Bless Your Heart

Saturday I went to my friend Michelle’s baby shower. She looks awesome! Especially to be giving birth in less than 4 weeks! It seems like just the other day that I was dropping something off at her house, I thought no one was home so I was leaving a note when her husband comes running out the door yelling that they just found out they were pregnant! So exciting! Michelle and I met on our first day of 12th grade. We were both new in town and we bonded instantly. She’s really great. I was worried about the shower- would I be sad, how would I feel surrounded by pregnant girls and babies? But I did just fine. Being excited about Lingling, talking about her, people asking about the process- it all makes it so much better. And everyone is incredibly supported and interested which is just awesome and makes me feel great. I really believe I’m not missing out on a thing now- I’ve got so much to look forward to!

Riddle me this At the shower Michelle told us that their baby boy’s name is a secret. But she gave us clues and told us she’d tell us if we could guess it. Amy, Sara, and I racked our brains all afternoon. The clues were so vague! See if you can guess it:

1. It does not start with a J. It does include an E. It only has 3 letters, but it’s not 3 letters long. Like Banana only has b a and n in it.

2. It’s the last name of a famous athlete. The athlete is not a soccer or water polo player.

3. The name can be found in a grocery store.

Finally that evening at Sara’s house for a get together to celebrate my BIL’s 36th birthday, my BIL’s brother’s wife Julie guessed it. I called Michelle on her cell and she confirmed we were right. It took 20 people over 3 hours to think of it! I’ll give you the answer tomorrow.

Jon was watching Headbangers Ball on MTV2 when he spotted a pug in one of the videos. I love how they’ve blacked out his eyes to protect his identity.

I’ve had to black bar a big part of my life for the last 2 months. But now I can safely tell you what happened. My employer (for whom I’ve worked for the last 6 years) has terminated my employment because I had one too many surgeries this last year and it put me over the 12 week disability period. Because I’d been there for so long I had earned 6 months paid leave but the government only guarantees your job for 12 weeks. My schedule was compressed into 4 day weeks so I used up those hours rather quickly. 2 of my days would equal almost 3 normal days. I had to wait until I was officially seperated from them to talk about it- even though I won’t mention their name. I just didn’t want any legal trouble. I never mentioned work in my blog for fear of being dooced as my job had a zero tolerance policy for even mentioning it’s name on the internet. Plus, my professional licenses would be at risk if I mentioned it. So many things could be misconstrued and there’s a lot of liability there. And I worked too hard to get licensed to lose those. I was really angry when they called me about it. Funny thing is that it is a HUGE company, like over 10,000 employees. So some HR lady who I’ve never met called me to tell me. It’s all policy ma’am. Doesn’t matter if you’ve been there 6 years or 6 months. All the same. Nice, huh.

Anyway, as you can imagine, this puts a huge kink in things. The thing I’ll miss most about my job is that they would reimburse you $5000 per child you adopt. How am I gonna find that benefit anywhere else? And then there’s the money thing. I’ve got to find a new job pretty quickly. I’m nervous. I haven’t interviewed in 6 years! And I’ve never been fired. And we want to get our homestudy started as soon as possible. Geez. And now I don’t know what to do with myself job wise. Between you and me, internet, I was only marginally interested in my line of work. I loved the benefits and some aspects, but I don’t think I want to do that again. So now what do I do? Get a similar job that I won’t like but would be a sure thing? Or go for a job I’ll actually enjoy, but may take longer to get? Whatever happens I don’t want Lingling sitting in that orphanage for any longer than she has to just because Mommy’s boss was a wanker.

I sure hope that is true because we can’t afford to have anything else break on us!
1. Jon’s car wouldn’t start the other day. Totally dead battery. Wouldn’t even jump off of my car. We had to tow it in to Toyota and get a new battery.
2. So Jon says since his car is dead he might as well mow the lawn. First mow of the season. He gets about 3 feet into it and the mower just dies. No reason. Only 2 years old. It’s supposed to be a good one too.
3. I drove over to Toyota to wait on Jon’s car and thought while I’m there they might as well check out my car since my engine light came on. Turns out my front breaks were paper thin, I needed new everything, including a tune up. The little guy from service called to tell me that my car was ready and gave me the total (almost $600!!!). I said Ok, now what about after you take off my fabulous customer discount. Keep in mind we already paid almost $200 the day before for Jon’s car (including tow). I reminded Dexter the service man that I did bring in 2 cars at the same time and I did spend almost 2 hours in the waiting room with Mrs. Campbell who didn’t take a breath from the time she said Good Morning, and who was STILL TALKING as I walked out of the room down the hall. So Dexter gave me the senior citizen discount and I saved 10%. Never hurts to ask.

The baptism or christening went well, and it was fast this time. Jake’s lasted over an hour because of all the kids getting baptized. When you’re in the audience you don’t get the best view of the baptism. Ah well, most of the fun was had at the after party anyway (more on that later). Although while at the church my little sister Morgan who turned 15 on the 2nd showed me the earrings her boyfriend gave her for her birthday. They have since broken up. Ah, young love. Anyway, she says to me “Aren’t they cool? He must be a metrosexual since he picked out such good earrings. Plus he wears orange Converse shoes.” Who knew the metrosexual requirements were so simple?

My dad & his wife drove up for the weekend from Florida last weekend. They brought their new English Bulldog Sally. She’s 70 lbs at 7 mos. I love her underbite. Anyway, this dog stayed in her crate in the car while we went to dinner. Granted, it was a nice cool day- a real treat when you live in Devil’s Crotch, SC- but Lisa and I were sure she’d suffocate. My dad assured us that cars are not airtight. So we went in for dinner at Cap’n Steves- this awesome fish camp style joint.
Dinner was so funny- Lisa and I kept hitting each other under the table and trying to stifling laughs. But we just couldn’t help it. My Dad is such a story teller. And he gets all animated and his eyes go all googly. Lisa said he looks like the Cookie Monster when he really gets going. And bless his heart he has these divets in the top of his head from hair transplants that didn’t take. Lisa said it looks like an earthworm crawled in and out of his head leaving these little holes. My bil said once that my Dad “looks like someone hit him in the head with a golf shoe!”. Moral of the story: you can cut a deal and ask for discounts on just about anything, except cosmetic surgery!

I’m late posting about this weekend- I guess I needed time to recover! I picked up Lisa at the airport and we went for Mexican. Holy frijoles was this place bizarre. And the odd thing is, it’s a chain and I’ve never had problems at any other location. It was late though, and in my small town nothing is open past 10pm so we didn’t have a choice. There were only a few people in the restaurant. There was karaoke going on in the smoking section- because nothing coats your throat and promises smooth tone like smoke! So while we waited AN HOUR for our food we were serenaded by croaky old people singing off key- poor things could barely keep up with the background tracks. I had requested no beans or lettuce (said I was allergic so I wouldn’t appear picky). When the food came of course it was loaded with both. So I sent it back and when it came again they had just scraped the beans off- they’d left a bunch under one of the burrito things. Good thing I’m not really allergic or I’d have died listening to smoky karaoke! We did tell the manager about our s l o w service and we got everything half off. Small victories.

Saturday we woke up and Lisa told me to wear something comfy and no makeup. We grabbed breakfast and ended up at my salon where she had booked us massages and facials! So sweet! I hadn’t had a massage since the day before my wedding 4 years ago. I really needed a day of pampering after all I’ve been dealing with this year. We had a ball. Our facials girl- LeeAnne (she does my waxing too) is so awesome, I’ve been going to her for over a year now and she’s just a riot. She was making us laugh so hard during our facials that I had to jump up and run down the hall to the bathroom or I’d have wet myself. Except I’m not that graceful and I fell off the table more than climbed down. Picture it- I’m topless, holding a towel over my boobs, my hair is all greasy from massage oil, sticking up everywhere, there’s a towel pinned to my head to hold my hair back and my face is covered with a black licorice mask! I’m sure the people getting pedicures and haircuts had a story to tell at dinner that night!

So the entire clan is gathering on Sunday to witness the CHRISTENING, not baptismal, of my nephew Joey and then immediately following we will be celebrating my other nephew Jake’s 2nd birthday. I really don’t think you’re ready for this jelly. People don’t believe our family stories until they meet the kinsmen themselves. Some of it is rather hard to believe. It’s mostly difficult to fathom that all this craziness is wrapped up in one family tree. Monday morning I will be posting pictures and I’ll be armed with enough blogger material to last a lifetime I’m sure. But before the weekend comes I’d like to give you guys a primer, so as to not skeer ya right outcha britches come Monday. A who’s who if you will (don’t worry, I’m not covering the entire guest list, neither you nor I have that kind of time):

–Nanny & Pappy: My paternal grandparents. Nanny is Irish and only in the last 5 years did she become a citizen. Pappy is my blind grandfather who until his eyesight totally left him, would watch his 60 inch plasma tv with binoculars. Unfortunately, due to Pappy’s health, they won’t be able to make it to the party (they live in Florida). But they’ll be there in spirit.

–Uncle Kevin & Aunt Marcia, Troy: my Dad’s brother and his wife & their son. Just last year at this time Kevin cut his thumb off in the woodshed. We visited him to check up on him as well as Troy because Nanny told us Troy had gone blind. Troy actually had hives (Nanny’s just hard of hearing) and Marcia was keeping Kevin’s severed thumb in a paper bag in the freezer. You can’t make this stuff up.

–Stephanie, Mike, & Cody: Cousin, her husband, their newborn son. Mike, bless his heart, is the skinniest highway patrol officer I’ve ever seen. I have earrings bigger than him. His head is so tiny it’s hard to believe he’s not a shrunken head from some tribe. I’m DYING to see this baby.

–Junior, Marilyn, Chad: My Dad, his 4th wife (we think, he’s shady, could be # 5 or 6), my brother. They all live in Florida so we don’t see them much. Marilyn married my Dad around Thanksgiving so she’s new to the family craziness. She seems relatively normal, although we’re thinking they may smoke the ganja (sp?) on occasion. Chad is 18 and is epileptic. Breaks my heart. I don’t joke about him. Now my Dad…..oh Lord. Where to begin? He’s just a nut job. The poster child for why you should never drink or do drugs when you’re young. He’s recently calmed down enough for us to allow him at family functions again. We went about 10 years without seeing him. That’s why we’re not exactly sure how many wives he’s had. I don’t know if he even knows for sure.

–Lisa: My best friend. THANK YOU LORD for lowering air fare enough so she can be here. I need a witness or you may all cry liar later.

–Rita, Gary, Jody, Pete: Aunt, Uncle & cousins on Mom’s side. They live in a town called Tookiedoo in a double wide trailer with a big screen tv, satellite dish, & golf cart. Gary’s the one who blew his face off a year or so ago with lye while unclogging a pipe in a pool. He’s healed now, and looks exactly the same as he did before the accident.

–Grandmommy: my Mom’s mom. Grandmommy lives in a house in the country. Her boyfriend, Ray, lives in a trailer in her yard. Ray’s the one who got so drunk he fell out of a tree while hunting, had a heart attack and a stroke, landed on his face and stayed there for 2 days before he was found. HE SURVIVED. Grandmommy is a no nonsense country girl who does not like fuss. The last time she was told there was a big function and she had to put on a dress she took a drag off her cigarette and drawled “Oh, shiiiiiit.”

Now, since my sister apparently refuses to post pics of her darling boys, I’ll do it. Here’s Joey:

And here are some more pics of him and Jake that I took last night. Such cuties! They have no idea what kind of family they are growing up in.

Sunday is my nephew Joey’s Christening and my nephew Jake’s 2nd birthday party. It will also be the first time I’ve seen a lot of friends and family in a long time as I missed Jake’s 1st birthday (I had my fallopian tube surgery the day prior) and it seems my girlie bits like to schedule d&c’s and other random girl medical crises during holidays and family get togethers. I’d been worried about this gathering since I first heard of it. I know who’s invited. I know that 99% of them are either pregnant or have babies. I know what 99% of the people are going to ask me as soon as we get past the hey how are ya’s. And that is…So, what’s taking you guys so long to have kids? Or, I figured ya’ll would have kids by now. Or, my favorite Are you still having problems getting pregnant? No- I’m 8 months pregnant with triplets right now, I just don’t show much. I have Truthful Tourettes and have a really hard time using a vague stock answer like “Oh, we’ll have kids when we’re ready.” Especially since we were ready over 3 years ago. So if you ask me about our fertility issues you’re bound to get an earful. You’re lucky I don’t have pictures or we’d set up a slide show. And then, inevitably, I’d cry.

Not anymore. Now that it’s a done deal, now that we’re adopting, we’ve started the process, we’ve named her, we’re on our way, things are better. I’ve been doing a lot of reading, praying, and studying material on adoption. A couple of weeks ago I had a remarkable day when I watched a dvd sent by an agency that really addressed a lot of my feelings and answered so many questions. I now know that I’m not the only one who asked “Why me, why us? Am I being punished for something? Maybe those poor choices in college hookups? What am I supposed to do if my whole life I wanted to grow up get married and have kids and now I can’t?”. Stuff like that. This dvd showed me that adoption isn’t plan B. Like Oh you can’t have kids so you’ve sunk to the bottom of the barrel and are going to adopt. Adoption is just as wonderful as birthing your own. I learned to stop saying things like “We can’t have kids” because yes we can, we won’t be giving birth to them, but we can have kids. And I realized that not everyone can or should adopt, that it takes special people. So even though my girlie bits are screwed up, God knows that my heart is good and He chose a Chinese baby for us to bring home. (By the way, Ling means bell, or tinkling of a bell in Chinese so Lingling is ok to say. I was worried maybe we’d chosen something weird like the Chinese word for upset stomach or cow turd, but we’re ok).

Back to the party. Now that my head is in the right place, and I have friends and family to support me (Lisa is flying in for the weekend to be with me- how awesome is she?), I know that I can face those people, hold my head high, answer questions, and hey, maybe even educate someone just a little about how great adoption is.

Plus, my favorite cowboy is turning 2 and he needs his Aunt Shanny to be all smiles on his big day!

At Easter brunch we got to talking about names. We are referring to our future daughter who we’ll be bringing home from China in approximately 18-24 months as LingLing. For a few reasons:

1. It is much easier and more fun to say LingLing when we speak of her than to constantly say our future daughter who we’ll be bringing home from China in approximately 18-24 months.

2. Our last name rhymes with Ling and if you know our last name and say it with LingLing as the first name you’ll realize how ridiculous of a name that would be for a child.

3. We’ve already chosen a forever name for LingLing, but we are keeping that secret. Adoption means so much isn’t secret, no surprises. If you give birth you can wait and see if you’re having a girl or a boy and that is a HUGE surprise (Jake was a wait and see). So by keeping her name secret we at least have that.

So we shared our decision with family on Sunday (Jon’s aunt & uncle & cousin were there at the inlaws, as well as a couple Marsha & Larry who are very close family friends- we think of them as our cool aunt and uncle fate forgot to give us). And we answered a lot of questions. And it was so great to see how excited everyone is! There’s already talk of how spoiled Lingling will be, and how to decorate the nursery, etc.

And then the conversation turned to names and it was so funny, and yet so horrifying to hear what real people actually named their children. I swear to you it seems like people are just throwing sounds and letters together with no regard to spelling or how their children will deal with these names. Everyone seems to have known someone with a terrible name and here are the ones we heard on Sunday: (they are all true I swear!) & (I’ve left off last names to protect these poor souls)

-Shasta

-Valencia

-Princess

-Unique (pronounced Unikay)

-Dorkus (a girl!)

-Janel (a boy!)

-Early May (guess when she was born)

-Kids who’s parents have gone nuts with spelling- Breeahnnah (why not just Brianna?) Charee (supposed to be Cherie the french name)

Then we started talking about unfortunate pairings of first and last names.

-Cherry Berry (the lady who signs off on the safety of elevators. I’ve seen her name every time I ride one).

-J. Peter Seaman (say it outloud then wonder why not use whatever the J stands for?)

-Harry Butts (asked Marsha out in high school)

-Blank Beaver (I dated this guy for 4 years. I won’t publish his first name, but nothing goes well with Beaver. Thank God his name wasn’t Harry. It all got out of control when I had to place a take out order for Beaver at Cluck U chicken in New Jersey. Oy.)

-and the prize for most unfortunate name heard on Easter Sunday goes to: Ima Hoar . (went to high school with Larry) Poor, poor girl.

So- what crazy names have you heard? Please share!

We received fabulous Easter baskets from Jon’s parents. They gave us beautiful wine glasses suitable for red wine (we only had white wine glasses), a great corkscrew, a couple of books, lots of candy, a cute Nicole Miller umbrella, adorable pug note cards, and my favorite item in our baskets was this puggy bank that I’ve been wanting for over a year. So cute!