My Kingdom for the Rent...

I'm having a "sigh" day.  I chatted with Harry last night.

He started his conversation with me by saying, "I am very worried for some things".  That's Harry saying, "You've got to help me.  I can't sleep because of some of these things I have no control over.  Remember how there's no way for me to get work here?  Remember how I'm trying to care for so many other people that I can't take care of my own family sometimes?"

I asked him what was wrong and he said, "I need to get the rent to the owner".

In Haiti they pay rent for buildings a year at a time.  That means it's easy for me to forget that he has to do that.  It also  means he's been worried about this for weeks and just now wanted to remind me that he still owes that.

I asked him what the rent was.  I honestly don't know.

See last year at the first of the year, my son was still in an orphanage in Haiti.  Last year, Bel Haiti paid the rent at THAT facility.

Then the earth shook and walls fell and all hell broke loose.

My son came home.

We had to split off from the orphanage he was in for a lot of reasons that aren't open for public nosiness.

We reorganized ourselves as Bel Haiti and Harry became our employee.

Harry lives in a building that should technically be paid for by another organization, another orphanage.  He lives in a building that was one of three locations of another orphanage.  Harry (and his wife and two kids) live in that facility and run the location for that orphanage's director in exchange for a roof over his head.

He, his wife and two children live in one room of that building.  That's it.  Their "home" is one room.

Oh, and his family gets to eat when the orphanage kids eat.

Have I mentioned Haiti's a rough place to live?

This year, things aren't good in Haiti.  The orphanage director can't pay the rent on Harry's location.  Since all that orphanage's locations were severely damaged by the earthquake, they are STRUGGLING for every penny this year.

Where does that leave Harry?  What is he to do?

He said, 'The rent is $7000, but this building very bad and need much repairs.  All the board part [he means "everything made of wood"] been distroyed the woof and the kitchen. also the gates.  It all need paint.  Very dirty."

I said, "in America the building owner pays the repairs."

Yeah... not how it works in Haiti.

I said, "Harry, please help me remember.  Do you feel $7000 is a fair price for that building?"

See it's hard for me to translate things into "Haiti".  I live in America and have a garage for my cars and electricity all the time.  I have sewage and running CLEAN water piped right into my house.

What do I know about the going yearly rate for a broken down building in Haiti?

Harry's optimism never ceases to amaze me.

He said, "Yes.  $7000 very good price.  I would like to have better place but i love this place because it is safe and the weather is cool and it easier to take tap-tap when the car is broken."

In Haiti, the cars are always broken.  It's always hard for Harry to get things.  He has to find a water truck to come and fill the cistern so that he and the children will have water.  That costs him $75 every other week.  He has to find gasoline so that they can have the generator run in the evenings for a short while.  At $4 per gallon, that's not cheap.

But here he is, 6 weeks into the new year, and the landlord wants his money.

How do I tell a man who is living somewhere that should probably be condemned by US standards but  by Haitian standards is someplace to "really love" that I don't have the $7000 he needs to cross this worry off his list?

Sometimes I get so focused on raising the other $33K we need for our part of the wall that I forget that Harry still has day-to-day in Haiti to pay for and no funds to do it.

He's always so grateful for every penny we send him.  I know he really feels sad when he has to ask for more money because the rent is due or he can't feed the kids if he doesn't get money soon.  It's usually smaller increments and we can usually send it to him, but we don't have this chunk of money for the rent.

What do I tell him?

I tell him "I'll get it.  We'll find it Harry.  We can't have you homeless."

And I cry as I type it from my warm house with the running water because my son "came home".

Harry IS HOME.  That's his world.  He lives there.  That's what he knows.

Our Political Best

I'm starting to worry about the intelligence of our leaders.

We're in the process of submitting green card paperwork for Nathan.  We have to get all that done so that we can get a SSN so that we can claim him on our taxes so that we can apply for the adoption tax credit before they kill it off entirely.  (I smell a request for a tax extension coming on)

First, there's the form.  I think they called it an "I-693".  When you print it, the form is 6 pages and the instructions on how to fill out the form are another 20 printed pages.

When the last page of the instructions came out of the printer, my eyes fell to the bottom section that explained how this form fell under the jurisdiction of the "Paperwork Reduction Act".  I guess I'm lucky that I got the "short" 26-page version of the form.

Then there's the section of questions that you have to answer.  Granted, the form expects that you're not three-years old.  I get that.  I do.

I just happen to think it is completely ridiculous that they make you answer questions like "do you plan on committing espionage while in the United States".  Seriously, how many spies answer that 'yes'.  Let me rephrase that... how many "successful spies" answer that "yes"?  I thought it was pretty much a given that if you were willing to SPY on someone else that HONESTY isn't high on your list of personality strengths.

They wanted to know if Nate was sympathetic to the Nazi Government of Germany between the years 1933 and 1945 .  Yes, the question lists those years.  Do we really still get a lot of green card submissions for former Nazi sympathizers?   Let's say, hypothetically, that a person is 20 before they really figure out their personal governmental leanings.  That would mean the youngest of that group is celebrating their 86th birthday this year.  I'd imagine that those that happen to still be surviving don't travel much, what with the bad hips and such that come from being EIGHTY-SIX.

And then at the end of the form, they have a section for the submitter to sign.  I wanted to add a post-it that says "applicant is THREE and cannot write his name", but I didn't.

At least they found a way to make things work within the laws so we can finish this process for him!

Dear Nate,

Mama likes to ask you random questions to see what you'll see.  Sometimes I ask you if you like asparagus, even though I know you have no idea what that means.  Or I'll ask you if you have a purple nose or if you like the Seahawks better than the Steelers.

I also like to ask you if your name is something strange.  I'll ask you if your name is Hephzibah McGillicudy, for example.  Or Dwayne Smarkinsky.  Or Eugene Parsnip.  Whatever strange-sounding names or words come into my head.  Just to see what you'll do.

You're used to it.  You know your Mama is silly.

The other night we heard the garage door open, signalling that Daddy was home.

I asked you who was home and you said, "Daddy".   I said, "Nathan's daddy or Divot's daddy?"  (Divot's our dog).

You said, "Divot's daddy" (and I could tell by the look in your eye that you were on to me - you knew that I was being silly).

Then I said, 'What's Divot's daddy's name?"

You did this funny thing with your eyebrows (that seemed to say, "Wait for it...") and then you proudly pronounced, "Felix!" and then you started laughing your head off because you knew you'd just played my own game back at me, and that you'd done it well.

I have no idea where "Felix" came from, but it is a pretty strange sounding name.  Good job, son!

We laughed and laughed at how silly you were.  You were so proud of yourself that you spent the rest of your night running around the house yelling, "Felix!  Felix!" and laughing proudly.

I'm so happy to see your sense of humor beginning to develop, Little Man.  Nothing in Haiti is funny.  It's hard to be wacky when you're starving to death.

So here, in this safe place, you're blossoming.  You're stretching your mind and you're discovering imagination and you're learning that the world has words like "pretend" and "playing" and "silly" and "more, please".

You're even branching out into wacky.

And I love every minute of it.

I love you, Felix.
Mama

Scenes that I've Seen

Saw a truck on the freeway the other day that was advertising its business in lawn care.  The side of the truck said,  

"Lawn Gevity"

and I had to give them points for creativity.

However, the best thing I've seen lately on the side of a truck was for an excavating company.  Across the tail gate of the truck in large, shiny font it said:

 "All Our Hoes Are Legal"

 That may be the best really bad marketing line I've ever read.  Good times... Good times...


And then the other day the guys went to lunch and I stayed back.  When they returned they informed us that they'd seen Lance described as a Street Urchin Darth Vader sitting on the side of the road with a sign that said, "Rebels destroyed my Death Star.  Please Help."  I guess there are internet pictures of these sorts of Beggin' Vaders going round the web.  But, really.... "Street Urchin Darth Vader" could be a great name for an album....

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My son loves to be with me.  He'll fall asleep in his bed, but then he comes in to my bed at some point (usually around 4) and stays there the rest of the night.  He likes me to sit by him if he's eating.  He likes to sit on me if he's resting.  He likes to follow me into the bathroom if I'm having a little toilet time.

I figure we might as well work on building some skills while we're there.  I'm trying to get him started on a stand-up comedy routine.  So far, his attempt to repeat and say, "So... how many of you are from out of town?" needs some work.  It will probably be quite some time before we try to bring his bathroom stand up to a urinal near you.

"The Way" We Communicate Around Here....

We do a lot of pointing at things and saying what the name of it is in English around these parts.  Mr. Nathan repeats what we say and we move on to the next thing.  It's all about repetition, right?

Well, a few weeks ago, Nathan and I were playing with his Matchbox Cars (thanks Jodi and Grandma R) and Mama got tired of saying, "Car", "Car", "Car", "Truck", "Car" as we pointed at all of them.  So I decided to mix it up a bit and use the actual names of the car models or models.  

That's where the problem started.  

It's not that I don't know my cars.  I'm pretty "non-girly" as those things go. 

No, the problem was that out of all the things I listed off, the one that stuck wasn't the Porsche or the Ferrari, or even the Mustang or the Magnum.  No!  It couldn't be any of those.  The one that stuck was "El Camino".  Nathan thinks it's the BEST. WORD. EVER.

Not my Proudest Mommying Moment. I happen to loathe the El Camino with the fires of one thousand suns... -ish.  (I might be rounding up.)

So for the next day he toddled around saying, "elcamino elcamino elcamino."  ALL. DAY. LONG.  Later we called my mom and Nathan and Grandma played a random "El Camino" game where he'd say it with a weird inflection and she'd repeat it.  They both laughed pretty hard at that one.  This wasn't just "once or twice"... it was at least 5 solid minutes of "ELcamino.  elcaminO.  El...camino!"

I'm in hell.

So fast forward a week.  Last Wednesday night I put my sweet, little boy to bed, tucked him in a gave him a kiss.  The next morning that sweet little boy isn't who woke up.  Instead what emerged from his bed was some sort of Evil Alter Ego.  Let's call him Senor Cranky Pants.

Senor Cranky Pants had a fit ALL MORNING LONG.  He had a lot of timeout.  At one point, I had him in timeout on the stairs.  I let him scream for a few minutes. Then I pulled out all my best Mommying skills and everything Nathan and I have been working on for the last 2 months and went over to him.  I took his sweet little face in my hands and said, "Nathan... Look at Mama's eyes." (and he did - we've been working on that - FOCUS when I'm talking to you).  I said, "You haven't been happy this morning, have you?" and he nodded.  "What can I do, Sweetness.  What do you need?  How can Mama help you?"

He looked up at me with those deep brown pools that are his eyes; eyes brimmed and running over with the tears from this last tantrum.  He looked thoughtful and I felt like he understood what I was asking.  This may be it!  This may be the moment that my Awesome Mommy Skills help me COMMUNICATE with my son and thereby ease his pain.  THIS IS IT!  

His answer came in a soft, gentle whisper as he said:  "elcamino".

Yeah...apparently the communication breakthrough wasn't really as "real" as I'd hoped.  He still has no idea what I'm talking about.  No Awesome Mommy Points for me that day. (although Senor Cranky Pants did finally disappear shortly afterward and Nathan and I had a pleasant day without him).

The final installment (I hope it's final) in this series happened last night.  He'd fallen asleep on my lap.  I carried him up to his room, changed his diaper and put his pajamas on him.  He was NOT coherent, but he kept trying to put his arm through sleeves that weren't there.  He was trying to help me get him ready for bed.  That finished, I laid him down, tucked him in and kissed his cheek.  I said, 'I love you, Sweetness.  Good night."

And his whispered reply?   

"el camino"

That darn car is going to ruin every Mama Moment for me, isn't it?  That's what I get for introducing it to him in the first place!

He seriously loves that car, Jodi.  It's the only one he knows by name.  The rest are just "Machins".  But he'll ask for his "El Camino" if he can't find it or he'll bring it to me and show it to me and tell me that it's his "El Camino".  

Next time, I'll stick with things I won't mind him repeating!

Out of the Mouths of Babes

I just found this in my Blogger Drafts... I meant to post it a couple weeks ago.  Sorry, Cliss:


My KohlBabySweetStars has said some pretty funny things lately about Mr. Nathan.

Cliss said that one day they were cleaning and suddenly Kohl started talking.  She said:

(out of the blue)  Kohl: "That's really cool about Brent and Lori's kid"

(small pause)      Kohl: "He's cool. I like him"

                           Me: "Yeah, it's really neat. He's a cute little boy. I'm sure you'll really have fun with him"

(best part...lol)   Kohl:   "And he's black. That's my favorite color."  (said with absolute sincerity, honestly, and innocence. I loved it.)

(smile from me.........)

                           Kohl:  "We're gonna have two Nates. A kid Nate and a grown up Nate. (he laughs a little to himself)                         

                                           "It's gonna be so fun"

Then a few days (just before we had a dinner date scheduled with them) she said she heard this from Kohl, "Tomorrow we are going to Brent and Lori's!" She asked him why he was so excited and he said, "To see Nate. I really like him. I love his skin. It's like brownish black. I really like it."

Thanks for coming over guys!  Nate LOVED playing with you!

Threatening Messages

This was on the fridge at work today.

I have the best team - all great guys!

Probably whoever lost their truffles doesn't think that, though...

BEST BAND NAME EVER!!!

So my siblings and I have this on-going game where we watch for things that people say in conversation or in print that would make good band names or album names.

My friend, Lance says it's a hobby.

Yeah... I'm that lame, I guess.  I'll admit it... It's kind of a hobby.

So today Friend Lance emails me and says, "Ladybug Holocaust:  Best Band Name EVER" and it had a link to this information posted to craigslist in New York back in December:

1500 live ladybugs, accidently bought while drunk, feels bad.

---

Date: 2009-12-05, 3:34PM EST

---

So, after consuming pot brownies and getting a little too drunk on thanksgiving a friend and i decided to buy 1500 live ladybugs from amazon, which was a great idea until they came in the mail. Now they're sitting on my windowsill and I have nothing to really do with them. If i set them free they'll die in this weather, if I leave them on my windowsill they'll die.

So, if you have a greenhouse or some kind of animals to feed them to it'd be awesome. I don't want to ruin 1500 lives.

How right you are, my friend... "Ladybug Holocaust" IS the best band name EVER!

Somebody's Parents are in TROUBLE...

A woman I know who is a kindergarten teacher shared this story with me. She said she has 2 little girls in her class (We'll call them Sally and Jane) who both have a crush on the same little boy (we'll call him Timmy). She said Sally and Timmy are always holding hands.

This last week, Jane "confronted" Timmy about it and asked him why he would hold hands with Sally and not with her.

His response?

"With Sally, there's electricity. It's just not there with you."

_______
A big hug to my dear Aunt G who found out this last week that three members of the Cancer Mafia have pounded down her door and are trying to ruin her life. I hope she knows how much we love her and how grateful we are for being in J's life. You're in my thoughts and many, many prayers. If anyone can beat this, it will be you. I love you!

You Take Much More Than I'd Ever Ask For...

Mean people suck.

And crazy mean people suck more.

Sometimes you encounter individuals that make you wonder how soon they're going to shave their head and start beating something with an umbrella.

It seems, lately, that there are all sorts of crazies in my life. And unfortunately right now, it's not just Haiti, my missing daughter, the fact that my kids are growing up in an orphanage, or "The Bank That Doesn't Want to Take Our Money on This House Because They've Already Received a Government Bail Out, But Thanks for Shopping".

So, in an effort to not give the crazy mean people any more of my life today, I thought I'd share a couple random "social whiplash" stories. At least then we can all laugh and ignore the mean people. ('Cause they suck.)

1. My friend, Melissa, got to overhear someone at her office having this conversation with an executive regarding data on a spreadsheet:
Executive:"So, you’re saying that numbers to the right of the decimal are less than one?"
M's friend:"Yes, every place to the right of the decimal represents another division by ten."

Unfortunately, he wasn't kidding. He was honestly baffled. Perhaps some of you would be willing to arrange for one of your 2nd graders to tutor him in some math skills....

2. I got to hear someone being introduced to the CEO and founder of a large corporation who made this comment directly to the CEO's face:

"Wow! You are not the man I thought you were. I thought I'd met you once when I was out at your facility. You know that tall, handsome guy?..... Yeah... THAT'S who I thought you were..."

Nothing like telling someone, "You're uglier and shorter than I remember..." Or maybe it was more like, "Wow, for a rich guy, you're sure short and ugly!"

(And by the way, the CEO kindly responded with, "Well, it's always disappointing when you find out you haven't lived up to someone's expectations." I thought that was very generous of him.)

3. We were playing a game with some friends recently. I'm not a real risk-taker by nature, so I kept playing my turn very conservatively. My friend called me on it and said, "Come on, Lori! Let's see what your luck does."

I looked at her and said, "Seriously?? You know me, right? What part of my life makes you think I have luck??" (OK... so maybe that isn't funny when I retell it, but we all had a good laugh) :)

Take that, mean people... At least we can still find humor in the craziness of our life.

If We Invested in Funeral Homes, They'd Find a Cure for Death...

If I didn't know me, I'd think I was making up my own life. Seriously... how do these things keep happening to us?

On Tuesday we got word that Jessica's birth father had come to the orphanage and taken her back.

Anyone besides me having horrible, terrible flashbacks to the other times this has happened to us. We lost Lexi and Nathan in February of 2008. We lost Malot in October of 2008. Not to mention Asnica before we started Haiti.

We've had a horrible, terrible, no good, very bad few days.

As far as we know, Jessica's birth father hasn't had contact with her for at least a year and a half. She's not even 3 yet, so that's a very large portion of her life.

HE isn't the one that Jessica thinks of when she wants to know where her Papa is. He's not her Papa.

Today we got word that our contacts in Haiti have found someone from the area where Jessica's father lives and that they are working to get her back. The information we do have is positive as it appears that he does want to bring her back but has some issues he is working through. I don't have much more detail beyond that, but we're trying to have hope.

After all, we got Nathan back in October of 2008. Stranger things have definitely happened.

Please keep our Jessica and our little family in your prayers.

Is That a Judge in Your Pocket or.....

One of the frustrations with Haitian Adoption is the chaos. There’s no order, no rhyme, no reason…. It’s the embodiment of insanity.

Every time a new official gets elected, the first thing they do is change policy – to prove they have power, of course. There’s no “grandfathering” generally… every pending file gets to go back and pick up whatever random step they’ve just added.

Since we’ve been in this Land of Eternal Wait, we’ve seen families start after us and come home before us. Just today, I found out about a family (different agency and different orphanage) that came out of IBESR in August (that’s the office we were finally done with in May of this year) and they now have passports and they’re coming home. HOME! They flew out of Parquet (which is where we’ve been since May, essentially) in 20 days. TWENTY!

So a few months back we started to hear rumblings that there was a new process for Haitian Adoption. I first read about this during the summer. It sounded like they were going to start to require adoptive parents to attend a court date in Port-au-Prince. Supposedly, this new process would allow the judge to assure himself that the parents really want the child they’re trying to adopt (cause nothing else we do apparently gives that impression).

This caused some concern, as Haitians aren’t exactly known for keeping appointments. Everything kinda of runs on “Haitian Standard Time” which means “they get to it when they get to it”. It’s kind of hard to book flights with that sort of organization.

So during this last trip, they made arrangements for our group to meet with a judge and take care of this new step. We were excited that they were able to work this out while we were already in Haiti so that we didn’t have to make a special visit just for this. We were all very excited and our coordinator told us that she hoped this would speed up our files since we would have this new step completed.

So the day of our appointment comes. We load into the back of a tap-tap and off we go. I kind of had an idea of what I was expecting. I mean, when we went to the Embassy in Haiti; you go to a clearly marked building; you’re met at the door by a guard and they check you in and check your bags and you leave your cell phone at the desk. Of course, that’s a US office in Haiti, so of course it’s closer to US standards but I thought I could imagine how this might go.

You’ve never really seen garbage until you’ve been to Port-au-Prince. We passed piles of garbage in the middle of streets the size of Volkswagens. Wherever the rain carries the trash it where it goes and it piles and builds and rots.

Every low point gathers trash….

This picture is a CANAL. It’s completely filled with garbage. Somewhere below it is water and I don’t really want to know how they’re using that water….

We end up on this strange little side street with so much gunk on the road that it just smelled like an open sewer. The road was wet and rutted and I remember thinking that I really wished I was wearing something besides sandals because I didn’t want whatever THAT was on my feet.

I also remember saying outloud, “THIS is where we’re going?” There wasn’t really anything about the building or the area or the street that let you feel like you were in an “official” location for anything. It seemed like we were in a back alley somewhere.

We wove our way through a makeshift market that had apparently sprung up as people realized that the Americans were going to have to come to this place for the new process. People were thronging around us and begging for money or pleading that we would buy whatever it was they had. Our agency representative had told us to focus straight ahead and just head for the door, so that’s what we did.

We entered the building. It was tiny – a large room and 4 offices off the side of it. The entire room was under some sort of renovation. There were paint cans and glass and wood and various tools everywhere. There weren’t light bulbs in the sockets in the ceilings. There were also stacks of obviously used filing cabinets, piled at odd angles on top of each other on one side of the big room. One of the other moms leaned over to me and said, “You think our files are in one of those cabinets and that’s why we aren’t moving anywhere in this process?” We both laughed nervously while secretly hoping it wasn’t true.

What the building did NOT have was workers. There were no government employees. There was no judge. The only people there were the men painting the walls a vivid shade of fluorescent peach. (I don’t think Home Depot carries that color and I think I know why.)

We had been told to bring two copies of our passport pictures and two copies of the stamps from our passports showing that we had entered Haiti. Our agency rep handed our papers to the lawyer that works with our orphanage and our orphanage director. They shuffled through them and arranged them and animatedly discussed things in Kreyol. We just waited… standing around this room while trying to not step on any of the materials on the floor and stay out of the painters’ way.

I remember thinking it was a bit like a “People Zoo”. There were people milling about outside the small building and it seemed everyone was watching the group of Americans standing inside looking lost. We tried harder to look like we knew what we were doing and what was going on.

About 20 minutes later a man walked into the building. He and our lawyer discussed something in Kreyol and then the man headed down the hall to one of the offices. We were told this was the judge we’d been waiting to see and that we were to follow him.

He led us to the 4^th office. It was a small room with just a small metal desk and one chair. He sat in the chair and the group filed into the room. He started gesturing rapidly with his hands and saying something very sternly in Kreyol. Our translator said, ‘He doesn’t want you to stand in front of his desk” so we all squished closer together on the sides and waited.

The judge set down the books he was carrying. I looked at the top one and noticed it was a notebook. Someone had made the cover out of an American bra ad. You read that right- an advertisement for brassieres. It had a busty, white woman on it and in big text across the top it said, “Maidenform - $3.99 - Limited Time Only”.

That has all sorts of class and all of it “low”.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the orphanage director placed the photocopied passport pages of the first couple in front of “Judge Maidenform”. The judge pulled out another notebook. It was your basic Mead spiral bound notebook like you’d use in Jr. High for taking notes. You know… like this: He turned to a blank page and about ¾ of the way down the page he wrote something carefully in Kreyol. It had the date in it, so I’m guessing it said something like “appeared before me this day”. Then he turned the notebook around to the first couple and started jabbing with his finger at the blank space below his line of text. We all looked at each other with a “what the…?” look and our translator said, “He wants you to sign your names”. So they took the pen and signed their names in the space he wanted in this spiral notebook. He then turned to the next blank page and rewrote the same line in Kreyol and repeated the process with the next couple. He also signed his name on the photocopies of our passports. One woman’s husband wasn’t able to travel but she was able to get him to send a scanned copy of his passport. The judge told her to just sign his name as well.

When we all finished signing, our orphanage director carefully counted out 4 $100 dollar US bills and handed them to the judge. He folded them up and put them in his pocket. I heard later that he said he’d get them a receipt when they brought the rest of our group (the next 4 couples) the next day. I didn’t bother to find out if that actually happened.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the new official record for this new process they’ve instituted. This new signature that supposedly has been “holding up” our paperwork. I can see how that’s possible. I’m sure the first thing Judge Maidenform is going to do with his little spiral notebook is go to the various offices where our papers are stuck and carefully explain to them that we’ve completed their requirement and our papers can proceed.

Yeah… I’m sure that’s what will happen…..

My Husband May Be Addicted...

.... to spackle.

I can't make him stop. He's re-texturizing the entire basement. He says that he wants the seams in the drywall to be perfect, but I think it must have some secret ingredient and he's getting some sort of contact high. He's already redone the hallways upstairs. And repainted the entire upstairs.

The terribly ironic part is that we're moving. Trying to move anyway. We've made an offer on another house. That house is a "short-sale" which means the bank has a 3 MONTHS to tell us whether or not they'll accept our offer. The good side of that is it means we have time to try to sell our house. The bad side of that is it means Brent can keep redoing all the things that have apparently been secretly driving him crazy.

Apparently he could live with them but he can't bear the thought of someone ELSE living with them.

It's completely awesome to be married to someone who can fix and build and do things. Except for the part with the drywall dust.

Please excuse our mess... Brent's renovating.

Note to Self: Don't Give Jess Benadryl...

Miss Jess was the Queen of Snots this last trip. They've always got an upper respiratory infection and what we call "kennel cough". And by "they" I mean "all the kiddos in our orphanage." Welcome to Haiti, folks. Plus, with 68 kids living in a 3 bedroom house, you're going to pass around some germs.

So, our first plan of attack was to give her some Children's Benadryl that was a "congestion" formula.

And this is what Miss Jess looked like for the next while.
Even if you waved your hand in front of her face, she still looked like this.



After that episode of "medicine head", we stuck to the Children's Tylenol Cold and she was much more alert and actually played around again.

It's so funny to watch them with medicine. Some of the kids throw a total fit if they have to take it and others through a fit if you give it to other kids but not them. And then sometimes you can get the kids that were throwing a fit to take it after they see that the other kids actually like it. Peer pressure can be a good thing.

I'm still so worried about a couple of the little ones at our orphanage. Please keep them in your prayers as we start to get into the worst of the heat and the hurricane season. I know they're in God's Hands, but I have faith that our prayers will help.

And Happy Birthday, to my awesome older brother, Matt. I'm glad you're back in our area and I'm glad you have a spouse that loves you and I'm glad that you are doing everything you can for your kids. Maybe in the next life, we'll be able to pay you back for all those times you used to make us play "Vacuum Cleaner". The things we believed if you said them....

I love you, Matt.

It's also my niece, Romy's birthday. She's a big 8 today. Happy birthday, sweet girl!

Name Game...

It's early, but I'm so excited. My dear friend and next-door neighbor is in labor so I'm over waiting with her kids (who are still sleeping and oblivious that their dear, sweet mamma is in labor!)

Which brings me to a discussion we had at work the other day about names. My friend at work's baby girl's name is the same as the middle name we're using for my Jessica (Afton is the name). He has some hilarious stories about how his in-laws completely freaked about the name and would only refer to her as "Baby Girl" for some time because they hated the name and would rant and rave about how they should have had "voting rights on the baby's name" as the child's grandparents.

One of my favorite kid name stories involves a family that I met several years ago when I was living in Southeast Florida. The woman had twin girls she had named Shaquir (pronounced "sha-keer") and Shaquira. She would get so annoyed when people would say, 'Why did you give them the same name?" I remember her saying, 'Can't they hear the difference? Shaquir... Shaquira... they're totally different."

That reminded me of a story that one of my coworker's told me some years ago. She was telling me that she was outside in her yard talking with her neighbor. The neighbor was a young woman who was expecting her first child. My coworker asked her if they'd picked a name for the baby.

The young neighbor replied, "Yes. We think we're going to name her 'Cinnamon'."

My coworker replied with, "So... are you going to teach her how to strip right away or wait until she's 18... how does that work, exactly?"

Not surprisingly, the neighbor baby did NOT end up with the name "Cinnamon".

The Poor Man's Jedi Mind Trick

On the way back to lunch from work the other day, one of my coworkers whipped out his camera phone and snapped this gem on a car we were passing.

I'll explain a bit - The left turn signal was flashing. Blue painter's tape makes an "X" over the turn signal, and then next to that are the letters "I-G-N-O-R-E", also crafted from blue painter's tape.

Apparently the turn signal is broken and he doesn't want everyone to think he's changing lanes on them but he also doesn't want to take the time to fix it. Little Jedi Mind trick action with the painter's tape. "You do not see this flashing turn signal."

I wonder if it works on policemen as well...

I Totally Did Not See That Coming!

People do some interesting, random, cool, bizarre, fascinating things. I love watching people and the way they interact. I don't mind layovers because I'm thoroughly entertained people watching in airports. People are awesome.

I saw a good one the other day. I was driving down a major road in downtown SLC. There was a marked mid-block crosswalk coming up and I could see there were people waiting on the median (not "medium", despite what people in UT say) for traffic to stop.

My car arrived first, so I stopped. The other two lanes in my direction followed suit. When traffic stopped I could see that there was an older gentleman (who could have possibly been homeless) waiting on the side of the road to cross the other way.

So I'm stopped - kids are crossing, Possible Homeless Guy is crossing. When Possible Homeless Guy hits the median he suddenly does this weird twisty thing, flips the double-bird right at me in my car and SCREAMS the Queen Mother of All Swear Words. Then he turns and resumes crossing like there was nothing at all unusual about that little maneuver.

What did I do, you ask? I did three things, really. . I burst out laughing. I immediately upgraded Possible Homeless Guy to Definite Homeless Guy. And I wondered why I'm always by myself when "people" happens.

Maybe I should get one of those police cameras installed on my car...

And did I mention it's 30 days until our trip!!!

No, Really... I'm Ironman!

I used to have super short hair.

One day I wore a scarf to work in my hair. When I went to lunch in the completely packed cafeteria that day, a woman that I didn't know came running up to me, calling my name very excitedly.

I started looking around to see if I was on fire or something... I honestly didn't know this woman and was concerned that she was so... excited... to see me.

"Lori!" she exclaimed. "Your hair!! It looks so FEMININE!! Not like it normally looks AT ALL."

Um....

So the next time I went to my stylist I relayed this little story to her and jokingly said that maybe we needed to mix things up a bit with my hair.

She looked at me and said (quite seriously), "Honey, it's not your hair. You need a boob job."

:)

She's a good friend and I still think it's one of the funniest things anyone has ever said to me. I still laugh when I think about it.

I'm built mostly like a yardstick. The only curves in my figure are the ones from my scoliosis. On top of that, I'm not a "girly girl". I don't do much makeup and I can't spend more than $30 on anything without getting heart failure.

So, tonight while I was doing yardwork I was watching my little neighbor Kohl run around in his Ironman Halloween costume. He was having so much fun. It's a cute little costume - it even has a mask and sculpted "muscles".

That's about when it hit me that my Victoria's Secret Miracle Bras are the "grown woman" equivalent of Kohl's Halloween costume - just more expensive.

Sigh...

Smells Like Teen Spirit

My job at Church on Sunday has been changed around a bit. Now I'm teaching the 3-year old class (called "the Sunbeams"). They are a complete riot - mostly because they don't know they're funny. All ya'll will benefit here because I should have a LOT of "little kid story" material going forward.

Teaching Sunbeams is a bit like being an aerobics instructor but without the cardiac benefits. You have to change things up every few minutes to keep them engaged because a 45 minute class is TORTURE for a 3 year old otherwise. I can't say that I blame them. If you've only lived for three whole years then 45 minutes is a huge percentage of your entire life compared to the adults you know.

Here are just two of the awesome moments from yesterday:

One of the little girls in my class was trying to tell me something so I was trying hard to listen to what she was telling me. One of the little boys in the class starts in with "Guess what I can do. Guess what I can do. Guess what I can do." over and over again as I'm trying to listen. I finally turn and say, "What, sweet friend. What is it you can do?"

His response? He says, "I can pee standing up. Wanna see??"

"Wow... NO! No, I do not want to see, but... uh...good job for... um,...thinking of others... and...I'm going to guess that means you need to go potty, right?"

So I take him to the restroom, and I'm standing outside the stall, holding the door closed for him. Those restroom stall latches are pretty complicated to work when you're only 3. From outside the door I hear him yell, 'Ta-da!!" when he finishes.

Oh, to be 3 again and have everything be magical and wonderful and to appreciate what a big deal it is to be able to accomplish little things!!

_____
And the other story... my friend was sitting next to me, chatting. Her little girl (newly 4 yrs old) was down on the floor and was leaning against her mom's legs so her cheeks was on her mom's knee. My friend was wearing a skirt and cute leather boots. We were visiting and then I hear little E say, "Lori! Lori! Lori! Do you want to smell my mom's boots?"

"No," I said, "but thank you. I like the smell of leather as well. Do you want to smell them for me?" So she obliged and took a big, deep whiff. "They smell like my Aunt Cheryl," she announced. I guess Aunt Cheryl wears a lot of leather.

That made me wonder if there are smells that my relatives associate with me...

Anyone know what sarcastic angst smell like???

"-Ectomy" Is Latin For "I Hope You Weren't Using That Cause You Ain't Getting It Back"

Brent's had a rough week. He actually thought he had food poisoning earlier in the week but then it just didn't get better. And then there was the whole symptom of extreme pain in his abdomen. He finally went into the doc today and when the doc pressed on his belly Brent kinda came unglued. The doc sent him over to the hospital for a CT scan and at that point they just admitted him. He's back in surgery right now.

The way I look at it, his appendix is entirely to blame. Brent's a pretty patient guy. He's put up with me for 11+ years so that should show you that Brent has the patience of Job. So it's really saying something if he takes extreme measures. Brent doesn't just go from "oh, you're my appendix? Nice to meet you! I've heard about you but it's nice to put a face with the name" to "this relationship isn't working for me" to "you are dead to me. It will be as if you never existed" in such a short time frame for no reason.

He's a pretty reasonable guy. He would have tried counseling. He would have worked out some sort of schedule I'm sure. But no... suddenly EVERYTHING is about Appendix. Appendix has to be all "look at me! look at me!" and becomes such an attention-whore that Brent can't even think straight. It all boils down to Appendix being needy, self-centered and shallow. It's really like the Paris Hilton of internal organs.

Think about it... Brent's given Appendix food and shelter for all these years, taken Appendix on trips, and camping and all sorts of things, and do you think Appendix has ever once thanked Brent? No! Not once in 38 years! Not even a card! Then, out of the blue, Appendix stabs Brent in the back (or belly as the case may be). I mean, what's Appendix ever done for Brent REALLY. You give, and you give, and you give, and you get nothing back. Sometimes relationships are so one sided that they aren't worth the investment.

I don't blame Brent. I would have done the same thing if I were in his position (that position being "doubled over in pain").

Brent's gall bladder should consider this post a warning.