swear on my mother's... um... well, I'll soon be able to get my mother to vouch for me. I haven't told any family members yet; they're all headed this way and I'm at work right now so I shouldn't be getting up and looking for cell phone numbers.

My grandmother! She's home! I'll call her.

So, no plans are final so far except the consulate appointment. Husband'o'mine is glad that he'll have the opportunity to be in school for the first few days of classes. Students show up on Sept 10th. Right now he's trying to decide how many days he'll need to settle them in before handing them over to the sub.

His boss (the science department head) is subbing for him. Pretty cool! Husband teaches chemistry, and boss can teach chemistry too, although he normally teaches biology. It is much easier to get a substitute for biology than chemistry.

My husband blushes whenever I mention that he's the Smart Teacher, but it's true! See?

Now it looks like we're leaving on the 15th. Sounds good to me.

We still don't have a Gotcha Day. I'm not sure if the agent provides that. Probably. The travel agent seems to be pretty confident he can start making plans before he learns our Gotcha Day.

It seems we'll be alone on this trip. The travel agent remarked that there were no other families from our adoption agency traveling at the same time. The families we'd thought we would be with, waaaay back when, will be a week ahead of us! Just a week! Sorry, Misty, I guess our caramel mochathingie date at Starbucks will have to be the two of us drinking separately.

I'll toast you, though.

Too bad. The mommies I've been interacting with seem really cool, and I'd love to meet/travel with you all. I'll see one or two of you on the Cape.

We could be....!

This is what I know so far: our possible consulate appointment dates are Tuesday, 9/22, Wednesday, 9/23, Tuesday, 9/29, and Wednesday, 9/30.

It was kinda funny. This morning I wrote an email to the agency - an epic email, complete with whingeing, begging, bargaining, reasoning... the works. Wordy Mom was being wordy. Then, a few minutes later, I got a response. It was an awfully quick response, barely long enough for my agent to read the whole thing. I was a little nervous - there was no way she could have answered aaaalllll my questions in that short time.

I opened it. It was a one-liner:

"Your TA just arrived. Call me."

EEEEK!

I called her. It turned out that I didn't have an actual appointment, just the promise of one, and I needed to pick a day. "Which day?" she asked me

"Okay... um... any day is good! As long as it's in September, I'm happy with whatever day!"

"Call me back this evening when I'm in the office and you've had time to choose a day."

"Great!"

I spoke to Husband'o'mine, and he was in agreement - any day at all was good. Oh, but it would be nice if he could attend school on the 10th and 11th, just to set his students up for the two weeks he'd be gone. But if we had to leave before the school year started, that was doable. Somehow.

I called her back at around 4:30. "Hi!" I said.

"Did you pick a day?" she asked.

"Well, my husband thought it would be good to leave on the 12th, so that he could attend the first two days of school."

This was apparently not the answer she was looking for. Incorrectly formatted, perhaps.

"He doesn't have to," I assured the agent. "Any day is good."

"The consulate appointment has to be on a Tuesday or Wednesday." Right. I knew that. The consulate appointment is at the end of the trip, but it's the starting point around which the rest of the trip is built. I was thinking of departure date, but China doesn't care when we get there.

"The 22nd and 23rd are a Tuesday and Wednesday!" I observed. "The 29th and 30th are also."

"Choose three possible days and I'll try to make the appointment," she said.

"That's four. Four is close to three," I pointed out.

The thing is, the day-to-day scheduling doesn't matter one bit to us. The only parts that matter are the few days before we leave and the few days after we get back. Those are the days when our real life intersects with our Chinese adventure. Once we're in China, it'll all be a wonderland of exotic locales and Mandarin-speaking masses and arriving at appointments in offices we've never been to before and can't find by ourselves.

Oh yeah, and getting to know our new son. Our firstborn. Our AwesomeCloud. As priorities go, everything else is icing and sprinkles.

It's kind of weird to be staring at a calendar and shouting out numbers from it, because none of the squares are distinctive in any way. The only significant part of the calendar is whether or not we have to flip ahead two pages. If we can get GuiGui in September, then the answer to any other question we're asked is, "Yes! Yes! Yes!"

Throw a dart at the calendar! That's fine with me! As long as it hits September, I'll be flying high. Just lay it all out for me and then give me the directions.

My parents are coming on Friday. Perfect timing. I can walk them around the house and give them copious house-sitting instructions. I'll be wordy, as usual, I'm sure. They will probably demand that I leave notes. However, I'd like to point out that my long-windedness is a learned trait. :)

Wait for it....!

Exciting update, coming soon.

I don't actually know what the news is yet, but there may be some. So just... um... hang in there with me.

Practicing on the cat

I've been reading books: "Attachment in Adoption" which I borrowed from my local agent, and found it a very difficult read¹ so I returned it after reading the first few chapters... and "Parenting the Internationally Adopted Child" which is more generalized and is excellent in many ways.

In fact it was recommended as critical reading by several moms on the mailing list I belong to. I will second that - yep, critical reading.

"Parenting" puts forth a parenting style that is starkly different from any parenting style popular in the general community. After a while, you can switch to something more normal and healthy, but for the first several months to a year, your child is grieving and traumatized, and if he's not being obvious about it, you have to figure it out and help him heal in spite of himself.

Oddly, instead of terrified by this idea, I'm actually growing more confident. I can do this! I'm reasonably empathetic. I can feel AwesomeCloud's pain, even if he's not advertising it to the world. Even if he internalizes it and goes through the motions of coping, I'll be on top of things and ready to guide him, willingly or unwillingly, to a healthier state of mind.

In fact I've already started noticing some of the poor coping behaviors in my cats. Trixie is a Dizzy Performer type. (All the types have nicknames.) When she's nervous, which is most of the time, she'll circle around, jump on things, and try to get the attention of any people who are present. She's attached to me, but she'll perform for anybody. When she does that... well, she's a cat, so the solution may be different. When she's circling around nervously, I just let her. I know she's safe. At this point, she'll never change, and I don't have to worry that the wrong approach now might turn her into a maladjusted teenager later.

Melody is a hider. Her Fight-or-Flight reflex strongly favors flight. But this morning, she decided to be a Stunned Ragdoll, just sitting there in terror as the builder noisily bumped around outside.

The routine is supposed to be: feed the cats before the builders show up, and then herd them into the bedroom and close the door. This morning, I was late. The builders showed up, THEN I fed them, and Mel was too frozen in place to eat her breakfast. So Trixie ate it for her. Then Trixie darted into the bedroom, like she should, and I closed the door behind her.

I looked at Mel and thought, You stupid cat. Now you've missed breakfast AND you're stuck out in the open.

But "Parenting the Internationally Adopted Child" says that the frightened child forgets the routine and falls back on old, unproductive survival mechanisms. When he does, you shouldn't blame him for being bad. You shouldn't punish him or let him suffer the consequences for choosing unwisely. When he freezes up and fails to make the right decision, you make it for him. Over and over and over and over for months and maybe even years.

So I scooped up that cat and brought her into the bedroom. Then I poured some fresh crunchy cat food and put it in the room with her. She immediately felt safer; and, feeling safer, she ate.

I win!

I'm going to be all right at this. Someday. When I get the baby finally.




¹ It was difficult in that it covered very serious and disturbing attachment issues that are probably far beyond what AwesomeCloud is likely to experience. I know how to read, thank you very much! If I'm wrong about AwesomeCloud, I can always get the book again.

I don't think "House flooding crisis" is a stage of grief

So! What have I done all day today? Mope? Nope. Eat too much ice cream? A little, but that wasn't the one I was thinking of. Did I move on to the 'bargaining' stage or the 'sadness' stage? Uh... not really.

I bailed the house out.

Our first leak was in the basement, behind the washing machine. It destroyed several boxes of books before we found it. After intensive mopping and some resourceful placement of buckets and barriers, we got it somewhat under control. Then it only needed to be mopped every half-hour.

This leak occurred because we have no gutters along the back of our house. We will soon... maybe next week... but, alas, our tropical storm hit too soon. The water drips right off the rubber roof into the ground, and then it keeps going until it enters the foundation. We really need to seal up that foundation, but we also need gutters.

Instead of gutters, we put a row of plastic storage bins along the rear of the house. They needed to be emptied every hour or so, or else they would overflow. They helped turn the basement gush into a mere trickle.

Upstairs, the roof held firm, but the flashing leaked. There was also dampness around the chimney. The builder came over and took note of the weak spots. We patched them up with some sticky tar tape, and he'll have to wait for better weather to repair them.

Now the rain has taken a break, and supposedly it will stop for good late this evening. So, yeah, I haven't been dwelling too much on adoption today.

Except...

...it occurs to me that this might have been a very different experience with the kiddo around. But not too bad, nonetheless. We managed to keep it relatively low-stress, considering what was going on. AwesomeCloud might have fretted about the house leaking, and about Mama and Baba rushing around and being busy and frantic. But he also might have learned a little bit of resourcefulness and problem-solving under pressure.

I have to go stoke the fire now. We're trying to dry out the house. I think it's working a little.

Today is another day of the multi-day mourning of Ted Kennedy, isn't it? I am saddened at his passing. He worked hard at his job. I didn't vote for him during the last election, but I acknowledge the huge strides he's made for civil rights and the welfare of the working class. And I can't help being sad to think of him dying of cancer, in much the same way my mother-in-law died of cancer. She was a teacher, and thus a government employee, and like Senator Kennedy, she had the very best in health care. And it's still a very difficult way to go, cancer. Imagine what it would be like to die of cancer without any health insurance. For my MiL, it would still have been painful, but 5 years earlier. And we'd have the knowledge hanging over our heads that chemo had a chance of saving her, maybe, if only we could afford to give it a try. In fact, it almost worked. She got some very expensive, experimental treatment, all paid for by her superb Teachers' Union health care plan, and it came within a handful of cancer cells of sending her into remission.

I remember that, how hard it was, and I grieve for the Kennedy clan who had to go through it too. I also grieve for the thousands of families who have to skip right to the died-of-cancer part because they had no other option.

Okay, really going to tend that fire now.

The 5 stages of grief

I'm grieving. This is normal. Anger is one of the stages of grief. I got denial covered, too.

I'm going through them quickly because I'm not grieving my baby; I'm only grieving two months away from my baby. Getting the extra two months of waiting time was unexpected, and, due to lack of information (my agent still hasn't called me), it dawned on me gradually. I'm still not 100% certain I won't get a last-minute call to hurry up and pack, because I'm leaving in a week! That would be cool.
I'm only 96% certain that won't happen.

Now it's raining hard. My new roof is being tested for leaks. Isn't that just awesome???

Hey, is sarcasm a stage of grief? Or is that just my normal state of being?

Guess I'd better go upstairs and check. *sigh* I want something good to happen. Or at least something bad to not happen.

I want a Boston cream pie to magically appear before me. (Because having a huge dish of watermelon and yogurt for supper wasn't enough stress-eating for me!)

I feel betrayed

I feel betrayed. I feel like I've gone above and beyond reasonable human flexibility in order to have a smooth adoption process, and that I deserve better than a last-minute two-month delay for no bloody reason.

I can't understand why my agent doesn't call me, out of common courtesy, to have a conversation about this setback. I left her a message yesterday. An apology would be nice, at least, or something.

My other agent, who has not been involved in this stage of the process, has been very distant, too.

Just a little customer service; that's all I ask. This silence sucks. (Obviously not as much as being left out of the September group sucks, but it's like kicking me when I'm down. Hmm, lousy metaphor. It's just neglect, not actual abuse.)

Edit: I should probably be less antagonistic. I'm waffling on that issue. I'll be furious for a couple of hours, then I'll feel bad about the intensity of my emotion (and the wording of this post - I've rewritten it 3 times already) and then I'll be angry again.

When it's just my husband and me, with no other input, that's the cycle we take.