April 2007

Last night, I had a dream that I was smoking a huge, haybale-sized bowl of pot with a bunch of people I knew in high school (hello, Facebook dreams!).

I was sitting in this comfortable black chair, sucking back lungs-full of weed and shouting that I wasn’t “feeling anything” and “shouldn’t I be feeling something” and then sucking back some more.

And more.

And more.

And then, just as I had inhaled for what seemed like the 99th time, and still wasn’t high, I started to panic. It suddenly occured to me that they might do drug testing for adoption!

If they tested me and found marijuana, I realized they’d only give me a kid who already was a pothead!

And while I was okay with that.. I REALLY didn’t want to have to SHARE the pot with the child!

That’s right. I was not afraid of them potentially banning me from adoption – because (duh) obviously they’d just give me a kid who liked the ganja, right? (It’s called “making a perfect match”, I guess.)

But whoah, I totally feared.. having to share my excessive supply of pot.

I’m gonna’ be the BEST MOMMY EVER.

Okay. There. I joined Facebook. Now what?

The Virginia Tech shootings – massacre, spree, whatever you prefer – is one of those subjects that I can’t bring myself to write about. Not because it isn’t a big deal, but because, like so many other tragedies that take place on a daily basis around the world, I’m simply not qualified to say much beyond, “Whoah, that’s a really bad thing.”

I’m no longer surprised by school shootings, attacks, bombs or any other major catastrophe caused by humans. To be honest, after Columbine and September 11th, I’ve found myself considerably jaded. I’ve always known that terrible things happen – even to good people – and while the details often shock me, the happenings do not.

In this case, I was not directly impacted – none of my friends, relatives or loved ones were, either. And while anyone shooting anyone, for any reason, is a bad thing – and, certainly a huge-scale shooting like what happened at VT is a whole other bad thing – I’m just not able to say anything here that hasn’t been said by better qualified, better-informed people, already.

I feel terrible for the families, of course, but even that’s a distant sensation.

What I’m finding interesting is viewing the different angles being presented. Certain notes and writings have been “leaked” to the media, and it’s intriguing to see how each person, or news source, “spins” that information to either fill a personal agenda or, in the case of the major media outlets, to find a new angle to gain a larger audience and, thus, make more money. Other people are viewing websites, jumping to conclusions, tossing random “I knew his best friend’s friend Dave and he said the dude once killed a CAT!!” comments into the mix..

Some people latch on to the theme of alienation and priviledge and financial status. Some people latch on to the idea of religion. There are those who have seemingly analyzed every drop of information they can find and, in my opinion, over-analyzed it.

It makes me wonder how much of what’s being “read into” the story was actually intended by the shooter. Could someone who was clearly disturbed (in any number of ways, if you believe the media) be so organized as to write special things on his skin and leave behind encoded notes and sign envelopes in such a way as to imply his glee over the intended killing spree? (Yes, quite possibly, I suppose..)

I imagine, briefly, how someone would view my life over the past few days if I were to snap and do something ridiculously public and obviously antisocial.

First, they’d examine the contents of my fridge and determine that the entire thing may have been caused by the plethora of organic foods contained therein. Some lobbiest against organics would find a way to make it appear that THAT was the deciding factor in my rampage.

They’d peek into my purse and find my Leatherman and wonder what I was protecting myself from (giant knife!) or what I had recently built (a bomb?) or disassembled (something safety-related, I’m sure!)

Another would look at my intention to adopt and suggest that my rampage was caused by a sudden understanding of how screwed up the world really is and how terribly futile everything can be. I was acting out the inner feelings of a neglected child.

Someone else would look into my family history and determine that the trauma of my parents’ deaths was completely to blame. Someone else might blame my divorce. Still others might say that this is what one should expect when a Canadian marries an American.

Surely someone would get a hold of my VISA bill and note where I shopped and, after some digging, discover what I had purchased. Obviously my t-shirts from QC fueled the fire. Or maybe the list of books I’ve taken out from the library recently would lead someone to yet another conclusion about my personality.

What about the fact that I’ve recently started using “Violet” in place of my given name? Is that a sign of insanity?

And on and on and on. You can read anything into anything if you try hard enough.

I’m not suggesting that examining the motives of any killer is a wasteful project. I’m certainly not going to suggest that we always take things at face value and never try to delve deeper into the who/what/where/when and why of how tragedies happen. If it can help to prevent a future tragedy, I’m even MORE for a thorough investigation.

But oh, sometimes I wonder. And if there’s an afterlife, I wonder if the killer is sitting, somewhere, shouting, “YOU TOOLS! I WROTE THAT ON MY ARM TO REMIND MYSELF TO CHECK OUT A BOOK FOR MY HISTORY CLASS! THAT’S ALL!” And I wonder how the families of this most recent killer feel – reading that their son was a racist Muslim Asian Sociopath Loner (fill in any other description here that may or may not apply).

I know – I know! – that tragedy sells, if it bleeds it leads, violence is the only thing that gets our attention. I know enough to ignore 90% of what I read online or in newspapers. So, instead, I let my own imagination run where it wishes – where I can ponder circumstance and coincidences instead of dead bodies and mourning.

The only report I’ve seen that I truly found offensive – shocking and appalling and horrifying – was a British newspaper that published a photo of the ex-girlfriend of the VT shooter.

Underneath her face was a headline that, in essence, read, “This is the face of a girl who may have sparked a killing spree”. My god, how incredibly.. tacky. Inappropriate. Horrible. How dare they attempt to pin even a single drop of blame onto that woman? She did not spark a killing spree. She did not cause this. SHE had nothing to do with any of this, regardless of what was written on any note, in any letter, or on any web site.

That disgusted me.

Everything else is simply an exercise for my mind. I’m lucky to have that priviledge – to be able to ponder things, to wonder, and to not be planning the funeral for my son or daughter or loved one. This, I suppose, is what I am reminded of when I am no longer being shocked.

The world is a weird place.

I’ve mentioned before that it blows my mind – totally – when I realize that our child is alive, right now, and doing something that I don’t know about. She might be at school or reading a book or giving a smack-down to another kid or eating carrot sticks or napping.

She could be five years old or ten years old or only a toddler.

But she’s OUT THERE. Right now.

And I don’t know her.

Not knowing her – what she looks like, what her name is, even – leaves me with so many questions. About her, about me, about our family-to-be, and what the future holds.

What will she need from us – from my husband and I – to grow into a happy adult? How will we provide it? It seems the happiest families have parents who can laugh at mistakes and the proverbial spilled milk, and we will feed her vegetables and let her play outside, but what will her specific needs be?

We know we are unlikely to bring a “normal” child into our lives. We know she will have challenges, but we don’t yet know what they are. Will she be slightly delayed, say, in her development? Will she be autistic or FASD or ADD or an insomniac?

How will I grow as a person as a result of her presence? How will I grow as a wife and a mother?

She will need patience and love and nurture and structure, of course, but will our days soon fill up with professionals? Therapists of varying types or medical doctors? Or will we settle into an initially bumpy-turning-to-graceful routine at home, helping her to relax into the safety of our family? Will we learn to navigate the special-needs world? Will we find supportive services in our area?

How will our lives change with her in our family? I spend so much time imagining what will change for me – from the loss of my spare time and the hours of leisurely reading of novels to the change in the layout of our rooms – but I know it won’t be like that. It will be different from any way that I can possibly view it. No matter how many ways I shift my life around, mentally, I know I can’t be prepared.

Will we spend weekends playing outside or will she be uncomfortable in the wide-open world? Will we read long stories at night or will she have a processing disorder that precludes it? How will she feel about our dogs, rats, fish and hamster?

How will my relationship with Coffee change? We have an amazing marriage – strong, balanced, healthy – and I know that’s crucial for a happy family. Having this strong marriage is why we’ve decided to adopt, after all – knowing we are secure enough, stable enough and ready to bring someone else into the mix.

I know that children do not make things easier if things are already messy – even biological children. We are both commited to our child and the changes she will bring – of course – but I wonder, anyway, how things will change.

She will bring her own personality, her own needs and wishes, and she will change everything.

I am preparing to make some huge changes, huge sacrifices.. for a stranger. I am preparing my heart to love someone I have never met.

And I can guarantee you that, a year from now, I will love her more than anything in this world. The changes and sacrfices will be forgotten, regardless of what she brings to our family.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Here’s what George Sheehan wrote in *Running and Being,* his book about running: “If you want to win anything–a race, your self, your life–you have to go a little berserk.” For a limited time only, I’m endorsing that strategy for your personal use, Cancerian. While I do love your sensitivity and subtlety, right now I’d like to see you get half-crazy in a ferocious devotion to the noble dream you love best.

(Freewill Astrology)

This morning we woke up, Coffee got ready for work and left, and I brought the dogs outside to do their morning, um, “business”.

On the way from her crate to the front door, the beagle left a trail of turds. One here… one there… one over here.. Running while pooping.

Nice multi-tasking, beagle. Very nice.

This matched nicely with the crate full of peed on blankets that I discovered.

Seriously, why do I let the dogs out of their crates AT ALL? They’re clearly doing just fine in there on their own. I should just toss in some clean shavings in the morning, a stick to gnaw on each evening and.. hey, maybe I’ll just trade the dogs for hamsters!

(mutter mutter)

We walked around the ‘hood and Daisy got to kiss a 2 year old girl on the face. A BIG kiss. A BIG WET kiss. I’m happy to report that evn when said child began shrieking with glee, Daisy and Zooey were both calm and un-ridiculous. There’s a first for everything.

Back home, I discovered that the washing machine is stuck on.. spin. Yeah. That’s helpful for washing peed on blankets. I’m letting it spin repeatedly in the hopes that it will get dizzy and suddenly decide that another cycle might be fun to try out.

(mutter mutter)

Then I opened the mail and discovered that, for some magical reason, my auto insurance has gone up by $25 a month. From $80-ish to $105-ish. This amuses me, to some extent, as I currently drive the car twice a week, put on less than 5K in mileage per year AND I no longer commute.

And my car is a 2002 that, you can bet, is depreciating quickly with each passing second that it takes me to write this.

No tickets, no accidents, NADA.

I’ve left a message for my broker to get back to me on what, exactly, compelled this increase. Another insurance company has quoted me $75/month for the same coverage, soooo.. we shall see what the broker says.

(mutter mutter)

Tonight is our first adoption training class. All I ask is that there be no bodily fluids tonight. Let’s save that for week number five.

Tomorrow evening, at 6:30pm, Coffee and I will meet up at the local F&CS offices for our first (of nine) adoption training classes. Coffee will be coming straight from work, gnawing a sandwich as he drives, and I will be coming from home.

I am surprisingly calm about this – for the time being – compared to my anxiety a few weeks ago.

The classes, I think I mentioned, are government mandated for anyone intending to adopt or foster children. We don’t know how many people will be in the class, nor do we know the format of the classes themselves (handouts? overhead projectors? videos? live-child-demonstrations?) (I kid on that last one, by the way).

My only demand is that I not have to sit for three hours and listen to someone read directly from a powerpoint presentation or handout.

I’ve already told Coffee that, should someone start reading aloud from a handout, I will implode. I really might. Yargh. Worst presentation-style EVER.

Each of the nine classes will last for three hours, and over the course of the nine weeks we’ll learn about the foster care system, the adoption process, the various issues that children in care tend to carry along with them, the way to create attachments, how to discipline, how to seek external assistance in parenting special needs children.. and a lot of other bits and pieces that we’ll try to absorb as completely as possible.

Shortly after we begin this training, we’ll be matched with our official worker (who may or may not be the woman we initially met with) and our homestudy will begin. That’s the part where we meet with the worker, in our home, to discuss our own childhoods, our perspectives on parenting, our relationship with each other, our family relationships, how we handle stress…etc.

I am becoming delirious with my impatience. I expect that, halfway through the first class, I’ll leap up and shout, “GIVE ME A KID! PLEEEEEASE! OH PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEEEEEEEEEEEASE!.”

It’s good that Coffee will be sitting next to me, wouldn’t you say? He’s got quick reflexes.

It’s going to take all of my self control not to drive to the F&CS offices tomorrow afternoon – say, around 2pm – to wait in the parking lot. Just tapping my fingers and twitching.

But we’re almost there! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

Kelly nominated this humble blogger as a “Thinking Blogger” which, I have to say, took me aback for more than a few reasons. If you’re here to find out whether I nominated you, just skip to the bottom of this post..

I first began chronicalling my thoughts, on the internet, in 1993 – my first year living away from home, my first year of university, and the same year that my mother died. It wasn’t called a “blog” then, and it wasn’t drafted up in WordPress or even Dreamweaver. Every line of code was cranked out in Notepad (or the Mac equivalent at times) and it was, for the most part, true vanity that kept me doing it. I wrote in an “online diary”. There were no comments; I had a guestbook.

Over the years, my writing shifted – more people read what I wrote, I moved from my university’s free web space to a domain that I purchased, and life expanded greatly in a lot of different ways. I began to pay more attention to my writing, less attention to other people’s opinions, and I developed a fairly decent group of loyal readers from all over the world. I “blossomed”, so to speak, in my writing.

Please don’t misinterpret: I did not become one of those “A List Bloggers” or whatever it is the popular kids are called these days. But I had an audience – a consistent presence of readers – and all was fine.

Within a few years, I had my first (of several) internet stalker. This one figured out where I worked and what I did for a living and.. showed up there to “meet me”. I’ll spare all the details (for now, at least) but it scared me. I didn’t want to censor myself, but I needed to be more aware of all the fine details I wrote for public consumption. The rest of those stalkers and bastards were different but just as scary.

Google did not always exist, you see, and that made a lot of people feel that they could say and do things online with no worries. Myself, included. I went through some heavy shit over the years and I documented it and I railed against it and I made weepy pronouncements and I created my own drama.

One day I had something I had written – something written several years earlier – flung into my face by someone who hadn’t been involved in the original conversation. My words had been discovered in an archive, somewhere. I love Google now, but for a while we were sworn enemies.

I changed my internal list of what I was comfortable writing, again, and lightened many of mysubjects up once internet archives began to form more cohesively. I was beginning to censor myself in larger ways.

For many years after leaving university I wrote on a personal domain that felt like a safe spot. A decade of writing and editing and posting photos. At my corporate job, shortly before I quit, a client found out about that site (through my own stupidity, not by his research) and, though he was completely harmless, I moved here to MisBliss in order to prevent my boss from finding me.

I censored my internal subjects/writing list again.

More recently, I wrote a few posts about various relationships I witnessed while I was growing up – friendships, family stuff – and got a scathing email from someone who felt I was selfish and horrible and blahblahblah for what I had written.

I maintain that I said nothing wrong in that post (and, indeed, it’s still up here on my site) and I refused to censor it – but it caused a great deal of crap nonetheless. The reader clearly misinterpreted my reasons for writing what I did, handed that information to someone else (who did not have access to my blog) and things went to hell for a bit.

The person who was most upset decided to depart from my life without explanation, never mentioning the blog post to me, and I decided not to pursue that further. It was excrutiating, of course, to lose someone I had been close to for so many years. At the same time, how close could we have been if she couldn’t be bothered to ask me why I wrote it?

I tried to resist the urge to further censor.

Over the years, my writing and my blog has been a pretty good indicator of how I feel about the world at large.

Sometimes I write intimate, personal thoughts because I’m feeling safe and secure and protected and like I can handle negative feedback or someone tossing my words in my face.

Sometimes it’s all I can do to post a meme with carefully sanitized responses to the various questions.

I am no longer as open and flowing here on my blog, and it bothers me. I don’t talk about my sex life anymore, nor about various activities or actions in my regular life. I don’t talk as much about relationships or my family or some of my experiences.

And sometimes, on occasion, I wonder why I write here at all if I’m going to censor myself.

But I’ve talked about how much I dislike being put on the defensive and I know, first-hand, how easy it is to draw conclusions based on what someone writes in their blog. If I ponder that too much, in fact, I end up writing extremely long posts while trying to cover every possible angle that someone could attack me through. Or I just don’t post.

I know that controversy causes excitement – I know that if I tell you something wild and wacky about myself, you may find my posts more interesting that a rundown of what I accomplished around the house. And my natural inclination is to tell you those wacky things. I’m a sharer!

I know that if I tell you what I’m thinking – what I’m really thinking – you’ll give me feedback and ideas to ponder and support.

And then I remember that Google exists.

And then I remember that not everyone lives by the “live and let live” rule or the “to each her own” rule.

So, when I read that Kelly had nominated me as a “Thinking Blogger”, I was prepared to not accept the honour. Okay, so it’s a virtual honour, but it’s an honour nonetheless. I was ready to argue that I was NOT a thinking blogger, I was a hiding blogger.

I’m not still not sure that I can really accept the nomination.

But, rather than turn it down, I’m going to use it as an excuse to do more thinking. To do more writing. To renew my own promise – to myself – to delve a little deeper into things. To resist the urge to hit “publish” just as I’m preparing to dive deeper into things that might be uncomfortable and, instead, to write more.

And on that note, I’m supposed to name five blogs that I believe are worthy of the “Thinking Blogger” award. Five blogs that make me think. With over 300 blogs in my RSS reader, that’s a hard task – all of them are able to draw me in time and time again, right?

I’m not nominating any of my bestest friends-who-blog, however, because I admit that I’m completely biased. I read their blogs because I know them, have grown with them, and as a result my judgement is clouded. Every single post they write makes me think because of who they are – and I’ve linked to them all over the months and years that they’ve been writing.

Instead, I’ll offer up some of the others.

1. Under His Hand is a blog written by Kaya, a submissive woman who is living her dream relationship. It’s most definitely “adults only”, and not safe for viewing at most workplaces.

   I’m nominating Kaya because she is a normal, average woman with children, a house to run, a husband she loves.. and a lifelong desire to live a life that many people would consider.. unconsiderable. Through a lot of thought, research, consideration, discussion, self-analysis, and a huge dose of courage, she’s managed to make her dream come true in many, many ways. Her dream is not everyone’s cup of tea, but the lesson is universal: be true to yourself and do what you must do to make the most of your life.

   I admire her ability to live this lifestyle (and share it with the world at large), be a good parent, enjoy her life and be as open and honest as she has been thus far. Every entry she writes makes me question how far I’d go for a dream, what the true boundaries of love and lust are, and reminds me that we all have different paths to follow on this earth.

2. The Adventures of Leelo and His Potty Mouthed Mom: is a blog written by a Mom (Squid), first and foremost. She chronicles the daily adventures of raising children, she advocates for her children as often as she needs to, she talks about trips to the aquarium.. and her blog is the first I’ve found that’s written by the mother of an autistic boy (Leelo).

   I consider her to be a “Thinking Blogger” because every time I read her blog, I am reminded that a child is not his or her disability or symptom or difference. Maybe that’s especially relevant now, while we’re waiting to adopt. While Squid talks about Leelo’s difficulties in adjusting to certain situations, or about convincing him to sleep in his big-boy-bed, this is not a blog about autism or raising a child that requires different parenting skills.

   The blog is about Leelo as a person, generally, and Leelo as a son and a brother and a kid who wants to play in the playground just as much as any other kid does. And sometimes, Leelo needs his Mom to go to bat for him. To fight for him. And Squid does it – with a sense of humour, with honesty, with hope.

3. Naked Jen: Here are some things to love about NakedJen – she’s naked a lot of the time, she has two beautiful dogs, she appreciates the colourful things in life, she’s funny and she’s smart and she has a very friendly writing style. No matter what subject she’s writing on, I find myself spending additional time pondering that subject myself. Agreeing that certain things must be done or disagreeing with an idea she has or wondering, even, why I don’t take pictures of myself in public.. She balances political with love and she makes me think.
4. Just Another Ink-Stained Wretch: Barbara reminds me, through her own explorations, to open my eyes a bit wider while I’m doing the “usual” things in my life. Walking the dogs, for example, or cleaning the kitchen. To think, too, about the lives of the people around me – as mundane or magical as they may appear. I can’t remember how I found her blog, only that I added her to my RSS feed almost instantly. Her work on other sites – Literary Mama, Salon, and others – may have led me to her. But I’m hooked.
5. Through The Looking Glass: I’ve been reading Annika’s blog for.. years. Literally, years. We’ve never met, I don’t think we’ve ever exchanged emails other than blog comments, but almost every post she writes makes me think. She makes things (thus causing me to ponder my yarn stash or my fabric or my sewing machine) and she was unschooled (something I recently learned and which interests me greatly due to my own plans for our kid) and she has a good sense of humour.

   She’s one of those people I’d be completely intimidated by if I saw her walking down the grocery store aisle, but who I’d simultaneously wish I could wander up to and ask for advice on how to be cool the way she is. (Seriously, she leaves a comment here and I get all giddy about it. I need all the “cool” help I can get..) She has the most adorable son, Sam, and she writes and she reviews books and she has some of the same perspectives on things that I do – but she’s always able to articulate things in a more coherent way than I am. She makes me think about my own ideas, choices and creativity. And she’s an all’round good egg, as far as I’m concerned.

My neighbour, Jackie, stopped to chat this morning while I was walking the dogs. Daisy was peevish about the delay (barking and tugging on her own leash.. sheeesh) and the beag let out a few howls of protest herself. Between the two of them, there was much fuss and yodeling.

With my overwhelming fear of being the ‘bad neighbours’, I sheepishly asked Jackie if she and her husband could hear the beag carrying on like a raging lunatic all day long and she looked me straight in the eye and said, “Not a sound. Honest.”

Stunning to know that I’m the only one going deaf from the beag’s howls.

She commented that the neighbours on the other side look “more normal” than we do but that they are “very much not.” They listen to mysoginistic rap all day and night at volumes no one is comfortable with and they have loud parties at night in the summers. She confessed that she had worried, on seeing us move in with our dyed hair and piercings. that we’d be yet another set of hooligans.

I assured her that we are the furthest from hooligans you could ask for in neighbours. We don’t have enough local friends for throwing wild parties, we understand the concept of “quiet nights” and both of us tend to fall asleep before midnight anyway.

She said she was already thrilled with us. No noise, no parties, no screaming fights on the sidewalk (!).

Then I confessed that there may be a tiny wrench in that perfection: we’re adopting. Possibly two children. Probably LOUD children.

She asked, immediately, if she could babysit for us. Could she smother our kid with love? Let the children swim in her pool any time they want? Could she play with them in the yard sometime?

Um, yes please! Okay! Sign me up!

(Hey, wanna’ start by taking the dogs for a trial run? No? Damn.)

She was nearly giddy at the idea of kids living next door – despairing that any of her kids will ever provide her with grandchildren (none of them are dating at the moment, and one lives out West.) She talked about how much she loved being pregnant with her kids and how she had been pondering being a Foster parent.

Alrighty, then, I guess it’s safe to say we have an emergency-care provider.. Huzzah!

It’s also very reassuring to know that we’re not driving the neighours insane with our dogs, or our music, or our laughter while playing Tetris. I’m fine with being the weird neighbour and the crazy neighbour, but I don’t want to be the BAD neighbour.

This is a “suncatcher” – in the shape of a triangle (with channel at the top for threading) and.. a sun burst at the bottom. Y’know, sun catcher? Sun?

Yeah, I know. You got it the first time.

I wasn’t kidding when I said it was five-year-old-kid worthy. But I’m happy to say that I’ve now got a better understanding of how much the glass expands when it’s heated, how much space to leave at the edges (so there’s a bit of a border) and my ability to cut glass has already improved.

Um, not that you should get all worked up about the next project. I mean, try to stay realistic here. Heee!