Must I Have Customers?!?!

OK, Mr Customer Guy...you send me a project you set up 2 months ago, that needs web programming upgrades (but you only sent to us last week), and then send me emails with swear words in it cause you are mad that I haven't flipped it in a crazy short period of time? Off of a product setup spreadsheet that had 90% filled out wrong - by you?

Dude...Dilbert could run another 5 years just off of what you put me thru every. single. stinkin'. day.

Thankfully, every other customer is not like you. And I like working with them. I wish I could really send this post to you.

Saved By The Wii...

P is a lucky guy. I was sooooo angry with him yesterday. I'm still mad, but not seething anymore. He gets pigheaded sometimes, and well, he's been pigheaded on this trip to Singapore that he has to take later in the year, and I got mad. I don't like being told that I'm not wanted, in not so many words. To report fairly, he says that he never said nor implied such a thought or concept. To this side of the marriage, it seemed like it was on a 20ft billboard in 18ft letters. Whatever. He's made his flight arrangements (first class too!), so what's done is done. I'm just seething that he got mad that I thought I might see if The Mother (I know, I know, what am I thinking on that) might want to go to Hawaii or Europe with me while he's gone.

Anywhoooooo...what saved us both from mutual annihilation last night?

A Wii...an allpowerful (apparently) Wii...

We've been looking for one of these things for 2 months - no I won't pay the overcharge on Amaz** that people are selling them for. P found it in a Target on his way home last night. AND, he also was able to get one for my Dad, cause he's been wanting one too. He played it in good K fashion - he asked to be let around the 1 Wii rule, as his FIL really wants one. The guy assumed some little old bald guy who's kinda hunched over apparently - he said "Yeah, I hear they use them in nursing homes and such cause it's good for the old people." and then gave the other one to P to buy. Har! My Dad is 90% bald on top, but he's only 60, and seriously, except for the gray at the sides, you'd think he's 52, tops. Whatever, P and I are Wii heroes when I take this thing to the office to give it to him.

See, I'm a predicitable pet of Pavlov, just for the record...everyone at work just about got one of these things. I was curious, but they started talking about them, and how cool they are. So I wanted one. Then I couldn't find it...so I needed one. We've looked, and P told me he's been stopping a lot of places without telling me, which is sweet. 98.5% of the time, he's an awesome guy, the rest of the time? Grrrrrrrr....

But, we have not Wii'd yet. We have torn the box apart, checking it out, but P wants a special something cable before we pull the tv off the wall...oh yeah, he got that a few weeks ago.

And P chipping his tooth also distracted us.

He got out of that fight, huh?

O Cat

For my RQ friend, who has a cat that seems to look just like O Cat...

I'm Tired...

Dear TATHMFF-
I'm tired. I had a quiet weekend. Dinner out, hanging around the house, chatting with the neighbors. That's it. I'm still suffering malaise. We've been waiting (sorta) patiently for 22.5 months. I'm toast. I know you want us to be patient. I know you want us to push ourselves to make us good parents for the child you will entrust to us. If you knew me, if you knew how much I have proven already. Seriously. I was whining in February of 06, saying I couldn't wait anymore...If someone had told me I would have to wait 2 years at the beginning of this, I would have told them I couldn't.

I've watched so many babies be born and start to grow up. I've seen family fade and die. I've seen life come and go at so many levels. I've felt so many emotions. I've made so many life-long friends thru this proces too - sisters and family from the friends who have also chosen this path in life.

I don't think you planned for this wait to turn into this. But, knowing that capitalism feeds our agencies, you should have known they wouldn't have policed themselves to submit the candidates that apparently you said you preferred. But in the end, we've waited 300-400% longer than we were first told. Longer than secondly told...and thirdly told. I think the last time our agency said no later than April 07.

Please, we're only 14 days away. Please, recognize that we've toiled and learned and danced with anxiety, and tossed and turned in our sleep more times than I care to admit.

I'm tired.

I'm ready. Let me show you.

I May Be New At This Soon, But...

You would think I wouldn't be this stupid, right??? This was on the inside of a lid of a big hard plastic container that was purchased for me to make my life easier at work...i.e., the boss has made it so I can stack my work into walls around me...

2 Years Ago Yesterday...

Two amazing souls came into this world, 1/2 a world away from us. They had a hard start in life, losing their birth family, but happily, they got to keep each other. Last year, they were referred to my amazing friend A, and her husband A, at the end of September. They brought them back to the US on the 1 year anniversary of our LID in December. This is their first birthday at home.

These two girls are amazing. They are strong souls, they have grown and adapted so much in the last year or so that they have been home. One has a huge crush on P and can work him over like I never could. They are so smart, so inquisitive, so beautiful...this is XB analyzing (yes, it is) a ladybug.

I only wish that they understood what they have meant to all of us (and I'm just the faux-auntie!). The happiness I see in my friends' eyes when they watch them playing, and learning. I can see the joy, I can hear it when A calls me on her way home, to tell me about how they learned to do something... Seeing them grow and expand, I can do nothing but get excited about what it is going to be like to see H go thru the same transformation - to see her learn how to trust, to fill out as she catches up from institutional delays, learn what it is like to have a family. I can't wait to watch all three of them continue to grow into amazing young people.

How can you not love this?

It also makes me sad, to think what they have been thru in their short lives. To think about what H is going thru right now. It makes me wonder if any of us would have had the fortitude to survive and flourish like all these amazing kids have...See, when I have no time, and I'm slammed against the wall, I start daydreaming and getting all philisophical!

P is "the next state over" on business, and I emailed him that I had gone thru the pics from the girls and their mommy and daddy visiting last weekend, and I said, "it's obvious that you will be totally whipped by H." He asked why, and asked me to email him a few of the pics that A took with the camera...so I sent them over and asked "Why, do you need a baby fix?"

Do you know how emotional I am right now, waiting for the next batch? He emails back "Yeah, I've needed one for 2 years." Just started me crying...

Photos included with permission of Mommy A.

Belated Congrats, Mr Gore

Congrats to Mr Gore on winning the Nobel. It sends an important message. Even if I don't necessarily agree with everything the major environmental movements preach right now...

I don't buy the electric car thing yet...no one has seemed to prove that the reduction in emissions offsets the caustic production, and disposal of, the batteries, along with the environmental damage caused by the power plants that instead have to produce the power that is needed to fuel the battery...I do appreciate the theories, and the research, and the committment to trying to break our dependence on dirty fossil fuels though.

I don't believe in the black and white view on things like pesticides etc...I think there's a very important difference between use and responsible use. As with many things, there are many shades of gray.

I don't believe in absolute saving of every species in the world. I think at some point, if you believe in evolution (which I do), sometimes a species' time has come and gone. Before you all climb on me, I'm not saying all, ok? Of course, man has perpetuated many crimes against nature, but sometimes it just is time for it to happen. Dinosaurs would really f*** up traffic on the expressway during rush hour.

The reason I congratulate Mr Gore, and am glad that an environmentalist won is because it has brought the environmental cause back to the forefront, and back to the masses (a bit). It has made something that was dismissed by the current administration a voice again. More than anything, it has opened discussion. If there is no discussion, there are no answers. We need to innovate. We need to make more fuel efficient cars. We need to see ourselves as part of the world population - we need to agree with other countries to make this planet better. Kyoto? We have to revisit it. We have to stop spraying pesticides on everything because every grape has to look perfect. We don't need super-cows that produce double milk at the expense of chemicals polluting our milk supply. But we also need healthy cows, and grapes that are not tainted by e. coli. And we need industry and technological progress. I don't think we know most of the answers, and we won't ever know all of them probably. But with the cold shoulder of many government officials, and the gutting of monies for non-corporate research thru government agencies, Mr Gore has mobilized some of the masses...started the discussion...even if people don't agree with what he says, at least we're talking...

And that's where change starts...