Running

Once upon a time, I could run.

3 miles? Let me get my shoes.
5 miles? Let me get my walkman.
10 miles? Let me get a snack (gummi bears work great)

I haven't done a road race in probably 5 years, but I'm proud to say I did one last Saturday with my friend and old running buddy. We like our waddling kind of pace and don't mind getting passed by power walkers. That and the fact neither of us wants to be the first to quit makes us good partners.

This race was the Polar Bear 5K (1500 runners, joggers, walkers, strollers, and dogs) and was held at a church nearby. At the start, the pastor said a few words about every comeback first requiring a set back. I liked it. I like to think my huge 5 year set back is over and I'm on the verge of a comeback.

I have Zoe fantasies of taking her to races in a baby jogger, then letting her do tot trots, and eventually running together. I know, I know, I can't make her like anything, and by then I may be in another huge set back, but I like to think about it.

The problem with the early phase of comeback is that you start to get grandeous ideas. We hadn't left the parking lot before we'd started planning our next race. And the next day we were tossing around the idea of half marathon in the fall. Hmmmmm.... I think I can. I think I can.

Serious yard work

Jeff and I LOVE our yard for about a month in the spring. The rest of the time, it's just too much to handle.




So the other day we hired my friend and his bobcat to take out our nasty shed and all the beds in the back yard. Here you can see him taking down the shed.




What we didn't know was that our shed was home to this little guy.


After the first wave of demolition, he came scurrying out, but didn't leave the rubble. It was very scary. I was afraid we'd find possum parts. But soon we saw him up a nearby tree where he stayed all day and watched us take his house down. Poor little fella.

We spent the next day laying seed and straw. And this morning we had a nice rain, so hopefully we'll soon have a nice low maintainance lawn.

1 month update

Okay. We have been logged in for 1 month. Our agency says to count on a 10 month wait. So we're 10% of the way there. That's not so bad.

Have we done 10% of the things we need to do before Zoe? uhhhhhh.....no. As I read blogs, I see most people are killing time until referral, but truthfully, I'm not sure how we're going to get everything done. The nursery and shopping I could knock out in a couple really good weekends, but there's other stuff we need to do. Are we going to parenting classes? If not, how many books can I read before then. We'd like to learn more about Chinese culture and attachment issues. I need to learn how to be a Mom of a non-newborn. I'd love to knit something for her. It's been a long time since I've knitted anything, so I might need to practice first. The home improvement stuff will never end, but there are certain things we have to do. On top of that, there's baby-proofing, researching child care options, and getting ready to travel. We have a family wedding in April. Are we going to squeeze in another really good vacation, or hunker down and save money? Jeff has a project car and I just started running again. I won't work overtime after Zoe gets here, so the more time we have to earn extra cash is a good thing.

Of course, I want my daughter as soon as possible, I'm just saying the wait isn't so bad. We expected a wait of six months when we first started. I KNOW there's no way we'd be ready by then. (June) This way, we'll be travelling in the winter. And if the wait isn't much more than 10 months I'll get my Zoe in time for Christmas. Plus the added bonus is that I won't have to work over Christmas!! No packages to deliver! And, we'll have time to spend with family over the holidays. How wonderful is that?

Another productive weekend

Our weekend started slow. I had to work Satuday and I didn't get up for the day today until noon or so. But once we got going, we really cranked it out!!

First, we decided to move the nursery to another room. The original one was constantly cold. We thought it was just because we always kept it closed off, but on closer inspection, we found out the duct work to that room is screwy. It will always be a cold room unless we fix the ducts. (And that ain't happenin' anytime soon) So we moved rooms.


The problem??? The new room was a nasty avacado kind of green. I swear it looked so much worse in person than in this photo. Jeff spent Saturday ripping out the carpet and then once I got moving we moved the furniture, shop-vac'd, Kilzed, and rolled the first coat of paint.



Here's the new color (pastel sage) and Jeff holding up the new nursery bedding. We decided the red floral one was just too hard to match with baby stuff. The new one is also from IKEA, but definately more "kiddie." And there's crib bedding to match. Now the whole thing is going to be green walls , pink bedding, and white furniture. I'm so excited to get finished with the nursery.


And! We even shaved the dog. Our poor dog is the victim of our cost cutting measures and now must suffer home grooming. I once took her to a groomer after one of my gooming efforts and, no kidding, she laughed. Very embarassing, but we did just save $50.

Ho Hum....

Things are pretty boring here. There's just nothing new going on.

So, I thought I'd liven up the blog with a picture of my Big Boy

5-spot

Goody Goody! I've been tagged!

I have a few blogs I frequent daily and the rest I catch up on from time to time as I go blog surfing. I saw that people were tagging each other and now I've been tagged, too. I feel so popular. Thanks, Johnny.

What were you doing 10 years ago?

I had just returned from Korea where I spent a few months teaching English. I was suppose to stay for a year, but couldn't handle it. Partly, this was due to my school's director who showed up at our apartment and demanded my roommate and I go out with him and some of his business friends. They drove, they were drunk, and the whole thing was scary. I could have handled him, but mostly, I was homesick something fierce. So I came home and started working at the post office until I found out what I really wanted to do with my life. Well.....if you've perused my blog at all you will know I'm still with the post office. I discovered that blue collar government work suits me fine. You can't beat the security and the benefits. I'll blog about the job some time soon. So many stories.....

What were you doing 1 year ago?

I was trying my darndest to get pregnant. Any given day I could tell you my temperature and every other fertility indicator. We were just starting infertility testing and had just begun to talk serious about adoption. I wish, I wish, I wish we had just moved straight to adoption. I'd have a LID in April and have my referral now. :-( Oh well.

Five snacks I enjoy
-poppycock
-cheese puffs
-chips with salsa and that restaurant white cheese
-hot Krispy Kremes
-Cadbury Creme Eggs

Five songs to which I know all the lyrics
-Anything by John Denver
-Gettin' Jiggy with It - Will Smith
-Baby got Back - SirMixaLot (sorry Mom)
-One Week - Barenaked Ladies
-Cowboy - Kid Rock
(please don't ask me to explain my musical taste, I'm embarrassed enough already)

Five things I would do if I were a millionaire
-quit my job
-hire a contractor
-travel
-plan Zoe's education in private school
-donate half to charity (I have a deal with God for when I when the lottery)


Five bad habits
-eat too much
-make fun of people
-salty language
-get lazy from time to time
-get fussy with Jeff

Five things I like doing
-reading
-napping
-going on dates with Jeff
-watching Jeff do home improvement
-jogging (this one comes and goes)

Five things I would never wear, buy or get new again
-thong
-real fur coat
-body piercing or tattoo
-Precious Moments
-Hummer

Five favorite toys
-shuffle (I'm not cool enough for the whole IPOD)
-treadmill
-digital camera
-dyson vacuum cleaner
-DVR

So here's the deal: Remove the blog in the top spot from the following list and bump everyone up one place. Then add your blog to the bottom slot.

a la carter
afrindiemum
An Elephant's Gestation
So, it's come down to this
waiting for Zoe

Then select five people to tag:

unfortunately, the only regular readers I know I have are my family and friends. I don't presume other adoption bloggers frequent my humble home. Therefore, I'm only tagging

my sister - Deanna's Diary
and
my nephew - Brian's Blog

It's Really Happening!

Although we talk about Zoe daily, it still doesn't seem real most of the time. It's like when we first got married and it felt more like we were playing house. That's how this is. We're playing.

I think about how we will deal with issues like daycare, racism, and explaining her adoption. I think about how our lives will change. How will we possibly squeeze a baby into our lives? (Although my sister rightfully said it's more like squeezing the rest of your life around your baby.) But it still isn't real.

Now, however, I'm getting more and more moments of reality. It hits me.....I'm going to be a Mom...Me...A Mom. How can that possibly be? The other day it happened when Jeff told me his Mom has started buying Zoe clothes. My first thought was, "Wow, she really thinks we're going thru with this." What kind of thought is that? Of course we're going thru with it. And other people are preparing, too.

It's really happening.

And Zoe already has a pink jogging suit waiting for her in Florida.

Oh, crap.

Apparently, you DO get pregnant after adopting!

I'll never hear the end of it.

Hip Hip Hooray!

WE HAVE A LOG IN DATE!!!!

12/20/05

For those outside the adoption community, a log in date (LID) is the date your dossier gets logged into the Chinese system. It is essentially your place in line for a baby (as weird as that sounds). Currently, everyone with a LID before April 25, 2005 has been matched with a baby already. The last group waited 8.5 months for their match. If that time frame continues, Jeff and I will have a picture of Zoe in early September. Although our agency told us to expect a 9 to 10 month wait, I remain hopeful.

The dining room is finally complete.

The floors, walls, and electrical are all finally finished in the dining room. We loaded 5 boxes of crystal and dishes into the china cabinet yesterday. They had been in boxes for over a year... Progress...

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Here is the traditional Southern New Year's Day dinner. (Why is it all our traditions revolve around food?) We have our pork, greens, black-eye peas and cornbread.

New Year's Resolutions

In my life, I have made 3 (maybe 4) resolutions that I stuck to. Buy a house (I actually did this the following year, but close enough), Run a marathon (okay, I walked most of it), and take belly dancing lessons. The fourth would be to lose weight. This is the "maybe" one since I gained it back the following year.

This year, my resolutions are mostly for Zoe, so hopefully I will have the oomph to stick with it. We want to finish the home improvement stuff. We want to learn to cook healthy stuff and eat at home more. We want to exercise so we will be fit enough to keep up with the baby.

Our agency told us to count on a 9-10 month wait for Zoe's referral with the understanding that things change. So, if that's the best I have to go on, I'm thinking we'll get her referral in Oct and travel to China in December. Although that's a REALLY long time, it does give us plenty of time to work on resolutions.

Check on our progress around....oh...March or so.

Half way thru the Weekend

The weekend is half way over. So far much has been accomplished, although nothing worth photographing really. I'm caught up on sleep, for sure. Averaging about 10 hours a night, plus some naps. I should be embarrased, but man, do I love a good nap. (Nap time also includes reading, by the way. I read until I can't hold the book up.) If you have any good reading suggestions, let me know. I'm ready for a new one.

On Friday, Jeff got called in to work. He always seems to get the on-call phone on holidays. This time it involved a crashed server in Connecticut and no back-ups, or something like that. I'm a mail man, so I'm not expected to understand. Most of the rest of the day was spent on laundry. Jeff worked on the floor a little, but mostly we continued with our "008 days of 007" on Spike TV.

Today, we went to the dump! I'm so happy about it, too. We finally figured out where it is and how the process works. You drive across a scale, go to your spot (scrap metal here, construction debris, there. Motor oil in the barrel, etc.) Here's a picture of Jeff at the household debris section. Then you drive across a scale on the way out. The weight difference determines your cost. We're on our way to a clean basement!

After another nappy, we got ready to go to Nana's And here's some pics for Deanna and the kids.
Nana's house.

Jokey-uncle Jeff.

Nana and Aunt Jojo (Honey in the background)
Mama kitty (the outside cat who has decided inside life ain't so bad)
Traditional New Year's Eve dinner of Reuben Sandwich. Yummy. Gotta love weird family traditions.

It's almost midnight. Happy New Year, everyone.

4 Day Weekend!!

Now marks the beginning of Jeff's and my 4 day weekend together. Hopefully, we will do finishing touches to the often talked about living, dining, foyer. It needs a bit more flooring, quarter round, and caulking. Oh, and a bit of touch up paint. If we get just that done to the house, I will be happy. I have more on the list of things I want to do, but it is a holiday, for crying-out-loud. I don't want to be too disappointed in myself if we end up laying around and watching movies. That's important, too, you know.

More Pictures

Here's just a few more pictures I wanted to include. This is our dining room. Notice the symmetrical fruit arrangement and the new light fixture. They would be Jeff's work.


And here are Princess and Nemo again. We are baby-sitting them for my niece and nephew until they come back from Germany in a few years. How long, exactly, do goldfish live? Anyway, I wanted to post it because I liked it. They are great pets. Not much in the way of maintainance. They're always really glad to see us. And they provide endless hours of entertainment for our less brilliant cat, Sydney. The others figured out a long time ago they they couldn't get to them and moved on. Sydney still tries to "catch" them all the time. Silly kitty.

Christmas Wrap-up

Today we woke up in south Georgia and had more time with Jeff's family. We had another quiet Christmas gathering with just his parents and grandmother.









And who racked up best this Christmas?? Zoe, of course! With parents and grandparents who love her already, she had a great Christmas, and she may not even be born yet!
My Mom had a lovey doll embroidered with her name. (It's the blue elephant) And they are now known as wubbies in our family thanks to my nephew Jeffrey who had the first.

And here is the first quilt to be made for Zoe by her grandmother and great-grandmother. They are already planning her second. Everyone in Jeff's mother's family has had a quilt made for them by Louise, the grandmother. I am thrilled that Zoe, the only adopted child in this huge clan is already being so readily accepted and that there is a physical representation of it in the quilt.

Christmas day

On Christmas day we woke up early-ish and headed over to Mom and Dad's.


Mom always makes Christmas breakfast and this year was pork tenderloin, biscuits, and orange danish. Mmmmm.

Mom is just as giddy as I am over presents so it didn't take long to dig in. Mom liked her Chinese Zodiac ornaments. Dad was thrilled with his new hat.

Jeff loved his new corvette books.

And Mom gave me an Asian baby doll so I can play pretend until Zoe gets here.


Normally at Christmas we would hang out all day taking naps, watching TV, playing on the computer, etc. But this year we needed to scoot out around lunch time and get to south Georgia to visit Jeff's family. We spent the rest of Christmas day eating, visiting and eating some more with Jeff's HUGE family. Here is a picture of his grandmother and her 10 children, all of whom make it to the festivities.


There were also grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She has some great-great's, too. I got a chance to visit with her and hear about the old days. How she married at 15 and proceeded to have a baby about every other year for the next 20 years and raise them, for the most part, in a 2 bedroom house!! Oh my!

It was a busy, but wonderful Christmas.

Our Christmas Eve

We had a wonderful Christmas full of Family, Friends, and Fun. On Christmas eve, I had to work, which was a bummer, but I racked up in presents and made overtime. So overall...not so bad.














Jeff stayed home and continued to work on our living room. You can see the wonderful job he did on our shelves. He's so great, he even brought me lunch on my mail route, and vaccuumed the house while I was working.





That evening we went to the traditional Christmas eve dinner with my parents and family friends. Here are some pics.
Afterwords, a very tired Jeff and I packed for our trip the next day and hit the hay!

I've been Re-gifted

As a mail carrier, I love the Christmas season. Everyone is happy to see me and I get presents!! The other day I opened a mailbox and found a present from a family I didn't expect to give me one. Earlier in the year I killed their froglet (more than a tadpole, less than a frog). The box clearly said to leave it in a cool place, but I didn't see it. I put it in the metal mail box on a hot summer day and cooked the little guy.

On a side note, you can mail live creatures thru the mail. Normally, we only see butterflies and ladybugs, but I have seen crickets and baby chicks. I've even heard of fighting cocks, but I don't know how that could be legal.

So back to my story, I was surprised to get something from this house. The man is a UPS delivery guy and I suspected it was something he got from one of his customers. I don't really mind re-gifting when done well and this was a nice little set of a mug and packet of gourmet hot chocolate. When I got home, Jeff looked at the mug and it was stamped 1999 on the bottom. Who care's, it could have been a design from then, but still reasonably new. But later I looked at the hot chocolate. It expired in 2004!! How long does it take for pre-packaged hot chocolate to expire? I don't know, but I suspect it's a long time. I can't believe that this little set has been sitting in their house for 6 years. I can, however, believe that it has been floating around as a token gift to service people since then.

I think they're still mad about the froglet.

Here, kitty kitty.

With 5 cats it's going to happen from time to time....but 2 mornings in a row?!! I get up to let the dog out. I don't turn on any lights so I won't disturb hubby and proceed to step in a pile of cold hair ball. Gross. The only thing worse, really, and I've stepped in that too, is a pile of warm hair ball. Mmmmmm.....yummy.