Progress

There's been a breakthrough on finding my biological parents.  I don't want to say anything more right now -- I'm almost afraid to breathe for fear it will all blow away -- but progress has been made.

Right now I've got a whirlwind of emotions swirling around inside me.  I'm trying to process them now so they don't get in the way later on.  Cry now, be calm later.

Late to the Party, Brought the Jello

Among the foods Mom never made was anything fancier than plain Jello, and that was very seldom.  It made me uncomfortable to realize I was missing out on something.  Years later, when I was grown and everyone thought fancy Jello was just so uncool I was too embarrassed to admit that I had no idea what they were talking about.

But darn it, just because I missed out is no reason for my children to miss out.  Especially since when I was moving our dry foods to the new house I came across a small mountain of Jello I had stored back "for emergencies".  Time to experiment.

With the bigger kitchen I'm able to store the ice cream sundae glasses inside the kitchen (instead of in a storage building) where they can be pulled out and used much more frequently.  It turns out fruits and berries go down kids much easier when they're encased in Jello, topped with whipped topping mix, and presented in a sundae glass.  I bought some old copper-tinted molds at flea markets and started playing around with them, although so far nothing's come out perfect.

And for the first day of Spring Break, I've the makings of Blue Skies Jello set back.  Things are looking a bit jiggly right now.

House Update February 10, 2014

We installed the kitchen drawer pulls, drawer facings and the lower cabinet doors.  Yay, I have drawers now!  There's an actual place for cutlery, as opposed to the used plastic tubs it was dumped into.  With more room to spread things out we were able to put the dinnerware and silverware at preschooler height, and turn over the job of setting the table to an excited 5yo.  An excited 14yo got promoted to cook's helper/dryer, and a not-very-excited 12yo got promoted to dishwasher.

Now I can bring down some of our nonessential cookware, like the John Wright decorative cast iron muffin pans and cookie molds I bought at Service Merchandise (back when that store existed) 30 years ago.  After 3 years exposure to humid Southern weather, their Victorian-era curves were hidden under a thick layer of rust.  Repairing and re-seasoning them are giving my arms a workout.

I don't even know where you can get John Wright now.  Someone said Williams-Sonoma, but there isn't one around here.  I went in a Williams-Sonoma store once on vacation.  It reminded me that there is a dividing line between "elitist" and "snob".  My nose doesn't tilt high enough to shop there, and they didn't have any John Wright.

With a bigger kitchen I can also round out my Lodge collection.  Cooking just got a lot more adventurous.

Dh is building a table for the arts-and-crafts shop with built-in storage for oversized art papers.  After that it's on to the kitchen island.

Update:  Today also begins the pre-spring gardening, with moving a willow sapling that had grown up too close to a building to a boggy spot in the backyard.

Ulterior Motive

In order to understand my biological mother better I just got in a copy of The Girls Who Went Away:  The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children For Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v.Wade.  My 14yo daughter immediately asked to read it. 

I can't imagine a better prophylactic.

The Dark Day Has Arrived

Brighteyes (14) has two papers of more than one page in length due at the same time.  Oh, the End Is Nigh!  The weeping, the wailing, the screaming, and the gnashing of teeth went on for over two hours yesterday.  (Time that could have been spent finishing both those reports.)  You'd think the Apocalypse was on us.

Her father was less than impressed.  "I've got freshman college students just encountering that for the first time who are having the same reaction.  Best to go on and get it over with now."  I agree.  Best get this explosion out of the way before the child is old enough to have a driver's license.

Comfort Food

My emotional heart is undergoing surgery right now as ancient barbs are being moved about none too delicately and certainly not painlessly.  It's led to all sorts of misadventures, such as running out of the room and collapsing on the floor crying during yesterday's episode of My Little Pony (409).  One of the coping mechanism's that's come out is a mild obsession with comfort food.  Not so much eating it (although there's some of that) as making it for my family.

Evolving Into High School

As my older children enter their teenage years our homeschooling is evolving to keep up with them. Their reading requirements have skyrocketed, and for that we got a Nook Glowlight for Christmas.  It's our first modern "handheld" and has quickly become the most fought-over item in the house.

Unfortunately it doesn't make the increasing length of the reports any less intimidating.  I try to tell them it's the mental equivalent of learning a cartwheel, but so far all that's got me are glares.

We're also adding more DVDs into the mix.   They're watching The Standard Deviants series and practicing note-taking with it.  It would have seemed grossly unfair to my teen-self to start learning note-taking with a series you can start and stop yourself and take as long as you want to write things down, but you have to start somewhere.  Besides the SD series manages to pack half a college-level Biology 101 course into a two-hour lecture interspersed with jokes, so they must have intended it to be stopped.

Christmas Season 2014

Actually got my husband to make his annual step inside a mall the week before Christmas.  We went to the Riverchase Galleria in Birmingham, which was --- okay, but am I the only one who remembers when malls were for everybody?  That newfangled "exclusivity" has a lot to do with why I can't get my husband to set foot in one more than once a year.  It also isn't helping their sales; all we could find that interested us were a couple of used video games and a block of cheese.

Stopped at a Chinese buffet.  The food was a bit dry, and two days later the girls and I came down with raging intestinal bugs.  Thank goodness it didn't get the youngest.  Not eating there again.

Got my very first e-reader for Christmas.  It's a Nook Glow Light.  Now I have to learn how to use it.  So far all it does is show me different pictures of trees.  I could use some light reading.  I've had to ingest too many searingly difficult psychology books lately.

Before my insides crashed I was using the video game Walk It Out to help with my insomnia.  Most other exercise games require a modicum of coordination, but I can stomp around this thing bleary-eyed at 3am and actually make some progress.

Here's hoping we all get better in time for New Year's.

Woozy, but still here.

I seem to have stabilized a bit.  My despair's hit an all-new rock bottom, which while lower than ever before looks like it'll hold steady for a bit.  It shouldn't collapse for, oh, a few months at least, and that will give me time to do some infrastructure repair above it.  Most of my physical ailments are gone, with the worst of the remainder being a migraine that's lasted three weeks.  If I don't start phasing soon I'm going to be PISSED.  :P

11/24 Update: The Psychosomatic Fireworks Get Annoying

Still alive, and rolling my eyes at the psychosomatic fireworks going on inside me.  Ever since this nervous breakdown triggered in the spring my ailments have all turned into blooming drama queens.  My illnesses have become incredibly intense and exaggerated, pushing the definition of "sub-clinical" to the limits.  Suffice to say that the current round of seeing how far complications from the flu can really mess up your period has left me with plenty of source material to write some spectacular gory first person body horror in the incredibly unlikely event that I should get a yen to write such a thing.

It would be a hypochondriac's wet dream, but since I'm not a hypochondriac it's just incredibly irritating.  All the recently uncovered pain and trauma of my childhood is seeping up, out, and looking for ways to manifest.

"All?"  Well, I hope so.  Of course it's quite likely to be just "most" or even "some".  I can hope it's "all" at any rate.

Anyway, blogging will resume when my guts calm down a bit.

Here's "The Talk" Miley Cyrus Probably Got But Ignored

Thank you, Miley Cyrus

We did need a new, up-to-date, universally accepted metaphor for "empowerment through the vigorous championing of one's oppressors and their methods of oppression."  All our previous metaphors were dated and falling out of cultural resonance.

And don't belittle irony by calling her "ironic"  Irony is detached.  Desperation is engaged.

Talking

Little Owl, now 5, has been a "Leo the Late Bloomer" type, slow to talk.  There's probably a certain amount of trauma there, as he was talking fine before the botched kidnapping (or whatever it was) right before his second birthday, then stopped talking entirely for years.  He recently started talking again, but it still takes my breath away whenever he starts a conversation.

The other night after we watched the end of one of his favorite cooking shows ("That yummy!  Mama make that!") I said, "Okay, it's time for bed."

He turned to me and said, "You break my heart."

I blinked.  This was new.  "I break your heart?"

"Yeah."

"Well if you're that fragile you need to go to bed and stay there."

He frowned and thought a bit, but went to bed.  As I tucked him in he said, "You no break my heart, Mama."

"That's good to know, Sweetie."

"Yeah."

And maybe one day when you're a grown man with a child of your own, you'll know how good.

King Ted Cruz (Seriously)

A hardcore Evangelical Christian Church in Texas has "anointed" Ted Cruz as King.  You read that right.  He's officially King Ted now.

King Ted has been given a mission.  His mission is to bring about "The End Time Transfer of Wealth", i.e., to wage war on all us people who don't belong to that church, steal our money and bring "the spoils of war to the priests" of that church.

Here's video of King Ted's Daddy laying out the plan before the congregation:

And another video where he goes on about how King Ted is going to "take Dominion" over all of us:

And here's the actual anointing of King Ted as Lord and Master over us heathens:

Really.  Read it for yourself.

Honestly, Cruz.  SNL gave up satirizing you over Green Eggs &  Ham, and here you go pulling this one on them.  Will someone think of the poor comedians?

(I'm laughing to keep from throwing up.)

Maxine Powell

Maxine Powell died last week. I doubt if any of you knew who she was.

I have no doubt you have admired her workmanship.

In the early 1960s Maxine Powell was hired by an up and coming record company called Motown to run their in-house finishing school. She took raw, young street musicians and taught them how to move like princes and princesses. The graceful, sophisticated sensuality of Martha Reeves, Diana Ross, Marvin Gaye, and Smoky Robinson is her doing. She taught them how to perform for the White House and Buckinham Palace while looking sexy as Hell the whole time.

She even taught them how to twerk with style when she found the Supremes practicing the shake:

“ ‘You are protruding the buttocks,’ ” she admonished them. “ ‘Whenever you do a naughty step like the shake, add some class to it. Instead of shaking and acting tough, you should roll your buttocks under and keep smiling all the time.’ Then I showed them. They were shocked that I could do it and at how much better it looked my way.”

I couldn't help remembering Miley Cyrus.  Her recent actions have been defended as simply the way she chooses to play a game that is heavily weighted against women.  Cyrus has chosen a particular way to game the system, but it is far from the only choice available. There are many women who choose to play without appealing to the lowest common denominator of the most puerile members of society.

Women Senators End Shutdown, Save Country

This isn't getting nearly the airplay it should, but apparently the group of Senators who forged the deal that ended the shutdown were almost all women.  John McCain is being given credit, but says, "Leadership, I must fully admit, was provided primarily by women in the Senate."

Male Senators Begrudgingly Admit Women Are Important

Signal boost, please.  People need to know so they can remember in November.

Housecleaning

I'm spending a great deal of time lately talking about highly personal matters.  This wasn't what I intended this blog for, so I've created another blog for that.

Whose Face Stares Out My Mirror

I'll post links to it from time to time.  So far I've talked about hydraulics, and the Doctor's Companions.

Narcissistic Women Favor Sexism

Women who feel entitled more likely to endorse benevolent sexism, study finds.

Duh, people.  My adoptive mother could have been Exhibit A.

Adoptee Abuse, i.e. You Know That Thing We're Supposed to Never Talk About? Let's Talk About That.

I found a good therapist this time.  (You'd be amazed how often that isn't the case.  Kind, yes.  Well-trained, yes.  Good?  Not so much.)  He's willing to dig down past all the obvious layers to go after the deeply buried stuff.  Right now we're at the level of dealing with being an abandoned child adopted by child abusers.  It's not a comfortable topic, but it's one that needs to be addressed.

I know it's completely against the stereotype of all adoptive parents being loving adoptive parents.  "Every adopted child is a loved child," the saying goes.  Whenever I hear that I just want to  pat the speaker on top of the head, hand her a Harlequin Romance novel, and make her sit in the corner while the grownups talk .  Because -- let's compare it to marriage, okay?  Is every bride a loved bride -- in a healthy way?  And even if she's loved in a healthy way at the altar, how many are still loved in a healthy way 2, 3, 5, 10 years down the road?

Yeah.  Now, do you honestly think it's any different for adopted children?  What happens when the "babymoon" is over and the adorable baby stops being adorable?

Yeah.

I'm not saying that all adopted children are abused.  My best friend has wonderful, loving adopted parents.  But statistically a greater percentage of adoptees are abused than children who live with their biological parents.

My sister and I were two of those children.

Whatever made the agency think that handing over newborn babies to a petty, domineering, narcissistic, self-loathing woman with the emotional maturity of a 13yo was anything remotely like a good idea was not a good thing.  Greed?  Apathy?  Naivete?  IDK, but if they fed my birthparents a line about me being sent to a loving home, then they lied through their teeth.

Imagine yourself a child and everyone is always telling you how lucky you are that your wonderful adoptive parents rescued you from a terrible beginning and took you in.  Imagine that those same parents belittle you, neglect you, beat you, and worse.

Imagine yourself trying over and over again to get help and no one believing you because those things don't happen to the "lucky" adopted kids with their "wonderful" adoptive parents.

Imagine telling your life story over and over again and every time being told flat out that you must be lying.  Those things don't happen to adopted kids.

Can you even begin to imagine the special kind of Hell this creates for abused adopted children?

Even if you can imagine that, here's the kicker.  Other children can imagine that they were switched at birth, and that somewhere there is someone out there who will rescue them someday.  Abused adoptees don't have that luxury.  We know we were rejected at birth, and that no one is ever going to come and save us.  We have no hope at all.

So we're in pretty bad shape to begin with.  A remarkably high number of men abused adoptees become serial killers:  Ted Bundy, Son of Sam, etc.  The women are more likely to become drug addicts or suicides.

But the icing on the shitcake is our social invisibility.  Nobody wants to hear our stories.  Nobody wants to know that things like this happen.  When we do speak we're told to shut up and take one for the team so that potential birthparents won't be scared off and keep their kids instead of giving them up.

But whose team are we taking one for?  The children, or the abusive adoptive parents?

There's an awful lot there folks would rather you didn't talk about.  So much so that the stopping of it has kept me from being able to talk about anything personal for most of my life.  I don't have much in the way of funny or pleasant anecdotes about my childhood to exchange with people in the process of making friends, and an excess of the sort of soul-searing horrors that should only be shared with good friends -- which leaves me little way of making good friends so I can share those stories.  Talk about a Catch-22.

House Update October 7, 2013

Yesterday we finished the kitchen countertops, after weeks of fitting, sanding, and more sanding down to 800 grit.  ("This is what happens when you ask a jeweler to build a countertop.")  The butcherblock and marble are in place, and even the butcherblock glistens like tiger's eye quartz.  The stove is actually where it's supposed to be for the first time ever, instead of moved aside to allow for work room.  The process of assigning canisters has begun, and so has the process of moving out the 1970s era steel credenza which has served as a temporary kitchen island to make room for building a real kitchen island.  We actually had three people working in the kitchen at the same time last night.  Wow!

My sewing machine is back from the repair shop and in working order for the first time since the 5yo messed it up as a baby.  It doesn't really have a place yet and most of my gear is still at the old house, but plans are in motion.

Between (and sometimes during) Karen-inspired showers yesterday we installed the amplifier on the TV antenna.  It doesn't really pick up any more stations, but at least it keeps working through rainstorms.

I'm feeling really frazzled right now.  The therapist is digging into some old, deep wounds; but at least he's beginning to understand the severity of the problem.