Congrats Rachel!

Rachel of Henry Street has announced the arrival of, well, "Henry"!! Go take a look. He's beautiful. :)

I've been a lurker for a long time, and have followed her story for quite a while. As a matter of fact, Henry Street was one of the first blogs I came across, and I identified with her early because her MIL drives her batty, too.

Happy stories/good news are a great way to end a weekend.

Thought Processes from Wednesday, Continued

Anyway... this is where I was when I had to stop writing the other day.

~~

About my occasional references to God - I'm not the devout person I used to be. I was very involved – probably to the point that part of my antipathy is burnout from being so involved. I served at Masses, I did this and that project, did that outreach, I taught Catechism. I was a candidate in an ancient secular order (you can read about that sad story on my alter ego blog), but was so devastated by their lies and hypocrisy that I've shunned going to Mass for the longest time. It's what, a year and a half now? I'm getting there. I am. Just not yet. When I'm finally over it - I don't think I can go to Mass without being over my... let's call them "trust issues" - there are some people I need to visit and apologize to. I walked away from teaching Catechism because I was so hurt and angry inside, and didn't feel that it was right for me to be teaching children when I felt that way. I need to see the coordinator and apologize for abandoning her, the kids and the program.

The paradox is that I have no problem with raising my future children in the Church. The parishes around our house are very orthodox, with really excellent priests; this is true especially my former parish, whose programs I'm firmly behind as they're just super and well thought out, much better than what I grew up with. We also have excellent parochial schools near our house. This is the part of any future children’s upbringing I don't have to worry about.

~~

I think about the things I would do differently with our children than my parents did with my younger brother and me. We were the tail end of seven kids, and were raised as a completely different unit than the "older five," the youngest of that group being eight years older than me. Little brother (4B - 4th brother) and I were late children; I am now the same age (37) as my mother was when she was pregnant with 4B. My children will essentially be, like me, late children. Because Mom and Dad were essentially part of the "Geritol Crowd" when we were in school, instead of the hyper-vigilant parenting with the older five, they were very laid back with us, allowing us to be kids, kicking us outside to play. When the older kids (by then out of the house) would come home, they went nuts. We got to stay out until 9 or 10 from an early age, we got our drivers’ licenses at 16, and they didn’t; not a one of them got their license because there were just too many of them and not enough money to insure them. The older kids whined about that. They still do, twenty years later. A lot.

Yet there was the other side to that coin. Laid back meant being, I'm sorry to say, uninvolved. There wasn't a lack of love - God no! - but they'd been there and done that and in their laxity, let us run free. We were left to our own a lot as kids. Mom and Dad didn’t come to my sports events. They didn’t sit down with us and help us do homework. They didn’t do parent/teacher conferences a lot – Mom went to a few for me through my elementary school years, but not much after, say, junior high school. They just weren’t involved that way.
They were lucky with me because I was self-sufficient: I did my homework, got myself to and from games and practices, maintained my GPA, and I was the lucky kid who didn’t really have to apply myself to do well in school. Mom was involved with me in kindergarten, because one of her friends was my teacher; after that, I was left to my own devices. And I survived. My brother wasn’t wired the same way cerebrally as I was, and had his difficulties. Mom hung onto him in high school because he was hanging with the wrong crowd and doing dumb skater stuff. He survived, too, but he paid for it. He still does, whether he admits it or not.

~~

DH, on the other hand, had parents who were TOO involved. His dad was a helicopter parent decades before the term was coined; hell, he war-dials the house every night, trying to live vicariously through DH’s corporate life since he’s worked from home for forty years. FIL meddled with DH’s teachers and coaches, wangled his way into coaching all of DH’s teams up until high school. His mother did many things right – teaching him to do his own laundry, do household stuff, although I wish she’d taught him how to cook! – but she had her issues too. She never told him what was going on. She took care of everything for him, paid for everything. She made him do piano lessons even though he wasn’t very good and hated the piano. He is always the bad guy when it comes to his sister – MIL *always* takes SIL’s side, even today, even when SIL is blatantly wrong. You get the idea. The favoritism has carried over into his adult life in the sense that he’s apathetic to his sister; the hypervigilance, he said even in his home study, made him unprepared for life in the real world. Pretty big stuff.

~~

We know that somewhere in the middle is the answer. We need to be involved, but not to the point of being crazy and controlling. Discipline needs to be instituted, safety ensured, yet freedom encouraged. Since DH and I are both academically lazy with foundations from not being pushed in that regard, we know we can’t let down our guard in the future. We also need to be attentive to the academics in general without being overbearing. Our child(ren) will be encouraged to do sports, but we won’t be there every day, every hour; and, if the child(ren) don’t want to do sports, that’s fine, too.

I guess it’s about balance.

My First Mama Kat's Writer's Workshop

Just for the hell of it. It's beautiful outside; it's rained all night; I feel better even though I didn't sleep worth a damn last night.

4.) List ten things you would say to ten different people in your life...if you had the hutzpah.
*cynical chuckle*

Oh and by the way, it’s “chutzpah.” Trust me: I married a Jew. He may have converted to my religion (on his own, no pressure from me), but you can’t really take the East Coast Jew out of the boy even though he’s about as far as one can get from New Jersey and from his former religion.

All right, Mama Kat. Be careful what you ask for.

1. Sis, stop being jelly spined! He’s only kissing your ass because you control the money when Dad’s gone! Once your usefulness is expired, he won’t give a damn about you. Oh, and by the way, that’s a nice racist kid you’ve raised there.

2. T, dearest and oldest friend, I wish you had a video camera on yourself sometimes. You’re turning into your crazy, self-centered mother, the one thing you vowed you never wanted to turn into when we were kids. Please don’t emotionally punish your boys the way your mother always emotionally punished you and your sisters.

3. J, I love you dearly, but you’re a dolt. You can’t save the world. God’s not going to judge you if you decline to get involved in a situation. Also, you need to decide if you’re going to be an activist or an attorney, because trying to be both JUST ISN’T WORKING. Oh, and the autopsy supported Michael Schiavo’s stance on his poor wife. She had NO brain function and had NO quality of life. Get past it already.

4. B, please stop running away from your problems. Sometimes they’re not even problems – it’s usually when you can’t have your way or just too emotionally powerful for you to cope with. Not only do you hurt me and those you supposedly care about, you isolate yourself more and more, making yourself even more unhappy.

5. To the Country at Large: SUCKERRRRRRS!

6. To my “little” brother (he’s 35 now): you know me better than that. Please stop being so easily led by the nose. And please, while you’re out doing your special forces stuff in Europe, find your balls that you seem to have misplaced, so you can talk to me directly about what in the hell your problem is with me rather than backstabbing me all the time. Grow up.

7. To the ex-boyfriend I haven’t seen in a dozen years: sadly, my predictions of your once sweet little boys becoming complete f*cked-up young men have come to pass. Pot, delinquency, and God knows what else. Between their mother’s atrocious treatment of them and your complete passivity where the mother is concerned (which they can’t fail to see), they are now completely screwed. And it’s so sad – and I’ve wondered occasionally through the years if it would have made any difference if you and I had worked out, if me being in their lives would have made the difference. Then I remember what a complete turd you were, and remember that you never were worth it, so that thought goes up in smoke. Karma’s really bitten you in the ass, huh?

8. MIL, please stop with the pretenses of being one of the moneyed elite. You’re broke. FIL can hardly keep up with your ridiculous spending. You can’t spend money like you did in 1985. And I have news for you: we can’t afford your lifestyle, so don’t even think about it.

9. D, you’re still WRONG. You keep compounding your initial error. You keep this up, and you’ll be even more lonely than you already are.

10. P, stop trying to run everyone’s lives. Why is it that the ones whose lives are in utter disarray are the ones who try and run everyone else’s life? Is it a control issue? Or with you, is it a mental illness? WTH? Sad to say, but when Dad's gone, I don't ever want to see or speak to you again - siblings by the accident of birth.

Wednesday Wobbling

Had to take the day off yesterday and go with my Dad to the doc. He's had some sudden onset issues which are being looked at, but the doctor carved a 3cm across and 3.5cm deep squamous cell growth out of my dad's temple. I have a yucky feeling in the pit of my stomach and I'm mentally exhausted.

Please, God, not this, not now.

~~

I have made the resolution that no matter what happens with Dad, that we - *I* - are continuing our adoption process. I know Dad approves of that attitude (he's not dying tomorrow or anything) so I don't feel guilty about it at all. I can't let anything stop us this time.

~~

Today, I have a letter signed by both DH and I giving permission to SW to place our profile in the State's Central Adoption Registry. It's a leap of faith; it can get murky when going through the State for anything, but as I've said before, God has this habit of taking care of us. I have to have faith in that.

~~

I'm going to just stop here. My brain is mush and I'm just mentally shot. I pasted what I was going to ramble about in Word and will make it its own post.

Is it Friday yet?

It's Out There... yikes!

Had DH review and proof the profile this morning. Flipped it to PDF, burned it to a thumb drive. Emailed SW and sent her the PDF of the profile with a note saying that a) we have a dedicated email for this now so nothing gets lost in the everyday shuffle, and b) that I'll have hard copies made today or tomorrow and I'll send them to Agency, and to please let me know how many copies to send them.

Then I went to Big Office Supply Store (BOSS? Really? LOL), got a decent price on color copies on decent paper, and bought binding materials (I'm not paying tons of money extra for them to to it). It was a good thing because everyone's getting school supplies and we got to skip lines and pay at the printing counter. Yeah, baby!

As DH and I walked out to the car to have lunch at Baja Fresh (not as good as it used to be, but doable for today's purposes), not only did I feel this lightness of soul, but this deep-seated excitement: we're doing this, we really are. Oh my God. :D

So here I am, preparing to assemble the profiles. I figure one to Boss's drawer, at least four to Agency, and I have several extras to go where anyone wants to show them.

I'm going to send the electronic profiles to only a limited pool outside of the state. I'm not sure I want to try to plan for sudden travel to anywhere in the US - so only a few friends in about four states. I'm putting the out of state stuff in God's hands - not going to obsess where it takes me.

It's almost like jumping out of a plane to skyjump: you know that where you end up will, 99% of the time, land you somewhere safe and dry - it's just the jump out of the plane that's scary as hell.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Oh. Oh Really? Okay. Great. Nahhh..... Whoa!

That's what my brain said in short order at about 2:30 this afternoon.

I left a message with SW today. She called me back at about two, which tells me she was out and about on (probably) a home study. Sounds good to me.

First, after amenable greetings and exchanges, I said I'm a hair away from finishing up our profile. I'll tell you in a minute what she said in response to that.

I asked her about getting a copy of our home study; I want to say she "bristled" but she sort of said that it wasn't generally done, because if we were applying to this or that or going through other agencies, these people/entities would need a copy from the Agency (duh). No, I said; it's strictly for our use, our file. I slid in a little snarky comment that we had paid for it, why shouldn't we have it? Oh, she sort of said, then I'll talk to A, it shouldn't be a problem.

WTH? Home studies aren't cheap. We paid for that sucker.

Then I asked about being added to the state adoption registry. I need to send her extra hard copies to her to send to the State that she'll include with a copy of our home study. What the hell, I figure - why exclude every road? Having dealt with the State on various matters relating to adoption now and again at work, I'm still cynical about it. But God has managed to take care of us, and I have to have faith in that.

It's like applying to a position in the government: be careful what you apply for, you might just get it.

~~

The barn burner was what she casually mentioned when I said I was almost done with our profile. By the by, she sort of segued, we had a child come through Agency yesterday. She was sorry that she didn't have our profile, as B, the person who facilitates these things there, certainly would have shown it. She proceeded to tell me the information on the child just for conversation, which I found rather cool.

So these are three thoughts that crossed my mind as SW and I chatted were as follows, not in any particular order, and certainly not with this coherence:

1) The child had been exposed to marijuana. I haven't yet gotten around to the research on this, but it stands to reason that if the mother toked during the pregnancy, it's more than likely she did other things as well - alcohol, tobacco, perhaps exposure to (if not use) of harder drugs. As SW said in general conversation at our home study with a roll of her eyes, "Oh, no, birthmothers never lie." Ayup. I would have paused if we'd gotten a call, because if pot was involved, it's likely other things were, too. It would be a hard think.

2) The child was part Indian. I know that different tribes have different takes on the Indian Child Welfare Act in terms of, for lack of a better word in my head at the moment, enforcement, but I don't know at what point someone is a member of a tribe, or at what percentage of one's heritage the ICWA applies, so this information about this child gave me pause since I didn't know if the child had been born on tribal lands, or if one of the parents belonged to one of several local tribes. And because I'm not yet well versed in the insies/outsies, I would not be comfortable with this.

Between this and the pot issues, I probably would have passed, at least at this early stage.

But as we were chatting, I had this delicious frisson of excitement. Wow, brushing so close, so fast! Can you imagine if we'd finished the profile before we'd left for DC, then come home to that? Wow! But it's okay... like I told SW, it's just not our turn, not meant to be, not yet.

She was surprised at my pleasant attitude. I didn't get into the fact that the last dozen years of my life has been a series of things that were just fate, timing, kismet, whatever you want to call it. I'm not daunted.

But here's the one thought that blazed through my mind after I hung up and processed what she said:

3) HOLY SHIT! I'd better kick DH out of his office, soon!

Because as those of here in Blogoland know, you NEVER know when The Call will come in, or from where. I want to be at least somewhat prepared. Don't have to be 10 for 10, just ready to put things in gear and fill in the holes.

Oh yeah, we're not close to ready for that. I need to kick him out of that room, amalgamate his crap with mine and be back to where we were five years ago, in the same home office.

I need to paint the room, and try and talk him into getting rid of the ghastly carpet that runs through the house. Then I need to make (more!) curtains, and buy a 4-in-1 convertible crib/bed and start prepping everything. From there I can collect things.

Wow. It seems more real. Holy crap! =D

First Sewing Project

Remember what I said about trying my hand at making my own stuff? I decided my guinea pig would be the window in my home office. That way, if it's a POS, the only one who sees it is me.

This is what it has been for..... ummmmmm... five years:

Sheers only. I wanted light and sun. DH hated them because, being from "Joisey," he's partial to privacy and security. I liked them until recently, when the brightness during the summer became unbearable. Guess I'm getting old.

So with Mom's sewing machine primed and ready with the appropriate thread, and after figuring out the damned bobbin case (what a pain!), I was ready to start.

I remeasured the window, folded over the top of my two cuts of fabric, and made the easy rod pocket. Then I played around with the hem (realizing too late that my rod pocket was too generous). No matter - all is well.

They look nice and neat, eh? Well, I pinned and played with them, then sewed the hems. I also went back and forth with the iron so the hems would sit properly as I fed them through the sewing machine.

This was yesterday afternoon, by the by, in between this and that and various disruptions.

So there I was, really proud of myself and delighted with the results. Hey! This is prety cool.

Red Cat was a lot of help, as you can see here.

And yes, he is that big. Huge. And lazy... of course. He's a cat, what else is he good for?

So I merrily put the curtains on the rod to see how they look before putting them back on their bracket, and in horror I realized that I had made a huuuuuge foofoo. I put the hem on one of the panels backwards. Moron. I was so mad at myself. Idiot, cretin, moron.

So I had to carefully pick the stitches out of the panel (cussing all the while - how tedious. Lesson learned: pay attention!), fold it, pin it, and iron it the other way, run it through the sewing machine once more.

Then, upon hearing the James Bond theme that DH had popped into the DVD player, I raced downstairs and watched "For Your Eyes Only," swigging Kiltlifters and trying to forget the frustrating episode of my first foray into sewing. This film got me thinking: Daniel Craig has none of the charm or suaveness of Moore, darling Pierce, or the one and only, original Bon, Connery. He even makes Lazenby look good (Dalton sucks eternally - ugh). A bit of trivia: Brosnan's late first wife, Cassandra Harris, is in FYEO, and that was the first time Broccoli met Pierce. Even then, he'd made that impression as a possible future Bond. Interesting.

Anyway...

I came back, put those suckers on the rod, and went to bed.

When I got up and dressed, I came in. I really liked what I saw. They're sheer enough without a liner so that you're well aware it's daytime, but cuts the light to the point that it's not competing with my computer screen. It also makes the room a LOT cooler. Why didn't I do this before?

So, with and without flash (and yes the walls are blue, too... taken at about 9am this morning):

You like my upstairs view of cookie-cutter suburbia? That's the other reason I made these.

DH came in and said, "Wow, they're blue." Hell yes, they're blue. My office is the anti-pink because of that damned fuschia carpet.

Remember the sheers Red Cat was dozing blissfully on? I cut those suckers down and they're now inside the window casing on a spring loaded rod. The added layer is nice, and if I open the curtains, there's still a bit of privacy, too.

Curtains for this big of a window, for a pair of panels, runs about $50. My bill from Joann Crafts - which included a tape measure and pins, was $17. You do the math. Boom!

The only thing I didn't do was remember how high I had the brackets for the sheers in the first place. I'm going to have DH bring them down about an inch and a half and it'll hang properly. All in all, not too bad! By the end of the project, I was feeling really confident. There's not a lot of mystery in sewing, really, at least not in the simpler projects.

My next project, then, will be making curtains for the guest room, which gets the streetlight directly (blessing and curse). I'll make liners for those suckers. No idea when I'll get to that, but eventually.