Questions On My Mind Today

1. When Husband and I and Lana land in the US from our trip back from Vietnam, will all three of us be able to enter the US through the “US Citizens” line at immigration/customs, or will we have to walk Lana through the “non-US Citizens” line first and THEN come through Immigrations ourselves through the separate line?
My understanding is that Lana will technically BE a US Citizen once she lands on US soil, but, she will be entering the US on a Vietnamese passport with an IR-3 or IR-4 visa (which ever visa they issue when both parents have traveled and the adoption has been completed overseas.) (Yes, I know I am a lawyer and should know these things, but, I don’t know off the top of my head, and, I don’t have the time or energy to look it up since I have to leave in a minute to go evict a woman whose little boy is dying of cancer and I am feeling like the biggest schmuck this side of the Mississippi River.) Anyway, I want to know how coming through customs/immigration will work. Anybody reading this whose been-there-done-that? We will probably be entering the US at Detroit via Tokyo, but, also possible we will be coming to San Francisco via Taipai…

2. What is up with my sister’s snake?????
(I know that’s a weird thing to be wondering about.) More specifically, it’s my niece J~’s snake. Poor J~ is violently allergic to cats AND dogs and guinea pigs and most other animals. She is also violently allergic to eggs and soy. (She has an extremely limited diet (you try to find bread with no eggs or soy products in it – Aunt Millie’s makes one or two varieties, but, if she cannot find those, she cannot eat bread) and a limited social life, due to the fact that she cannot go to anyone’s home that has a dog or a cat, which is something like 60% of the households in the United States.) Anyway, despite this, she loves animals, so, my sister got her a snake. It’s a King snake, which is a kind of snake that eats other snakes. They are creepy looking, at least this one is. (Farmer’s like them, because the eat pest-type snakes. Also, they eat rattle snakes, and I remember being traumatized as a child visiting my great-grandparents rice farm in central Arkansas, by a king snake, and screaming for my great-grandmother to come outside because I was sure I was going to DIE. My great-grandma came running out with a garden hoe, ready to KILL THE SNAKE that was threatening one of her grandbabies, only to find I was screaming my head off about a King snake, and I was then told that if I had “a lick of sense in that Yankee head” I would learn to tell the difference between “a good snake and a bad snake.” And then I spent the afternoon shucking black-eyed peas on the porch, because I could not be trusted to walk around.) (Incidently, my great-grandmother is still alive and still killing rattle snakes in central Arkansas with a garden hoe at the age of 97. She really hates it when they hide under her rosebushes.) Anyway, my sister’s home is near the river, and she and her five children usually go for a walk in the evening in the park that runs along the river, and often will catch garden snakes to bring home and feed to the King snake, which is JUST DARN CREEPY if you ask me. (And, it think it would probably surprise people that my sister is 5’0” and a size 4 and dressed to the nines with her nails nicely done, while she is on the hunt for a WILD SNAKE to feed to her PET SNAKE.) But, in the last month or so, they haven’t been able to find any snakes to feed to Milly (the pet snake), so, my sister bought a mouse at the pet store. She put the mouse in the snake’s cage, and, three weeks into this arrangement, the mouse and the snake are getting along famously. The snake is not eating the mouse. My sister says, sometimes the MOUSE bites the SNAKE. This is JUST NOT NORMAL. Mice and snakes do not live happily together. So, that is what leads me to wonder, just what, exactly, is going on with my sister’s snake?

3. Why doesn’t the Hershey company make a Special Dark Mr. Goodbar? I mean, think about it – all the rich dark, velvety goodness of the Special Dark Bar, melted and formed with the peanut-y goodness of the Mr. Goodbar? True, the Special Dark Bar and the Mr. Goodbar are both find candybars, in their own right, but IMAGINE the possibility of PUTTING THE PEANUTS IN THE SPECIAL DARK BAR. It makes my knees weak, people. I think we should all email the Hershey company and ask them to consider this. Immediately.

That’s all for now. I have to go play Ebeneezer Scrooge at housing court.