Christmas Question -- Part One

I LOVE Christmas movies, even really sappy ones or cheesy ones or black and whites with dudes singing and dancing. I love them all!! I could list about 100 of my favorite quotes from Christmas movies, but I will post just this one.

George Bailey: What is it you want, Mary? What do you want? You want the moon? Just say the word and I'll throw a lasso around it and pull it down. Hey. That's a pretty good idea. I'll give you the moon, Mary.

Mary: I'll take it. Then what?

George Bailey: Well, then you can swallow it, and it'll all dissolve, see... and the moonbeams would shoot out of your fingers and your toes and the ends of your hair... am I talking too much?

Now, if you love Christmas movies too (and I KNOW you do), leave a comment and tell me what your all-time favorite line from a Christmas movie is. If you don't remember the line word-for-word, that's ok. Or, if you want to get it right, just google it. Let's get some participation here people! Come on you lurkers!!

Thank God for Brangelina

This Thanksgiving, I am thankful for Brad and Angelina. Yeah, that's right. Brad and Angelina. I'm only going to say this once, and I want all of you to listen closely. I don't know if Angelina got special treatment in receiving her children, but if she did, she certainly deserved it.

Before adopting three children internationally (from Cambodia, Ethiopia, and Vietnam), Ms. Jolie had already devoted herself to the worldwide humanitarian crisis. In her life, she has traveled to and assisted the people of Cambodia, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Pakistan, Thailand, Ecuador, Kosovo, Kenya, Namibia, Sri Lanka, Russia, Jordan, Egypt, Haiti, India, New Delhi, Chad, Syria, and Iraq.

She has served as a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. (The UNHCR protects refugees and assists in their return or resettlement.) She was the first recipient of the Citizen of the World Award, and she was also presented with the Global Humanitarian Award as well as a membership to the Council on Foreign Relations.

She and Brad Pitt have devoted time, energy, and oodles of money to global causes. They have used their fame to bring attention and aid to people around the world.

This touches me because, as a fellow adoptive mom-to-be, it is becoming very clear to me how fortunate and lucky we are. My daughter will live for one year in an orphanage. She will most likely receive her first bath the night after she is placed in our arms. Her "first picture" will be her referral picture sent to us prior to travel. In it, she will look like a little boy. Her hair will be cut very short to minimize head lice. She will most likely be wearing a heavy winter coat to keep her warm as the orphanage is very minimally heated. Many times, food will not come when she is hungry, but only at the regularly scheduled feeding time.

Since we have started this journey, we have learned a lot about the world beyond the U.S. We are still novices, as there is so much to learn, but we are realizing that our world view is very warped. For example, did you know that if you own your home, have a car, pay your bills, and send your children to college, you are part of the wealthiest 2% of the world population? Think about this the next time you are watching television and you are bombarded with advertisements for SUVs, diamond rings, and electronic gadgets.

A REAL world view is shown below.*

If we could reduce the world's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all existing human ratios remaining the same, the demographics would look something like this:

The village would have 60 Asians, 14 Africans, 12 Europeans, 8 Latin Americans, 5 from the USA and Canada, and 1 from the South Pacific.

51 would be male; 49 would be female.

82 would be non-white; 18 white.

67 would be non-Christian; 33 would be Christian.

80 would live in substandard housing.

67 would be unable to read.

50 would be malnourished and 1 dying of starvation.

33 would be without access to a safe water supply.

39 would lack access to improved sanitation.

24 would not have any electricity; of the 76 that do have electricity, most would only use it for light at night.

7 people would have access to the internet.

1 would have a college education.

1 would have HIV.

2 would be near birth; 1 near death.

5 would control 32% of the entire world's wealth; all 5 would be U.S. citizens.

33 would be receiving -- and attempting to live on -- only 3% of the income of "the village."

*The original version of the State of the Village Report by Donella H. Meadows was published in 1990 as "Who Lives in the Global Village?" and updated in 2005. With so many new reports and constantly changing statistics, please view the above presentation as general and not meant to be totally accurate. It is more for the purpose of fostering understanding, so that we might better dialogue and understand the different cultures of our world.

Happy Birthday Rider!!

Rider is my nephew, and today is his birthday. Rider is a stellar athlete. He loves baseball, basketball, and football. He is also a terrific hugger and a very smart young man. He loves to play UNO, eat popcorn, and go on long strenuous hikes up very big mountains in Tennessee. Happy Birthday, Rider! We love you!

The Concurrent Conundrum

We've been doing our homework. Last week we spent hours and hours online and on the phone to adoptive parents and adoption agencies across the country. Other agencies are allowing concurrent adoption for their parents waiting for babies from China, and we met several parents who are already deep into the concurrent process.

Unfortunately, when we contacted our agency to get the ball rolling, we ran into a lot of resistance. So we went back to the forums and chat rooms and contacted the parents online who were also hitting a lot of red tape. Would you believe that they used our same agency for their China adoption?

Then, the final blow came when our agency issued an update to all parents saying, in summary, there is no way for them to predict the current wait for China (the math is too difficult for them to even venture an estimate). Additionally, they listed several popular countries for international adoption and basically formulated a reason why most of them would not be viable as concurrent options. You can do it in Columbia, but they have a 3-year wait. Ethiopia does not understand why families would want to adopt from more than one country and would therefore need "concrete answers to satisfy this question." Kazakhstan and Russia have no rules one way or the other for concurrent, and are therefore too risky. Needless to say, Stan and I feel that a lot of what they said is bullshit.

The problem is this. Our contract with the agency precludes us from pursuing a concurrent adoption with another agency. So our China agency is against concurrent, and we are not permitted to go elsewhere for concurrent either. This leaves us with the following choices: (1) stay right where we are and wait 4-5 years for a child from China; (2) terminate our China adoption and lose all of the money we have already paid so that we can legally begin a paperchase to another adoption with a different agency; (3) knowingly breech our contract with the China agency and pursue a concurrent adoption behind their back, risking the chance of being involuntarily terminated from the China program; or (4) go "Raising Arizona" and steal babies from owners of unpainted furniture stores.

Here's the deal, folks. We haven't decided anything yet, and in light of the highly-charged emotional and legal risks associated with each of the options listed above, we have chosen to deal with this privately and not discuss it on this blog until a solid, definite, and final decision has been made.

Please keep us in your prayers, send good vibes our way, practice some positive voodoo on our likenesses, throw a penny in a wishing well, or do whatever you do to think good thoughts. It has been an uphill battle for us to start a family, and let me tell you, Stan and I think of little else. It is heartbreaking to KNOW something in your soul but find yourself incapable of realizing that dream. There have been few things in my life that I have "known" in this way. So far, all of them have come true. I have to believe that this one will, too.

Re-Cap

Maybe those last two posts were too long and you all died of thirst/starvation/boredom while reading them. Anyway, in case I buried the punchline beyond recognition, here is a re-cap:

The Bad News: Our baby from China will not be here until 2012 or later.

The Good News: We are going to (try to) go get us a baby boy from some other country while we wait. Details to be announced.

The Bad News

Disclaimer: If you want the good news first, scroll down to the post below this one.

Many moons wait. When we got into this, we knew that we would have a long wait in front of us. Lately, however, we have been doing our homework on the subject, and it turns out that 24 moons may not be accurate at all.

Before I tell you what we've learned, I feel that it's important to tell you about our sources. Many of you reading this are friends and family, but there may also be waiting families reading this blog, and I want everyone to know how we came to our conclusions.

When you are adopting internationally, you have several resources at your disposal:

1. Your agency
2. Fellow adoptive parents
3. The government
4. Books and other written literature
5. Websites

In this Information Age, we all know that the smart researcher will consider not only the content of the message, but also the source from which it came. As for the above list, there are good and bad things to be said of each.

Agency -- Our agency is great. We are using Children's Hope International. We love all of the people who have helped us through the paper chase, mainly our adoption specialist and our social worker. We've spent a lot of time with these ladies (one is an adoptive parent and the other is a waiting mom) and we really feel a bond with them. That being said, it's important for adoptive parents to remember that the agency is still a business. Like any corporation these days, there is something to watch out for -- the spin factor. When we talk about "the wait" with our agency, we are always told the same thing: the current wait is 24 months, and we expect this wait to grow in 2008. This statement is completely true and reasonable, but it's also just a tiny sliver of truth, scraped from the top of the ice burg of information available on this particular subject. This, my friends, is a spin.

Adoptive Parents -- If you want some real information, find some people who are in your same boat (i.e., the slow boat to China!). But take caution -- some of these people are at a completely different stage in the wait, and some of them have taken the 24-month story to heart (as we did). If you just want some inspiration, there are plenty of blogs out there loaded with pictures of adorable little girls who are now at home in the U.S. with their forever families. See my list of blogs I like on the right. 3 Peanuts and Katiebug's Journey are blogs I found back in February when we first started thinking about China. At the time, both little girls were still in China and both sets of parents were preparing for their trip. It was great to catch them right at that moment and follow their story through travel, coming home, and becoming a family. For those of you (Dad) who are not so computer-savvy, please note that you can click on the names of the blogs and be directed right to their site.

It's also important to meet people "in real life" who are adopting. We attended a seminar this week and met a handful of people in our area who are adopting internationally. We hope to establish friendships with these people. We're all in this together!!

Government -- Adoption is heavily regulated by state and federal law. Furthermore, because international adoption involves the immigration of the child to the U.S., adoptive parents and their agency must work with the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the Consulate, the Embassy, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (just a name a few off the top of my head). The government is pretty reliable in their information as it pertains to Chinese adoption, but they don't always explain things in the simplest of terms. And their focus is not on the wait, but rather the forms you will need.

Books and other literature -- The world of international adoption changes at a head-spinning pace. Book content can be outdated before it even reaches the shelves of your local Barnes & Noble. Magazines and newspapers are probably a better option, but still, the focus is not typically on the subject of the wait.

Websites -- If you're adopting from China, it won't take you very long to find the Rumor Queen. As I perused the hallways of the blogosphere, I kept hearing about this Rumor Queen or about a rumor or about something found on "RQ." It seemed as if everyone (I mean everyone) was listening to this lady! I thought, "Well who is SHE? Why should she know something that my agency doesn't know?" And then I went to her site, and I saw how intense she was and how intense her readers were. And I thought, "These people are all CRAZY!"

But I kept reading, and I did my homework, and it turns out that she is a fairly reputable source. She gathers her information from insiders (international adoption agency employees from all over the world, many of whom who are willing to, anonymously, tell it like it is). She also gathers information from CCAA's website and puts it into one place for everyone to read. (The CCAA is the Chinese government entity overseeing adoption in that country.)

Rumor Queen has no spin. And she has some common sense. And she can do the math for the rest of us. Like most analysts, RQ estimates that there are currently 20,000 to 30,000 people like us waiting for a baby from China. (Read that again and let it sink in. 20,000 to 30,000 people. No shit.) And we are at the end of that long line. Approximately 300 to 400 babies are matched with their forever family each month. You can do the math, or you can let the Rumor Queen do it for you, "... that means it will take 71.25 months to get through the backlog. How long is 71.25 months? Five years, eleven months, and 8 days." And that was from June of this year, so Stan and I (LID 9-28-2007) are faced with the realization that our wait may be even longer. Click here to read this particular post at Rumor Queen's site, China Adopt Talk.

http://chinaadopttalk.com/2007/06/24/the-backlog/

So, my friends, it is not 24 moons to our daughter. It is 71.25+ moons.

If you're thinking things could change -- well, it is possible that things could change for the better. For one thing, many families are deciding to accept children with special needs (SN). Those taking the SN track can receive their referrals ahead of everyone else, thus removing them from "our" line. Also, it is estimated that approximately 25% of waiting families drop out (probably after THEY do the math). This 25%, however, was taken into consideration by RQ when she calculated the estimated number of families waiting right now. I believe, though, that this percentage will grow even bigger if the agencies start to revise their "24 months and likely to grow" spin into something closer to the truth.

If you're thinking things could change -- well, it is possible that things could get worse. I don't want to go into it too much (I believe the news above is bad enough to satiate even the most Pekar-ish of doomsayers), but the Olympics and the media attention on China could actually slow down the referral process. As ludicrous as it may sound, China wants it to be a secret that so many baby girls are adopted from its borders every year. And they certainly don't want people to know that the number of abandoned babies who do not survive their first year is far, far greater than the number of babies adopted. But let's save that topic for another day, or I'll never finish this post, which we can all agree is too long already.

Now, for the good news.

The Good News

photo by NASA

The good news is ... we don't think we'll drop out of the China program, and we ARE going to do whatever we can to begin a journey to our SON! We're moving on to the long-term plan, people.

We had planned to get our daughter from China and then begin the paperchase for a boy from whatever country seemed right at the time. We thought he would be Baby Number Two. If things work out, he will be Baby Number One and he will come home with us while we wait for his sister!

Where will we go next in our pursuit of parenthood? We're not ready to publicize any details yet, because we are still in the information-gathering stage. To be honest, we don't know for sure ourselves. We're going to meet with our agency as soon as we can. Obviously, our goal this time is to choose a country with a short wait time. We have to make sure that this "concurrent" adoption can be done.

For the moment, we feel very confident that this will work. Stan is preparing himself to conduct Jedi training as we speak! I'm thinking about the nursery. Here we go again. Oh boy!

Leaves of Grass: The Pants

I am a huge Seinfeld fan. If you are too, then you know about the J. Peterman Catalogue. But maybe you are wiser than I, and you know that the J. Peterman Catalogue is a REAL THING. I thought it was fictional until I came across the latest edition in my workplace lunchroom. The best part is that J. Peterman Company really does sell items similar to the Himalayan Walking Boot and the Urban Sombrero. Now, as far as I know, those two things ARE fictional.

But Walt Whitman pants are not. No, baby, these are for real. If you want to wear the same britches as worn by the great American poet, you can get them from a catalogue (shown above). And, just as portrayed on Seinfeld, the product descriptions in the magazine are true poems in and of themselves. Feast your ears on this description of the trousers:

When Walt Whitman heard America singing, these are the kind of pants it was singing in. They look different from the pants that came later; more important, they really are different, altogether tougher, being true, heavy-duty canvas. The men who dug the canals and cut through the mountains and drove the railroad spikes wore canvas pants like these. The pioneers who made it west on the wagon trains, 15 miles on a good day, they wore them. Miners and lumberjacks wore them. At least one poet I know of did, too.The pants that came later were fine; they still are. But when you put these pants on, you will feel an extra measure of character. Walt Whitman Pants (No. 1981). Substantial cotton canvas, with big front pockets, watch pocket, welted rear pocket. Notched waistband and adjustable belt in back. Aged-brass shank buttons for suspenders. Men’s even sizes: 32 through 46. Color: Brown. Price: $69.

Happy Birthday, Jason!

Ok, so we have a lot of November birthdays too. Today is my brother Jason's birthday. I tried to find a less goofy picture, but apparently, Jason makes goofy faces whenever I point the camera his way. He's not really cross-eyed, but it is true that he likes Budweiser and the Browns.

Best Birthday Card Ever

American Greetings

I LOVE this birthday card, presented to me by my co-workers. I'm thinking of having it framed and hanging it in my cubicle.

35

photo by Leo Reynolds

35th president of the United States ... John F. Kennedy

35th state in the union ... West Virginia

35th parallel north runs through ... China, Iraq, Afghanistan, Tennessee, and many other places

35th anniversary gift ... coral

35th academy award for best actor in a leading roll ... Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird

35th birthday for me ... today

Harvey & Anthony

American Splendor #1 cover (outside Tommy's in Coventry)

If you've read my sidebar, you know that I dig Harvey Pekar. Who is this Harvey Pekar, you might ask? Well, let me introduce you. Harvey Pekar, age 68, now lives in my favorite neighborhood of Cleveland (Coventry Village in Cleveland Heights). When I lived there, I used to go for walks on his street (before I even knew who he was or that he lived there). He's into vintage jazz and record collecting. He thinks negative thoughts 24-7. He worries a lot. His wife and adopted daughter are everything in the world to him.

He loves the grit of Cleveland like a muskrat loves his musk. He has lived here his whole life, and for the most part, lived in some of the not-so-cushy neighborhoods -- in neighborhoods where money is earned with sweat and perseverance, and ethnic loyalties run deep. In other words, neighborhoods like mine. Places where, if it weren't for the perpetual snow and cold of the Cleveland winter, the demographic stirring of the iron ore melting pot we call home would probably result in more crime and violence than is currently observed. (That snow keeps us all indoors-- and complacent -- for four or five months out of the year.)

Harvey is a retired file clerk. Have you ever worked with files? I don't mean on your pc, I mean real, manila folder files with labels on them? Most people my age have not. It is a loathsome task. When it was needed, I used to file customer records at a cell phone company. Imagine (those of you working in offices now) if you had to ask A PERSON to bring you a file every time you wanted to review a client's history or read the memo about XYZ or refresh your memory on the specs needed for blah blah blah? Harvey was the one who would get you that file. He must have had one of the dullest day jobs anyone could ever imagine.

However, he's one of the most influential and ground-breaking comic book writers of all time. Pekar was one of the first comic book writers (or really, any kind of writer) to chronicle his broodings of the mundane and mostly unrecognized events of human existence, particularly those wrapped in grimy gloominess and saturated in the stink of man.

A good example of this can be found in one of his stories, "Class Antagonism," in which Harvey's co-worker tells him he can't have any cake because he never brings food to the workplace for his co-workers -- he only takes and never gives. The story is told in nine frames and in about 100 words. That's all it's about! The "punchline" is when Pekar asks this co-worker if it's ok for him to eat donuts left by the Johnson & Johnson salesman, since no one in the building paid for those. And she says she doesn't care.

In a more "exciting" episode, Harvey tries to interview some guy about "the most important phenomena in Cleveland during the 1930s." The guy tries to tell Harvey that the Goldberg hustlers called Maggies sold linoleum (or magnoleum, as they called it) to immigrants, blacks, and farmers on the corner of 117th and Kinsman during the depression at outrageously high prices in order to satiate their gambling addiction. When, during the interview, the guy's story doesn't "add up," the guy admits to his own dishonesty but defends himself saying, "Socrates said all men are dishonest, so even he was dishonest." The last frame of the comic shows Pekar musing, "There you have it folks -- now you know all about the Maggies with a little Socrates thrown in."

It's like a comic book version of Seinfeld, written by George, and set in 1970s/1980s Cleveland. In many ways, Pekar is the lone pioneer of the story of nothing. He is truly a creative genius. But not every story was about nothing. Although Pekar's stories were always about regular people within his circle of friends, on his street, or at his workplace, many of the stories centered on such heady themes as race, love, divorce, charity, labor, cancer, and (of course) the pure angst of being Harvey Pekar.

On top of all that, he's an acclaimed jazz critic and author of several books. A movie based on his autobiographical comic book series American Splendor featuring Paul Giamatti as Harvey was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 2003 Academy Awards. But don't get the idea that Harvey ever made any substantial money on all this. For most of his career, the comic writing caused him to lose money. He's a regular guy. He stayed on as the file clerk (what he called his "flunky" career) until retirement age. His following is not mainstream, but cultish and underground. He's the unsung hero of Cleveland.

Recently, Harvey joined the Travel Channel's Anthony Bourdain for a Cleveland episode of "Anthony Bourdain, No Reservations." I missed it when it first aired, but I finally got to see it last week, and it was great.

Here is some of what Anthony had to say about Harvey (from the travel.discovery.com web site for No Reservations):

When my old crony, Ruhlman, said he was going to introduce me to Harvey Pekar I was frankly -- intimidated. Pekar was like ... the poet laureate of Cleveland! I'd been following his American Splendor books since the 70s. I'd seen the movie ... I knew he was supposed to be this cranky, misanthropic working class guy with a loathing for TV phonies.

He turned me on to Zubal's Books, this amazing repository of all the world's printed knowledge in an old TWINKIE factory. They even let Ruhlman drink vintage twinkie filling out of the ancient pipes!

He introduced me to Toby, the only guy in the world who could make a giant rubber stamp interesting.

We all went to Sokolowski's University Inn: me, Harvey, Joyce, Toby, Danielle ... Wow, these guys are really great! Cleveland definitely does not suck! ... They were, all of them -- incredibly cool and nice. Smart, funny weird? Yes ... but these days? The perfect American family.

Click on the link below to see a clip from the show.

http://www.motionbox.com/video/player/1f9cdeb41918e292?segment_begin=0&segment_end=85

Happy Birthday, Karen!

Karen is my sister-in-law, and today is her birthday. (Take note of this picture, because it is the only known image in existence of by brother doing dishes.) Karen is a great mom and, quite possibly the world's biggest baby lover of all time. She just LOVES babies. She is very excited for her new niece to hurry up and get here.