Insecurities

I read lots of books and for some reason, it bothers me more than TV and magazines which also features perfect people, but maybe it's because in a book, you don't see.  On TV and in magazines, they're all pretty people so you can imagine that appearance is their only skill, but in a book, it's different.

In, what feels like, all books, there has to be the amazing main character.  She's pretty, but doesn't realize it because, of course, she's humble.  She's so brilliant, no one else can compare.  The detective who has such amazing powers of deduction, no one else can see the solution until he spells it out for them.  Of course they are flawed, too.

It's the classic tragic hero.  Knowing the symbolism of knowledge past doesn't make it any easier to swallow.

I read and read, but then I look around the world and I get stuck because I know people who are really beautiful.  I know people who are really smart.  I've met amazing writers and talented artists.  I see the talent and skill it takes to be a superior mom or an exceptional accountant.

And then there's me.  I lost a bunch of weight and looked in the mirror and remembered why I let myself go.  There's no pretty face under there.  In fact, I'm a little on the unattractive side.  If passion was talent, I'd be the best writer on the planet, but it isn't and despite college level training, online research, and attentiveness to other opinions and my own, I've wished to be a writer for about 27 years and I'm still not *that* good.  I'm not very smart, I don't like people, I lack skills everywhere.  I can't be defined by my job, nor do I want to be.

I'm not that depressed today.  I'm just exhausted by the fact that I'll never be what I want and what's the point in being anything else?  Accepting average is such a disappointment.

And we're live!

For over a year, I've been putting off a silly little task of building our personal webpage.  It's all just a bit of fun, but we have recipes and more.  I only have a few recipes for now, but will be adding more and transferring some from the blogs to make them easier to find.  http://originalninjapineapple.com/

Good news!

Almost as if on cue, I post something to clear my mind and another stress gets removed from my brain.  Just got a call and Jane has been accepted to the middle school where we want her to go.  I almost cried at the relief!  Wow, that's more emotional than I get most of the time...

Seeking Inspiration

Wow, looking back things got worse, but then they got better.  Yay.

My niece is living with us now.  Sister of niece who lived with us a few years ago.

In high school, I knew a couple different kids.  "I'm living with my aunt" or "I live with my grandparents."  Without going into detail on their personal lives, I would think, "How can their parents do that?  It seems like there should be some way to work things out.  The kid comes first.  What a terrible parent to let their kid go."  Now my brother is one of those parents.

But the thing is, he's not a bad guy.  Quite the opposite, he's a good guy; or at least that's the way I've always seen him.  You can't blame the person he is with for his choices because in the end, the person he is with is his choice, too.  So, I've categorized my feelings for his girlfriend and, well, I tried to be friends with her, but in the end I felt like she was trying to be friends with me and I was somehow cast in the part of the bad guy.  I can't be the pawn in some political power play between his past and his present so I side with the one who didn't ask me to choose and let everything else go.

Still, I can't quite figure out how I feel about brother right now.  His happiness seems to have come before his children's somehow, and yet - he's still a good guy.  In certain ways.  With that frame, is that possible?  Of course people are complex...

Meanwhile, his kids need out because they aren't trusted, supported.  Even emotional and financial support is lost in favor, I suppose, of making them independent, but unwillingness to help your kids for the urgent things like school fees (or even food, and clothing if they move out before they graduate High School) appears nothing more than selfish.  I have seen and heard enough on this subject to know it is true without taking the kids' word for it.

My own child is 11.  I have no practice for this.  I love these kids, but I am just not sure I know how to do it right.  I worry enough about doing it right for my pre-teen.

I try to be straight forward with these guys, but I have a feeling it comes of very weird because, again, no practice.  Our family does not come from the school of straight forward by any stretch of the imagination.

Well, I don't care what is said about me because I'm comfortable with my choices.  I spend very little time and energy defending myself because even if my actions aren't perfect, I know I made them with the best of intentions.  Always.  Which in my mind I see me saying "I don't care what is said" and thinking that is something someone says when they do care so take that as you will.  In honesty, I guess there are certain things said about me that get back to me and piss me off, but that's also something I have to become comfortable with.

I just feel so overwhelmed sometimes.

I haven't done an obscure art project for a long time and I think maybe it will help with this creative constipation I'm having.  Ideas running rampant, but I can't form anything.  I say obscure art because any artist or art teacher would probably say it's crap.  I'm not exactly talented, but sometimes converting to the visual medium opens the non-visual part of my brain.  Seeking inspiration...

I feel anger.  Enraged.  Underlying irritation even when I'm happy lately and I don't know why.  I hate being a ticking bomb, but for some dumb reason, examining my life as it is doesn't seem to yield answers.  I just wish I knew what was up and could start working on making things better.  Tomorrow just keeps coming even though I kind of want to get off the ride for a few days.

An Artist's Life for me

Just ended a long week temping the old 8-5, M-F.  This is just a couple weeks after doing a previous week and then a few Mondays this summer.

Well, it appears I'm supposed to be grateful - for the experience or the money or something.  I feel like I don't see my family anymore and find myself instead thinking about things like how can a parent who works full-time think they know their kid at all?  How can a person who works that many hours a week believe they have it all?  How many marriages only work because the couple never see each other?

I set Jane up on playdates every day.  I checked in to see where she was and what was happening.  I called her on lunch every day and when I got home, I asked what she did and if she had fun.  I find it hard to believe that a parent who sticks their kid in daycare, know where they are every day, and get soft in their routine can say as much.  I'm not an overbearing, overly nurturing Mom so I know I'm not smothering her by being home, but I have a feeling I know my kid better than most parents and I don't quite understand having a kid you don't have any desire to know.

If you spend all day at work, then come home, someone has to clean, cook, etc.  Hiring people to do this is fine, but you still have to do bills, register your kids for school, and all those other little tasks that add up.  Why believe this is really all?  No, I have it all most of the time.  I know my kid, get to play with my kid, but also get to follow my dream of writing.  I will throw in the disclaimer here that I realize many people need the extra income, don't dream of an artists life, or don't have the support of their spouse in such endeavors.  I understand that, but stop judging me because I do have those things.  Yeah, who couldn't use a little more money, but I know tons of people who make more and still don't have enough.  What's enough?  You just end up spending whatever you make.

I'll admit things aren't always perfect, but my spouse and I get along pretty great - better than most couples - and we do it without hiding ourselves to make the other happy.  We are pretty honest with each other and still make it work.  Sure, making yourself too available ends up making yourself taken for granted, but a gal can (and should) have a life outside of her marriage.  Go out with friends.  Join groups with common interests.  Whatever it takes.

I'm just saying, I reflect and say this is working for us, but so much emphasis is placed in the wrong areas of life.  We can't predict what's going to happen in our future, but it's not fair for everyone to tell me what I should be doing.  I've spent years listening to them judge me for not working and I will tell you now, they've got nothing in comparison to what I have.  Don't knock it 'till you try it.

Adoption

This has become something of a MomBlog so that's going to be its new official unofficial title.

Our situation is unique.  I know that.  But to think my feelings about adoption are invalid because of that is unfair and naive.

Nutshell:  Our daughter is adopted.  Her birth mother is my niece.  They are and will have a relationship of sorts.  Her birth father moved and started his own family.  While we kept the doors open, we haven't heard from him in quite some time and the last two letters sent with the intention of keeping him updated have been returned unknown.

TV, movies, Reader's Digest, and various news articles have always addressed the situation of adoption and they have sometimes tried to be fair, sometimes been 'sensational', and often annoy me in some ways.  It's not their fault.  It is not their responsibility to be a moral guide or good example.

Last night we watched the Pilot of Once Upon A Time [SPOILERS]  At one point, the woman whom we know will end up being wicked witch says (to birth mother who has recently been found by adopted son) a speech about how she is the one who was there to change diapers, stay up nights, feed him, clothe him, etc.  It's a truth we adoptive parents feel; the strain of being a parent that a non-parent can imagine, but never quite understand.  The problem I had is that I know this woman will end up being the evil step mother figure.  Birth mom is nice, sweet, child of lovely, innocent Snow White.

It just bugs me in a way I can't put into exact words today.  I think it's because of the stories where the adopted/foster child thinks of the person who took them in as the evil not-really-my-mom way and surely the person who gave up the child was under such duress that giving up the child was their only choice or maybe they weren't given the choice.  Well, I know I come off as the mean one.  Why? Because I am the disciplinarian.  Birth Mom comes into the picture after the child has learned to be a wonderful person and gets to play with Birth Mom.  She doesn't have to criticize or hurt the child's feelings because Adoptive Mom has already done that job.  Let's keep that in mind.

Today, I saw a description for a movie that will probably be nothing like it's described, but just reading the description and watching the first two minutes sent me right to this blog to get out these feelings.

It explains that a boy's parents fight the adoptive parents for custody of a young boy.  In the first two minutes, you see a man arrested as his pregnant abused wife looks on, crying.  Seven years later, he's out of prison, the two are cleaned up and ready to start over.

I can only assume this is why they go after the boy, but you know what?  They have no right.  Let me repeat.  THEY HAVE NO RIGHT.

She voluntarily gave up the child in this particular story, see, and it's my opinion that we need to stop thinking in this world in terms of the birth parents giving up a child because things suck, but when they clean up, they can just fix it.

I can't help but ask why we don't think in terms of it being a permanent situation.  If you give up your child for adoption, you are giving it a better home; in theory the one you would like to give it if you could, but you can't.  HANDS CLEAN.  It is a good thing you have done and you are done now.  I realize those ties don't just dissolve and your feelings don't go away the minute you sign the adoption papers, but people die and you lose them.  You cannot have them back.  When an adoption is finalized, the child lives, it's true, but you cannot have them back.

I once saw a guy on the news complaining that Utah has one of the hardest adoption policies.  Granted, I felt bad for this guy because his child was given up without his permission.  I still don't care, though.  Utah is not the hardest for birth parents, imo, it's just the most protective for the REAL PARENTS.  The ones who have been raising the child.  Utah takes 6 months after birth to finalize.  That's just about long enough for a parent to become too attached to a child to give it up without it being as much of a heartache to them as it was to the birth parent who gave up the child in the first place.  Why on earth should the adoptive parents' heart be less important than the one who hasn't been the child's parents for the last 6 months?

The one who changed the diapers and stayed up nights are now the parents.  I think we should, as a society, see it as that.  They are the parents and the birth parents no longer enter into the decisions.  I know adoptive parents live that way because they have to for their own sanity, but stories in the paper and this world constantly undermine that.  They don't want to discard the feelings of the birth parents, but you have given genetics and a womb.  THAT IS ALL.  I don't mean to demean the importance of that great task, but getting pregnant and making a baby is not a miracle, it's base instinct.  Monkeys do it, okay? Brine shrimp do it. What a birth parent did is not nearly as miraculous as the parent who took the child into their home and their heart and raised it as their own.  Adoptive parents aren't "saving" the child.  They are just being parents, but we know from stories and experience that it takes a special kind of person to treat a child who is not biologically their own as their own.

Examples: step families, foster families, etc.  In so many cases, a parent cannot quite treat the other kids as well as they treat their own. Therefore, it is the minority of adoptive parents who are good enough to raise the kid.  Babies are made and born with little help from the parent (when something like miscarriage goes wrong, is it not often blamed on something the parent had no control over?), therefore that part is NOT the miracle.  Being the actual parent is the miracle.  Why is this discounted?  Why must we cater to the person who gave up the child?  I appreciate the birth mother more than can ever be expressed, but I also know in my heart that I am the mother.  The real mother.  The only mother.

I am more attached to my child than the birth mother is.  Maybe she doesn't think so, but I know that to be true.  A huge part of coming to terms with giving up the child is what's in your heart.  If your heart cannot let go, neither should you.  Meanwhile, if you think you can train you heart to know better, then let go and let the adoptive parents drop the adjective and be, simply, THE PARENTS