I just don't have the words.

It is never easy to hear about crimes committed against children, never. But there is something about the Karissa Boudreau case that strikes even closer to my heart. Maybe it is the short distance between our two communities. So close in fact that the woman who stole her life is housed in a building I drive past on my way to and from work every day. Perhaps it is because I know how cold and wet and dark a Nova Scotian winter is and I can't imagine worse place to die then laying on that cold ground. Perhaps it is because I wanted desperately for the gnawing suspicion that her mother was involved to be wrong.
If my suspicion was correct I needed for it at least to be a terrible accident. A fight between a stressed out, ineffective parent and a saucy preteen that escalated into a physical altercation, maybe a shove that led to a blow to the head and then blind panic. It would still be horrible, it would still be unthinkable that she staged such an elaborate lie, perpetrated such a fraud. But there is a hint of something you can almost wrap your head around. A mistake can happen so easily, situations can spiral out of control. That is what my heart wanted to believe. However today's revelation of what actually transpired is so much worse then I ever could have imagined. I am literally sick to my stomach reading the details of how this woman stole the life of her own child.

Like ships to sea I dip my spoon away from me...and other lessons from Mom

My mother was a dear. She was so funny and quirky and today I thought I would share some tidbits about her ('cause I am miss her, can you tell?)
When she ate toast she would not butter the whole piece, she would break off a piece at a time, butter it and then eat it.
She was totally addicted to Pepsi, she would drink a glass at breakfast.
She loved animals and we always had some kind of pet in the house.
There was a point in time when her love of animals did not extend to rodents. One year my brothers had to bring home mice or rats for the weekend (they were teaching them to go through a maze) and my mom FLIPPED OUT. That was Friday after school. By Sunday evening she was talking to them in a baby voice and did not want to send them back to the school.
She was very good at both knitting and sewing, neither a skill I inherited.
She smoked Export A green death right up 'til she got cancer. Then she stopped.
My mother loved the word fuck, no kidding, she loved it. She didn't use it a lot in front of me but I know she enjoyed the heck out of it.
She was was no kind of cook, sorry but it is true. Someone once gave her a recipe for boiling water. I am working hard to prove that cooking ability is not genetic.
For a woman who didn't cook she had an unholy amount of recipes. I know where I get THAT from.

Having a rough night, a reminder once again that grief is cyclical and can rear its ugly hear at any moment. Of course I have taken out my bad feelings on Gil. Poor man, some time he gets a $1000 fine for a $1.50 crime. I am going to bed now. I will start tomorrow fresh. You can't ask for much more then that.

I sense a disturbance in the force

So I am a tea drinker. I mean really I LOVE tea. However once a week or so I really need a cup of coffee. I love that cup of coffee. Not the same as I love me tea but with almost the same intensity. I really look forward to those cups of coffee. However lately something has been amiss. Lately I have been really enjoying my cup off coffee but a little while later something bad happens. About 20 minutes after the glorious cup of steamy hot love my guts start to roil. 10 minutes after that I am sure I am coming down with the worst stomach flu known to human kind. 5 minutes after that I remember I felt this way the last time I drank a cup of coffee. Oh dear! Oh god! Not my precious coffee. Et tu Juan Valdez!!
So what do I do? Give up the coffee I love altogether? Stick with my beloved tea and just be happy?

Some more adoption talk .....

I am sorry if this is getting boring but it is so heavy on my mind and in our lives at the moment. One of the major things round in my head is the pros and cons of transracial adoption. Actually I hate the term pro and cons here. But I can't find a better way of expressing myself at the moment. When I think of a better way to say it I will. I have been talking with our social worker. I have also been reading lots of books and blogs (as always) and of course Gil and I have been doing a LOT of talking. I have worries about our abilities to pass a cultural competence test.
Just as I have no preference for the gender of our child, I have no preconcived idea about the colour of his or her skin, the racial or ethnic background. I am prepared to integrate his or her life experience into ours, to become a truly blended family. But I can't see us as appearing anything other then white and nerdy. We really don't have connections to ANY community other then the geek community and that is very prominently white. I am willing to what I have to do for my child.
What I mean to say is that I don't know how to become culturally competent basically from scratch. At this point I should tell you I am very embarrassed and I am afraid that everything that come out of my mouth (or fingers) sounds completely moronic. So how does someone like me who has had very minimal experience with the African Nova Scotian community go from a dork walking on egg shells to a confidant, competent parent? I know this is a very BROAD question. But as I said I think it very important to address because I do want to have all the doors open for Gil and I and believe that our child is out there and I don't want the possibility of a match to be limited my my ignorance. Is it possible for a person or a couple to BECOME culturally competent or is it a you either are or aren't kind of thing?

Oh I love being right. This Saturday was awesome. A trip to the salon for a much desired wax. Breakfast with my hubby. Hours of hanging out with Aimee playing Sing Star. Amazing dinner with Terry and Sarah. Now I am snuggled down in my comfy bed under the covers ('cause it is DAMN cold in here, we need to do something about the insulation up here!) and I am listening to tunes on my iHome which was a birthday gift from my amazing husband. I thought I was ready for bed but then my brain started ticking away so I thought I might as well write.
Tonight I am doing a practice run with PJ's. I know that must sound so strange but I need to train myself to get used to it before we get a kid. I am going to try and convince Gil to do the same thing. I mean there may come a day when we will be comfortable sleeping in the buff, but with an older child coming into our home I think the safest, most responsible thing to do is be appropriately clothed as often as possible. For the first while it is going to be a lot like living with a stranger and we don't want to make him or her uncomfortable. Also the social worker might have something to say about it. In the same vein I also need to start peeing with the bathroom door closed. These are learned behaviors and it is never too soon to get started on them. I am pretty good with most things if I get in to the habit. I know I might be crazy for putting so much thought and energy into this at this stage in the game but I HAVE to think positive and be constructive with our time or I will go crazy.
I had lots of chat this past week with our social worker, looking for things that we (I) can be doing in this time to make things easier, to make us better candidates. So I have been in touch with the guidance councilor at our local elementary school to see what programs they have for children with challenges. That went really well and I got an email back from him two days later with a really good description of the extensive programs and resources they have available. SCORE.
I also made an appointment to go to the lawyer next week to have our will drawn up. This one cheeses me off a bit. I mean I know SO MANY people who don't have a will. Plus once we have a child we are just going to have an amendment to add them. But I have wanted a will anyway so this is a good enough reason to get it done.
We also have a fire escape plan now. In fact we have a fire escape plan the was done up with the aid of a real life fireman! He also tested all of our smoke alarms (all 5! of them) and put dates on them to show when they were tested! He was awesome, it is so good to have well connected friends. But seriously.... can you imagine if a parent was not allowed to leave the hospital with their new baby until they could prove they had a fire escape plan and adequate extinguishers?!! No one would have kids. But I don't mind jumping through the hoops. We made our choice and we stick by it and for now we place our faith in the system. In my life the system has actually really worked in my favour and I have to trust it again. With any luck they will see how hard we are working at this and give is all the gold stars and a child of our own to love. If not we will have the safest house on the block.
Tomorrow I am going to finish the painting in the dinning room. I feel really good about that because it has been my project and I want to have something to actually cross off my list. That is the thing about owning a house, the list NEVER gets any shorter. But it still feels really good. I still get the tummy wiggles every time we pull in the driveway. I love that.
Okay I am finally starting to feel a little sleepy so it is time for me to say good night. Play safe!

I have said it before and I say it again now. I love Saturday. Yes I almost always have TOO much to do but that is beside the point. It gets done at my own pace (read slowly but surely). Saturday always involves a god meal of some kind. It usually involves spending time with people I like. I can pretty much guarantee at some point there will be coffee. What is not to like about this?

Today I don't want to talk about adoption. I am spent there at the moment. I mean I will probably still be thinking about it but I want don't want to talk about it. I have a headache today. I feel like my cranium is playing host to a marching band convention. I think it is because the weather and pressure systems keep changing. My little noggin is very sensitive to these things. Yeah I know, my noggin is just sensitive. It is true, try as I may to toughed my hide I am just a sensitive individual. The funny thing about that is that it wasn't always the case. I went through a period where I was considered "hard". Here are 25 more things you may not know about me...

1) When I was in high school I wanted to be a cop.
2) I did not attend my grade 9 "graduation" because I had community service hours to do.
3) I hate wearing socks.
4) I can not stand Jelly Beans.
5) The exception to the jelly beans is Jelly Belly's they rock.
6) One of my best high school memories involves jelly belly's but I am not telling you what it is.
7) When I was little my older brother told me that Gene Simmons was my real father and I believed him.
8) I believe that if pain had a smell it would cinnamon hearts.
9) The first time I saw the mountains up close I literally lost my breath.
10) In my dreams I am still thin.
11) I don't have an ex's who I hate or even really dislike.
12) I always used to make my Barbies kiss each other while Ken went off to work.
13) When I was 8 I wanted to be a Gospel Singer.
14) I also wanted to BE the Virgin Mary.
15) I desperately wish I could be crafty.
16) I totally heart Martha.
17) I am addicted to magazines.
18) I am REALLY addicted to TV. The reason we don't have one hooked up is because I would watch it ALL THE TIME. I would rather have a life.
19) When my husband is away on business I keep a baseball bat in the bed with me. For protection.
20) Like Kelso I seemed to get poked in the eye more then my fair share.
21) I have no idea how to read music.
22) I tried to go blond once. It was BAD
23) Sometimes I actually read my spam.
24) I have kissed a stranger on the dance floor at the Dome. Shannon saved me from myself.
25)I do believe I have seen ghosts.

Mini-rant.

So I was doing some reading today... at the moment Blogs are like tv for me. Totally addictive. I was starting off actually doing some research for topic # 2 Polygamy (sounds like a fun topic right?!) Anyway I got distracted, which is not at all surprising. I was reading the blogs of a few other expectant adoptive moms and they all start out pretty much the same. Months or YEARS of dealing with infertility. Endless procedures, tests, miscarriages, doctors, disappointments. I wonder is there something wrong with me that I didn't try THAT hard? I am not going to be a dedicated a parent because I gave up after half a dozen rounds of Clomid? Is that how others see me? Is that how a social worker might see me? As uncommitted to parenthood? Let me be perfectly clear. I would love to get pregnant. I would love grow a life inside of me even though it seems a lot of women spend the best part of 9 months unwell. I would love to look at a child to see bits of Gil or me or our family members. I would love to do it all. But I want to be a parent MUCH more then that. I don't want to be a parent after I am exhausted by the disappointment. I don't want to adopt as last resort. Gil and I both feel like this is a natural progression for us. And it leaves our sanity pretty much intact. It is something we are able to go through together. That is important for me. I felt so alone in the fertility treatments. It is a very isolating world. Gil and I are going to be parents together, we are partners in the true sense. This is what works for us.

Questions and Answers

So I was reading the blog of another prospective adoptive mom in the states and she had this list of questions. She referred to them as the 19 infamous questions so I have decided that I should try and answer them here.

1. Describe your personality? Quirky, introspective, kind, impatient inquisitive
   
2. Describe your spouse’s personality? Funny, warm, extremely smart, awkward, solitary, passionate
   
3. What are your strengths? I think I am very good with people, I try very hard to be kind and compassionate and I am a nurturer.
   
4. What are your limitations? I have difficulty with change, I really need a stable routine or I get very out of sorts. Also I can be a very selfish person.
   
5. What do you feel are the strong points in your marriage? Our relationship is built on a very, very strong friendship. That often carries the day.
   
6. What do you feel are the areas for further growth in your marriage? We could always communicate better, I think we take for granted sometimes that the other person will know what is going on, what the plan is, or what we really mean.
   
7. How do you resolve conflict in your marriage? We talk about our problems. Some times it takes a while but not usually. Most often one or both of us need something to eat or some sleep, once that is done the talking comes easier. Also we both compromise when we need to.
   
8. What are your interests as an individual? Reading, exploring crafts although I am not really crafty, lately cooking. Spending time with my friends.
   
9. What are your interests as a couple? Gaming, traveling, food, books, movies, spending time with our friends.
   
10. What are your attributes that you feel best contribute toward your ability to parent? On one hand my nurturing nature and compassion. On the other hand my ability to be fun and silly.
    
11. Who/What has been the strongest influence in your life to date? My mother, both my brothers, Susan K, my time in care.
    
12. What do you regard as your greatest personal achievement to date? I feel like it was a big achievement to make it through care with a sense of pride, a sense of humour and with a heart full of compassion.
    
13. What three things would you most like to be said about you if you died today? She was a good wife, she was a good friend, she will not be forgotten.
    
14. What are your needs as a person? Which ones are satisfied within your family, your work, in recreational activities, in other ways? My goodness, this is a loaded question. Okay well of course I have my very basic needs, beyond those I need to feel like a productive member of my community and a contributor to my family. I don't love my job but it pays me every two weeks like clock work which allows me to pay some bills which really makes me feel good as a person. I need to be in contact with my friends. At the moment that is easy to do with weekly get-togethers for geeking or crafting or drinking coffee. I imagine that gets harder when you have children. I need to feel valued a person. Gil is the main (though not exclusive) source of satisfaction here. Gil makes me feel like a good person.
    
15. In what ways would you find satisfaction and fulfillment if you never had children? Of course I have thought about this. What if it never happens for us? In many ways I am sure life would be easier. We would travel and read and sleep in on Saturdays. We would have lunches with friends and I would quit my job and go back to school in a heart beat. I would work on the book I have always wanted to write. We would invest our lives and money on our house and friends and family and each other. Our life would have meaning (as it does now), but I don't think I would ever be 100% satisfied.
    
16. What are your most important values? Love, family,trust, honesty, independence, humour, loyalty and friendship
    
17. What are your expectations for your child? I expect that it won't always be easy, that we will have struggles but that at the end of the day love will win.
    
18. What goals do you wish your child to achieve? It is hard to discuss goals for a hypothetical child. Lots of course will depend on the the individual. I want my child to always try. She or he doesn't have to always succeed, lord knows I don't. But I hope they try.
19. What are your thoughts on the following:

• Parenting - The hardest job a person will ever do. There is no rule book and more people should ask for help when they feel like they don't know what they are doing. Also the most rewarding experience a person can have.
  
• Discipline - not punishment. Like being good at a sport or instrument or video game takes discipline, practice, coaching.
  
• Love - is the most important thing in the world and people need to stop hoarding it and start spreading it around. It is a verb not a noun. It takes dedication and discipline
  
• Positive Self-Image - This is so important. There is a lot of talk about the need for young ladies to have a positive self image and they do but so do young men. Feeling confidant to make good decisions, to partake in the world, to love ones self. This is what I want for my children, myself, the world.
  
• Negative Self-Image - Is a learned behavior. Messages picked up around people whether they are overt or not dictate how we feel about ourselves. You can't talk about how fat you are and how you need to go on a diet and then tell your kid to love their body just as it is. You can't ignore a person and expect them to feel worthy. With adopted children you can't speak ill of their biological parents and expect them not to be impacted by that.
  
• Adoption - Clearly I am pro-adoption and I think that is a wonderful way to form a family but it is not without it's complexities and issues. It is NOT the same as having a biological child and saying so negates the adopted child's experience.
  
• Biological Parents - I admit I have some reservations here. But in talking and reading over the past few months I have really begun to feel differently on the subject. I was afraid at first that our child would be confused about the roles of the biological parent vs us. I was worried that the biological parents or family might meddle in out life. I won't lie, I was worried that my kid might not love me as much if I had to share him or her with another mother. But I have been doing so much reading of birth mom blogs, and blogs of family with open adoptions. Plus I have talked to a few women I know who are birth moms and it has been very enlightening. I still have worries but I think that in the long run contact with the birth family is what is best for my child and THAT is the most important thing.
  

How cool kids like me spend Saturday night....

Well having spent the whole day priming the lower walls of my dinning room and front entry for a coat of fresh white paint, organizing the junk drawer and doing GREEN BIN duty I decided that rather then going out and spending money I don't have I was going to stay in. Oh yeah I am a real rebel in my advancing age. So my evening includes plans for a bath, reading up on an adoptive mother blog that I really enjoy and having a cup of tea. For most people making a cup of tea is a fairly brainless activity but for me it is a very complex ritual with lots of thoughts and planning. I thought I would share some of that with you... oh yeah we are going there....


First thing we have to do is choose what KIND of tea we are having. In my house you have a lot to pick from. This year for my birthday I received ELEVEN kinds of tea. No repeats, no duplicates. I think that my friends are really trying to tell me something. This does not include the six or eight kinds of tea I already had. I believe that there is a tea for every occasion. This year I got a lot of loose teas. You will see why in a moment.





For this evening I choose this little cutie. A birthday gift from Ang that came as part of a trio. It is caffeine free which is good because I have had way more then my share today. It is made with rooibos, mint and chamomile and smells amazing. Actually it smells a wee bit like licorice too.







Look at this stuff!! No wussy tea here! Isn't it divine?








This little baby here is the reason for all the loose tea. This year was mine and Gil's second wedding anniversary and the traditional gift is cotton. Gil found this cool guy and a bunch of other lovely cotton goodies online made by real honest to goodness hippies!! I love hippies. This reusable cotton tea infuser is so delightful and I feel really good about myself and the world when I use it.









Ready to Brew!!








Filled with hot water in one of my favorite mugs. There slots in the tea bag which you can put a spoon threw, or a pen, or a chop stick... the point it you don't have to pull the bag out of the hot water with your fingers.
I love it!









No cup of tea is complete for me with out this guy. Oh Billy Bee!


You are the bee's knees!!






I am going to enjoy my tea now! I hope you all have a lovely Saturday night. Cheers.

Some thoughts on permanence

Permanence... it is a HOT word in the field a foster and adoption care. A buzz word grouped with so many others like reunification, concurrent planning or transition. But like so many words when you start batting it around over and over it starts to lose its meaning, it becomes this abstract concept, like when you say tree 100 times and it ceases to have any significant meaning.
The ultimate goal of adoption is permanence and has a special place in my heart; it a large part of why adoption is so appealing to me in the first place. I can tell you first hand the importance of permanence and stability in the life of a child. From the moment I was born there was no stability in my life. I try extra hard not to sound bitter when I talk about it but it is hard, especially for people who don't know me well. I have only lived one life so for me it is "normal", it is what I know, what I have grown comfortable with. Unfortunately that means I accept or worse anticipate that people who I love and who are supposed to love me will just up and leave; that I will be moved; that circumstances are almost always beyond my control; and the no matter how much a person loves you they can hurt you.
Gil and I have been together for six and a half years now and despite some moves and job changes things have been very stable for me. This has give me the time and strength to work on overcoming the challenges that years and years of instability have left in their wake. We have a home now and it our permanent home base, this is the ultimate win for me.
I have always envied my peers who have had a home and family to always go back to even if just for the holidays or to do laundry. A parent to call for a special recipe or to bounce an idea off of. A room or a house or a neighbourhood that says "I'm home".
One of my greatest goals as a parent is to provide that for my child and especially for a child who has already had so much upheaval in their life. I want Gil and I to mean home and safety to someone else as we do now for each other.

The joys of womanhood

I would like to start this by saying I have never been a man. It is important that you know this so that you know that I am talking about this topic from a very biased position. I am sick of the crap that I go through every year based solely on my gender. I had almost come to accept that once a month I will feel sick, have a head, have mood swings I can't control, have sore boobs, cramp and bleed. It was much easier to swallow that when the pay off was that one day I would be able to create life in my womb, now that I have been declared a barren waste land the period just seems like a slap in the face.
On top of this lets add our yearly pap test. You want me to what??? Crawl up on the table, cover my self with a piece of paper so some doctor can make a human hand puppet out of me?!! I swear to god the next doctor who tells me to "skootch down" is getting a kick in the teeth. There is nothing pleasant about this procedure. NOTHING. Having said that I fully believe that every woman should have one every year. It is better to have it done, no matter how uncomfortable, then risk the possible consequences of NOT doing it.
Now I have another painful, humiliating, absolutely necessary yearly procedure to add to the heap. Once a year I now get to go have ball bearings tapped my breasts squeezed, slammed, pulled and tugged between slabs of metal and plastic. I get to start early because my mother died of breast cancer as a young woman. I can look forward to doing this excruciating dance at LEAST once a year for ... we basically the rest of my life.
As I have said I do these things because I believe at in the long run they will add to my quality of life. I believe that they are important and I preach to all my girl friends to have them done. But that is my problem, I only need to preach to the girls. What do the guys have to do??
Anyway I off to have a hot cup of tea and nurse my poor mashed up girls back to health.

Oh and just so you know I have started working on topic #2! Yeah I know it has been a LONG time coming.

Bugger....

So if you are friends with me on facbook then it is no shock when I tell you that I have lately been having a very hard time at work. I am very unhappy there, very very unhappy. I don't know what to do. It is not a good time, economically speaking to go hunting for another job. I keep thinking if I can just tough it out until I go on parental leave when we finally get an adoption and then we can re-visit the issue. But I don't know if I can hold out that long. Every day is worse then the one before and I get a deep feeling of sadness in my chest when I think about going to work. Not fear, not panic,but sadness and dread. It shouldn't be like this. We spend so much of our lives working. Shouldn't it be.... shouldn't it not make you sad. I feel like every thing else in my life is in such a good spot but work is this dark cloud that is casting a shadow on everything. This is not a good way to live. So what do I do? Where do I go from here? I can't quit without somewhere to go. But I don't want to head to another dead end sales job. I don't know what else I am qualified to do. I am lost. I need guidance.

rant...

The great conundrum of being a prospective adoptive parent is that you want to get ready, you want to have some level of preparedness but it is almost impossible. I have a crib in storage as well as a play pen and a baby monitor but I don't know if I will ever need them. I have a bed and I am looking for a bunk bed but I don't know if it will just be a colossal waste of money. We might not be approved. I mean really, we might not. I can't understand why we might be denied, but I have to emotionally prepare for the possibility that it could happen. How do that? How do I get excited and make preparations and all the while remain emotionally detached? I don't know if I have that in me. So far I have been pretty cool about the whole thing.

Preparing to turn 34....

According to an article 34 is the most expensive year of a persons life. I can see how this might happen for me. We have a new house I want to decorate. We want to have a child in our home before the year is out and as I understand it children are expensive. I want 2 or three new major appliances. I want to get my drivers license which will involve lessons. So yeah, basically I am going to be a one woman economic stimulus package.
It is strange you know, when I turned 30 I kept waiting for the freak out and it never happened. I mean isn't thirty that magical age when most women lose their shit? I loved 30, I breezed through it like a stroll in the park. It was one of the best years of my life. Actually my thirties have been pretty remarkable all round. Certainly an improvement over my twenties which I would not repeat for love or money. I digress, I did not wig when I turned 30 but for some reason the looming 34 has me on edge. I don't really know why. In my moments of distress I have bemoaned that I am stuck in a dead end job, I am barren AND childless. Those dark moments are pretty rare. They are usually days associated with high hormone activity (like my own person 40 days and 40 nights which is blessedly over now) or when I am dangerously over tired. In reality I have nothing to fear from 34. It is not like there is anything particularly scary about that number. Well I lie. There is something a little scary. 34 is exactly 10 years younger then my Mother was when she died. I know it doesn't MEAN anything... but those little things they eat at a person very slowly and subtly. I am going to make it my mission to overcome this fear. I know that you can't have a great day EVERY day but this year I am going to make it my goal to have more days that are good, that are happy, that are productive. Less days with poor me parties, less days where I feel disconnected from the world, less days where I take out my frustrations on my husband and other loved ones. This is the year I learn to roll with the punches, to not fall apart when the plan changes. This is the year I stop taking things so personally. This is the year I start placing my faith in others, in god and in myself.
Is that too tall an order?? Nah, I don't think so either.

We'll take a cup of kindness yet, for auld lang syne...

Well the first day of 2009 has been a pretty good one. we spent last night with just a few friends and some food and a couple of drinks. The weather which was truly frightful kept things pretty subdued which is of course what I like. When we got home at about 12:20am I checked my Facebook before heading to be and found out that a couple who went through PRIDE with us have a brand new baby boy. They got a new born which is just incredible. I am so thrilled for them, and of course green with envy.
I spent most of today packing up all the Christmas decorations and getting the house ready for my big slumber party on the weekend. I would be totally psyched if I didn't have such a rotten headache at the moment. I am sure it is caused by all the funky weather. It actually snowed for more then 24 hours. It is madness but beautiful of course. If only I was going to get a snow day out of it, but I won't. Tomorrow morning I am going to have to drag my sad ass out of bed and go to work and there will be NOTHING to do there because the rest of the world is pretty much shut down for business. Next year if I am not off on leave I am taking a big chunk of time off over the holidays. I just could not afford to do that this year.
I haven't made any resolutions per se for this year but I hope to live well. I hope to be a good wife and a good friend.
I hope you all enjoyed a day off. I hope you are filled with the spirit of possibility.