I'm back! Let's talk! Or, the longest post ever.

A little the worse for wear, but back nonetheless. A warning to the squeamish and to my phobic friends, bodily fluids mentioned below.

We had a lovely time out in suprisingly sunny northern CA. I think Bri and I may have breathed the same air molecules as we were stunningly near each other without knowing it. My cousin, wife, and adorable twin niecies live around the corner from the cafe in which she apparently spent most of high school. Weird.

I guess Pili and I really are married, fucking assholes on the NY State court of appeals be damned*, because I LOST it at her mother. Lost it. I believe the words selfish and inappreciative flew out there a few times. It's just really hard for me to see how her parents treat her. Their priorities are, IMHO, weird. I know they love her - and me. And they're always happy to see us - and very jealous of our time when we're there. But they don't make much of an effort to get out here, or to encourage us to come there by subsidizing things... And it's hard for me to believe the "oh we're so poor line" when they're in the middle of remodeling their entire house.

Aside from that outburst, it was a beautiful trip. And Pili's mom is coming to visit us, g-d help me, in a month. So I should really stop bitching about her. Dad and step-mom, on the other hand... And my niecies are the cutest, smartest things ever. I will put some pix up on flickr, friends and fam only, so let me know if you want to be among the elect.

After a miserable trip back which included getting sick at O'Hare, convincing myself that I had Toxic Shock Syndrome (did not, but still cannot bring myself to leave the world of girly diapers MAXIpads and return to more convenient modes of dealing with things), a two hour delay, and not being able to find my car in the airport parking garage (Stop. Laughing. At Me. Now.), I am finally back in the Lovely City of Eternal Sleepage.

And, as of three am last night, the autobiography is done. It's not, by any stretch of the imagination, a piece of writing of which I'm proud. But it's done, and I don't think Mrs. Vaseline Teeth cares that much about my writing. In fact, I'm not sure what she cares about, which is unfortunate.

A word about Mrs. Vaseline Teeth. She smiles. A lot. More than I could smile without my lips sticking to my teeth. She gushes about how adorable Guatemalan children are and hasn't asked any questions to date about our ability to support the culture of said adorable children. At our first meeting with her, we flipped through the gigantic basket of adoptive family Christmas cards. I picked up one of those adopt-the-world family pictures with sixteen or seventeen children, some bio, some clearly adopted. "Oh that's such a sweeet family," she crooned. "Can you tell which ones are their real kids?"

[Adoption bloggers, you are with me now in saying: no, no, no - she didn't. The adoption social worker did not ask you that. But she did.]

A trick question, I thought, and pounced. "Why, all of them, of course," I said, well-read adoption advocate me.

"Oh yes, of course," she said. "But which ones are their own?"

More tentatively: "Do you mean, which ones are their biological children? Because, I mean, they adopted them, right?"

Dismissively: Yes, yes. Can you tell which ones are adopted? Well, duh. The parents are office-paper white. I'm guessing the brown ones are adopted. Why are we working with her? Because everyone says she is the best in town. And no one seems to have any suggestions for anyone else within a hundred mile radius. And she will get the job done, and not make our lives difficult. Am I crazy though, for thinking that her job is, on some level, to make our lives difficult? To ask tough questions and make us think through them? Or am I expecting too much of her?

I bought myself a present for finishing my autobiography. Actually, I bought it beforehand because I have wanted one for a long long time and it was super on sale (try, $250 off list). But I didn't open it until I was done with the autobiography. And now I am having a wee bit of buyers remorse because, really, we can't afford this right now. But it would probably cost $50 just to ship this puppy back, so I ought to keep it. Right?



A word about being sick: My Stomach Thing That Was Not Toxic Shock Syndrome is now a Generalized Low Energy Headachy Snotty Thing. I want to have energy. I need to have energy. I need to have energy so as:

• To take on my lengthy todo list. [MOST DECIDELY NOT DONE]
  
• To carry the haveahart out to the wilderness behind our house and try to capture the evil groundhog who has bitten off the tops of my phlox, my tomatoes (a short way to get on my shit list), my liatris, and my yarrow. [DONE!]
  
• To plant the strawberry runners I brought back from CA. [DONE!]
  
• To pull out the lawn weeds that have taken over the lawn. [Ha! Surely you jest!]
  
• To outline the New and Revitalized, Revisited Thesis. [Err, um.]
  
• To vacuum the cat-hair coated carpets before Pili gets home on Sunday. [See above]
  
• To call NonExpressScripts and ask where the hell my prescriptions are. [Two arrived today. The test strips are now "in pharmacy." The pump supplies? In limbo, apparently.]
  
• To cook up the fridge full of delicious organic veggies before more arrive from the CSA on Tuesday. (Spell check wanted to change veggies to Vegas! Perhaps next weeks delivery from the crunchy granola farm will include a few crunchy granola showgirls?)
  
• To change my lancet.
  

Okay, now I'm having an anxiety attack about all I have to do. Later, sweeties.

*Lots of other bloggers have commented about the incredible stupidity that is the appeals court decision. I will say only that these are not the great legal minds of our time. To say in the same breath that children born into same-sex relationships live in more stable family units (and therefore do not deserve legal protection for those family units) and that (contrary to the opinion of any number of respected social science organizations) it's better for kids to grow up in opposite sex couple households... that's just frickin idiotic. And what about non-procreative straight couples? What about... oh, it just pisses me off beyond words.