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Come on over: http://marydell.livejournal.com/
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So we're licensed through 2012, for 2 children. It's weird to see it on paper - a license for the future we're hoping for.
]]>So far we've been shown to one potential mom, who didn't pick us. Another potential mom is on the horizon. If someone does pick us, then we wait until the baby is born to see if she decides to place or not. It's going to be a long, nerve-wracking few months/year. This is why I didn't want to do domestic in the first place...but. I keep reminding myself not to make it about me. I'm wishing for it to happen quickly, and not to cause me too much pain, but I'm not praying for that. My prayer is, "let the woman who needs me, find me." For that to happen I have to be more open, more trusting, and have more faith, than I would have believed I could be.
Let the woman who needs me, find me.
Yesterday we sat down and budgeted to figure out where all of the different fees and costs are coming from. We'll be maxing out our credit, most likely, but it's doable, and we feel very fortunate to be in the position we're in. Benefit of being middle-aged, I guess--our careers are in full swing, and things are going pretty well, financially.
So now I'm just trying to get a handle on having some kind of rhythm to my life while we wait. I went for a run today, and I went two days ago, and with perseverence I can get back into my every-other-day habit that I worked up to before it got cold. I have art projects to finish, and I have a lot of overtime to put in at the office, getting things ready for me to be gone for 4 weeks or maybe a little more. So it's not like I won't stay busy. But I've been doing paperwork for a couple of months straight, so it's odd to be back in the no-paper zone again.
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1. get fingerprinted for DCFS license - DONE. Waiting for results.
2. send DCFS paperwork to SW - DONE except for med forms, which can follow later
3. see doctor on Feb 2 (self) and Feb 11 (hub) to get med forms filled out. For China adoption, med forms require HIV status, TB test, assorted other stuff. For DCFS, it's mostly about whether you can lift a child and if you're likely to die before 18 years from now. No blood work, apparently. Whew. Because Tanya, my doctor's needle tech, is great, but she skips my shy elbow veins and goes in through the back of my hand. Which HURTS.
4. take cat to vet for new rabies shot. Need to do before SW visit so we have paperwork for her.
5. verify that batteries in smoke detectors are up to date
6. install bannister - DONE. This wasn't strictly necessary, but when you show your SW around the house and wave a hand at the basement stairs and say "we're going to put in a bannister soon" it's probably good to do it before her next visit a year-and-a-half later.
7. re-caulk the basement shower. Okay, ridiculous, SW won't care, but it really needs it, so we may as well tie that task to the adoption because then we'll get it done soon.
8. Go to Indy to meet with placement agency and get paperwork started with them, Jan 5. EEK
9. reserve hotel for Indy trip - yeah, really gotta do that, like NOW.
10. write "dear birthmother" letter, a task which squicks me on several levels. To be discussed in a future post, no doubt.
11. apply for 401k loan, which will cover about half the cost of the adoption. Our already-existing home equity line of credit (taken out for the China adoption) should cover the other half. Just in case, I also applied for an extra credit card, which hopefully will arrive soon.
12. re-work budget to figure out how to make the payments on the loans (totally doable) and daycare (doable with some sacrifices), possibly for twins (maybe not doable). (also totally unlikely to happen, but we need to know how we'd answer the question, should opportunity arise).
13. Take the online "conspicuous families" course recommended by our SW, soon
14. Take the local workshop on adoption & child development recommended by our SW, Feb 23
15. SW visit. She's been here before, so this is a followup/update visit. Probably will happen sometime in January.
16. Talk to my bosses to let them know I might need some unexpected FMLA leave in 2008 - DONE
17. Talk to my staff to let them know I might be vanishing for a month - will do that once the process is underway.
18. Hub has to talk to his bosses and find out if they do paid paternity leave at his company. If not, he has a lot of vacation he can take.
And in the land of China adoption, there's just one thing to do right now, and one to do later:
1. decide if we're going to file a new I-600, or if we let the I-171H expire and re-file in a couple of years when we're closer to a match
-and later-
2. decide if we're going to stay in the China program at all. Yeah, I said it. We'll decide this AFTER, and if, we complete a domestic adoption.
As for the LID date...Our LID is December 11 of 2006. As of this month, CCAA has matched folks through December 14 of *2005.* They've been doing between 6 and 8 calendar days per month. At that rate it will be approximately...[calculates]...one million years before we get a match. So we celebrated by filling out paperwork for our DCFS clearance, and I'm sending it to our SW today. This process will hopefully be a little faster, without interfering with the China process. We shall see.
Hub and I have been waiting for 12 months, and we expect to wait another 2 to 4 YEARS from now before we travel. Fortunately, China has explicitly said that if you adopt another child during the wait interval, it will not jeopardize your China adoption. So instead of China baby being our first child...we think she should be our second.
So. I've always wanted to adopt an african-american baby. I like the idea of being an interracial family (hence China), and this is something I've thought about since long before I got married or started trying to conceive. But over the years, I started to be unsure whether that's a good idea. Some years back, the National Association of Black Social Workers famously characterized placement of black children in white families as "cultural genocide" and opposed it in every case. And the difficulties of being black in america are so far beyond those of being asian, (both of which are so different from the white privelege I've always experienced) I've never been sure I would be able to teach a child to adequately navigate that.
But over the past two years, an interesting thing has happened. Every time I tell one of my white friends I'm adopting a Chinese baby, they praise me for my goodness (which, of course, has nothing to do with it - I just want a baby, damnit, and orphan adoption is my first choice...more on that down below). When I tell one of my black friends, their reactions range from a polite "oh, really? interesting. Why not a black baby?" to a fairly angry "HUH? why not black?"
So as we've been considering our options, I've been asking my black friends directly what they would think if we adopted a black baby. ALL of them have been way beyond encouraging. Not just "yes, do it," but "I'll help you, they'll have me as a resource, I know you're going to teach them to know their culture, it'll be great." And "do it right away." Total strangers at a party last night...WAY beyond encouraging. There was a black social worker at the party and he said that he places children in interracial situations because children need love, they need to be taught, they need to be raised so they can accomplish things, and racial identity is secondary.
Over the year I've been waiting for China I've done more research, and it seems like the "cultural genocide" idea is pretty hotly disputed; the NAACP came down on the opposide side of the debate, saying you can't deny a child a family based on his race. And I've read that a lot of black american children are being adoped by white people in europe and canada, because they don't have enough parents here. So they're losing their culture and their nation.
So we went and got fresh fingerprints, and I'm filling out paperwork to update our home study, and it's looking like we're going to do this. By the time we go to China to get our "first" child, we could have a 2-year-old "second" child in tow.
The kicker is that this will be an open adoption, which is scary, scary, scary, but also the only right way to do a non-orphan adoption, in my opinion. I have a family member who is a birth mother in a closed adoption, and I never, NEVER want to put anyone through anything like that. I don't want to put anyone through being a birth/first mom in an open adoption, either, because from what I can tell, relinquishment is hell, pure and simple. But some people don't have a choice, and hopefully we can craft something that will work without screwing anybody over.
More updates as we get our paperwork going and get 100% settled on our choice.
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I mean. Seriously.
]]>As for the basic concept, it's a chipper little satire about suicide. Some of my friends love it, some don't, and some would be freakin' horrified by it, so I'm not showing it to them. I expect many editors to reject it, either because they don't enjoy the concept, or because I didn't execute it well enough. Which is fine...getting this little bit of validation makes me eager to sub it again, and (much more important) eager to try writing something with more heart to it, so I can take another crack at F&SF.
Yay!
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This is a collage I made back in 1997 when I was learning Photoshop (starting to, that is. I'm still learning Photoshop!). It's about female sexuality, in case all the fruit doesn't make that apparent. Oh, my clever and ungodly serious 10-years-younger self! And I really called it the title shown up above, even though that's clearly a butter knife I've stuck into everything. I'm still quite fond of this image, though. I find the big stern lady unnerving, but as I recall, that was my intention.
Anyway, the source images are...hm. Big stern lady is some Gainsborough or other, little girl is Gainsborough's daughter (chasing a butterfly in the original...surprised I didn't work that in!). I'm pretty sure that's Mary Stuart being guided to the chopping block, and the nonchalant gal in the corner sure looks like she's by Alma-Tadema. As for the fruit images, god knows - something in a Christie's catalog, most likely, from the golden age of fruit pictures (17th century). Nowadays I'm careful about attribution, of course, but back in the dark ages it didn't occur to me to keep track.
These are my steps for overcoming the curse of handmedowns and garage sales. The first time takes a while but is worth it. Oh and it's kinda fun.
Ready? Okey dokey.
Go through all clothing you own.
Sort it into piles based on the following questions:
1. do I love it?
if no, put in pile A. if yes, proceed to 2.
2. does it fit?
if no, put in pile B. if yes, proceed to 3.
3. is it in good condition?
if no, put in pile C. if yes, go to 4.
4. does it flatter me?
if no, put in pile D. if yes, go to 5.
5. can I assemble an outfit that includes it?
if no, put in pile E. if yes, give it a little hug and hang it up--it is now officially part of your wardrobe.
Now, go through pile A and ask these questions:
6. do I wear this?
if yes, put in pile F. if no, proceed to 7.
7. do I feel I might need to wear this item at some point?
if yes, put in pile G. if no, proceed to 8.
8. do I feel compelled to keep this even though I'll never wear it?
if yes, put in pile H. if no, put in the discard pile.
Ok, so here's what to do with the piles:
Piles H and B should be packed up in boxes and stored until such time as you feel like doing this again for those items.
Items in piles G and F (unloved) should be systematically "upgraded" with similar items that you can say yes to questions 1-5 for. For instance, the blah interview suit that you keep just in case should be replaced with one you really love, as soon as you find it. In the meantime you put all those items in a different part of your closet and make a list that you take whenever you're shopping. In a year or two you'll have upgraded all of them and can discard or store them. I replaced all my baggy black tee shirts with fitted black tee shirts, for instance, over the course of year.
Items in pile C (beloved, but damaged) should be repaired, dry cleaned, or replaced. A little mourning party is acceptable for something great that's not salveagable.
Items in pile E (beloved orphans) should be taken shopping. Buy whatever you need to make a complete outfit with that item so that you can actually wear it.
Items in pile D (unflattering, and therefore undeserving of love, but loved anyway) should be played with in front of the mirror, preferably when you're in a good mood. The thing you love that just doesn't suit you because of the color or whatever can be worn anyway with the right hair, makeup, and other items. I had a coral color dress that was too bright for my pale skin, but with matching lipstick it worked, because the fabric and fit were wonderful. Pull together a whole look for that item that will let you feel good wearing it.
Now you should be done! You will have 3 sections of your closet and drawers now:
1. stuff I love and can't wait to wear
2. stuff I can't wear just yet but will once it's repaired or I have pieces to go with it
3. stuff I have to wear until I buy better stuff.
Keep it sectioned like that from now on. You will also have 2 sets of boxes:
1. stuff I hope to wear again
2. stuff I'm never gonna wear, but am keeping anyway.
And you'll have shopping lists
1.stuff I need to replace with better stuff
2.stuff I need to add to my wardrobe.
by Mary Dell (of course)
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