I hear Deaf people

I start school tomorrow and while getting ready I remembered a conversation I had with someone during the last school year.
It was a friend of a friend, we didn't know each other and were making small talk.
She asked me what I do and I told her I taught Deaf kids. She gave me a funny look and asked how I did that. I told her I went to the schools that have Deaf kids and work with them and their teachers. She had this incredulous look on her face and said
"You teach kids that are dead??"
Believe it or not this is not the first time a person has made this mistake, so I wasn't too shocked.
"No," I said "I teach kids who can't hear. They are Deaf."
"Oh!!" she said while turning red.
At least she didn't ask me if I could read Braille.
(and yes, that happens a lot. Way more then the dead thing)

Here we go again...

Well, summer's over and I start back to school this Wednesday. This week is only for the teachers and the kids start next Tuesday.
I don't mind going back to school so much, but, well, I thought we'd have our kiddo by now. It's the milestones that get you. Another Christmas without our daughter, another start of the school year and don't get me started on Mother's Day.
But I think 2009 is going to be our year.
Hopefully this time next year I'll be blogging about trying to find childcare and looking forward to going back to work to be able to talk to grownups again. And is I do complain or whine, you have my permission to give me a dope slap up the side of my head!
:)

Fewer kids available for adoption by foreigners??

From China Daily

"Fewer Chinese children are available for adoption by foreigners because more affluent families at home have started adopting them, the Ministry of Civil Affairs (MCA) said on Tuesday."The number of Chinese couples applying to adopt children has risen substantially in recent years," said Wang Suying, a division chief of MCA's social welfare and social affairs department, which oversees adoption"

I wish this was true, I really do. I wish there weren't so many baby girls in need of homes.

But basically, this is crap.

However if this is the only article about Chinese adoptions that comes out during the Olympics, then I'm extremely grateful!

Um, I meant 38 days

Well, China surprised us an actually matched through January 31, 2006. This is not as much as it seems because the CCAA was closed from Jan 28-Feb 5 for Chinese New Year, so they didn't make any matches those days. Anyway, it's all complicated and confusing, but if your keeping count by days, and not matches (and I'm pretty much keeping count by days) this means China has to match 38 days before they get to me.

Now there are 41

It looks like China is making referrals up to January 28, 2006. I'm logged in on March 10, 2006. I had 43 days between where China has matched to my log in date. This month China matched 2 (two) more days, so now there are 41 days between me and referral. A two day match is really small, but since I didn't think they'd match at all I guess I should be happy. Just a reminder, when I was logged in with China on March 10, 2006, China was matching 15-20 days a month. If it were that rate now, I would be about three months away from a referral. But with a 2-5 day referral every month I'm between 9 to 21 months away.
On a happier note. I believe I have won my 4 month battle with our USCIS office!
A little history, USCIS was coming down to Juneau to do some fingerprinting and I had tried to get a appointment to update my fingerprints for a certain document I have to have for the adoption. If I could get it done in Juneau, then I could save the airfare that it would cost to get Graham and I up to Anchorage and have it done there. Airplane tickets and car rental could cost close to $800, so I really wanted to take advantage of them flying down to Juneau. I sent in the request and didn't hear back from them. I called and left messages, still no word. I started calling three times a day (usually in tears) begging them to call me back so I could get an appointment. Didn't hear a thing.
So we called our Senator's office and asked for help.
USCIS called back that afternoon.
However, when we went to get fingerprinted the agent in charge was not amused that we called the senator's office on him and made many rude and snarky comments. So when we didn't get the document back in a couple of weeks I thought it might be because we pissed him off. Weeks turned into months and about a month ago I started calling and leaving a message every week. Today was the last time. I was going to leave a message that said he had not returned our paperwork in a timely manner and had not called to say he needed any further information or why this was taking so long. If he didn't contact me by the end of the day I would take this up again with the governor's office and find out who his supervisor is so I could make a formal complaint.
However when I called today I actually got the agent in charge and he told me it went out in the mail yesterday and that I should have it by Monday. He didn't offer why it took so long and didn't apologise either. He just said if it wasn't there by Monday to call him back. I wanted to find out why he was being such a dick, but every sentence I formed in my head either started or ended with Motherfucker, so I just said I would look for it on Monday and hung up.
As angry as I get at China, I have to say I'm just as pissed if not more so at our government. Why, why, why do they have to make everything so hard?

Reflected glory

We hear a lot about celebrities coming to Juneau, but I haven't seen any yet. However I do have a good story. Harrison Ford, his wife Calista Flockhart and their son were in Juneau over the fourth of July. I know this because my neighbor is a guide and took them out on his boat! How cool is that? The marina called my neighbor up and said a couple wanted to go out on the 4th of July to whale watch and look at glaciers. He said, no, he wanted to spend the day with his family. They then told him that the people who wanted to go out with him was Harrison Ford and his family. He said well, let me call my wife. He called her and asked if he should, also, did she know who Harrison Ford was?? His wife was very excited and said he should (then she explained who he was, Han Solo, Indiana Jones!) So he did and he said they were really nice, polite and fun to take out!
I hear that Bill Gates comes into town a lot with his family because he can relax and doesn't get recognized. He wears Extra Tuffs and flannel and people just think he's a local. My friend works at a bookstore downtown and has sold him some books before. She said she didn't even notice him until he signed the credit card receipt. Then she looked and said there was no mistaking that it was him.
If I could run into anyone on the street it would be Jimmy Buffett! I wouldn't ask for a picture or autograph or anything, but it would be cool to see him up close!
Who have you or would you want to run into on the street?

August 2, 2005

Three years ago my brother past away in Iraq. Like people say, life goes on. It happened in the middle of our paperchase for the adoption. Now we are all logged in and just waiting to be matched. I thought my three nephews and sister-in-law would never get over it. But they are on a month long RV trip through the mid-west and stopped to visit my mom and aunt and cousins. They had a great visit and were able to talk about my brother and the three boys asked tons of questions about their dad. It was a good visit for everyone, especially my mom. My father is doing OK. He lives alone and I think it still gets to him a lot, but he seems to be doing better too.
So like people say, it might suck sometimes, but life really does go on.

Retail Therapy

We've decided to get a flat screen HDTV television. Our little $30 tv we got at a garage sale three years ago just isn't doing it for us anymore. So my question to you is; should we go with plasma or LCD? We've researched and most of it says that it's a toss up. Plasma has the possibility of screen burn and LCD doesn't look as good from an angle, lots of talk about "deep blacks" blah blah blah .
We'll probably just go look at price and size and decide from there. But what do you think?