Confronting Prejudice

The family and I were at a local restaurant, chatting away while waiting for our food to arrive.  In the booth facing ours was an older gentleman who, I began to notice, was making faces at Lil Sweetie.  He would wave, smile, wink--anything to get Lil Sweetie to respond.  I kept a discreet but watchful eye, trying to determine if he was a perv or just a friendly old fart.  At one point, Lil Sweetie said, "Do I even KNOW that guy?" 

Eventually our food came and we dug in.  While we were waiting for our tab, the elderly gentleman got up from his booth and headed directly toward ours.  I tried really hard not to make eye contact, hoping he would pass us by.  It was not to be--he was making a beeline straight for us.  I smiled but inside I was cringing, thinking, "Oh no, this old geezer is not going to understand my family.  He is going to assume that Lil Sweetie is a foster child or ask what country she is from or something equally stupid."  But to my surprise, he complimented Lil Sweetie on her manners, stating that he could tell that her parents (gesturing to me and Mr. Sweetie) were raising her right.  He then went on his merry way, while I sat there shamefaced, realizing that the prejudice I was forced to confront that day was my own.

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!

Wonderful Weekend

I find it's much easier to be happy when I am wearing my jammies.  Hooray, hooray for vacation days!

My precious Birdie and I are headed to Texas tonight for Heather Ales Soldering Workshop.  Can't wait!

The Highs and Lows

Here's a blog post that I wrote a couple of weeks ago and never posted that explains why I haven't been posting lately:

Have you ever seen that TV show, “Hoarders”? That’s the way my mind feels—all cluttered and sad, with mouse droppings in the corners and evidence of insect infestation. It’s all musty and dusty and rusty up in here and I’d like to do something about it but I don’t know where to start. So I sit in the chaos and the clutter. I need some mental Drano, some psychic Ex-lax.  It’s days like this that it’s easy to forget my theme for this year is “HOPE.”

And here's a excerpt from an email I wrote to a friend who jokingly asked if I were going to make croissants from scratch:

I will never stuff a mushroom. I will never make a turducken. I will never make croissants or homemade puff pastry. I will never personally roast a pig on a spit or bury a goat in a hole in my yard. I will ever pickle eggs. I will never egg a pickle. I will however, on occasion, stuff a pickle with pimento cheese. (Don't knock it until you've tried it.)  I will never cook a rack of lamb. I will never make any form or flavor of aspic. (For the love of God, never ever EVER google the word “aspic”...the images are horrifying! I can never unsee them. I now suffer from Post Traumatic Aspic Disorder.)

I will never fry, saute’ or stuff a squash blossom. I will never make gelatin from scratch. I will never make chitlins, tripe, brains, kidney pie, tongue, blood pudding, or calf fries. Ditto re lamb fries. I will never make head cheese (see aspic, above). For that matter, I will most likely never make any form of cheese from scratch. Not that head cheese is actual cheese.

I very much know who I am and what I am about (and what I am not) in the kitchen.

So no, I will not be making homemade croissants. And you?

No Regrets

This weekend, some men came and cut down a lot of dead branches out of our sweet gum trees.  I was fascinated by the wood chipper they brought--they fired it up and it chomped up those giant branches and in no time at all, the branches were nothing but sawdust.  I thought, "Wow, wouldn't it be great if there was a wood chipper for life?" 

Then I remembered that I don't believe in regrets.  Well, that's not entirely true.  I don't regret the big things, like my disasterous first marriage.  It hurt like hell going through it and I dang sure wouldn't want to do it again.  But I don't regret it.  I learned a lot.  A LOT.  It toughened me up, which I sorely needed.  It wore off some rough edges.  And it opened my eyes, which helped me recognize Mr. Sweetie as my Mr. Right.  I think I would have passed right by him if not for the lessons learned in my first marriage.

Same thing with infertility...it wasn't fun, I have no desire to go through it again, but I have no regrets.  Infertility was the road I had to take to end up here, as Lil Sweetie's mom, my personal pot of gold at the end of the infertility rainbow.

The things I do regret are the little things...the times when I was impatient and snappish and hurtful to others.  Those are my regrets, and the things I would put through the wood chipper if I could.