chez-french.net

meet Peter Puck

meghann@chez-french.net — 2008-04-17T01:45:40-04:00

No, not that Peter Puck. This one: I've been meaning to introduce him for a while but didn't get around to moving the pictures from my camera to my computer until tonight. We brought him home from the city animal shelter nearly a month ago and he & Sydney have been conspiring together to drive me out of my mind ever since. When he's not eating my spider plant or trying to jump through random walls, he's the sweetest kitten you'll ever meet.

this group is amazing

meghann@chez-french.net — 2008-02-15T16:52:50-05:00

Improv Everywhere has been around since 2001, causing "scenes of chaos and joy in public places." I check out their Web site every once in a while, but I did not see this one until a friend sent it to me. It's fantastic...

G's company perks

meghann@chez-french.net — 2008-01-14T16:47:33-05:00

Every once in a while G comes home from work with little freebies from the companies he deals with at work. Sadly, none of these has ever been an all-expenses-paid trip to Europe for a month or a big fat cash bonus of any sort, but every once in a while it is something that makes us giggle. This is one of those. It comes to us from a large printing company that G used to deal with before he moved into his current job & that his company still works with. Coincidentally, my father worked for one of its print shops once upon a time. We took these pictures because we thought he'd get a kick out of them, but I just looked at them again & they made me laugh so hard the dog thinks I've gone nuts. The front? Eh, just one of those cheesy corporate safety slogans. But the back... Seriously, if you're working at a shop with equipment that could potentially rip your arm off, you shouldn't need to be told not to reach into it while it's running. Just sayin'.

Christmas cactus

meghann@chez-french.net — 2007-12-04T12:45:12-05:00

(null)

there will be coffee and cookies in the Gandhi Room after the revolution

meghann@chez-french.net — 2007-09-14T11:07:34-04:00

My Unitarian Jihad Name is Sister Gatling Gun of Looking at All Sides of the Question. Get yours.

a kleenex moment

meghann@chez-french.net — 2007-08-24T16:38:00-04:00

A dear friend of mine - a mother through adoption - sent me the link to this. I'd never seen it before, and I was completely unfamiliar with the artist, but I thought it was really sweet & so I decided to share it. It might blow my tough, cynical rep, but I have to admit I cried watching it. (And because my tough-girl cred is at stake here... I'll note that I think Steven Curtis Chapman looks like the love child of Doogie Howser and William H. Macy. There. I was cynical. Better?)

do what now?

meghann@chez-french.net — 2007-07-29T21:02:04-04:00

Inspired, I think, by the book I recently worked on dealing with the sociological implications of Henry David Thoreau's works, I've been doing a lot of reading online...again...about voluntary simplicity. I already try to live that sort of life, to a large degree, but I figure I can always find inspiration & new ideas from looking at what other people are doing. And there's one thing I don't get: If the whole point is to leave a smaller footprint on the planet, to learn to live without being distracted by all the unnecessary crap that our consumer culture works so hard to convince us we absolutely need, to live more deliberately - why are so many voluntary simplicity sites trying to sell me something? Must I own my own copy of Your Money or Your Life and Voluntary Simplicity—or can I just borrow them from the library like I do all the other books I want to read? And do I really need a "Live Simply" T-shirt or coffee mug? Isn't that just more of the junk that I'm supposed to be trying to cull from my life?

some people are just jerks

meghann@chez-french.net — 2007-07-25T22:09:13-04:00

G and I walked up to Fowler's tonight to get ice cream. It was crowded when we got there, but the line moved quickly until the couple ahead of us took their turn. The guy ordered a cone, while the girl hemmed and hawed and eventually the two of them just turned around & left. While the girl behind the counter was making the guy's cone. Weirdest thing I've ever seen—G said he heard the girl say, "Come on; we're going somewhere else." Who the hell is that whipped that they'll leave while their ice cream cone is being made because the girl is apparently picky enough that the two dozen or so flavours they have at Fowler's just aren't doing it for her? But that's not even the truly jerky part of it. Right after the girl behind the counter threw out the cone—I almost asked what kind it was because I thought it was the same as I was going to order, so she wouldn't have had to throw it out, but I wasn't quick enough - she took the tub out of the freezer & flattened it. That asshole took the last two scoops of Blueberry Cheesecake & then left without even taking it... :/

I am easily amused...

meghann@chez-french.net — 2007-07-14T16:30:18-04:00

This cracked my shit up...

man, I love this guy...

meghann@chez-french.net — 2007-07-13T17:19:23-04:00

Which is probably a good thing, because we're going to be seeing a hell of a lot more of him in Sabreland this year. Assuming, of course, Darcy takes his thumb out of his ass long enough to get a deal done before arbitration. Or that his arbitration award isn't so ridiculously large that the team has no choice but to walk away from it (what with TV taking up a good chunk of the cap space & all...). I haven't written anything at all about the team lately, not because I haven't been paying attention but rather because I was gloriously out of town with no Internet access when the Shitstorm From Hell (aka Free Agency) started up. I did, however, have a clear cell connection, and G was kind enough to keep me apprised of the goings-on here. And my brother J was pleased to announce the Rangers' signing of Drury, and also had difficulty keeping the shit-eating grin off his face when he told me he was getting a new jersey this season. *le sigh* Someone sent me this video the night before Free Agency: I'm not ashamed to admit I got a little misty. But I can't say I'm not looking forward to seeing what these kids do next year. Not knowing what to expect certainly beats having sky-high expectations in a "just relax and enjoy the games" sort of way...

because I know you're dying to know...

meghann@chez-french.net — 2007-07-12T21:59:55-04:00

Much more relaxed than I was expecting - probably because we've both met Sue before, so it wasn't like we were baring our lives to a complete stranger. We talked about the sort of things we wrote in our autobiographies - our upbringing, our relationships with our parents & siblings, our education & work lives, our marriage, our parenting philosophies, our attitudes toward adoption & birth parents. Naturally, I met with Sue for about an hour & probably could have gone on & on for much longer but I tried really hard to let her direct the discussion - not my strong suit - so that we could cover everything she needed to. G was in with her for about a half hour - which also shouldn't surprise anyone who knows him. Timing the home visit for right after I returned from vacation was an unintended stroke of brilliance, because I didn't have enough time to get worked up about the condition of my house. So I put away some of the clutter, swept the floor, mopped the kitchen, and that was pretty much it. My friend Suz said that she couldn't imagine the number of immaculate homes social workers must see, and that made me laugh, because I was actually worried about cleaning too much - they must know that no one really lives in a spotlessly clean house, and I didn't want to pretend our house was a magazine showpiece. So despite G's objections, my bag stayed where it lives (on the chair in the front hall) and the magazines stayed on the coffee table. ...That made me laugh, because a grand total of four rooms in our house are what I would characterize as "beautiful"; one is on its way to becoming beautiful, and the rest look...well, like no one has done anything with them since before I was born. (This is because no one has, in fact, done anything with them since before I was born.) ...She asked us about our religious beliefs/philosophies, and a few other things that are escaping me right now because at the time she was asking them I was thinking, "Oh my god, when she sees the half-done upstairs she's going to laugh & tell us we're crazy for thinking a baby could ever live in a house like this." ...She didn't express any concerns with anything about the house, and I'm fairly certain the 406 million smoke detectors the Buffalo city electrical inspector made us put in every single room in the house when we re-did the kitchen were duly noted. She said it will take her a few weeks to write the homestudy, and that she'll call if she has any more questions as she's writing it.

clearly, I'm not dropping enough f-bombs

meghann@chez-french.net — 2007-07-12T21:42:20-04:00

Reading through my friend Matt's blog, I found a link to this site, which evidently assigns blogs a rating based on the words it finds. Here's the rating for my blog: Mingle² - Online Dating This was "based on the presence of the following words: punch (1x)." I LOL'd.

Apparently the rating system doesn't mind the words dammit, kick-ass, shit, and... I can't believe I've been blogging - albeit very sporadically - for nearly two years and haven't used the F-word even once yet. I must be losing my edge in my old age.

talk me down...

meghann@chez-french.net — 2007-07-11T10:08:38-04:00

...cross your fingers, wish me luck. Our home visit with Sue is tonight at 6. I've taken the day off so I can clean my house. Which, interestingly, is pretty clean because I've been away for nearly 2 weeks. I think George did some de-cluttering when I was away. I hope he didn't throw away anything important. I'm hoping I can settle down enough to actually get anything done. I haven't been nervous about anything - we already had our individual meetings with the social worker (which I *will* blog about at some point), and I wasn't nervous for that. But my stomach hasn't churned like this since the morning game 4 of the ECF. :/

meet sue...

meghann@chez-french.net — 2007-06-19T17:56:28-04:00

Well, that's not strictly true - we've met her before, at the homestudy classes we went to (Jesus on a bike we've been dragging our feet on this for a long time) last year. ...The way the homestudy works is that we each meet with her for an hour separately, and then on another day she comes to our house and meets with us both. I should probably be freaking out about the meeting at our house, but at least I have an excuse about the house being a disaster because of the whole "fixer-upper in the midst of being fixed up" thing. That should go a long way toward explaining why the "baby's room" has only half a floor right now. ...I'm worried about that first meeting, because by the time she gets to our house I'll know what to expect. I have no idea what she's going to ask me, or what I'm supposed to talk about. I'm worried about my propensity to - how do I put this delicately? - direct the conversation, when I imagine she's got specific things she'll want to cover and while I know I'm just a hoot to talk to, she probably will want to keep it to the hour she has scheduled for me. My meeting with her was originally scheduled for tomorrow evening, but she called yesterday to reschedule. George's is at 10AM on Sunday & I am now going at 11AM. The latest worry: Sue is going to spend three hours total with us & decide that nature got it right on this one. ... But it's hard, when you're having every single aspect of your existence scrutinised in an attempt to determine your fitness to parent - when you're being held to a higher standard than the general population in so many ways - to know where exactly that standard is. ...But worrying about it gives me something to do while I pass the time.

another small step...

meghann@chez-french.net — 2007-06-12T22:56:24-04:00

I'll be dropping it off - along with G's - at the agency tomorrow. I could make all sorts of excuses about why it took me so damn long to finish it - busy with work, busy with things around the house with G's recently hectic travel schedule, and a million other things - but they'd all be lies. The truth is, I've been worried about a million little things that have no bearing at all on what sort of parent I'll be, and my brain simply wouldn't let me string the words together until I'd gotten those things out of the way. None of those things has actually gone away, mind. Well, except that I did do a thorough spring housecleaning so that before our home visit I'll just have to do a "normal" cleaning. My house is still a living construction zone. Our washroom won't be finished any time soon (we've decided to put it off a while longer so that we're not drowning in debt when we do have a placement). The "baby's room" is almost finished, but it's going to be another month or so before it's actually done. I still have to pull together all the photos we need for our profile. But I've made peace with the fact that things aren't going to be "perfect." ... She told me the story of her child's birth, and her decision to place her with a couple - and how she chose the couple, which was probably the most important part of her story to me personally, because it made me understand that somewhere out there is someone who will think G and I are the "right" parents for her baby, and when that happens she won't care that my washroom isn't finished or that my house is a work in progress. She'll just care that we're the people she wants to be the parents of her baby. ...And I'm ready to go ahead with this.

spotted on a red Dodge Caravan from Ohio

meghann@chez-french.net — 2007-06-01T23:38:31-04:00

When Bush took office, gas was $1.46

I have no idea how accurate this is, but damn...

that's the spirit

meghann@chez-french.net — 2007-05-17T09:55:20-04:00

inside the Sabres locker room after game 2...

meghann@chez-french.net — 2007-05-13T00:58:12-04:00

I do. I really, really do.

meghann@chez-french.net — 2007-05-06T09:45:53-04:00

I've had no time to blog because I've been busy cleaning my house, working 238476234568971234 hours a day...and watching my President's Trophy–winning Buffalo Sabres play some playoff hockey. I wasn't impressed with their first series, or with the first four games of their second. But this? This is impressive. Whether it was a turning point or just a flukey flash of the sort of determination I fell in love with in this team last season remains to be seen, but damn if it wasn't the most amazing moment in a hockey game I've ever witnessed in person. I daresay the 18,690 in the building & the 4,000–5,000 or so watching on a big screen in the plaza felt pretty well the same way. A little background to this clip: The Sabres controlled the play for most of the game, but couldn't solve Lundqvist. The game was scoreless until about three and a half minutes left in the third period, when the Rangers got on the board. With 17 seconds left, the Rangers iced the puck & the faceoff came back to our offensive zone. Lindy called a timeout, and the entire building got to their feet & started cheering. Empty Sabres net, six skaters, and with 7.7 seconds on the clock...well, I'll let the clip tell the rest of the story. Suffice it to say, I sobbed like a little girl.

better days...

meghann@chez-french.net — 2007-04-15T15:31:00-04:00

Yeah, I'm a sap. But I had this song in my head for about a week before the regular season began in October. It just seemed fitting - the season was starting the day between my birthday & G's, and all I wanted this year was...just a chance. The Sabres apparently felt the same way about the song; they put together a video with this song as a backdrop that I think so perfectly captures the spirit of this city. I had chills & frankly got a little teary when they showed it in the arena before game 1 of the Conference Quarterfinals; I've watched it a million times, and it still gives me chills.

heaven is a better place today

meghann@chez-french.net — 2007-03-08T09:31:45-05:00

I had joined the Scouts because I thought you had to be a Scout in order to go to camp. I had absolutely no idea what camp entailed, but I knew that I wanted to go to camp. And the day finally arrived, and my parents dropped me off—and the realization hit that I was expected to spend two whole weeks without them for the very first time in my very young life…and I did not want to stay at camp. In my mind’s eye, I see Bernie’s kind face, and vaguely recall that she somehow—through some gesture, some word—made feel that it would be OK. I didn’t know her yet, but I knew at once that I didn’t want to let her down by not giving it a chance, and that with her there nothing bad could ever happen. By the time my parents came to get me, I never wanted to leave. ...I know my memory of Bernie is coloured by my age when I knew her and tempered by the distance in time between then and now, but I also know with utter certainty that my understanding of what it is to love unconditionally; my ability to believe in myself and in others, and in the magic and the beauty of what is inside of all of us; my sense of the importance of being a part of something that is bigger than myself, and in doing so leaving the world a little nicer place than I found it—all of this is shaped in no small measure by her presence in my life. Bernie is one of the first people I can remember who loved me just because I was me. Even as a child, I struggled to always live up to others’ (real or imagined) expectations, but for a few glorious summer weeks, I was free from every expectation except that I try to be the best “me” that I could be. No “could have” done better or “should have” done differently or “might have” been more successful if only… None of that: just a quiet understanding that, even if only for a little while, just being who I was, was…enough. I remember how a hug from Bernie made a small girl feel like the most special person in the world. Of course with the benefit of hindsight I realise I was no more special than any of the hundreds of other girls who came temporarily under her care. ...With Bernie, you simply were, and because you were, you were loved, and that was all there was to it.

don't mess around with Buffalo

meghann@chez-french.net — 2007-03-05T13:56:28-05:00

we'll punch you in the head... One of these days I will get around to writing about something that is actually happening in my life instead of just linking hockey-related things that catch my interest. But today is not that day...

it's trade deadline day!!

meghann@chez-french.net — 2007-02-27T12:55:20-05:00

It's the best day of the whole season. Like Christmas, and my birthday, and a bunch of other holidays all rolled into one. So far today Marty Biron is gone, Ty Conklin is in, and we're waiting to see what else is coming (because there's no way Darcy Regier thinks Ty Conklin improves this team). My giggle of the morning came, once again, from WGR's latest Real Men of Genius spoof...

MVP!

meghann@chez-french.net — 2007-01-25T22:12:36-05:00

Three All-Star starters, an All-Star coach, one player named to the Young Guns exhibition, and Rip Simonick as equipment manager for the Eastern Conference team. What a year! And even though the East wasn't able to pull out the victory, we still got the MVP! Beauty features about Daniel, Brian, Ryan, and Lindy on nhl.com. I'm so proud of all of them.

w00t! w00t!

meghann@chez-french.net — 2007-01-17T15:04:35-05:00

Got another e-mail from Michele - the state FedEx-ed the agency a buttload of fingerprinting cards. Which means we won't have to wait until god-knows-when for them to be able to fingerprint us. I just called the agency & made an appointment to get our prints done on Monday morning. This still creates a delay, but at least this way the clock starts right away - ten weeks for the prints to be processed, and then we're assigned a caseworker & start the homestudy meetings - versus waiting who knows how long for the agency to even be able to submit our prints. The delay seems more reasonable now that we have a good idea of how long it will be before our homestudy is finished.

well, dammit...

meghann@chez-french.net — 2007-01-16T14:22:01-05:00

Effective January 11, 2007, new State Legislation takes effect amending section 378-a of the Social Services Law to require all prospective foster and adoptive parent applicants and household members over the age of eighteen to submit fingerprints for a nationwide criminal history background check processed through the FBI. ...The agency has received a lengthy process we are required to follow for any of our home study clients that do not already have a certified home study BEFORE January 11, 2007. ...Anyone who has already been issued a home study draft or home study document; anyone who has already had all of their meetings with a home study worker that were conducted no later than January 10, 2007. Even if you have not received your final version of the home study as long as you have turned in all your home study paperwork and had all your meetings with your social worker prior to January 11, then it should not affect your study. ...Though you will have met with the social worker prior to the results being received, a completed home study can NOT be issued until the results of the nationwide criminal history check is received by the agency. ...* If you have not yet been assigned a home study worker: You will not be assigned a home study worker until the results of the nationwide criminal history background check is processed through the FBI and the results are received by Adoption STAR. ...We currently have fourteen cards and can only select by priority who will be fingerprinted immediately and those will be the clients who are currently matched with a pregnant woman and whose home study has not been finished or has expired or will be expiring prior to the birth of the baby. ... The State did remind us today that this is a process that will be easier in the next few months as eventually only one fingerprint card will (hopefully) be utilized for both the State and FBI prints, but at this time it will be a slow, manual process. ...The Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) has informed us that the process WILL be a lengthy process (for at least the next few months) for several reasons: The process conducted as of now is a manual process and may take longer than 10 weeks to receive results. ... It is therefore recommended that additional care be taken when fingerprinting applicants, but nonetheless you must be aware of the very real possibility that the cards may be rejected and new fingerprinting will be required and another 10 weeks may need to pass again waiting for the results. Another important point is that both the FBI cards and State cards must be submitted TOGETHER so any State cards still pending will no longer be processed as the January 11th date has arrived so all those applicants must be re-finger printed along with the FBI cards. ...In fact, I was unaware that the check we were having done was just for the state of New York; I assumed any criminal record one had anywhere would turn up on it, particularly when combined with the background check forms we had to fill out with every address either of us has had since we turned eighteen. ...But here's the shitty part: it takes more than ten weeks for the print results to come back—and that is after they've been sent out, and we will be a low priority to have them taken because we're not currently "waiting"—and since we haven't yet been assigned a social worker, our homestudy won't actually start until after our print results come back.

real men of genius

meghann@chez-french.net — 2007-01-16T10:05:15-05:00

WGR picks on my least-favourite guy at the arena: Mr. Yelling "Shoot" on the Powerplay Guy. Heh.

perhaps Fretalian

meghann@chez-french.net — 2007-01-11T17:03:03-05:00

I love YouTube. I love that I figured out how to embed YouTube videos in my blog. Also? I love this commercial... G says: "Latte is English? Since when...?" I told him I think it's one of them thar' furrin' words that have made their way into the lexicon.

parenting, worrying about parenting, and worrying about worrying about parenting

meghann@chez-french.net — 2007-01-11T10:11:14-05:00

Not about physically giving birth, of course, but about actually having a baby in our care that is our child. It seems more real these days - I can actually describe the baby's features, I know the child's gender, I know how it came to be in our care - unlike my earlier dreams in which I simply found myself caring for a child with no idea how it all came to be. ...We haven't finished our homestudy - we both have appointments this afternoon with our doctor, who has to fill out a form for each of us, and I'll bring this last bit of paperwork to the agency either tomorrow or Monday. ...Last night I dreamed that we had a baby, and that we went to visit my parents - and that we forgot to bring the baby & left her (it was a "her" in this dream) in Buffalo. Now, I know that it's very unlikely that even I would forget to bring my child along on a trip 400 miles from home. ...It's not like you can ask an elephant, "Did I turn the lights off before we left Burma? ...And I find myself wondering: Is it a first-time parent thing, is it an adoptive parent thing, or is it an ADD thing? Or maybe, by becoming a first-time adoptive parent with ADD, I will actually achieve a neurotic trifecta: worrying that because I don't know what I am doing, I will screw up; worrying that if I screw up, I will scar my child for life and eventually she will come to hate my guts and wish I'd never adopted her, and run off to be with her birth family, which is infinitely better than I am; and worrying that because the peculiar way my brain works makes it inevitable that I will screw up, this is all probably a very, very bad idea. G says he can picture me out & about with a baby, suddenly realising I've left something important - like the diaper bag - at home. I worry that I'm going to accidentally drive off with the infant carrier on top of the car, or trip going up the stairs holding the baby because I'm not paying attention to what I'm doing. Heather tells me that everything about the way you think changes when you become a parent - that you're more aware of what you're doing. ...Common sense tells me that if my father managed to get through all those years with infants & small children & never drive off without us or drop us on our heads, I'll probably be OK. And I think I know - logically, in that part of my brain that doesn't get much of a workout when I think about these things - that I will be OK.

ever wonder what an enforcer does with all his free time in the "New NHL"™?

meghann@chez-french.net — 2007-01-10T14:01:45-05:00

This made me laugh so hard I nearly pulled a muscle...

drool

meghann@chez-french.net — 2007-01-09T14:19:20-05:00

I am not a gadget person. I have never been a gadget person. That said, I cannot wait until June, when I can buy this...

what I did on my Christmas vacation...

meghann@chez-french.net — 2006-12-30T13:56:42-05:00

Yeah, I'm a dork. But I'm a dork with a kick-ass new scarf...

best. Christmas present. ever.

meghann@chez-french.net — 2006-12-19T08:46:06-05:00

I went to see Matt and Rhona last night - it's been ages since I've seen them & I had a souvenir from the National Zoo for Autumn that's been hanging out here, cowering in terror from the dog's advances, since November. And since I'm fully over whatever icky stomach bug I had last week, it seemed a good time to visit. ...I can't get over how big Autumn has gotten. She's all smiles & giggles, and her face lit up when she saw the red-eyed tree frog stuffed animal I brought. ... It was fun to see them, even though I didn't stay long because I knew they had to get Autumn bathed & put to bed. ...I felt bad, because I didn't get anything for anyone this year, outside our families. Christmas has kind of snuck up on me because of how busy we've been and all the things we have going on this year. But this is, hands down, the best Christmas present ever: Sabres in Traffic, a book of photos by Mark Dellas, who is the photographer who did what we affectionately refer to as the "GAP ad photos" of the Sabres that are hung all around the arena concourse. Rhona was certain I must already have it - she didn't write any message inside until after I opened it, just in case I had to return it - but I was totally unaware he'd done a book of photos. ...And of course I am completely in love with the amazing team we've had the privilege to watch for the last season and a half. ... Now I'm simply jealous that this guy has had the amazing vantage point he's had to photograph the team the way he has - in portrait and in action. ...Way better, I'd say, than a red-eyed tree frog stuffed animal. But I've got a whole year to come up with something equally amazing for them, for next Christmas.

HSBC Arena - 1, random car - 0

meghann@chez-french.net — 2006-12-14T09:13:45-05:00

Penalty to #HSBC, 2 minutes, interference. Penalty to #AVB-9767, 2 minutes, unsportsmanlike–driving. Apparently the driver blew the stop sign at the intersection of Washington & Perry. Still not sure how she managed to get her car up on top of the trash can like that.

...

meghann@chez-french.net — 2006-12-11T08:17:32-05:00

Things are not looking good for Laura Gainey, who was washed overboard the Picton Castle by a rogue wave on Friday night. Laura is the 25-year-old daughter of Habs GM Bob Gainey. She was not wearing survival gear when she went overboard, and as of this morning she's been in the water nearly 60 hours. I can't imagine what her father, her brother, and her sisters are going through right now. I don't want to imagine it; it's too horrible to contemplate. My heart goes out to them. Update: The US Coast Guard suspended its search for Laura at 6PM Monday.

WGR makes a funny

meghann@chez-french.net — 2006-12-01T10:06:05-05:00

Sabres Delight. Cracks my shit up. Seriously.

pong kicked my ass

meghann@chez-french.net — 2006-09-02T20:44:26-04:00

Feh.

hurricane remnants + wing festival = soggy wings

meghann@chez-french.net — 2006-09-02T09:56:36-04:00

It was windy. It was rainy. It was cold. And frankly, the tents didn't help much with any of it. But the wings were good, and we got to see a guy in a wedding dress be crowned Miss Buffalo Wing 2006. The weather's supposed to clear up overnight, so tomorrow the Wing Festival should be warmer & drier. Also more crowded, but escaping the crowd didn't quite work out the way we hoped today, anyway.

happy birthday, Karen

meghann@chez-french.net — 2006-08-30T08:47:32-04:00

Karen just stopped by on her way home from Nova Photo. She had a very eventful birthday. Luckily, she's fine.

well, he's half right, anyway...

meghann@chez-french.net — 2006-08-30T06:30:35-04:00

From today's Buffalo News: Rumsfeld likens critics to Nazi appeasers

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld compared critics of the Bush administration to those who sought to appease the Nazis before World War II, warning Tuesday that the United States is confronting "a new type of fascism."

Of course, I doubt somehow that he recognizes the irony involved in his characterization of Fearless Leader's opposition as representing "a new type of fascism"...

a little light reading

meghann@chez-french.net — 2006-08-29T22:42:07-04:00

If I weren't so lazy I'd take a picture of the "education manual" we got from the agency during our initial consultation yesterday - but that would require finding the camera, then uploading the picture to my computer, restarting the computer when it crashes, getting back online, finding the picture, and pasting it in here. ... So you'll just have to trust me when I say it's easily a full ream of paper, comb-bound with plastic covers & tabbed dividers that separate the information that will be used in each of the classes.

...We didn't really have any questions for her - I figured most of the questions we had must be addressed in the Adoption Bible she'd just handed me, and we'll have plenty of time over the next few months to ask any other ones we think of. We filled out and signed an agreement with the agency, releases allowing them to run our fingerprints, and forms affirming that, to the best of our knowledge, we have never been convicted of any crime. ...(For good measure, I'm going to provide my spreadsheet where I track my invoices as they go out & payment comes in; K didn't seem to know exactly what I needed to do to prove income as a self-employed person & that seems as good a method as any.) ...

We also have to fill out a form listing every address at which we've lived since age 18, so a complete background check can be run; a financial statement listing our income, savings, debts, etc. (this? ... We're going to be paying off the infertility treatment bills for quite some time, and I hope they don't hold that massive debt against us...); and a form listing three non-family and one family reference, with addresses and phone numbers, so the agency can send out confidential reference forms for them to fill out. We have to make appointments with our doctor for medical exams at which he will sign a form stating that as far as he can tell there's nothing physically or mentally wrong with either of us that should keep us from having a child placed with us.

...Then the caseworker will write up the homestudy, we'll get a copy of it to sign off on before it is filed, and that's that.

...The profile will contain our "Dear Birthmother" letter - which chafes right away because the women who read this letter will not be birthmothers yet and it seems really insensitive to use that term to address someone who hasn't even given birth yet, but I can't think of a better way to introduce it than the one that everyone else does - an "at a glance" page where the important information about us is condensed into a little chart, and seven double-sided pages of pictures, recent, with captions.

...I'm really not sure how to write a letter like that, and I hesitate to look at the letters other people have written because I don't want to follow a formula. I want who we are to come through; I want the woman who eventually chooses us to feel an affinity with who we are - to get a sense of Yes. This is them. And I'm not sure I can do that in a single page.

one small step

meghann@chez-french.net — 2006-08-23T00:33:51-04:00

Saturday, August 12: After months of hemming & hawing, we finally sent our registration in to the adoption agency we've decided to work with. We attended an information session there in January, and we've spent the last 8 months alternately talking about it and avoiding talking about it; reading everything we could get our hands on; and talking to people we know who either were adopted, adopted their children, or placed a child at some point. ... He still has reservations, but after talking to the woman who runs the homestudy classes at the agency we decided to sign up; apparently it's not uncommon for one partner to have reservations, and that partner is usually the husband. The homestudy classes deal with many of the issues G is still trying to wrap his head around, so we figure when the process is over we'll either be certain we're on the right path or we'll know for certain that the concerns G has are un-workable. We also wrote away for our birth certificates and our marriage certificate, which we'll need to submit as part of the homestudy; I'm not sure how long it will take for them to arrive, so it seemed like a good idea to write away for them now. ...Based on the date they received our application, we should be starting the homestudy classes in October, but there's a new opening in the August/September class session and they wanted to give us the opportunity to move the process up if we wanted to. We decided to stay with the October/November session because we've got a lot going on with the house right now - I'm going to have to "nest" in a huge way just to get this place livable before a baby enters the picture, and we've been going full-throttle for three weeks now - and we didn't want to have to switch gears so quickly. We'd also have to get into the office for our initial consultation before the classes begin on Tuesday, and G can't take a morning or afternoon off any time in the next little while - it's busy for him right now with file reviews, training, travel, and then trying to get his regular work done on top of it. ...She was very glad to hear we'd registered with an agency, and she told me she & her husband are working on their application for an agency where they live. ... We've been running on a somewhat parallel course with our attempts to start our respective families, and it's comforting to know we'll be going through this together, too. ...G e-mailed me his availability for the next month; he has about four open days the whole time but he's not available at all until next week. ...Which brings us to today, Tuesday, August 22: I've been e-mailing back & forth with my friend J, who adopted her daughter two and a half years ago. It's so funny e-mailing her; I'm very open with her about what I'm thinking, and in the back of my head I'm afraid she's going to say she thinks maybe I'm not cut out for it.

a whole new world of waiting

meghann@chez-french.net — 2006-07-28T01:43:39-04:00

"On pins and needles" takes on an entirely different meaning once you've given up trying to get pregnant. It was, I thought, a poignant yet clever heading with the requisite double meaning - on the one hand, the "pins and needles" attendant with the endless waiting and hoping; on the other, the quite literal needles jabbed daily into belly, thighs, and, of course, the "upper outer quadrant" of the backside, alternating cheeks morning and evening. We decided quite some time ago to forgo trying to get pregnant entirely. Dr S confirmed last September what my obsessive research had already concluded: IVF was not going to work, and our reasonable options were donor eggs and adoption. ...I didn't care as much as G about biological connection, so it seemed a no-brainer: G would have the biological connection, I'd have a gestational one, and all would be right with the world in nine months' time. Then I started to wonder what the odds were that yet another procedure would uncover yet another problem - and I started to wonder whether we were looking at the proper goal: Was the goal to get pregnant, or to become parents? G agreed to look into adoption before we decided to proceed with anything. If we were going to try DE, I needed to know beforehand whether a failure was the end of the line. So we went to an orientation session at a local agency, started doing research, borrowed books from some friends of ours who had adopted their children, and started talking to people involved with adoption on one side of it or another. And while we're still not 100% certain this is the detour we're meant to take, we're going ahead with the classes and the homestudy required to take it. We figure whatever concerns we have will be either assuaged or heightened by the learning process - and either way, when we're done we'll know what to do. I haven't been able to come up with a suitably clever heading for the latest portion of this unexpected detour, I think simply because once you've gotten to this point you've run out of pithy remarks intended to convince the world - and maybe yourself - that it's really not that big a deal. By this point, you've just gone all in on the belief that you will make a good parent - hell, an amazing parent - and that once you get all your ducks in a row it will happen.

the slug unveiled today?

meghann@chez-french.net — 2006-07-27T16:05:54-04:00

The Sabres have announced a press conference with Larry Quinn at 4PM "concerning the team's uniform for the upcoming season." Rumour has it that channel 7 will be airing it live, but sabres.com says video will be available on the site to Sabres Insiders afterward - which makes one think there will be something to see. I suppose we'll see what we see then... Update: The pessimists were once again correct - nothing to see here. Just an announcement that the new alternate uniform will be the old blue jersey, and confirmation that Donald Trump's Combover is in fact the new logo. LQ apparently thinks it's quite nice but had nothing to show us just yet, and won't until September.

G says...

meghann@chez-french.net — 2006-07-25T22:27:12-04:00

You're comparing apples and crayons.

I guess this means that not only am I not in the same ballpark, I'm not even in the same sport.

I am so going to hell for laughing at these...

meghann@chez-french.net — 2006-06-27T16:05:12-04:00

Funny, funny stuff on the Carolina Hurricanes ... The Onion: Carolina Residents Confused, Terrified as Victorious Hurricane Players Riot in Streets The Brushback.com: Edmonton Fans Happy for Long-Suffering Carolina Fans

it's a puppy party...

meghann@chez-french.net — 2006-06-22T13:18:05-04:00

This is what I had to deal with while trying to sleep last night. Lucy (the one in the back) is visiting while her people are in hospital having a baby, and she & Sydney didn't hesitate to make themselves right at home. Thankfully, I did not wake up with a pup standing on my head at 4:30 this morning, like I did last night. I am looking forward to G's return home tomorrow, though, so he can take over the dog-watching responsibilities & I can get a few things done ...

ring in the new

meghann@chez-french.net — 2006-01-01T00:00:00-05:00

New Year's Eve is always a time of reflection for me...and upon reflection I have to say that 2005 was a pretty shitty year. In fact, it was a completely shitty year; it started off shitty, and it didn't get any less shitty as it went along. ...At Christmas I saw a billboard at a roadside stand that read: "No man is a failure who has friends" - the inscription Clarence leaves for George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life. At the end of that film, after he's been to hell and back, George's life is changed by the love of his friends - and he realizes the many ways his love for them has changed theirs, too. I am fortunate to have a life enriched by the love of my friends, and I am equally fortunate to be able to enrich their lives. In difficult times, it's easy to take more than you give from the people who support you, and this year I've taken far more than I've been able to give. I trust that those who've given me so much care and support this year know how much it's appreciated, and the best I can give in return is my most heartfelt good wishes for the coming year: To those who have lost loved ones, I wish you peace, that time may dull the sharp edge of pain and your precious memories bring more comfort with each day that passes. ...To those anticipating a new arrival, I wish you health and happiness and love, and joy in sharing life's wonders with your children. ...To those who have faced conflict with those you love, I wish you resolution, that you may be able to restore harmony. ...To those who have propped me up, I wish you spirits so buoyant they never need lifting - but if ever they do, I wish I may be a source of support to you. To those who have known nothing but joy in the past year, I wish you more of the same in the coming year. At midnight I'll raise a glass to you all in love and thanks, with wishes for nothing but good things in 2006.

from the "favourite quotes I'd nearly forgotten about" files

meghann@chez-french.net — 2005-11-13T13:03:40-05:00

quoted in today's UUCB bulletin:

Man always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on - while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man - for precisely the same reason.

- Douglas Adams

spotted at the pier

meghann@chez-french.net — 2005-11-12T16:43:46-05:00

...on the riverwalk this afternoon. We were walking the dog & G said, "You have to get a picture of this..."

oooh! big chubby squishy baby!

meghann@chez-french.net — 2005-09-14T21:54:46-04:00

Our friend Jackie stopped by with her dog, Casee, tonight. And she had great news - after a year-plus of endless paperwork & an insane waiting game, they have a daughter. They're travelling to China next month to bring her home. And they've started a blog to record the experience - not to mention some really cute pictures...

right back where we started from...

meghann@chez-french.net — 2005-09-14T11:20:33-04:00

I was perhaps feeling a smidge too optimistic after a better-than-expected retrieval yesterday. Somehow, out of the two really mature follicles and one or two that were almost there, the doctor managed to get five eggs, all metastage II (according to G; I was pretty out of it from the nice drugs they gave me before the retrieval). Dr. S. called a short while ago to say that of the five, the embryologist was able to attempt ICSI on only four, as the fifth was clearly not quite mature. Of that four...only one fertilised. He said it's possible for eggs to fertilise on the second day, but it's really unlikely with ICSI. So - at best - we're looking at one. Again. No longer feeling particularly optimistic. What are the odds of lightning striking twice, with only one egg - again?

just in case you were wondering

meghann@chez-french.net — 2005-08-30T12:12:02-04:00

...what $2,500.00 worth of meds would look like if you put it all in one drawer, here you go:

before the storm

meghann@chez-french.net — 2005-08-21T20:01:39-04:00

This is what the sky looks like from my front porch right this minute. I think we're in for one hell of a storm...

I love the Onion

meghann@chez-french.net — 2005-08-21T19:35:38-04:00

...for taking my usual canned response to the phrase "Evolution is not a fact, it's just a theory" to its natural conclusion. That is all.

anxious much?

meghann@chez-french.net — 2005-08-16T09:31:52-04:00

Last night - more accurately, some time around four o'clock this morning - I dreamed I was in Connecticut for M's wedding. Because it's horribly inconvenient to take all my meds, needles, etc. with me when I travel, it's only natural that I'm supposed to start my injections that weekend. In my dream, I was getting things ready for the wedding when I remembered I had to take my first injection in the morning. ... Obviously I couldn't go home to get them & be back in time for the wedding. ...Do you ever have that dream where you find yourself in an emergency & need to get someone on the phone quickly, but no matter how carefully you dial, you get the number wrong? G thinks I'm nuts, so apparently he's never had this dream, but I have it all the time. Sometimes the phone skips a number and sometimes I misdial the last digit - either way, I have to hang up & redial. ...But for some reason dialing the office number - which would connect to the answering service in the real world - connected directly to my doctor's home in my bizarro dream world. And suddenly, it was two in the morning, and I'd woken the doctor's wife from a sound sleep. Of course I woke up before I was able to talk to the doctor, so I will never know whether dream-me was able to get her meds in time. Last time I was in the office - late last spring - I overheard one of the nurses say, "She forgot to take her injection last night..." I remember cringing on behalf of my anonymous fellow patient - how mortified she must have been to have forgotten something so important, and how upset she must have been to have caused a setback in her treatment. My fear with all of this is that it won't work - but an even bigger fear is that it won't work because I screwed something up.

the last piece of the kitchen falls into place

meghann@chez-french.net — 2005-08-14T23:08:38-04:00

At last, a mere nine and a half months after our "quick" kitchen remodel began, it's finished. (Pay no attention to the trim that needs to be touched up...details, details...) My grandmother tells me this table is at least seventy-five years old. It belonged to a friend of her family, and she remembers seeing it as a child. I think it was given to my great-aunt, and when she died, my grandmother got it. I remember it sitting at the bottom of the basement stairs for many years, until she gave it to me when I moved in to my first apartment. It's been living in my office for the last three years - I needed a place to put my fax machine more than I needed a kitchen table. Besides, I had to do something about the awful "antiquing" job my aunt did on the legs years ago. Two coats of black lacquer later...here it is. And I finally have all the space I need to work in my kitchen.