Faster. GO. FASTER.

[kyburg]

Frantic. Too much bread, not enough butter - and there's more bread coming out of the oven in a few minutes. The spray-on PAM only goes so far.

Shit. This is where I grew up, folks. You didn't go onto tribal lands, back when I was a kid. Period. It was understood that if you trespassed, they could shoot you and nobody would look surprised, and they would think you were a dumb-butt. Then bury you. You didn't trespass on tribal lands. Repeat.

I thought there had been improvement. Riiiiight.

From the FL:

mdlbear gives a lesson in 'getting over it.' Hint: stop listening to them, and listen to your own heart. Grieving is a personal business - don't sweat the external dialog - the internal one is the one that counts.

cadhla has joined the ranks of the newly published, and with REALLY GOOD REASON. I can't wait. Not too many people more deserving, you want my honest opinion.

I'm finding more adoptees on Wordpress...which, I'm certain, is giving them some truly mixed feelings. If you're coming over for a quick look-see - *WAVES MADLY* - I don't bite. Well, not much. Well, not enough to draw blood. Often. Yeah. Right.

Thanks for being there for me. I'd like to say I'm not one of THOSE prospective adoptive parents, because that's pretty ballsy for me to throw out there.

But I wish I could show you my house, with all the food labeled in Japanese and Chinese that I can't completely read - and I adore. The silk paintings on the walls, the incense burners, the ceramics...all of which are beloved by me, were here long before the idea of adopting internationally ever entered the picture. I wish you could see my coworkers and friends. My neighborhood. My iTunes library.

I'm usually the only blond head and blue eyes in view. Except for my fella, and he looked like an email address when I met him.( (What does he look like now? unclejimbo.)

We already have a line on Chinese school on Saturdays for the kids. They'll have other Asian kids to play with - and kids that look like us.

We know. Keep talking. We're listening. (And while I'm slowly learning the language, I'm realistic about it too. 8,000 characters for literacy is something I may not see in my lifetime. We'll see. Something as tonal as Chinese might not ever work for us. Maybe.)

...and maybe I know something about the loss of first parents. I lost my father before I was seven years old, after all. In all the years after that, nobody else took that spot. I had a fabulous older brother who grew up and left me too. You deal.

When late husband passed in 1998, it almost like seasons turning. I went into a relationship with a type I diabetic, I knew the job was dangerous when I took it.

And now I'm adopting. I'll be blunt. I CAN'T WAIT. But I do. Some days, I really really don't do it well. And hate it with pointy stabby hate. But I can wait, and I do.

Comments

[shannon-elaine.livejournal.com]

My husband and I have been discussing adoption. But I've heard it's really hard to get approved through an agency.

[n6vfp.livejournal.com]

On Wordpress yet?

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

'Hard' is not the word I'd use. 'Work,' is. And it's good work, necessary work and work you'd not question or want skipped if it was your life at stake.

I started with DCFS - and in all honesty, I would again. The amount of education and training they did on my taxpayer dollars was worth every hour I spent getting it.

Any agency that doesn't require classroom time, pass on.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

Nope. I gotta figure out how I want to feed it - feed from Wordpress to LJ via RSS? I think so - now, the kick is to make it possible for Jim to update as well as me.

[shannon-elaine.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... that gives me some hope. I'd heard that pretty much you had to have ben 100% perfect your whole life if you wanted an agency to approve you. I was in some trouble when I was a teenager and had some financial issues (which I am resolving) thanks to my ex husband. So I was afraid that would be held against us.

[mdlbear]

Thanks for the link!

Tried learning Chinese once, way back when. Didn't have your motivation, though. But it's a fascinating language, and the tones aren't as difficult as the ones in Vietnamese from what I understand. Sometimes I can still get them right.

LJ exports...

[n6vfp.livejournal.com]

I tend to move items to my wordpress based blog by using xml inports. I export from LJ using XML and import into wordpress. Then I find some punctuation doesn't always translate well. I then have to do a bit of editting. I sometimes just cut and paste text from one blog to another. If you discover a better way, let me in on it.

[murphymom.livejournal.com]

I can honestly say, as an adoptee, that I can't think of a single "things I'd want my adoptive parents to know/understand" that you haven't already brought up and discussed intelligently and compassionately. Young Alexander (can't remember the rest, sorry) is coming to a wonderful set of parents.

[jrittenhouse.livejournal.com]

No. I got divorced in 1990, and one of the contributing factors was that my now-ex was a terrible money manager. As in *don't look at the bills they burn* sort, and we were massively in debt. Took me years to pay off my share of the mess.

I remarried, and now there's a eight and a half year old from Southern China in the upstairs bedroom who has to get up in a half an hour and cuddle with Mommy and fuss about what to wear to her third-grade class.

I could go on, but my impression is that you don't have to be perfect, and rules for international adoptions radically differ from time to time and country to country, but perfection is not required.

Re: LJ exports...

[jrittenhouse.livejournal.com]

There's a specific plugin to get Wordpress to export automatically to LJ. I use it on a daily basis.

http://ebroder.net/livejournal-crossposter/
http://code.google.com/p/ljxp/
http://lj-xp.com/

[shannon-elaine.livejournal.com]

You just made me feel so much better. So I guess first on our agenda is to buy a house in the next few months and then start saving money for all of the fees etc.

[ms-hecubus.livejournal.com]

Remember, we all have to go through a gestation period. Yours is just a little longer and a little more unusual than most.