pronoia

Random Bullets for the End of the Year

How better to jump-start the return to blogging than some Random Bullets?

• We've been on vacation, glorious vacation, since the 21st. I'm dreading returning to work and in fact had a lovely little breakdown about it last night. We've got to figure something else out and soon. So as soon as I finish this, I'm working on a copyediting test to see if I can get that going. Ms. P, on the other hand, is "working" from home today, and she finally got the VPN to load properly, which means she actually can work from home sometimes. This is awesome.
• My parents gave us a new SLR for the holidays, so we're busy taking pictures of everything under the sun. If I have time later to install the camera software on the computer, I'll upload some Cute Nephew pics.
• The visit to GradSchoolTown was mostly fantastic. We stayed with BIL and SIL and spent most of our time hanging out and passing the baby around. There was no Baby's First Christmas to contend with. There was, however, the alcoholism of Ms. P's dad to contend with.
• In another holy-shit-I'm-immersed moment, we realized we're going to have to do some serious education of our friends and family around adoption. We've started drafting an Adoption Primer to help start those conversations.
• We have our first adoption class on the 12th, which is just too exciting for words!
• Ms. P gave me Veronica Mars for Yule, and we've powered through season one. Holy shit, people, this show is fantastic! We very well might pick up season two later today. I have a holiday gift card from work, after all, and they owe me some escapism.
• I've got it in my head that I want to do some serious decluttering, cleaning, and organizing of the house. Ms. P is very afraid. We'll see how my energy distributes. It won't be happening today or tomorrow, at least not in the main.
• We looked at calendars today and the next unobligated day we have, except for tomorrow, is the 26th of January. How do we do this to ourselves?
• Because we threw me and N a joint birthday party, the downstairs is looking pretty nice. Except for the disposable plates still on the VCR. Must remember to collect them when I stand up and they are once again out of my sight.

See? Random. Posts in the works on ethics in/and adoption, the Great Work Question, and others.

Synchronicity

This morning brought a Board meeting at work. Since R is the freelance minute-taker, I got to have a quick chat with him afterwards and then send him off to rush home to meet a deadline for another job he's got. I returned to the style manual I'm writing and planned to leave early to let the dogs out before Ms. P and I went to the office holiday party despite my not feeling very celebratory with this particular organization right now.

And then my colleague came in with the power cord to a laptop, which she said was R's. R, who has a deadline today. So I called him and yes, it was his, and he was already so far into his train commute that returning would take a huge chunk out of his day. I packed up my own laptop and headed to his house so I could drop off the power cord and then proceed to work at home for the afternoon, which was a nice idea all on its own.

Except that my car started making the most godawful noise--metal on metal screeching from the right rear quadrant, but only when I was moving. I called R and got him to meet me at the dealer's. By now it was 12:30, he's not gotten to work any more on his deadline, and it's going to be hours before the car is done. We talked about me dropping him off and keeping his car for the evening so I could pick Ms. P up from the train after her therapy appointment and then pick up our car, but we realized that he could work at our house as easily as he can at his. So we ordered a pizza and settled in with laptops.

And we both agreed, it's been so nice. It's not that we're talking or distracting each other; it's that it's companionable and friendly.

The car will be ready sometime today, and we'll only be out the $1500 we knew we'd be spending on the car in the next two months. We have the perfect excuse to avoid this holiday party we didn't want to attend anyway. And R and I got some low-key hang-out time, which I really miss in all of our socializing. Somehow it ended up being a pretty damn good day.

Afterwards

The house next door burnt down last night.

About a quarter to eight we were walking through the dining room and we noticed a fire in the yard that separates our house from the one next door. "Is someone in charge of that?" we asked each other; "Is it contained?" When we saw smoke coming from the door of the basement apartment, we knew the answer was no and called 911. Before we got through, we heard sirens and hung up. (Aside: when you call 911 and don't actually talk to someone, they call you back to make sure you're okay. Good to know.)

In a matter of minutes we had approximately eight fire trucks--one behind the house shining a huge light on the matter, several pumper trucks daisy-chaining from the hydrant at the corner, and others providing people-power and backup. I don't think anyone was trapped in the house or seriously injured, since no one left the house once the fire fighters arrived.

We expected the men in yellow suits carrying long hoses. We expected the rivers of water sloshing down the street. We didn't expect them to break all of the windows with long poles designed to do just that. We didn't expect them to pull the window frames out. We didn't expect them to cut holes in the roof. We didn't expect them to toss belongings out the windows.

I knew just enough about fires to put two and two together and realize they were providing themselves ways in and the smoke ways out so they could get in and see anything. After the first basement blaze was brought under control a hot spot flared in the opposite corner of the house near the roof. I think there was one more after that, and then it was just a matter of opening holes in the walls and floors and ceilings to make sure nothing else was smoldering, ready to burst into flames. And after everything was declared fire-free, after the necessary investigation into causes and pathways and what happened next, they put plywood over all the doors and windows to prevent looters. The last people left sometime after 5am this morning.

Since our bedroom window faces that house, we didn't sleep very well. Kleig lights and random crashes don't lend themselves to consistent slumber. Grace, in particular, was pretty freaked out about the whole thing, but all of the animals stayed close. I spent a fair amount of the night imagining how we'd get them all out of the house safely in a similar situation.

We don't know our neighbors well; we wave and chat outside, but we've never gotten chummier than that. From what we've observed, this particular family has a lot of ongoing drama, what with custody fights, the odd police visit, grandma raising the grandkids, revolving adults who may or may not be actually living there. According to the gossipy old man down the street, this same family had this same house burn down a few years back and they got back into it just before we moved in. I can't imagine the repeated trauma, not to mention the insurance nightmare.

In the grey light of dawn their lawn looked like a bar at closing after a particularly manic night--mangled bits of things strewn everywhere, glass peppering the grass. The house looks like it has been abandoned for years instead of just hours. As we drove to work this morning, we could see that the side of the house furthest from us is entirely black and scorched. We're grateful no one was hurt; we're grateful it didn't migrate to our house; we're grateful the official response was quick and thorough.

I'm lucky that my major job today at work is folding paper, and once all of the paper is folded and tucked into its respective envelopes I'm likely to go home and lie down. I'm exhausted and shaken and more than a little on edge. But more than anything I'm holding my neighbors in the Light, these people who didn't need more drama or trauma in their lives.

Waste

When, one day when we're mothers, someone invariably comments that it's a waste that I, a woman with a PhD, spend my time wiping snotty noses and providing instruction on the finer points of toilet usage, remind me that in November and December of 2007 I spent approximately eleven days folding paper and stuffing envelopes. And someone paid me to do it. A lot.

Picking Up the Thread

You can tell when my work-life exploded by my personal inbox: all kinds of exchanges with friends just stop around November 1. I'm finally trawling through the pile and reconnecting. Today is the first day I've had the energy and the enthusiasm to do so, which is funny given how despondent I was yesterday. But perhaps I needed yesterday's mood to get to today's, and anyway, here we are.

Of course, credit might also be due to Ms. P and the fabulous R, with whom I shared a raucous dinner at our favorite beer bar. My family is awesome. With whom else can I have a conversation that ranges from adoption naming choices to cybersex to homeschooling to personality types to home organization to gossip about the love lives of our friends?

I also decided not to have any more chiropractic appointments until early January. They're helping a lot, but logistically they're taking too much out of me right now when I don't have much to start with. It was starting to come down to chiropractic or Christmas, and we can't have that, now, can we?

I'm picking up the thread of my life again, and I like it so much better than my work.

Waiting for the Light

Soon we will have the longest night of the year. Ms. P and R and I will all take the day off of work, eschew electric lights, spend the day crafting and hanging out and napping and baking snickerdoodles by candlelight. We will watch the night come in, settle on us, and whatever the weather, we will feel snug together, comforted by the company of family. We don't hold a vigil, although some people do, but when we wake the next day and watch the light return, we will know that we are teetering on the brink of the return, that the days will lengthen into summer, that the winter will not last forever. Even when we do not believe it because the long, cold, dark days of February are wearing us down, we know.

The struggle with my job right now is that I do not know when the light will return. Every day just pushes us further into the darkness--email requests ignored, deadlines pushed, sanity fraying. I don't know how or when things will turn, either in them or in me. My body is starting to reflect the immense stress of this position despite my twice-weekly chiropractor visits; my weekaday mood is depressed, although my weekend mood is reasonably chipper. On nights before I work I wake up for hours in the middle of the night and can't fall back asleep; on Friday and Saturday nights I sleep through with no problem. None of the options before me is appealing, and so I wait.

The light will return one way or another. This I do know.

Portrait of Friends

On Sunday we decided that what we needed was to hang out with J&N, so we called them up and made dinner plans. They wanted to hear about the adoption expo and oh, did we want to tell them!

When we got there, J was cleaning off his altar in preparation for the scheduled house-closing next Friday. He got a little teary and gave us the fertility statue that helped them conceive K to help us bring a child into our lives.

Later on in the conversation, we were talking about the absolute bare necessities we'd need to get and keep around once the home study was completed, since there's no telling when you'll get the phone call. I mentioned that on our list of necessities is a small fridge and a bottle warmer, because anything that helps shorten night-time feedings is a necessity. And N immediately jumped up because she had a bottle warmer, unused, still in its box, and she wanted us to have it.

Baby's first gifts: one fertility statue, one bottle warmer. Somehow, that seems appropriate to our lives.

Sleeeeeepy

I have now been at work for 5 hours, and if timestamps work the way I think they should, you'll see that I got here at 5:45. Ms. P had to be at work at that hour to host a TV crew interviewing her boss, but we don't usually see that hour from anywhere other than our bed or maybe the couch if we've been successful in getting up and journaling.

If there were any justice in the world, I would go home at 2pm, but I have a meeting from 4 to 6, so I'm here for the duration. Bah. There will very likely be caffeine in my future. Damn the torpedoes--I need sugar as well.

Zero to Sixty

It's been nearly three years since we had a really major life-change, so it's about time, don't you think?

We went to the adoption expo yesterday and it was fantastic. Loud as only an open conference hall filled with tables and people asking questions can be, but fantastic. We attended a session on knowing when you're ready to adopt and one on transracial adoption, and we spent a few minutes talking to a represenative of the agency we're interested in. While there are still some open questions for us (we're still working out timing as best we can, and we're still talking about whether we have the resources to parent a boy of color, given the crisis of boys of color in this country and especially around here), we're pretty much on board.

And just because that's not enough of a big decision, today Ms. P's parents offered to pay for her to go back to school. When she first attended college, she got either As or Fs and finally dropped out. In hindsight it's easy to see that the untreated bipolar and the seasonal depression that comes with it (not to mention evil voices and profound anxiety) was the cause of things not working out. We've talked about school off and on, but it's expensive and we can't afford school and adoption. But with this offer, we could do both. So she's got an email out to an enrollment specialist at the continuing ed arm of the state school up the road, and if everything works out she'll start school again on January 22. She'll probably only take one class the first semester and work up to taking two a semester, so it will take a while, but we're in no rush. Since this wasn't on the table in the first place, we've got no investment in everything being wrapped up by a certain date.

In some ways it will work out really well. I'm continuing to work on getting freelance work, and if she's in school there's time built in for studying and working for both of us in a way there isn't if she's not got something similar on her plate.

So we're throwing ourselves off this cliff. It's going to be all humanities and home study and child development and freelancing around here. Sure, we'll still have our spirituality and religion and friends and chosen family and animals and all of that, but we have this amazing opportunity. And so we're taking it.