The Beloved Beasts.

Time to lighten things up around here! So onto one of my favorite subjects: my dogs….

These are my three well-loved dogs. Spot is the oldest and biggest, an Akita-Aussie mix. When he was a puppy, he had a more-prominent black splotch on his head, hence his old-school name. The middle one is our black-and-white, rough coat Jack Russell Terrier named Gus. He is my bestest dog buddy, really an amazing animal. When I am at home, we are never apart.

Fiona is our little girl, also a rough coat JRT. She came to us from a breeder in Ohio, on a plane, in a crate. She has perfect “conformation” (in case that means anything to you) and is completely neurotic.

For instance, her favorite thing to do in the whole world is chasing the weeds you pull from the garden–not mice, or lizards, or bugs. Weeds. I usually don’t go to breeders for dogs (I’m a pound puppy person) but, when I got Fiona, I was mourning the loss of another female JRT who had unusual markings very similar to Fiona’s, so I went looking for as near a match as I could find. Probably not the best reason to adopt a new dog, but it ended up working out pretty well. I always thought I was a “big-dog person” (had a collie growing up) until I got to know JRTs. They believe themselves to be big dogs. R. calls them “thugs in white clown suits.” He read that in a book.

I am now smitten with the breed. My car’s bumper sticker reads, “Got Jacks?”

Oh, yes. Yes, I do.

Some of my best friends are…

gay? infertile? adopting? menopausal? childfree? Well, apparently, for the purpose of getting married, none of the aforementioned are considered eligible in the states of Washington or New York. The Supreme Courts of the states of Washington and New York have just ruled against same-sex marriage by defining marriage as a relationship entered into for the purpose of “furthering” procreation. Period.

Let me quote from the Washington state ruling for you, written by Justice Barbara Madsen: “Limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples furthers procreation, essential to the survival of the human race, and furthers the well-being of children by encouraging families where children are reared in homes headed by the children’s biological parents.”

As one of my favorite syndicated columnists, Ellen Goodman, pointed out this week: the language of this ruling may attempt to exclude only gay couples from the act of “procreationist marriage” (although I know plenty of gay couples who are raising happy and healthy children as we speak), but in fact it has the technical effect of excluding all couples who are incapable or uninterested or unwilling to procreate from participating in marriage as well.

First and foremost, let me say that–as both an infertile woman and an adopting parent–I feel I am in good company with the gay, the menopausal, and the childfree person. Trust me, I am not bristling at being associated with so-called social or moral outcasts.

On the one hand, I know full well that both infertility and adoption turn you into a social outcast of sorts–witness all the asswipe comments both infertiles and adopting parents have to deal with on a regular basis, which all have the effect of highlighting difference: “If God intended you to be parents, you would be“…”Can’t you have your own children?“…”Bless you for saving her.” Those persons who have endured infertility and/or who have chosen to adopt defy what’s considered culturally normative. And, so, they’re marginalized–not in the same way or to the same extent that a gay person is marginalized, or that a childfree person is marginalized, but marginalized nonetheless.

On the other hand, what I am bristling at is the decision to expand the parameters of the exclusionary language to encompass a larger group of people, rather than just ruling that the right to marry extends to all people. Why do we continue to dig ourselves into deeper and deeper pits of injustice?

This ruling just seems so transparent to me. There are no logical arguments for why same-sex marriage should be illegal, and so we resort to a definition of marriage that effectively bars any two people who can’t or won’t have biological babies from experiencing it. So, sorry, no luck to the 70-somethings who fall in love later in life. Nope, can’t do it. Sorry, too, to the couple with the tied tubes and the vasectomy. Oh!–and to the couple who both happen to be women and who are raising biological children together? Errr…nope to you, too. We’re certainly not talking about that sort of biology.

As for adoption, Goodman writes, “the states’ other interest is in families ‘headed by the children’s biological parents.’ Why then give [marriage] licenses to the couples who are raising 1.5 million adopted children?”

Sorry, folks. But this emperor has no clothes.

Disclaimer.

Wow. My blog suddenly lit up like…dare I say it?…a bunch of fireflies after atomic mama posted her way-too-kind link to over here. Very humbling. Does this mean I don’t get to flake out anymore? Probably what that means. No assinine posts about toe jam or what’s stuck to the bottom of my refridgerator drawers or what R. might have said to me last night during dinner…um, yeah. Too late. Because this is an assinine post about what R. said to me last night during dinner.

So, R. hasn’t looked at my blog in like six months. Basically not since the day I started it. He forgot the address, he says. But I happened to mention that I quoted him in my last post, and he basically freaked. He had to know what I said. And I wouldn’t tell him. I rarely get to wield this sort of power over anyone, let alone Mr. SBird, so I made the most of it. Heh.

Here’s how the dinner conversation went:

SBird: Did you find the blog?

R.: Yeah. You’ve written a lot more than I thought you had. (note of nervous tension in voice)

SB: Um, well, I’ve got some time on my hands…I’ve had writer’s block for six months now, remember?

R: I can’t say that I see the problem.

SB: Not bloggers-block, writer’s block. *Sniff.*

R: You made us look like unfit parents.

SB: (Silence…WTF?)

R: In that post about the snakes and the scorpions. Everyone’s going to think we live in the wild west. That we’re out to kill our kid.

SBird: We do sort of live in the wild west.

R: You’ll be lucky if the social worker doesn’t find it. Or the CCAA.

SBird: *Snort.* I thought you said that people have been raising children in the Southwest for thousands of years…hanging off the sides of cliff dwellings…running with the coyotes…whatever.

R: I wrote that in a book. *Sigh.* We clearly need to move.

SBird: I don’t think we need to move. At least, not yet. I’ll just put on the blog that we plan to keep little jars of kerosene under the legs of the baby’s crib so the scorpions can’t crawl in.*
_____________
So, here, now, is my official disclaimer regarding the earlier post about the scorpion:
No children or animals will be hurt in the making of this family.

*Update: Johnny asked me to clarify about the jars of kerosene: one of the homespun desert remedies for keeping scorpions (and fire ants) out of baby’s crib–or parents’ bed–is to set each furniture leg into a glass jar and fill it part way with kerosene. Then the creepy-crawlies can’t get past the poison moat you’ve created. Yeah, um, so, that’s something that could be done. It might even be interesting to try to explain to the social worker at the post-placement visit why my newly-ambulatory daughter is playing on the floor of her bedroom with lighter fluid. Hmmmm.

Fear of Fire…

flies. That’s right. I am in fear of a bug (we always did call them lightning bugs growing up). More specifically, the bugs of the JulyDTC Yahoo Group, who opted for the moniker “Fireflies” in a group vote before I joined the board. I DID get to vote for the accompanying logo, out of a field of 20 or so options.

I voted for the only one I could find without:

(1) a red thread pictured;
(2) a weird caricature of a Chinese girl that looked awfully doll-like (there were several different variations of this);
(3) pastel colors.

I ended up voting for a logo of a firefly carrying a baby bundle like the stork, flying over the Great Wall. It was the only one that fit the above criteria. I also sort of liked a logo that had the fireflies caught inside the glass jar because it reminded me of catching lightning bugs as a kid back on the East Coast (there are no fireflies/lightning bugs in Arizona–at least, none that I’ve ever seen…yet another irony that the group name carries for me). But then I decided that the imagery of containment…of catching the bugs and keeping them pent up for my own enjoyment…was probably not the iconography I wanted to associate with my adoption. So, I chose the firefly-stork. I lost.

The winning logo was a pastel-colored image of a doll-like Chinese girl interacting with pink fireflies under the branches of a pink cherry tree. In fact, the blooming cherry tree dominates the whole logo, so I’m not really sure why the group isn’t calling itself The Cherry Blossoms or The Pink Buds or Bugs and Blossoms. Whatever. At least it cleared up the issue of whether I’m buying any merchandise.

I’ve posted before here with my reservations about the whole redthread-ladybug-chinadoll syndrome that seems to infect so much of the Chinese adoption world. I feel myself wanting to run away quickly from this whole scene. The problem is that I’m also very excited to be adopting, very excited to become a mother, and a family, after many years of not being able to do that. So, it’s hard. I’m skeptical by nature, no one would accuse me of being touchy-feely, but little pink dresses have had the recent effect of sending me over the edge into pure swoon. As they should. (And, a confession: when we were in Mexico in May, I even bought two little handmade dresses with ladybugs embroidered on them…I figured that all that cross-cultural groove would make up for the fact that I had caved into the ladybug hype.)

So, while it wasn’t without trepidation, it was with some sense of eagerness that I joined my month’s DTC group, thinking I could finally participate in this waiting a-parent thing and not just watch from the sidelines. But I just don’t think I can survive in this group’s world.

First, there was the issue of the group members who are planning to name their daughter “Chynna.” Good grief. I’m not usually one to react to name choices; I’m pretty much a live-and-let-live kind of girl. But there was a bit of a brouhaha on the board (and on this member’s blog) about the name. And, I have to admit, I think it’s a particularly racialized name choice in this context. Rightly or wrongly, it makes me think that these future parents are fetishizing a wee bit here. Or, am I overreacting? I always thought Chynna Phillips was a cool name, but she was the white daughter of white parents. Not so in this case.

Second, the religious fervor on the board has erupted. I don’t even need to characterize of what persuasion it issueth from, but I will–because I am so tired of hearing “I’m a Christian…” as a justification for thrusting their belief system onto the community. As if this is the only way that a Christian acts or can act. Or, following this out to its logical extreme, if you don’t act this way, you’re not a Christian. I mean, why can’t they just say, “I’m a Christian fundamentalist…” and then we’d all just nod and go on about our lives.

And then there was this email message:

Do not ever be sorry for asking for prayer! It is the most powerful tool we have
and remember God can and will do all things! I am a Christian and I will never
hide from that! I also know that my country USA was founded on those principles
to worship God, that is why they left England and settled here. Its is our
history. God will bless you for asking other to pray! There is no offense in
that only victory!

In His Name!

So, WTF? Her “country USA was founded on those principles”–the principles of assuming everyone prays the same way, to the same God? I don’t think so. I thought the historical principles that this country was founded on when it came to religion were tolerance and separation of church and state. Period. Not the imposition of religious values and the claim to religious “victory,” but the assurance of religious freedom.

Oh, bother. It’s all a question of missing your audience anyway. I’m just in a huff because I had to read this comment on the RQ board today:

I first and foremost want another child, but I actually do buy in to the idea that we will be potentially “saving a child” as well. Our daughter will be brought up in a Christian home, which she may not have otherwise had if she is adopted by “the next family in line.” We will have the opportunity to help save a soul.

I really do sometimes wonder how people ever made it through a homestudy.

But then I remember what R. (who has grown kids from his first marriage) says about going to Parent-Teacher Night at your kids’ schools: you realize at some point during the evening that the only thing you have in common with the other parents sitting around you is the fact that you’re all parents.

Luckily, I did not yet “introduce” myself to the Fireflies group. I was waiting to see when my LID is, to see if I was going to jump ship to the August group, in hopes that there might be more sanity there. And, there did seem to be a couple of sane, fun people in the July group: atomic mama is there, for instance.

But I don’t think I am anymore.

Home on the Range.

I grew up back East in one of those planned communities that sprung up during the 60s as social living experiments: town divided into eight villages, each village divided into four neighborhoods, each with its own shopping center, grocery store, swimming pool, high school, elementary schools, all within walking distance to every house in the neighborhood, bike paths running everywhere like veins, “communal” mailboxes so you could greet your neighbors as you picked up the day’s post, affordable housing sitting next to upscale homes, and so forth. You get the idea. American Suburbia with a 60s twist.

After spending my college years in a quintessential New England borough, I returned back to the D.C. metro area to attend graduate school. I lived “inside the Beltway” for most of my 20s. When I finished my degree and landed my first faculty position, I moved to west Michigan and lived in a town on the shores of the Big Lake famous for its Tulip Festival every May and its reputation as housing most of yuppie Chicago during the summers.

So, the idea that I now live on a 57-acre ranch in the high desert of rural Arizona comes as a bit of a shock to most people who’ve known me for any amount of time. Sometimes, it comes as a bit of a shock to me. Witness a morning last week, not unlike many a morning in the SBird household: dogs already up, variously whining, barking, greeting each other, and very ready to be let out…R. and SBird awake but still faking sleep. An eye pops open to check the level of light (not yet ready to acknowledge the clock). My eye. Instead of registering the outline of the window, I instead catch movement on the sheet in front of me. Small. Brown. Crawling. Movement. No, it’s not a roach, for those of my Eastern readers who might have simply shrugged off that little reality. Nope. It’s a scorpion. In. My. Bed.

You have basically never seen two people hop out of the sheets so fast in your life. Both R. and I have been stung by the bark scorpion (a particularly heinous, although not altogether large, variety) and are here to report that neither of us are among the 1 in 50 who react to the unleashed neurotoxins by dying. So, we killed the effing thing, right there on our percale blend, and promptly called the exterminator (who we call “the scorpion guy”) to come back out to the ranch to do his thing. Because even though I hate pesticides and the like around my living spaces, I draw the line with this particular varmint. So…hose away. I’ll deal with the chemical fallout later.

I wish I could find the photo to post that I took years ago, when we first moved in, of one of these buggers on my bathroom floor (see Found It!). I was so fascinated by the idea of a SCORPION on my tile–this was before the morning one crawled into my bathrobe and stung me five times. I no longer take pictures of scorpions. I no longer coo over them, or stop to examine them, or wonder what the folks back home will think. Now I just whack the hell out of them and feel good about doing it.

Until I locate said photo, you’ll have to make do with the following. We found this guy in our driveway one evening last summer, coming home after a trip into town (30 miles away). I actually felt sorry for him because, although he rattled and rattled to warn us away, there really wasn’t much he would have been able to do for himself, preoccupied as he was. In fact, it was the closest I’ve ever allowed myself to come to a rattler because the rabbit acted like a sheath against his fangs. He had put himself into quite a predicament, and I’m sure he was feeling very vulnerable. We watched him devour the rabbit for about an hour, and then he and his immense belly slunk off into the brush. This was probably his only meal all summer–enough to carry him through the winter. By the way, we have quite a few rattlesnakes around the property, and there are no quick-fix sprays to keep them away. We depend on a hefty walking stick, boots in the garden, rattlesnake vaccines for our dogs, and a lot of luck.