Protected: Soooo . . . I’ve Been a Bad Blogger . . .
The Fruit Who Lived
Pottermelon.
On a totally unrelated note, I will gather some food storage resources and post a barrage of links in the next few days for those of you who expressed some interest. In the mean time, just watch for canned goods to go on sale and start there. Just make sure they are canned goods you will actually eat, because rotation of stored food is rather important. So, what I’m saying is: buy canned goods you’d buy anyway, but instead of buying one or two, think about buying 20 or more. When our grocery store does the 10 for $10 and get the 11th free on canned fruit, I buy a minimum of three dozen.
Aha! Fruit! It wasn’t a totally unrelated note after all, was it?
So, there you go. A baby step. More later in the week. Hopefully.
Tewt the Newt has a bit of a pottermelon tummy ache.
Dear Amy Winehouse
Dear Amy Winehouse,
I’m sorry for the loss to your family and friends, but your early demise seems too inevitable to actually be news.
Dear Quinn,
I don’t think four-year-old boys are supposed to care so much about having their bedroom painted. I’m sorry I vetoed your first two color choices of pink and black, but I do think the two shades of blue you ultimately settled on will look very nice together. I don’t appreciate your late addition of red into the color scheme, but I might work it in anyway. This morning’s addition of purple, however, is just not happening.
Dear Motorola Xoom,
I HEART you. Really, I do. Almost as much as I heart the husband who brought you home for a 15th anniversary gift. I especially love your Kindle app, and your Nook app comes in a close second. I mean, who couldn’t love an app that gives one The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook for free? Sure I already have it in hardback, but I probably won’t travel around with it like I will with you, Motorola Xoom; and one never knows when one will be on the road and in need of an authentic wizarding-inspired recipe.
Dear Pinterest,
You are worse than Facebook. You are total internet crack like nothing I’ve ever experienced (except blogging during the adoption process and stalking my email for approval from USCIS). I would love to set my very crafty daughter up with her own account on your site, dear Pinterest, but the occasional gomers keep posting soft core porn and things with very bad words – thing that I don’t even want to see – so no kids on Pinterest. If the problem doesn’t get better soon, there will also be no E. on Pinterest. That would make me very sad, since I am finding such good, fun, inspirational things there. Oh well.
Dear Google Reader,
I am terrified to open you. It has been . . . umm . . . I think, at least two weeks since I have opened you. Doing so now will reaffirm what a bad bloggy friend I have been and make me feel like I am a drowning in a big, huge vat of behindedness (If Shakespeare can make up words, so can I).
Dear Blog,
It has also been about two weeks since I have opened you. Hope I can remember the password to post this drivel.
Dear Zoning Peeps,
We were so focused on buying the property behind us and joining all of our properties together to make one big property that would allow us to have horses, that we missed a very important thing until I thought of it Friday. We’ve been all bummed about not being able to fence in the front part of our side lot because the zoning regs say no fencing can extend beyond the front of the house. But? Since the property owners behind us can’t split off a couple acres to sell us, and we’ll be renting it instead (because it’s already zoned agricultural, so we don’t have to have so much of it to put horses on)? We don’t HAVE to join our side lot to our main lot. This means there is no house legally associated with that lot. This means, according to your regulations, we can fence that sucker within 30 feet or so of the road. This means we are fencing in the best pasture area we have, that front part, for when our horses visit. On a daily basis. Because they will be living on two acres just behind us.
Dear Summer,
You are going by too quickly.
Dear Captain American,
You’re cute, but you’re not Thor.
Dear Harry Potter Movie Makers,
Harry was supposed to fix his own wand at the end and then put the elder wand back in Dumbledore’s tomb. What was with the snapping it in half? And? Molly Weasley got her moment, but it deserved much more build up than it got (none). There were a few other things you left out that were really rather critical to the themes and allegory of the story, but I suppose you were afraid of including too much Christianity. Because heaven forbid anyone should do that.
Dear Washington D.C. Clowns,
I don’t think it matters much what you do at this point. We’re screwed either way, thanks to all of your imbecilic money mismanagement and greed, and power lust. It’s just a matter of how soon it’s all going to hit the fan.
Dear Whoever Is Left Reading This,
I have two words for you: Food. Storage.
And Tewt the Newt says to remember water is an important part of food storage!
An Open Letter for the Bac Lieu 16
I have tried off and on for days to write a blog post about the situation with the Bac Lieu 16. Everything I wrote was garbage. Then I sat down and wrote an email to family and friends (my apologies for all the typos I didn’t catch before I sent it out). Since many who read my blog are also family and friends, here it is (I didn’t email it out to my blog friends, since I knew you’d read it here):
I am writing to you today on behalf of 16 orphans in Bac Lieu province, Vietnam. This is not spam. This is not something I have cut and pasted to just forward on. This is me, Elaine, writing from my heart.
Three years ago, around the same general time frame that our youngest son, Quinn, was finally able to leave Vietnam to come home to us, 16 other American families were receiving their official referrals of children in Vietnam. This means they were officially matched with a child. If you haven’t gone through the international adoption process it is difficult to understand what a huge thing this official match is, and how completely parents fall in love with “their” child based on scant information and a few pictures; but this love is very real, very deep, and very genuine.
These 16 families are not just random strangers to me. Though I don’t know them all, I do know many of them through blogs, emails, and our agency Yahoo! group. I have been blessed to meet one of the couples personally. As we struggled through the process to adopt Quinn, as we faced unexpected setbacks and delays in getting him home, many of these 16 waiting mothers were part of a vital support system. They cheered for us when we received our referral, they cheered us on as we waited months longer than expected to bring Quinn home, and they cheered with us when that long-awaited day finally came. I have an email folder titled “Congratulations Quinn” where I have saved all of their, and your, congratulatory messages.
At the time Quinn was coming home, the time these families were receiving and accepting referrals, the adoption relationship between Vietnam and the US was breaking down. There were reports of widespread corruption and unethical practices, and the US announced that it would let the Memorandum of Agreement allowing adoptions between the two countries to expire in Sept. of 2008. At the same time this announcement was made, assurance was given to waiting parents already in process that, so long as they had an official referral prior to the MOA expiration date, their adoptions would go forward. Families continued to accept referrals based on this promise.
Now, here we are, three years later. While most of those “pipeline” children have, indeed, been allowed to come home to their waiting American parents, 16 children in Bac Lieu province have not. They are still there, growing up in an orphanage housed in a former prison, with inadequate food and medical supplies. I have attached a flyer with pictures of some of the children that better explains the hardships they are enduring. Please open it so you can see them. As I look at their pictures, the song A Child’s Prayer loops through my head.
During much of this three-year period, the waiting American parents have been allowed to visit their children in Vietnam. In turn, they have gone over to take the children food, clothing, and toys. They have spent time playing with and loving these children, bonding with them, talking to them, reading to them. They have now been forbidden from having any further contact with the children or the orphanage. My heart breaks for the kids, now three and four years old, who must be so confused, and my heart breaks for the parents who want nothing more than to parent these children.
No matter the sins of the past in terms of Vietnam adoption, one fact is irrefutable now: these children have no biological parents coming back for them, but they do have loving, devoted, American parents who desperately want to bring them home. The vast majority of these children have undergone DNA testing to prove the identities of their birth mothers, who have willingly relinquished them.
Now the adoptive parents are told they will have to reapply to adopt these children after Vietnam is Hague accredited. Nobody knows for sure when that will happen. While rumor has it that it could happen as early as this fall, it is doubtful. Even if Vietnam is Hague approved by this fall, it would probably be at least another year before the parents could redo the entire adoption process and get these kids home. If you’ve ever worked with children, parented children, or just loved a child, you understand that time is of the essence, and another year (but, realistically, more) will further hamper, if not cripple some of these children, physically, mentally, and emotionally.
These children, and their tireless waiting parents, need our help. They aren’t asking for our money, they are asking for our help. Here is what you can do:
Join the Bring Home the Bac Lieu 16 Facebook page to keep abreast of their endeavors and see pictures and videos of the children. After joining, you can go into your FB settings and choose not to receive emails generated every time somebody posts to the group. The inbox does get overwhelmed otherwise.
Click here to sign a petition to Congress and send letters to your elected officials to help bring home the Bac Lieu orphans.
You can also read the blog To Bac Lieu With Love. Here you will find pictures, links, sample tweets to join the Twitter campaign, and other ways you can help.
If you want to help financially, you can:
Shop at the Mothers In Action for Vietnam Etsy store to help raise money for the 16 children. This money does not go to the waiting parents. It goes to a non-profit called Chances for Children, and 100% of all funds for Bac Lieu will go to purchase and deliver food and other supplies for the children. You can also make a tax deductible donation directly to Chances For Children. Make sure you put Bac Lieu in the subject line if you want your donation to help these kids.
If you are feeling really ambitious, plans are underway for an empty stroller march in Washington D.C. on July 21. Details are emerging as plans are being finalized, and you can follow it all on the Facebook page. I hope to go to this and would love some company!
I know this has been a long email. If you’ve made it this far, thank you; and I hope you will consider helping. Please, at the very least, take just a minute to sign the petition.
Elaine
Protected: Forgive Me Father
Dear . . . Holy Heart Attack, Batman!
Dear Midge and Tank Boy,
What part of, “You are not to play games that involve tying each other up any more!” did you not understand yesterday? The next time I find one of you tied to a post by your neck because you let the other one do it? I think I will just leave you there for a while (assuming, of course, that you aren’t choking to death, which you weren’t this morning when I had that heart attack, thank goodness).
Dear Land Appraiser,
What were you smoking? We’ve done just as much research into land prices around here as you did to come up with that number and, again, what were you smoking? We don’t want to cheat the sellers, but we also have this thing about being taken advantage of. At your prices, the horses can just stay where they are.
Dear Creators of Words With Friends,
Sure, it’s just a Scrabble knock off, but God bless you! I love Scrabble, but I love it even more when my butt doesn’t have to be glued to a chair at a table for hours and hours on end, and I can play with friends in different parts of the country, and I can take my turn at my own convenience. And did I mention that part about not having my butt glued to a chair at a table for hours and hours on end? God bless you!
Dear Steve Jobs,
If you’d freaking put Flash on the iPad I probably would have bought two by now. I really don’t want to buy one of the other ones. I really want an iPad. I have a Droid phone and an iPod Touch. I LOVE the iPod touch (except it doesn’t have Flash) and only like my Droid because it’s the first phone I’ve ever owned that I’ve been able to figure out how to text with, since it has a keyboard. What I’m saying is: I MUCH prefer all the iCrap to the competitors’ crap, but iCrap doesn’t have Flash and the Crap crap does. FIX THIS PLEASE.
Dear Apple Snobs,
Don’t leave me comments about the superiority of iStuff and Flash one day becoming obsolete and my lack of understanding of . . . whatever it is you think I don’t understand. For my purposes right now, I need Flash. End of story.
Dear Friends,
Invest in food storage. Now. Just do it, okay? Word on the “street” is that the LDS storehouses (at least the one in my area) are going to start limiting how much food they will sell to any one person/family. If that’s true, something is up.
Dear Freshmen Guidance Counselor at the High School Which My Child Will Attend,
For the love. Lose the porn ‘stache. You’re working with high school kids. It’s ookie.
Tewt the Newt thinks I should take the fun money and buy more wheat. After all, you can’t eat an iPad.
