Quote of the Day

"Mom, do they speak Finnish in Fitaly?"

Rehearsal Love

     

WARNING!!  This is not visually appealing at all.  My camera was sitting on top of the piano and facing the wall for four minutes. 

This is a recording of Todd and me rehearsing for a duet we have to sing Saturday evening.  It is not great.  We screw up notes and words and me playing the piano while singing typically leads to sad noises.  (Happily we will have an accompanist who actually can play the piano.)  

The reason I am posting this is because listening to it makes me happy.  Hearing Todd's lovely singing voice makes me fall in love with him a little bit all over again.  The first time he and I sang together, I was four and he was five.  All these years later I still haven't tired of singing with him.  Even more than that, I love that while rehearsing we are silly.  We laugh and joke and sing.

When I listened to this again today, I thought, "If Todd were suddenly gone one day, this is what I would remember.  How I felt doing this.  How I always feel doing this."

While this is no treat for your eyes, to my ears at least it sounds like love.

Vote!

Nathaniel and I went downtown this morning to vote early.  We stood in line for an hour, but the mood was festive.  Nathaniel was pretty thrilled that there was a concession stand and even scored a bag of popcorn to munch on while standing in line.  

This was the first time in a really long time that I had to fill out a paper ballot.  In my town, we have machines. The last three years they've been the touchscreen ones.  I like those.  Apparently, the city isn't there yet.

Todd and I are a political house divided, but we navigate our differences just fine.  The children, however, side with me politically.  Probably because they are around me more.  Nathaniel and I had this conversation as I was filling out my ballot.

N: Mom, did you vote for Barack Obama?

Me: Yes, honey.

N: Then why are you still doing this?

Me: Because I have to vote for other people too, and the issues.

N: But you voted for Barack?

Me: Yes.  Shh.

N: You're sure?

Me: Yes.  Shh.

N: Is everybody else voting for him?

Me: I don't know.  Shh.

N: You're sure you filled in the oval next to his name and you didn't accidentally fill in the one next to McCain's?

Me: YES!  SHHHHHHH.

N: I'm bored.  Can we go now since you already voted for Barack?

On the way out, Nathaniel beguiled the news people and gave a little report about how l-o-n-g it took to vote.  Thank you Mr. Cameraman and Mr. Reporter.  I don't usually watch the news, but I'll tune into yours once or twice during sweeps just to say "thanks".
Tip: if you plan on spending an hour in line with a six year old, don't forget the Gameboy.  It was far more pleasant this way than it would have been otherwise.

Question:  Why do we elect county coroners?  Can there really be more than one person who wants that job?  And how could politics get in the way?  Does a Republican coroner do things differently than a Democrat coroner?  Why don't they ever have a county coroner's debate?  I can guarantee that I would listen to that one!

Signs

I feel like I need a virtual support group. I am a reformed sign stealer. Like a former alcoholic in a bar,  I no longer steal signs but my fingers get itchy whenever I'm around a particularly clever one.

I was a sign stealer with standards. I never took anything that would compromise the safety of others. But sometimes there are signs which are just silly...or conveniently knocked over on the ground, or irresistible. Like this one:

I have a similar one that I took from the pavilion of a park which shall not be named in a state that won't be named either because I have relatives in law enforcement in that same state...and town. I was 16. It still hangs as decoration in my basement. In college it was the main picture in the living room of one of my apartments.

We are about to travel for two days on the highway. This is bad. Every time I go on a road trip I get itchy fingers and begin jonesing for this sign:

I always hope that there will be one knocked to the ground, but there never is. A girl can hope, right? Oh, big white question mark, someday you will be mine!!

I was better behaved when I was in England for a visit during college. There were great signs there that would have looked excellent at my place, but I was VERY certain that I wouldn't get them passed the customs agents. They're grouchy like that. But look how irresistible this one is! I had to content myself with taking a picture.

I really enjoyed this one in San Francisco, but it was too big to carry back on the plane. Oh. And I guess that would violate those standards of mine. Hm. I wonder if they make tourist versions that could be purchased in the airport gift shop...

Here's another one I really enjoyed, and it was these signs and others like them that started the whole "People Die Here" thing. I'm not sure if taking these goes against my standards or not. Isn't it self evident that you could fall off if you are climbing around on a steep cliff? I don't know that a sign is really necessary for that. Hm. I'll have to think about that one some more.

You may be asking yourself "Why is Emilia telling me about this bizarre compulsion of hers?"

Well, I will tell you why I'm telling you.

I walk around my neighborhood in the mornings. There are no street lights in my neighborhood, so at 6:30 am it is still very dark. (We're also on the very western edge of eastern time zone which makes it darker later in the morning.) Last week while walking, I had to really fight the urge to steal all the political signs off of everybody's yards. I was particularly tempted to take the ones of the party I'm not voting for. When I say tempted, I mean really Tempted. With a capital "T".



And that's what ultimately kept me from doing it. Not that I could be arrested. Not that it would have been stealing and therefore wrong. But that it didn't seem fair to steal the signs of only one party. Apparently, one of my sign stealing standards also involves equal opportunity practices.

Personal ethics are a real pain sometimes.

But in case it ever gets to be too much, I may need to reach out to a lifeline. Any volunteers to talk me off my neighbor's yards at 6:30am?!!

Anybody...?

Fine.

What the Heck We Were Thinking

I am one of four children.  All of us were adopted.  Todd is from a family in which three of the six kids were adopted.  It seemed very natural to say that we would one day adopt.  

When I realized I was pregnant on our six month anniversary of marriage, I was stunned.  Mostly because everyone is sort of stunned that first time, but also because I had no idea pregnancy could be that easy.  We weren't even trying.  But the month before we had stopped trying not to, so it shouldn't have been that unexpected.  Seriously, though, I had grown up hearing stories of years and years of trying without success, so I assumed that would be us, too.

Apparently not.

When Benjamin was a toddler and I was pregnant with Nathaniel, I saw signs on the New Jersey Turnpike asking for people to volunteer to be foster parents.  I mentioned them to Todd and he said, "Not yet.  Now is not the time."

The same thing happened in between Nathaniel and Caleb.  And again Todd said, "Not yet."

After Caleb was born, nobody who lives with me wanted me to be pregnant ever again.  (I know it's shocking, but I'm not very pleasant while pregnant.)

Todd and I both heard a few news stories on NPR at different times highlighting the difficulties of getting adopted as an older child.  We knew that we didn't need to adopt a baby.  We had been there and done that, and everybody wants to adopt babies.  We wanted an older child, but one that would be enough older than Benjamin that the natural birth order of our kids wouldn't be upset.  So we started looking into what we needed to do to be able to adopt a teenager.

I love the teen years.  They are turbulent and tumultuous.  They are ridiculoulsy hard and really wonderful.  There is so much possibility and experimentation.  It's a great time to figure out how to start as a little kid and end up as a fledgling adult.  

I had a great time teaching middle school students way back when I was still teaching school, and my favorite part of seminary was being able to start my morning off with a bunch of kids whom I both loved and wanted to shake some sense into.  Sometimes all at once.

Our prayers in the last couple of years have included a lot of, "Please let us know if we are doing something completely insane here."  But mostly we feel absurdly calm about the whole thing.  Even when we realize that we are about to have to face driving, dating, and college about ten years before we were initially planning on addressing such things.

There was another element to all of this.  About three years ago, Todd looked at each other and said, "Now what?"  We had three beautiful boys.  Todd had a well paying job that he enjoyed.  We had a nice house in a great neighborhood.  So what was next?  This question led to lots of other questions.  Go back to school?  Career change?  Move? Baby?  After a few months of contemplating what was next, Todd finally said, "It's time."

And so, the ultimate answer of "What the heck you were you thinking adopting a sixteen year old?" is:

Because we want to and we can. 

And we've been given the go-ahead to do something that on paper seems utterly absurd.  We've been subtley preparing for this for our entire lives.  And this time our desires and the Lord's timetable seem to be in synch. 

 

  

Harvesting

This was the last of the bounty from my garden for the season.  I had no idea that Italian Parsley was so wonderfully hardy!  Since I always need it for my enormous batches of tomato sauce, I grew some this year.  It was so prolific throughout the entire growing season, that I think I'm set until next year!  I love not having to try to find fresh herbs at the grocery store in the middle of winter.

I harvested some broccoli the other day, but didn't take a picture, because I managed to completely cover myself and the kitchen in dirt during the experience.

And then there are my green tomatoes.  Last year I had so many I made pickled green tomatoes which was one of my favorite things to eat when I worked at the Princetonian Diner in college.  The ones I made were considerably spicier, and it has taken me most of this year to come up with things to do with them.  They are great tossed into guacamole, like you would a tomatillo.  And they are also yummy as a fried green tomato. 

With this year's crop, I'm skipping the pickling and just going straight for the fried.  It's so rare that I fry things that this is a special treat...which probably nobody in my family will actually eat.

Any other great green tomato recipes out there?

Back to the Cleaning

I've decided that a week is more than enough time to walk around in a shell-schocked stupor of a new calling and a new kid, and it's time to get back to the cleaning/nesting thing.  

Today's projects will be cleaning the bathrooms, hallway, and stairs again.  And baking up the pumpkins and squash I received from our CSA so I can freeze them for future Thanksgivingy use.   The outlet covers and switch plates are still not painted and TODAY is the day.

Later this week, watch for the "What the heck we were thinking when we decided to adopt a teenager" post.  I've had so many people ask me that, that I figure next time I can just give them the blog address and be done with it.  ;)