Poll Results and more…

Sorry, again, for being a wayward poster.

The poll on the Halloween costume for The Bee (between the blue-winged butterfly and the bumblebee) ran neck-in-neck. I got responses in the comments and also by email. The end result was 18 for the butterfly and 16 for the bee…still not absolutely sure what we’ll end up doing, although there was a suggestion that the butterfly looks like a dark fairy…a little spooky and mysterious…and so we might be persuaded to use a little glitter make-up on her face and go with that angle. I’ve been finishing reading all the Harry Potters, so the magical creature option naturally seems appropriate.

Our LOI was translated and went out to China last Tuesday, the 16th, for Zee (new nickname…Snow just wasn’t cutting it for me…her middle name will start with a “Z” [her Chinese name] and that’s what we’ve been referring to her as around here). So, now, we’re waiting on the pre-approval from the CCAA–hopefully by Christmas–although collecting our dossier documents in the meantime.

Our six-month post-placement meeting with our social worker is scheduled for next Tuesday, the 30th, at which point we’ll also start the new homestudy.

I’ve been having some really wonderful meetings with the Early Intervention people, who are going to work with The Bee on her running and jumping and stair-climbing, and also on her speech. On the other hand, I almost came to fisticuffs with our private speech therapist on Friday, whom I think it’s fair to say is clueless in working with kids of The Bee’s age. If she drags my resistant daughter onto her lap one more time, or asks me again for the seventeenth time now how often The Bee responds to my commands, I’m going to scream. I reluctantly made another appointment with her for tomorrow, but R. is going instead of me in order to make the final decision about whether to continue or not (my decision is basically made). She is a nightmare of curt arrogance and defensiveness, and if you don’t trust the people you’re seeking care from, it’s not going to work in any case.

Finally, tomorrow–the 23rd–marks SIX MONTHS since we met The Bee. Amazing. And, to celebrate, here’s a quick picture from yesterday…The Bee’s Sunday Best:

Friends.

When I was younger, I had the certain impression that close friendships looked a particular way, followed a particular (nearly predictable) pattern, were cast in a similar mold…and that the presence of these signposts in a friendship meant that it was true and good and close and significant. So, for instance, a good friend was one whose house was always open to you…you could simply stop by on your way home from the supermarket for a cup of coffee…or a glass of wine…and a chat. You checked in by phone daily…first thing in the morning perhaps, just to see how the day was shaping up for the other. And you grabbed the phone immediately if there was a personal crisis at hand, if only to offer up into the receiver that wail of anguish that you knew would send the friend running at once to your side for a full debriefing and requisite hand-holding. That was pretty much my vision of close friendship. Perhaps it still is.

Problem is, none of my friendships resemble that vision. Not one.

I did once have a friend who worked in the same English department, whose house was always open to me. It was located half-way between the college where we taught and my own house, and I often stopped by for a glass of wine on my way home. I even knew where she kept the wine glasses: lovely, green depression-glass goblets, which sat on the top shelf of her china cabinet in the dining room when not in use. We would sit at her kitchen table surrounded by her mustard-colored appliances and three of her five kids (the two oldest stayed with Dad) and go over our days. It was noisy and disjointed and bitchy and wonderful. But it wasn’t usual, and, in this instance, the friendship didn’t survive my move to another state and her new boyfriend.

The trouble with my youthful vision of friendship is that it insists on a few factors that very rarely enter into the equation for me anymore: geographical proximity, for instance, and phone time. Not a single one of my good friends from earlier times in my life lives anywhere near me–not even in the same state, or in the same region of the country–and, in at least one case, not even in the same country–and I don’t talk on the phone to any of them, except on the rare–like once a year–occasion. My friendships are conducted online and by post. And they all require the ability to pick up where we left off–in other words, on a certain amount of trust, on a certain amount of felt continuity, either because we’re poor correspondents, or–in the case of friends I’ve come to know online–because in most cases we’ve never actually met.

This year has been one, however, in which I’ve had the opportunity to re-connect with many of my closest friends…when I was home at my parents’ house this summer (for the first time in almost a decade), I spent time with my two good friends from graduate school, and with my oldest friend of all, whom I met in the seventh grade. And next month, R. and I are taking The Bee to Key West, to see my college roommate, whom I last saw in 1995. And last weekend, Sophie, my best friend from college, came to visit the ranch…all the way from India, where she lives (and was born).

I thought I’d share some photos of Sophie and myself through the ages, so to speak. I last saw her in 1998, when I visited India for two months but hadn’t really had exclusive time to talk with her since 1988, when I graduated from college, and we backpacked across Scotland and England together.

SBird and Sophie here, circa May 1988:

There was a tradition at our college, where you handed off your graduation robe to another, younger, student…Sophie was a year younger than I was, so here I am, just after picking up my diploma, handing the thing off to her…I have no idea where it is now, but it would be nice to think someone’s still using it and passing it along:

Here we are in July of 1988, eating a picnic of honey and bread on the island of Iona, off the coast of Scotland:

Here I am in India, in December 1998…Sophie took this picture, but we have very few of ourselves together from that visit…

and you can see how poor the one we do have turned out:

And here is Sophie up on the mountain last weekend:

What age has taught me about friendships is not to plan them too closely…not to depend on the idea that you know what they’re supposed to look like…and to assume that what unfolds will surprise you. Looking at these photos of Sophie and I, I realize that our friendship has occurred in glumps of time…moments where we touch base, catch up, and then move on again. And that certainly is one version of friendship, even if it doesn’t fit my earlier program. Moreover, some of my most regular friendships these days occur exclusively online…and the internets–blogs, email, newgroups–didn’t even exist when I was certain I knew what friendships looked like at the age of 20-something.

This year was marked by motherhood for me, of course, but it also has turned into a year of friends–several of whom stop by regularly for a chat, if only virtually.

The Butterfly or The Bee?

We need your help with a decision…despite the fact that The Bee has no clue what Halloween is, we’re in the throes of choosing her costume. Here are the running favorites…please tell me what your preference is.

I do want to make one caveat: EVEN THOUGH my daughter’s nickname is The Bee, and her referral pic said “I am a Bee,” etc., etc., try to exclude that as the reason behind your choice. Trust me, it’s on my mind enough as it is (I should dress her as a bee because that’s what’s got meaning behind it, etc.). I’m just looking for a purely aesthetic opinion.

Oh, and if you’re wondering whether I asked The Bee what HER preference was…yes, I did. She signed “all done” to BOTH costumes. I doubt she was pleased with antennae in either case.

The Bee costume:

The Butterfly costume:

Antenna Head:

Fireworm.

This morning, The Bee saw her very first real fire in the fireplace. R. built one when he got up, so that when The Bee and I struggled wearily out of the bedroom roused ourselves reluctantly got up and walked outside to the main building, the air smelled like shaggy-bark juniper. Which is very, very good. Seriously. They should bottle the stuff.

So I walked her over to the fireplace and got down to her level to explain that the fire was very hot (she signed this) and could hurt (she likewise signed this) her if she got too close. You should have seen her face when she first saw it. She just stopped cold in her tracks and stared and pointed. Then she signed “orange.” Then she signed “worm.” Um…huh?

Maybe I’ve been reading too much Harry Potter until too far into the wee hours of the morning, but “worm” is not the first thought…nor even the first metaphor…that springs to mind when I consider flames licking wood. But perhaps it should be. Out of the mouths of babes and all that.

In other news, I have been meaning to post about this past weekend because my best friend from college visited us from India, and we had some good walks down memory lane…I have been trying to scan some old photos to post, so that you can tag along on said walks. Nothing doing so far for reasons that involve…

our hellish week of appointments for The Bee…it is really saying something to realize we have driven into town, or will drive into town, every single day this week…yesterday twice. Because I rarely go to town more than once total in a single week. But The Bee had separate speech therapy appointments Monday and Tuesday; the dentist today; the pediatrician tomorrow; and then I have acupuncture on Friday. So, I have a lot to write about but not a lot of time to write. To whit, I will have to do better.

*Age, not months since LID…

Happy 41 to me*…

We’re spending the day in the Valley of Death, at the otolaryngologist’s, for The Bee’s follow-up appointment for the ear-tube surgery. I’m not sure if she’ll have another full hearing test or not, or whether he’ll just look in and see if the tubes are still open and in place. I haven’t noticed any difference in The Bee’s reactions to spoken words…the other day, I said the word “shower,” and she signed “flower.” Hard to know what that means. Perhaps she’s a postmodernist.

Oh, and yesterday’s post was spot on. Last night the temperature sunk to 40 degrees. It was darn right cold in them these parts.

‘Tis the Season

In the high desert, the seasons change in less conventional ways. There are no crisp days and changing leaves here (we’re too low for the gilding of the aspens). Our “trees” are scrub oaks, and the leaves of scrub oaks actually turn a dingey yellow and drop to the ground in March every year. The first year I lived here, I thought all my trees were dying one spring. Not so. They just have their seasonal ministrations inverted.

The very first sign of Fall, usually in mid-to-late August, is a cool morning. Not a cool day. Not a cool evening. Just a morning where, when you walk outside for the first time, you aren’t hit by a warm wave of sauna-like conditions. You can actually breathe deeply and glide into it easily. The days are still in the upper 90s. But the morning offers just the slightest suggestion of what is coming. By September, you get a few cool evenings thrown into the mix, too. Still blazing hot during the day, but the air is able to shed the scorch after sundown.

And–just as I often refer to summer here as “snake season”–I often refer to early Fall as “skunk season.” The road to town has been lousy with skunk hides and lingering skunk smell (what The Bee calls “Peeeuwwweeeeee!”) all week. I don’t know why they suddenly appear in early September, but all my epic late-night dog baths of V8 and vinegar have taken place in early September. In fact, the reason I wasn’t up early watching the news on the morning of 9-11 was because I was sleeping off a particularly late dog-and-vinegar bath, post-rendezvous with a skunk.

So, the rains have been declared officially over for the year, after a few sprinkles this weekend. We had more rain here this year than last, but still fairly feeble. To celebrate the End of the Rains and to herald the coming of autumn–my favorite season–(although since I moved to the desert, winter is fast becoming my new favorite. That thing about snakes plays a big role in that determination)–here are a few shots of the clouds that we were visited with this year:

The last is my favorite. That’s Black Mountain. The ranch sits at the foot of it. I think it looks like Scotland more than usual with this hirsute skein of clouds.

Happy Fall!

Thank you

for the support and perspective, re: Dude and the mirror. Sometimes, when you live in a hole like I do, you wonder if your take on something is appropriate or accurate. I am sort of uber-private, too. I hate people I don’t know in my house, knocking on my door, in my driveway, etc., so Dude sort of pushed all sorts of buttons just by his very presence.* I get this hypersensitivity to unknown folks from my father, who refused to answer our door growing up, unless he was expecting someone. I guess the ethic of inviting a stranger to dinner is one that’s going to be lost on me–although I like it, in principle.

By the way, Dude IS the boss, the supervisor. He OWNS the appraisal company that the bank contracted with. But going to the bank and reporting our experience with him is a good idea, and one that I’ll pursue, as soon as we get a favorable appraisal. I don’t think I even mentioned yesterday that he *forgot*–or *overlooked*–pulling one of our plats. So, he didn’t even have an accurate sense of the property until R. pointed it out to him. GAH.

More later.

*Although it’s interesting, in light of my uber-privacy IRL, that I am one of the more public blogs that I read. Hmmmmmm…anybody want to psychoanalyze that? I’ve always attributed my lack of anxiety about stalkers to the fact that we live in the middle of nowhere, past a locked gate, a long driveway, a guard dog, and a gun (well, it IS the West, ya know…).

Pissed. Need advice.

Okay, so we had an appraiser here at the ranch today, as we’re going for a mortgage equity loan. R. arranged the whole thing, and–frankly, embarrassedly–I know precious little about it.

I was walking out of the bedroom, having just dressed The Bee this morning, and The Appraiser Dude is taking notes on my back garden. My weed-filled, choked-with-green, viper-pit of a back garden. Taking notes. GAH. The Bee walks straight up to him and yanks on the cord to his GPS. (Guffaw.) Dude grunts at her. I go into the main house and notice Dude entering my bedroom building, wandering around by himself. Eyebrow raises.

I mention this to R. when I get down to the office, but R. insists Dude didn’t go into the main house. I insist he did, or would. Then Dude barges into my office without knocking while I’m sitting at the computer, through my outside door, even though R. told him explicitly to use the other door, the one that goes to R.’s office. Guard dog wants to rip Dude’s northern vertebrae out. As Dude sticks his head in my door, I simply say, “You really don’t want to come in here.”

We pass a mid-day. Dude has long ago left.

I take The Bee back up to the house and notice that the door to the guest room is askew. The guest room sits at one end of our doublewide and used to be two separate bedrooms, but we ripped the wall out between those and merged the rooms as one. But the two original entrance doors remain, although I keep a strategically-placed chair and baskets thingy in front of the door that we never use, thusly:

It’s important that I do that because propped behind the unused door in the guest room is the largest damned mirror you will ever see–or not see, because I can no longer show it to you, because Dude frigging went through the door (behind the chair and baskets thingy) and the gargantuan, ceiling-to-floor mirror came crashing down. And broke. Leaving one of us with seven years of bad luck.

Now, my questions are plenty.

Such as: since he had just been in the guest room, having walked in through the usable door, and he could see how freaking big the room is, WHY would he jam his weight into the other door (behind the chair and baskets thingy), looking for “another room”? (This was his later–much later–explanation.)

Please note:

You can see the mirror on the floor here, and here is the room in the other direction, back of broken mirror also visible on floor:

How do we possibly tuck another room in here?

GAH.

GAH.

GAH.

So, the absolute worst of it is that Dude leaves WITHOUT SAYING A WORD ABOUT IT.

After doing his dirty deed and leaving the main house, he spends another 45 minutes walking and driving the property–all the way up the mountain to the back twenty–WITH R. FORTY-FIVE MINUTES of chitchat, of guy-crap, of shooting the breeze, and Dude says nary a thing about the scene of ka-ka he left for me to walk in on in the guest room.

Jeezus. My dogs do a better job of cowering letting me know when they’ve had an accident.

I immediately have R. phone him. R. comes back and says it’s his “impression” that Dude was “hoping it would just go away.” R. says Dude reluctantly agreed to pay for a replacement mirror, but R. says take pictures in any case. Um, duh…hello? Blog!

Okay. I get that we initiated the reason for Dude to be here, even though we didn’t hire him–the bank did. I even get that R. should have been escorting Dude around 100% of the time whilst he was surveying. (I’m still unclear why that wasn’t happening…seems that R. was under the impression that Dude wanted to do his thing alone.)

What I don’t get is the imbecilic and completely immature way that Dude handles this mistake. What? Are we five?

No. We are a professional. We own our own business. We have an “& Associates” after our name on the shingle.

Okay. So, I need a reality check. Am I way out of line? Feeling overly-protective and overreacting as a result? How would you feel about this? Advice?

Future Plans.

When I last updated the travel blog, I mentioned casually that we hoped to have The Bee’s sister home from China by next summer. You might have thought I’d revealed state secrets for the wholesale kerfuffle that ensued. I had quite a few people–both within the blogging world and without–contact me, asking if I was serious, asking if they had read it wrong, wondering what was up.

Well, this is up: we’re absolutely going to adopt again. She will again be a child with cleft lip/palate from China. She will be younger than The Bee because, knowing The Bee as we now do, we feel it’s important she remain the oldest kiddo. We will be doing this soon. This was never a secret.

One of the reasons we chose to switch to the special needs program in the first place was so we could be assured of a second adoption. Had we stayed in the NSN line and not received a referral until 2009 or so, we wouldn’t have been able to complete a second, SN adoption because R. would already be aged out of the program. I usually think of our adoption of The Bee only as intensely felt; a leap of faith; emotionally charged. We found her and were changed. But, in this one regard, it was also pragmatic.

We think it’s important that The Bee have a sibling with a similar life story, so that they can share experiences and fears and doubts and triumphs. Thus, we’re going back to China. Thus, we’re again adopting a child with cleft lip/palate, rather than another special need. We want to create some common ground for them, despite the unknowns that will also be a part of their lives forever. When they have questions about their birthparents, about what the adoption means in terms of their identity, about what it means to grow up Asian-American in this culture, I want them to have a partner with experiences close to their own, a peer–in addition to parents–that they can bounce their thoughts off of.

We wanted to get through The Bee’s surgery before starting the process again. And, now, we’re through it. The social worker comes to the ranch in a month for the standard six-month post-placement report. We will ask her to use that visit to start our new homestudy. And we will begin the paperchase a second time (a thought that makes my heart wiggle with discomfort in its cavity).

I have contacted an agency that may very well be The One. They have a new program that is expedited above and beyond the already-expedited Waiting Child Program, so it’s possible we could travel by late spring or early next summer. It would be great to get over there before the Olympics because I still have some angst about China suspending adoptions for a time while they’re busy hosting the world. Ahem.

So, stay tuned. We could be seeing our younger daughter’s face in a matter of days. Another thought that makes my heart wiggle, although with decidedly more joy.