I started out being honest. I wrote honestly about my feelings of inadequacy while being a new parent (and, let’s face it, a very, very old one). I wrote honestly about certain events that happened in my life with people I initially trusted and loved (note the past tense here…if you’re reading this you know I don’t mean you. Of course I don’t mean you). I wrote about how hard it was to be a parent and having the brutal fact that I wasn’t my child’s real parent constantly in my face at every turn.

I don’t write that way anymore.

First of all, all those things came back to bite me in the ass. Hard enough to draw blood. Over time, I ceased using adoption as my sole blog topic and started writing about politics. Then I wrote about our adoption experience in locked/password-protected posts. Now, confident that the only people who read my blog either have been reading for a long time or are our local gossips (more about that in a minute), I write about our adoption. Sporadically.

One issue that we have here at Chez Evil is that School Girl is older. She’s, well, in school. Her adoption story is for her own damn blog, thankyouveryfsckingmuch. If her friends can’t find this blog in a Google search – and even though I blog pseudonymously, it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out exactly who I am – her parents can. Some of them have. You, both of my darling readers, don’t have to think about how this all will affect my child. I do.

I am fairly open about certain things in my life which might not be the norm, or even socially acceptable. Yes, I’ll be writing a little about that giant red A in the sidebar another day. I don’t give a damn about what anyone thinks of me. I do, however, care very much what others think about our child. I have never ever held myself up as an example to others. Not that it’s not a good thing for other people. I’m just not that good a person to use as an example for anybody’s life. Well, okay, a bad one perhaps.

There was once a famous daddy blogger; who is, alas, no longer writing due to personal circumstances. He gave me a great piece of advice about writing honestly about your life. Basically it was this: You have to pick and choose what to write about for the sake of real-life relationships. As his example, he said he no longer wrote about his or his wife’s extended families. If that’s being less than honest…well hey, there’s plenty of other blogs out there.

Holiday Radio Station of the Week: the Doomed channel on SomaFM.

This is day 3 of our re-creation of The Shining School Girl’s district canceling school. I don’t know if they’ll be holding any/all of the Trick of Treat fests tomorrow…I think we’ll be hosting a sleepover tonight anyway, so at least 2 somebodies will be getting candy.

Write about a blogger (or bloggers) who influenced your real-life open adoption, and how. It might be someone who became an offline friend who supports and challenges you. Or a writer who makes you uncomfortable, but gets you thinking. Maybe a blogger who doesn’t even know you are reading. Tell us about them and how they’ve affected you.

There are a lot of bloggers who have influenced how I think about adoption in general, and open adoption in particular. Dawn was one of the first bloggers I ever read, and she’s been a huge influence on our adoption. Even though I don’t write about adoption so much anymore, just about all the adoption bloggers I read – Margie, Jenna, and Shannon, among others, influence how I think about our adoption. Usually I wind up making comparisons, which isn’t always a healthy thing. But anyway.

I think the one person who has influenced how our open adoption has gone is Barb. I’m not even sure how I started reading her blog. I think it might have been through Dawn, but I’m not certain. I do know that over the years we’ve become friends. We’re on different sides of the adoption “triad” (I originally typed that “tirade” for some possibly Freudian reason), but we get along pretty well.

Over the course of our open adoption, we’ve had more contact with some members of our daughter’s other family than others.
Knowing Barb and reading her blog has helped me realize that even though we don’t have too many people walking through our metaphorical open door, it’s important to keep that door open.

In this weeks New York Times Sunday magazine, reporter Dexter Filkins has some pretty sobering answers. He followed General Stanley McCrhystal around dyring a recent visit. Here’s what happened when he met with a group of Afghanis in a bazaar in Garmsir:

“What do you need here?” McChrystal asked.

A translator turned the general’s words into Pashto.

“We need schools!” one Afghan called back. “Schools!”

“We’re working on that,” McChrystal said. “Those things take time.”

McChrystal walked some more, engaging another group of Afghans. He posed the same question.

“Security,” a man said. “We need security. Security first, then the other things will be possible.”

“That is what we are trying to do,” McChrystal said. “But it’s going to take time. Success takes time.”

Apparently a long, long time. In addition to asking for a lot more troops (40,000 is the figure quoted in the article) and a lot more time (like, say, at least another 5 years. At least). Read the whole article – Gen. McChrystal isn’t just talking about defeating the Taliban. It’s a terrific, interesting piece that will keep you awake at night.

If Mr. Filkin’s name sounds familiar, he wrote a terrific book, The Forever War, about the US “war on terror”. The sections of the book that hit me the hardest were the ones about Afghanistan.

I’m talking about this piece, published on Sunday in the NYT’s “Room for Debate” online section, discussing IVF and the high incidence of multiple births. This, incidentally, is something that has affected our family; both multiple births from IVF and adoption. The comments, both about IVF patients/parents and adoption, are astounding. Scroll down and read them. Read them all. I’ll wait.

“To me, the phrase “just adopt” means a couple of things. It leads to the beloved phrase “adoption is so easy/you had your babies the easy way”. Adoption is difficult on both sides. For an expectant parent who places their child with someone else, it’s got to be hideously difficult. For an adoptive parent, it’s more in the area of discomfort – having people look through your personal life with a magnifying glass, begging someone to allow them to be parents (or not)…uncomfortable, to say the least. But easy?

It also means “if you adopt, you’ll be a parent and all your infertility sadness will be magically fixed.” Adoption does not provide a solution to infertility. The only “cure” for infertility is getting pregnant.

Some of the commenters had the tiniest bit of a clue. Not nearly enough did, and that’s just pathetic. Because, invariably, the people who will tell someone else to “just adopt” or “adopt from foster care” or “adopt a special needs baby” would be the last people on earth to do that themselves. But it’ll certainly be okay for you.

UPDATE: A quick note that will be added in part to “About This Blog”: any comment, no matter how spot on, witty or profound, that does not have a VALID EMAIL ADDRESS will be deleted. A VALID EMAIL ADDRESS is one that can be verified by an administrator and matched with an IP address. Anon@anon.com is not, unfortunately, a valid email address. Oh, and yes, Julie did write a similar post, but it was not the “same”. I apologize for the omission.