If you want to know who comes up with creative how-to projects for sites like Kodak Gallery's Idea Center, you've come to the right place. I love coming up with creative projects—even if I never make a single one. I can't lay claim to all of the ideas here, but quite a few of them are mine.
Our soon-to-be daughter lives in Guangdong province, where there's been terrible flooding over the past few weeks. I believe she's okay, because I've been following the travels of someone else who just adopted from the same orphanage, and other than a road outage that delayed the mom's follow-up tour of the orphanage, it sounds like it's just rainy there.
But boy, it makes me even more anxious to get our daughter home.
Our backyard is more concrete jungle than green acres: We basically have a 1-foot by 12-foot patch of dirt along one fence and the rest of our postage stamp-sized yard is filled with pool, garage and concrete. But we've managed to pack greenery into every square inch of our dirt: we have lilies and a rose bush, several pepper plants, lots of mint and hibiscus (no matter how hard we try to prune back), clematis and a hydrangea bush. But we wanted more...so we filled huge metal tubs with dirt, and put in some lettuce, basil, tomatoes and strawberries. If nothing else, I thought it'd be fun for my daughter to see how fruits and vegetables grow, and the girl does love to water.
We've managed to reap a little bit of what we sowed already. Our strawberry plants have yielded two strawberries. I can't tell you how they tasted, but since my daughter won't share them, I'm assuming they're pretty tasty. And today we had the first fresh pesto of the season, and the first salad made exclusively from lettuce in our garden. I have to say, if you have land (or if you have a spare metal tub), grow some lettuce. We tried a few different varieties of lettuce (the only one I can remember is the arugula), and there's absolutely no contest—the homegrown lettuce tastes infinitely better than even our fancy organic greens. And given that four tiny plants cost about the same amount as a package of organic greens—and we look to be able to fill a salad bowl every few days from our 12 plants, it's pretty easy on the wallet as well.
Our new daughter will have a cozy place to rest her head...we're just about done putting together the nursery! We'll post a picture later today, but here's one of my favorite details—we made a giant tree for our little one with this cool kit from Land of Nod. We'll be decking it out today with little birdhouses my mom painted, to give it a more three-dimensional look.
Last night, our town gave us a call to let us know that PSE&G was holding rolling blackouts because of the heat. (At least this time they gave us a little notice, so we could fully crank up the AC and cool the place down.) And then the wrath of God rained down on our tiny subsection of the 'burbs, downing tree branches, raining sideways, the whole shebang.
But the power didn't come back on. For the rest of the night, the following morning and stretching wellll into the afternoon. We had a heated debate over dumping the ($5 per gallon) milk. We hurried out for ice to stuff in the nooks and crannies of our fully stocked fridge. And we worried about what we'd do tonight if the power still hadn't returned. So there was much rejoicing ringing through our neighborhood's opened windows when the power finally came on at 2 p.m. today. We're still crossing our fingers that we'll keep the power. Here in my section of the burbs, it can't be taken for granted.
Apparently, my family sucks all the energy out of a place. First, we caused a blackout in our area over the weekend. Then today, we head to the next town over to have the docs give our dear daughter her annual once-over. As her doctor and I discuss the impending adoption, and before the doc even lays a cold stethoscope on my daughter, the power goes out...and we're in pitch black.
The ever-resourceful doctor managed to get a checkup done in the dark, thanks to the light on that little otoscope, and our daughter was healthy as an ox (and pleased as punch that this visit didn't entail a needle stick, since the pediatrician is sold out of Hepatitis A vaccine at the moment). We'll be heading to the travel clinic this week to be sure she's up to date on everything she needs...and hope that our doctor's office gets juiced up enough tomorrow to write the letter we need to add to our adoption file.
For most people, the harbingers of summer are things like opening their pool, the end of school for their kids, the blooming of the daylilies. But here in my tiny corner of northern New Jersey, nothing says summer like a bunch of old guys standing around watering their driveways and, of course, the annual power outages. Yesterday, as temperatures of 96 and above scorched our latest attempts at landscaping, our power gave out four different times. The first, for nearly four hours; two hours later, for another two hours; and overnight, once for a half hour, and once for a few minutes or so.
I was particularly peeved, because I was trying to do my best for the environment and the budget: I was only running ceiling fans at the time the power gave out. It was a balmy 80 degrees at the outset, but soon skyrocketed toward 90. My husband and I took turns trying to cool off our panting dog, who refused the pool but tolerated cool washcloths placed on him, and bringing our daughter into our (thankfully chilly) pool.
Apparently, it was a "substation problem," as the PSE&G person assured us over my corded phone. (I keep one of these antiquities handy all summer, because we have to use it eventually.) In the seven years I've lived in my house, we've lost power at least three times a summer each and every year. This was never a problem anywhere else I've lived, including New York City.
So, what gives, PSE&G? By the end of the evening, my tired, hot and cranky daughter was asking "why the not nice people took our power away." And boy, I was wondering the same thing...especially when many times, it turns out that the power's only out for our small little area (as in, a tiny four-block subsection). We pay our bills. We pay you handsomely. And we deserve answers about why we have yet to go through a summer without a blackout.
I'm not afraid of flying...but what I'm about to experience would make any mom tremble. Fifteen hours. On a plane. With a high-energy four-year-old and a husband who borders on flying phobic. And two weeks later: Fifteen hours back. On a plane. With a high-energy four-year-old, a husband who borders on flying phobic and a 18-month-old who may not like us much at that point and will probably be suffering from some sort of ear infection/stomach virus/nasty cold, courtesy of the brand new germs that we'll share with her.
I'm already picturing the "Dear God, please don't let them sit next to me" looks we'll be getting from the other passengers as we board the plane. I think I've got a pretty good strategy for handling the four-year-old. We're bringing my laptop, an airline adapter and a thick book full of her favorite DVDs. If she wants to watch Cars seven times through, she can be my guest. (I will have some cool travel art sets and a few of her favorite treats to keep her occupied during the "intermissions.")
We've tried various means of medicating my husband to calm his nerves, but with disastrous results, so we'll just have to download a few movies to his iPod and hope for the best.
I'm bringing a book and a movie on my iPod, just in case I get a few seconds to relax on the way there. I doubt I'll have the same luxury on the way home.
So, today I experienced the adoption equivalent of labor pains: totally annoying, very time consuming and completely necessary to making parenthood possible.
This morning, my daughter missed her very last day of preschool (and a pizza party!) in order to spend two hours with my husband and me waiting to be fingerprinted. Again. Because our fingerprints that we did last year for this adoption "expired," so they need to reinsure that we haven't done something horrific in the intervening 13 months. As per usual, it took many, many attempts to get mine to print, because I've apparently worn my fingerprints clear off. (Guess a life of crime is always an option if freelancing doesn't work out.)
And then my agency e-mailed this afternoon. I already knew that our government's approval to adopt expires very soon. August 7th, to be exact. It's pretty likely that we'll be to China and home just in the nick of time. But if there's a hiccup somewhere along the line (and you know there's always a hiccup), not having the 171-H, as USCIS approval is called in adoption circles, means we'll have to wait to travel to our second daughter until it's all been cleared up. Which could mean weeks of delays...and I'm not prepared to let it ride.
So tonight, on one of those rare evenings when I didn't have any pressing work to move on, I filled out 22 pages of documents. One asked for the details of our finances, including balances of investment accounts and loans, our salaries, the amount of life insurance we have and what we currently have in our checking account. Another asked for our addresses going back to 1972 or the age of 18, whichever comes first. And tomorrow, we have to beg our respective doctors (and our daughter's pediatrician) for a short letter saying we're still in good health. (Thankfully, we won't have to ask them to fill out the three pages of medical background we needed in the first place.)
I definitely see the need to have safeguards in place to ensure that people applying to be adoptive parents aren't pedophiles or completely incapable of being a parent emotionally, physically or financially. But it's incredibly frustrating to fill out these same forms and keep sharing intrusive information over and over again. And boy, I'm going to have to do better than a big box of cookies when I ask my doctor, yet again, to send me a letter declaring me medically fit to parent.
Okay, all you moms out there...I'm starting to freak out about how to handle a 4-year-old and a 16-month-old and still maintain my sanity. Because my husband tends to work odd schedules, there are times when I'm on total bedtime duty, total morning duty, etc. And I'm trying to figure out how I'll get two kids into bed simultaneously. Anything you wish you'd known beforehand that you feel like sharing? Feel free to share your wisdom in the comments.
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