History Rewritten

My collegiate education began at a state college where I learned to party like it was 1999 (before it actually was 1999) and met my dear husband. Eventually, I had the opportunity to transfer to the midwestern liberal arts college that had been my first love since my junior year of high school. At that time, my dad pointed out that an out-of-state, private college was way out of our price range. More than a decade after graduating from that college, I'd like to tell my dad that he was right. However, I have a degree from a well-respected university and the education I received there far outweighed that of the state college, proving the old adage that you get what you pay for.... and are still paying for...

I floated a bit to find my major field of study and had been highly tempted by a degree in History. But even though I was willing to shell out thousands upon thousands for an education, I must have had a slight bit of common sense because I realized that History wouldn't get me very far in the present-day.

So I chose to major in Rhetoric and minored in History. (cough cough snort)

The good news is that announcing my degree in Rhetoric has at least befuddled potential employers long enough to tout my other, more tangible talents.

The fabulous thing about liberal arts colleges is that they teach you to think and to spout opinions loudly, without regard to whether or not you are actually correct. The professors there had no problems writing 'Bullsh*t' across the tops of papers that didn't meet their standards. One of my favorite professors in the History department, Fred, loved to explain that The New Deal policies of the 1930s were the precursor to our present day welfare state and that FDR only used the wheelchair as a prop. My Rhetoric professors pointed out that FDR's Fireside Chats were broadcast over the radio and that a wheelchair-bound president in the 1930s was not likely to inspire sympathy and respect at a time when the country was falling apart. We tore apart the presidential election campaign speeches, rambled about the subtle Communist leanings of country music, and delved into the true definition of 'personal space' (which one of my professors believed only actually existed when you were alone in your car).

So I popped out of college with a degree and a healthy amount of cynicism. Books like A Voyage Long and Strange are right up my alley. When the author accidentally ends up at the site of Plymouth Rock (which he describes as a shriveled potato), he realizes that he's lost more than a century of American history since the only thing he remembers prior to the Pilgrims' landing is that Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492. Off he goes on a quest to figure out what happened in the more than 100 years between the two events, which he then recounts with a decidedly sarcastic, not completely patriotic viewpoint.

I'm enjoying this book, but can't wait to finish it and move on to Horowitz's Confederates in the Attic. The Civil War is one of my favorite time periods in U.S. history and I'm dying to see what skeletons he turns up that aren't in the officially sanctioned history books. I betcha Fred absolutely adores Horowitz.

The Other Vietnam

Up Country by Nelson DeMille

I mentioned in a previous post that I was reading this book and that I wasn't completely comfortable. It's a spy novel, but that storyline takes a back seat to the story of a Vietnam veteran returning 30 years after the war. He visits the battlefields he served on and every mountain or valley triggers a memory. These memories are relived in the pages of the book, written by a Vietnam vet who took his own journey back in 1997. Military details, political influences, relationships between the Vietnamese factions, bloody battles... it's all here in a format that is much more vivid than any history book. In one chapter, the army vet meets at a battlefield with a marine vet and a veteran from the North Vietnamese side. The three-sided view of one battle is absolutely chilling.

For me, born in the early 70s, Vietnam is not the Vietnam war. Vietnam is the stuffiness of the airport and the crowd of people waiting outside. It's the relief at seeing the Dillon sign. It's the Dillon Vietnam staff members who took us to every appointment and made sure our paperwork was filled out correctly. It's the an air conditioned bus that drove us to Vinh Long. It's a long dirt road with a cow at the side and a driverless motorcycle that we had to inch around to reach our destination. It's nannies with wide smiles. It's street-side shops and honking horns and playing frogger when crossing the street. It's searching for a vanilla latte and eating the afternoon tea in the cafe of our hotel in Ho Chi Minh City.

For a lot of people, Vietnam is hell. It's family members who died and were never brought home for burial. It's the image of a tank crashing through an embassy gate. It was the first 'war' fought in the media - with radio broadcasts and television images beamed into every American home. It's conflict about whether the U.S. should be fighting. It's peace signs and protests. This book reminded me that Vietnam is so much more than the tiny baby girl who now terrorizes our household on a daily basis.

It also reminded me that I have a responsibility to her - a responsibility to learn more about the Vietnam 'Conflict', from both the American perspective and the Vietnamese perspective. It's very likely that some of P's birth relatives fought and died during the ten years of conflict. Shouldn't I be able to explain both sides of that war when she is learning about it in school? Shouldn't I be able to provide a different view than that of the U.S. history books? Which brings up a good question for future discussion - how much is 'enough'? If parents of Vietnamese adoptees celebrate Tet and eat pho, is that enough? If I gather up books about Vietnamese culture and traditions, is that enough? Do I need to know Vietnamese history as well as I know U.S. history to raise a Vietnamese child? How will I know when I know enough?

I've already begun a post on that topic... but for now, I wanted to let you all know that I finished Up Country. And it's worth reading. But it will make you think about things that you won't expect. Then again, so has the entire adoption process - right?

I was going to read Twilight next, but somehow it seems disrespectful to segue from deep thoughts about the U.S.'s relationship to the country of my child's birth to teenage vampire relationships... so I'm going to read A Voyage Long and Strange by Tony Horwitz. Did you know he is married to Geraldine Brooks???

Wednesday Night Smackdown

Once the kids are in bed, the husband and I are always happy to have time alone. We're not big on date nights since that incurs expenses for babysitters. Most of the time, we turn the tv to a football game (or in absence of football season, a college or NFL classic game will do), hang with a little internet surfing, talk about our day, and revel in the peace and quiet. However, we are currently having a bit of a problem.

I'm a huge Project Runway fan. We, as a couple, are huge Ghost Hunters fans. The 5th season of PR is on now. So is GH International. Granted, GHI isn't exactly as fabulous as the original GH... but when you're desperate for a little ghostly activity...

We have compromised, and we're watching PR at 8:00 CST and then staying up until 10CST to watch GHI. This causes an obvious problem since we're too old to be staying up that late on a work night. The second and less obvious problem is: what to watch from 9-10CST??? Being too lazy to change the channel, we've settled on Shear Genius. We've learned a couple of things: 1) Hair dressers are much more dramatic than even what you'd expect and 2) We have 1980s hair cuts. It's probably my fault though - every time I go to my hair dresser, I remind her that I'm a child of the 80s... the more hair spray, the better - right?!??!

I'm also helping my sis on her new career as a consultant for Tastefully Simple so I decided that 'warm savory cheese dip' sounded like the perfect accompianment to a couple glasses of merlot. Not bad, my friends, not bad! My favorite is still the Oh My, Chai hot drink though - mostly becuase it's fun to say Oh My! (insert dramatic pause...) Chai! They don't do that at Starbucks, but I think it would increase sales if they did.

Not sure what the point of this was. Mostly - Ha! My husband is watching a fashion reality show and a hair cutting reality show on the same night! Manly man, my Aunt Sally. (Not that I actually have an Aunt Sally but you know what I mean). Second, if you're interested in some yummy cheese dip or a hot drink that even your local coffee shop can't reproduce, let me know. I'm helping my sis get her biz off the ground by doing an email party. The deadline is Friday though so act now!

That's what all the good infomercials say...

The Birthday Dilemna

My birthday is coming up and, being a Leo, I'm a tad self-centered about birthday celebrations. Well, let's be honest... more than a tad! I've been thinking about possible birthday gifts since, ohhhhhh, Christmas or thereabouts. I've narrowed it down to three gifts:

1. A new rug for the living room, to accent the lovely paint colors I've chosen but not yet applied to my walls.
2. New dishes (the ones we currently use are 7 years old, from the ever-so-popular Walmart collection.
3. Cash... to finance the as-yet-undetermined quilt class I want to take this fall. My very favorite instructor typically does a class each fall that meets twice per month for four months. The instruction itself is expensive, and then add the fabric and well... ouch. But I'd have an incredibly beautiful quilt when I was done, incredibly valuable instruction from a quilt instructor whose quilts are often worth in the thousands of dollars, and a few hours of 'me time' each month.

Can you tell which way I'm leaning? My sweet husband has pointed out that if the power ever goes out permanently in the middle of winter, we would be the only family with enough blankets to survive the cold. Of course, he's also pointed out that the money invested in my fabric stash would allow us to retire comfortably, send all three girls to college, and buy Bill Gates' shares of Microsoft. He is exaggerating... I think.

Book Reviews

I've been doing some serious reading over the last 2 1/2 weeks. Since you guys were the ones who suggested a majority of them, I thought I'd give you a quick rundown. I will warn you, however, that the books I seem to love the most right now are the ones that make me cry. Gotta love the post-surgical hormones.

• Oh My Stars, Lorna Landvik - I haven't read a bad Lorna Landvik book and can't imagine that I ever will. But this one. Wow - this one. One Southern girl who's never had happiness, one Minnesota boy who knows nothing but. I laughed. I cried. I highly recommend it.
• How Nancy Drew Saved My Life - Chick Lit with a tongue-in-cheek WWNND attitude (What Would Nancy Drew Do?). Promising approach to the overdone nanny-sleeps-with-employer-and-has-heart-broken premise, fun to relive my Nancy Drew reading years, horrible canned ending. I felt a tad cheated at the end of this book.
• Dream When You're Feeling Blue, Elizabeth Berg - I hated her book about Mary & Joseph's courtship and marriage (yes, THAT Mary & Joseph.) But this was excellent. A cry-inducing, detail-filled view of WWII from the perspective of three Irish sisters in Chicago. The letters they exchange with soldiers serving overseas will tear your heart out. The ending will tear your heart out.
• Sick of Shadows, Marion Chesney - She has several mystery series and this, in my opinion and based on one book, is the worst. I'm not fond of her Agatha Raisin character but the books at least make sense. This one is poorly written and not very impressive, from a mystery point of view. Too much 'Oh Victorian London and the horrible inequalities of class!'... with bosom-clasping and such. Why is there always bosom-clasping in novels set in the Victorian period?
• Alexander McCall Smith - Best known for his No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, I actually like this one better. Cynical editor of a philosophical journal gets involved in all sorts of mysterious circumstances, set in Edinburgh. I read two of these recently: The Careful Use of Compliments and Friends, Lovers, Chocolate. As with all A.M.S.'s novels, the joy isn't necessarily in the mystery, it's in the descriptive writing and thoughtful winding roads that lead away from the central story.
• Miss Julia's School of Beauty and Miss Julie Strikes Back, Ann B. Ross - Pure fun and laugh-out-loud. Sixty-something widow with spunk, always involved in something fairly zany despite a strict moral code and impeccable manners.
• The Quilter's Homecoming, Jennifer Chiaverini - Sweet story of a new bride who leaves her family to move to California with her husband. These novels (it's an extensive series) are always woven around a quilt or quilt pattern, with excellent historical details and a... well, as I already said, a sweet story. I liked it, as I like all of them. Nothing spectacular - just comforting and familiar.
• The Book of Shadows, Lincoln Child - Frankly, a little gory. But incredibly interesting, with well-drawn characters and a great setting. This is one of a series and I'm not sure I'm going to read the others because I prefer my suspense novels with a tad bit less blood and deranged madmen, but it was intriguing enough that I just might.
• Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks - Set in the 1600s, a plague comes to a small village. The primary characters are one of the village women (narrated from her point of view) and a minister and his wife. I like Geraldine Brooks in general (her March novel is fabulous) because her characters are so well drawn. This story isn't exactly a beach read, but if you're in the mood for something that will absorb you completely in another time, this is it.
• Currently reading Up Country by Nelson DeMille - This is set in Vietnam in the current time, but with a lot of flashbacks to the main character's tours of duty in 1968 and 1972. It's a mystery/suspense novel and I'm liking it so far. It's been fun to follow the main character around Saigon as he goes to some of the places we were at in Vietnam. Not so fun, and a little hard to read, are his reflections of the Vietnam war. The book is presenting both the American and Vietnamese perspectives through the various characters. The mystery/suspense part has been good though, and no one ever said I should only read things that make me comfortable.

And there have been others, but heck if I can remember exactly what all else. I've also paged through a million or so quilting magazines that my sister-in-law sent me and watched several episodes of the current Doctor Who series. Recovery is getting very boring. I tried to do a little more around the house last week, but by the end of the night I hurt so much that I was walking around like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Guess I'm back to 'recovering' for a few more days.

Coming up next: Twilight (Elaine, this one's for you!), a book of travel essays by Conde' Naste, and The Know-it-All. I'll let you know what I think :)

P Revealed

The pure evil that is P is typically not revealed to those living outside our four walls. The hillarious cackle of her laugh, the way she smacks her sisters in the head when she wants something, the four million times a day we have to tell her to leave the dog alone, the constant climbing on anything that could add an element of danger to the exercise... these are things she reserves for her closest and most beloved family members. My sister once remarked that all she ever hears when she calls is me saying, "P, no" "P, stop that" or "P, get out of _fill-in-the-blank_" - and she couldn't understand it because when she sees P, she isn't naughty at all.

You see, P is still painfully uncertain around other people. All of our family is out of state, so we don't see them on a daily/weekly/or even monthly basis. She only goes to daycare twice a week and we haven't had a babysitter other than family since P has been home. So when we're visiting our folks or hanging with friends, P clings to us like a baby howler monkey. She is slowly gaining confidence, but we can still tell that she's very uncomfortable and worried when she's away from her stuff and her house.

However. The Grandmas were here for the first two weeks of my recovery and NOW they get it. No longer will they think we're overreacting when we tell them how busy she is! The first night my mom was here, after a full day of the spectacularly active Miss P, Chris said she practically collapsed on the couch once P was in bed. My mother-in-law walked around muttering statements like, "She never stops!" and "Oh my, she's naughty".

Uh huh... so we've been saying. But noooooooooo, no one wanted to believe that our beautiful, petite little munchkin was a fireball waiting for her next adrenaline high. P is full blast, all the time. And it's exhausting. But it's also caused fits of spontaneous giggles when Chris and I catch her doing something that our other two would never have thought of. We give Miss P points for creativity - 3 points for using the Lego table as a step for climbing over the arm of the couch, 2 points for wheeling the toy car over to the table in an attempt to get A's juice box, 2 points for using the cat as a trampoline (we give it a higher creativity rating but must subtract points for cruelty to animals)... you get the idea.

I did point out to the husband that if we adopt a little boy in the future, P's current behavior is breaking us in nicely for his rough and tumble football-playing years. In return, Chris pointed out that we won't be able to attend our possible-future-son's football games because we'll be visiting P in the juvenille detention center.

He may have a point.

Whooooooo Hoooooo!

What a week! Not only is this the week for the season premieres of Project Runway, Monk, and Psych but...

The Connors are going to Vietnam!!!!!!!!!!

We met Nadra and Charlie two years ago when we went to the Dillon International adoption orientation program. They had just come home with their adorable son from India, Ian. Last October, they received a referral for their second sweet blessing, Drew - this time from Vietnam. The wait has been torturous and I'm so thrilled to know that they will soon be on their way to meet little Drew. Congratulations Nadra and Charlie!

The Hazards of Recovery

My husband is ready for me to be completely recovered. It's not that he minds being the primary caregiver or doing all the cooking, cleaning, and laundry. No... those things are all fine. But the longer I lay on the sofa, the stronger my urge to repaint the living room.

It was bad enough on Saturday, when I decided to conduct my daily walk at the mall. After a shopping spree at Old Navy for the girls (Hey, it was summer clearance!) and a stop at Sears for new living room curtains, the husband decided it was cheaper for me to be home. But once I got back home, I decided my new curtains and new wood laminate flooring would be highlighted best with a new paint color. The current color is a soft brown that has a rose color as its base, which I've loved for the last 5 1/2 years. However, our new floors are cherry and the whole room now has a pink undertone that's driving me nuts. So I'm thinking of going with a lighter khaki color so the undertone is more of a green and the room is lightened up a bit. Hence the new curtains, which are a light tan with chocolate brown swirls, to replace the previous deep maroon curtains. Painting is an activity that the husband wants nothing to do with... although he did drive me to the store to pick up a bunch of paint samples. I've got four more weeks of lifting restrictions before I can even think about painting, so I have plenty of time to make him reconsider :)

In other news, did you know that the Miss Universe contest is being held in Vietnam this month? How cool is that!?!?!? Oh, and the picture of P is posted because I think you all should see her evil look. The one that says, "I know I'm not supposed to be standing up on this chair but I look so darn cute that I'm going to do it anyway."

One Year Ago Today

One year ago today, we saw P's face for the first time.

Most of the major events with the adoption happened on holidays. We sent our first application in on St. Patrick's Day, mailed our dossier on Halloween, were notified that we were on the waiting list a couple of days before Christmas, and our log in date was on Valentine's Day. So I was convinced that our referral was coming on a holiday. Our agency kept saying to expect a referral in September or October, but I was shooting for my birthday in August. And I kept reminding Jynger over and over and over. In fact, the poor thing had been reminded so often that she had my birthday written on her office calendar. On July 3rd last year, two baby girl referrals were given to the #1 and #2 families - moving us up to #3 on the list as far as I knew. I called Jynger bright and early on July 5th to make sure it was just those two referrals that had been given out and to see if she knew of any other baby girl referrals in the works. She was a little reserved (and if you've ever spoken to Jynger, you KNOW that 'reserved' is not a word you use often to describe her!!!) and told me that I needed to be patient. Before I hung up the phone, I reminded her that all I wanted for my birthday was our referral.

Two hours later, the phone rang and the caller id said 'Dillon International'. When I picked up the phone, Jynger started singing 'Happy early birthday to you'. I kept calling her a liar and she kept insisting that she did, indeed, have our referral. I was shaking and barely wrote down any of the details she gave me. Instead, I frantically hit the refresh button on the computer, hoping it would download the photos of our new daughter. I called the husband at his office and when he answered, I told him that he had a daughter. He obviously wasn't focusing, because his reply was, "Yes, I have two of them." I told him that now he had three, and there was dead silence for a while. He told me later that it was the first time he'd ever gone to work with two kids and come home with three :)

Happy Referral Day to our entire family. We're so lucky to have this little one in our lives!

Progress

The surgery on Monday went very smoothly. We checked in around 8 a.m. and zipped right back to the pre-surgical area where I changed into a very stylish gown, had the i.v. line inserted, and was tucked into bed with toasty blankets from the warmer. I seriously need to get one of those things for my house. We watched Tony Bourdain eat some disgusting things on the Travel Channel and I was wheeled up to surgery right on schedule. It's actually a funny experience to have surgery in a hospital where your husband does surgery. The anesthesiologist stopped to chit chat about things completely non-surgery related, the nurses felt free to have conversations that I bet they wouldn't have in front of other patients, and you get treated extra nice, including the sweet nurse who held my hand and stroked my hair while I was coming out of the anesthetic. Sadly, I couldn't identify her now - that's the fun of drugs!

The morphine kept my pain levels (and my consciousness levels) very low for a while and I had a fairly easy night, other than the part where they told me I had to try to walk and I was convinced the nurses were in league with Satan. Tuesday morning, they tried switching me to Percoset but I had a horrible reaction to it so I was in the hospital a little longer than expected while the Percoset worked its way out of my system. Then we tried another drug, which didn't make me sicker than a dog, and I was finally free to go home at around 4:00. Since then, I've pretty much laid in bed watching tennis and Olympic Trials and Murder, She Wrote. I've read a couple of books, snuggled with my girls, and wandered to the kitchen every so often to fulfill my daily walking requirements. I'm slowly weaning myself off the drugs and today, I managed to stay awake more than I've been asleep. That's what I'd call progress :)

Back at Home

Hey all - just a note to say I'm home again. The surgery went well - no signs of cancer and I was able to come home right on schedule. It will be a couple of days before I'm ready for email again... but wanted you all to know I've made it this far :)