After 2 months of hemming and hawing the bankground check papers are completed and notarized and ready to be turned in to start this whole adoption process. I find this terrifying and exciting and this is only the first, easiest little baby step. After this there are home inspections and parenting classes and then possibly an ACTUAL ALIVE CHILD thing. The inside of my head looks something like this: Holy shit I can't wait until we have our own kid. Holy shit what the hell am I thinking; I cannot believe I think I can do this. On the other hand, I know meth heads who are doing this. Surely I can do that well. Way to set the bar really high, Megs. What? I'm trying to manage expectations. By setting the bar so low you might actually get the kid taken away right after you get it adopted? I'm pretty lucky there doesn't appear to be much of a psychological evaluation involved in this process. I don't know that my prospective children are all that lucky there doesn't appear to be much of a psychological evaluation, but whatever. I will be the boss of them anyway.

Hello? Is anyone still here?

I kind of checked out of the blogging thing for awhile. You know how it is. You get busy and keep meaning to come back and then you can't think what to write and then it's a year and a half later and you have a couple of drinks at a charity event and decide to blog. A tale as old as time. So, what's new? My hair grew back. I lost my mind and agreed to be the matron of honor for my sister in law. I learned to sew ( I make quilts! And dresses that don't quite fit! Because I am fancy!) My husband and I are starting the process to adopt a baby. Like, we brought home the background check paperwork. We still haven't filled it out. Baby steps. I think I want to do it and then one of the dogs wakes me up at 4:00 in the morning and I get mad and then I remember that I think I want a baby. I'm pretty sure they don't let you just lock the baby out of the bedroom and tell it to shut up. I might be wrong. It can go on the list of questions to ask in the parenting class. And now I have to go watch a Hart of Dixie marathon. Rachel Bilson as a genius surgeon in a small Alabama town. The entire show is cast with people faking southern accents. It's ridiculous and I can't stop watching it.

It's not a plague of locusts or anything, but good grief

Our dumb dog is at the vet for bladder stone surgery. Which costs $500. 500 real American dollars. That's kind of a lot of dollars. Especially for a free dog that was supposed to be inexpensive. We had her fixed. The end. Except then we had to replace the blinds that she destroyed and the curtains and the laptop and the paint on the door frames. Then we had to replace every pair of underwear in the house plus every single pair of my pajama pants and three pairs of blue jeans. And now the bladder stone surgery which follows 2 $200 vet visits in which they tried to determine what was wrong with her in the first place. I have a bald spot on the back of my head. And my husband does not understand why "It is not that big a deal" is not a helpful thing to say to me. I have a fucking bald spot. I realize that it is not exactly genocide or war orphans or those kids with the flies on their eyeballs. I will probably be over it by tomorrow. But right now, I would like to sob inconsolably over my big fucking bald spot that came from no fucking where in peace. Like he wouldn't be upset if he started turning into (non)fucking Quasimodo. My IBS has been overactive the last 2 weeks, and yet for some reason I cannot seem to lose any weight. I'm sure you are glad that I shared that little detail of my life with you. I am a giver, is what I am. A fat, broke, balding giver. My mom's hours have been cut in half at her job. Which means she will start needing money from me again. Which I don't have. Because the dog. And also whatever amount of money I have to give my hairdresser to fix this baldness shit. As long as it doesn't involve hair extensions. I don't know why. Except I'm in a contrary mood and I want my own fucking hair back. Give me things that are impossible. GIVE THEM. I'm 30. Which is fine, except apparently everything in the media is all "30?! That's so gross! Minus 12 billion hotness points, Old Person!You might as well just have your sex organs removed now and die because it's not like anyone will want to have sex with you. Your husband is a total liar who is picturing an 18 year old when he has to sleep with you." Because the balding and the fatness aren't enough. My endometriosis is getting worse again. It feels like someone wrapped several strands of barbed wire around my midsection and now they are trying to cut me in half with it. Which may also explain the baldness freakout and the oldness freakout. I'm going to take, like, 8 Midol and go to sleep now. And maybe a Valium wouldn't hurt anything either.

The Thing

My mom works as a home health care giver for a very sweet little lady. She works with 2 sisters and they have all gotten to be fairly good friends. One of the sisters has a daughter. The daughter has 4 children. 2 of the children were fathered by her cousin, and were adopted by his family. She is "raising" the 2 youngest boys. And by raising, I mean maintaining custody and leaving them with her mother and her aunt for days at a time while she goes off and gets high. She just got out of jail, had a court date, was supposed to go back to jail, and is now hiding out from the law. The 2 boys' father is...snorting pills or something. Also out of jail on bail.

Back a few months ago, my husband and I were approached by the girl's aunt about the possibility of adopting the youngest boy in order to keep him from going into foster care and losing touch with the family. About the time that we decided we were really into the idea of taking this little boy, the mother decided that the $5,000 tax return, the WIC benefits, and the fact that her drug dealer lets her pay in food stamps (which would decrease without the kids) were worth the few days a month she deigns to remember that she has children. My husband suggested that we could pay her. It would probably work. It's completely illegal, but it would probably work. My husband was unaware it was illegal when he made that statement. Based on conversations he had with a co-worker who adopted his kids through an agency (and was told $10,000 for a black baby, $15,000 for a mixed baby, and $20,000 for a white baby)he failed to realize that was different from buying a baby. How is it different? Well, because. Regardless, neither of us feels that it is a good idea to give a drug addict money and expect her not to ask for more without some kind of official, legal document. We cannot very well legally document the illegal purchase of a baby. Anyway, we decided to tell the aunt that while we had been interested, we were no longer interested. We won't be adopting him because he is now beginning to walk. Frankly, I wish I was a better person, willing to take an older child. But I'm not that good of a person. I want a little time to adjust to HAVING a child before having to adjust to a child that is running around all over the place and falling down and active.

So that was the thing. I was surprised at how badly I wanted that little boy. I have always been a little ambivalent about the whole motherhood deal. Turns out, I want to do it. I am a little late posting this because I was surprisingly upset over the way it all turned out. I'm still a little sad. I apologize for the maudlinness...maudlinity...sorry this isn't funny or whatever. I'll be back to doing whatever it is I do on the next post.

Night of the Living Yuppies

Today my husband and I attended church, ate brunch with a friend, went to the mall, and then came home to putter around the house. Teenage me would bitch slap me for such a suburban cliche of a day, but I kind of liked it.

To be fair, "brunch" occurred at a Waffle House and "putter around the house" actually means "played Guitar Hero for four hours until I cooked dinner and we watched East Bound and Down".

So it could be worse.

Bonus "view of a marriage" conversation:

While we are playing Words with Friends against one another, in the same room:

Him: Did you like how I crushed you with that last word?

Me: You crushed me? You beat me by 5 points. How the hell did you crush me?

Him: Because I was saving it and you thought you were ahead and then I pulled it out in a last minute defeat.

Me: You didn't crush me. Crushing involves a larger point margin.

Him: I crushed you. I more than crushed you. I ripped your beating heart out of your chest and then I defecated in the bleeding hole. You will never recover.

Me:...It is nice to not always be the crazy one in this relationship.

Him: Crushed. You.

Sick Puppy

Sunny, the dog frequently referred to as "Bunny" in this house, because she is about as close as you can get to being a rabbit while actually being a dog, did something to her neck that is making my life miserable. She is on a muscle relaxant, a ridiculous dose of steroids, and a pain killer that could probably fell a moose. But that is probably a good thing, as she's not supposed to run, play, or jump. Unfortuantely, sometimes it makes her sleepy and sometimes it makes her sit rigidly straight, panting like a maniac, while her eyeballs roll around and she generally appears to be a complete psycho. Also, confession, we don't crate her and never have. I don't usually tell people that because they act like it's a major sin, but frankly she has always ALWAYS hated the crate. In fact, to say she hates the crate is a little like saying the Westboro Baptist Church isn't very fond of gay people. Which is to say, a giant understatement. She trembles violently and generally vomits any time you try to put her in the crate.

Anyway, this means I don't sleep because I have to stop her from jumping up or down on the bed (which is another way the medication sucks, because she has NO IDEA that she is supposed to feel bad). And of course, I keep trying to reason with her, by saying "Now, Bunny, you know you can't jump or play with Stormy, or run right now. I know that sucks but you have hurt yourself and have to lie still for Mama so you don't herniate a disc and require expensive surgery and/or become paralysed for life." And she looks back at me with her super dialated eyes, and basically says, "Dude. I understood the words Bunny, Stormy, and Mama. Because I'm a fucking dog. And also I am so high right now."

And then she jumps down from the couch or up onto the bed or whatever thing I am convinced will make her crippled forever. I managed to stop the running in the yard by making her harness, though. She used to have one and then Stormy ate it and it's a whole big thing and they always go out in the yard anyway so we never replaced it. Plus they require a PhD in mechanical engineering to actually get on the dog. So I made one out of an old pair of thong panties. Don't judge me. It makes an excellent harness. And I'm not going to actually WEAR them again. So shut your pie hole.

And we get to do this for a MONTH! Super yay!

2nd sick day in a row. It's like a vacation only with more vomit and trips to the bathroom.

Actually, it's fairly similar to my last vacation in Mexico. Except of course for the fact that I haven't thrown up in 10 years, and my whole streak is ruined. Wasn't there a t.v. show with an episode where one of the characters was vomit three since '03 or something? It was like that, except I was vomit free since like, 2001 or 2002. But that doesn't rhyme.

Um. Anyway. Very productive two days. I've watched about 7,000 episodes of Law and Order (SVU and Criminal Intent) because it's the perfect sick day show. It's oddly soothing, for all that it is about killers and rapists and whatnot. If you doze off in the middle of one episode, and wake up in the middle of another, it doesn't really matter. Also it's fun to play "Spot the Famous People". Every one who was ever in The Wire or Oz appears to have shown up in Law and Order at some point. Plus other people.

Truthfully, I like to watch Law and Order on the treadmill too. The storylines distract me from the discomfort while being predictable enough to let me know how much longer I have to go without watching the clock.

I...really have no idea why I'm babbling about this except that I must be on the mend, because yesterday I was not at all bored and today I'm starting to be a little bored with the laying around. Also, the dogs are totally over me. Yesterday they were all about taking care of me, and today they keep shoving me off the couch and stealing my pillow and my blanket. I'm going to go shove them around a little, so I can take my lunch nap.