The Whirl of Gaiety

 Back in December when I went back to work, that first week I actually thought, "This working mom gig isn't so bad.  I can juggle it all-- no problem!"  I think that was on day three, which was the first day I didn't break down in tears at some point on the way to or from work.  (I may also have had a wee glass of wine, which is relaxing but apparently makes me overconfident.)  

So. Three months later and I am still juggling just as fast as I can.  Some weeks go better than others.  Sometimes my house is cleaner than others, and some weeks I make it through more of the to-do list than others.  I struggle with feeling a certain amount of performance pressure at work and many days wish I just didn't have to deal with it.  

If I could, I'd stay home full-time with AK in a split second.  I know I'm a good mom, and it's what I truly love to do.  I struggle with the fact that by the end of a long and busy workday, there's just not as much of me-- or the best of me-- left to give my family.  But it truly isn't possible for us right now (and given the state of the economy it might never happen) so I am trying hard to be content right where I am.  You know, that whole "attitude of gratitude."   So I'm:

• Thankful that AK has a good daycare to go to where she feels comfortable and happy.  
• Thankful that we have a home, and jobs, when so many have lost theirs.
• Thankful that I do work that is meaningful and that I have wanted to do since I was little. Although when I was little I thought librarians got to read books all day and that was their whole job.  
• Thankful that when I've had a tiring or icky day I get to go home to my husband and daughter.  There has not been a bad day that wasn't totally improved by seeing AK grin and giggle when she sees me. 
• Thankful that Mark shooed me out of the house for a few hours on Saturday for a mom's day out.  I treated myself to a pedicure, since we have had flip-flop weather all weekend, and  did some shopping at one of my favorite stores.  I took advantage of a deal they ran this past week (I donated 2 pairs of pants, which they will donate to Goodwill, and got $15 dollars off of each of 2 new pairs of pants), and a coupon I had and got some new things for spring and summer.  Mark had given me a gift certificate for Christmas so this was a chance to put it to good use.  I had sooooo much fun and came home feeing rejuvenated.  

So. I'm trying.  I know every mom feels stretched and I am one of many who work outside the home but still strive to be an effective and Godly homemaker, wife, mother as well.  

Our calendar continues to be busy.  In addition to a demanding workweek ahead for me, we just had our six-month post placement visit today.  

All went well, although I should remember by now that our homestudy agency always has us write a super-long report answering many questions about our lives, and then we will answer all of those same questions in person for the social worker.  The HS office never forwards our paperwork to her either, so I end up giving her a copy.  I am also never told in advance to have x number of copies of various documents and then spend a lot of the visit pawing through an expanding file looking for the one document that seems to have gone missing, and then find it tucked into one of our document booklets.  Sigh.

It was a good visit overall and I think our SW really enjoyed meeting AK in person after all these years of meeting with us throughout the adoption process.   I certainly talked my head off-- our SW is a truly sweet lady and my tendency to overshare goes into overdrive at these sorts of things.  I also did some extra housekeeping this weekend just in case although at this point we've adopted our child and surely a little extra dust won't change that.  I've been trying to whip our perpetually messy guest bedroom/office/scrapbook room (aka "The Pit of Despair") into shape and get to the bottom of a huge pile of filing so this gave me incentive to actually do this.  

We enjoyed the beautiful weather the past few days-- sunny, temps in the 70's-- and are bracing ourselves for the next little remnant of winter coming our way this weekend.  This weather pattern is exactly like it was in March of 2003 when we got married.  The weekend before the wedding was gorgeous, and then the day of it was 50 degrees and poured rain all day.  All that to say our 6th wedding anniversary is Sunday, six months anniversary of Gotcha Day is on Monday, and my mom, sister, and nieces are coming for an impromptu visit this weekend.  

Oh, and now that we are back on Daylight Savings Time I want to stay up til midnight and suddenly can't seem to get dinner on the table before 6:45, because it's so sunny outside.  

Whew!   I think this post may have ended up being a mini-therapy session.  I feel better now. 

Mama said there'd be days like this

This is what happens when Mama gets distracted and in a rush.  Or, the way things normally run at the House of the Snickerdoodle.

Tuesday, 5:45 AM:  Alarm rings.  I roll over and mentally start running through the day's schedule.  Yesterday was kinda blah, hoping today goes better.  Drag self out of comfy, cozy bed. 

5:58 AM:  I put in my contact lenses. and do not realize that the right one isn't all the way in my eye.  Feel lens on eyelashes and automatically blink.  Hear lens hit the sink.  Know instantly that it's gone down the drain.  10 minutes of searching with a flashlight proves my intuition is correct.  (I have had a new pair of lenses for only 10 days, and I wear gas permeable lenses, which have to be special ordered.  $50 down the drain, literally).

7:31 AM:  Driving Anna Kathryn to day care, since I will be taking her to the pediatrician for a well baby checkup later in the afternoon.  Mark calls me, panicked, since I have apparently taken both sets of car keys to the other car with me, and he is stranded.  

7:34 AM:  Mark calls me to say that Allison can swing back by the house and give him a ride to school.  Yay!  This will save me an extra half-hour of driving, on top of the hour it takes me to get to work when I take AK, since her day care is the opposite direction from my school.  Thank goodness.  

9:35 AM:  At work.  Literally sitting down for a long-planned and very necessary meeting with a co-worker.  Said co-worker is pulled away due to big emergency event.  

10:00 AM:  I manage to drop our inventory scanner on the floor and have a few panicked moments while I reinsert the battery and make sure it works.  It does, thankfully.  A replacement would be about $1700 and it's not in this year's budget!

3:15 PM:  I make it to AK's day care in record time and find out she's had a good day.  Finally, good news!

3:55 PM:  Arrive at the dr.'s office, after a restoring detour at Starbucks for an iced coffee.  Find out this is just a visit with a nurse for more immunizations, not the checkup I thought we had scheduled.  Oh.  I had kinda been planning to ask if we can save this round of vaccinations for the next visit, since poor little AK just assumes by now that every visit to the doctor will involve pain due to shots or bloodwork, and acts accordingly.  So much for that idea.  

5:01 PM:  2 shots, one hour,  and a good deal of crying later, finally exit doctor's office.  

5:15 PM:  Arrive home.  Mark calls and says he's invited Allison and Maggie for dinner.  I get AK and all our gear inside and start pulling out stuff for dinner. 

5:30 PM:  I reach into an upper cabinet to get a bowl out.  CRASH.  I manage to knock a small Pyrex bowl out of the cabinet and it shatters into smithereens on the counter and floor, and the stove, which already has a-- not covered-- pan of rice cooking.  

5:32 PM:  As, I sweep and vacuum, Mark suggests pizza for dinner.  No arguing here!  He offers to go get it, which is fine by me, since disaster is following me today.  And then he makes my evening 100% better by playing with the girls and doing the whole bath and bedtime routine with Anna Kathryn while I sat on the sofa with Allison, yakking and watching Inside Edition while eating Moose Tracks ice cream (which is clinically proven to improve any bad day).   What a guy!!

It really wasn't such a bad day, really.  Just full of calamity and disagreeable things.  Anne of Green Gables would call it a Jonah day.  

On days like this, it's nice to end it with moments like this one:

(Yes, I got a haircut.  It's short again and I am so very happy.  It's not lookin' so pretty in this picture, though.  More on haircuts in an upcoming post!)

So close, yet so far away

According to our agency, September travel is pretty much out of the question due to the fact that, after years of waiting for approvals from China, the US Consulate is now the holdup.  They are (allegedly) booked through the month, and although a few other families have gotten September appointments as late as today, we were not that lucky.  We have been told, possibly early October.  Or not.  Who knows?  

I can finally quit being utterly frustrated with C*hina's government being so slow and return to being completely fed up with my own.  Without this appointment, and the papers we will get at it, we cannot legally bring our daughter home.  So no travel plans can be made until we get the CA.  Until the last month or two, families usually got their CA within a day or two of getting their travel approval.  Tomorrow will be six days for us.  **sigh**

I wish we might have heard something today, but our agency was closed for a planned staff development day.  I'm having a hard time not being totally frustrated with them, too. I feel like they needed to spend today on the phone requesting/begging/bribing the consulate folks to give us an appointment as soon as is humanly possible so I can go get my daughter out of an orphanage already and BRING HER HOME.  

Plus, I need to be able to get something done at work except hit the refresh button on my e-mail and Rumor Queen.

I know I am blessed to even be able to complain about this.  I could still be waiting in the long line.  And I believe wholeheartedly that this delay is a part of God's plans for us... but as usual, I am ready for "someday" to become "tomorrow."  I can't stand the thought of Anna Kathryn growing up without us being with her.  

Speaking of tomorrow, my sister is scheduled to give birth to daughter #3 in the early hours of the morning... please be in prayer that all would go well for mama and baby Allison Hope during the delivery and after.  Hospitals are still difficult for Hillary, and I'm sure there will be many memories of Natalie and lots of emotions that will go along with Alie's arrival.   We cannot wait to meet Alie, our new little joy!

Pity Party

Yesterday marked 16 months since we were logged in with the CCAA in China.  There are 358 LIDs ahead of us, and the CCAA has referred only 72 days in the last year (since May 1, 2007).  So, the wait ahead of us (and the math involved in figuring it out) is too long to contemplate.  We just keep hoping not too much will change in our lives or China's program before our turn comes.  This month also marks 2 years since we began the adoption process.  Will it be two more?  Three more?  God only knows.  This was not an anniversary I wanted to celebrate with empty arms.  

Yesterday, we got some other disappointing news.  Not anything I can share, not life-altering, just disappointing. 

I gained this week on Weight Watchers.  

Sunday is Mother's Day.  A difficult day for me personally, although I love being able to tell my mom, Mamapa, and my mother-in-law how much I love them.  And my sister, who is an awesome mom.  I did mail off the presents today-- a small triumph since I am almost never this organized when it comes to giving gifts.  I'm ready for next Monday to be here though.  Someone on one of my online adoption forums said she and her husband were having Mother's Day lunch at Hooters, so it's not so "in their face".  I'm not sure that I would go there (literally or figuratively) but I totally get where she is coming from.  

Last week, a beloved teacher at the school where I teach died very suddenly.  It's been a tough week for the staff and students.  She is greatly missed, and there is still much grieving both in and out of class.  

Another friend e-mailed me and shared about a recent loss in her life, which broke my heart for her.  

Tough stuff.

I have so many blessings, and I do count them, but sometimes they seem overshadowed by the hard things.  As Anne of Green Gables would say-- a Jonah day.  Or week, in my case.  I'm sure things'll look better in the morning.  

Ok, party over. 

Because a picture is worth a thousand words...

P.S.  Thank goodness this semester is over in two weeks!  I am ready to be done with my boring grad school classes!

P.P.S.  If you want to see some more hilariously "insprational" stuff, head over to Despair.com.  It's worth the trip!  

15 months

Hard to believe it's been 2 weeks since I posted on Easter.  Lots of reasons why-- we went to Ohio over Spring Break, work has been super-busy, lack of topics I feel motivated to write about-- but mostly, I just haven't gotten around to it.  I'm really good at writing posts in my head but not getting them down on paper... or at least the screen.   

Yesterday marked 15 months since we were logged in.  We also got our homestudy update report in the mail-- 3 months to the day when I first e-mailed our social worker to get it started.  It took forever.  On Friday, referrals for this month came out.  Only 5 more days were referred this month.  Now the CCAA is up to January 9, 2006.  Only 361 days ahead of us.    Another month has gone by, but it just doesn't feel like we are making any progress.  

I used to imagine what my daughter might look like, what leaving for China might be like, collect ideas in a file for the nursery.  I haven't done that in a long time.  Of course, not a single day goes by where I don't think of AK in some way, and where I am not reminded of just how empty my arms are, but I just cannot picture her at all.  A few days ago, a friend of a friend got the referral for her daughter.  On her blog, she recalled how right around the beginning of August, she had a very vivid dream about her baby being born.  She learned the other day that her daughter was born just days after she had that dream.  I just can't even imagine that.  I have dreamt no dreams, seen no signs (I refuse to count dead ladybugs), had no indicators whatsoever.  I've begun to think of her as just a "mythical baby."  

 It's been such a long wait, and only God knows how much longer it will be.  Some (actually, many) days I wonder if the adoption, if parenthood, will ever really happen.  I feel guilty for having so little faith, but there it is.  Right now, it's easier to not prepare for a little one; I'm fully aware that this is a form of self-preservation.  I guess in some ways it's good to live life without feeling like we are constantly on hold.  I (well, Mark, too) am making plans for summer and fall that do not include welcoming a baby into the household (although if a miracle does happen, you'd better believe all plans will be adjusted accordingly).  And, since I can't seem to get/stay/be excited right now about this, it's just hard to be enthused about much of anything.  

Maybe I should have been a librarian 50 years ago

Let me just start by saying that I really do like a lot of things about my job as a school library media coordinator.  I particularly like working with kids and teachers, collection development, and of course reading the new books and helping students find books they love.  However, lately, each day seems like a battle with our equipment and technology.

Technology is great -- when it works.  I'm certainly a lot more comfortable working with all the various computers and projectors and camcorders and video/DVD players than I was a year or two ago.  I am, however, a digital immigrant, and I am not a gadget person by nature.  But it drives me absolutely crazy when equipment works fine one day and totally messes up the next.  

This week my school has been showing movies as a reward for good behavior.  We've done the set up many times before, the test run when we got the equipment set up went well, and then today (of course) the sound system went haywire right as we seated 150 wild seventh graders and we started the movie.  It did not help my frustration level when one of the APs at the school was really ugly to me (yelling) about the fact that the stupid microphone and speaker were suddenly on the fritz and no one could hear the movie.  Which was "The Game Plan" starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, so I'm not sure this was much of a loss. 

 (Keep in mind that there are home karaoke machines that are higher quality equipment than our microphone/speaker system.  We have one 2-ft. speaker to project the sound to the entire school auditorium.  We are not talking a Dolby digital surround sound system here, people). 

To make a long, annoying story shorter, we (me and my assistant) finally determined that the battery was dead in the cordless microphone.  No one in the office bothered to order extra 9-volt batteries as we requested a month ago, so we had to make do with what we had.  Which is -- one dying microphone and one that barely works because it appears to have been used as a soccer ball in PE.  This is what teachers are used to anyway, right?  I did feel slightly vindicated when our instructional technology specialist, who was there to tutor, checked out the problem and agreed that it was the battery and not anything we failed to do in the set up.  

This is the latest in about 2 weeks of nonstop equipment "issues".  Frankly, I'm tired of it.  Give me a book any day -- it's cheap, portable, will not suddenly get a virus, need an extra cord or batteries, or just not work.  (I'm also wondering if maybe this is a sign from God that my school administrators need to cough up the bucks for a movie license so that we quit violating copyright every time we show a reward movie.)

I'm ready to go old-school librarian for a while.  Give me a bunch of books, an old-fashioned card catalog, and a filmstrip reel and I will weep with delight.  But I draw the line at wearing my hair in a bun.