ever-fixed mark

We are waiting for a referral. Waiting isn’t active enough for me — I need progress. So I’ve been checking the adoption agency’s hotline and other adoption agencies’ bulletin boards. Other people’s progress is more satisfying than the slow march of the calendar, which is the only visible sign of our own.

My new hobby has been the waiting child photolisting on my agency’s web site. For anyone out there who is not familiar with the adoption process, a “waiting child” is an older child, or a young child with special medical needs, who may be hard to place. These children are matched with families in an open process, not the usual next-on-the-list process. Prospective parents get to review their histories and medical files before they accept the referral of the baby.

Several weeks ago, I noticed a photo of a very cute little Korean girl. Her medical diagnosis sounded frightening, but there was a little addendum stating that her “development was age-appropriate.” As a parent, I have learned to give considerable weight to developmental evidence. Medical tests provide data points, but a child’s behavior does as well. Looking at the photo and description, I was confident that there was a family out there that would request that little girl’s referral and be willing to brave the scary-sounding test result with her.

Earlier this week, I noticed an updated photo and some follow-up information. They had repeated the test and found that the original finding was mostly resolved. Intrigued, I called the agency and asked if the girl had been referred to another family yet. She had not, although a few other families had requested information on her. I asked to see the file, thinking that by the time I had someone review it, she would already be matched. The agency faxed it right over, around 11:00 a.m. Around noon I took it to my doctor’s office, and by the time I returned from lunch the doctor had left a message. “Nothing to be concerned about; a common incidental finding that never results in anything.”

Husband and I talked it over and decided to proceed. I called the agency, still expecting that the girl would have been matched. She had not; the coordinator explained the process going forward. They would call a “match meeting,” asking all the social workers to inform the interested families that we wanted to go ahead by a certain date. The other families would have the opportunity to step forward for consideration by the deadline. The selection criteria were simple: The family who had been waiting longest would be matched with the baby.

That was disappointing news, as we have been officially on the waiting list only a month, and any other family considering this baby is likely to have been waiting much longer, even up to a year. Our only hope was that the other families involved could not have been that serious, or they would have asked for a match meeting themselves. Wouldn’t they?

It doesn’t look that way. The match meeting is late tomorrow, and we have been told that at least one other family has come forward, and they have “probably been in process” longer than us. It seems wrong to me that another family would profit from our initiative, but maybe they were just about to pick up the phone when we did. Or maybe they will decide not to come forward at all.

The protocol, we are told, is that the coordinator will call the social worker tomorrow, and the social worker will call us. Since our social worker is out of the office tomorrow, she told us that “if the coordinator can reach her,” and then “if she can reach us” in Chicago, where we’ll be on vacation, she’ll call us tomorrow evening. Otherwise, she’ll speak to us on Monday.

(Deep breath here while I ponder the humanity of a social worker who is unwilling to make a single phone call over a weekend, or perhaps she hasn’t caught on to that whole cell phone/voice mail thing?)

We have not told anyone about this, until just now. (Hey, a locutionary post. I always knew that linguistics training would be relevant somewhere.) The reasons for our silence are not hard to imagine: It’s likely to fall through; we don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up; we don’t want to get our hopes up. These are the same reasons you keep mum on a pregnancy until the first trimester is safely past. When disappointment strikes, you won’t have to go through the bother of telling anyone. But you do lose out on the support of people who might otherwise be pulling for you.

So, pull, please. There may still be some hope for us. And, if not, there is an adorable little girl out there who is about to get matched to a wonderful family, which is a cause for celebration.

Our attempts to introduce Aitch to the wonderful world of toilet-training have been hamstrung by his tendency to pee the minute his equipment is liberated from the diaper. Combine this with his reluctance to sit on the potty, and we have a lot of cleaning products being used up in the Ever-Fixed Mark household.

Tonight, for example, Aitch let loose as soon as he was put into the bath. He stood there watching himself, fascinated. “Green,” he said, helpfully, pointing to the stream. “Yellow,” I corrected automatically.

“Oh, man,” Husband said, exasperated. “Now I’m going to have to empty the tub. Well, give yourself a shake,” he said, an instruction that I would have never thought to give.

Aitch shook his head vigorously.

Looks like this is going to be harder than I thought.

The Thursday “Style” section of the New York Times carried a feature about the resentment engendered on streets and in stores by parents pushing oversized strollers (registration required).

The resentment stems not only from the fact that the big strollers take up so much room on the sidewalk or the aisle, but also because the parents piloting them are perceived as projecting a “superior” attitude. One Ophira Eisenberg (a comedian) was quoted, “These women have a child, and they’re like, ‘Look at me’…It’s like this baby is more important than anything, and everyone should be bowing down because they created life.”

E. Marla Felcher, an adjunct lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard (who is, therefore, someone whose foot I might have bumped as I was wheeling Aitch through the Public Garden), was also quoted, “I do hate the parents who somehow have decided that they are superior to everyone else because they have kids.”

Wow. Could I possibly be projecting all that attitude as I stroll Aitch downtown on my morning coffee run? “One large coffee with skim milk, please, and a major indictment of anyone in my path who has not made the same life choices as I, with a big heaping of scorn on the side!” I might actually be concerned about this if it weren’t the silliest piece of reportage to come out of the New York Times. And that’s saying a lot, David Brooks.

Marla, Ophira (come one, with jobs like “professor” and “comedian” you know you’re Googling yourselves on a regular basis) — how do you know that the superior look on my face is because of my child? Maybe it’s because my hair just looks so damned great today.

My life in a series of tableaux vivantes:

The drama. On Thursday evening, I left a meeting with a promise to revise a file and send it out before a 9:00 a.m. meeting the next morning. It was a fifteen-minute job but I wasn’t able to start it until 11:00 p.m. As I was firing up the laptop containing the file, I noticed that I had left the power cord at the office and remembered that I only had a little battery left — 14 minutes, the indicator told me. No problem, I thought. I’ll just transfer the file to one of the six other computers on the network and edit it from there.

When I tried to access another computer, though, the network was down, despite a strong wireless signal. No problem, I thought, as the battery indicator clicked down to 12 minutes. I’ll just hop on the internet and e-mail the file to myself. But there was no internet access, either.

Now I was getting frantic. I tried a few tricks — restart Windows Explorer. 10 minutes. Do an ipconfig/release and renew. 9 minutes. Remap the network drive. 8 minutes.

No problem, I thought. I’ll just get a thumb drive and pop the file on there. Should have thought of that to begin with. I looked in my bag — no thumb drive. 6 minutes. Searched the house and came up with one in my husband’s bag. 4 minutes. Attached it, and nothing happened. The thumb drive could not find the correct drivers.

As the clock ticked down, I was nearly renting my garments in frustration. I was literally sitting in the middle of seven computers, but the one file I needed was stuck on the one that was going to go dark in minutes. It was terribly dramatic, like “24″ meets Office Space. (”If this battery goes dead, Jack, you know what that means.” “We can’t have the meeting without the TPS report, Tony.”) In a last-ditch effort, at Husband’s suggestion, I cycled the power on the wireless modem, and everything sprang back to life. I e-mailed the file with less than one minute on the clock.

The runaway. I took Dog and Aitch for a walk around a nearby lake. At one point, the path around the lake is raised and drops off quite steeply a good distance to the water. Aitch and Dog were running along the path, and I was pushing the empty stroller. The stroller is a brand-new marvel of engineering that looks like a single carriage but allows you to add a seat to stack two children vertically without expanding the stroller’s footprint.

Aitch was jumping in puddles, which I generally allow him to do, but I saw him run toward a deep one and made a move to head him off. When I turned around the stroller was rolling gently across the (perfectly flat) path toward the edge of the embankment. Then my brand-spanking-new so-expensive-that-it-must-last-until-the-next-baby-is-grown stroller took a suicidal plunge about fifteen feet straight down. I was horrified. It reminded me of the time my dad forgot to set the parking brake on my Triumph Spitfire and it crashed into the shed. The stroller, though, cost several times as much as the Spitfire (which my dad practically bought as spare parts, but still).

I told Aitch to wait for me, but Dog of course followed me right down the hill. I was afraid that Aitch would follow Dog, so I told Dog to “Sit,” a command Aitch promptly followed as well. I then scrambled down the hill, righted the stroller, retrived the bag with the Epipen from the basket so it wouldn’t fall out, and then dragged it straight up the embankment, scrambling on my hand and knees for the last few feet. The stroller and I were covered with dirt, but otherwise no damage.

The emergency room. Dog woke up at 3:00 a.m. on Sunday scratching madly and soon developed hives all over his body, but particularly on his head, which made him look like an extra from Star Trek. We gave him some children’s Benadryl by mixing it with some soup. I called the emergency vet for further advice, and she (strongly) suggested we bring him in. Feeling guilty (because I was not about to drive the dog to the emergency vet 30 miles away at 3:00 a.m. unless he were in immediate danger of expiring), I sat up with Dog for several hours to make sure the symptoms didn’t worsen. By morning he still had a few hives so, feeling guiltier, I insisted we drive him to the emergency vet. Two hours and one moderate vet bill later, we left with the advice to give Dog more Benadryl.

The bloodbath. Husband kindly took Aitch for a walk so I could catch up on my sleep. On the boardwalk, Aitch took a tumble into a piling that left him with a nasty nosebleed, his first ever. On the way home, another bodily fluid leak led Husband to the realization that we had neglected to change poor Aitch for going on six hours.

The townies. Two sets of neighbors are arguing over some proposed development in the ‘hood. One side is for it because the developer has promised them a few perks in exchange for their support. The other neighbors are against it because the nothing has changed on this street for thirty years, dadgum it, so why start now? Each side is very eager to enlist our support, which means they often buttonhole us in the driveway and give us way too much detail about zoning commissions and planning boards and also some of their personal history while they’re at it. We’re nominally in favor of the development but really just wish they would leave us alone.

You’ll get an idea of the level of interest involved when I say that this weekend, one of the “pro” neighbors called me from the psych ward of the local hospital, to which she had just been committed, to badger me about the latest zoning board contretemps. Oh, yes, and to ask me to bring her her eyeglasses, which I did, and a grande decaf latte from Starbucks, which I politely declined to do.

I felt like kind of a heel, but really — is asking a near-stranger to deliver your coffee order to the hospital a symptom of mental illness, or just impressive audacity? I decided it really doesn’t matter. In either case, this waitress already handles a permanent table of one who’s always bellowing for his sippy cup, and I’m not taking on another customer.

How unfeeling am I? No, really, I want to know.

On Wednesday night, to celebrate Husband’s birthday, we took Aitch out to a relatively fancy restaurant. Believe me, we’re not the kind of people who don’t know that it’s uncool to subject fine diners to our screaming toddler, but there were mitigating circumstances. It was a special occasion, we couldn’t get a sitter, and it was too hot to cook in our kitchen. We originally planned to sit on the patio, isolated from the main event, but when we got to the restaurant it was SO hot, and the dining room was SO cool, not to mention SO empty, and the wait staff was SO gracious, and there was even another family with a two-year-old there….SO….

We were SO sorry.

Aitch began indulging in as manic a fit as I have ever witnessed. Jumping up and down on the banquette, licking the salt shaker, running around the dining room, banging the plates, scraping the silverware on the wall. It wasn’t that he did anything particularly heinous, just that he did a million annoying things at warp speed. To distract ourselves from the carnage, Husband and I wearily analyzed our different approaches to discipline. I believe that Aitch does best with a lot of structure, with clear expectations for his behavior (translation: I wanted to strap him tightly in the high chair and remove all breakable objects from the table). Husband believes in imposing limits as the need for them arises: for example, Aitch is free to play with a glass until he spills it, or is allowed to get down from the table until he runs away. By the time the appetizers came, though, we were both revising our preferred approaches to incorporate the concept of “cattle prod.”

Just as our entrees were being served, and we were contemplating asking for them “to go,” a jazz quartet that was setting up in the corner began its sound check. The bass gave a few thump, thump thumps. Suddenly, Aitch’s head swiveled (not 360 degrees; it just seemed that way) in the direction of the band. He stopped moving, grabbing, flailing. He quieted. He listened. The band started up and he stared, mesmerized. When he finally snapped out of it, he turned his attention to the plate of food he had been playing with and began to eat. It was like the music cleared a mental space for him to organize his thoughts.

When we finished eating, we let Aitch get close to the musicians. He danced, arms outstretched, head tilted up, happy happy Snoopy feet, until we dragged him away. We didn’t have the heart to tell him that wild dancing is not the usual way jazz is enjoyed. We’ll wait until he’s old enough to sport a beret and smoke clove cigarettes.

Two politically astute fellow Port City residents (hi guys!), noting my interest in the mayoral race, forwarded me a newsletter from candidate Stephen R. Cole (the previously-reported “handwritten newsletter”; turns out it is not handwritten, but certainly hand-assembled.) I’m no longer anonymizing him because 1. he asked for it, and 2. a Google search of his name, the city’s name, and “mayor” turns up precious little, and I thought he could use the traction.

The front of the newsletter contains a photo of said candidate standing next to an actor dressed up as Ben Franklin, with the caption, “Stephen R. Cole and Benjamin Franklin in front of Faneuil Hall, Boston, MA. We were both born on January 17 and we are both Capricorn’s [sic]. See Character and Personality on Page 2.”

What is this, a horoscope? And what’s with the superfluous apostrophe? Why is this so hard, Port City? Do we not teach this in our charming if somewhat run-down sweet little brick elementary schools?

Page 2 expands upon the Capricorn theme: “Why am I a candidate for Mayor? My character and personality as a Capricorn is [sic!] ruled by discipline, structure, and philosophy of work hard, stick to it and you will rise to the top.”

I guess they don’t teach subject/verb agreement or parallel construction, either.

“Capricorn derives great security from the continuance of projects. The goat is often a history buff and loves antiques and old buildings.”

Is he running for Mayor, or for Student Council president at New Age High?

“Think of what the antique historic buildings of down town [sic!] will look like with a four-story concrete garage towering over the middle of our precious old colonial brick buildings!”

Towering over the middle of buildings in old down town? I’m dizzy just thinking about it. But then I’m also a Capricorn, and the goat is often fond of clear writing and proper spelling.

“Most all problem solving may be worked out with sound logical common sense.”

Most all, sure. But some problem solving may be worked out with giddy flights of fancy, obviously.

“I would appreciate your vote on September 20, 2005.”

I’m actually considering it. I hear Moak is a Scorpio, and you know how they are.

Port City is having yet another mayoral race. For the life of me, I can’t understand why we elect a mayor every two years, while a city like Chicago seems to have a Mayor for Life. At any rate, here is one of our front runners:

This moke, as I’ve mentioned before, is the city clerk who handled my complaint about the lack of punctuation on Aitch’s birth certificate with such aplomb. Yet, he seems to be a local favorite. I voiced my concerns to a group of friends during a political discussion over dinner last night.

“If he gets elected, Port City will become an apostrophe-free zone!” I implored.

“You know, Denise,” one of my friends said, “in the scheme of things that’s…”

“An extremely important and compelling issue? A good reason to campaign against him?”

“Not that big of a deal,” she finished. “Anyway, one of the other candidates has been circulating a handwritten newsletter. Have you seen this thing?” [Husband: “Was it mimeographed, too?”]

Hmm. A mayor who doesn’t know how to use a computer properly, or a mayor who can’t use the computer at all?

I don’t know. If Moak couldn’t handle a simple complaint about apostrophes without pissing me off, how’s he going to handle the really thorny issues, like the Million Dog March or a sex scandal?

I’ll bet Jogging Jesus would make a terrific mayor.

Today, I decided to take Aitch to the beach as a little reward for both of us. For me, a maiden run with the new jogging stroller, followed by play-time in the sand for Aitch.

On the turnpike on the way to the island, just beyond the abandoned cabin with the “No Evacuation Possible” banner and “Got KI?” notice, there was an electronic sign with scrolling text. Imagine the little frisson of excitement when I caught sight of this announcement:

“Shark alert!”

I slowed down to see the next text stream, eager for clarification.

“Construction on Northern Boulevard September 9 … “

Not very helpful.

The wildlife refuge had a bit more information: “Sharks spotted between Lot 1 and Lot 3 beaches today.”

I approached the Lot 3 beach expecting a scene out of Jaws, with all the townspeople gathered around debating the economic ramifications of closing the beaches and preparing their fishing boats for a little shark hunting. Instead I found a calm, virtually deserted beach with nary a specimen of fauna in sight.

Then a fellow beachgoer told me, “Someone thought they spotted a bunch of basking sharks, but we haven’t seen anything.” Apparently basking sharks are impressive-looking, but hardly blood-thirsty man-eaters, which would explain the mild response.

What does it say about your state of mind when you’re slightly disappointed that your beautiful day at the beach was not enlivened by a vicious shark attack? Is this what the Germans would call Sharkenfreude?

I have been taking advantage of the gorgeous weather this weekend to go kayaking with Dog. At one time, when I first bought the kayak, I had envisioned Dog sitting in the cockpit or even on the bow as we paddled calmly through the waters. Then Dog grew to Clifford the Big Red Vizsla proportions, but I figured out a way to include him on kayaking trips anyway. I paddle close to shore and he runs around the path, wades along the edge, or sometimes (when the brush is too thick or the water too deep, or when he just feels like being next to me) he swims alongside the boat.

Dog loves the water and the woods that surround it. He likes to swim to cool off, but really adores frog-hunting in the tall grass and lily pads. He’s so obviously happy. His tail wags, his step is lively, and his little doggie face is animated. It’s such a joy to share something I love so much with him, and to give him such a happy morning while simultaneously getting to enjoy the fresh air and the beautiful scenery myself.

It took us a little while to get into the groove. At first, I couldn’t paddle more than a few yards offshore without Dog swimming out after me, usually directly into the path of the boat. Vizslas are “Velcro dogs”; they like to be close to their humans. When he was a puppy, he used to sit at my feet as I washed dishes, and would get up and move when I moved the three feet to the cabinet to put them away. I was a bit afraid when we started kayaking “together” that Dog would stick so closely to me that he would swim to exhaustion. Now he’s more comfortable on the shore while I’m on the water, but I still have to shout reassurance to him: “It’s okay! I’m not going anywhere! Go take a rest!”

Of all the heartbreaking coverage coming out of New Orleans and environs this week, a report of refugees’ being forced to leave their pets behind, and the Humane Society’s efforts to rescue them and locate their owners, struck a very personal chord. One can certainly see how limited resources would need to be applied toward relieving human suffering, but it seems horrible to deprive people who have lost homes, friends, and family of their pets as well. A pet can provide great comfort at a time of loss — sometimes, better than another human can. Unfortunately, even those few people who managed to rescue their pets will probably need to place them with other families during the upcoming months. A refugee (terrible-sounding word) living in borrowed or shared accommodations will not have the luxury of keeping a pet, or indeed of making most of the personal, mundane decisions that are your right when the space you occupy is your own.

I know this picture will not shock anyone who has not been living in a cave the past week. I wanted to record it for posterity, though.

My tank was nearly on E this morning as I got in the car and noticed this price at the station across the street. Historically, gas prices in the next town over have always been three or four cents lower than Port City, and since I was headed across the river anyway I decided to try my luck with the reserve fuel and see if I could do better than $3.14. So off I went, over the river and through the woods, to the El Cheapo station.

$3.41!!!

I proceeded to my destination and decided to take another route home past additional gas stations to see if I could at least get better than $3.41. I passed $3.26, another $3.19, and yet another $3.41 before doubling back to $3.19 — amazingly, at a self-serve station where the attendant also gave me a treat for the dog. This kindness did not go unnoticed by Aitch, who repeated, “Treat? Treat?” wondering why he had been overlooked.

I basked in the satisfaction of getting gas an entire $0.27 a gallon cheaper than the gouging price, thus saving an entire $4.86 —from which you should subtract, I suppose, the gas spent driving around to find a price $.05 more than I could have gotten on my own block.

My hope is that, some day, with an aggressive program of conservation, exploration of alternative energy sources, and reduction of dependence on foreign oil, the price will recede to the point where I will be astonished to look back at this blog and say, “Wow, remember when the price of gas went all the way up to $3.41?”

I hope the floodwaters recede more quickly than the gas prices.