We're home...

It was a grueling trip - I was crazy ill the whole time, and H had a rough adjustment, but she's awesome, and we've been home two days, and she's battling a double-ear infection, but we'll manage thru...she learned to dance last night, and that alone made it all worth it...

I just wanted to let everyone out there know we are back home. I've got some (ok, tons) of thoughts rolling around in my head, but H has been asleep for 45 minutes, so I've got to get off to bed and use this time wisely!

The Last...

I've been having a lot of "lasts" lately...The last full week of work...the last Friday at work...the last grocery store trip...the last lunch out with friends...the last conference call...the last house project...the last get together with family...

P thinks I'm crazy. He just shakes his head at me..."it's just like going on vacation, K...you'll be back in 2 weeks. No different than last time we went to China."

Yeah, dude, it's totally different.

The vacations we took, we came home and picked up life right where it left off...usually running back to the endless jogging wheel of work, more tired than when we left (and the one time we planned down time when we got home?! That's when we ended up having to drive from Toronto home)...BUT this time, this is the discontinuous line adjustment of life. I'm not complaining, but it's different...it's not the same at all...all the little things...Hey, M&L, yeah, let's have a Wii-fest and go get super spicy Thai up the street the weekend we get home! That'd be swwweeeettt. Hey, D&K, J&B, N&C - let's have a bbq on the 22nd...Can't do that. Can't even tell work when I'm coming back!

This is the first time in my life that I can remember that there is a break in my life continuum. The reason for it doesn't scare me, I'm ready for it. But it's just straight out an odd feeling...I have not a single plan but for one...motherhood...for when I get home...
No nights out.
No plans with friends or family. (Though I think the deal of no airport meeting traded for dinner the next night with my mom is something I can't barter out of, my guess...)
No projects deadlines for work.
No house projects.
No vacations to plan.
No pedicures.
No helping out friends with various things.

All I have planned from March of 08 on is: Pay bills, eat, sleep, bathe (I hope), shop for food and basic supplies, buy cute baby shoes and mother. Hopefully a little something something on the side with P when H goes to bed, but now I know all you parents out there are laughing already...

For me, the list planner, the organizer, the duck-liner-upper (you should see how awesomly straight my ducks are...they are the US duck standard, I'm telling you), this is a bigger leap of faith in myself a thousand times over than the actual parenthood I'm taking on. The lack of structure, the floating from day to day and seeing how it goes...

Well, I've never been one to shy away from a challenge.

Baby H's SWI

Here's a posted update from Half The Sky on H's SWI:

Huaihua HeChen District SWI, Hunan - need winter clothing, quilts, diapers, heaters, medical assistance. Estimated cost: 50,000 yuan; total child population: 35 (social welfare institutions house elderly also)

I worry...constantly...

Moving Dreams

First off, thanks everyone for your packing tips, I appreciate it!

We're home snow-bound today, though B&J 2 doors down apparently snowblowed our entire driveway AND our sidewalks. They are amazing neighbors (even without the doing favors for us thing)...I was doing H laundry while working from home, P's here too, cause you know that little sports car will NEVER get thru our totally unplowed streets - not one plow has come yet - even on the main streets in our 'hood. Finally, went to go outside, bite the bullet, and all the snow was gone...until you hit the street - there's about 10 inches there.

Anyways, why this matters - I slept in this morning, knowing I wasn't going to work, cause it took me 1 hour 50 minutes to get home yesterday (usually, 35 minutes).

I had one of those damn "moving dreams" again...a little different than I've had in the past. We are in the apartment, P is soon going to graduate (I don't think the impending graduation has been in there before). And I remember that we put money down on a house like a year before and they have never called to tell us that they are going to start building! Then, I realize we have like 3 months to be moved out of the apartment. Now, why I would not have remembered a house under contract, that's just odd...Nothing this time about stuff being left behind in the apartment, or trying to move, like the dreams normally are...this was all about planning. And then we went to get yesterday's paper to look for ads for housing, cause we had realized we didn't have to live in the house we had put money down on, that there were nice towns other than the one I went to HS in (mind you, we don't live there now at all)....and it was like, ok, let's find another one. Basically, who cares about the other house...

So, even though the moving to the house and leaving the apartment when P got his PhD was not at all stressful, at least not that I felt it was at the time, somehow, I think this is for sure a manifestation of my worries about change, or probably, change out of my control! Our agency hasn't given us the particulars of our time in China (when we fly between cities etc), and I don't take to that kind of ambiquity very well....

Of course, the natural disaster of the winter storms is weighing on my head and heart heavily right now. I wish I was there living it with H, even if we were stuck in Hunan, to know she was safe and warm.

But I can't be, so I can only hope that this clears up in the next week or so, and that our travel isn't delayed in any way, so I can be there when I'm planning on being there!

Yet, I still can't help but look outside today and dream of snowmen and snowball fights with H, and the gleeful scream of delight (from me) when we realize that we have a snowday and I can spend it at home with H...hopefully she'll scream with delight too!

Do I Look At All Organized?!

This is where we are at...does it look like I'm at all prepared?!?

Of course, all this will be distributed between 2 large suitcases and 2 carry-ons, this is just all in one catproof suitcase for now.

This is odd for me, packing so much ahead of time! Of course, if the weather doesn't change, 1/2 of these clothes are going to come out and the heavy duty kid clothes are going to go in.

Do I look like a responsible parent yet?! :)

Okitty and Ekitty are starting to freak out. To Ekitty, the suitcase is the equivalent of the Anti-Christ. So, this bag being out for about 5 days now?! She's about to have a little kitty heart-attack. With a little kitty stroke on top of it for good measure!

So, we're getting thru this. I think we're mostly organized. I have to find someone who is willing to pick us up at the airport and endure the likely screaming of a restrained child in a car seat for the first time. The Dad unit is unable to do so. The mom unit?! I'm unable to do that one. Gonna start calling in friend-favors. The official excuse to the Mom?! She can't fit the luggage and us in the car...cost of not having me flip out at the airport when she says something really stupid and I'm jet-lagged and covered in some baby-substance that smells, and just being able to go home and (hopefully) sleep before that encounter?! Priceless.

OK, tell me what is really really stupid that I have that you can see in the picture...I can handle it!

Lastly, is anyone else addicted to Super Mario Galaxy for Wii?! It's been helping the time pass...so if you need a distraction - get a Wii and this game (and Godzilla, but P won't play it with me - he's trying to conquer Metroid). I opened up the kitchen last night - I could not kill spinning Bowser for the longest time! But I finally did him in last night in his castle, and I have the whole kitchen world opened up to me now. It is sooo awesome.

People Really Are Like This?!

OK, a little background...last Monday, I worked from home. Honestly, I just couldn't stand the idea of going into work, it was snowing, and P was off for MLK day....and everything I had to do was web based...so I fibbed about an upset stomach, but really, the thought of going to work was nauseating. So, 1/2 way thru the day, I get a forwarded junk email from our bookkeeper: She's around 50, divorced, white, the kind that puts the sticker on her bumper: "Keep the Christ in Christmas." Which is odd, cause she doesn't like that the really really religious guy who runs one of our presses prays in the lunchroom before lunch. She talks trash about him being uppity. So, I guess we can chalk her up to a hypocrite....

So this email, I've gotten similar anti-something emails from her in the past, quotes an article from Spain about how the Holocaust ruined the intellectual capital of Europe, cause then they felt bad and then let Muslims in. It cited 9/11, it cited Sirhan Sirhan etc etc etc. At some point, the email said that allowing Muslims into the Europe had brought "stupidity and ignorance" to Europe as none of them were willing to work hard to support themselves. So I emailed her back and said "OK, that's it. Do not email me junk like this anymore. This is random facts pulled together, and until you can explain away the 'anomalies' of the Unabomber, OK City etc etc etc, I don't want to hear it anymore." She emailed back..."Ok, sorry if I offended you (ok, email was ok so far), but sometimes you have to be forced to read the truth."

I went ballistic. I realized she had sent the original email to 3 customers at our biggest client. I forwarded the original email to my father to notify him that this was sent to customers. I emailed her back and said, "Change every word in this to 'Chinese' and 'Japan' for 'Muslim' and 'Europe' - then read it. You would be forwarding this commenting on how racist the Japanese are then, wouldn't you? If you want, I can prove just about anything, if I take #s and choice facts. What you are forwarding is racist, and I don't like you making our family's company look like it supports this. EVERY culture has good, bad and ugly. EVERY culture on this planet has contributed beautiful works of art, intellectual leaps, horrible atrocities and honorable people." She never responded.

So Thursday night, I'm down by my father's office. Mind you, we have a lot of hispanic workers, and a smattering of other ethnicities. They are looking for a part-time bookkeeper to help her out. Sooooo...I'm talking to him, and he drops two resumes on her desk. She said she gave him one to approve, he says ok, bring her in. Then he shows her the other one and says "This one has a lot of small business experience, let's interview this person too." She responds: "OK, but I can tell this person is a foreigner. Just from the resume, I can tell that." My Dad looks at her and says "This is one of the best written resumes we've gotten, and she's got the small business experience, so let's interview her too."

I'm not stupid, I know there are racist assholes out there....but, really? Really? In front of your boss, in front of the one that took you to task earlier in the week?? Really? That crazy obvious?

So, the first one we hired to help you - the white middle class woman who was so flaky that she decided the day before she was going to start that she didn't want to work here, and left you in a lurch, she's better because she can pass for a ghost?! WTF?

I just wanted to bitchslap her. And then I walked away, blushing from the embarrasment of association...

I sobbed all the way home...

So, we've got our tickets...the countdown has begun. And because of P's last business trip to Singapore in December, and his elite status as a 1k person now, we get to fly out business class, and come back in economy plus. Which totally rocks.

Yesterday was a flurry of activity, as we got approval to book, and the chase for tickets started. P was on the phone with special people, and I was on line, and we were emailing back and forth. It was like hitting a brick wall when he emailed me the confirmations...BAM! It was all done. All this unknown for the past 2.5 years is done. Like that. Poof. I'm not really a waiting parent anymore. I guess I'm in limbo right now, actually - a Packing Parent. But, a piece of our identity was stripped away with that one purchase of a plane ticket. And a new superhero costume is waiting for us...

I was so happy all afternoon. It felt like a relief. And it is....

I got in the car to come home a bit late, and the driving sucked cause the weather has been soooo snowy lately. So I'm sitting at a light to turn, being actually super careful with the right turn on red thing, sitting longer than normal, and the thought flashed thru my head: You are going to go get Baby H. And I just started sobbing. Not sad sobbing, for sure. I don't know if it was happy sobbing either. It was just a release. All the angst, fear (and I'll have some of that until we're on the plane headed home), worry and unknowns that have been piled on my shoulders and my heart...all that crap that I couldn't admit was there for the fear of it breaking me down...I could acknowledge that it was there. That it had been there. I don't feel it's gone, but I don't feel it's there either.

I think it's going to be like our latest snowstorm...digging out is going to be slow, in reality, to heal the pain that I have felt the last 4 years or so. The infertility, the ever lengthening wait for H, all of it...you can't drop it over night. There's no way. My mother would chastize me that it should all be gone and I should be handing daisys out on the street corner now, but that's not reality. I can't even realize how happy I am that I'm going to go get my beautiful baby girl, there's no way for me to even understand how blessed I am with my daughter. But, I don't think that I can just "forget" the last 4 years. It will always be part of me. And oddly, that's not all bad. It's made me who I am...someone who I think is more fearless, stronger, and more mature than I was 4 years ago. I've aged too, you can see it in my eyes, but the jury is still out on if it is bad or not. I still can't believe that I've lived this role for 2.5 years, as a waiting adoptive parent, and 4 years as a hopeful parent. I can't believe how time has passed.

I don't see the same person in the mirror from when we first started this. Not at all. My tears seem to have washed away any worries about what I have become in this transformation...

It felt damn good.