Karen's Journey

We -- and the school -- are having a difficult time getting a certain someone to follow directions the first time. Compliance takes three or four reminders to achieve. It's not outright refusal to follow directions; it's just that he's requiring us to repeat ourselves repeatedly before deciding to do as he's been told. This drains the patience bucket quickly. I'm sure it falls in the brain drain category, but my brain drain bible is about how to respond to verbalized recalcitrance, not ignored instructions. I don't have any tricks for this one. So anything that anyone can share that is appropriate for an attachment-challenged, developmentally traumatized child, I'm all ears. Thanks!

Dear Mr. Ed, I'm the type of person who gives money to those guys at the highway exits holding up signs "Will work for food." I know they may very well spend it on alcohol, but I figure it's not my business to judge them. I'm the kind of person who brings the excess bounty of my garden to the food pantry instead of putting it out for sale at the curb, because I know that people going to the food pantry don't get fresh tomatoes; they get canned tomatoes, and if I've got more than I need, well, how better than to make someone's day -- someone who is going through tough times -- than to give them some fresh-from-the-garden tomatoes? I feed stray cats and sometimes even take one in to foster until he finds a forever home. Basically, I'm a softie. I also am more inclined to trust people than to be suspicious. You are the father of my son's friend. They go to the same school and same daycare. I don't know you really well, but enough to say he...

When I was a teenager, we lived in an upper middle class community. Everyone's father worked as an engineer or researcher for Generous Electric. My family was a bit of an anomaly, as my father was a "lowly" computer informations systems specialist. No one back then had a clue what that meant -- laughable now to remember having to explain it to people -- and if he were starting out in that field today, he'd be getting paid as much as the fathers who were engineers and researchers. But still, he worked for -- ugh I can hardly cough it out, I hate the company so much -- GE, and we lived the GE family life. My parents overstretched on the housing budget to get us into that area so we would be in a good school district. So there I was, living in our suburban raised ranch house -- nestled among colonials and split-levels and ranches and other raised ranches -- living the upper middle class life, riding the bus with everyone who was just like me, or at least close to bein...

My Facebook status today is about how T can't run the annual Shamrock Run ( see my post from last year ) because he's got a whopper of a cold and a heck of a cough. And that he missed the Festival of Races last fall due to pneumonia. And for a kid who was born to run, he sure misses a lot of races where he would shine. And that I was disappointed that I'm not running due to injury, but more disappointed for him. I lied. I'm beyond disappointed that I'm not running right now. Hubs is 45 and running competitively better than he has in years. Of course, a new age group will do that for you. But when I was 45, we would pull up to the grocery store -- I got dropped off at the door so I didn't have to make the trek in from the parking lot -- and I would sit for several seconds psyching myself up for the pain to follow before opening the car door to get out. By the time we got to the cash register, I would be almost hopping, my foot hurt so badly, and that was even ...

Yesterday we ordered in Chinese food. This whole stopping my work day at 3:30 thing just isn't going well and once again it was well past five when I finally logged out, tired, beat up, and not close to being done. I ordered vegetable mu shoo. We usually get veggie lo mein, but I wanted something different. It worked out well last night. I just tried to eat leftover mu shoo for lunch. At first it seemed like an epic FAIL. The wrapper fell apart and was impossible to hold -- the veggies landed in a heap on my plate. I was ready to toss the wrapper and just heat up some rice, but then I remembered my acquired-through-adoption Ethiopian heritage. I ripped the mu shoo wrapper into scoop-sized pieces and ate my mu shoo like I was eating doro wat with injera. It worked perfectly! Does that count as fusion cuisine? Sometimes you have to take your successes where you find them. :)

The other day at bedtime, T asked his nightly "good night" question, "Mommy, can you tell me a story of when I was little or you were little?" The conundrum is I know very little about "when he was little." How many times can I tell him that he was afraid of the pit toilet and so would use the woods and his uncle would yell at him? Or that he and his brothers would play hide and seek by hiding in the trees, but he was too little to climb the trees so he was always the seeker? Or that one time there was a pot of food heating over the fire and no adults around and he tried to see what was cooking and tipped the pot over and the hot food spilled onto the ground and his foot, and the entire top of his foot blistered and it hurt and he cried and no one hugged him or kissed it all better? He has a heck of a scar, so I know it was bad. But that's all I know. It's like this child stepped through a portal at the age of four and everything before then ...

I recently received our annual post-placement report reminder from our adoption agency. Every year we have to file a report with the Ethiopian government updating them on T and how he is doing. For us, it falls in February. When I received the reminder, I thought, "Okay, it's January; maybe I'll get it done before the end of February this year." Except it arrived in February. I can't explain where January went -- it's just gone. And I'm still working on last year's post-placement report. So close to being finished, but stymied by a lack of both black and color ink in the printer. Once I can print out the final set of photos, I'm ready to put that one in the mail. and then I can start on the one that's due by the end of this month. Which is seven days away. And there's a birthday party tomorrow, which means birthday gift shopping today. And a bathroom that's being remodeled. And I'm still one-point-five people at work, getting pa...