Things That Annoy Me

1. Don’t offer your kid to me unless you are seriously willing to terminate your parental rights and sign a Consent to Adoption. I don’t care how horrible the little bugger has been. As someone who struggled mightily and painfully for years to be a parent, you cavalierly saying, “Ugh! My kid’s been awful lately! Ya want him?” really pisses me off. My kid actually had her first set of parents walk away from her and she will carry that emotional burden her whole life. You joking about doing the same to your kid, especially to me, is just WRONG.
2. Likewise, don’t joke to me about being so broke you may have to sell your kid into slavery. Slavery is not funny or cute. Neither is child trafficking. Sadly, there are children in the world today being sold into slavery. Have the decency not to make light of the horror that is their lives.
3. Middle-aged women actually exist. We are not invisible. It is not cool to let me stand in line at the store for ten minutes, then the minute a man walks up behind me, open up an additional check-out line by saying, “Sir? I can help you over here.”
4. When we are in our cars and I stop to let you into my lane because your lane is closed due to construction, I do that because I am a nice person and I would like a little wave of appreciation in acknowledgment of that. When you don’t give me the wave, I feel like you feel you are entitled to go ahead of me and that makes me want to stomp on the gas and ram into your car.
5. It is not necessary to do construction on every street in my city at the same time. Planning, people! It’s a good thing.
6. If you want to stand around in large groups in public places, fine. But don’t block entire entryways, aisles, sidewalks, etc. It’s just plain rude. And blocking the exit point of an escalator is dangerous and stupid. See, I can’t really stop, no matter how dirty of a look you give me, as I’m on a mechanical moving apparatus that is about to dump me off right where you are standing.
7. Shrieking in a high-pitched voice, especially directly into my ear, is neither desired nor appreciated. I don’t care how close we are to missing the beginning of your favorite TV program.
8. If you are a place of business and are going to have a website (which you really should, by the way), then have the decency to put your address, phone number and hours on that website in a place that is easy to find. Why else would I be looking at your lame-ass website?
9. If you are literally a silly goose, you really shouldn’t casually stroll across a busy street during rush hour every morning. You have wings, use them!  You are going to end up as roadway pate' one morning and that is going to ruin both our days.
10. A sports superstar screwing around on his wife is not news. Neither is a TV personality’s divorce from his SEVENTH wife. There is plenty enough real news in the world. Let’s stop focusing on the silly crap, shall we?  And leave poor Sandra alone, for God's sake!
11. If you are a middle-aged woman with her own blog, who has found numerous things to be cranky about, it’s quite possible you need your hormones adjusted. Excuse me while I call my doctor...

Closing an Open Adoption

As I've talked about before, we have had a semi-open adoption with Lil Sweetie's birthmom, Ashley.*  In theory, that means that we share information, gifts, and photos with Ashley, but we don't know identifying information about her, nor does she know our last names or where we live.  In reality, though, the openness in our adoption has mostly been on our side--in almost eight years, we have had one meeting and received one letter and one packet of photos from Ashley.  In contrast, we have sent photos, letters, gifts, and examples of Lil Sweetie's artwork and school work a minimum of four times a year.  (Not that I'm keeping score or anything.  Ok, maybe I am.)

We've been going on this way for almost eight years.  Then, a couple of the weeks ago, we received an email from the adoption agency saying that Ashley has chosen to close our adoption and no longer wants to receive communications from us.  This was a complete surprise to us.  We had no hint that this was coming.  In fact, I didn't really realize that an open adoption could be closed.  In hindsight, I probably should have realized that, as we have known of other adoptions where the level of openness increases as the adoptive parents and birthparents come to know and trust each other.  It stands to reason that if the degree of openness can increase, it could decrease as well...I just had never thought about it.

So, it was quite shocking to receive that email from the adoption agency.  I was pretty devastated at first.  I felt like we had done something wrong, even though the adoption agency assures us that is not the case.  And of course, I was worried sick about how this would affect Lil Sweetie.  As usual, Mr. Sweetie talked me down off the ledge.  He has such a knack for seeing to the heart of matters.  Mr. Sweetie pointed out, rightly so, that I was upset about the loss of "what might have been", rather than "what was."  Mr. Sweetie pointed out that Lil Sweetie's life is no different than it was before, and that she will probably not even notice the difference.  For that reason, we have not yet talked to Lil Sweetie about all this.  At some point, she will ask why we no longer send photos and letters and gifts to Ashley, and we will tell her that we have lost contact with Ashley and no longer know how to get things to her.  And that is the truth.

Easter Weekend

Before.

During.

After.

What a ham!

If you are spoiled, you might get to decorate some cookies.

If you are really spoiled, your Grammy will load up your fingers with frosting.  Who needs cookies?

If you are really, REALLY spoiled, your Grammy will let you eat frosting off her fingers, too.

Hope you had a beautiful Easter!