As I was trying on bathing suits this weekend I wondered how I could have possibly packed on two inches onto my waist and hips in just a matter of a year? Married life, no matter how you slice it is fattening.
Now I have to figure out a way back to size 8 and that involves sacrificing weekend mornings of lounging for the Lord with my sweetie and getting my butt on the bike in spin class and outdoor rides.
Whatyagonnado? Whoa is me.
It feels like it’s raining all over the world. I’d like to know why our Saks Fifth Avenue is carrying clothes that I would no more put on my back than a monkey suit – just who are they catering to? And who designed Banana Republic’s clothes this season – BLECH – double BLECH. Even BCBG – yuck. And forget about Ann Taylor that I think nose dived into a Brooks Brother catalog gone bad. Is there anything nice out there?
Sometimes you just have to get out of the house and be with your friends. A good friend started the roll yesterday afternoon when she text “G-spot at Ruby Fruit?” and suddenly everyone was making a plan. We met at Tonique on Rampart Street – the no name bar that used to have the asshole bartender – the good news: a new bartender and some funked up music and as usual, a great cocktail. From there we headed to Ruby Fruit Jungle, the revived lesbian bar now on Decatur where Girlspot was holding its monthly outing.
We danced to what we could as the DJ seemed more interested in playing her cool, unknown music than anything we wanted to dance to, but after as much coercing as possible, we gave up and just moved to whatever we could. I plan to make a CD of dance music and just bring it with me from now on. Who doesn’t have VALERIE on their playlist?
Meanwhile, it rained on the parades – St. Patty’s and St. Joseph’s – but I think a good time was had by all despite the weather.
When my friend’s daughter was dying of a brain tumor and she was overwhelmed and asked me how she was going to get through it, I told her a band of angels will help you to the other side. And so they appeared – one by one, in droves, groups – her inlaws moved in, her parents backed up the other kids, her friends spent the night at the hospital holding her daughter and then came to hold her as she died at home. How do you get through these types of challenges in life – with a little help from your friends and even people you don’t know yet – so let’s just call them angels, despite the sappy sound of that nickname.
When we discovered Wolfie on the side of the road and were preparing our home for a baby but found out Wolfie needed a lot of TLC plus some months of heart worm treatment, we were a little overwhelmed – but in swooped a merry band of dog angels with options. Right now, we are caring for Wolfie in our home, while she is being treated by Lakeside Vet and Toby both working under the auspices of the German Shepherd rescue organization. Toby has rescued over 500 Shepherds!
NOW this morning, we woke up and talked about what our next step is with adopting a child – we’re both UBER ready but right now disheartened. Then I came upstairs and saw an email from a woman who read my blog about Wolfie and responded, and then who read my blog about our failed adoption and points us in a potential new direction. She was an “unadoptable” child and the organization she referred us to is the one founded by the man who started Wendy’s, R. David Thomas.
When I was a young woman, I wrote R. David Thomas because I was fascinated at how he opened a fast food burger joint against competitors like Burger King and McDonald’s. I asked him, what made you do it? He responded with a thoughtful letter that even his wife thought he was crazy, but it was what he wanted to do. After years of covering media, I have never come across a marketer the likes of R. David Thomas, who was the face of Wendy’s and whose charm and smile were sorely missed when he passed.
Who knows where this journey is going to lead. An attorney specializing in international adoption left us with this thought, “I know this for sure, if you want a child, you are going to find one.”
We took a break from the malaise and went with friends to eat at Herbsaint – always delicious – and then walked right next door to Le Chat Noir to see The Ball and All. It was fun – campy and totally inside New Orleans – but it was good to laugh and be distracted. The show ends soon, so get your tickets now.
Do you think he’s happy?
Now that the bookshelves and bedside and coffee tables are littered with books with titles such as Transracial Adoption, It’s all good hair, The Baby Whisperer, Happy Baby, as well as folktales of African American lore – do we begin again to buy books about Bulgarian Gypsies? Or maybe just books about other people who want a child and can’t have one?
I’ve run out of steam riding this wave and now that I’ve crashed into the surf, the energy to get back on the board is daunting. But more books – please – we don’t have room for another shelf full of voices telling us this, that, and nothing.
You know the old saying that they say about relationships, you find one when you are not looking for it anymore. Does the same saying apply to children? Hard to think that way, but a neighbor stopped by with her child wrapped to her chest and said about the recent loss that maybe it wasn’t the right time, and maybe we need to quit focusing on it right now and instead to immerse ourselves in babyland as in walking over to the Cabrini playground and hanging out with the new moms and their babies on Saturday mornings.
I know she has something to tell me – but for me, strolling over the park to watch new mothers with their babies might be just a little bit much right now. I already did this enough when I was trying to get pregnant myself and kept losing every baby in the first trimester – I watched ALL of my friends get pregnant and join mom’s groups. You know, honestly, it wasn’t fun, it wasn’t zen, it just kind of sucked.
I had lunch with my friend who lost her two year old daughter last year to a brain tumor. It’s hard to be happy about anything, she said. Yeah, you’re right, I responded. But the good news is that we both get up in the morning and carry on. You just do what you got to do – as sucky as it may be.
I told her the big picture was eluding me – how all my exes have children – and all of them a) didn’t want children, and b) were pivotal in my not having any – it seems, uh, unfair. She said it was hard to believe that there are so many children in the world who are unwanted; it seems odd that we have so much to offer and keep arriving at dead ends. I told her just what I told my neighbor earlier and what I told T yesterday: yeah, but we’re this close.
It’s sordid and sick, you know, the whole business of wanting. A mother wanting her dead child when she has two beautiful ones in front of her. My wanting to adopt a baby when that involves someone giving up one.
Wanting carries a language all to itself.
Okay the range of emotions goes like this:
Friday – uncertainty
Saturday and Sunday – melancholy
Monday – depressed
Tuesday – unbearable sadness
Wednesday – getting better – go forward
Thursday – PISSED OFF
Who FUCKING GIVES THEIR BABY TO A DRUG ADDICT?
Why CAN’T GAY COUPLES ADOPT?
When WAS IT DECIDED THAT 50 IS TOO OLD TO BE A PARENT?
Fuck everyone and the horse they rode in on.
I looked at the calendar this morning and was shocked to see it is the middle of March. Good god the earth is spinning way too fast for my sentiment. I spoke to a source in NY who said to me between the evil weather and Wall Street, the malaise there is so thick you could cut it with a knife. Here, we had a nip in the air, a vestige of winter, if you could call what we had winter.
Meanwhile, I walked through the park this morning, with a light jacket, and thought about the pelicans leaving soon and about gearing up my energies to pursue another adoption as well as a myriad of other things that were floating in the ether of my mind.
I’m caught in that sort of thinking where I think I know what is going on but I keep asking myself do I really? I feel sometimes as if emotion drives me forward, then intellect, then herd mentality, then isolationist instinct, then people push me and then I push against them, and I somehow don’t understand if I know more than the others, or if they know more than me, or is it that none of us knows jack shit?
I can’t exactly put this in words – but I feel as if I am straddling either total understanding, maybe even enlightenment and absolute ignorance.
And yet what I’m seeking is nirvana.