Have I mentioned that OmegaDotter is sick? Again? A search on "how often children get sick" results in this, from About Pediatrics": "It is normal for young children to have six to eight upper respiratory tract infections and two or three gastrointestinal infections each year." Excuse me while OmegaMom runs screaming from the room. A search on "how get children take medicine" results in 23,300,000 hits. It is empowering to realize I Am Not Alone. On the other hand, it is depressing to realize that there isn't a definitive answer, repeated by all 50 of the top hits. My daydream is to find a child's cold/flu or fever medicine that does not require any cooperation from the child. A patch would do nicely. Then you could slap that puppy right between the shoulder blades whenever your child is feverish, in pain, somewhat incoherent, and definitely uncooperative. OmegaMom even, in the depths of the night, considered for a brief period the idea of BenGay for dotter--only to remember that it is definitely a topical ointment. In other words, maybe OmegaDotter's fever would go down wherever the BenGay was rubbed, but nowhere else. Besides, given the writhing and screaming that accompanies any attempt to get OmegaDotter to ingest nice bubble-gum flavored fever medications or nice bubble-gum flavored cold/flu medicines, the BenGay experiment would have been a catastrophe, with BenGay flying all over the bedroom. But, damn, that patch idea sings through my head at 1:30 a.m. and 5:00 a.m. A search on child fever red spots bumps is not reassuring, as the second hit is all about Chicken Pox, and the third is about Scarlet Fever. Google is a Bad, Bad Thing. Categories: [Family]

This has been posted on at least two Chinese adoption email groups within the past half-hour, so I figure it's okay to post it here. For background, check out my December 1 and December 2 posts, plus this article. Hunan Closes to Adoptions Copy of a post by Brian Stuy on Global Adoption Triad site "I'm in China, so don't know if this has hit Stateside yet, but the CCAA has closed Hunan Province to adoptions until further notice. Apparently the issues with the baby smuggling are raising additional concerns, so to avoid international censure they are closing down this one Province for adoptions. "Additionally, I think you have heard the the Chinese government has prohibited Chinese newspapers from reporting on this event anymore. These two events show that the Hunan story is not yet close to resolution, and thus was broader than most people initially thought.--Brian" I don't know what this means to folks who currently have referrals from Hunan and are waiting to travel...my heart goes out to them in such an uncertain time. Categories: [Hunan Situation] [Adoption Issues]

*C*O*N*G*R*A*T*U*L*A*T*I*O*N*S* to my longtime bud the Desert Rat, who is marrying Mr. Wolf today. Mazel tov, kiddo. May you and Mr. Wolf find joyous shelter in each other's arms for many lovely years. Categories: [This 'n That]

This is a touchy subject. Let me state at the outset that the Omegas are not religious. Spiritual...agnostic (as in "I do not know")...but not religious. Omegamom's background on one side is that of at least three previous generations being non-religious; on the other side, it is Anglican, high-Church Episcopalian, with a large dash of New England reticence. On the one hand, she got quite a dose of religious pomp and circumstance, going to church with grandma and grandpa on Sundays at Saint Luke's, which had, amongst other amenities, the most wonderful organ with a trumpet fanfare that would make the air quiver when playing "Hail Thee, Festival Day" for Easter. (This left OmegaMom with a great love for old religious music.) On the other hand, she spent summers with the other grandparents, and got a similarly hearty dose of...well...total disinterest in churchy things. OmegaDad's background is Southern Baptist and Church of Christ. (The lack of music is something he makes note of.) He is virulently anti-fundamentalist as a result. He tells tales of noticing at an early age that the people who were the most churchy in the congregations tended to be the ones who were the most hypocritical. He had a short stint in his early 20s when he spent a great deal of time with Father John, a Catholic priest who shared his passion for fishing, discussing various religious subjects. Anyway. My attitude towards religion and spirituality tends to be that it's something that...well...it's private. (Remember that "New England reticence" mentioned above?) It's definitely not something that you should be pushing on other people. The Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons who come to our doors are chatted with briefly, we accept their tracts, sometimes read them, and then toss them into the recycle bin. Luckily, we haven't had any who were more assertive (and having a large growling barking slavering dawg on the other side of the glass doors provides a grand deterrant). In various email lists I have been on over the years, there's a certain etiquette to follow. On infertility lists, you make sure you mention in the subject line when you're talking about pregnancy, birth, kids, etc. Flame wars would erupt regularly, when new people who had children would innocently post about them, be requested to put the proper code in the subject, and promptly feel hurt and defensive. Folks with long-term primary infertility (no kids) would try to explain the pain reading about little Johnny's cute behavior at the family gathering could cause them. Folks new to the IF game would counter with how bitter and miserable the others were--after all, didn't they all want baybeeees? They didn't feel that way! Surely a mention or two of someone's child or pregnancy couldn't possibly be painful! Religion is such a touchy subject that many email lists devoted to particular subjects have similar etiquette rules. If your post is pretty much religion-oriented, you are requested to put "(God ment.)" or "(rel.)" or something of the sort in the subject line. In the Chinese adoption community, there are myriad lists...especially those related to the "DTC" date. (DTC="dossier to China".) When you submit your dossier, given the standardization of the Chinese adoption process, all the folks who sent in their dossiers in the same month are likely to end up receiving referrals at the same time, and also likely to travel at the same time. DTC groups are a way to provide community for folks who are waiting (and waiting...and waiting) for their referrals. You chit-chat, you talk about nurseries and pediatricians, you do scrapbook exchanges, you maybe join a "100 Good Wishes" quilting square exchange, you share your ups and downs about the wait and life in general. (When we traveled to China, there were two other families in our travel group who I had gotten to know on our DTC group.) The problem sometimes comes that folks to whom religion is very important clash with those to whom it's not. Some DTC groups are overrun with religiosity. Some aren't. And the flames start up..."Please remember that there are folks on the list who don't want to be told that the support of Christ will help us with the wait." "Are you telling me to not share my love of Christ?! It's an integral part of my life and I won't be told to shut it out!" "Some of us are very satisfied with our spiritual life and don't appreciate being told that there is Only One Way." Etc. Y'see, there's a great divide. Some Christian churches actively promote proselytizing (sp?)...it is an integral part of their religion that they must shout it to the rooftops, they must Share The Word of God, they must Witness. If someone doesn't want to listen, they seem to feel that this person must be "shared" with, because otherwise, they are Lost. (Funny story: a friend of mine, back in Chicago, walking down State Street at lunchtime, is followed by an itinerant preacher, haranguing her about the Word of God. At one point, he proclaims to her, "WOMAN! You are LOST!" Having had it, she spins around and shouts at him, "Then why are you FOLLOWING ME?!?!") And then there are folks like us Omegas. To people like us, people who insist on Sharing The Word of God, after being requested not to, are being...well...pushy. And, in some cases, downright insulting. After all, telling someone that their deeply held beliefs are going to lead them straight to hell isn't the best way to win friends and influence people. Telling other people that they are misguided, foolish, lost, should be praying to Jesus for forgiveness, or whathaveyou, is a surefire recipe for hostility and defensiveness. To top it all off, most of the people who tend to Witness (either live or on lists) also tend to complain that Christianity is being persecuted in the U.S. (when 80% of U.S. people surveyed identify themselves as Christian), blather on about activist judges secularizing society (but don't mind activist judges who try to codify religious belief into law), want prayer in school to be required (or simply don't understand why a whole slew of people don't want prayer in school), push for teaching Intelligent Design as science, want to restrict or abolish women's ability to have abortions--no matter what reason--based on their religious beliefs, and seem to have a really hard time separating the idea of legal marriage versus religious marriage. Anyway, there's been some hoorah on one of the DTC groups, and it has split into (at least) two. Folks who want respite from endless prayer circles and admonishments that Jesus will support them in their times of trouble (the referral wait is lengthening) have formed their own group, and, from what I hear, it's growing by leaps and bounds. Sadly, I think this split reflects society at large. How do you reconcile two such drastically opposed world views? I hope the U.S. can find a way. Because it sure is getting ugly out there. Categories: [This 'n That] [Adoption Issues]

OmegaDotter is, indeed, sick. Sigh. We're like one great big germ-sharing machine here at the Omega Home. She wanted to go to bed early. In my arms, she was weepy, whiny and snuggly. With OmegaDad, who does the bed thing first, she is bouncy and bubbly; I can hear her giggling and screeching from the bedroom. But when I get there, she will want to snuggle up against me and whimper again. I think some gender roles are innate. Categories: [Family]

So I go to check on several of my favorite blogstops this morning, and, one after another, poof!, they are missing their latest posts. It's like taking a step back in time. Of course, in an automatic reversal to high school angst (aka, "memememe!"), my immediate suspicion is that "I've done something to make them mad! They've all gone away and will NEVER SPEAK TO ME AGAIN!!!! Waaaah! They don't liiiiiike me!" My second thought is that I'm sicker than I thought, and have been hallucinating recent posts. Well, no. Turns out that Typepad is having problems again, so people's last two days' worth of posts have vanished into the ether. Immediately paranoid about something similar happening here to Omegamom's little spot on the web, I googled "blog backup". The results: Typepad does, indeed, have an export and import feature (I don't know whether it backs up the commenttrails, though). Blogspot, alas, does not. You can finesse around it by fiddling with your template, as referenced here. Be sure to make a backup copy of your template FIRST!!! Another suggestion, which only backs up the posts, is to have your posts emailed to an address of your choice when they are posted. Categories: [Bloggy Stuff]

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We bought a new 'puter, a laptop. Gasp!! Yes--the old 'puter has been gasping and wheezing and rattling for months now, and finally these past three weeks has just been dying at totally unexpected moments. This is all due to a cooling fan dying the death. No data has been permanently damaged, it's just an ongoing frustration. First, there you are, on one of your boards, composing a real zinger of a reply to someone, only to have this odd *poit!* sound emerge from the computer and the screen suddenly go black. So you lose that wonder of composition, and in the irritation of losing it, it disappears completely from your human memory, too. Secondly, if you want to continue on, you have to reset the surge-protector, restart the computer, wait for Windows to scan for broken files, yadda, yadda, yadda. All of which takes far too long. And if you do it too soon, the heat disperser hasn't cooled enough, and the next unexpected downtime comes that much sooner. Anyway. We'd like to transfer our data over from old 'puter to new. (I already used our USB digi-cam to transfer over our cable modem's driver...seems that the hardware wizard really really wants to use the Internet to install new drivers...but if you're trying to install the driver that allows you to access the internet...well, it ends up being like that old Celtic image of the snake surrounding the world, eating its own tail.) I sent OmegaDad off to Staples with a list, which included "null-modem serial cable". The poor folk at Staples didn't know what the hell that was. I feel old. Is there such a thing as a serial-to-USB null-modem cable? (Honest question, and you may feel free to mock me in the comments as a twit who knows nothing about modern day computers...) Would this work? (The laptop was a real deal, and is way cool.) Categories: [Computers]

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OmegaMom is sick. OmegaDad is sick. We think OmegaDotter is getting sick; she is being ultra-whiny and running an itty-bitty fever. The folks at daycare tell me a stomach bug is going around. Well, this was conveyed to me thus: "One of the kids threw up in the hall from Miss Betty's class." I boggled. Some kid threw up from Miss Betty's class out into the hall?!?! Ewww! Projectile vomiting! No, no--it turns out it's supposed to be: "One of the kids from Miss Betty's class threw up in the hall." Folks. Can we please use a leetle precision when speaking? It reminds me of my pettest peeve: people who say "All x's do not do y" when what they mean to say is "Not all x's do y". Trust me. There's a difference between "All bees do not sting" and "Not all bees sting". Use that as an example, and everyone can see the difference. Use a different statement, and they seem to lose the ability to understand the difference any more. Grrr. Categories: [Mr. OmegaMom] [This 'n That]

OmegaDad and I met in Northern New Mexico while on internships at Los Alamos National Laboratory. While we were falling in love with each other, we also fell in love with Northern New Mexico. We spent our weekends touring the area, piling into Blue, the pickup truck, grabbing a map, and wandering. We visited Taos, Santa Fe, Chama, fell in love with Bandolier National Monument, the Valle Grande (the caldera of an ancient volcano), the Rio Grande River--everything about Northern New Mexico enchanted us. The mix of old Hispanic culture and good ol' Western U.S. traditions with modern, new age thinking was intoxicating. I daydreamed of working at the Santa Fe Institute, doing intriguing work on artificial intelligence. OmegaDad daydreamed of jobs with the Nature Conservancy, or working with local ranchers to help them manage their lands in a more environmentally conscious manner. And then we discovered Earthships(c). What a daydream! Living off the grid...having a completely self-sustaining system where we could live more in tune with the Earth, leaving a smaller environmental footprint. Water gathered from nature...recycling the water we used...solar power...gardens indoors...huge windows for drawing the outside in. OmegaGranny, being a skeptical sort, always asks, "But what about maintaining all those systems?" If you do a search on "maintenance earthship", most of the information you pull up is how maintenance-free these wombs are (no gutters, no painting, etc. etc.). Very frustrating--you can't find info on long-term housing issues. How often do you need to fix the pipes? What if the central water system gets, say, caliche'd up? How dependable are the toilets? This guy has some very good information about how to modify standard earth ship designs to avoid roof and window leaks, which are apparently a problem in the original approach. Some of the designs are more out there, woo-woo, and "hippeyesque" than the Omegas would be comfortable with. But so many of the more recent ones include the comforts of modern homes in designs that have less of the woo-woo. We wouldn't want our home to Make A Statement--we want it to be comfy. This last weekend, we toured Arcosanti, a grand (though extremely slow!) experiment in arcology design. (I will devote a separate post to that--pics are on our old computer, and we haven't transferred them over yet.) And it re-sparked our yearnings for an earth ship. Some day...some day. This is our daydream. Categories: [This 'n That] [Mr. OmegaMom]

Marguerite was born in Arizona in December, 1903. Teddy Roosevelt was president of the United States. The day she was born would later be immortalized as "the day which will live in infamy"--Pearl Harbor Day, an event which served as a cultural marker for her generation, in the way that 9/11 and the Challenger explosion were cultural markers for another generation, and the assassination of JFK was for yet a different generation. Her mother met her father as a middle-aged spinster, and they married when she was 40. They promptly had four children (Josephine, Marguerite, Ione, and Edward--who should properly have been named Etienne or Edouard to fit the mold) and one stillborn child. They lived on a farm with orange trees and a variety of vegetables and fruits. Milk was delivered to their home by horse and cart. The milkman was courting one of her teachers, and would drive on his rounds with the teacher up beside him; Marguerite remembers drawing a chalk portrait of the milkman and his horse on the wall of their house. When the Flu Epidemic came around, their father pulled the children from school, hired a teacher, and had them schooled at home to protect them. Marguerite recalls Thanksgiving dinners that were picnics in the Riverside mountains. She and her siblings entertained themselves with plays and performances, written by Marguerite; our family has pictures from when they were in their mid-teens, clowning around, brother Edward "playing" a violin with a saw. She moved to Phoenix in her early 20s, and started teaching at a business school. And then she met Norvin--who preferred to be called "Bill". We have a picture of Bill from when he was about 19, and he looks astonishingly like Lyle Lovett. They fell in love. They married; Marguerite made her own wedding dress, which was blue. They quickly had a daughter, and, a year later, a son. The 30s were tough...so when Bill passed the Civil Service examination, and got an assignment to Jacksonville, FL, making $3000 per year, they were ecstatic. (Many years later, Bill performed IRS audits on Ernest Hemingway on a yearly basis.) Life went swirling on...the children grew up, and, as children tend to do, became independent thinkers, wanting to be out on their own, doing their own thing. They married...they had children of their own. Marguerite volunteered at the local hospital...joined the garden club...won a variety of accolades for ingenious and charming decorations and poetry. Her three granddaughters spent every summer with her, learning stick dancing, having fake "initiations" in the middle of the night, listening to her stories of the mischief she and her sisters got into as youngsters. They moved to Sun City, Arizona, in the early 1970s. They both had relatives who had moved there, and Bill wanted Marguerite to be close to them. A year later, he died. Marguerite lived in Sun City for 30 years. She continued on, as she made new friends, then watched them get ill and die, over and over again. She kept bowling, and told her daughter that she would move into her daughter's town when she could no longer bowl or drive. A few years ago, she gave up her car. Then she decided she couldn't bowl any more. (She was 98 at this time.) She moved up into the mountains to be near her daughter, and there she lives today. She is an amazing woman. She has seen the U.S. go from horse-drawn carriage to supersonic jets and airline shuttles. She has lived through four named wars (World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War) and a wide variety of military incidents. Her life encompasses communicating by telegraph, telephone, and computer. The world has changed a lot in the past 102 years.

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We had Grandma's 102nd birthday party this weekend. It was a small but pleasant affair. Various friends from her assisted living home joined in; relatives drove down the mountain to be there; the foodservice folks made her a delicious carrot cake and provided cookies, punch, and munchies; people brought presents and balloons. Sadly, OmegaMom and family don't think Marguerite will last another full year. For a while, we would joke that she would outlive us all, or at least live to 110. Now...well, this lady with the sharp-as-a-tack mind is losing her short-term memory at an amazing pace. And she's tired and bored, and her eyesight is failing quickly. So I just wanted to introduce you to her and tell you her story. Marguerite: Some party attendees: OmegaDotter and her GreatGrandmother: Omegamom enjoying balloons: Categories: [Family] [Photo Posts]

This weekend, dinner with OmegaGranny featured a conversation that was somewhat surreal. The town fathers of the town where OmegaGranny lives have a grand tradition of local musicians being invited to busk inside some of the stores on the courthouse square. She had spent an afternoon/evening bopping in and out of stores on the square and listening to music, and enjoyed it greatly. All well & good. Then OmegaGranny informs us that Georgene is performing on the square, too. Then she says, "Interestingly enough, Georgene performs at the Thomas Kincaid gallery..." OmegaDad and I just bugged our eyes out, thinking we had heard incorrectly. Of all the people we can't imagine even wanting to be in a Thomas Kincaid gallery, let alone perform in one, Georgene heads the list. She is a fascinating lady--intelligent, a published writer, exquisite taste, fun to be with, interested in a wide variety of things. The idea that she would subject herself to a Thomas Kincaid gallery...I am still shaking my head over this concept. So later in the evening, OmegaDad announced: "I have an idea. We need to open a new store on the square. We'll call it Thomas GetsLaid Galleries. I think it should feature tasteful gay and lesbian erotica. Don't you think the town fathers would like that??" Well, no, we didn't. But we had to snicker. "It should have pieces of art like the Penis DeMilo..." We were all silent for a few moments, imagining the uproar in OmegaGranny's nice town. OmegaDad hasn't forgiven the town for shaving off hilltops and ripping out native vegetation in the name of development; but when they ran off the one and only strip joint in town, he decided the town had lost its character entirely. I could see him opening this gallery just to spite the town fathers.

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One of the major parts of OmegaDad's job is making maps. Each of these maps has a legal disclaimer at the bottom ("This Federal Agency is an equal opportunity employer, yadda, yadda, yadda..."). OmegaDad was making maps for J., one of his coworkers. He got kind of bored. He added a little something to the legalese. A few hours later, J. comes into his office and gives him the hairy eyeball. "'Be nice to nematodes'?" asks J. "They need all the help they can get!" explains OmegaDad. "Out it comes!" quoth J. "See! What have you got against nematodes??" asks OmegaDad. I think we need to do a CafePress T-shirt.

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Last night, OmegaDad made his very yummy homemade macaroni. This is based on a recipe from Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins, in their The New Basics cookbook. OmegaDad has toned down their recipe somewhat--the girls, as we call them, have never met a recipe with too much butter or cream. Never. So, to keep our arteries from slamming shut prematurely, OmegaDad removes half the butter from their recipes. Or more. Anyway. The mac & cheese was yummy. OmegaDotter ate everything! (I am still amazed. This child has become the eat-like-a-bird champeen.) I had seconds. Yum. As OmegaDad and I were snuggling into bed, I said, "I love your..." He sleepily replied, "I love you, too." "...macaroni and cheese." There was a silence. Then he said, "Well, it loves you, too! In fact, maybe I should trade with the mac and cheese? Let it snuggle down with you?" "That would be kind of messy, I'd think," I replied. We snickered, snuggled up, and went to sleep. Mr. Idea Man--I think I'll keep him. He makes me laugh. Categories: [Mr. OmegaMom] [This 'n That]

OmegaMom has discovered the seductive, addictive pull of personal blog tracking. It started innocently enough. Someone on one of the blogs OmegaMom visits mentioned that she had a site meter. OmegaMom asked what it was...the blogger replied "SiteMeter". OmegaMom promptly typed it into the address bar and read up on free blog tracking. ("Pssst. Over here, little lady! C'mon. Wanna blog tracker? Aw, sweetie, it's just for fun, no problems, it won't lead to any hard stuff.") So the blog has been metered for three weeks. The first week, OmegaMom would sign in now & then, see how many hits the blog had gotten. It was kind of depressing, actually. A hit here, a hit there. Good ol' internet buds who stopped by. Then OmegaMom added a Java calendar for people to click for archives...and realized that it had been an entire month since she had written anything. The site meter has become a menace in OmegaMom's life. Click! Log in! Who's visited lately?! Hmmm...I need to write a new post! Generate some clicks! ("Heh. Back again so soon? C'mere, lemme give you a little taste. FastQ, Comcast.com, rr.com. Just a little, now!") So OmegaMom ADVERTISED. A post filled with pictures of the OmegaDotter doing cute things! She mentioned it to some friends on some boards and lists she participates in. Surely that would pull in some people! Whoa! One hundred hits! Man, oh, man! ("Whoa, little lady! Getting into it kind of hot and heavy, aren't you? Y'know, you may need some stronger stuff than I can provide...advertising already, hmmm?") The synergy was building. Like all those damned articles say, if you want to generate hits, you need to post regularly. Sure enough, OM has been posting regularly, and people are coming back regularly. It's addictive. I need my fix. It's sad when you let your life be ruled by ephemera like a list of clicks... (Hi, Mom!) It's gotten so bad that this morning, when OmegaMom wandered by the IT department and stopped in to visit old friends, she just had to mention her blog... Bloggers Anonymous?? Categories: [Bloggy Stuff]

We were in Nanning, China. We had been up for 36 hours straight, flying from Big City to LA, then to Guangzhou, then to Nanning. We had been given a couple of hours at the hotel to "rest". Har. Like we could rest. They loaded us onto a bus and drove us to a government office. We waited in a big room decorated in red and gold, with a dais, podium, flags. We heard them coming. Babies crying, crying, crying. The nannies came into the room one at a time, each carrying a baby. OmegaDad and I looked at each baby, asking each other, "Is that her? Is that her?" Finally, a nanny walked into the room carrying a baby that we recognized instantly. I gasped. OmegaDad gasped. "That's her!" we said simultaneously. She wasn't crying. She was solemnly looking around, eyeing everyone, trying to figure things out. They called our names. We walked forward. The nanny put her into my arms. We went back to our hotel room in shock. OmegaDad was enchanted, enthralled. I tried dressing her. As a first-time mommy, it was pretty hilarious--I didn't know what I was doing; she didn't know what I was doing...But we got it done one way or another. We have so many pictures from the first six months home of her with that same shellshocked look. Oh, she'd laugh and giggle and play...but looking back, we can see that she was scared out of her wits a lot of the time. Who are these people? What's going on? Am I going to be yanked away from here any minute, just as I get used to it? But as our fourth (FOURTH!) year together starts, I can freely say, she's happy, healthy, smart, funny, beautiful...and it's only in the dead of night that she goes back to that scared to death little girl, and it seems to be happening less and less. Categories: [Our Adoption] [Family] [Photo Posts] [Adoption Issues]

Sooo... My Place Of Business is moving away from regular FTP to secure FTP. The ITS department replaced the good ol' FTP program with something called "Secure FTP" (wow! What a creative name!). For months, I have been trying to log into my unix space using that program, being unable to, and saying "Screw it--I have better things to do with my time!", and using Dreamweaver or the Telnet program instead. Today, needing to fiddle around with uploading and downloading some files for one of the folks in my department, I took the bull by the horns and called the ITS help desk. Lovely folks there. Really! I used to work there. I would work there again in a heartbeat if they had a place. But there were layoffs a few years ago, and I got axed, then found a job as an admin assistant so I could keep accruing those nice retirement bennies, then, after a year at the admin assistant position, said to myself that they had gotten their money's worth out of me, and began looking for another computer position. Which I now have. Thank heavens. I am a computer person. I know computers. I love programming. I play around with websites and java and VB and css. I'm good at working with people, so this department (200+ people) is a good fit for me. I am not good with accounting or odd regulatory requirements as to where you buy from or what forms to fill out or whether you can use state funds for purchasing, say, lunch for the team at the end of the semester to thank everyone...so being an admin assistant was super stressful for me. Oh! Sorry! I digress! Anyway, I called the help desk. Jean answered. I explained my problem. She said it always worked on her system. (This is a standard answer from help desks. It also, amazingly enough, is usually true, because Help Desk folks have got their computers tuned and cleaned and scrubbed of weird and wonderful viruses or spyware.) She deleted her stored FTP session. She re-ran the program and typed everything in by hand, as I was typing everything in by hand on my end. It worked on her system. It didn't work on mine. We ran through every option in the SecureFTP program, and mine were set just like hers. She finally tried to log in as me on her computer, rather than using her username. Whammo-blammo, just like magic, her SecureFTP didn't work. We puzzled it about. We tossed up ideas at each other. She IM'd her teammates. Lots of good suggestions, none of which applied to me. And then one of them messaged something about "does she have the menu turned on on ServerName?" Yes. Telnet into ServerName. Turn the menu off. Okay. All of a sudden, now my SecureFTP connection works. WTF? Please. I know that help desk folks are known for knowing odd and esoteric solutions to computer problems that no-one would ever think of trying. But this was so odd and so esoteric that even the help desk folks didn't know it! Why on earth would that menu thing interfere with the secure FTP, when it didn't make a bit of difference with the normal FTP? Color me puzzled. Color you bored. I'll talk about something more widely entertaining next time! Categories: [Computers] [Work]

The night sky where the Omegas live is awesome. Perhaps 80% of the time, you can see the Milky Way. The constellations pop in a way that citydwellers could never imagine. As a child, OmegaMom lived in Chicago. A wonderful city, lively, interesting, full of parks, beaches, places for children to play and explore nature, science, art. Damned fine shopping, too. But the stars there are...well...pathetic is the word that springs to mind. Oh, you can see the Big Dipper and Little Dipper, a few more constellations. But the Milky Way?? Fat chance. OmegaMom has a vivid memory of one childhood camping trip to the Indiana Dunes. This was way before today's rather strict control of who camps where, when and how; OmegaMom's very Bohemian/Beatnik parents and their buddies simply drove as close as they could to the beach, marched on down close to the water, built a huge bonfire, and set up sleeping bags (Tents? Were there tents? Memory is cloudy on this point.). Ray Watkins got out his guitar, OmegaGranpa got out his banjo, marshmallows were toasted, the fire roared into the sky with sparks dancing in the breeze. When OmegaMom turned her eyes away from the dazzling bonfire, and looked out over the lake, her back to the light, and let her eyes adjust...stars started peeking out. More and more of them. And still more. As her eyes totally adjusted, to her awe she saw a path of stars arching across the sky. The Milky Way. It was stunning. It was something she had read about, heard about, but never seen. Glorious. Exciting. She laid on her back in the sand, listening to the music and the singing and the roar of the bonfire and the sound of the waves lapping on the beach, and stared up into the sky, amazed. Nowadays, OmegaMom and OmegaDad can drive home from work in the twilight, and, if it's late enough, and dark enough, when we open the car doors and stumble out onto the concrete landing pad...we merely have to glance upward and we are slammed with stars. The Milky Way leaps forth immeidately, with no need to wait for our eyes to acclimatize and adjust. It's just there, beauteous to behold. We can step onto the back deck in the middle of a moonless night, and see how the Milky Way has moved across the sky from where it was when we got home. And on those nights when the Perseids or Geminids or Orionids are putting on a show, we can haul our sleeping bags out on the deck or into the yard, stare up at the sky, and begin counting meteors. (The meteor storm of a few years ago was the best--we set our alarms for 3 a.m., staggered out of bed, and OmegaMom peered sleepily out the windows in the back door to see if it was really going to be good or not...through the windows, she saw a fireball streak across the sky. 'Nuff said: we hauled ass out into the cold darkness and watched for an hour, jaws dropping. That was a spectacular show.) While there are things that OmegaMom and OmegaDad miss about the city, we wouldn't give up our nightly sky show for the world. Categories: [This 'n That]

So OmegaDad thought it would be fun to make sugar cookies as a family project. Step one was mom creaming butter and sugar. (I'm old-fashioned. If you're gonna cream butter and sugar, you gotta do it by hand.) Steps two and three were flour, baking powder, salt...hands... Step four was mixing the wets with the dries (we left out the part where OmegaDad was completing the wet mix): This required a bit of clowning around--OmegaDotter decided to "get" OmegaDad, then giggled with glee. Forming the dough into balls: OmegaDotter got her first whack at a rolling pin. Cutting out cookies. OmegaDad made OmegaDotter a few special horsie cookies: OmegaMom demonstrates how to ice the cookies, then it was OmegaDotter's turn. How many sprinkles can an almost-four-year-old put onto a sugar cookie? A lot. OmegaDad's special horsie cookie in all it's glory: Christmas cookies in a variety of not-very-Christmassy colors: The artistes at work: The finale--what a mess!!! Thank goodness for wax paper! Categories: [Family] [Cuteness] [Photo Posts]

Sster at Boomerific posted (quite a while ago, alas, and I am just now getting to it): "...how about a post in the next day or so about what brought you to adoption and what ethical/moral/political/personal battles you have had to wage surrounding that decision? I'm looking for something more than "I wanted a baby," because we all want babies (see, I'm a little selfish too. just a little. you know.). Everybody's story is so different and interesting." This is all in the midst of a discussion of "baby shortages" and altruism versus selfishness involved in the process of adopting. Then, this week, the topic on Adoption Parenting included a similar question. What brought the Omegas to adopting? Well, we started out the usual way: when we got together and knew it was going to be permanent, and looked at my age (34), we said, "Whoops! Time to get started on that family thing!" Unlike the majority of adults, sex just didn't seem to do it. We went off to get tested. OmegaDad was found to have three sperm, one of which wasn't bad...(not literally, but that's OD's joke). We waited until we had $$ for IVF with ICSI. That's when we found out that OmegaMom's eggs were fried--we got one lone little embryo. Got pregnant for three weeks. Tried again. Got cancelled. The eggs were really fried. OmegaDad, who had had three years to ponder the "what if it doesn't work?" and "OMG, my body is dysfunctional!" issues, immediately promoted adoption. OmegaMom, who was stunned to find out that she had the eggs of a 48-year-old at the ripe old age of 38, went through the requisite angst for about a year, during which she seethed with envy at pregnant women, hated baby showers, cried a lot, and turned into a shrew. During that year, at OmegaDad's prompting, we trotted off to the local domestic adoption agency, where we hit a snag. Turns out that LDAA, being bound to a conservative religious organization, wanted us to be married three years. We had only been married one. Whoops! In retrospect, it was a Good Thing. This gave OmegaMom a chance to work through lots of issues and research the adoption world. I started out on the Adoption Debate board on iVillage (I'm not linking to it because I'm still peeved that they changed the format to one where you have to click through zillions of ads to see the posts--besides, the format killed the board pretty dead, and I haven't been back there in ages). I met and talked with birthmothers, adult adoptees, adoptive parents who had adopted from a variety of systems--domestic private, domestic via the state, international, family, etc. It was a learning experience. I distinctly remember one Sunday afternoon emerging from the office to sob on the sofa, telling my husband that the birthmothers all hated me and it was horrible and I was never going back there, blah, blah, blah. Of course, I went back there. I learned a lot about the Bad Old Days of domestic private adoption, where young unwed mothers were forced by their families and adoption agencies to relinquish their childen, even though they didn't want to. Of being in labor with unsympathetic nurses who essentially told them they were Bad Girls and Deserved What They Got. Think this is all gone? A relic of the time when appearances mattered? I know of a case where the teen birthmother was shipped out of town to give birth--without support of friends or family--and her baby was handed over toot sweet to the adoptive parents, because the birthgrandparents didn't want the neighbors to know. This was in 2001. I read stories of people adopting from the state. Some had to wait years. Some went the foster-to-adopt route, had a child placed with them, only to have the child removed because the birthparents had finally gotten their shit together or because (for some unknown reason) the social workers decided the child needed a different foster family. I read stories about people adopting from the state who discovered--after the adoption papers were signed--that the files on the child(ren) they adopted had been carefully vetted so that any "issues" were hidden away. Being an optimistic sort, I tend to think this was a case of social workers meaning well, wanting to get children out of the system and into families. I read stories about international adoptions that turned out to have been the result of corruption and baby-brokering. OmegaDad and I discussed things endlessly. We started out thinking of domestic private open adoption--we thought that was most ethical. Then we heard stories of potential birthmoms who felt obligated to relinquish their children after months'-long relationships with potential adoptive parents. One day, we went through a series of scenarios where the birthmother realized, shortly after relinquishment, that she had made a mistake...when would we feel ethically bound to return the child to its first mother? One month? Two? Three? Six? It was a hard discussion. We couldn't bear the thought of having to return a child after having it in the family. But we felt ethically bound to do so. So we looked at international adoption. OmegaDad, being enthralled with Hispanic culture, wanted to adopt from a Latin American country. At the time, there were a number of articles about corruption in the systems--baby selling, mothers being lied to and discovering that their children, supposedly being cared for in orphanages while the parents made their way through a tough financial spot, had been adopted out, stories like that. I looked into international adoption from two countries where babies in orphanages were typically abandoned due to cultural and political issues (things that no one person could make a difference about)--India and China. And, to be crass, these two countries were much less expensive to adopt from than others. And there were all these girl babies. Babies in societies where not having a family was a big societal ding. Girls in societies where--in my cursory examination--it seemed that females were relatively low on the totem pole. Thirdly, I had heard that the mortality rate for babies in these orphanages was very high. So...these two countries satisfied us all around: Healthy babies available. Girls (we had resigned ourselves to boychildren if I ended up preggers, because OmegaDad's family was ALL BOYS for three generations). Societal issues that made it seem that it would be better for the child to be adopted internationally rather than remain in an orphanage. At the time, adopting from India was taking 18 months from start to finish. China was taking less than 12. We wanted a baby now! So we turned to China. What happened? The time from start to finish for China almost immediately lengthened. It took us 9 months to get our dossier completed. It took 14 months for us to get our referral. During this time, I began reading about transracial adoption and conspicuous families. Began reading about subtle racism. Began listening to adult international adoptees. Realized there was more to this whole thing than I had originally thought. But those are topics for another post, because this one is just too darned long. Later, gators. Categories: [Our Adoption] [Adoption Issues]

So the latest is here: Orphanages Involved in Infant Trafficking* Note, waaaay down at the bottom of the article, this: "Some of them were even sold to foreign adopters, said the official, adding that they are now looking into the hometowns and whereabouts of the trafficked infants." So. Does this mean foreign adopters working outside the Chinese system? Or does this mean foreign adopters who used the (naively believed by me) squeaky-clean Chinese adoption system? Dunno. I emailed our agency. True to its word, they responded within 24 hours. In fact, the director of the agency emailed me back almost right away, saying that they are asking their Chinese staff to investigate and clarify, and that he will keep everyone updated as soon as they get more news. Then, of course, he says that, so far as the agency knows, all adoptions are through "reputable" orphanages. The swiftness of the response makes me think that I'm not the first to email/call them! Me = naive. Sigh. I'm beginning to think that the folks who say corruption is inevitable in any form of international adoption (which is usually from poor areas to richer countries) may be more correct than I thought. I changed my link title; I was thinking "Welfare organs" meant charity organizations, but now I think they're talking about the Social Welfare Institutes themselves. Categories: [Hunan Situation] [Adoption Issues]

Just before Thanksgiving, a person posted some links to news stories about orphanages buying and selling babies on the Big List (APC). Baby-selling orphanage in Hunan cracked down Hunan orphanages sells babies, says report Charity workers in Hunan orphanage arrested for selling babies Since then, there have been maybe--maybe--20 posts about this. This, on a list that averages 3000 messages per month. A commenter on Soper's blog says that she was sent a private email asking her to please not talk about the recent stories on the list. Someone posting on Adoption Parenting (an awesome resource for adoptive parents of all stripes, by the way) says that the clippings about this story are definitely going into her daughter's lifebox. Then she asks, somewhat puzzledly, why aren't there more posts about this on the various lists? Well, I'm wondering, too. My POV: I'm worried. The orphanages that bought/sold/traded babies did so with some orphanages in the province OmegaDotter came from. What if...? What if, contrary to our original assumptions, OmegaDotter was stolen from her first parents? What if the story we've been telling her all along is just a pack of lies? There are plenty of adult adoptees who found out that the stories their adoptive parents told as they were growing up were just so much nonsense...adult adoptees who find that, yes, they were stolen from their original families, sold to orphanages, given made up origins, then sent on their way to adoptive families across the world. Naturally, adult adoptees who have this background are angry--at the system, at the corruption, at their adoptive parents. All along, one of the things that drew us to the China adoption program was that it was stable, ethical, the children available for adoption were truly abandoned and truly needed parents. The answers to ethical questions that I saw related to other paths to adoption, particularly international adoption, seemed crystal clear in the case of China. And now, I'm left wondering: what if it's not so? What if this is the tip of the iceberg? These people were selling babies to other orphanages, in other provinces. What were the people at these other orphanages doing, in their turn? How far does this go? Does the soaring demand of Western parents for adoptable infants from China, and the accompanying mandatory donation to the orphanage, inevitably cause corruption of this sort? But not a word--not a peep--do you hear on the big lists. All is quiet. Don't talk about it, don't think about it, maybe it'll just go away, la, la, la, I can't hear you! My personal fear is that this is the beginning of a very large crackdown. Of course, such a crackdown would be good for the system--rout out corruption, clean the system up, make sure that the babies that are available are not the result of kidnappings, baby-buyings. But such a crackdown would probably require a suspension of international adoptions while the CCAA got down to the bottom of things. (Please note: I am not claiming anyone else said this is what is happening. This is not a rumor of what's going on. This is my fear only.) And since OmegaDad and I are thinking of number two, my selfish side wants the whole story to just go away. The other side of me looks at OmegaDotter and hopes and prays that she was not stolen away from her parents from some province far, far away from where we adopted her. I hope to god that she is, indeed, from the province where we adopted her, that, if she wants to try to locate her birthfamily as an adult, that there is, actually, some hope. But, in the meantime, silence. Shhh. Let's not talk about it. Categories: [Hunan Situation] [Adoption Issues]

Happy Big

About two years ago, OmegaDotter began asking me, "Are you happy little or happy big?" "Happy little" is accompanied by the thumb-and-forefinger-an-inch-apart gesture. These days, I am happy to say, I am almost always "happy big". Contentment seems to be my thang right now. Yay. A little soupcon (how do I get the accent under that 'c'?) of excitement for the future adds to it. Anyway, if there were a way to bottle the feeling of contented-cat that I'm feeling these days--emotionally lolling in the sun, as it were--I think I'd make a fortune.

Phoenix Rising?*

So for some odd reason, out of the blue, I decided I wanted to find Phoenix again. I was on an infertility listserv with her for eons. We were fairly good buds...then OmegaDotter erupted into our lives, and over time, my IF links became less frequently visited, then never visited at all. They just no longer were relevant to my life (sorry, IF folks, but that's what happens sometimes!). It wasn't a conscious thing, it just happened. Like drifting away from old friends. Anyway, I googled "Phoenix Amon", and, lo and behold, one of the hits was in a four-year-old post on an adoption blog I love, because the author writes thoughtful pieces about adoption, infertility, openness, race, etc. Does anyone know where Phoenix is? Other possible titles: "It's a Small World" or "Six Degrees of Separation".

Social Butterflies

Amazingly for such a bunch of homebodies as we are, the weekends between now and New Year's are full to the brim. We have a "Lollipop concert" to go to next weekend--a kids' downsized version of "Peter and the Wolf". The next weekend, we have a guided tour of Arcosanti, Grandma's 102nd birthday party (woohoo!), and the Nutcracker. The weekend after that, we are headed to SoCal. Then, of course, there's Christmas. This is very unlike us.

Christmastime is Coming

So Dyson is having this sweet special these days: purchase a brand new Dyson, and get a FREE!!! toy Dyson. Well, dayum. Why didn't they have this neato-keeno freebie when I succumbed to my inner Yuppie this summer?? When OmegaDotter and I went to the mall to purchase frilly Christmas dresses and other stuff, we wandered through Sears. OmegaDotter was smitten with this stupid thing. As a result, I can almost understand the frenzies of the "gotta-have" Christmas toy. I mean, I am almost tempted to spend $70 to get one of these things via a "Buy NOW!" on eBay. The kicker is that the folks in the UK and Australia can get them from their local toy stores--but can we U.S.ians? Oh, noooo. No, Dyson is having their lure-the-desperate-parents-in giveaway, deviously timed for the holiday season, and no toy stores in the U.S. are carrying them. Wanna see this gem? Image courtesy of one of the aforesaid UK toy stores, MailOrderExpress, which will gladly ship to Ireland, Wales, Scotland, the Guernsey Islands, but not to the U.S. Bah. We do, however, have two Asian New Year barbies, courtesy of Amazon.com's two-for-one, which swept like wildfire through the Chinese adoption community, courtesy of a posting on The Big List. And some horses.

Categories: [This 'n That] [Family] [Cuteness]

Last night, while snuggling with OmegaDotter as she was striving to NOT go to sleep, she began to sing. I heard this tiny, tremulous, soulful, emotional voice. And it was singing: "On top of spaghetti All covered with cheese I lost my poor meatball..." And then she fell asleep. Categories: [Cuteness] [Family]

Do you ever lie awake at night, with lists running through your head, that won't go away and let you sleep? If I'm not sacked out at 9 p.m. with OmegaDotter, I tend to stay up late. Then I'll snuggle into bed with OmegaDad, striving to keep my ice-cold feet away from the lovely temptation of the back of his knees (succumbing to the temptation is, I am sure, a valid excuse for murder). And then the lists begin. Christmas letter...cards...have to put old Christmas letters up on the website so the folks who haven't gotten one in three, four years can see what's happening...what to get the Dotter...what to get OmegaDad...have to clear the top of the glass-front bookcase (dear Gawd, there's a shitload of dusty stuff up there!) to put the mini-tree and other decorations on...have to peer at the top of the bookcase and entertainment center, clear those off...find some stocking hangers...oh, lord, I have to put together a basket or two for the holiday party raffle at work...I want an iPod or similar player...oooh, those laptop prices are sooo tempting...damn, I need to get my shit together and get the dependent care flex-account claim in, it's not like it's a real savings account...but I'm glad I haven't done it since March, because it'll be a nice chunk o' change to have around the holidays...I'd really like to finish painting the beams in the living room...I wonder if we'll have enough $$ so I can order those double-cell blinds...will that really help us save money in the winter?...I wonder how much they cost...damn, OmegaDad forgot to clean the air intake filter again this weekend...maybe I'll just hire someone to come & crawl into the crawlspace to see how our floor insulation is doing...surely I can pull myself together to get my old clothes out of the old dresser, haul them off to the Goodwill...gotta do it before the end of the year, so we can get the deductions in this tax year...I can do one hour a night after work, right?...yeah, so I'm a lazy SOB, damn, you know I'm not going to do that...how the hell am I going to function at work tomorrow, I've got to get some sleep...we really, really need to get OmegaDotter's room set up... Blah, blah, blah. It just gets started, and then there I am, it's 2 a.m., the little mental rats are running faster and faster in their little exercise wheel. There's a theory I've heard, that if you just turn on the light and write down all the to-dos on a pad, it short-circuits this roundabout. And then I get to sleep, and an hour later OmegaDotter comes dashing out of the bedroom and snuggles into bed with us and starts doing The Foot Thing. Remember the tales of the "Chinese Water Torture"? Where the person being tortured is tied down, and a drop of water goes splish...splish...splish onto one spot on the torturee's body until the physical sensation becomes excruciatingly painful? OmegaDotter's Foot Thing can result in the same sensation. She's learning--now, if I say, "No Foot Thing, Dotter!" in a grumpy, sleep-laden voice, she hears it subconsciously and tries to stop. But it's a compulsion of hers. It makes her feel soothed and comfortable. I just wish she could transfer it to, say, a pillow rather than a body! Can you tell I didn't get much sleep last night? Categories: [This 'n That]

What is Omegamom thankful for?

• Indoor plumbing.
• Thousands of years of glassmakers and the optometrists who piggybacked on them.
• LASIK surgery.
• Antibiotics--Zithromax RULES!
• Modern medicine. Multiple folks at Omegamom's place of work have had to have stents put in recently. While OmegaGranddad's stent operation didn't work, and he died, it's nice to know that so many folks out there can have their hearts repaired without cracking their chests open.
• Modern reproductive medicine. While it didn't work for Omegamom and Omegadad, it's worked for many, many people, and I'm happy for them.
• Our darling Omegadotter, who is turning into a little girl by leaps and bounds.
• OmegaGreatGrandma is still alive and kicking at--get this--102!
• Central heat, even with the cost of fuel so high this year.
• The Internet. Hmmmm. Maybe I shouldn't be thankful for that--it's a dreadful addiction...
• Omegadad, who is way cool. WAY cool.
• That it won't be snowing when we drive down to OmegaGranny's house.
• That last year's sturm und drang in the family is gone, over with, finis. Thank god.
• Lots of good friends.

A hearty and happy Thanksgiving to all my vast (::snerk::) array of readers! Categories: [Family] [This 'n That]

Jeanne Marie Laskas, a columnist for the Washington Post, adopted from China twice. She recently wrote a column about a friend being worried about bonding when they brought their baby home. I love JML, and followed her columns as she went to China to adopt #1 and then #2. (In fact, I followed her columns before that, because she was temporarily on an infertility list I was on, too!) It's a great article--but there's one thing I have to say: If you meet your child and *don't* feel that immediate bond, IT'S OKAY. You're not weird. You're not strange. You're not a cold, unfeeling person. IT'S OKAY TO NOT BOND IMMEDIATELY. And, yes, I'm shouting. Because I don't want people who are soon to meet their babies thinking, if they don't bond right away, that there is "something wrong" with them, with the baby, with the adoption. Because there are lots of us who *didn't* feel that immediate bond. Oh, I felt "in love" right away, but I also felt, in a way, detached. It took at least six months for me to feel "love". It took me a year to really, truly feel "bonded" to my daughter. At this point, I can look at her when she's just being herself, doing something goofy, and my heart aches with love for her. The kind of oh-my-god-she's-so-wonderful-beautiful-smart-funny love that kicks you in the chest and takes your breath away. (Of course, since she's 3 [almost 4], I can also feel the utter exasperation and irritation that only a 3-year-old can bring you!) But I didn't feel that kind of love at first. It took time to grow. And, of course, I feel that we got "the best one"! ;-) Categories: [Our Adoption] [Adoption Issues]

Three years ago (well, plus 2 weeks, eek!), Omegamom and Omegadad were waiting for a referral. We had been waiting fourteen months since our dossier went to China. When we first started the whole process, the wait between DTC (dossier to China) and referral was 8 months. By the time we got our dossier to China, that wait had crept up to 12 months. Within a few more months, the wait had crept up to 14 months. And there it stayed--because the Chinese Central Adoption Authority had slapped a quota system on, so they could catch up with the backlog. So we waited. And we waited. And we waited. Luckily, I was on A-Parent-China, the BIG Yahoo Group for people adopting from China. While it is, at times, a source of conflicting rumors, an endless collection of clueless questions from newbies (which I was once, so I'm not knocking it), discussions of ladybugs (good luck, supposedly) and red threads, it is also a grand place to keep up with The Wait, and know just where you stand. So, as time passed, we knew, at every step, just how much longer it should be taking. I knew it was going to happen. I informed Omegadad. Omegadad had to go out in the field that week (boo!), but gave me the cellphone number for his work phone. And on that day, I got the call. I had been so prepared. I had a list of questions to ask. Did I ask them? Oooooh, no! I was just so overwhelmed, it was a miracle I managed to write anything down on that sheet of paper. An hour later, I got the email from our agency, with a pic of OmegaDotter. And I called Omegadad. And we turned into sobbing messes. Wow. In all her early glory: As she looks now: It's been a grand three years. Categories: [Our Adoption] [Photo Posts]

So I have added an archive calendar to the blog. Way cool, check it out. Alas, this means that I am aware of just how poorly I have been keeping the blog up-to-date, as there's just one entry in November (now two), and just one entry in October. Bad, bad Omegamom! I will add more now! Categories: [Bloggy Stuff]