McDreamy Motivation

I have always had a hard time finding motivation to exercise. For a while, I was exercising on our ellyptical trainer 4 to 6 times per week, and my motivation was solely weight loss, and, after six months passed and I had lost all of 3 pounds...it was no longer motivating for me. It wasn't doing what I wanted it to, so, why bother?

Okay, so, I know, excercise that doesn't result in weight loss is still important for overall health, blood pressure, etc. That wasn't enough motivation and I was just depressed as hell that I had spent so much time working out and I was no thinner.

In January, we got a treadmill in addition to our ellyptical trainer. It's a good treadmill because Husband runs something like 8 miles a day. Fast. (Have I mentioned this before? The man runs. The man is addicted to running. He runs and runs and runs and runs. And for years he kept telling me that it felt GOOD to run, and, mostly, the only thing I have ever felt while running is PAIN. And, in my book, PAIN does not FEEL GOOD. (Well, unless you are into that kind of thing.) (But, I'm really not.) (NOT that there's anything wrong with it if you are.) (So long as you're, you know, consenting adults and all that..) (I digress.)

Anyway, I think I have finally found the motivation I need to work out on the treadmill, and the motivation has a name, and its name is...

McDreamy.

AKA Patrick Dempsey as Dr. Derek Shepherd.

Yes, yes, I know that the REST OF THE NATION discovered Grey's Anatomy two years ago, but, I have MISSED A LOT OF TV in the past 7 years. (See, there are choices one has to make when one is parenting a child who doesn't sleep a lot. And when it comes to choosing between prime time TV and enough sleep, I am pretty much going to choose sleep every time. The show airs at 10:00 PM, and I just cannot stay up until 11:00. And I miss a lot of 9:00 shows because I am putting the kids to bed. The only shows I have really kept up with in real time are Desperate Housewives (because one of the writers is an old friend of mine in real life) and Gilmore Girls (and I had to drive to my friend M~'s house to watch, because we don't get the CW on our DISH package.)

Anyway, for the past three weeks, I have been walking/running on the treadmill for 40 minutes about 3 or 4 times a week. My goal is to get up to 5 times per week. And the carrot I'm using to get myself on that machine is the opportunity to watch Grey's Anatomy. I have banned the Grey's Anatomy netflixed DVDs from any other TVs in the house, except the one parked in front of the treadmill. And it seems to be working. I actually WANT to go and work out. And, I am working up to running for part of those minutes. At the moment, I am only running (not fast, not gazelle-like as is Husband, but, actual real running none the less) for 8 minutes of the 40. But, in the grand scheme of things, that's like 40 minutes per week of RUNNING, which is 40 minutes more of running per week than I have ever done before. Plus, you know, the other 32 minutes per day of walking. It has to be good for something. It has to be making me healthier even if it's not going to make me THINNER. And I least I get to watch...sigh...Dr. McDreamy.

Here's my problem. Very shortly, I will come to the end of the available episodes of Grey's Anatomy, and THEN where will I be??

SO, my challenge to you is - name addictive television shows available on Netflix WITH English subtitles! (I need the sub-titles because I have low decible hearing loss to begin with, and, even without hearing loss, it is hard to hear all the dialogue over the noise of the treadmill - so, shows such as Veronica Mars (which only had subtitles on the DVDs for Season 1, cheap bastards at the CW) have to be ruled out. (Well, plus I've already watched all the episodes of VM. Twice. Such a good show. Anyway...) I was thinking of trying Boston Legal next, but, it only has captions in Spanish. :-(.

So, please, indulge me. What TV shows on DVD will keep me coming back to the treadmill?


LM

Errors in Judgment

I realize that all of the international adoption literature in the world will tell me that what I am about to say is wrong. I realize that what I am about to say will probably make other transracial adoptees (some at least) furious. (Although, I suspect that just about everything I say on this blog, ever, about anything, probably is capable of making someone angry with me.) So, here goes.

Lana was not ready to attend the Asian Festival.

I thought that taking her to the Asian Festival would be a positive experience for her, exposing her to Vietnamese food and culture and people. I thought I had a *duty*, and *obligation* to remind her of what it means, for her, to be a Vietnamese person.

And it was a horrible, wretched, traumatizing mistake. For Lana. I'm not saying it was a bad festival, not at all. I'm saying that Lana was not ready to go to the Asian festival. As near as I can tell, the experience - the travel, the hotel, the enormous crowd - made Lana believe that we were trying to give her away.

I thought things went well, on Friday night. We met up with several other families who adopted from Vietnam, who had come to the Asian festival from as far away as Texas and Oregon (among other places), and we had really fabulous Vietnamese food at a place called HaLong Bay. And Lana, for the first time in almost 2 months, ate Vietnamese food. (Which is not to say that we haven't offered her Vietnamese foods. We have. She has rejected them outright. And vehemently.) But, Friday night, her eyes lit up when the waitress set the soft spring rolls and nuoc mam in front of her. She dove into the food. SHE DRANK the dregs of the nuoc mam sauce after she had used up most of it eating her spring rolls. (She did this once in Hanoi, as well, and it made me nauseated just watching her do it. Both times. On other occasions she has attempted to drink salad dressing and honey mustard sauce.) She devoured her chicken pho - slurping the noodles and the savory broth with loud and messy gusto.

And at 2 AM, in our hotel room, she woke up screaming in terror. She ran to the bathroom, she huddled on the bathroom floor, screaming and crying and begging for her Daddy.

She fell back to sleep wrapped around Husband, and whimpered on and off through the rest of the night.

So, perhaps we should have known better than to take her to the festival. But, it was the main purpose of our weekend trip. (Well, that, and meeting with the other families on Friday night.)

So, we went. And parking was crazy, and there were TONS of people everywhere, and the food smelled AMAZING. And we got bubble tea and a pineapple and lychee beverage and Malaysian food (my best friend from highschool, Amy, has been living in Malaysia for the past decade, and she raves about the food, and I had never had an opportunity to try it. And I have to agree, what we had at the festival was delicious.) I tried to get more spring rolls and some shrimp chips for Lana. She screamed and rejected them. She rejected EVERYTHING. She demanded to be fed "donald's shicken an fries" (McDonald's Chicken Nuggets and French Fries - which I believe she thinks is at the pinnacle of the cuisine found in her new life. This, despite the fact that I am a pretty decent cook, and regularly offer her much better food.) She cried, she threw fit after fit, and, in one weird moment, she stopped crying when she saw a police officer on a horse. (There were several Asian law enforcement officers at the festival. One of them let Gabe sit in his squad car. Gabe was thrilled. Lana refused to sit in the car.) Anyway, Husband took Lana up to the horse, and the officer let her pet the horse. As they were walking away from the officer, Lana said, "Bye-bye horsey. Yummy horsey. I eat you up. Yummy horsey. Yum." (No, I'm not making that up.)

Husband doesn't think the officer heard anything after "bye-bye horsey."

I sincerely hope he didn't.

I have no idea if Lana has ever eaten horse. I myself (inadvertently) ate horse in France, and considering the French influence in Vietnam, it wouldn't surprise me if they also eat horse there. But, I never saw it on any menus. Maybe she was just being silly. Maybe she was just trying to get a rise out of David. Hell, maybe she knows they eat horses in France (she seems to have been educated about a couple of odd things in her short school life in Vietnam) and was commenting on that. I don't know. I have no idea.

I just know that Lana's behavior at the festival ranged from bizarre to wretched. So, after two hours, we left. We went back to the hotel. All four of us took a nap. We went and swam in the hotel pool (even though it was not as nice as the pool in our own backyard.) We took the kids to the California Pizza Kitchen for dinner and, back at the hotel, we watched Over the Hedge and tried to get some sleep. Lana cried and whimpered through most of the night.

We did not return to the festival on Sunday. The kids wanted to swim again, and then we took them to the Columbus Zoo. We visited the zoo, and with some other Vietnamese adopting families whose agency (VORF) was having an event at the zoo that day.

All the way home in the car, Lana demanded, "go faster, Daddy. GO HOME. GO HOME FASTER, Daddy."

She crawled into her own bed last night and slept for twelve hours.

She just wasn't ready. I guess I should recognize that Bich Lan spent over four years being Vietnamese in Vietnam. For just over four months she's been getting her feet underneath her, being a new child, in a new family, a family that doesn't look like her, or eat the things she is used to, or speak the language of her old life. She is trying to make sense of that new life, and it wasn't fair of me, so soon into this new family, to put her in a position that made her uncomfortable. She is trying her hardest to learn to be Lana, in a whole new world.

I don't really know where to go from here, in terms of helping Lana feel comfortable as a trans-racial adoptee. She has positive Asian role models in her life, every day, thanks to the diverse staff at her daycare center. I can take her to visit our Vietnamese friends, and make her Vietnamese foods that maybe only Husband and I will eat. Beyond that, I'm not sure what to do.

Feeling a bit at a loss,
LM

Blogger Dinner

I left work at 2:00 PM yesterday, picked up Lana from the daycare center, and hurried home, where I met Husband, we through some suitcases in the car, and then picked Gabe up from school just as it was letting out. Then, we hit the road for Columbus and the annual Asian Festival! It took us longer than we expected to get there due to the Memorial Day traffic. But, it was worth it, because -

Last night, we met up with several other Vietnamese adopting families who have pretty much come from all over the country for the Asian festival. It was great to finally get to meet Nicole, Nicki,
E., Jenn, and M. (aka Mia's Mommy).

We had dinner at a place called Ha Long Bay and the food was VERY good. I'll write more later, but, right now we are going to head into downtown for the festival.

LM

Mommy Got Boobs

I debated blogging about this, truly I did. But, I decided that I really did think it was funny, in retrospect...

Lately, Lana has been obsessed with breasts. OBSESSED. Who has them, who doesn't have them, and why they do or do not have them.

I'm not sure when the obsession began. She likes to come and keep me company if I am taking a bubble bath. At first, I resented this intrusion into what is, for me, SACRED PRIVATE TIME. However, it then occurred to me that I used to have some of my best talks with MY mom while she was taking a bubble bath and I was keeping her company. Also, Lana will happily sit for 10 to 15 minutes with one of her plastic tub-toy-cups and pour water down my back repeatedly. Really. It's like a spa treatment. Probably, there are people out there who would pay good money to have someone pour warm water over their back, over and over, while they are having a bubble bath. So, I've found I don't necessarily mind the company.

So, I believe the first time the subject she broached the subject, she was sitting on the side of the tub. "Mommy?" she asked. "Mommy, what those?"

I debated how to answer this question. "Breasts" seemed like too formal an answer for a child who is only 4 and whose English vocabulary is still limited. I sighed. "Boobs," I said. And immediately regretted it. And continue to regret it to this day...because she LOVES the word "boobs" and doesn't want to replace it with any other word.

She recently picked up a bra out of the clean laundry that Husband was folding. She wrapped it around herself. Honestly, I wish I had had a camera at that moment, because it looked absurdly comical. It was electric orange, for one thing, and the child only weighs 35 pounds soaking wet, so, to say it was gigantic on her is an understatement. "Look, Mommy. Lana need this. Lana need boobs."

"Lana doesn't need that yet." I said.

"Mommy?"

"Yes, Lana."

"Where Lana boobs?"

I sigh. (See, I sigh a lot with this child.)

"When Lana is a big girl, Lana will have boobs."

"Lana need boobs NOW, Mommy."

Sorry baby. Not gonna happen.

"Where Daddy boobs?"

"Daddy is a boy. Boys don't have boobs." (The Mansierre or The Bro of Seinfeld fame notwithstanding, of course).

"Gabriel no have boobs?"

"That's right. Gabriel is a boy, too. Boys don't have boobs."

I thought perhaps we had moved beyond the "boobs" obsession, because she didn't bring it up again for a few days. Until Saturday, when we were in the CEREAL AISLE at a MAJOR GROCERY STORE CHAIN. Did I mention it was SATURDAY? When the entire population of this city is grocery shopping?

I was wearing a v-neck t-shirt, and I picked her up to put her in the cart, cause she was whining about walking. From her vantage point in the cart, Lana snaked her fingers into my shirt and stuffed her head inside, and then she peeked back out (still pulling on my shirt and thus exposing far more of my body than I really care to think about) and announced, with happy excitement, to everyone on the cereal aisle, "MOMMY GOT BOOBS!!"

Twelve shades of red later, I decided to only let Husband push the cart.

LM

Walking in Troubled Dreams

This morning, after David's alarm went off, I almost immediately fell back into a deep sleep. (This is odd for me - I usually just doze for another hour, but, it isn't deep, restful sleep.) But, this morning, I fell back to sleep and smack into the middle of a dream I've had several times during my adult life. I wouldn't say it happens often enough to call it "recurring" - but, it is a dream I've had before, several times.

In the dream, I am three years old. I am walking beside a lake with my father and my god-father, whose name is Bruce. It is 1975, and they are dressed accordingly, like the post-flower children they were. Their green sharp-collared shirts throb like pulses of electricity run through them. One of them is smoking a cigar. My three-year-old fingers hold tight to their hands, the shore of the lake is rocky and sandy and unfamiliar beneath my legs.

Abruptly, a plane appears, and it is red and covered in black crosses. My adult mind recognizes it as a plane from the book Snoopy and the Red Baron, which was one of my favorite books when I was young, but, not as young as three.

There is a sound like car-backfiring, and the plane bursts into an enormous fireball and falls into the lake.

And my father scoops me up, and we are running, running - first towards the lake, then suddenly away from it. We run and run until we reach a road and my father and my god-father are saying quick, troubled things to eachother in loud voices, and my god-father is flagging down a car.

And my father is running with me, away from Bruce, away from the car, away from the lake. We are running towards a pop-up trailer camper, and he opens the door and hands me to my Aunt Kay, my mother's sister, who is holding my cousin Melanie, still a baby, in a towel. My father says something to Kay in a quiet, hurried, frightened tone. He turns and leaves. "Come with me to the bathroom," my aunt says. "Melanie needs a bath." The words sound disembodied, but, I know they are Kay's words. We walk to a campground bathroom, and I watch my aunt bathe my baby cousin in the sink. "I wish I was small," I say, "small enough to fit into the sink."

That's it. I woke up. Sweaty, with a feeling of...something like sadness.

The dream is mostly true. I think.

In 1975, when I was three years old, my father, my god-father and I witnessed a plane crash in northern Michigan, where we were camping. My father believes the memories I have of the crash are pieced together from being told ABOUT the incident, and not the incident itself, and I think he is partly, but not entirely, right. The plane, according to my father and Bruce, was gray or white, not red. And certainly not covered with black crosses. It did not burst into flames, it did not explode. The engine was whining and loud when we first saw it, and the pilot had clearly lost control, and it's decsent into the lake, while terrifying for my father and Bruce to watch, was not fiery. There were four people on the plane and all of them died. We did run towards the crash at first, but, when my father and uncle realized that the wreckage was too bad for anyone to have survived, they ran up to the road to flag down help. My father took me back to our campsite and then returned to the site of the crash. He swears that they neither he nor Bruce was smoking a cigar. Obviously neither of them was actually wearing an electric shirt. My father says he handed me to my mother, not my aunt, although he thinks that my aunt was there, (and my father was in a state of distress) and my mother and my aunt look an awful lot a like - but, not so much that my three-year-old self couldn't tell the difference*. He doesn't know if Kay was headed to the bathroom to give Melanie a bath in the sink.

The dream, when it has happened, has not always been exactly this way. But, it always ends with the sink, the bath, and my wish to be small. Which is why I think that the bath is probably the truest part of the dream. I think it is apparent that my subconscious mind has painted the plane red, covered in black crosses, to represent the tragedy that is about to occur. My three-year-old self had little concept of death - my adult mind realizes that what is about to happen is tragic and horrifying. I can read all kinds of things into my statement, my wish to be small. I can interpret this wish in many ways now, mostly having to do with my feelings of frustration regarding my body. Although, I think at the time, I really was wishing, without any subtext, simply to be small enough to take a bath in the sink with Melanie.

It's still a hell of a way to start the morning, walking in troubled dreams of 32 year old catastrophe.
LM

*They do look enough alike that when Gabe was about three, he confused Kay with my mother, sidled up to her to be snuggled, and it wasn't until he was RIGHT UP IN HER LAP that it occured to him she wasn't his grandma. After his initial shock about it (Kay lives very far away, so, we only see her maybe once a year), he took to calling her, "other Grandma."

Sangria Lament

I spent yesterday with my head pounding like 10 monkeys were playing the bongoes on it. And cursing myself for uttering the words, "We should make some sangria and take it to S~ and O~'s paella party."

See...it made perfect sense at the time. Paella calls out for sangria, doesn't it?

Yes, yes it does. And yet it is so very very mean the next morning.

I'm not a huge fan of shellfish (aside from shrimp) - but, Lana was EXTREMELY happy to see mussels and oysters in the paella. These are things we have never fed her before (um...because, I once read that Anthony Bourdain (chef/hero) said that one should never eat mussels unless A. one was sitting close enough to actually hear the ocean from which said mussels had been procrured and B. one had cooked said mussels oneself). (Also, because I think they are gross, but, the Bourdain excuse is much more sophisticated sounding than my squeegy/icky feeling about eathing things that look like snot in a shell, in my humble opinion.) But, our friends had ordered in the seafood, from a very reputable seafood market, and had carefully prepared the mussels, so, we let Lana eat what she wanted. (And I waited, expecting her to become violently ill, since I am a pessimist and of course such a thing would happen to my child). But, she was fine. She just likes steamed mussels. A lot. Enough so that she overcame her recent tendancy of "only eating things that her big brother will eat". (Yes, lately, unless Gabe puts something in his mouth FIRST, Lana will have NOTHING to do with it. But, I guess her mussel-lust overcame her desire to be just like her big brother.)

I enjoyed my paella with just shrimp and squid, free of the oysters and mussels and clams, and evidently I enjoyed my own sangria A BIT TOO MUCH.

After many aspirins, we also spent yesterday opening up our pool. Correction. Husband spent yesterday opening our pool. I spent yesterday complaining about my head. I did drive to the pool supply store to pick up pool supplies. I took a screaming Lana with me, since Husband was trying to get the filter up and running and Lana kept trying to fling herself into the water - which was help that Husband didn't really need, you know?

Lately, Lana spends a lot of time screaming when she cannot be with Husband and doing exactly whatever it is that Husband is doing. I am persona non grata once again. I assume it's just a stage. She and Gabriel are fighting like cats and dogs. I am told this is normal behavior for siblings. I am pretty sure it's illegal in this state for me to strangle them for this, so, I'll refrain. I really don't know how parents who have more than two children survive without completely going bananas!!

More later,
LM

Lydia??

This morning, for no reason that I can even begin to fathom, I called Lana, "Lydia".

At 8:43 this morning, the following sentence came out of my mouth:

"Lydia, put your shoes on, we need to get in the car."

This caused both of us to stop and look quizically around. Me, because it occured to me that I had just called my daughter Lydia, and Lana, because, well, her name isn't Lydia.

I don't even KNOW anyone NAMED Lydia. I don't think I've EVER known anyone named Lydia. I do kind of enjoy that scene in The Fisher King where Michael Jeter's character sings "Lydia the Tatooed Lady" to Amanda Plummer's character. But, it's been, like, four years since I last watched that movie. Even though I own it. Sad.)

Once, a long time ago, I had a cat named Lydia. For two days. (Her name was Lydia for two days. Then we decided it didn't fit her and renamed her Kashi. Then we decided she didn't fit US and we gave her to our friend Wendy. Who pampered her until her untimely death from feline leukemia a few years ago. Hi, Wendy.)

Anyway, I have no clue why I did that.

Also, when I dropped Lana off at school, I started to write July 17 on her drop off sheet. And it's only May. It's possible I'm losing my mind.

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I'm totally depressed and sad that the crap network that is the CW is not renewing Veronica Mars. I've only recently discovered (via watching Seasons 1 and 2 on DVD courtesy of Netflix) what a great, funny and well-written show this is, and WHACK. It gets cancelled. I'm bad luck like that for shows. I'm like a TV show killer. Seriously. As soon as I start to love them? They get the ax. I am not kidding when I say I am bad juju for intelligent television. Oh, what? You want example??

Dead Like Me? Cancelled. Arrested Development? Cancelled. Brimstone? Cancelled. Queer as Folk? Well, first it jumped the shark in the middle of season three, and held on for a while, AND then it was cancelled. (I mean, REALLY, did anybody buy Ted Schmidt as a drug addict? Because I did NOT.) There are others, I'm sure.

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I have more to say and no time to say it. Such is my life right now.

Welcome Baby Soren!!

Everyone go and see what a beautiful baby D&J have produced.

On a related note, has anyone EVER seen a new mom look quite this beautiful so soon after giving birth? D~, you're so beautiful, it's just not fair. (As some of you may know (or maybe not, since I think I have the pictures hidden), in my post-Gabriel's birth photos, I look like someone that just came from the morgue, not a pretty site!)

LM

A Meme...I AM

~ I AM paralyzed with fear and worry about J~'s surgery at the cancer center on Monday.

~ I AM both worried and hopeful for My Girl D~ today. (Love you D~.)

~I AM still in love with Husband after almost 12 years.

~I AM afraid of being a bad mother.

~I AM not entirely sure that men are from Mars and women are from Venus.

~I AM a lousy divorce attorney. I AM not able to separate my emotions from those of my clients. I AM postive this is a VERY BAD THING. I AM not taking any more divorce clients with children.

~I AM 100% certain that Timothy McVeigh was not acting alone on the morning of April 19, 1995.

~I AM hungry.

~I am unable to decide if the thing that is giving me insomnia right now is sadness, the paralyzing fear mentioned above, or prescription strength sudaphed.

~I AM still crazy after all these years.

LM

Right, so, you get the idea. 10 things about you. All starting with I AM. GO.

ARGH!!

My morning started at 6:40 AM with Gabriel snuggling into bed with me. That was fine - he just curled up next to me and went back to sleep. Unfortunately, the sleep lasted all of 5 mniutes when Lana woke up at 6:45 AM, crying. I went into her room to find she had wet the bed. This was suprising since she had woken us up at 2:30 to pee. Also surprising since she has NEVER done this in the almost 4 months since we adopted her. Part of me suspects she did this on purpose since I put her to bed last night in leggings that she could wear to school today. (She sometimes gives me a really hard time about changing into her clothes in the morning, so, last night, I thought, I'll just make my morning a tad less stressful and put her to bed in some stretchy leggings that she can just wear to school if she wants. Is it paranoid of me to think that she would purposely sabotage any attempt on my part to make my morning slightly less stressful than it already is? I get the kids up and to school by myself since Husband is a high school teacher and has to be at work before we even wake-up. It's the most stressful part of my day by far and everyday that Gabe makes it to school on time with a healthy breakfast in him feels like a small victory in a never ending war against cranky tired hungry children who aren't morning people. So, today, when she woke up an HOUR earlier, with WET LEGGINGS, I just felt like she did it on PURPOSE. I realize that's probably crazy thinking on my part.)

I got the bed cleaned up and she fell back to sleep for 15 minutes only to wake up screaming for no apparent reason.

THEN, the small auxiliary cat escaped from the house when Gabe went outside to catch the bus, and I had to chase him around the yard. D**N sneaky cat.

Making matters worse is the insomnia I had last night - I didn't fall asleep until after midnight, Lana was up at 2:30 to go to the bathroom, didn't fall back to sleep til around 3:15, then up against my will at 6:45. YAWN.

LM

After almost four weeks of walking around, coughing up a lung, and wheezing and sniffling and feeling mostly lousy, I dragged my sorry self to the doctor yesterday. (Question: Why is it, if my kids are sick, I have them into the doctor within 24 hours, but, if I am sick, it takes waking up with my eyes glued shut before I call for an appointment for myself?)

Anyway, I have brochitis and a sinus infection. This is good news, since I had convinced myself that I had walking pneumonia and some kind of weird eye cancer. Or something. I've got the good prescription strength pseudophedrine, antibiotics, and some kind of wretched flowery smelling spray I am suppose to shoot up my nose, which makes me feel vaguely like I am secretly snorting some kind of illicit material. (It also makes me wonder how people who ARE actually snorting illicit materials up their nose do so without jumping out of their own damn skin, because frankly, the feeling of snuffing up the flowery smelling spray is very oogy and unpleasant, and I cannot imagine shooting anything with more substance up there.) (Dear god, the places this free-writing takes my thought process. I apologize.)

Husband has been sick, too, and Lana's nose is running like a sieve. Gabe seems to be the only one of us feeling okay.

Lana freaked me out the other day by bringing me a photo of her foster mom. I said, "who is that?" and Lana said, "Mommy." I looked at her quizzically (because she, until this point, referred to her foster mother exclusively as "Ma" and never "Mommy") and said, "Who am I?" and she said, "Mommy." So, I pointed at foster mom, and asked, "Is this me?" and Lana said, "Yes." OY. And UGH. And WHAT THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO MAKE OF THAT? I mean, the child is NOT blind. She KNOWS what I look like. It is clear that I am not a 95 pound, 5 foot tall Vietnamese woman. I'm not sure if Lana was commenting that we have both been mothers to her, or if she actually is living in some magical place in her head where FosterMom and I are ONE AND THE SAME? I cannot decide if it is good she sees me in a similar light as she saw the woman who raised her for almost 4 years. Is it good? Is it bad? Is it normal? IS there ANY defintion of normal in a situation that is SO FAR BEYOND THE NORMAL FAMILY EXPERIENCE? Am I having too much angst about this?

In work news, I had to be in divorce court today, a sucking, heart-wrenching experience that normally eats up an entire afternoon, and I was only there for 35 minutes! A new record for least amount of time spent wallowing in the court of broken dreams. OH! And my client left HAPPY. Which is darn unusual, considering that most people leave divorce court in a BAD MOOD. (Even if you want a divorce, most people don't skip out of the building. I hypothesize that people don't really like having to confront their failed personal relationships in open court.) But, anyway, this was a post-decree hearing, and it went fine. Which hardly ever happens. Maybe I should go buy a lottery ticket or something.

LM