Washout

Check your sump pumps people. C and I spent a good part of yesterday afternoon helping friends of our ours carrying furniture out of their basement. It is amazing how water can ruin everything that accumulates in your basement.

To make matters worse she has health issues as it is that can be severely aggravated if she comes in contact with mold. It is amazing how a $2 piece of pastic can cause this much damage and heartbreak when it fails.

Long Run

I started training this week for marathon number 8. Depending on how China travel works out I hope to do the Bayshore Marathon in Northern Michigan. C's Aunt and Uncle live in Muskegon and we would stop by there on the way up, again, if it all works out.

Four days a week is my normal schedule with a long run on the weekend. I have been running since December after taking the Summer off. The weather was nice this morning and I headed out for a nice quick six miles. Unfortunately all of the snow from last week had not melted yet and it was some of the worse terrain to run on.

There are three options available for me to run:

1) The street. Not so bad when I run before work during the week, but a long run on the weekend can be terrifying because some people are morons and don't give you space. I haven't had people yell at me or throw things, but I've heard stories.

2) Des Plaines River Trail path. This is my favorite place to run. It is a path that follow the Des Plaines river through protected wetlands and savannas. It is absolutely beautiful when the weather is good. You only have to deal with moron cyclists that all think they have one testicle.

3) Treadmill. I hit this when the wind chill drops below zero. Very monotonous and scares the hell out of the dogs.

I try to take the camera with me when I go and that is where these shots are from. There is a lot of wildlife including deer and coyotes.

The path was horrible today. It is hard to run on packed snow and mud because it the terrain is very uneven and slippery. I am really going to feel it tomorrow. It wasn't icy enough to need the yak trax, but I could have used some help.

I am trying for a 9 minute pace but the snow kept me at 10:20. Oh well, it was nice to be outside for a bit and listen to some music.

The picture to the right is about as hilly as we get it in Illinois. You can see how crappy the running surface was today. I really miss the hilly and diverse topography STL.

We are taking it easy and going out to dinner with some friends tonight. C is going some projects tomorrow for Maya's room and I am doing some work and hopefully some writing.

Arrrgghhhh. Why can't I dress myself?

Two things:

Over Christmas at the in-laws I was always carve the turkey. I accidentally cut the foil that the bird was sitting in and all the juices leaked out and ran down my legs and I didn't realize it until the pants were ruined. Henceforth the term turkey pants. C's dad lent me a pair of khakis and everything was cool. (Besides the weird feeling of wearing someone else's clothing. I don't know why, but this has always creeped me out.

Flash forward today to the morning ritual in our house getting ready for work.

K: "What color pants go with this shirt?"
C: (Exasperated)"Bring them here."
K: (Meekly displaying pants)
C: "Either brown corduroy or khakis."

C has dressed me for as long as I had to be business casual. When I worked in Jeff City she actually flew in and attached post-it notes to all of my ties and shirts. Every night I would come home and carefully re-attach the paper to the clothing so as not to mess it up. I know, I am really pathetic. After all these years the only thing I know is that brown shoes get a brown belt and black shoes get a black belt and most every work shirt can be worn with khakis.

We were in a huge rush to the train this morning (we always are when Courtney is riding in with me) and I grabbed a pair of khakis out of the closet and threw them on without thinking. As we were making our mad dash, Courtney looked at me and chuckled.

C: "What are you wearing?"
K: "Khaki's, like you said."

You can see where this is going, I grabbed my father-in-laws' pants and threw them on without thinking. No big deal right? What I failed to mention, though we are about the same height his legs are about 4 inches shorter than mine. I've already had two people ask me at work today if I dressed my self and "Where's the flood?".

Just another Friday. I usually have the camera, but not today so you will have to settle with the picture to the right for a visual. (As I look through my cataract-covered fashion eye I actually noticed that his shoes and belt actually match)

Have a good weekend and look for the Journey part 2 and possibly 3 this weekend. I am just finishing them up.

Trying not to get our hopes up, but...

The paragraph to the left was taken from the CCAA web site. This is the government agency in China that processes adoption requests. I will go deeper into the process later, but basically your file is slid through a slot in the door and you wait 6-47 months (that's a slight embellishment) and you listen to 367 rumors and eventually you are matched up with a child.


Basically what this means is that all paperwork that has been submitted through 5/13/05 has been processed and the families have been matched with children. We were logged in 5/17/2005 so we hope this means that we are next up for the next batch of matches in hopefully 4 weeks (but it could be longer). I will write more on the entire process later.

Two months until Spring

When I first moved to Chicago I had a thin coat purchased from JcPenny on my Mom's credit.

I told Courtney that I knew what cold was and that my non-insulated coat would be able to outheat a Northern Illinois winter.

We lived downtown at the time and the first sub-30 wind chill ripped a layer of skin from my face when I would come around the corner of every high-rise.

We had a friend that cross-country skiied to our apartment. (Well she had to walk across the streets and it probably would have taken her less time to walk.) The wind off the lake was amazing and terrifying because of how cold it was


The coat lasted until the weekend and became known as the Fall jacket because I took it off one day after work and it could literally stand on its own it was so stiff.






Friday night we were supposed to get 2-5 inches of snow; which is typical for the time of the year. We ended up with 13. My father-in-law has a T-square in the backyard to track these things.

It is that thick water-logged snow that breaks your back when you try to shovel it. My neighbor from down the street was driving home and stopped and laughed at me for not owning a snowthrower. Part of me sincerely enjoys the exercise. A snowthrower feels like you are cheating nature no matter what my back says later in the evening.

I shoveled the back patio off for the dogs and to make a path to the grill for Sunday dinner. The dogs love the snow and haul ass for 10-minute intervals and then sleep for hours- content.




















A guy up the street must have gotten a new snowblower becasuse he generously did almost the entire sidewalk on our side of the street. I was shovelling the driveway and secretly wished he would take a righ-turn and help me out but he didn't so I resigned myself to the exercise.

















The night before we had been at a friends' house throughout the snowstorm and we drove home to find that the plow had built a wall on the street at the entrance of the driveway. It took two trys, but we were able to burst through the wall of snow and beach the car about five feet past the sidewalk.




We have actually had more than 30+ days of above-normal tempatures and the wind has been pretty dormant, but I am ready for Spring.



As you can see, Courtney is much better with the camera than the shovel but at least she kept me company.



Two more months until Spring and it was over 60 degrees in St. Louis last weekend.

All thanks to a tire

Weird situation for me this past weekend. A friend of ours was having tire issues late on a Saturday afternoon when most places were closed. She was coming into our town from Wisconsin to see family and to watch the Bears crush the Panthers. (I am a sports fan, but to pay that much money for tickets seems a little ludicrous; even the tailgate parking was going for $200 a spot)

She drove down on Saturday and was able to get into Sam's club Auto around 2-3 for the tire repair which was supposed to last about 3 hours because of the weekend wait. Believe me, I would not want to spend this amount of time in a Sam's Club for all of the 5 gallon jars of mayonnaise in the world. C was explaining this to me about the big car shuffle and how she was going to drive and her friend was going to drive and so forth. You know how you can tell when your spouse or significant other is prepping you? She had the speech in her head and was laying out the argument guiding me down through the wooden rails that lead to the slaughterhouse doors.

C: "Blah* blah blah tire."
K: "OK"C: "Blah blah blah Sam's Club."
K: "Gotcha"
C: "Blah blah blah 2-3 hours."
K: "No problem."
C: "Blah* blah blah She needs you to watch her kid."
K: "What? Wait what's going on?**"

*Blah - every instance meaning a concise and complete description of events transpiring that have been edited for this format not because the author was not listening"
**ensuing argument omitted for fear of creating documented proof to fuel future arguments.

I've watched kids before for 30-second intervals, nothing like this, but I knew it was something that was long overdue and would give me a glimpse into this whole parenting world. I came back from an afternoon run to be informed that the he (I will call him "The Kid" from now on -Damn weird Internet perverts) was sleeping and that the they were going to leave once I showered.

With last second advice and the smell of fear washed off of me I assured the Mom that everything was cool and that my cell phone would be connected to me like a pacemaker in case of trouble or a really full diaper.

C: "Raised eyebrow" (You going to be OK?)
K: "Shoulder shrug" (I think so.)
C: "Smirk" (You know he is going fill his diaper)
K: "Cautious smile" (Please hurry)

"The Kid" was asleep in the other room with the door closed and the fan whirling. I was in the family room with the TV on low tuned to something non-offensive so as not to damage his sleeping psyche. The dogs were on the couch as usual. Time ticked slowly.

K: (to self) "Shit was that a sound?"
TK: (in other room) "..."
K: (muting TV) "Shit, shit, shit - I thought he was going to sleep the whole time. You have the cell phone, relax. Don't call or they are going to laugh at you. Prove that you can do this. They think you are this hot, intelligent hunk of a caring man and you don't want to ruin that perception.
TK: (muffled cry)
K: (muffled cry)
TK: "...Momma?..."

I jumped out of the chair and took a deep breath before opening the door. Lying on the bed was this cute little moppet rubbing the remaining sleep out of his eyes. He turned and looked at me with half-drawn eyes and in the cutest little voice spoke.

"Hi...Kevy, where's Momma?"
"She went to replace the damaged tire at Sam's Club."
(Wait, wait stupid, it's a kid, they don't understand complex terms)
"I mean, the car is broken and she went bye-bye to fix it."
(Great now you are going to retard his growth by speaking down to him)
"She went bye-bye?"
(Damn it, he's starting to cry a little. Quick, moron, think of something. What is the one thing your experience with kids has taught you.)
"Hey, "The Kid" do you want to watch a movie?"
"OK."

Now, I know that the bait and switch has been used since caveman times to quell the desires of unhappy kids.

Grog: "Grok, no cry, look rock"
Grok: "Yay."

Really, I understand that TV is not a babysitter, it should only be used in small doses and infrequently like another common parent's helper --Valium.

"The Kid" really is a well-adjusted 30-month old and smart beyond his years (months). Now that I broke the seal, he was ready to sit down and relax in front of the tube.

K: "Hey, "The Kid" what do you want to watch?"
TK: "Elephants"
K: OK, let's see what we have in Momma's magic bag. (Fumbling) Hmmmm. no elephant's in here what do you want to watch?"
TK: "Elephants."
K: "There are no elephants in here, let me call the video store (wasn't going to say I was calling Mom, yep already three minutes into babysitting and I am lying to the kid.")

M: "Is everything OK?"
K: "He wants to watch elephants."
M: "It's in the laptop. Everything OK"
K: "No problems."

Another lesson learned, a kid is not your client. You do not have to cater to his/her every desire. I pulled the DVD out of her laptop and loaded it up. It was a Baby Einstein movie (movie?) about animals that have these really creepy puppets and music and montages intertwined with very bright and distinct color sets. Market share for these videos seems to be equally divided between babies, toddlers and the college demographic.

Placing a couple of pillows on the floor I set up a little relaxation lounge for his viewing pleasure. The video was playing but "The Kid" still looked confused and unsettled. I asked him what was wrong and he just seemed out of sorts. I tried to guide him to the pillow but now he was just looking directly at me as I sat in the big blue Laz-E-Boy (really that is how it is spelled).

He stuck both his hands out toward me. At first I thought it was in a accusatory manner, like he was pointing at me telling me I was a bad caregiver. As I was reaching for the cell phone something clicked in me and I realized that he wanted me to pick him up, no he wanted to sit with me on the chair to watch the movie.

Reaching down I picked him up and put him between my legs on the chair. He settled right in and relaxed against me in a way that I haven't seen since I had my last double treatment of wine therapy. Here I was on a chair watching a video with this little person and I wasn't screwing him up at all. The excitement that was inside of him was amazing; we screamed out the name of each animal and identified rain and flowers and colors.

K&TK: "Clouds!"
K&TK: "Zebra!"
K: "Moose!"
TK: "No, Kevy that's a caribou."
K: "Right, I know."

Kids are smarter than you give them credit for; also TK's Mom later told me that if she had $1 for every time they watched this DVD she could be majority owner in Baby Einstein Holdings Inc.

So there we sat, the footstool on the chair extended, both of us had out legs stretched out as he sat in the crook of my lap. We moved our sock-clad feet in time to the music and screamed out the names of everything he knew and I was feeling like I was seeing these things for the first time.

Then it hit me. Here is this little boy completely dependent on those around him to feed, clean and educate him. He seemed so content sitting there pushed up against me for comfort. So innocent and trusting and loving without a fault and he was just being a kid. No cares (his pants weren't filled yet) no worries and completely satisfied in the moment. He wasn't worrying about the job or the bills or any other of a million nuisances, he was just in the moment and I was glad that he invited me there.

I had my first realizations that I think I can do this. Maya will be here in a couple of months and she is going to be MY daughter, MY responsibility and probably the best thing to ever happen to me. I know that babies don't just poop rainbows and puppy dogs; there will be a considerable amount of work involved and a lot of strenuous challenges, but spending time with "The Kid" really made me realize that I am in store for an amazing journey. One that I am looking forward to taking.

On a side note, after 3 hours of waiting (and shopping) C and her friend went back to Sam's Club to get the fixed car. Unfortunately, for some strange reason when the two of them get together some weird quantum worm hole rips through the time/space fabric of the universe and they enter a place called loony world. So after all the hassle and waiting (and shopping) they returned to find out that the repair guy was missing a key part, namely the rim from the damaged tire that was sitting in a fix-it shop 60 miles away in another state. (She eventually got it fixed the next day)

The Boomerang Factor

My Mom likes to tell me the story about a visit we took to JcPenny's when my sister and I were younger. Apparently, as a matter of coincidence, both my sister and I had black eyes at the time. You don't need to call DCFS, I am sure we gave them to each other. In the store we were screaming our heads off and demanding that our parents by us something or another and of course they refused. My sister and I didn't like this so in the wisdom of youth we start screaming "Daddy, don't hit us again," or something to that affect. Of course my father walked out of the store absolutely mortified. For the record, he never laid a finger on us.

This leads to reason #37744 to freak out about being a parent. I have heard stories recently about raised eyebrows in stores when Chinese children with non-Chinese parents start to make a ruckus in public as kids are wont to do. I can just see Maya having a meltdown in the middle of Target and starting to scream, "I want my Mommy!" as I am trying to drag her out of the store to calm her down.

With my luck I am sure I will be arrested for kidnapping my own daughter. Some suggestions are to always carry around family pictures, get Maya a state ID at a young age or even shrink and laminate the adoption certification. I guess what goes around comes around.

Neti Pot and Nursery update

Here is a glimpse into out weird little lives. C and I have both been having sinus issues lately. Nothing like headaches thankfully; just small problems breathing easily. We both generally try stay away from OTC drugs when we can and try to find a more natural remedy if possible.

(Sidebar - I had to ask a pharmacist to get Sudafed for me last month. What is going on with this? It seems that Walgreens considers this dangerous? Sure, I can understand if I was buying it buy the case, but I don't even get carded for beer anymore. I would love to doctor up a sign and replace the existing one that said "Meth Lab supplies (please see pharmacist)". It is pretty funny that the Mormons at Walgreens keep the greatest threats to our society behind the counter: Sudafed, high-end razor blades and condoms)

She gets those magazines that are great for rainy days or contain 101 ways to put the sizzle back in the sack. This one was called Ladies Home Cosmopolitan Redbook Journal and Gardens or something like that. It contained an article touting the Neti pot. This is a small ceramic teapot that you fill with water and saline solution, insert in your nostrils and pour into your sinuses.

Usually the ideas she gets from the magazines are well received (see the 101 ways above) but I was a little skeptical on this one. Actual conversation (embellished for humor):

C: I think I found something that my help us breathe a little easier.
K: Winning lottery ticket?
C: Can't you be serious for a second?
K: Sorry, I am listening.
C: It's called a Neti pot. It's like a little tea kettle that you stick in your nose and you pour lukewarm water into your sinuses and it comes out the other nostril cleansing your nasal cavity.
K: ???
C: Seriously.
K: So, let me get this straight, you want me to pour hot salt water up into my brain through one nostril and let it ooze out the other one?
C: Right.
K: So, it's like a nasal douche?
C: I guess so; you go first.

I am used to being a guinea pig for her to try the things that she is unsure of trying herself. This one made me a little nervous so I did some research and found this:

Yes, it is as cool as it looks and it works exactly as described. We went to Whole Foods (do you think there is a Neti Pot store?) and shelled out $15 for the special nasal cleansing container.

My sinuses were pretty full that day so I had my doubts that this was going to work. Part of me wondered if C was just seeing if she could get me to do something ridiculous.

We came home and followed the directions by filling it with lukewarm water and 1/4 tablespoon of salt. I stood in front of the kitchen sink and put the spout in my nostril, I have to admit it was a nice and snug comfortable fit. It is one size fits all by the way.

Before letting the liquid flow I looked at C and she looked at me with this piece of ceramic wedged in my nose and of course we both laughed and blew bubbles back into the pot.

C: You sure you want to do this?
K: Why not?
C: Maybe we should do this in the bathroom where the neighbors can't see you.
K: Naw, it's not like it is the first time they have see us doing something odd (remind me to tell you about the gorilla vest story some time)

I tilted my head back and felt the water enter my sinuses, but nothing came out the other end. So, I just stood there looking at Courtney looking at me in expectation. All of the sudden, drip, drip, drip.

C: Ewwww. Move the dishes!

And then it flowed through; a steady little stream of mucosa water. I could feel it doing it's magic and dousching my head out. It felt calming and a little surreal. I had the taste in the back of my throat like when you swallow water at the swimming pool. I blew my nose and I seriously could not believe the difference. I had Courtney fill it up and I did the other side. After blowing my nose, I felt great. It really did work and the neighbors never even saw what was going on.



Nursery update:
We had a little bit of time yesterday to work on Maya's room. C hung her letters on the wall. We had a hard time deciding which way to position the letters. You know me, I just wanted totally straight, even and centered and C wanted to give it a dose of flair by making them undulate or descend. We ended up hanging them in a way that covers the most nail holes and other imperfections so we don't have to touch up the paint. Such is life. Thankfully her name isn't going to be Elizabeth or something similarly long. We have the furniture moved in and once we get the blinds up (we need to purchase them first) I will take more pictures of the completed room.

Does anyone know how to work a pack and play? While she was doing the letters I put our together. No problems setting it up, it looks cute and everything, but I was unable to collapse it. I know I am just not doing something right, but I am afraid to break it. If this is the most I have to worry about regarding parenthood, I think I will be OK.

Happy New Year!

Wow! Your responses have been overwelming. If anyone else wants to drop us a line you can do so by E-mail.

I am sorry that it has taken me so long to post anything new. We took it easy over an exteneded break and sort of caught up on each other and decompressed.

I promise to have Part 2 up shortly; I just took some time off of work and I am trying to catch up with it and I have been neglecting my greyhound website duties, but I promise there will be more coming soon.

In the mean time here is a picture of our 20# cat: