Judecorp.

Jen was offered and accepted a full-time position at her current part-time job. It comes with a significant salary increase and it is something she enjoys very much. I am skeptical about the job a bit because the company seems more than a little disorganized, but they have come through in the part-time capacity and I can only hope they continue to do so in a full-time capacity. She is very excited about it.

The big hitch is that the new job is in Springfield (where I also work) as opposed to Amherst, which is where her current job is located and also where her child care provider lives. I /love/ Punk's child care provider and she has proven to be very devoted to Punk, very good with children in general, very in line with our parenting philosophies, and just awesome in general. When we found her I really did feel like we won the child care lottery. But it is not feasible to keep her in child care there if Jen is working in Springfield, because it would involve ridiculous amounts of driving, tons of gas money, and most importantly, really long days for Punk. So we have to find alternate child care.

I have no idea how this is going to work. Jen's new job starts on August 18th and that is about a week and a half away. I have no time to call child care centers, let alone visit them and interview providers. And I am really, really, REALLY sad about losing our child care provider. She loves Punk, sends me e-mails about her on a regular basis, sends photos of her enjoying her day, and is just genuinely invested in her. I can't even think about it without crying.

I am trying to find child care near our home or on the way to work, and I hate it. I hate everything about it. I keep finding all of the things out there that made me so glad for M in the first place - scheduled naps, one nap per day no matter what, requiring full immunizations, etc. I am sick about it all.

~//~

My new doctor made me sit for a 2 hour glucose test for whatever reason. I asked for a prescription for Metformin for my PCOS and she required the 2 hour glucose. I did it on Wednesday and it was the most boring thing ever. And of course my blood sugar is fine. Now give me my damned prescription!!

While I was sitting at the lab for 2 hours for my glucose test, I read a lot of People magazines. And there were a couple of articles about "the pregnant man." And then he had his baby! And all I could think of was, "Pregnant Man Gives Birth. That's a fact."

~//~

This morning we headed to family court so Jen could officially adopt Punk. It was short and sweet, and the judge has this special bowl full of brightly colored pens that she uses for adoptions. She lets the kid choose a pen, uses the pen to sign the adoption decree, and then gives the kid the pen. It was really the cutest little thing. Then they take a polaroid picture of the family and the judge and stick it to a little certificate. And the court officer takes photos with whatever camera you bring. Cute cute cute.

I don't know why it happens to me. I attract freaky folks. No, not the fun kind of freak that is prone to going a little overboard at a Renaissance Faire, but one of those people who from the minute they first open their mouths screams, "I have issues!" It's that person who can relay story after story about how they were disrespected and abused, tales of being yelled at by strangers in public places, instances of being kicked out of restaurants, carnivals, grocery stores, and can list numerous doctors or healthcare professionals who have somehow assaulted or wronged them. The sort of person who can tell all of these stories and you just look back, befuddled, thinking, "How can all of these random, awful things happen to you that have never in a million years happened to me?"

(Now I am not saying, AT ALL, that people are never disrespected in public or abused by healthcare professionals. I'm just saying that I've met people who seem to have at least one story like this for every day of their lives.)

When I first moved to Maine to be with A., I had somehow come across this woman named Carmen. I didn't really know anyone else in the area so we spent some time together. I was always blown away by her life, by how many people were threatening her or messing with her or would turn around out of nowhere and say/do something terrible to her. I remember thinking, "You know, I go into some sort of store at least every couple of days and no one has EVER just turned around and said something horrible to me and tried to start a fight with me." After a while I couldn't take it anymore and was looking for ways to cut ties from her. I got my wish when I was babysitting her children (ages 5 and 7 or so) and at bedtime they were both hysterically screaming and crying because I wouldn't give them Benadryl because they weren't sick. Apparently Carmen gave them a nightly dose to help them sleep before she took her nightly sleeping pill herself.

I managed to avoid a lot of this in Columbus (yay!) and met a lot of nice people. (Maybe it's a rural thing?) I thought it was a thing of the past until someone from the Pioneer Valley started contacting me via LJ through a community and suggesting we get together. You know, I don't know a ton of people up in these parts yet, especially not pregnant folks (she is due the same day as me, actually) so I thought I would give it a shot.

Jen and I met her for warm beverages a bit over a month ago and she was very conversational and such, but I started getting weird vibes because she wanted to randomly bring up very negative things. And you know, negative things happen but I don't go talking about child abuse the first time I meet someone. So it was weird that she busted out with how she was pregnant 10 years ago and was "forced" to give her baby up for adoption, and about how she had a stalker, and a bunch of other really negative stuff. It would be like Jen and I were talking about how we didn't know much about being pregnant and she would say, "Yeah well I did it all before, I got pregnant and was forced to give my baby up and it was so horrible, and now I'm pregnant again and so I'm showing so much earlier and ..." and both of us would just stuff our faces with food. I mean, what do you say to that other than, "I'm sorry."?

So against my better judgment, I agreed to meet with her again this past Sunday. Jen had mentioned wanting to get some painting done and I thought it would be less distracting for her if I got out of the house for a while. So I met up with K for lunch after church. Within 30 minutes I was crying in a public place. I guess I have learned my lesson.

We sat down with our lunches and it was a matter of minutes before she brought up her stalker. Without my even inquiring, she mentioned that her stalker was her son's adoptive mother, how she is always stalking her on the internet, blah blah blah. This is NOT MY BUSINESS. Anyway, so she goes on and on about it and then says basically that the whole institution of adoption is evil.

So I tried to keep the conversation casual and mentioned that I agreed that there were a lot of flaws in the system, especially with the proliferation of private adoption agencies and high prices, but that I felt like the IDEA of adoption was a good thing and that the carry-out was flawed. And she went berzerk, going on about how adoption was terrible and about how they stole her baby and about how there are no women who don't want to parent their own children and about how rich people steal poor women's babies when they clearly want to parent them themselves.

1. How can ANYONE say that there is not a single woman out there who doesn't want to parent their child? I mean, I can think of SEVERAL women with NO desire to parent a child, several women who have terminated pregnancies for this very reason, and also some women who have willingly given their children up for adoption with at least mostly positive feelings. Gosh, I hate blanket statements.

2. But then, of course, we have the fact that Jen and I were supposed to adopt an acquaintance's child last year. We did not go through a private agency, we did not pay tens of thousands of dollars, and we did not try to force anyone to give us any babies. It was not even our idea - we were approached by someone in a conflicting position and basically offered a child. So I took MAJOR offense to K, and it more than brought up months and months of awfully sad feelings about how we did not, in fact, adopt a child last year... that unfortunately the mother miscarried but we were pretty sure she was going to change her mind and decide to parent her child herself anyway.

It was awful. Snot was everywhere, my face was bright red, and I went OFF on her. I went off on her for Jen and me, and for my aunt and uncle and anyone else who have adopted children out of foster care, and for myself and any other person WORKING in the foster care/adoption arena who are NOT baby snatchers and do NOT coersce people into giving up wanted children. I seriously just lost time for several minutes while I told her how offensive she was being with her blanket statements and how she cannot possibly understand the situations of everyone in the world just as I couldn't possibly understand her personal situation.

And then there was another 20 minutes about how she cried and cried and told all of the prospective adoptive parents that she didn't want to give her baby up and yet they still wanted her baby, and how the adoption agency worker told her awful things about how she was no good to parent her child, and I just sat there full of ire and even though I /know/ that poor and young women often hear things like this I just wanted to yell, "You could have walked out the door, you ridiculous, confrontational woman!"

Either way, I did neither of those things. I let her tell her story and I told her it was awful and I wiped away all of the snot on my face and I promised myself I would NEVER answer contact from her again. No e-mail, no phone calls, no nothing. It's safer that way.

And I guess I realized I still have a lot to work through in terms of the baby we didn't adopt in November, and how heartbroken I still am about all of that. Life lesson, I suppose.