bits and pieces of an over-saturated life

in no particular order . . .
* Andy starts his new school tomorrow. We are enrolling him in the private school I attended, known for its vigilent approach to character issues such as respect and obey.
* Jamie starts a turn-around next week. This is when a refinery is shut-down for maintenance and work is carried on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for several months. Jamie will be working 14 hour shifts, as he is the supervisor and has to overlap the crews that work mere 12 hour shifts. He gets a mandatory day off on the 52nd consecutive work day. So, I'll be pretty much parenting solo.
* I've been sick for over a week which means I can't go see my Dad which is a sorrow for me. Dad is, reportedly, much better.
* We have a new dog, Bear, who is staying with us while Dad gets better. He is a sweet dog and fits in nicely with our other dogs and has even learned to not chase the kitties. He regularly breaks into the goat corral where Betsy, the bearded lady goat, roundly trounces him.
* The lovely week of sunshine has come to an end and the more typical grey dreary bitterly cold days have returned.
* We are filing our post-placement reports and getting ready to start the Washington State readoption process. The sole reason for doing this is getting Washington birth certificates for the kids. In the event that they ever need to get a copy of their birth certificate, it is much easier to do this locally than to apply to Russia for one.

Busy busy busy

I must say that I have never ever multi-tasked more than I did last night when I was cooking dinner (okay, heating up the dinner my girlfriend J brought over), corralling three joyfully loose goats, and consoling a small girl with a high fever and a broken heart because she had misplaced her footie pajamas. Jamie was toiling away at work saving small cities from refinery mishaps. Okay, maybe his work is not quite that dramatic, but I like to tell myself so when I have to do without him – makes our struggle seem more meaningful I suppose.

For goat details, see The Great Goat Escape – different day, same caper.

Fever? The children have had to redo all their shots, and have both reacted strongly with fevers and malaise and serious crankiness.

So, a general update is in order. We saw Dr. Julian Davies at the adoption clinic at UW who ordered gallons of blood and a zillion x-rays and sent all the findings to our local doctor whom we saw on Tuesday. We very much like him and Nurse Christina. Juliana has brought home some unwanted guests in her GI tract, so we are looking forward to getting rid of them. In addition we have started working towards a diagnosis for why she is so teeny. We are very happy to have gotten an appointment a good pediatric dentist for Juliana next week, as she is in dire need.

On the school side, we are getting closer to getting on the same page with our school personnel in terms of getting the children assessed in Russia asap. We have to officially enroll them which we are doing through the MP3 program. The MP3 program is the vehicle whereby home-schooling families access some classes. We need a district teacher to recommend that the children be assessed, so we’ll go to class and demonstrate our remarkable melt-down capacity. Our children have the emotional fortitude of much younger children.

Why are we pushing for assessment you may ask? On one hand, they are clearly bright. On the other hand, their background is statistically risky for learning troubles. If we wait and see, we will lose our window for accurate assessment. We either need to assess in Russian now or in English about four years from now. If we don’t assess now and do enroll them in school next year and do run into trouble, we will have limited our options for determining the nature and possible resolution of the troubles.

So, between scheduling and keeping doctor appointments, and talking with and meeting the various staff members of the school team, we have been busy busy.

Waiting

No news yet. Nothing to post. Perhaps I'll chatter about our furkids.

Holly and Laurel are our dogs. Holly is a ten year old Akita mix (smart and willful) and Laurel is a Corgi/Fox mix. Okay, maybe not Fox, but she sure looks it. We picked Holly when she was a pup. Laurel picked Jamie. She was starving, scabies-laden, crusty and slimy when they met. I think her little guardian puppy angel -- ack the theological implications of that are atrocious, but I'm half-crazed with waiting, so we'll let it be -- anyway her guardian angel pointed out Jamie to her: "Him, he's the nicest one ever; he's the one you want." So Laurel whimpered and staggered her way over to him and that was that.

Dill and Parsley are our kitties. When Pickle, our 20 year cat, passed I swore I'd never love another kitty again. It just hurt so much when they leave. But nine days later Jamie heard of a kitten that really needed us and I told him fine, it would be his kitty. We named her Dill in honor of Pickle. And yes, I love her. She was lonely though, and needed her own kitten. So then there was Parsley. She is in my profile pic and is probably the sweetest kitty that ever lived.

Joy and Bliss are our geriatric house-rabbits. Yes, they use a litter box. Mostly. They are mini-Rexes which are bunnies bred by the evil fur trade to be the softest thing you will ever touch. I most heartily hope that when you get to touch one, the fur is on its original owner. We rescued them from a hot cage in a parking lot with no shade and no water.

Alex and Betsy and Chester are our pygmy goats. Alex came to us first with his buddy Edgar (think Mariners 95). Edgar died and Alex went nutso with loneliness. Did you know that goat brains can either lead or follow but hanging around by themselves is not one of their options. They literally go crazy from the stress. (Hmmmm, sounds familar). So we found Betsy who was retiring from the breeder's life (She is a deluxo extra supremo grand champion descended on all sides from other deluxo supremo grand champions. She wanted me to tell you that.) and her wee son, Chester. So now we have a happy herd of three. Pics in goat post.

Egads. I'm done with the pet litany and still no news.

The Great Goat Escape

   Okay, I admit, I spent the better part of Monday afternoon in the hammock. Some of the time I was working (really grooving on the laptop and the wireless), but yes, at one point I did surrender to the nap -- as that is what hammocks are for -- and what a lovely nap it was. I dreamt of goats, goats talking in complete sentences and remarkably near by. Strange dreams, yes, and dreams from which I was rudely awakened by a jolting push. There they were all three of them peering at me over the side of the hammock. Cute cute cute.

   Cute, that is, until it was time to get them repenned. Have you ever tried to herd a goat? Probably not so much different than herding a cat, though in my case, in triplicate. Every time I got two of them near the pen gate, the other would dash off and call loudly to them. I believe he or she was saying, "Fools, don't go back in there! In there there is only grass and trees and dandelions to eat, while out here there are dandelions and trees and grass!! Goats live in a perpetual state of Grass-Is-Always-Greener syndrome.


   What has this to do with adoption? Absolutely nothing. Just fill while we wait for our court date. It's hard to not think of every day as fill. We are getting enough done on our ToDo list that we no longer appreciate the extra time to prepare. Really, we could go right now if we needed to. My excellent student teacher takes over next week, so I could leave without any troubles. There are no good times for Jamie to be gone, so now is just as good (or bad) as later.

   In the meantime, we herd goats and deskunk dogs and rearrange household items ad infinitum.
    We are looking forward to the Darrington BlueGrass Festival this weekend. I'm odd -- I know; I listen pretty much exclusively to Classical and Bluegrass.