In Which I Look Ahead

We had a busy day today, and I'm pretty tired!  From the way my throat feels right now, I suspect I might be coming down with a bit of a cold.  It's that season, after all.  The kids still seem to be feeling pretty good though, so that's a relief.  It's tough when everyone gets sick.

It's been interesting hearing about Jeremy's first days of clinical rotations as he gets settled in to the new phase of his schooling.  Obviously there's a lot he doesn't share with me since the privacy of patients is really important, but it's great to hear the enthusiasm in his voice when he talks about his work.  I'm so glad that he's finding it so interesting, and I think he's really going to be a fantastic PA once he's finished.

I've been trying to do some more serious writing in the past couple of weeks; I'm starting to look forward to the time when Jeremy graduates, and while it's still almost a year away it's not too soon for me to start thinking about my plans once he's home.  If I want to eventually return to school, I need to start building up a more significant body of work.

Since I've been out of college for ten years now, I doubt my professors would even remember me-- let alone be willing to write me recommendations for graduate school.  That means I'll have to rely largely on my writing skills to find acceptance into a good school, so I need to work hard-- especially if I'm going to attempt to win a grant or scholarship, which I'll likely need as Eden's education will be our priority.  Most low residency graduate programs with a focus in English or creative writing are extremely competitive, and scholarships are even more so.

So I've got to make sure to practice my skills as much as possible in order to have a chance at getting a slot.  Cramming extra writing in on top of my current sort-of-single parenthood, caregiving, and all the other obligations I have right now is a challenge, but I've got to make it a priority if I want to meet my goal.  I love being a mother and a caregiver, and those are my main concerns right now, but that doesn't mean that's all I want to be.  I think it's important to remind myself sometimes that I'm not defined solely by my role as a mother, and that there are dreams it's important for me to hang onto if I want to be true to myself.

~Jess

In Which We Have A Quiet Day

Today Connor had his first seizure since that whopper over spring break.  It was only about a minute and a half long, but it makes me wonder if maybe he's catching the cold I'm still getting over.  I've passed it along to Eden for sure; she's just really starting to sound hoarse.  We'll see what Connor sounds like tomorrow, but I wouldn't be surprised if he's coming down with it too.

Connor didn't have physical therapy today because we did it yesterday, so things ended up being fairly quiet around here.  He took a pretty good actual nap (another sign that he's probably getting sick) and I took the opportunity to catch up on a bit of housework and do some writing.

I'm really struggling at finding a good time and place to write at the moment.   I've always much preferred writing in the evenings out at a coffee shop or somewhere away from the house, and that's just not feasible right now since we don't have respite care at the moment.  Finding time and a place that works for me during the day while the kids are in school is difficult; I always feel like I should be doing something else, like unloading the dishwasher or something.

Oh well-- I'll keep plugging away at it and I'm sure that eventually I'll form new habits and things will get easier!

~Jess

In Which We Have A Slow Day And Think About The Future

Today I spent a good portion of my alone time while the kids were in school napping.  I never used to be able to nap, but it has now become one of my favorite activities.  This is probably a sign that I'm firmly out of young adulthood and trundling on towards middle age.  Either that or I'm turning into a cat. 

Hey.  It could happen.

Anyway, Connor spent a good portion of the day napping as well-- he kept nodding off in his wheelchair, though apparently he lasted through school all right.  Thankfully he crashed as soon as I put him down for bed tonight, so hopefully by tomorrow he'll have mostly caught up on sleep and will be back to his usual cheery self.  He was a bit grumpy today.  Staying up for forty-four hours straight tends to have that effect on people.

Once I managed to get up and moving, I went down to Target to pick up Connor's medication and to find myself a new notebook.  I've been trying to get more involved in my serious writing projects recently, and whenever I start a new writing project I have to buy a new notebook.  This is completely regardless of the fact that I already have about forty half-filled notebooks stashed away in various corners of the house.  I really pity whoever has to go through my stuff after I die, because since I plan to live to at least a hundred and twenty they are probably going to have a lot of recycling to do. 

I'm starting to try and write more for a couple of reasons.  The first is that I really love writing and it's a hobby I can do indoors with the kids, which is where I'm going to be spending a lot of my summer.  The second reason is that in another five or six years, when Jeremy is out of school and is allowed vacation time and the kids are a bit older, I'd like to find a low residency program and go back to college an earn either an M.A. or an M.F.A. in creative writing. 

However, in order to do that I'd need to actually have a body of work-- preferably published work-- to show in my application.  Also Eden will be pretty close to college by that point, and paying for one college education will be bad enough without tacking on one I would be doing less for career opportunities and more for personal gratification.  This means I will likely have to manage to land a scholarship to be able to attend, and most of the ones connected with writing are merit based. 

So you know, actually writing something once in a while that isn't a blog I cobbled together in fifteen minutes might be a good idea, right?

~Jess

In Which I Don't Write For A While And Explain Why

So I haven't blogged in about a month.  Many of you have e-mailed me or left comments asking how we're doing, which I really appreciate. 

And the truth is, we're doing okay.  Not wonderful, but okay.

Don't worry; it's not Connor.  He's fine.  More than fine actually-- he's thriving right now.  It's just that it turns out that this parenting two kids thing is kind of tough.  I know, who would have guessed, right?  It's without a doubt the best thing I've ever done and I have zero regrets, but I'm not going to pretend it's all roses and sunshine over here.  Our daughter is dealing with some really big feelings, and she's still developing the tools she needs to handle them.  Things are slowly improving, but it's a process that's going to take a long time.  She's a fantastic kid and a survivor, and she's learning and growing in leaps and bounds every day.  But we are definitely experiencing some challenging parenting moments right now.

So one of the reasons why I haven't been blogging is that I've been trying to figure out where my boundaries are in terms of transparency and honesty versus being sensitive about respecting our daughter's privacy.  I've always been a fairly open and frank blogger in terms of how I write about my experiences, but I want to make sure that what I'm putting down here is something that "Ellen" will be okay with having in the public eye.  Once her English improved to the point where I'm sure she understood what I was asking, I had a discussion with her about how comfortable she is with me writing about her.  She gave me pretty much free reign.  That's a tremendous gesture of trust in me on her part, and I want to make sure I honor that. 

So I'm still hashing out exactly how much detail I'll go into in regards to exactly what issues we're dealing with around here. Please bear with me on that one, okay?  I don't want to give you the impression that they're life-threatening or anything out of the realm of the ordinary for a child adopted at an older age; in fact we were expecting to potentially deal with much greater issues than what we've seen, and for the most part our girl is doing beautifully.  But the fact remains that she is facing some pretty significant challenges emotionally and behaviorally.  I do want to keep in mind that anyone can see this blog, and I don't want to write anything that might be potentially embarrassing to her in the future if, say, one of her classmates was to stumble upon it.

Another thing we've discussed in recent weeks is exactly what our daughter would like to be called on here.  She's decided to take an American first name when we finalize the adoption in July, and after a bit of experimentation and a lot of poring over baby name books she seems to have settled pretty firmly on one.  She'd like me to start calling her by that name on the blog, and since it's not currently her legal name that isn't a problem in terms of our agreement with our agency.  So she's chosen the name "Eden," and I'll be referring to her here that way from now on.  We'll see if that's still what she wants to go by come July, but she seems pretty stuck on it.  In the meantime, Eden it is! 

Goodness knows she has much better taste than I would have if I'd been given the opportunity to name myself at fifteen.  I was heavily into a hippy-dippy bad poetry phase at the time and probably would have named myself something like "Ebony Rose Skylark Meadowsong."  It would not have been good.

Anyway, now for something completely different.  It's time for a bit more transparency on another topic, which will also help explain my recent absence from the Internet.  I kept this concealed at the time for a variety of reasons, few of which apply anymore, so now I can share.  Savvy readers might have noticed that pictures and writing about Jer dropped off sharply a few months ago.  I think I mentioned once waaaaaaaaaaaay back in 2010 that he was taking prerequisite classes in preparation for applying to the army's Physician's Assistant Program, and then I never said anything about it ever again.  What I've been neglecting to mention for, um, a while is that he applied, and he was accepted (of course, as the man is brilliant-- not that I have a biased opinion or anything), and he started up the program last July.  It happens to be on the other side of the country-- down south in Texas.

And we, of course, couldn't go with him.

Connor doesn't sweat, and taking him down to live in an area that gets to 115 degrees in August would be a Rather Poor Parenting Decision on our part.  So we made the extremely difficult decision to do the long-distance marriage thing until the first part of Jer's PA school is complete.  We're then really hoping he'll be able to get a special dispensation to move back up this way for the second phase of PA school.  I'm so proud of him and he's been doing very well in school, which is no surprise.  I also miss him terribly.  He's been gone for about ten months now, and we have about eight months left to go.  In other words, I've been doing the sort-of-single-parent thing for nearly a year now. 

This is not particularly fun.

We talk to him every day, of course, and Skype when our lousy Internet connections allow for it.  He's able to visit us during semester breaks as well, which is pretty fantastic.  And he's not deployed, which we're very grateful for.  But it's pretty hard not having him here, and I'm definitely being stretched in a lot of ways.  As a result, when I'm not dreaming about Jer being home again, a lot of my current fantasies involve going away for a whole weekend to some little Bed and Breakfast with a maid, a 24-hour tea and chocolate service, a large bathtub and a suitcase full of books.  And I would go there By Myself.  To be All Alone.  And it would be marvelous.

I don't want to make it sound like things are falling apart around here.  They aren't.  We're actually having a lot of wonderful moments.  In the past month Connor had his birthday, took his first step ever in a walker (and then got very surprised when we started cheering and refused to do it again), Eden got her ears pierced, went roller skating, and discovered the wonders of fresh-picked corn on the cob from the farmer's market and I've spent a ton of time playing out in the garden.  So there's actually been some really wonderful stuff happening around these parts.

But in the process of trying to avoid talking about Jer being gone and figuring out what to say or not say about Eden and also doing the eight bajillion things that one does as a parent of a seven year old and a teenager, blogging started to seem less like a pleasure and more like extra work.  And if there's one thing I don't need around here right now, it's extra work.  So I stopped and took a step back.  And it was only yesterday that I realized I was beginning to genuinely miss writing here to you, and I knew it was time to start up again. 

So sorry for disappearing on you all like that.  I'm still here, we're still trucking along, and I'm still going to write about it.  No guarantees on quality, but I'm going to do my best to get back in the habit of writing every day. 

Thanks for being patient with me!

~Jess

In Which I Turn On The Waterworks For A Good Cause

Today after I dropped Connor off at school I grabbed my lap top and writing notebook and headed down to one of the local coffee shops to get some work done.  I'm giving a speech on Saturday for a fundraiser being held by Children's Therapy Center-- the fantastic organization that did Connor's therapy for a number of years-- and I needed to transcribe my speech to a Word document so I could send it to the organizer of the event. 

I am not what you would call a particularly gifted public speaker; actually I have terrible stage fright and really dislike being in the spotlight.  But the topic I'm speaking on-- Connor-- is one I'm an expert in.  Actually (as the 1300+ blog posts here testify) it's pretty difficult to get me to shut up about the kid.  I had to cut large portions of my first draft when I read it out loud and discovered it was nearly three times longer than my allotted speaking time.  Whoops. 

So at least I won't run out of things to say.  The next problem I have to tackle is that I seem to be completely unable to read the thing out loud without weeping all over the place.  I can make all right until about halfway through when I start talking about all of the "firsts" Connor had at CTC-- first time sitting on his own, first time standing, etc. and then I lose it.  Heck, I can't even type the thing without crying; I was sitting in the coffee shop this morning clattering away on the keyboard with tears streaming down my face.  The other customers gave my table a wide berth.

So I'm not entirely sure how successful this whole speech thing is going to be.  But I'll do my best and we'll see how it goes.  If nothing else I'm looking forward to the chance to meet up with my friends at CTC and my lovely ladies from my roller derby league the Dockyard Derby Dames, who will be helping out at the event because they are awesome.  If you're in the local area, you should come!  If nothing else, watching me attempt to give an actual speech without freaking out and/or leaking all over the stage should be highly amusing.  And hey, it's a great cause!

~Jess


  

In Which I Am Not Top Chef

Today was a Crock Pot Surprise sort of day, which is when I am cleaning the kitchen and making dinner consists of throwing a whole bunch of things into a pot and hoping the result is edible.  I actually make most of my meals this way, come to think of it.  I've managed to come up with some pretty tasty stuff every once in a while, though I've also served some pretty spectacular failures.

The problem with cooking like this is that you never end up with the same meal twice.  There have been a few times that I've made really tasty meals that I've never been able to duplicate because I don't measure anything and I never write any of the ingredients down.  I've considered writing up some recipes, but that never works out both because of the whole not-measuring-anything issue and also because I get off on huge tangents and my recipes end up being three pages long.  Take tonight's dinner, which is something I'm calling beef stew because it happens to have beef in it.  I liked the results and tried writing it down, and I ended up with this:

1.) Peel and chop 1/2 onion, a parsnip, some carrots, a few small potatoes or substitute whatever root vegetables you happen to have in your kitchen and 1 apple and put in crock pot.  Cut up a whole mess of beef chuck, dust with a heaping spoonful of sweet rice flour (regular flour will work too) and add to pot.  Pound a couple of garlic cloves, a smallish chunk of palm sugar and a piece of fresh ginger about as big around as your pinky together in a mortar and pestle and then add to the other stuff.  Brown sugar will work too if you don't have palm sugar, but don't use plain because what's the point. 

Add a generous dollop of fish sauce, a pinch of pepper and a heaping spoonful of Thai roasted red chili paste-- that kind made by Thai Kitchen that comes in the little glass bottle with a black lid. It's mild enough to eat right off the spoon-- it adds just a bit of a kick and a nice smoky flavor. Yum!  If you don't have roasted red chili paste for Pete's sake don't use more than three fresh Thai chilies unless you really like spicy food or you will sear the roof of your mouth right off. 

Stir up the whole mess and then throw in a single bay leaf, because it's a rule that all meals identifying as stew have to have a bay leaf in them.  Pour in plain apple cider until you're halfway up the ingredients and then top off with water until all the stuff in the pot is covered.  Toss in a packet of mulling spices and a small hunk of frozen beef stock (if you are out of homemade beef stock you can use the paste, but skip this if all you've got is the cubes because they're too salty).  Throw in a shot of Tuaca or Fireball for added flavor.  Shot for the cook optional.  Cover and cook until done.

Just realized I put all of that as one instruction.  Whoops.  Anyway, this goes really well with a big ol' hunk of dark bread with lots of butter and a glass of milk on the side. 

After reading that, not only is that meal kind of bizarre (Mulling spices and fish sauce?  Really?) but it's pretty well useless as a recipe because unless you speak Southern Cooking Dialect you probably have no idea what a 'whole mess' or a 'generous dollop' would look like.  I don't speak with a southern accent, but apparently I cook in one. 

So yeah, I don't think a recipe book is going to be happening any time in the near future. 

~Jess

In Which I Write Way, Way Way Too Much About Very Little

Connor's seizure count today: four.  Of course after he had his first one before seven in the morning I told his teacher that he'd be having some during the school day for sure.  Of course he had a fantastic seizure free school day, and then started up with the seizures again five minutes after we got home.  Isn't that the way it always goes?

In other news, this seems to be my 1,000th blog post.  Holy crap that's a lot of listening to me drone on about covert pediatric laxative buying, insane cats and possibly illegal amounts of chocolate consumption.  I'm not sure if I should congratulate people who've read the whole entire thing or question their sanity.  Either way, party hats for you all!

I have no plans to stop writing any time in the near future, because it's an ingrained habit now and also because I get at least ten e-mails wondering why the heck I haven't blogged any time I skip a day.  So I'm pretty sure I'll still be doing this when I'm eighty, only then I'll be blogging about things like misplacing my teeth and how I like to threaten random bystanders with my jewel topped cane.  I plan on being a wickedly eccentric old lady, which, judging from where I am now, should not be difficult.

Fun fact: if I did indeed blog every day from now until I was eighty, I will have written over 19,000 blog posts.  Wow.  That's makes hitting 1,000 posts look kind of insignificant.  Maybe I'll hold off on the party hats for a few decades.

Of course I'm not sure what I'd be celebrating anyway-- it's not like I put a whole heck of a lot of effort into these things, as is probably painfully obvious.  I just sit down before bed and write about whatever happened that day, and if nothing happened I either write about that or digress off on some crazy tangent about velociraptors or possibly cheese.  I like cheese.

Um, so yeah.  1,000 blog posts.  Crazy.

~Jess

In Which I Eat Gerbil Stew And Grow An Herb Garden For Nefarious Purposes

Today we got Ellen's letter back from the translator!  So now we just have to print it out and figure out which pictures we want to send with it and we'll be able to get her care package in the mail. 

I'm so glad that we have a translator available to us, though I wish I knew Thai well enough that we didn't need to use one.  Since I spent quite a bit of time in college studying various translations of poetry and fiction, I'm well aware that word choice can make such a difference in the tone and meaning of a letter.  While I have no doubt the translator did an absolutely fantastic job-- she has a ton of experience and a great reputation-- I'm anal and nit-picky like that and wish I could do it myself.  Maybe one day a few years in the future I'll be good enough to manage it.  In the meantime we'll rely on the translator.  It's either that or write her letters composed entirely of the eight or so words I know in Thai.  No doubt they would make a really good impression.

Of course I could always save us some money and plug the letters we write into Google Translate, because it does a really professional job.  It's easy to determine just how accurate of a translation you get with the program-- you just copy whatever you've written into Google Translate, change it over to Thai, and then change the Thai back to English.  Here's the first paragraph of our letter:

"Hello!  This is our first letter to you, and it’s so difficult to figure out what to say because we have so many things we want to tell you.  We are so excited about making you a part of our family, and we can’t wait to meet you for the first time!  Our adoption dossier is in Thailand right now but it will probably be many months before we are cleared by the government to travel, so in the meantime we’ll be sending you packages and writing you letters so that you can get to know us a little better and to make the wait not seem quite as long."

And here's Google Translate's version:

"Hello!  (untranslatable sentence) Our dossier is accepted in the country right now.  It may be several months before we were washed out by the government to travel, so in the meantime, we will send you a package and letter writing you so that you can get to know us a little.  Better and do not seem to be waiting a very long time. "

See!  Our daughter could have tons of fun trying to figure out what the heck we are talking about.  Highlights include when I tell her about roller derby, which is translated as "a woman who is very popular here and has been on a roller skate," and about how we don't let the gerbils out in the house because "I would love to make dinner out of them."

Yum.  Gerbil stew is my favorite.  Oh, and also I apparently grow an herb garden because I'm planning on cooking my mother.  Sorry, Mom.

So I think I'll let a person who actually knows what they are doing translate our letters into something that, um, makes sense.  That way our daughter won't believe that my cooking is quite a bit more exotic than the average American household prepares.

Yeah.

~Jess

In Which Connor Has An Uplifting Experience And Jer And I Write A Letter

Connor had no seizures today!  Whoo hoo!  He was pretty feisty today; we did a whole lot of standing practice and he's started doing something new.  He very carefully lifts one leg up and puts his full weight on the other leg!  This is a huge step (almost literally) for him, as this is the first time he's realized he can lift a leg up and put it down without falling over.  He still needs plenty of support and balance from us, of course, but it would be amazing if we could get him to the point where he could use a walker and be able to move around independently.  Yay Connor!

Today Jeremy and I finally finished up Ellen's letter for her latest care package.  It was so incredibly difficult to figure out what to say!  It's about a page and a half long and took me about three hours to write, which is around two hours and forty-five minutes hours longer than it normally takes me to write a letter of that length.  Hopefully now that we have our introduction letter out of the way future letters will be much easier to compose.  We've sent it off to our adoption agency for translation, and hopefully when we get it back in a week or two we can send Ellen's care package on its way to her!

We'll probably start working on the next one right away.  Packages are pretty expensive to send to Thailand and we don't want to overwhelm her, so we're limiting ourselves to about one a month.  It takes us a little while to find just the right things to put in them though, so that's okay!

~Jess

In Which I Am Not Ready For 2011

 

Christmas 2008

Is 2011 seriously here?  Someone needs to slow the clock down, because I am so not ready. 

I mean, Connor turns five in 2011.  Five.  That's halfway through a decade, for Pete's sake.  My little guy is not ever allowed to turn five, so 2011 will just have to turn back into 2010.  That kid is getting entirely too big.  And what about me?  I'll be a scant year away from thirty years old, which is completely unacceptable.  Of course I already have grey hair, but seriously I'm not finished with my twenties yet.

Besides, I haven't fully recovered from 2010 yet.  I mean, look at all of the stuff that happened!  Jeremy got back on his feet, we moved into our amazing house, experienced gerbil cannibalism, started the adoption process, Connor had about eight billion seizures but also began standing with support, and I joined roller derby-- among many other crazy things!  Not exactly the boring year I was hoping for, but overall we had a pretty good time anyway.  So I figure we should throw at least a couple more days of 2010 in there just to give Jer and I a chance to kind of wrap everything up. 


Christmas 2009



 Oh, and did I mention that this is my 753rd blog post?  There's nothing particularly special about that number except that seriously how the heck have I written 753 blog posts?  That is a staggering amount of writing about things like poop explosions.  And since I don't exactly put a ton of effort into these things (because then blogging would be work and I wouldn't want to do it anymore) goodness knows how many times I've used the words 'really,''very,' and 'anyway' in that ridiculous number of posts.  I haven't exactly been writing the Great American Novel here, and it's still a wonder to me that people not only want to read about Connor's poop explosions, but then they want to comment and write me long e-mails giving advice on proper poop containment and sharing their own poignant or hilarious poop explosion stories with me. 

Really, you are all amazing!

But as wonderful as all of your commiserating and moral support is, it still doesn't make me any more ready for 2011.  Since Father Time doesn't seem to be taking suggestions from me at the moment however, I guess I'll just have to get used to it, even if it will take me three or four months at the earliest before I quit writing 2010 on all of my checks.  Force of habit is a powerful thing.

 So since I'm stuck with 2011, I hope the year will be a good one.  I'm not going to ask for a boring year, because our family doesn't do boring.  But I hope that it's exciting in a good way, and I wish you all the same! 
~Jess



Christmas 2010







In Which Jer And I Have A Date

Today Jeremy and went out on a date!

First off we stopped by the bookstore because Jeremy is currently reading the Hyperion Cantos series by Dan Simmons, and he needed the next book.  I technically didn't need a new book, but I got one anyway.  Or two.  You might have figured out by this point that I have a slight addiction to books.

At any rate, the first bookstore we went to didn't have the book he wanted, so we drove over to another bookstore, where he found it right away.  He checked out and actually called me on my cellphone from outside the bookstore because I hadn't realized he'd left the store; I was so busy wandering around in the usual state of bliss I enter when surrounded by my own personal literary brand of crack.  Cheeky man!

I had to leave the store bookless.  It was terrible.

Then we walked over to a local hole-in-the-wall Pho shop, where we each ate a huge bowl of tasty Vietnamese soup.  I swear a small bowl of that stuff is about two meals worth for me, but somehow there's never any left over to save! 

After eating we needed to walk off our gigantic meal, so we drove over to the mall and wandered around for a while.  I picked up another t-shirt and a pair of knee-high socks for roller derby practice, because I can never have too many socks.  These are teal and have little whales on them: too cute!  I'll use them for Connor's therapy when I'm not skating in them, since we go without shoes in the activity rooms.

Once we'd walked off our lunch we went to (where else?) one of our many local coffee shops, where we sat for an hour or so sipping delicious beverages and reading.  Finally it was time for us to come back home because Jeremy needed to spend some time in front of the computer.  I dropped him off and then drove over to a different coffee shop to spend some time cozied up to a fire while writing mediocre poetry.

I was excited to see, by the way, that the Femme Fatal special issue of Thunderclap! Magazine is out; I have three poems published inside (pages 19-22).  You can download a free version or buy a paperback version of the magazine here.  I'm always excited to see any of my poetry in print, and it makes me want to submit more often.  I rarely do, however, becase I can never figure out when anything is finished.  It drives me nuts.

Oh well.  I'll keep plugging away at it!

~Jess

My monthly article is up over at Hopeful Parents.  I'll have another blog post here later today!

~Jess

In Which I Have Trouble With Adoption Paperwork Because I Am A Smart Aleck

Connor has been a little sniffly the past couple of days and by late afternoon yesterday was sporting a full-blown cold, so I kept him home today.  By this evening he sounded much better, though, and he was acting like he felt pretty good, so hopefully he'll be able to go to school tomorrow.  Since it was sunny and nice outside he helped me plant out my strawberries (we have four varieties and 125 plants this year).  I'm not expecting big crops this summer, but next summer should be a pretty tasty one.  Here he is all bundled up and in his explorer hat; sunny-but-cool days make for some very strange outfits.

I also spent several hours today answering questions for our adoption home study.  I just finished up the autobiography portion of the study, which is only eight discussion questions long.  This doesn't sound so bad until you realize that question one is divided into parts A through M.  Many of these parts are actually several questions.  My eight-question autobiography is sixteen pages long.  Single spaced.

All of the adoptive parents out there are laughing and shaking their heads at me right now, as I have just begun to skirt the edge of the paperwork that will need to be filled out, signed, mailed to various parts of the country to be notarized, and then if the adoption is drawn out long enough possibly filled out, signed and notarized all over again.  We won't have an adoption file by the time this is done-- we'll have an adoption box, which I may be unable to lift without straining my back.  So it is perhaps premature to be complaining about it, especially since I like writing and answering discussion questions.  My problem is actually not with the number or the length of the questions.  My problem is that I have an overwhelming impulse to spice the whole thing up by writing ridiculous answers. 

Take this question, which is under the Courtship and Marriage/Partnership section:

Give an example of your problem solving process with your partner.

What I wrote was this:

If Jeremy and I have a conflict about something, the first thing we do is make sure that we’re both able to speak about the problem calmly and rationally. So we each have a cooling off activity—I’ll sit with a cup of tea and read or take a long bath, and he may exercise or play a video game. Often times we’ll realize that the argument was over something that wasn’t a big deal and we have no reason to have any further discussion about it. If the issue is still something we need to talk about, we’ll sit next to one another when Connor is in school or down for a nap and work the problem out through calm and rational conversation. Then once we’ve resolved the issue we’ll do something together that we both enjoy, such as taking a walk or going out to eat. We won’t go to bed angry with one another.

Totally appropriate.  Totally boring.  What I really wanted to write was this:

First Jeremy and I attempt to solve the problem with large amounts of duct tape.  We might also pretend it doesn't exist for a while in the hope that it might become depressed and lonely and go away.  If this does not work, we may employ screaming, scary masks and jumping out from behind various pieces of furniture in an effort to scare it into leaving.  If the problem proves persistant and unimpressed by our scare tactics, we will then attempt to set it on fire.  Whether or not this results in the resolution of the problem depends on how flammable it is and whether or not it possesses opposable thumbs and is able to call emergency services and/or operate fire extinguishers.  Other problem solving methods involve velociraptors, very small rocks, chain saws and loudly singing multiple rounds of "It's A Small World."  We save nukes as a last resort.

Now I personally think my second answer would be a much better read.  Completely inappropriate, sure, but I like to think that I'd at least make the social worker chuckle as she threw our file into the waste basket and called Child Protective Services.  I do actually want to adopt a child at the end of all of this, though (as well as keep the one I already have), and so I'd probably better rein myself in and stick with the serious answers, even if I don't get to mention anything about velociraptors. 

Dang it.

~Jess

Hopeful Parents

My monthly article is up over at Hopeful Parents!

~Jess

In Which Something Faintly Happen Almost Good English

I'm been lightly getting a lot of spam green comments recently.  They mostly show up in my inbox, as I have comments on blog posts that are more than seven days old set to "published after approval."  I would do something about the spam, but to tell you the truth I don't really want to. 
 
Yes, I have a sad little secret to share with you all; while I would never ever allow them to stay in the comments here, I actually enjoy reading them. 
 
This is because the grammar, spelling and punctuation are so delightfully horrible.  This is Engrish at its finest, folks, and I can't help but chuckle every time I read one.  Take one of today's examples (with the links and product names removed, of course):
 
"Traverse Our Faint Prices at (insert spam website here), the Famed Online Chemist's workshop To Buy (insert spam product here) Online!  You Can also Suppose Mammoth Deals When You Buy (insert other spam product here) and When You You Buy (ditto) Online.  We Also Be subjected to a Massive Generic (ditto again) as a help to Your Provisions!  We Push Hawser of ouevre hear high consider (still more spam product) and Also Generic (final spam product)!"
 
Hawser of ouevre (sic)?  Is that a cable towing a ship full of the spammer's badly spelled work, or what?  Hilarious. 
 
Here's another one from today:
 
"Hello everyone!
 
I would like to burn a theme at here.  There is such a nicey, called (spam product).  It reminds of financial piramyde, but in rare cases one may happen to meet a company that really pays up to 2% daily not from real money, but from profits.
 
For several years, I made money with the help of these programs. 
I don't have problems with money now, but there are heights that must be conquered.  I make 2G daily, and I started with funny 500 bucks.  Right now, I managed to catch a guarenteed varient to make a sharp rise.  Visit my web site to get additional info."
 
That was some nicey spam!  Seriously, who writes this stuff?  I really, really hope it is not someone with English as a first language, because if someone who is a native speaker is creating these I'm pretty sure we are doomed as a society.  DOOMED.
 
I am cautiously optimistic for our chances, though, because there are some spammers who seem to know how to string a coherent-- albeit a little odd-- sentence together.  These are usually the ones that sound like they could be a legitimate comment until the very end, where they throw in something totally off-topic.  I received this one a few weeks ago:
 
"Thanks for the informative information- I enjoyed reading it!  I always enjoy this blog. :) Cheers, video clips of women giving birth."
 
On second thought, after reading this I changed my mind about the being hopeful thing.  Pretty sure we're doomed.
 
I have a little hall-of-fame style word document on my computer where I keep my favorite sentences; how sad is that?  And now that the blog's been around for a while, I'm not just getting spam in English.  I'm getting it in Korean, Chinese, French, German, and Greek.  International spam!  I kind of wish I knew what those e-mails said, because I bet I'm missing out on a few really good ones. 
 
I've also been tossing around the idea of trying to write an Engrish novella.  It would be 18,000 words that sound like they could almost go together but don't quite mesh well enough to make any sense, with a plot to match!  I need more research material though, so I'll keep the spam filters off. 
 
I am way, way too easily amused. 
 
~Jess

In Which I Am Passing The Buck To Jeremy

So I've been nagging Jeremy for weeks now about the possibility of writing a blog post here, ostensibly because I know a lot of people would like to hear from him but probably secretly because it would be awesome to have a free day for me. I mean, don't get me wrong--I love writing blog posts and usually plenty of drama happens around here to keep me in subject matter-- but there are days in which I'm worried I may be reduced to writing about nose hair or something, as absolutely nothing exciting happens. Also sometimes I'm lazy.

Anyway, he's been telling me that he wouldn't know what to write about, but I finally wore him down to the point that he agreed to do a Q&A session as that would give him some subject matter to start from. So here's your chance: do you have a question for Jeremy? You can leave the questions in the comment section or e-mail them to me and next Saturday he'll answer them. If there are a lot of questions maybe I can get him to commit to doing this a couple of Saturdays in a row. With a few notable exceptions (Robert Rummel-Hudson comes to mind) there aren't a whole lot of blogging dads of children with special needs out there. There are even fewer who are (hopefully temporarily) disabled themselves. And as an added bonus, he's even more sarcastic than I am!

He says to warn you though that if you ask any touchy-feely metaphysical questions, he will "start making crap up." This is because he is a guy. Otherwise I think pretty much anything is fair game.

So come out of the shadows, all you lurkers, and ask away!

~Jess

In Which Connor Is Not Special And I'm Fine With It

I was filling out a questionnaire today; Connor has been selected for an award given out by the military hospital every year, and so we were to write a bit about him and send in some pictures to be used in the ceremony. Everything was going along swimmingly until I got to this question:

"Knowing that you are Mom and Dad, we would like to know from your perspective what makes your child special to you and your family."

And it was there that things screeched to a halt. I couldn't figure out how to answer this question, and I was surprised by my strong negative reaction to it. It's certainly a totally innocent query-- we were probably just supposed to list some of Connor's positive traits and move on. But it was that word "special" that was sticking in my craw.

While I say that Connor has special needs, as that seems to be the most PC term, and I love him deeply and fiercely, do I think of him as special? I might get a little flack for this one, but oh well.

No. No I don't.

He's not a saint or an angel or some sort of pillar of society. He's an ordinary little boy who happens to have a lot of challenges to deal with on a daily basis. While I know he's not ever going to be "ordinary" in the conventional sense-- he'll always be set apart by his physical and cognitive disabilities-- I really, really wish that wasn't the case. I wish that he could be viewed by the world outside our little family as simply a person, no better or worse than any other, and not as a case study or someone to be pitied or babied or scorned or idolized, depending on who's looking at him.

This is probably such a sticking point for me because we run into a whole lot of folks who tell Jeremy and me that we are special people for having Connor. And we're not. We're totally ordinary, normal parents who are muddling through raising a child and figuring it out as we go along, just like everyone else. I don't like being thought of as some sort of extraordinary person because it implies that only extraordinary people can raise children with disabilities. And that's not true; I firmly believe that anyone who would be a good parent to any child can be a good parent to a child with disabilities. To my mind, being special means being set apart. It implies an us and a them. And we don't want that, not for ourselves or for Connor.

It took me a long time to compose an answer-- I didn't want to turn Connor's award into my own oversensitive personal rant, and so it took me a while to figure out what I wanted to say. Tell me what you think about it. Here's what I ended up with:

"What a difficult question to answer! Certainly Connor is special from a medical perspective; he’s the only known case in the world with his specific genetic condition. But here’s the deal—despite the fact that his medical conditions permeate almost every aspect of our lives, we think of them as relatively unimportant. Connor has a variety of conditions that are part of him, just as he has blond hair and green eyes. They don’t define who he is.

"We could tell you about his bubbly, sweet personality, his great passion for music, and his easy acceptance of the hand that life has dealt him. We could mention his unmitigated joy in making new discoveries, his silly sense of humor, and the stubborn streak a mile wide he inherited from both sides of the family. We could talk to you about his bravery in the face of numerous emergency room visits, hospital stays, and painful medical procedures, his gentle touch with animals, and the astonishing beauty of his smile.

"But ultimately I think what makes him special to us is what makes any child special to a parent. He is our son, an ordinary person placed in extraordinary circumstances, who, like all of us, is doing his best to make the most out of what he’s been blessed with. He is made special by how very ordinary he is despite all of the challenges he is facing. We couldn’t possibly ask for more."



~Jess

In Which We Are Surprised!

Something pretty cool happened today.

We got an e-mail out of the blue from Kat Speyer, who is a fantastic photographer in Seattle. Apparently my sneaky sister, Mary, entered us into a Family Photo Giveaway without our knowledge . . . and we won! Check it out, see? (And check out Kat's pictures while you're over there-- she's amazing.) We'll get the chance to do a two-hour photo shoot with Kat and then we'll be able to pick out a ton of great prints, albums, canvasses, etc!

We are incredibly stoked about this opportunity. Other than the photos we took right before Jer left we have very few pictures of the three of us together; usually I'm the one behind the camera. Since I have no idea what I'm doing most of the pictures I have of Connor and Jer are blurry, marginally acceptable photos anyway. It'll be fantastic to have some really great ones.

While I'm sure that the grandparents will be thrilled about getting pictures of the grandbaby (and us too, I suppose) and I'm excited about some updated photos for the walls, that's not the main reason why I'm so happy about the shoot. I take so many pictures of Connor for the same reason I started this blog-- not only to keep people updated on how Connor is doing, but to provide Jer and me with a record of as many moments as we can capture out of his life.

While we do our best not to dwell on it and I don't blog about it often on here, the fact of the matter is that Connor is considered by the medical experts to have a severely life-limiting condition. He's already out-lived the original projections for his life expectancy three times, and so while we're taking their current projection (another one-and-a-half to eleven-and-a-half years) with a grain of salt we are well aware of the fact that it will be extremely unlikely that he will reach adulthood, let alone outlive us. Every moment that we can possibly capture of Connor's life, whether it be in words or on film, is extremely precious to us. I'd like to think that they'll be a comforting thing to look back on should that awful day come.

So while it came as a big surprise to us, we are absolutely thrilled to be able to have these pictures taken with the extremely talented Kat, who should be able to capture Connor's toddler attitude in all its glory. And though Connor is, in our minds, the total center of attention it'll be pretty nice to have some pictures of me and Jeremy that do not look (for good reason) like they have been taken from a camera held at arm's length and that have in the background an extremely messy living room. Also maybe she could make me a couple of dress sizes smaller. With bigger boobs. I've heard Photoshop can work wonders these days.

Right.

Um, anyway we may wait for a little while to take these unless we can find a pretty awesome indoor or sheltered place in the Seattle/Tacoma area to take pictures in (suggestions, anyone?) as Connor doesn't really need to be out in the rain, but I'll be sure to write all about our fun time once it happens!

I have to go shoe shopping. Photo shoots require an awesome pair of shoes.

~Jess

In Which I Act In An Exceedingly Lazy Manner

I'm cheating for tonight and counting tomorrow's post for Hopeful Parents as my blog for today (you can find it over here) but I'll post two entries tomorrow to make up for it.

I promise! Cross my heart!

~Jess

In Which I Don't Have To Clean The House Any More, And I Am Very Happy

Mom and Dad to the rescue!

My parents, as a belated birthday/housewarming present, are hiring a maid to come and clean up the house! This takes a huge load off of our shoulders as now all we have to worry about is hauling away all of the garbage, fixing up the landscaping, and the actual move itself. I am ridiculously happy about this.

Here is the garage for your viewing pleasure.

I did take about three hours today to clean up the bathrooms. I can wait for the maid to do the rest of the house, but I'd like the bathrooms clean now. You know how it is. I feel much better now that they're scrubbed from top to bottom.

We have quite the to-do list for tomorrow: talking to our apartment complex (wish us luck), switching over utilities, calling the plumber, roofer, chimney sweep, furnace inspector, and exterminator, picking up supplies to start on the yard, (it doesn't sound like the biggest priority, I know, but with the rainy season coming on fast getting out there before it's a constant drizzling 40-degree mess will be a really good thing), and finding a maid. In the afternoon, we'll be heading over to see what kind of recommendations the wonderful company that's doing our remodeling has put together-- more on that later.

Speaking of the remodeling: I met one of the owners of the company at the house tonight so he could get a few more measurements, and we got to talking about the ramp. He told me that instead of doing a separate ramp, we could just add cement to the walkway and grade it up to a level entry. Simple and perfect! I got home and told Jeremy about it, and he pointed out that he'd said that in the beginning and I just hadn't listened to him. So I'm giving credit where credit is due. There you go, honey.

One of these days I'm going to get Jeremy to post an entry on the blog so he can give you his perspective on this whole thing. I'm sure he'd tell a whole different story than the one you get from me! If you all bug him about it enough maybe he'll do it once a month or something. What do you think?

~Jess