Saturday Roundup

So....I have all these little bits and pieces rolling around my brain. Making me all distracted..or, erm, more distracted than usual. So, in order to get something done and move forward, I'm kind of downloading them into a roundup post.
It's Saturday, chore day, time for tidying up.
Today, I'm tidying my brain.
Fair warning.

Let's see (in no particular order of importance):

Just talked w/ Chris. He's safe and sound in Rome, he's ensconced in his dorm and happy as a clam. Jet-lagged excited happy and hungry. Four course dinner tonight to welcome them after Mass. Ah, what a life!

The group in Haiti who was detained for taking the kids across the border...? Makes me nuts. I don't pretend to know what they were doing, or if it was criminal or not. But, IMHO, it was simply, if nothing else, stupid and damaging. Possibly criminally stupid. It was not only, at best, good intentions run amok, but it appears that it was deceptive. And that is always wrong. Setting aside the trauma of these kids, families, parents in this event, if you can, (and I know, you can't, but I told you my mind is all over the map lately)...it is the worst of the ugly American. At best, it was thoughtless and arrogant.

And that gets me riled. That somehow, taking these kids to live across the border in an orphanage, and possibly adopted out of their home country, is better than keeping them with their families and in their home country? Really? NO. Yes, the hardships before and even more so now after this quake were and are overwhelming. But those kids have parents, families and a village and a culture and HOME....and that trumps all. That is what is best for them, not a removal of that, swayed by nudging and promises made in desperate times. And further, this just continues to give international adoption a bad name. It adds to the misinformation and misunderstanding of orphaned and relinquished and abandoned kids...to the whole system and process and complex nature of adoption in general, and internationally in particular. And that, the broader scope of what these folks have unwittingly accomplished here, just kind of ticks me off. Ok, sorry, rant over.


Next, still working on school fine tuning, especially with Marta. And realizing that being an advocate for your kids is never done. I mean, I knew it.....but sometimes you kind of think, "Ok, whew, done for now. Hoorah." Well, no. Especially with regard to special needs, and school stuff....its a marathon, an ultra-marathon...and I'm strapping on my shoes for the long haul. Because, well, it's gonna be a long haul. But then again, I guess that's being a mom. That's the job description in one way or another.

Special needs stuff is a huge jungle to hack through. I mean, just when you figure out one tiny part of the map, or how to read that map and begin to make sense of it...well, then you have to start reading a whole new one. And it's very hard to parse out. And the road ahead...well, it's hard to see. I guess that's where we are supposed to work on one day at a time. Living in the moment, and all that. I'm really bad at that, good thing I have so much opportunity to practice. Ha!


Been thinking about the blog a bit. I think I have been using a double standard and I think I might change it up. By which I mean, I use nicknames for most of the kids.....(and did for Tom and I before all the Marta Visa/TB stuff hit the fan) but never have with Gabey or Marta. Well, that's not entirely fair, is it? So, do I add nicknames to Gabey and Marta? Hmm, that bell has already been rung. Or do I go for equity and just start using the rest of the kids given names? At least sometimes. Stewing on this. What do you think?


Last: Lent approaches. I have much pondering to do about that again. I want to think about fasting and get that all sorted out before Ash Wednesday....Stewing about what I will do for this lent, how to have a spiritually productive season....surely there will be posts about it all. And it seems unrelated but its not (at least to my jumbly mind): I was wondering if anyone knew a reasonably priced way to reproduce original artwork.....paper mixed media into a print form and downsized considerably. I have a series on the Stations of the Cross that I was thinking about making into a manageable form, like printed together on one sheet or a few....but not sure how to do it without spending a fortune. Ideas?

OK, I've swept my brain clean for a moment or two. Now to do the same to my house. And find some more coffee to jump start those sleepy synapses again.