Archive for June, 2008

I was born on one, and now I’m turning 28 on one.

Good thing I’m not superstitious!

With a huge grin on his face he happily exclaims, “I can’t wait!” when talking about the Adopted Child To Be.
You realize that the years of pain and torture and seemingly endless roller coaster of emotions will be worth it when you see him hold it all in his hands for the very first time.

Even if he doesn’t cry.
But you know he will, if only in his soul.

That moment won’t erase the forever pain, for pain is ever present when a part of your heart is not.
But it will dress a wound.

Time will stand still.
Dreams will no longer be a thing of sleep.

A man will grow up to be a dad.
And like that man, I just can’t wait.

Ever wonder what a day at the bench is like? I thought you might, so I documented a little bit of a normal afternoon of jewelry making. I had to make several discs of copper and sterling for a few projects. Enjoy!

Whack the thing with a brass hammer several times, and wonder about the people who claim they punch their discs with one blow.

Repeat several times, then sit back and admire your hard work.

Hammer discs.

Flip hammer and hammer some more for cool old weathered type look.

Keep hammering until all discs are done.
Take nap because your arm is now ready to fall off.

Wake up and admire your work.

Gather doming equipment.

Start to dome discs.

Get ticked off because you forgot to punch holes first.
Get hole punching thingamabop and punch holes.

Get ticked off again because you forgot a couple discs.
Grab disc cutter again and punch more discs.
Grab doming block again and finish doming discs.
Try to sit back and admire your hard work, but have a hard time because you’re still annoyed.

File where needed.

Do some sanding.

Prepare soldering station.

Cut little solder bits.

Dip stuff in flux.

Melt solder onto posts.

Solder posts to discs.

Sit back and admire your hard work.

Put freshly soldered stuff into make-shift pickle pot full of all natural non-toxic acid-like stuff.
Call mom and remind her to bring you the crockpot she promised soon.

Have a cold and frosty Canadian beer (root beer, that is) while your stuff takes a pickle bath.

Read the wise quote on the underside of the lid and laugh as only a redhead can.
Silly Canadian root beer.

Rinse off pickle and throw stuff into tumbler along with all their buddies made earlier.

Cover with tumbler stuff and tumble for several hours.

Make good use of your time waiting and go outside to smell the roses.
Or the dogs, if you don’t have any roses.

Don’t forget their close-ups. Dogs need close-ups, you know.

Check out your baby squash.

And your first baby tomato (which now unfortunately has a caterpillar hole. *grrrrrr*)

Don’t forget to feed your man. They get kind of hungry about this time.
After several hours have passed, pull stuff out of tumbler.

Do lots more sanding.

Go through all these different grits and make the stuff look like a mirror.

Decide you want it to have a satin finish instead, so go back to grit #1.

All done! Sit back and admire your hand work… and pray it sells so you can do it all again tomorrow.

No lie, that’s a slogan that you will see in the city of Austin, TX. I’m not sure how weird it is, but it is big. And far. We had to drive there on the weekend of May 31st to attend a seminar for our adoption.

I hate travel, people. HATE it. But I survived. We played “20 Questions” and sang “Fried Ham” to keep ourselves entertained. I tried to get a video of Dustin singing “Fried Ham” in his best Billy Mays impression (that’s the Oxyclean guy by the way, whom we mercilessly mock at each commercial), but he would not let me. It was hilarious though. You’ll just have to take my word for it (or call Dustin and beg him until he does it for you… yeah, that might work). I married a silly man. I laugh at with him constantly. At least our children will be entertained.

When we arrived at our hotel, we requested a room on the ground floor. They only had one. We went to it and it smelled, in Dustin’s words, “musty”. It my words, it smelled like urine. I know what musty smells like and I know what urine smells like. This was not musty. It was a very nice hotel, however, so the “musty” smell really surprised me. So back to the front desk we went and very kindly requested a different room, since this one was “musty”. They apologized profusely and said it would not be a problem. A woman that I can only assume is a manager was standing there and said that for our inconvenience they were going to upgrade us to a suite (ground level, of course).

People. This hotel room was HUGE (and odor-free). I’ve never stayed in such a nice room. The counters were like granite or something. There was a wet bar. An entirely separate room with a couch, recliner, table, and second television. The service was top-notch. They even had a good (according to Dustin) hot breakfast (for free), free popcorn and hot dogs every day, and free drinks each evening (both alcoholic and non-alcoholic).

The seminar was good. It was very long, but very informative. We learned a lot. At the end, we got to hear from a birth mom who placed her son for adoption about 18 years ago. She was a kind soul, and by the time she finished sharing her story, I wanted so badly to run up and give her a hug. I shook her hand and expressed my gratitude instead. Also on that panel was a couple who adopted through this agency twice. To hear the husband talk about the day they brought their son home… well, you could tell that he was not a man of many words, but the words he had to say were touching.

In our group, there were two couples that had previously adopted (one with our agency and the other through a different one). The one that adopted through this agency has a daughter that is 19 months old. It was encouraging to me to see them back for their second. That makes me believe that they were happy with their first experience with this agency. I did not think I would be comfortable working with an agency. When we first started exploring adoption, I talked to many many agencies and most of them left me with a very bad taste in my mouth. Not that I rely on feelings to guide me, but the way I would feel after the conversations with them were not good. I felt sort of like a big dollar sign instead of a woman in pain. I can only assume that their birth moms might feel the same way. *shudders*

This agency though is not like that. I’ve never had a conversation with anyone in either the local office or the Austin office that made me feel like they were anything but caring. They seem to genuinely care about us and about the women facing the difficult decisions regarding their babies. The fact that people (both birth moms and adopting couples) return to them time and time again speaks volumes to me. I hope that the remainder of our adoption experience with them is good. Who knows, if it is, maybe we’ll be back for a second someday. Though I’d really really like to adopt a beautiful Korean child if we ever do this again. *grin*

We watched a few videos. One was on transracial families, which I found particularly interesting and informative, though it left me feeling the need to pursue that topic more deeply if we become one. Another was on shaken baby syndrome and how to avoid it. This video is awful. There should be a law that every person to ever come into contact with a child has to watch it.

They covered things such as discipline and punishment, and one person sitting next to me was what I would call mouthing off. Mumbling all sorts of trash. I wanted to throw a bottle of water at her, but I was nice. Apparently she thought that hitting a child is a laughing matter. I think she made most of the people in the room uncomfortable (including her husband). She made me flat out angry.

I’m slowly starting to think about buying baby things. It’s a very scary thing to me. It still feels like a huge leap of faith to actually buy something… wrong, almost. But we really need to. I ordered some bottles last night (glass bottles… BPA free, thankyouverymuch) and we’re going to look at changing tables very soon. I’m watching craigslist for stuff, though I haven’t seen anything I want.

Now we’re just waiting to schedule our homestudy interviews, which will probably happen over the next month or so. Oh, and they might do an FBI check on us. That’s a little intimidating. Not that we have anything to worry about, but the FBI? Maybe they’ll get CTU and Jack Bauer on our trail too.

I wonder if Jack Bauer would read my blog. That could be a problem.

See, because if you were, you would get free food.

Caterpillars I guess don’t like cucumbers, because we have cucumbers growing out our ears (Not literally, of course. That would be weird.) and none of them are hole-y. In the past week, I have picked about seven. We love cucumbers, but we just cannot eat that many. So I gave a couple away to our neighbors/friends/Realtors. We *heart* our neighbors/friends/Realtors. They have about a billion adorable children and are the nicest people we’ve ever met.

We like them so much, in fact, that they got not only free freshly picked cucumbers, but also an Amish Friendship Bread starter.

Dustin’s co-worker gave us one a couple weeks ago. We followed the directions, baked it up, and realized it’s yummy stuff. Now, you must know that I’ve just tasted it. A small taste. Most of the eating has been done by Dustin. See, I don’t really care to put things in my mouth that involve spoiled milk. This recipe has milk, flour, sugar, yeast and I don’t know what else sitting in a baggie on your counter for many many days. It smells like wine when it’s finally ready to be baked. It tastes nothing like wine though (which, to be honest, I found mildly disappointing). You have to mash it daily, and add some more flour and milk and stuff and burp it every once in a while. Then on day 10, you add more stuff, put a cup of the mixture into four baggies (to give away as “starters”) and cook what’s left of the fermented mess (with some more added ingredients) into two loaves of very sweet and very moist bread.

It looks like this:

Yummm. Now, don’t you wish you lived in Texas?

We do.

Not in us (that we know of), and not our dogs, thank goodness (though we’ve been down that road before)… but in the garden.

Not good, friendly worms either. These worms are hungry and they like my veggies. I’ve been finding little holes in a few of my green beans.

Bad worm. No cookie!

Today I found a large hole in a pepper. So I picked it (just one – not a peck – and I did not pickle it) and cracked it open. This is what I found.

Anyone know what it is (other than in biiiig trouble)?

Tuesday I had my first ever acupuncture treatment. My doctor is a certified acupuncturist and has been wanting to practice on me since last year. I finally agreed. It was definitely an interesting experience. I’m not a stranger to so-called “energy therapies”. I’ve had some success with acupressure and acupuncture is sort of the same thing. Western medicine claims they don’t know why it works, they just know it does. Traditional Chinese Medicine claims it is all about “energy” and meridian points and what not. Anyway you slice it though, sticking a ton of tiny needles in your body… by choice… is just strange.

My visit went a little something like this…

Dr: When I saw I had an acupuncture appointment today, I was excited. When I saw it was you, I was very surprised.

Me: So was I.

Dr: I have to have you sign this form that states that you understand we don’t know why acupuncture works, you can bleed and/or bruise and get lightheaded and faint. You may feel really tired afterwards and feel achy where the needles were inserted.

Me: So long as you don’t make me puke, we can still be friends.

Dr: I use very thin needles, sterile and single use, and they do not tear muscle or nerve tissue like an injection needle does.

Me: Wait. Muscle? What do you mean they don’t tear muscle? You’re going to poke my muscles??

Dr: Well, yes. They go into your muscles and nerves.

Me: *blink, blink*

Dr: Ok, small pinch. *pokes first needle in my foot*

Me: Ouch.

Dr: Another small pinch *inserts second needle in opposite foot*

Me: Small p… what the frick? Small pinch? Are you mad, woman?!

Dr: Don’t move. If you move, it will hurt. *inserts more needles*

Me: Frick!!! Oh.My.God. FRICK!!

Dr: I told you not to move!

Me: Yeah, it’s sort of an automatic reaction to jerk when you’re, you know, poked with something sharp.

Dr: Try to relax.

Me: Relax??? With 10 needles in me? How the heck?!

Dr: You’ll see.

Me: Yeah… u-huh…

Mom: *laughing in the corner*

Dr: Ok, two more to go… well, actually three more. I’m going to put one in your head.

Me: In my head? This was not part of our original deal!

Dr: Yes. That one is to make you relax.

Me: Ooooh no.

Dr: No?

Me: My HEAD?? What if I jerk my neck and it goes into my brain?

Dr: It’s my favorite point. During a stressful day in the hospital, I walk around with a needle sticking out of the top of my head. It really works.

Me: *stunned silence at this crazy woman assaulting me with needles*

Dr: *pokes the top of my head*

Me: Oh. Well, I hardly felt that.

Dr: See? Now relax and I’ll be back in 10 minutes. Don’t move.

Me: Relax. Right.

A couple minutes pass… mom and I joke about photographing the 13 needles now protruding from my body. I’m nervous as heck because I can’t move. Then all of a sudden… aaaaaah. It’s like total calm. If my eyes would have stayed closed and someone wasn’t banging on something in another room, I could have fallen asleep.

People. I was totally relaxed. At the dr’s office. I’ve NEVER been even remotely relaxed at a doctor’s office before. It was wild. Then several minutes later I did indeed get light-headed so we stopped the treatment a couple minutes early.

It was by far one of the most bizarre things ever. I did not expect the light-headedness. Even though she warned me and I read the paper or whatever, I figured it would happen at the beginning, not at the end. Apparently it can relax you enough to drop your blood pressure some. According to her and what I read online, it usually only happens during a person’s first treatment. I go back in two weeks.

I had at least 13 needles in me. They were in my feet, on both sides of my knees, my arms, wrists and the top of my head. Not all the needles hurt. Most of them just felt like a “little pinch”. A few though really did hurt, and it was interesting to note that all but one of the ones that hurt bad were on my right side. The one that hurt on my left side was probably only because I jerked my finger. Can you say OUCH?! Don’t jerk your finger, people. It’s not good.

Painful. Bizarre. But to be totally honest, I think I want a needle permanently poked into the top of my head.

A couple weeks ago we decided to take some photos. We had to turn some in with our official adoption application paperwork stuff, and they had to be current, so we needed to take some.

The lighting was horrible that day and it was super hot, so they didn’t turn out very good, but I thought I’d share anyway. There are more, but here are a few for now.

Don’t you love that you can see Dustin holding the camera remote in the first one? *giggle*

Well, Moby Wrap has heard of the 2 Belles! They asked us to donate some jewelry for their Summer Gift Basket Giveaway and we were more than happy to oblige.

If you’ve not heard of them, they are a wonderful company that employs women in Thailand (with good wages & benefits) to make these fabulous and versatile baby carriers. Being friends with lots of AP mommies and other “baby wearers”, I’ve known of Moby Wraps for quite a while and was thrilled when they approached us. I expect to try a Moby Wrap out myself when we get our little baby.

Anyway, check them out and enter to win one of three gift baskets, including some 2 Belles pieces! Have fun and good luck. *grin*