Nic’s Questions…

Nicole over at The Moon Is Always Female tagged everybody to do their duty on this meme…I am feeling so BLUE and happy today, that I have obliged:

1) What side of the heart do you draw first?
Right

2) Can you dive without plugging your nose? Yes. I was on the swim team as a kid because I would only participate in individualized sports.

3) What color is your razor?
Green. It’s a men’s Gillette. I only use men’s razors. They’re better. Trust me.

4) What is your blood-type?
A-. Both my parents are +. When I told my mom I was Rh-, she freaked out. I have had to take a Rhogam shot because of it, which is not fun.

5) Who would you want to be tied to for 24 hours?
Okay, don’t shoot me for being sappy and predictable, but I would have to say my daughter. It’s just that it’s true.

6) What is a rumor someone has spread about you?
That I had two young kids that I kept hidden away in a basement. (R.’s ex to my in-laws. No shit.)

7) How do you feel about carrots?
Fairly indifferent. I don’t not like them. At one point, I ate the pre-washed baby ones a lot.

8) How many chairs at the dining room table?
Six.

9) Which is the best spice girl?

Cumin.

Oh! You mean the Brit singing group. I thought you said, “Which is the best spice, girl?”

10) Do you know what time it is?
Exactly.

11) Do you know all the words to the Fresh Prince song?
I like that Summertime song.

12) What would you do if you were stuck in an elevator?
Faint. I have claustrophobia. The last time it struck, I was inside the center of the pyramid at Chichen Itza in the Yucatan. Alone, I might add, because R. decided to climb the outside of the pyramid, while I went to the inner tomb. I had claustrophobia and he had acrophobia and vertigo. Not good decisions all the way around.

13) What’s your favorite kind of gum?
Bazooka.

14)T or F: All’s fair in love and war.
False.

15) Do you have a crush on anyone?
I have friend-crushes these days. Which doesn’t mean I get crushes on my friends. It means I get frushes. And that’s not some scary throat disease.

16) Do you know how to use some words correctly, but not know the meaning?
Solipsistic.

17) Do you like to sleep?
Yes. But not as much as I used to. No napping. Never napping.

18) Do you know which US states don’t use Daylight Savings?
Mine.

19) Do you know the song Total Eclipse of the Heart?
Turn around. Every now and then I get a little bit lonely….

20) Do you want a bright yellow ‘06 mustang?
No. The only thing I want bright yellow is a tree.

21) What’s something you’ve always wanted?
A beach house.

22) Do you have hairy legs?
You mean, like right now? No.

Genetically? Ah….yeah.

24) Would you rather swim in the ocean or a lake?
Neither. I only swim in places where I can see my feet in the water.

25) Do you wear a lot of black?
Yes. Not as much as I used to, though, because of the desert. I wear a lot of white in the summer.

26) Describe your hair.
Dark Auburn out of a bottle. A lot of gray if I haven’t seen a bottle in a while. Very thick. Longish. I always wear it up–either in a pony, or a braid, or a clip-bun. Always. I have to make sure it’s got some height in the front (no flat pull-backs), or my giganticus forehead looks funny.

27) Do you have Entomophobia?
No.

28) Are you an adult?

literally? or metaphorically?

29) Where is/are your best friends?

literally? or metaphorically?

30) Do you have a tan?
Not anymore.

31) Are you a television addict?
Yes. It’s my Xanax.

32) Do you enjoy spending time with your mother?
More now than I used to. Growing up, I was much closer to my father.

33) Are you a sugar freak?

No. I am a salt freak, though.

34) Do you like orange juice?
I choose tomato juice if there’s a choice. As far as OJ goes, I hate pulp. With a passion. I mean, if you want to eat the fruit, then eat the fruit. But juice should be JUICE. Not to be gross, but the pulp reminds me of vomit.

35) What sign are you?
Virgo. An angel or a mermaid or a virgin with a harp, depending on your pleasure.

36) What color is your Cell Phone?
Silver.

37) Where do you wish you were right now?

Jiangsu Province, PRC

sitting in a Parisian cafe with a glass of red wine and a good fashion magazine

Bora Bora, in one of those huts that sits out over the water, on top of a crystal-blue lagoon

giving a poetry reading in a little bookshop in the Village

eating blue crabs on a porch on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, looking at the dunes and the sea oats

Just Do It.

Read. Think. Vote.

The 101 Most Influential People Who Never Lived

Did you hear about this list? The 101 Most Influential People Who Never Lived…Never Lived because they are fictional characters, pop icons, cartoons, symbols, signifiers, and personas.

The list comes from this book.

Here are the top five, counting down:

5. Hamlet

4. Santa Claus (Saint Nick)

3. King Arthur

2. Big Brother

1. The Marlboro Man

The rest of the Top 10 are: (6) Dr. Frankenstein’s Monster [which, by the way, should technically be “Creature”–you heard it straight from an English major’s mouth]; (7) Siegfried; (8) Sherlock Holmes; (9) Romeo and Juliet; (10) Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Some other random notables: The Little Engine That Could is #31; Barbie is #43; Nancy Drew is #62; Norman Bates is #75; John Doe is #100; and some of the more notable absences who “almost” made the cut…Holden Caulfield, Tom Joad, Uncle Remus, and Winnie-the-Pooh.

Hmmmmm. I’m glad to see Hamlet up there (sorry–sad, but true), but I’m indifferent to the #1 pick. Here’s the editors’ reasoning, in part, for choosing The Marlboro Man: “By the end of the twenty-first century, the Marlboro Man will have triggered thousands of American deaths. Why not millions? Be patient. Lung cancer takes years to develop–forty years, fifty, sixty. So the kids who started smoking in 1957 are just starting to wheeze into the cancer wards” (277). Thus, it’s the huge literal impact that warrants a #1, I guess. Depressing. It’d be nice to think the human imagination could leave something to the world besides burgeoning cancer wards…like Bambi (#41), ya know?

By the way, despite the fact that The Marlboro Man is a cowboy, “The American Cowboy” also made the list. #19.

So, what do you all think?

It turns out…I have a chemical addiction to my bloggy friends!

My mom sent me the following article yesterday. In the writing class I’m teaching, we are on the chapter in our text entitled “Projecting Gender,” so I brought it in to read to my students yesterday, too. And, now, I offer it to you–my blog friends–who might understand now, as I think I do, why the blogging community has become a vital part of my health care. (And for the male bloggers with whom I enjoy this community, there’s interesting stuff in here about you, too!)

UCLA Study On Friendship Among Women

By Gale Berkowitz

A landmark UCLA study suggests friendships between women are special. They shape who we are and who we are yet to be. They soothe our tumultuous inner world, fill the emotional gaps in our marriage, and help us remember who we really are.

By the way, they may do even more. Scientists now suspect that hanging out with our friends can actually counteract the kind of stomach-quivering stress most of us experience on a daily basis. A landmark UCLA study suggests that women respond to stress with a cascade of brain chemicals that cause us to make and maintain friendships with other women. It’s a stunning find that has turned five decades of stress research–most of it on men–upside down.

Until this study was published, scientists generally believed that when people experience stress, they trigger a hormonal cascade that revs the body to either stand and fight or flee as fast as possible, explains Laura Cousin Klein, Ph.D., now an Assistant Professor of Bio-Behavioral Health at Penn State University and one of the study’s authors. It’s an ancient survival mechanism left over from the time we were chased across the planet by saber-toothed tigers.

Now the researchers suspect that women have a larger behavioral repertoire than just fight or flight; in fact, says Dr. Klein, it seems that when the hormone oxytocin is released as part of the stress responses in a woman, it buffers the fight or flight response and encourages her to tend children and gather with other women instead. When she actually engages in this tending or befriending, studies suggest that more oxytocin is released, which further counters stress and produces a calming effect. This calming response does not occur in men, says Dr. Klein, because testosterone–which men produce in high levels when they’re under stress–seems to reduce the effects of oxytocin. Estrogen, she adds, seems to enhance it.

The discovery that women respond to stress differently than men was made in a classic “aha” moment shared by two women scientists who were talking one day in a lab at UCLA. There was this joke that when the women who worked in the lab were stressed, they came in, cleaned the lab, had coffee, and bonded, says Dr. Klein. When the men were stressed, they holed up somewhere on their own. I commented one day to fellow researcher Shelley Taylor that nearly 90% of the stress research is on males. I showed her the data from my lab, and the two of us knew instantly that we were onto something.

The women cleared their schedules and started meeting with one scientist after another from various research specialties. Very quickly, Drs. Klein and Taylor discovered that by not including women in stress research, scientists had made a huge mistake: The fact that women respond to stress differently than men has significant implications for our health.

It may take some time for new studies to reveal all the ways that oxytocin encourages us to care for children and hang out with other women, but the “tend and befriend” notion developed by Drs. Klein and Taylor may explain why women consistently outlive men. Study after study has found that social ties reduce our risk of disease by lowering blood pressure, heart rate, and cholesterol.

There’s no doubt, says Dr. Klein, that friends are helping us live longer. In one study, for example, researchers found that people who had no friends increased their risk of death over a 6-month period. In another study, those who had the most friends over a 9-year period cut their risk of death by more than 60%.

Friends are also helping us live better. The Health Study from Harvard Medical School found that the more friends women had, the less likely they were to develop physical impairments as they aged, and the more likely they were to be leading a joyful life. In fact, the results were so significant, the researchers concluded, that not having close friends or confidantes was as detrimental to your health as smoking or carrying extra weight!

And that’s not all! When the researchers looked at how well the women functioned after the death of their spouse, they found that even in the face of this biggest stressor of all, those women who had a close friend and confidante were more likely to survive the experience without any new physical impairments or permanent loss of vitality. Those without friends were not always so fortunate.

Yet if friends counter the stress that seems to swallow up so much of our life these days, if they keep us healthy and even add years to our life, why is it so hard to find time to be with them? That’s a question that also troubles researcher Ruthellen Josselson, Ph.D., co-author of Best Friends:The Pleasures and Perils of Girls’ and Women’s Friendships (Three Rivers Press, 1998). Every time we get overly busy with work and family, the first thing we do is let go of friendships with other women, explains Dr. Josselson. We push them right to the back burner. That’s really a mistake because women are such a source of strength to each other. We nurture one another. And we need to have unpressured space in which we can do the special kind of talk that women do when they’re with other women. It’s a very healing experience.

Source: Taylor, S. E., Klein, L.C., Lewis, B. P., Gruenewald, T.L., Gurung, R.A.R., & Updegraff, J. A. (2000). “Female Responses to Stress: Tend and Befriend, Not Fight or Flight,” Psychological Review, 107(3): 41-429.

The Authority of the Ordinary.

So…have you seen the coverage of the Michael J. Fox–Rush Limbaugh controversy? It involves the campaign ad that Fox did in Missouri for Claire McCaskill in support of stem cell research; followed by the Rush rant on his radio show in which he accuses Fox of “faking” his symptoms on the ad; followed by Fox’s interview last night with Katie Couric on the CBS Evening News, in which Fox explains that when he filmed the campaign ad, he was overmedicated and thus experiencing dyskinesia–not unmedicated, and definitely not. faking. it.

The larger context here is the controversy over stem cell research in general, and, more specifically, the VERY FIRST VETO of George W.’s presidency in July of this year, when he signed the veto to a bill that would have eased restrictions on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. For the veto’s official signing ceremony, Bush appeared surrounded by couples who had received donated embryos as part of an IVF process and their resulting babies.

But this isn’t really a post about stem cell research, the veto, or even the upcoming election. It could be, but that would be too obvious. I can end any mystery that might surround my voting booth pretty quickly, right here and now: I won’t be voting for war, establishment, hatred, or fear. Go figure. I actually wish it was more complex than that, especially since I am a registered “NonParty” member, but it isn’t. The Bushy has made it very, very simple.

What I want to write about instead is the overwhelming reaction I had to the coverage of that Bush veto ceremony in July and to the Michael J. Fox–Rush Limbaugh debacle this week. My reaction was immediate, visceral, and borderline pathological. I had this overriding sense that the media and the pundits and the spin doctors and the politicos and even most of my friends and family had better shut up and/or get the hell out of the way, ’cause NO ONE COULD SPEAK TO THIS ISSUE BUT ME. Yeah, slightly bizarre, I know. But it’s true. I felt suddenly proprietary like I’d never felt before. BIG, WILD, TIGER-MOMMA PROPRIETARY.

I remember when I was in graduate school studying literature, there was a debate at one point among the Ph.D. candidates vying for that year’s open job positions in the national academic market about whether Anglo-American professors could or should be able to teach African-American literature. It included the parallel argument about whether men could or should be able to teach women’s literature (the inverse considerations didn’t work the same way, since the fact that blacks live in a white world and women live inside a patriarchal one was pretty well accepted and thus made it easy and appropriate for them to teach outside their own race or gender).

The real question being asked was, “can you teach (or pontificate about or speak on or have authority about) a subject matter about which you have no personal experience and little personal investment?” If you haven’t lived as a black person in this country, should you be trying to teach about that experience of blackness to others? If you haven’t lived as a woman, should you be trying to teach about that experience of womanhood to others?

And if you don’t have an embryo–frozen for future use or perhaps non-use–should you be trying to tell others what to do about it?

Because I do. I DO have an embryo. He or she is six days old. He or she is a very lovely blastocyst, now on ice, after having survived five full days in a petri dish. He or she struggled at first, being only five cells big on the third day of embryonic life. Not developed enough to be considered for use in the IVF. But hanging on. And, now, he or she is considered a tough little thing, with much better odds at implantation, should I decide to go ahead with that at some point, than he or she would have had initially. And full of stem cells. Full of those basic building blocks of life that can morph so outrageously, so impossibly, into many of the mature cell forms that we know of in the human body. Capable of saving lives already. Potentially capable of saving many more by curing terminal diseases. Like Alzheimer’s. Like Parkinson’s.

And so it gets even better. Another sort of question could be asked: If you don’t have a close friend or family member dying of one of these potentially curable diseases, should you really be trying to tell others what to do about it?

Because I do. I DO have a family member dying of one of those potentially curable diseases. My father has Parkinson’s Disease. He is 73 and can’t walk very far and won’t be walking at all in another couple of years. He slides down until he’s “sitting” on his back when he’s in chairs. When I talk to him on the phone, we have the same conversation over again three times because he can’t remember that we’ve just covered that territory. And I end up having really terrible conversations with myself, like “at least it’s not Alzheimer’s. Then he wouldn’t remember who I was. At least he remembers who I am.” GAH.

So my reaction to the veto and to the Fox-Limbaugh debate is to close ranks to some extreme nth degree and tell all these people trying to control my life–MY LIFE FOR REAL–to go screw off. Because I have a frozen embryo AND I have a dad with Parkinson’s, and I’ll be DAMNED if you do, George W. OR Rush Limbaugh. This is MY business and MY experience and you’d better walk in all my shoes in this matter before you start telling me how to think or feel about it. It’s MINE. (See? Proprietary.)

Please understand that I recognize the irrationality behind my reaction. It surprised me when it happened. I’m not a proprietary person, and I especially like to dialogue with other people. But I suddenly understood in a way I hadn’t before that an authority–an expertise–forged from experience is one that you can’t dismiss. It may not be the only kind of authority. It may not be the only way to expertise. But it has value, and it has rank.

I used to think that if you couldn’t learn about and, then, potentially, teach about a subject outside yourself and your experience, you lacked imagination, you lacked empathy, you lacked ability. So, yes, I thought that men could and should teach women’s literature; white teachers could and should teach black literature; and I could and should teach 16th-century literature, even though I did not grow up in that time or culture.

But now I also understand the power of the personal experience.

Good Housekeeping?

A recent salvo in the gender wars occurred a few weeks back when Forbes.com published a column by editor Michael Noer suggesting that men should never marry career women. Here’s a taste: “the more successful she is, the more likely she is to grow dissatisfied with you.” WTF? He’s ascribing marital dissatisfaction to the fact that a woman works? Maybe, Mr. Noer, it has something to do with the marriage itself.

This sort of attitude hurts SAHMs as much as it does working moms and women in general.

It reminded me of this column from the 1950s, which appeared in Housekeeping Monthly magazine. I’m letting this get really big so you all can read it. That is, if you can scrape your eyeballs off the ceiling since that’s where they may end up after you get an inkling of what our mothers had to put up with:

The underlines and other assorted marginalia come courtesy of my good friend, T., who sent this article to me in horror.

I am a meme virgin, people…

Yep, this is my first meme ever. I was tagged by Jessi over at Elsie Elsewhere, so I guess I owe my deflowering to her. Here goes:

7 x 7

7 Things I Want To Do Without Dying of Embarrassment

1. Wear heels.

2. Go sleeveless.

3. Call a doctor’s office and explain my health problem to the gatekeeper who answers the phone.

4. Rock climb (the idea that the person on belay is forced to stare at my butt while I’m shimmying up a sheer rock face convinces me that I would fall).

5. Speak French when visiting Paris.

6. Play guitar.

7. Start a blog.

7 Things I Cannot Do in the Summer

1. Walk the dogs on the trails at the ranch (re: snakes).

2. Work in the flower garden (see #1). (I do all my gardening in the winter.)

3. Buy Christmas presents (I can’t buy Xmas presents until December–it just doesn’t seem festive enough.)

4. Skip shaving.

5. Wear my favorite long, black, wool coat that has a metallic thread woven through it.

6. Make yummy winter squash soups.

7. Curl up in front of the fire.

7 Things I Can Do Which Are Meaningless Unless You Are Still in Jr. High

1. Do a backflip in the swimming pool.

2. Curl my tongue (the recessive gene way).

3. Recite Miss Mary Black, Black, Black…All Down Your Back, Back, Back.

4. Lick the flavored lip gloss straight out of the tube.

5. Skateboard.

6. French braid hair.

7. Wonder if you’ll still like me if I really say what I think about something.

7 Things Which Attracted Me to My House

1. Sits at the foot of Black Mountain, an ancient volcano that looks like the Scottish highlands.

2. 20 miles from town, so we have the feeling like we’re leaving the bullshit behind.

3. Trails lead to shrines that the former owners built.

4. Room for more dogs.

5. Fireplace.

6. Swimming hole.

7. Space for gardens.

7 Things I Say Most When I’m Crying

1. This is the part in the movie I always lose it.

2. I hate this.

3. This sucks.

4. I’m sorry.

5. I’m just tired.

6. I’m such a sucker for animals.

7. [Silence]–because mostly I am trying to hide the fact I’m crying when I’m crying.

7 Children’s Books I Am Adding to My Own Collection(I don’t have children, so this list is really based on my own nostaglia)

1. any of the Nancy Drew books (I wanted to be a detective when I grew up.)

2. Hailstones and Halibut Bones (A wonderful book, in which each color is turned into a poem. The title is a line from the “white poem.” I’m sure this book has something to do with the fact that I’m a poet today.)

3. The Big Tidy-Up (I drove my mother crazy reciting this by heart. It’s now out-of-print and costs $299.95!!! Good grief!)

4. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIHM

5. The Plant Sitter (This is sort of a friendlier version of Where the Wild Things Are, or at least the dream I’d prefer to have….)

6. The Story of Sacajawea (out-of-print)

7. Free To Be You and Me (I listened to this album endlessly as a kid, although it’s also a book)

7 Children’s Movies I Can Watch for the Bazillionth Time Without Wanting to Rip My Eyes from Their Sockets

1. Charlotte’s Web (absolutely, positively, guaranteed to make me cry)

2. My Dog Skip (ditto to the comment on #1)

3. A Charlie Brown Christmas (Don’t tell me it’s a TV special, not a movie. The sad lost tree that almost doesn’t find a home is a killer.)

4. The Sound of Music

5. How the Grinch Stole Christmas (the original, animated Chuck Jones/Boris Karloff TV version, not the bogus Jim Carey makeover)

6. The Wizard of Oz

7. Old Yeller

So, I nominate Snow Monkey and Walternatives as “IT.” Consider yourselves tagged.

Antidote to All Things Buggy.

My latest personal bugspray:

This diaper/wipes pouch

and this bib and this diaper bag .

I love the imagery of the skull-and-crossbones, the candy-skulls, and the tattoos, especially used to adorn All Things Baby. It flies in the face of sentiment and, right now, sentimentality is wreaking havoc on the adoption world. Anything that stands up to its onslaught is allright by me.

What’s wrong with a little sentiment, you ask? And by that question, you mean besides the fact that it leads

to this

and this: An invisible red thread connects those that are destined to meet regardless of time, place, or circumstance. The thread may tangle but will never break. ~ Ancient Chinese proverb

and, yes, even this: Do not be afraid, for I am with you, I will bring your children from the east and gather you from the west.~Isaiah 43:5 ?

Sentimentality sounds the death-knell of what’s real because, in fact, the effect of sentimentality is to erase the present moment and replace it with a romanticized version of the facts–a sort of dreamy netherworld. That’s why those who reject sentiment are often accused of being unromantic. Or unpatriotic. Or uncooperative. The world at large really wants to buy into the Hallmark Card. And the ladybugs. And the red thread.

But it is possible for couples to be completely in-love-feel-it-to-your-toes romantic without sentimentality. It is also possible to adopt a child with a sense of outrageous - excitement - about - how - this - is - going - to - change - your - life - forever without sentimentality. It is even possible to swoon over the child’s clothes, her 100 wishes quilt, her nursery, and her diaper bag without sentimentality. Not without swoon. Without sentiment. There’s a difference.

Please don’t misunderstand: I am not advocating my particular taste for Dios de los Muertos fabric as a remedy to sentiment. Avoiding sentiment can be accomplished by a myriad of different tastes. Dress the kid in martian fabric or puppy fabric or ferris-wheel fabric–whatever floats your boat, as long as it doesn’t serve the coded purpose of turning your adoption into a fairy tale…because that is what the ladybugs and the red threads do. I bought the tatooed bib and the calaveras diaper bag because I had never before imagined that flaming hearts and skeletons could be associated with baby (other people are way ahead of me in this realm). In other words, I was not going to opt for the buggy fabric that acts like a secret handshake, that says, hey, I’m one of you, too, and aren’t we all neat, and (queue music) it’s a small world after all. (Pat back here.) Because I don’t believe that. The world is more complex than that, and it’s a damn good thing that it is.

The alternative to living with complexity is to live in a ladybug world. And I have a deep distrust of the ladybug world, not because I am an angry grouch, or because I have some deep-seeded paranoia, or because I want to flaunt my easy sense of counter-culture. That is not the goal. Yes, the cutesiepie bug-and-thread stuff can rise to the vomitous level. Some days (like on referral days), reading some blogs, I come away feeling like I need to get in the shower and wash it all off. It’s that sticky.

But that is not really it either.

I distrust the ladybug world because it exchanges many of the hard truths of IA for platitudes. And it is not that I need to push the hard truths of IA on myself all the time. I’m truly not in the business of self-flagellation. If I lived there all the time, I wouldn’t be adopting. But to never discuss or debate the challenges inherent in IA, to see this opportunity to parent a Chinese-born child as only a way to the warm fuzzies, is to ladybug it.

So, what I’m really saying is that sentimentality is subtly connected to a sense of denial. It has political undertones. If you believe that God wrote in the bible that your children will be brought to you from the east by way of adoption in China, well, then, congratulations…you’ve discovered a spiritual mandate to adopt…If a-parents are connected to their Chinese-born children from the beginning of time by a red thread, then…heck…the birth parents couldn’t have really struggled over their decision because this abandonment was meant to be.

Never mind that the verse from Isaiah was meant as a type of formulae for the destruction of Israel’s enemies and not a commentary on international adoption. Never mind that the original context of the legend of the red thread is a romantic one, a legend about married couples finding each other, not about parents and children. Never mind about that. As Scarlett O’Hara says at the end of GWTW, “I’ll think about that tomorrow.”

That’s the trouble with sentimentality. It’s subtle. It’s easy. It’s familiar. But it makes things disappear.

__________________________

Read this post from the Twice the Rice blog, written by an adult Korean adoptee, for additional perspective on why the buggy-fying (and red-thread-ifying) of international adoption is so off the mark.

___________________________

In an effort to be consistent (something I’m not always so good at), I am going to take my blog’s epigraph (”Keep a green bough in your heart, and the singing bird will come”) down off the site. Although I’ve only ever seen it on one other a-parent blog and so it hasn’t attained the star status that the others I’ve quoted above have, it has the potential to misrepresent the entire IA process as one that is destined to be. And destiny has no place in the IA world. The concept of destiny relies on sentiment to do its dirty work.

I chose this epigraph originally because it seemed to work well for both infertility and adoption, and because it’s a line of poetry and I’m a poet, but my reasons are really beside the point. The point is that it romanticizes adoption (and infertility, for that matter), and so it’s gone.

It’s probably more accurate in my case to talk about a dead branch and a squawking bird anyway. I’ll keep the SBird moniker, though, because I have a birdy name in RL, so it fits that.

The Nest

Musings on international adoption, infertility, ttc 12 years and counting, ranch life, turning 40, academia, poetry, and whatever else keeps me sane and writing.