Looking back on all these retrospectives of 2011 I can't help but gag a little whenever I see some glowing post about how fantastically awesome 2011 has been.
"OMG it's the best year ever"
"2011 has been a year of amazements"
"this has been the best year of my life"
Really? Because I have to say that 2011 has been a year of disappointments. Do you what I drive? A Toyota. It's a regular car that drives on a regular road. Seriously, how boring is that? It doesn't fly, or transform, or talk to me. It just sucks gas and drives.
And do you know how I get from pace to place (when I'm not driving my boring car) I walk. No jet pack, not even a hover board. Seriously, I'm willing to start wearing high tops if it means I get a hover board.
So I ask you 2011, where is my personal robot like Rosie from the Jetsons? Shouldn't she be waking me up in the morning with coffee and breakfast? Shouldn't she be making my bed and brushing my teeth and basically turning me into the laziest person EVER (side bar: why weren't the Jetsons fatter). Where is my spaceship? Where is my machine that magically cooks anything I want with the touch of a button in under 60 seconds? And for the love of Pete where is my flying car?
I mean sure, I'm typing this on my iPad while listening to my iPod and answering email on my phone...but really 2011 I expected more from you.
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Sunday, December 25, 2011
The Rejection Game
Do you remember middle school gym class and how horrifying it was when two of the super athletic cool kids were chosen as team captains and the rest of the class lined up waiting to be picked?
This, as you can well imagine, never ended well for me. I was neither popular, or athletic. What I was, was short...very short. I was once compared to a wind-up toy.
For this reason I never much cared for gym, and never took it past those dreaded middle school years (in my high school the marching band counted as PE credit...told you I wasn't popular).
I like to think that those middle school gym classes were the beginning of my fear of rejection. And lets face it, no one really likes being rejected. We strive to fit it, to be part of a crowd, to be accepted by those around us. It's the reason why people dress, and act, and talk, the way they do. And lets not pretend like you don't do it too. Everyone wants acceptance.
I'm not saying its a bad thing to want to be accepted. I'm saying that it sucks to be rejected.
The adoption process, at least in my personal experience, is a study in rejection. You spend months getting paperwork together; with background checks, and fingerprints (multiple times which, come on, is stupid), and social work visits, and interviews. Your friends and family write letters of recommendation. You create a self-absorbed (on purpose) scrapbook all about how fantastically awesome you are. And FINALLY you submit everything to the agency and you wait...
and wait...
and wait...
And while each adoption journey, domestic or international, has it's own particular struggles, the wait is universal. And it doesn't matter if you wait 4 months for a birth mother to choose you in a domestic situation, or 36 months to get your match from China, the waiting (while it lasts), seems endless.
In my particular case the wait (9 months and counting) is interrupted with these intense moments of hope. When I match the criteria a birth mother is looking for, and my profile is shown. Let me assure you that the wait, during those moments, is worse then endless. And when the hope dies, I'm still waiting, the short, unpopular kid in gym class, standing on the sidelines while everyone else plays.
It sucks...a lot.
And it's happened five times.
And I really don't want it to happen a 6th.
A girl can only be rejected so many times before she starts to think...maybe it's her.
(also, gym teachers, I really hope you don't let the cool kids pick teams anymore...just sayin)
This, as you can well imagine, never ended well for me. I was neither popular, or athletic. What I was, was short...very short. I was once compared to a wind-up toy.
For this reason I never much cared for gym, and never took it past those dreaded middle school years (in my high school the marching band counted as PE credit...told you I wasn't popular).
I like to think that those middle school gym classes were the beginning of my fear of rejection. And lets face it, no one really likes being rejected. We strive to fit it, to be part of a crowd, to be accepted by those around us. It's the reason why people dress, and act, and talk, the way they do. And lets not pretend like you don't do it too. Everyone wants acceptance.
I'm not saying its a bad thing to want to be accepted. I'm saying that it sucks to be rejected.
The adoption process, at least in my personal experience, is a study in rejection. You spend months getting paperwork together; with background checks, and fingerprints (multiple times which, come on, is stupid), and social work visits, and interviews. Your friends and family write letters of recommendation. You create a self-absorbed (on purpose) scrapbook all about how fantastically awesome you are. And FINALLY you submit everything to the agency and you wait...
and wait...
and wait...
And while each adoption journey, domestic or international, has it's own particular struggles, the wait is universal. And it doesn't matter if you wait 4 months for a birth mother to choose you in a domestic situation, or 36 months to get your match from China, the waiting (while it lasts), seems endless.
In my particular case the wait (9 months and counting) is interrupted with these intense moments of hope. When I match the criteria a birth mother is looking for, and my profile is shown. Let me assure you that the wait, during those moments, is worse then endless. And when the hope dies, I'm still waiting, the short, unpopular kid in gym class, standing on the sidelines while everyone else plays.
It sucks...a lot.
And it's happened five times.
And I really don't want it to happen a 6th.
A girl can only be rejected so many times before she starts to think...maybe it's her.
(also, gym teachers, I really hope you don't let the cool kids pick teams anymore...just sayin)
Friday, December 16, 2011
Envy
I often find my self suffering from blog envy or, more specifically, envy of the crafty-antiquey-bakey-homemadey stuff I see in blogs.
You see in my mind I am that girl, the one who crafts, and writes, and reads, and L.I.V.E.S. everyday like life is some sort of carnival and I'm queen of the parade.
And I like to craft, and antique, and bake (ok that's a lie, unless you count the cookies that you just break apart and set on the cookie sheet because I can bake the shit out of those), and do homemade things.
But.....
I'm inherently lazy. I mean there are lots of things I like to do (in theory). Things like knit, and open an etsy shop, and find a job I can do from home AND make enough money to pay the bills, and run.
But...my hands hurt when I try to knit.
Etsy already has ten thousand of any idea I've ever had (and they are all way cuter than anything I could make).
I was an English Major, which means that my second degree gave me the skills I needed to get a job, but somehow teaching from my living room isn't shaping up to be that million dollar work-from-home idea.
The idea of shopping for a sports bra hardy enough to reign in the girls is too overwhelming for words.
So until then I'll continue to read blogs and drool over the craft rooms, and gorgeously wrapped presents, and lovely re-purposed furniture that someone just happened to find in an old barn. And I'll work on small projects and dream of the day when my niece won't need a play room and I can turn it into a crafting mecca....
You see in my mind I am that girl, the one who crafts, and writes, and reads, and L.I.V.E.S. everyday like life is some sort of carnival and I'm queen of the parade.
And I like to craft, and antique, and bake (ok that's a lie, unless you count the cookies that you just break apart and set on the cookie sheet because I can bake the shit out of those), and do homemade things.
But.....
I'm inherently lazy. I mean there are lots of things I like to do (in theory). Things like knit, and open an etsy shop, and find a job I can do from home AND make enough money to pay the bills, and run.
But...my hands hurt when I try to knit.
Etsy already has ten thousand of any idea I've ever had (and they are all way cuter than anything I could make).
I was an English Major, which means that my second degree gave me the skills I needed to get a job, but somehow teaching from my living room isn't shaping up to be that million dollar work-from-home idea.
The idea of shopping for a sports bra hardy enough to reign in the girls is too overwhelming for words.
So until then I'll continue to read blogs and drool over the craft rooms, and gorgeously wrapped presents, and lovely re-purposed furniture that someone just happened to find in an old barn. And I'll work on small projects and dream of the day when my niece won't need a play room and I can turn it into a crafting mecca....
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