What's Your Excuse?

Oh, Internet. I can't leave you alone for one minute, can I?

I went to New York City last weekend and when I got back, everyone online was raising a stink about a photograph.

I'm not going to post it here because reasons, but if you have spent any time on a computer in the past week you have probably seen it. It's a photograph of a mother with her three small boys. The mother is wearing a body-baring sports bra and booty shorts, so we can admire her impeccable abs. The caption at the top of the photo reads "What's your excuse?"

"What's my excuse for what?" I thought, because I enjoy being deliberately obtuse. But obviously, this woman is asking what my excuse is for not having a body like hers.

There are a lot of things I'd like to say to the world about pregnancy and childbirth and a woman's body. But Beauty Redefined says it better than I could, so I'll let you go there. The world isn't very kind to women who don't bounce back from a pregnancy with the speed and precision of a celebrity. You know what makes it even worse? Not having a baby to show for it.

I think that even though society has these expectations of new mothers, we're willing to make allowances for a woman if she's pushing a newborn around in a stroller. "Her midsection is doughy," Society says, "but she did have a baby a few months ago." When I went to the store with Roo, my baby belly was excused. I had proof that there was a purpose to how I looked.

After placement? I was just another fat girl. No one could tell that my body had done something amazing in growing a human from scratch. No one could tell that I emotionally gutted myself to give that tiny human a wonderful life. And it didn't matter - in the eyes of the world, I wasn't a birth mother or a woman or a child of God. I was just fat.

I don't like that word, by the way. Fat. I don't like the way it's defined today and I don't like the way that it's used. My sister-in-law doesn't allow her children to say it. They're allowed to speak in terms of healthy and less healthy, but never fat, and they understand that you can't tell if someone is healthy just by looking at them.

I've struggled with my weight and with disordered eating for 2/3 of my life. When I was 19 years old, I finally got skinny. I had flat abs and slim legs and I fit the societal definition of health because I could wear a certain jeans size. It's worth noting that at that point in time I still wanted to lose 10 pounds, because according to the Body Mass Index I was overweight. But, hey, I was skinny - my body looked a lot like What's Your Excuse Lady's, right down to the washboard abs, so I must have been fit, right?

Wrong. I had hypertension, my cholesterol and triglycerides were atrocious, I was sleeping 3-4 hours a night, I was a mental health disaster, and I got winded if I tried to run from the front door to the sidewalk. My physical appearance gave the impression of health, but I was as unhealthy as it was possible to be without a fatal disease.

I looked good, and I was constantly given compliments on my appearance. But my looks didn't tell the whole story.

What's Your Excuse Lady is probably much more physically fit than I was at my thinnest. Or, you know, maybe she isn't. Because all I know about her is that she looks fit. What's Your Excuse Lady might find my body repulsive, and wonder why it looks this way. I'm single and childless - why am I not working out an hour each day?

For the record, here are my abs as of three weeks ago:

Please note the myriad stretch marks. I am very proud of them. Roo gave them to me. When I see them, I think of her and how much I love her. You may also notice a few odd little horizontal white scars. Those are from the surgery to remove my gallbladder. Because when I was skinny and by all appearances healthy, I had gallstones. (When my gallbladder was inspected post-surgery, they lost count at 15 gallstones.)

These are my abs, and I am, at the age of 30 years minus a week, the healthiest I have ever been in my life. I probably can't convince you with the picture above, but it's true. I can do 10 pushups with perfect form. I can hold a full squat for a solid minute. I can do a 20-minute ab workout without a struggle. I can run - not super fast, but I can do it. My cholesterol is on the low end of normal. My triglycerides are perfect. My blood pressure? 93/50. I am happy and mentally healthy and, by the way, I weigh 155 pounds.

So, what's my excuse?

My excuse is that I think there are at least 600 things in this world that are more important than flat abs. My excuse is that "have a perfect body" isn't anywhere on my list of priorities - health, yes, "hot," no. My excuse is that I am so much more than what I look like. My excuse is that I would rather live a full and interesting life and have a doughy belly than spend 365 hours a year at the gym. My excuse is that I have value and worth beyond my physical appearance.

My excuse is that I am capable of doing things, not just being being looked at. My excuse is that I am strong, and strong doesn't have a single look, nor should it, nor should we expect it to. My excuse is that I earned this stomach, stretch marks and scars and all, and I love it. My excuse is that I am happy with who I am, regardless of the fact that no one covets my abs.

My excuse is a precious, perfectly imperfect little four-year-old girl named Roo who is going to take her cues about health and worth and womanhood from the influential women in her life. She is blessed with an intelligent, clever, and media-savvy mother to guide her, and I am so glad! I can't talk M up enough. If I ever grow up I want to be just like her.

I don't know how big of an influence I will end up having on Roo and the woman that she becomes, but I refuse to take any risks. I refuse to sacrifice any part of myself at the altar of "hot," because I don't want Roo to think it's something I place any value on.

I know that her parents will teach her well, as they already have. But if she ever looks to me as an example or a role model or even just as a genetic roadmap, I want her to see a woman whose imperfections give her strength. I want her to see a woman who is more concerned with making the world beautiful than she is with making herself beautiful.

My excuse is that I don't want the person I love most in the world to ever have to feel she needs to make excuses for the way that she looks. She is more than her body. She is precious to me because of who she is, not because of her looks.

I have made a lot of excuses today, but you know what? I don't need them. There are only a handful of things you can tell about me by looking at me, and none of them are important.

Remembering

You know what I love? Going on vacation. I should do it more often. Two weeks ago I took a trip to San Diego, which was lovely and amazing and fantastic and wonderful and lots of other words that I tend to apply to both important life experiences and particularly good pizza (but I repeat myself). 

I went with my friend Emily and she unwisely allowed me to plan our itinerary. I tried to warn her that I have military fangirl tendencies* but she wouldn't listen. I think she regretted this when we ended up on the Russian submarine that is part of the Maritime Museum. Also later on when my camera and I wanted to spend 4 hours on an aircraft carrier. I probably should have joined the Navy in my younger years. I may have missed my calling in life.

Fortunately for Emily I only planned for one day of "Oh my gosh, look at that navy shipyard!" We spent the next day in Balboa Park, and we both touched dinosaur poo.

(Yes, I got sunburned. Laugh. Laugh at my pain.)

Anyway. Day three of our trip included a visit to Sea World. I've been to Sea World before, but it was a while ago. And by "a while ago" I mean "in 1987." A few things have changed at Sea World in the past 26 years, but it still felt vaguely familiar to me because I remember being there when I was little. I didn't think I would remember, because I had a traumatic encounter with a puffer fish and I thought I probably repressed most of that particular vacation. But I got back to the penguin exhibit, and I saw this:

and I remembered. (Unfortunately, I also remembered the puffer fish.)

Roo is the same age now that I was then. Roo is at an age where she will remember things. I suspect that, because she is so clever, she will probably have memories of being younger than she is now. I have memories of being about 18 months old. (I know that Science would probably call shenanigans on that, but I know what I remember.) But my clearer memories start at about three-and-a-half, Roo's age.

Which brings me to my point (hey, I've got one this time!). I've been more aware during the last couple of visits that Roo is forming memories of me. It's made me more than usually grateful for the progress I've made and for the person I've become. I'm far from perfect - every day I seem to discover some new flaw or weakness** - but I am so much better than I used to be, and I think I'm starting to be the kind of person Roo can be proud of.

I certainly wasn't there a few years ago. I forget that at times. Fortunately(?) I got a reminder the other day. I decided to start using Twitter again last week because I don't want to miss my chance to be personally victimized by Amanda Bynes. While I was trying to decide what to say to my two followers, I felt this compulsion to read through old tweets, and it was educational. I used to be a hot mess, you guys. If you don't believe me, feel free to browse the blog archive. Scary stuff.

But I think my wrong turn down memory lane was useful. Sometimes I need a reminder of how far I've come. Four years ago I was unemployed and poor and alone and eight months pregnant. Just look at me now - still poor and alone, but now I've touched dinosaur poo!

Seriously, though. I used to have more issues than Newsweek, and I am so, so grateful that at that time Roo was too small to get a sense of my personality. I'd hate for her to remember me the way I was when she was a baby. I hate to remember me the way I was when she was a baby.

I have decided, however, that every now and then I need to remember. Especially lately. I've been frustrated with where I am in life (single, poor, have touched dinosaur poo). I thought that my vacation would be a break from feeling like the last single woman on earth, but it wasn't. I felt like I was surrounded by couples in love - is it normal to see so many kissing people in public? - and the fact that Emily spent a lot of time text messaging her boyfriend didn't help. (I still love you, Emily.)

But there are worse things in the world than being single, and I've been through those things. More importantly, I've made it through them, stronger, happier, and better. And that's something worth remembering.





*Raise your hand if some of your happiest childhood memories are of watching "Wings of the Luftwaffe" on television with your father.

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Just me? Okay.


**A comprehensive list of my faults and weaknesses is available upon request.

In Which Jill Talks About Her Feelings

I hate trying to blog when I haven't blogged in a while. I feel the need to explain my absence, to say something profound, to make a Big Statement. I have started and abandoned twenty different posts since the last one, and absolutely nothing I tried to say felt right.

It's not that I'm having these deep emotional thoughts I can't express, though. My life is pretty awesome. But I wonder if that's part of the problem. I've always had more to say when I've been upset. Some of my best writing came from my darkest times. What is up with that? I mean, I know that there are these cliches about tortured artists and tragic clowns and everything, but that's messed up. Maybe some people need trauma to bring out their inner genius, and maybe I once did too, but in the words of Homer Simpson, that ship has sailed. I have been a happy person for quite some time now, and I plan on being a happy person for the rest of my life.

This is the other reason I hate trying to blog when I haven't blogged in a while. I end up mentioning clowns and Homer Simpson and I still haven't said anything of value. I probably won't say anything of value today, either, so brace yourselves. 

Last week I did an outreach presentation at a high school in Ahwatukee. (The location isn't particularly important, but Ahwatukee is a fun name.) It wasn't my first presentation of the school year - that was in September and I don't think I wrote about it because I've been ten kinds of lazy lately - but it was the longest at four classes in a row. There's a danger in doing four classes in a row. I feel like the first class gets the best version of my story. By the last class, I can't remember what I've mentioned already and I am easily distracted and I tend to be underemotional about some things. Blogger has put a squiggly red line under the word "underemotional" but I don't care, I want it to be a word today and I don't feel like hyphenating it.

I noticed something on Thursday, though. I did not cry.

I used to be big on crying when I did presentations. Not for effect (although doesn't that seem like something I'd do?) but because I could not get through my story without turning into what I believe the kids these days would call a hot mess, because placement was so expletive deleted hard, and I missed my baby SO MUCH, and just thinking about it took me back to that dark and lonely time. It helped, if that's the right word, that I was still not a particularly happy person, so it wasn't too hard to pull those feelings up for reference. Now that I am a happy person, it is much harder.

I got a little choked up when I mentioned Roo being born because that was such a defining moment for me - I don't think I have even gotten that far in my excruciatingly long and drawn-out story on this blog - but that was the extent of it. And I felt kind of weird, thinking about it, that I would utter a phrase like "I didn't think I could hurt that much and still be alive" and not even have a fizzy throat. I felt kind of deceitful.

I'm not sure why. I was telling the truth - it was the worst I've hurt in my whole life. But it felt wrong somehow that I could talk about it without being upset. I wonder if that's part of the reason I hung on to my unhappiness for so long. I figured out two years ago that part of why I couldn't let go of the pain was because I felt like I needed it - I needed to hurt to prove to myself that I love Roo and that placement was a hard thing. I wonder if the other part of it is that I needed to hurt because it gave me credibility.

But pain is exhausting. Hurting all the time made it hard to get out of bed in the morning. I had to let it go, and I am so glad I did! Because while being sad may have made me credible as far as the difficulty of placement, it didn't do much for the overall message I wanted to send, which was that adoption is a really awesome thing. I mean, if I sat through a presentation that was supposed to be pro-adoption and the birth mom who spoke was still a wreck, I wouldn't be any more inclined to place a child. I'd feel really sad for the birth mom but I would tell myself that if that's what placement does to a person, I'm staying away from it. That is not the point of me taking a morning off work and telling a hundred high school students embarrassingly personal things about my life.

The point is that I think adoption is pretty rad, and Roo is really ridiculously happy, and so am I, and even though I was a deeply unhappy person for at least a solid year, I'm not that person anymore. I am happy and I have a really awesome life.

I probably could have just said that to the disinterested looking teenagers and cut twenty minutes off my presentation, but I do like to tell a good story. Mostly, I like to tell a long story, which isn't news if you have ever read this blog before. Boy, do I like to tell a long story. I have always admired people who can express themselves succinctly. I think it's a remarkable skill. It's like juggling. I can be amazed at how easy other people make it look, but every time I decide to try it for myself, I end up with a headache.

I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but I think P and M are pretty much the coolest people I know. They are fantastic parents, and they are smart, and patient, and thoughtful, and a lot of other great things. If I ever grow up, I want to be just like them. When I was pregnant and considering adoption, one birth mom suggested looking for a couple that reminded me of myself - "That way it's like another version of you is parenting your baby." I am SO glad I did not take her advice. Roo already has to combat the genes I gave her; I wouldn't want to compound the problem by choosing parents for her with all of my neuroses.

I think I was trying to make a point, and here it is. I am such a wordy person. I can't accept that a picture is worth a thousand words. I will find a picture worth a thousand words, and I will give it a 10,000-word caption. When I edit my writing, I add to it instead of taking away. One of my earliest memories is of being told to shut up. My childhood nickname was Little Miss Chatterbox. I could go on.

One of the things that I love about M is that when she says something, she says exactly what she wants to say, without saying anything else. Where I would be pulling adjectives out of the air, she simply says what she needs to say and stops talking or writing. For instance, M would have finished this blog post about eight paragraphs ago. I still don't know where I'm going with it. I should probably be done for now.

But I will blog again soon, and when I do, I have some exciting news to share.

Happy Birthday, Blog!

Today is this blog's third birthday! I feel like there should be cake. There should always be cake, don't you think? Not just for birthdays but in general. There should always be cake. I would bake one but I tend not to bake, as I live alone and I lack the self-control to keep from eating everything that comes out of the oven. Although if I'm honest, sometimes I don't even turn the oven on. There's no need to lie to myself. I make cookie dough for eating, not for baking.

I digress. Today my blog is three. Birthdays are a good time for self-reflection, aren't they? No? Well, too bad. To answer the question that no one has asked, I have not gone back and read my blog to commemorate the occasion. I tried that last year and had to have an extra session with my therapist to curb the ensuing bout of self-loathing. (I have evolved since placement, and I quite sincerely thank God for that.) A few minutes ago I read through the first two entries of this blog, and I decided that was enough. I don't need to go back. I know where I've been, because I was there. I will occasionally reflect on the dark days of my adoption experience, but only as a means of gauging how far I have come. Going back for more than a moment or two would accomplish nothing. I want to go forward.

I wish I could achieve that sort of psychological clarity in other areas of my life. I like to think that I possess the right mental skill-set to achieve that. Every one of my grade-school report cards mentioned my critical thinking skills (also, that I seemed to be bored a lot). The problem is that I have not yet learned to use my skills for good. I am like a teenage superhero, doing my best to save the world but occasionally using my superpowers for nefarious purposes by accident. While there may not be any comically-nicknamed villains on the streets of Mesa because of my neglect, there are consequences, and they usually involve a tearful existential crisis* in my therapist's office.

Because in addition to being untrustworthy with baked goods, something I know to be absolutely true of myself is that I am a world-class Monday morning quarterback. I don't know of anyone whose second-guessing skills rival mine, although in all fairness, I have had decades of practice. I am the Muhammad Ali of rumination. And I blame my brain.

I blame my brain for a lot of things, because pretty much every problem I've had can be traced (however tangentially) back to my brain. My brain is a jerk. Have you ever seen the scumbag brain meme? Here's my favorite:

When I found that on Pinterest, I laughed for about ten minutes. I was tired. Anyway. I blame my brain because if it didn't remember things so well, I would have less to ruminate on. Of course, my brain doesn't remember everything well, because that would be convenient and useful.

For example: I've been playing the piano since I was Roo's age, and the only song I have ever been able to memorize is "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star." So I have to scan the room before I mention my piano-playing skills. I won't tell anyone that I can play if I'm in a room with a piano, because then they'll want a demonstration, and I'll play my little song, and I can practically hear people think, "Wait, did she say she's been playing since she was three or since she was twenty-three?" It's humiliating. I can play really complicated pieces if I have sheet music, but I'm useless without it.

My brain refuses to remember the notes to a song I have played more than a thousand times, but it will remember conversations word-for-word, and it will remember them for years. This is especially detrimental for someone as socially awkward as I am. I can recall pretty much every stupid thing I've ever said, and the uncomfortable looks on the faces of the people I said them to. I can recall, and my traitorous little brain comes up with other, less-embarrassing things I could have said. Come on, brain! Why can't you come up with better things to say when I can still say them? What good is a snappy comeback three months later?

One of the things I like best about writing, particularly on the computer, is editing. Until I hit "publish," nothing is permanent or fixed. I can take as long as I need to come up with just the right combination of words. For instance, the third paragraph of this post was re-written nine times and I may edit it once more before I publish. I can mull it over, read it out loud to see how it tastes, add and subtract words and phrases and rearrange until it says exactly what I want it to say.**

I can't do that in real life. My car did not come equipped with a flux capacitor.  So while I can remember conversations I've had, and while I can think of how I could fix them, I can't actually go back. Ideally, this knowledge would keep me from constantly editing past conversations. Ideally it would keep me from looking back so desperately and with such agony.

I'm pleased that I've gotten there with adoption. It has taken me nearly all of the past three years to stop looking back and thinking of things I want to edit. For my next trick, I want to stop editing the rest of my life. I don't imagine I can live my life completely without regret. But there's a difference between regretting something, and re-living and editing it at night when you ought to be asleep. I tend to do the latter. Again, I blame my brain.

You know, I would love to say that there is a point to all of the preceding, but I confess I've quite lost track of it. Sheesh. This is embarrassing. Where was I going with all this? Blog birthday, self-reflection, scumbag brain ... hmm.

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I think I was explaining why I don't read my own blog. Well, that'll teach me to ask and answer my own questions, won't it?

I meant to self-reflect and talk about how far I've come in three years and I ended up talking about why I should probably be seeing my therapist more often. But you know what? I kind of don't care that I ruminate a lot. Is it really the worst thing in the world? No.

The fact is that I have come really, super far in the past three years. I am a different person entirely. I am a happy person. There was a time when I thought I would never be able to say that about myself, but I'm saying it now and it's true. I am happy. I am happy almost all the time, and sometimes I am really ridiculously happy and people probably want to punch me in the face for it. My life is quite far from perfect, but that feels so unimportant to me. Far from perfect is still pretty rad.***

I'm not where I thought I'd be at this point in my life, and that's not a bad thing. I think I've ended up where I needed to be. I believe that God has a plan for me that's a lot greater than anything I could ever come up with. I know that when I've trusted Him in the past, amazing things have happened. I trust Him now get me where I need to be next.

I'm not the same woman who started blogging three years ago and I wouldn't be her again for anything in the world. It makes me wonder how much more awesome I'm going to be three years from now. I can't wait :)
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*I am proud to say that my therapist decided last December that I am a sane, functional adult, and I only see him four or five times a year now, just to check in. I could probably see him less often but I've decided it's good for him to see someone who is happy and doing well, even if it's only seasonally, because I know that his office deals with a lot of sexual deviants, and I feel like he probably needs the occasional mental hand sanitizer to keep from crying himself to sleep at night.

**This doesn't mean that I am proud of everything I have ever written. I think most of this blog is crap. But everything I have posted here was, at one point, exactly what I wanted to say and I felt pretty good about it at the time. Even if I'd never say it now and am now in fact slightly ashamed of having wanted to say it ever.

***Sorry about that. Two weeks ago I caught myself using the word "rad" and I don't know where it came from but it's like a virus. I can't seem to stop using it. I counted a few days ago and I described more than nine different people and things as "really rad." I think I need help.

****I was pretty stupid to say that everything I've posted on my blog was, at the time, exactly what I wanted to say. It's not even true. I'm not happy with the conclusion of this post and no amount of mulling has fixed it. The smart thing to do would be to think about it for a while and come back to this post, but if I don't hit "publish" today the post's point, such as it is, would be moot. What I should have said is that everything I've posted on my blog was good enough at the time.
Also, I feel like I should apologize for the sheer volume of my footnotes today. I'm not going to, but I still feel like I should.

In Which December is Also Adoption Month

I feel kind of bad that I hardly blogged at all for National Adoption Month. I feel like I should have had SOMETHING to say about it, being a birth mother and all. But I guess that's part of why I didn't say more - I am a birth mother. Every month is adoption month for me :)

It's like that for anyone who's been through something big. There might be a day or a month for cancer or adoption or civil rights or anything else. But whereas most people think about it for a day or a month, if it's personal for you, every single day is, for instance, National Adoption Day. It's not a once-a-year occasion.

I don't specifically think of adoption every single day, but I do think of Roo and, as I placed her, adoption is in there somewhere. I can't separate Roo from adoption. Without adoption, I wouldn't be blogging right now. I'd be chasing a two-year-old around, trying to keep her from breaking the ornaments on my Christmas tree.

Or not. It's the weekend, so I might not have custody of Roo today; H would. I know that having to share custody would have broken my heart. I try to remember that kind of thing whenever I get these rosy ideas about what being Roo's mother would be like. I wouldn't even get to be her mother full-time - and not just because of H. I would probably be at work today, because if I'd chosen to parent Roo, I'd be working at least two jobs to try to keep afloat. I'd have to. I mean, I'm falling under as it is with the one job I'm working now, and I only have to take care of me. I can't imagine trying to take care of someone else.

It's just ... I love her. I think I'm always going to imagine what one thing or another would be like, even though I know my imagination glosses over the reality of what it would be like. I can't help but think about her, and I can't help but miss her.

It's not always a terribly sad thing. And over time, it's become something that isn't always Roo-specific. I miss having a baby and I miss being a mother in general.

I've been told by more than one birth mother that I'm lucky because I "got to" parent Roo for a couple of months before I placed her, that they're jealous. I hate hearing that. I feel like it diminishes the difficulty of placement - like it was a breeze because I got to spend time with Roo first, or like I was always going to place her but I parented first just to see what it was like. Whenever I hear placement stories, birth moms say things about how they cherished their time in the hospital because they knew it was their only time with the baby they were going to place. They often say that they wished they had more time.

Sometimes I selfishly wish I'd had less. Not that I would ever, for anything in the world, take back a single second I spent with my baby when she was mine. But the fact that I hadn't previously made an adoption plan, that I planned to be and was in fact Roo's mother, that made it so much harder for me to place her. [I want to specify here that I'm not saying that it was any harder for me to place than it was for anyone else, but that parenting first made adoption harder for me personally.] I knew exactly what it was that I was going to miss. I had been not just a mother but Roo's mother. If I hadn't been above 100% certain about P and M, I never could have placed.

But as I said, I have moments these days where it's not baby Roo that I miss entirely; it's motherhood. I have always wanted to be a mother. I worry sometimes that Roo was my only shot at motherhood. Sometimes I feel okay with that. Sometimes I think, "Roo is enough. The time I had as her mother was enough. If that's all I ever get, I'm okay with that." Other times all I can think is how grossly unfair life is. The key is balancing those times, making sure the former is more common than the latter. I'm not quite there yet.

But I'm getting better.

I'm Old, and Here's Why

When I read through this for typos and grammatical errors, I noticed that it felt a lot more melancholy than I intended. It felt very matter-of-fact when I was writing it. So when reading it, please keep that in mind. I am mostly over my October Crabbies and, on account of today being my day off, I'm feeling pretty good. This is mostly my way of explaining why, Crock Pot aside, I feel old, and why I don't mind.


So, my birthday turned out okay. Nothing special, nothing exciting, but that's what happens when you're an adult, isn't it? Nothing is as big a deal as it was when you were a kid. When you're a kid, the whole world stops for your birthday. It's an Event. People fuss over you and pay special attention to you. You get asked how old you are, and no matter what you answer, people are excited for you. "You're four? Hey, that's great! Four is a great age!" There will be presents, and a cake in the shape of an animal. (I had a giraffe cake one year. You can't beat that.)

But when you're an adult, you get, "Oh, happy birthday!" and that's about it. No one tells you, "How exciting to be twenty-eight! It's such a fun age." No one asks, "What did you get for your birthday this year?" Because the answer is usually just, "Older." The question I keep getting asked is, "Did you do anything fun for your birthday?" People don't even assume that I actually did do something fun - they ask if I did. Because I am an adult, and adults are very often too tired to do anything fun, because they spend all their time working, and cleaning the house (even though the house should, by all rights, stay clean, because they are never actually home), and worrying about things like the weather and their car's gas mileage and Kids These Days and how quickly fruit seems to spoil. (Or maybe that's just me.)

Two days after my birthday marked three years since I found out I was pregnant. In my mind, my birthday and that day are inextricably linked. I'm okay with that. Grown-up Jill was born when I saw those parallel pink lines, so it feels appropriate that the two dates should come to mind as a pair. It also means that I miss Roo just a tiny bit more around my birthday, but that's okay.

Grown-up Jill is three this year. She feels much, much older.

I want to make it clear that I've always been bothered by young people who complain about how old they are. That hasn't changed. If you can't rent a car, you are not old, so please shush. I used to joke about being prematurely old, on account of my fibromyalgia (which totally sounds like an old person's disease, doesn't it?) and the fact that I can't get off the couch without making some sort of pained noise, and how I hate most popular music, and having used, more than once, the phrase, "When I was your age."

I didn't really believe that I was old. It was just something funny to say. I knew I still had a lot of growing up to do, and I was okay with that. I wasn't in any great rush to get it over with. I've never understood why younger people are in such a rush to grow up. You have the rest of your life to be an adult - why speed to get there? I realize in retrospect that I probably should have started to grow up sooner, but my parents were very kind in letting me take my time. They didn't rush me. I appreciate that.

Then I found out I was responsible for growing another human being, and that whole no-big-rush thing sort of went up in smoke. If pregnancy didn't grow me up enough (I thought it did), placement sure finished the job. I found that I no longer felt the least bit young. As amazing as it was discover that I could love another person as much as I love Roo, to discover that I could love enough to hurt myself, it was also heavy - it aged me. It's a great responsibility, to love so much. It changed me. I'm so glad it did! But it's a very grown-up sort of change.

I envy birth moms who are able, after placement, to go back to being young and carefree and giggly. I wasn't able to. Although in all fairness, I was never particularly giggly before, and I don't think I've ever been carefree. I was a frequently serious child (thanks to an anxiety disorder), and a serious teenager (thanks to a mood disorder), and a serious young adult (thanks to growing up with anxiety and mood disorders). None of that's gone away.

It's not that I never laugh, or that I'm never happy. I do laugh, quite frequently as a matter of fact, and as far as happy goes, I'd say I'm happier than I've been in a long time. But I still feel old. I guess part of the problem is the people with whom I spend my time. At church, I am part of a congregation of young single adults, ages 18-30. That is a huge age range, I think. I thought it was ridiculous when I was 18 and I think it's equally as ridiculous now. My particular congregation skews young, and there are several girls in it who graduated from high school a few months ago. They are very young, and very giggly, and not the least bit serious. They are legal adults, but they haven't had to grow up yet. They haven't had to be selfless. They have probably never worried about kilowatt-hours or interest rates or insurance deductibles. And that's okay! I'm glad they haven't. Like I said before, I don't think there should be any great rush to be an adult. But being around these people who seem so very young, makes me feel old. I share none of their interests or their current life experiences, and yet I find myself grouped with them time and time again because of the way things are organized - we're all 18-30! We're all alike! Psh. The more I'm around them, the older I feel.

Then I go to work. In reality, I am not really that much younger than some of my co-workers. I think the biggest difference is that they're married (or were married) and have kids, and I am ostensibly this young, selfish, single person who never has to think of anyone else, and who has less money deducted from her paychecks because there are no dependents on her insurance. Any time anything age- or life-related comes up, I hear, "Yeah, but you're still young," in a very dismissive tone, as though because of my apparent youth, I wouldn't know what it's like to be an actual grown-up.

Every time I hear that phrase, hear the word "young," I think, I don't have the words to explain how little you understand. I'm not young. I haven't been young in a long, long time. I can't remember the last time I felt young. Even before I placed, even before I got pregnant, there was my dad's death, and his cancer before that. I vaguely remember thinking once or twice back in beauty school that I was kind of still a kid, but my mind blurs. Was it beauty school? Or was it college before that? Those phases of my life sort of run together in my memory. They feel like ages ago. I think it's probably been six or seven years since I felt young. And that ship has since sailed.

I don't mind. I'm quite comfortable being an adult. There is something very improving about rising and falling on my own merits or lack thereof. It's something I can recommend with great enthusiasm. I've embraced it. I want Roo to be proud of me, and I don't think she would be if I regressed after placement, if I clung desperately to my youth. Instead, I cling to my love for her. I want to set a good example, the kind of example I owe to her because of my love. If Roo were to grow up and be in my situation - not a birth mom, but single and alone in the world at my age - I wouldn't want her to be giggly and carefree and a child. I would want her to be responsible, to take care of herself, to work hard. I know that she has an excellent example in her own mother, but should she ever look to me, I'm mindful of what she'll see. I want her to see maturity and responsibility and contentment and faith in God. I'm working on them, and they're not conducive to the prolonging of my youth.

I'm not young, and that's okay. I'm okay.

And in case you're wondering, for my birthday, I went to my mom's house for dinner, and my brother and his family came, and there was a cake in the shape of a rectangle, and I got older.

In Which Jill Counts Her Blessings in a Roundabout Sort of Way

I haven't blogged in a while. I haven't had much to say. I'm not comfortable with blogging just for the sake of blogging. I think that if I don't have anything to say, I should keep quiet lest I prove that I don't have anything to say.

I don't have anything adoption-specific to say today, but I do need to whine, and I don't see my therapist, John, until next week. This month is our 6th anniversary. I should buy him a present. Six years is ... what, wood or iron or something, right? I miss John. I used to see him a lot more but he's decided that I am a functional adult - or, at the very least, that I'm no more messed up than the average American - and so I only see him a few times a year now.

That's okay, I guess. I mean, I am busy. I pretty much live at the library now. I got a really nice promotion so I work full-time and I have benefits and everything. I also have a desk now, and an official Maricopa County ID badge. Also, to answer the question that people always want to ask about working for the government, no, this does not get me out of jury duty. I got a summons for November 1st.

Anyway.

Part of why I haven't posted is that I've been sort of a bear lately. Well, not all the time. I mean, I've been a bear quite a bit lately, but I've also had plenty of those overwhelmed, sobbing-on-the-couch moments, so I've been like a bear with a mood disorder. I blame the calendar - it's October. I always get depressed in October.

Part of it is my birthday (this Sunday, if you were wondering), which is usually not a particularly happy occasion, and part of it is what my birthday represents - another step further away from the life I thought I'd have, and another step closer to dying alone in a house full of cats. Except that I'm allergic to cats, so they would have to be robot cats, which concerns me, because what do you do if your robot cats don't get along? Can they be re-programmed? Should I get a robot dog to keep them in line? So many questions.

In addition, I can think of no less than twelve years when weird or bad things happened on or around my birthday. Car accidents, panic attacks, deaths, hospitalizations, 9-hour solo shifts at the hair salon ... and, most notably, a positive pregnancy test. Happy birthday, right?

Every year I think, this year will be different - nothing bad is going to happen, and my birthday will be a happy day. I am very nearly always proven wrong. Good things have happened - the first birthday I had after placement was made quite happy by a great visit with Roo and her family - but it seems like it's rare that I can shake what I have come to refer to as my birthday curse.

All week I've been waiting for something to happen. Nothing too bad yet - although I did find out the other day that a man I greatly admire has a girlfriend who is roughly half my size and has limbs like a stick insect. But that's okay. In twenty years, those stick-insect arms will probably become brittle and arthritic, and my chubby arms and I will have a house full of robot cats for company.

I digress.

While nothing catastrophic has occurred, a lot of little things have gone wrong. I could list them, but I'm trying not to dwell on them, because when a lot of little things add up, they're something big. Like library fines. Twenty cents per book per day for an overdue fine doesn't seem like much, but if you have eight books that are two weeks late, you've got a fine of more than twenty dollars, as I explained to an irate patron today.

But I don't want to focus on my ruined Crock Pot meal, or my three new bruises, four scrapes and blood blister. I want to forget that my electricity went out while I was at work the other day and I had to replace the contents of my refrigerator. And I am not even going to get into how many stupid mistakes I made at work this week (27) or how many times people swore at me (2). I don't want to get so shortsighted that these individual twenty-cent fines are all I can see.

Because a year from now, when I'm panicking about turning 29, I'm not going to care about any of that. I probably won't remember any of it. It's not going to make a difference. It's not important. Two years from now, when I'm sobbing into my breakfast cereal over my lost youth on my thirtieth birthday, I won't remember this year, or next year. Ten years from now ... well, ten years from now I'll be pushing 40, and that's scary. But the little things are going to fall away and I'll probably have ruined so many Crock Pot meals that I'll have learned to like them that way and I'll be able to do my job in my sleep and maybe I won't bruise so easily as I get older. But what's important to me right now, and what will be important to me next year and the next year and in ten years and every year after that, is that the Unexpected Birthday Occurrence of 2008 brought me Roo, and that I placed her for adoption, and that it is the best thing I have ever done.

There's some vaguely cheesy quote out there about how this thing and that don't matter but what matters is that you make a difference in the life of a child. I'm too lazy for Google right now. But it's true, isn't it? None of this, not the Stick Insect Girl or the Crock Pot and certainly not the robot cats, none of it will matter in the long run. What matters is Roo. I feel cheesier than a fondue pot for saying so, but what matters is that I made a difference in her life (and the life of her family) - and that she's made a difference in mine.

And nothing, not even a lifetime of bad birthdays, can take that away.

Hey, maybe John was right. Maybe I am functional after all :)

Up and Away

First of all, I want to thank the awesome peeps who commented on my last post. I got a lot of really good feedback, and I feel like slightly less of a brat than I did before. I'm going to try to be more patient ... and also more direct.

And now for something completely different. (Happy birthday, Monty Python!)

I think I mentioned a few weeks ago that I've been feeling the urge to tell more people about my being a birth mother. I'm not sure why, but the itch is there. It's a little bit annoying, to be honest. I mean, I don't think I will ever be so blasé about adoption as to throw it out there when I first meet someone. When someone says, "Tell me about yourself," I never say, "Well, for openers, I'm a birth mother." My experience with adoption was and is much too significant, much too important to be mentioned in the same breath as an introduction.

But when it feels right, I've been speaking up more and more. There's always this brief moment of panic where I wonder, what will they think of me? But more often than not, the reaction I get is, "Wow!"

I don't know if it's because people are genuinely impressed or because they don't know what else to say. I'm content to believe that it's the former.

Still, every now and then, I'll hear that phrase so loathed by every birth mother of my acquaintance: "I could never do that." It doesn't matter how the person means it, it's still cringe-inducing. But you know what makes it worse? When people specify what "that" is - "Oh, I could never give my baby away."

You know what? I could never give my baby away, either.

I promise I'm not being deliberately obtuse. I know what people mean when they say "give up" or "give away." But I didn't give Roo up, or away. I placed her. I will very nearly always correct someone who says "give up" or "give away." I don't even think about it most of the time. If it's a situation where someone else is talking and I'm supposed to be listening, I'll catch myself interrupting with "placed" every time the other person says "gave up." I can't help it.

Usually when I correct people, they'll brush my correction aside. "Same thing," they'll say. But ladies and gents, it is absolutely NOT the same thing. There is a difference between placing, giving up and giving away, and I can tell you right now that only one of them applies to adoption as I've experienced it.

In case you weren't aware, I like words. I like learning them and what they mean and I like using them correctly. I adored semantics before I even knew what that particular word meant. Can we talk about words here for a minute?

Even before I ever thought about adoption, the word "placed" always brought to mind care and deliberation - it's a verb one would apply to the action taken on something that is precious and important. I might drop my purse, I might set down a book, but something of value, a piece of fine china, for instance, is carefully placed on the table or in a cabinet. I toss my mail on the counter, but I place my jewelry on my nightstand. When I place something, I don't let go prematurely. I make sure that it's just where I want it before I loosen my grip - I make sure my target is stable. I slide my water pitcher into the refrigerator, but I place my full glass of water on the table. I take care. Placement is always done deliberately. When I care about an object, I don't let it go. I place it.

"Gave up," on the other hand, suggests something that should be the object of less care. People give up things that are bad for them - their vices. You might give up smoking. You might give up sugar for Lent. You might give up drinking soda. There are other uses for "gave up" though. People will give up on a sports team that isn't going to win (maybe next year, Dodgers). If something is too hard, what do you do? You give up. You quit. Giving up is quitting. I don't know about anyone else, but I sure didn't choose adoption because I wanted to quit being a mother. "Gave up" is a poor, mean way to describe the impossible choice a birthmother makes. Saying a birthmother "gave up" her child makes it sound like she was a drug user who couldn't kick the habit, or a selfish person who didn't want to bother with parenting.

I didn't give up my baby. You know what else? I sure as heck didn't give her away.

Have you ever wandered through the cosmetics section of a department store? There are signs everywhere for free lip gloss, bonus eyeshadow compacts and miniature bottles of perfume that can be yours with a purchase of $40 or more. Do you know what those little freebies are? They're giveaways. The samples of medicine or cereal or granola bars that come packaged with your Sunday paper? (I don't know if they do those other places, but in Phoenix sometimes you get NyQuil or Frosted Flakes with your newspaper.) Those are giveaways, too. Giveaways are cheap. They cost the giver either very little or nothing at all. Of course, you usually have to pay for those one way or another - your $40 purchase, or a newspaper subscription. If a giveaway is really free, it's usually given in the hopes that it will entice you to spend money - the giver stands to gain from his or her generosity.

That doesn't sound much like adoption to me, either.

But, hey, I'm talking about giveaways as a single word. I've forgotten semantics. What people have said is that I gave my baby away. Really? Gave away? Well, if I ever decide to replace my couch, I'll give away this one. I won't sell it, because it's not really worth anything. I'll put an ad on Craigslist and give my couch to the first person to contact me. People give things away because the things are no longer wanted, no longer needed, and have no value. If it's worth something, you sell it, you don't give it away.

Place, give up, give away. Which one of these three sounds the most appropriate given what you know of adoption from my blog? I love my little Roo. I always will. I wanted her. I needed her. She has infinite worth. She is dear and precious and very much loved. Because I love her more than I ever thought one person could love another person, I placed her. I took deliberate care. I didn't give her up or away, and I never, ever could, not in a million years.

So, please, don't tell me that either of those is the "same thing" as placement. They are worlds apart. I know which one I did and why. If I correct you, it's because I want you to know too.

The Worst Person in the World

I need an outlet today. I need to get something out of my brain. It's only vaguely adoption-related, and it's nothing I'm proud of, but I need to get it out just the same.

I never watched Keith Olbermann's TV show - I had to Google him to figure out how to spell his name. But I am vaguely familiar with one part of the program because of an episode of "The Simpsons." Apparently Mr. Olbermann liked to single out individuals with whom he disagreed and label them that day's Worst Person in the World.

I'm not sure by what authority he makes such claims, or in comparison to whom. If Keith Olbermann had ever met my high school band director, Mrs. Woodard, he'd think Ann Coulter was just a sweetheart. Mrs. Woodard was a musical Mussolini. When I quit band after my sophomore year, she spent ten minutes yelling at me and telling me what an awful person I was and how I was a quitter and loser and I'd never amount to anything and how she was ashamed of me. Apparently this was meant to convince me to stick around.

I digress.

Most of the time I think I'm a pretty decent person. I'm not perfect, but I think most of us have our moments, don't we? Most of the time I am mostly good, and I do the best I can. It's human nature to judge people and to compare ourselves to others. As long as I keep it to myself, or between myself and God, and remind myself that I probably shouldn't be judging, I think I'm doing alright. I am much less judg-y than I used to be.

But every now and then I'll have a thought that is perhaps not very kind, and I wonder if anyone else would be as mean, or if Keith Olbermann was mistaken because I am the Worst Person in the World. I don't want to think these thoughts, but they keep popping up and several of them have been doing so regularly since my mom got married last December.

Usually it happens when I hear my mother's husband say he has eleven grandchildren.

My mother has eleven grandchildren. She's only got ten, strictly speaking, but she likes to count Roo, too. I mean, Roo's already got grandparents and everything, and I don't count Roo when people ask me if I have any children, so it's a little funny for me, but whatever. If my mom wants to count Roo as #9, she's allowed.

I actually insisted that she count Roo at first, because after I placed it seemed like most people I knew expected me to just move on with my life and pretend I never had a baby. My mom counting Roo as her grandchild was an acknowledgement to me that even though I wasn't a mom anymore, I had had a baby, and I still loved her. I was mostly fine with my mother counting Roo until last December, when my mom got married.

I am not at all fine with my mom's husband (let's call him Rick, just for fun) counting Roo. I have mentioned this to my mother on many occasions. I don't feel that Rick has any right to claim Roo as a grandchild, because he's never met her and isn't likely to, and he's never going to be a part of her life. He doesn't get to claim Roo. Not as far as I'm concerned.

If I'm honest, and I know this is just me being juvenile about my mom re-marrying, I'm not 100% comfortable with Rick claiming he has any grandchildren at all, because none of them are his kids' kids. They're all my mother's grandchildren. Rick isn't the least bit bothered by this. He started calling himself “Grandpa” pretty much the day he proposed to my mom.

My brother's youngest, L, was born two months after my dad died. His birth was a great blessing - he came when we needed a reason to be happy, something to celebrate. Of course, this means that L never met my dad, which is very sad.

A few weeks ago, Rick mentioned that L is his favorite grandchild, because L never knew his Grandpa Willy, so Rick is the only grandpa that L has ever known. That bothered me. What kind of person would take joy in the fact that a little boy never got to meet his own grandpa? It made me think unkindly of Rick, and I'm still bugged by it.

Am I awful for thinking these things? Am I awful for being bothered by these things that Rick says? Am I awful for not wanting Rick to claim Roo as his grandchild? But she's totally not his grandchild. Not at all. He doesn't get to claim her. He hasn't earned that right. He won't. It's just … I feel very, very protective of Roo and her story and the part that my dad played in everything (being such an awesome dad that I wanted the same for Roo, etc). Rick's presence in anything Roo-related feels intrusive. He doesn't belong.

Speaking of, as long as I'm admitting to being this selfish, horrible little brat, here's the other Rick-related thing that grates on me. Rick has, on more than one occasion, told people that he and my mother have nine children.

Um, excuse me? No, no they do not. He has five and she has four. THEY do not have any kids together and, parenthetically, as my mother is 54 I'd lay money down that they aren't going to. When Rick says things like that, I feel like he's pretending that my mother wasn't married to my father for 32 years. Rick and my mother don't have any children together. Rick is not my dad. I don't need Rick to be my dad. I have a dad. He's “laid this mortal by,” to quote a hymn, but he is still my father and he will be forever.

Am I awful? I need honest feedback here, because if I'm an awful person I should probably see my therapist more often and learn to make a conscious effort to be less awful. Even if I am awful, though, is it normal to be awful about these sorts of things? Even if you remove adoption from the situation, would it be normal to have these feelings about Rick, or am I just a rotten human being?

It's nothing personal against Rick - just the language that he uses. I mean, he's a nice enough guy, and he and my mother are happy together. But he's not my father and he never will be. Which makes it uncomfortable for me when Dad-related things come up, and there's Rick. It's intrusive and uncomfortable, and the fact that it's such an issue for me makes me feel like the worst person in the world.

In Which a Lot of Whining Occurs

The FSA National Conference is in a few days. Y'all are going, right? I'll be there, of course (please say hello if you see me; I promise I only bite on Tuesdays). August used to feel very far away but now the whole thing will be over in a week, and I'm looking forward to it. Not that I'm not excited, because I am, sort of, but I've been feeling kind of blah lately and I think if I weren't presenting I'd just say to heck with the whole thing and stay home. Google Maps rather optimistically calls my drive 11 hours and 39 minutes. Google Maps has clearly never made the trip before. I have, and when you factor in breaks for eating and fueling up, plus the nightmare that is Utah road construction, it was closer to 14 hours last year. (Utah's roads have been under construction for the past 80 years or so. I've decided this is their way of taking the state motto of "Industry" to heart.)

Last year after the conference I stayed for a week with a friend in Provo. This year is different, and I'll be driving home only three days after I drive up. My back hurts just thinking about it. In case you're wondering, I'm driving instead of flying because while a flight was about the same as driving, if I flew I would have to rent a car, and that would break the bank. So I'm not stupid, you see. Just cheap.

There are other little things that are bothering me about this whole thing. For openers, I had to submit my presentation for approval, which I totally understand, but now I feel this pressure to only say what I've submitted so I don't accidentally say something I'm not allowed to. I don't like doing public speaking that way; it feels inorganic and uncomfortable. Also, I am totally unprepared to present without staring at the words on my computer screen. This could be a problem.

Another thing is that I'm missing work so I can go, and while I'm happy to get a break (if you call 24+ hours of driving in five days a break) I already accidentally calculated how much money I'm not making when I'm gone. Also, I'm funny about how certain of my work tasks are done, and I just know that my co-workers are going to mess them up while I'm away and I'm going to have to fix things when I get back.

Did I mention I'm not looking forward to the drive? I'm really not. Although I'm considering some sort of audio tapes to learn a foreign language on the road (learn Swedish? Ja!). But it's just ... it's such a long drive. I could never be a long-haul trucker.

And then there's my brain. Have I mentioned before what a scary place my brain is? It's terrifying. It never shuts up. My brain wants to know why, nearly two years after placement, I'm still so "into" adoption.

Don't get me wrong. I know plenty of birth mothers who are several years post-placement who are still involved in the adoption community. But it seems like most of them have also moved on in the sense that things are happening in their lives. That's where my brain gets stuck. It wants to know why they get to move on and I'm still alone in my boring little world. It seems grossly unfair. I know, of course, that life is very rarely fair but, to quote a Calvin & Hobbes cartoon, couldn't it be unfair in my favor?

I honestly believed that two years after placement I would be married or at the very least have a busy social calendar and go on dates. It sort of bites at me that, work aside, this trip to Utah interferes with absolutely nothing. My mother and my boss know that I'm leaving town, and that's about it, because there's no one else to tell. I am so sick and tired of being lonely. It bothers me that there's no one to inform of my plans.

I know that faith in God includes faith in His timing. I just wish He'd throw me a bone, give me a hint, something. I just wish I had a reason to believe that things won't always be exactly the way they are now, and I don't have one yet. It would be nice if God would say, "Hey, Jill, be patient a little while longer, good things are coming." Or even, "I hope you like the quiet, because you're going to grow old with a lot of it." I mean, I need to be able to plan for the future. I want to know if I should give up hope. If I'm going to be alone forever, I have to plan for the acquisition of a lot of cats. Should I start collecting them now? Inquiring minds want to know!

Okay, I think that's all the whining I'm going to allow for myself for today. I need to stop so I can psyche myself into being excited about the driving I get to do this week. I'm going to need to start now if I want to convince myself I'm excited about it by Thursday morning. I don't think I'm going to believe myself. Wish me luck.

Here's the Problem: A Warning

I've been thinking about this post for a while, and I had decided to abandon it, because it's the sort of thing that could potentially humiliate me. The nice thing about this blog is that I write it, so I'm able to control how I appear through what I write, and because I don't typically ever meet my blog readers, you are all none the wiser. I put a few pretty words together to give the impression of cleverness and think, ah, I've fooled them again.

But I don't reckon that's fair. Although I'm careful for the most part about what I share, I do pride myself on my honesty, so I've decided to admit to something I am not the least bit proud of. And in case you're tempted to offer it as a suggestion, please keep in mind I am already in therapy (although my therapist totally says I'm functional now, so there).

With that in mind, here's the post. Please feel free to laugh.

I was thinking about things the other day (I do that sometimes), and I decided that I sort of wish I had never mentioned that I'm going to be teaching a class at the FSA conference in August. Not because I'm not excited about it, or because I think I'm going to do poorly. I regret it because now people know, and several of them have said they want to come hear me speak.

I don't have a problem with public speaking. If I had a topic and a few minutes to prepare, I think I could comfortably address the United Nations. The problem is that after I speak, or maybe before, people are going to want to talk to me. Public speaking? Check. Social interaction? Um ... no.

Ladies and gents, I am Lord Mayor of Awkwardtown. I don't know how I was elected or why, and I'm not sure what's wrong with me. I've decided to blame it on high school. All those years ago, when everyone else was out socializing and learning how to interact with people, I was locked in my bedroom reading French existentialist philosophy and listening to The Cure. So now most of society knows when it's polite to make eye contact or smile at someone or exchange pleasantries, and I'm stuck thinking things like, "I smiled at her earlier and said hello. Should I smile again? Should I say hello again? If I do will she think I don't remember our exchange from earlier?" And by then, whoever I should have interacted with will have walked past and seen me looking thoughtfully bemused, which unfortunately comes across to most people as disgruntled or dyspeptic.

I work at a rather large library with around thirty other people, and every single workday my mind races - how many times do I smile and say hello? Was that a courtesy "how are you" or does he expect an answer? Do people think I'm pedantic for saying I'm doing "well" instead of "good" like everyone else? How long do I hold eye contact? (I read somewhere that too much is unsettling and you should focus on other parts of the face near the eyes for the count of seven each - seven seconds on the forehead, the cheeks, et cetera. But what if my lips move while I count? How do I explain that one?) How was that social smile, because it felt to me like I was accidentally imitating this angry chimp I saw on TV who bared his teeth as a sign of aggression. Do other people know that most other primates show their teeth as a sign of aggression and not cheer? Do other people think about that when they give social smiles?

Most importantly, can people tell by the look in my eyes that even though I'm smiling at them I'm actually thinking of a television program about chimpanzees that I watched in 1998?

And then there's physical contact. Oh, man. Don't even get me started. I've mentioned before that I give awkward hugs. I can't tell you how many hours I've wasted wishing I lived someplace like Japan where people don't even shake hands as a general rule, they bow (or at least that's what popular culture has led me to believe). Instead, I live in America, where sometimes people like to hug. I think part of my difficulty in hugging comes from the fact that I used to have a weight problem. The weight is gone but the awkwardness is residual. Even though I'm not a heifer anymore, I'm not exactly willowy, and it seems like very often the person who wants to hug me is rather lithe, and I feel like Jack Black with David Letterman's hands. We'll hug and I think, is this how narrow a woman's shoulders are supposed to be, and if so how come I ended up with my pipefitter grandfather's supraclavicular muscles? She must think I'm a tank. She must think I have to shop at a men's big and tall store for shirts. Not to mention, I'm always afraid people's hands are going to land on a particularly flabby patch of back, despite having relatively few of those now.

And where do I put my hands in a hug? What if I accidentally touch someone where they don't want to be touched? How long should a social hug last? How can you tell whose arms should go on top? What if the other person is going for a side hug and you go full-frontal? How tight should a hug be, and how close? What if my deodorant isn't as powerful as the brand's ad campaign led me to believe? What if my shampoo doesn't smell as good as I think it does? What if the other person's jewelry gets stuck in my hair? (You laugh, but that's happened more than once.) What if my clothes smell more like work than Woolite?

There are days where I think if someone reaches out to hug me I might just shriek and run in the opposite direction.

And then, as if physical contact weren't bad enough, people want to talk. I like to talk as a general rule. I think I'm pretty good at it. But I'm best at it when it's one-sided. Conversation is much trickier. I'm not nearly as clever with words in conversation. I tend to get nervous, for openers, and nerves make me stutter. No, not the typical, almost charming stutter that Colin Firth affected in "The King's Speech." Mine is more of a parade of ums and uhs and other random nonsense syllables with which I intended to begin words when I started out. And even when I can get words out, the letters those words are made of don't form the proper alliances. They get knotted. I end up spouting things like "Creen Queek" instead of Queen Creek. My nervous conversation is a stream of the world's least funny Spoonerisms.

It would be tolerable if I were unaware of it. But I am overly aware of it to the point that I am often unaware of anything else. Sometimes I'll recall an exchange and think, it's really a wonder I ever ended up pregnant.

Have I scared you off yet? You may be tempted to follow my lead on the whole running-off-screaming thing.

I'm not saying I don't want to meet any of you. I would love to meet any of you who go to the FSA conference, I absolutely would. I'm making the 12 hour drive and I'm almost never in Utah, so we may as well say hello. But consider yourselves warned. I may end up looking at your hair and counting instead of making eye contact, I'll ask if you had a "drong live" to the conference, my social smiles could incite chimp riots, and I have abnormally well-developed deltoids.

But you know what? My presentation is going to rock.

I haven't blogged much lately at all, and I feel the need to empty my brain, so here goes, in no particular order. Also, I'm tired, so this is probably going to be more moody and introspective and goofy than usual, but here it is.

I've been missing Roo a bit more than usual lately. I'm not sure why.

Maybe it's because her birthday is coming up. Maybe it's because I've been seeing more babies than usual at work. Maybe it's because I've been able to spend more time with my brother and his family these days, and seeing his kids makes me wonder what it would be like if I had a kid, too.

Whatever the reason, I find myself thinking more about her than I usually do. Two years ago she was still snug in my belly, kicking and stretching at odd hours and making me perpetually uncomfortable. Sometimes I wish I could go back to those days, physically miserable as they were. There was a peace in knowing that she was always with me, that she was healthy and happy and had everything she needed,

It's not that I worry about such things now. Although I don't get the updates I used to right after placement, I know that Roo is well. She has wonderful parents who love her dearly. I don't have any reason to think she isn't the happiest little girl in the world.

But this happy little girl isn't mine, precisely. She's P and M's. I love her, but the more time that passes the stranger it feels to love her so much. I suppose that some part of me thought maybe I would love her a little less as she got older and became more of a stranger to me. But my heart doesn't work that way. I don't think it will matter how old she gets or how she changes. I love her just the same, just as much.

I find myself thinking a lot about my birth grandmother lately, too. Sometimes I wish I could talk to her, to ask her questions and borrow some of her strength. I often wonder where she got it, how she was able to place her baby girl and pick herself up so quickly, never speaking of what happened to anyone. I wish I could ask her if her love ever changed, if she ever stopped wondering.

Is it strange to miss a relationship I never had? I think I do. I miss Roberta. I like to think, in my more fanciful moments, that she would have understood me, that she would know just the right things to say to me when I miss Roo too much. I don't know why I think she would have any special insight. I mean, I'll talk about things at my birth mom group and no one there has ever shared a mind-blowing insight that made things all better. But group is funny that way. I don't go because of what people have to say. I go because of the feeling there - that even if no one knows what to say, they know how I feel - maybe not exactly, but they get the idea.

Usually they do, anyway. But sometimes things come up and I think, who on earth can I consult about this? For instance, after placement, I just boxed everything up and put it away. I have all of the accouterments needed for taking care of a baby. The only thing I'm missing is diapers. I put it all away hoping that I would meet someone and marry and have another child within a few years of placement. But the more time that passes - the more I get a sense of what the next several years of my life are going to be - the more I think it's foolish to hang on to things. I'm obviously never going to marry, which means no children, which means I have no use for Onesies and blankets and a crib. I have these moments where I think I should just list the lot of it on Craig's List and be done with it. But I don't feel like I'm quite ready for that. It would be nice if I could talk to someone about it, someone who would understand, someone who could say to hang onto things for four years but not past five.

Although I suspect my mother would be happier if she didn't have all my Roo things in her garage through 2014.

I think I'd be happier if she didn't, too.

There was a time, probably a year ago, when I thought that I could never leave my mother's house, because that's where my memories lived - of my dad, and of Roo. I thought it would hurt too much to live someplace memory-free, somewhere no one I love has ever been. But I think moving out was a good thing, because I find more and more than the real pain comes in being in the same place as those memories. When I go to my mom's house, I'm crushed by them. I think, here's where I showed Roo off to my grandmother. Here's where my father sat to listen when I played the piano. Here's where Roo's crib was. Here's where I gave her a bath, and here's where I paced the floor with her when her tummy hurt too much for sleep.

It's overwhelming. Sometimes I can't breathe in that house. It feels haunted. My apartment is much safer. There are reminders of Roo, but they're mostly tucked away, or if they aren't I know exactly where they are, so I don't have to confront anything I don't want to. I don't have to grieve when I want to be happy. It's easier to avoid the pain. Things will sneak up on me at my mom's. I'll be minding my own business, picking up my mail or catching up with my mother, when a memory will catch my eye or tap me on the shoulder.

It's exhausting.

I wonder sometimes if that's why I've slept better since I moved. There are no memories here. My apartment is a blank slate, nothing hanging around waiting to invade my dreams. Not that I've been sleeping great, but you know those nights where even though you're tired you can't fall asleep no matter what, and you lie there for hours and hours until finally it's time to get up and you're still awake? I've only had one of those nights since I moved.

But at the same time, there are moments where the emptiness of my apartment is a little lonely. Here, where no memories live, it's almost as though I never had a father, never got pregnant, never brought a baby home and was her mother. Here it sometimes feels like Roo was never mine at all, and the love I feel for her is that much more puzzling.

I need to create new memories here - happy ones, so that it's okay if they decide to intrude. I've never been very good at creating happy memories - why is it so much easier to remember unhappy things? - so I'm going to have to practice.

Maybe I'll start with my houseplant, Rufus. I think he's gotten complacent. I'll re-pot him, give his roots room to stretch, and watch his leaves perk up. As the weeks pass by I can look back and think, remember when I re-potted him, and I was worried he wouldn't like it? See how happy he is now, how much better he is. He only needed a little breathing room.

Just like me.

A Few Things ...

And by a few, I mean ... oh, let's say, three followed by seven, and here they are.

1) My deep dark secret is no more! Ladies and gentlemen, I have a library card.

[As soon as I can find the cable that connects my camera to my computer, I'll put a picture of it here. "It" being of course my library card, not the cable that connects my camera to my computer.]

One of my co-workers, with whom I am Facebook friends, found my blog, read my post about my secret shame, and offered to help me out. So last Saturday, when no one was looking, she re-activated my account and gave me a new card. It was all very stealthy, and I expected to be caught several times. I am just not cut out for espionage.

Thanks, Alexia! I'm glad you're back :)

I cannot even say what a relief it is to have that little matter taken care of. I no longer live in fear of being found out, and I won't have to endure the humiliation I would certainly have faced if I'd been found out.

2) I recently had to submit a detailed outline of my FSA presentation to the people who are in charge of that sort of thing. In the process of researching some of the things I wanted to discuss, I ended up sobbing about my dad's death for about twenty minutes. Am I wrong in thinking it bodes poorly for me that I'm supposed to be talking about grief and I seem to be struggling with it myself?

But it's not the same kind of grief, really. Death and placement weren't the same kind of pain at all. It's not that one was worse than the other, because I think they both rank pretty high on the rottenness scale, but the pain was definitely different. So maybe my presentation won't be so bad, after all. I mean, I do feel at least moderately qualified to talk about making placement grief useful. I don't feel remotely qualified to talk about grieving the death of a parent. I'm still trying to get the hang of it.

Onward now to happy thoughts, like the fact that for some reason,

3) People seem to like me. I'm always sort of surprised when people like me. But Mary likes me well enough to give me a blog award! Mary blogs at Genuinely Jarman and is an adoptive mama. I think the title of her blog fits her because she is a very genuine person. I love her thoughts on birth mothers; you can read them *here.* Mary gave me this:



Wasn't that nice of her? Thank you, Mary! It looks so pretty in my sidebar by Captain Cluck and friends.

There are rules with this but as usual I'm weaseling out of some of them. Well, I say some, but I mean most. I'm already blathering today so I'm going to do the bit where I tell seven things about myself, and here they are in no particular order:

1) I've had four surgeries in the past eight years. All four made my life a million times better, particularly the fourth one, which brought Roo into the world!

2) My biggest fear is fish. I think they are the nastiest, creepiest things in the world, and I have no sense of humor about them.

Let's change the subject.

3) My driving record is immaculate - not so much as a warning from a police officer. (This is a happy consequence of being a good driver.)

4) I have an Arizona cosmetology license, and I used to work at a children's hair salon.

5) I grew an inch taller between my 19th and 20th birthdays. I hadn't grown before that in nine years.

6) I started my first blog in 1997, before it was even called blogging. You think the internet is full of whiny emo crap now, you should have seen it in the days of Geocities and Tripod.

7) I don't know what I'm going to do if I have another baby girl someday, because I gave Roo the only girl name I really like.

Anyway. That's probably a lot more information than you ever wanted about me, but there it is. Thanks again to Mary for the blog award!

I'm supposed to give this award to at least five other people, but I can never choose, so as usual, if you're reading this and you've always wanted a blog award, it's yours for the taking, because you are all awesome.

My Biggest Secret

Today I am taking a break from blogging about adoption. I'm going to write about something else instead. I'll probably start doing this from now on, every so often, just to cleanse my blogging palate. I thought today was a good day to start, because I have something I need to get off my back.


I have tried very hard to keep this blog from being a place where I re-hash all of the mistakes I've made and list all my sins. The past is firmly behind me. I've never been the type of person to have a lot of deep, dark secrets but on the rare occasion where I have one or two, I keep it to myself.

But lately something has been bothering me, making my brain itch. It's my own personal tell-tale heart, and I'm afraid one of these days I'm going to just snap at work and the whole sordid tale is going to come spilling out. Sometimes I feel it on the tip of my tongue, biding its time until the moment when I'm less vigilant. I can't let that happen, not in public. And so I feel the need to unburden myself. This may not be the appropriate place or time, but I don't know what else to do.

Okay. Deep breath. I can do this.

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I work at a library, and I don't have a library card.

Phew. There, I said it. It's out.

I used to have a Maricopa County library card. I had one, and I used it all the time, and I still have the 13-digit card number memorized. I went to the library all the time, and I checked out hundreds of books. But what with school and work and other things, I got lazy about returning them. The fines piled up on my account. I went to the library less frequently in an attempt to incur fewer fines on my account. But going less frequently meant that I wasn't turning books in as frequently. Three times in six months I paid astronomical sums in overdue fines. I felt sick about it. I thought to myself, if I'm going to spend so much money on books, I might as well be buying them.

That was when I started going to the book store, and that's how I ended up with more than 45 boxes full of books by the time I moved. I lost count of individual books somewhere in the thousands. I always meant to go back to the library at some point, but it just never happened.

Last October, when I applied for the library job I have now, I thought to myself that I had better go back to the library and get a card and get myself re-acquainted with the stacks. I never did. I got the job, so figuring out where different parts of the collection had been moved to was taken care of. But now I've been at the library for six months, and I don't have a library card.

I cannot possibly get one now. How would I ever live it down? My co-workers all know me by name. I don't mean to brag or anything, but I'm very good at what I do, and my hard work has been noticed. I have a certain reputation at work. If it got out that I don't have a card, I would be ruined. I have considered going to one of the other county libraries to get a card there, but mine is the closest by far and I'm not sure I want a card badly enough to drive 12 miles out of my way for one.

I thought at first that maybe I could get by without one. But my co-workers keep recommending books and asking me about bestsellers. I keep seeing books I want to read but can't afford to buy. Something's gotta give. I'm afraid this won't end well for me. I am going to end up completely humiliated. But the good news is, there are books written about dealing with that kind of embarrassment, and we have them at my library, and when all is said and done, I'll finally be able to check them out.

Good for You!

When I was pregnant, actually telling people that I was pregnant was done on a need-to-know basis. You may recall that I didn't tell my extended family I was expecting until two weeks before my due date. I tend to procrastinate doing things that I know are going to be painful or awkward, and this was no exception.

Some people I figured I'd tell eventually, but I knew I wasn't ready yet. Of course, things rarely work out as neatly as we plan them, and when I was probably three or four months along, I went to the dentist. I expected the hygienist to begin, as she usually does, by asking if there had been any changes in my health. This visit, however, was different. I'd barely sat down in the chair when Brittany, the hygienist, said, "Dr. D. wants a few x-rays today."

Radiation? Back up the bus. I wasn't even sure if I could safely get x-rays while pregnant. Out came my news. "Oh, congratulations!" Brittany said. That wasn't a word I heard very often, and I smiled.

I went to the dentist again three months later (I have bad teeth so I go twice as often as most people). This time quite a bit of the work was done with me reclining instead of flat on my back, to accommodate my pregnancy. The next time I went to the dentist was three months after that, when Roo was only a few weeks old. It was the first time I'd gone anywhere without her.

("Wow, how did that feel?" my therapist asked when I told him about it later.

"It was nothing special," I said. "I've been to the dentist before.")

I told Brittany all about my darling little girl, and I think I must have shown her a picture on my phone. Anyway, not too long after that I placed Roo with her family. And a few months later, I was back at the dentist's. Brittany was happy to see me. "And how's your beautiful daughter doing?" she asked.

Oh, crap. What was I supposed to say now? I weighed my options. The pain of placement was still fresh and I wasn't sure I wanted to get into it. I thought, I see Brittany for 30 minutes four times a year, and her hands are in my mouth for most of that time. What difference does it make if I tell her or not? I decided to tell her the truth ... or at least, part of the truth.

"She's doing great!" I said, my voice full of all the false cheer I could muster. "Growing like a weed."

"They grow up so fast," Brittany agreed, and then she asked me if I'd been flossing. I exhaled sharply, glad that was over with. Each visit was the same after that - she'd say hello and ask how my daughter was doing, and I'd tell her, only omitting the fact that Roo wasn't actually my daughter anymore.

Then, a few weeks ago, I had dinner at my mother's house. Somehow we ended up talking about braces (she has Invisalign) and she told me she'd been to the dentist the week before.

"Brittany cleaned my teeth - you know her, right?" my mom said.

"Of course."

"She said she's seen you around at a few YSA activities."

Brittany was LDS? Hmm. I wondered what she thought of the fact that I, ostensibly a single mother, was spending so much time at singles events, away from my child.

"Oh, that's nice," I told my mother, and I changed the subject (which is easy enough to do with my mother, because she has ADD). But I kept thinking about Brittany going to the same activities I do, and wondering.

So, a week ago Tuesday I had another cleaning appointment. Brittany came out to the waiting area to get me. We made small talk on the way back to the room. I set my purse down and made myself comfortable. Brittany made a few notes in my chart, and asked if there were any changes in my health history.

"Nope," I said.

"How's your job going?"

I gave my usual response - "Oh, you know. Books in, books out."

Brittany smiled. "And how's [Roo's real name] doing?"

I tried to remember if and when I'd mentioned Roo's name before. Did Brittany have a really good memory, or was that sort of thing in my chart? I panicked a bit at the thought of Roo being in my dental chart. I'm not sure why. But all I said was, "She's doing great!"

"Who does she stay with during the day while you work?"

Oh, expletive. Really? I thought. It was 7:20am, I'd gotten four hours of sleep and I'd skipped breakfast. I wasn't really in the mood to explain things. I'm not ashamed of my decision, but it's the sort of thing that I don't like being pushed about. I talk about it, and about Roo, when I feel like it.

Except, it seemed, for this morning. But this was no time to be shy.

"She's at home with her parents," I said, all cool nonchalance.

Brittany's eyebrows migrated north towards her hairline. "Oh!" she said. There was a beat before she said, "You put her up for adoption?"

I hate that phrase. Put her up. It always makes adoption sound like an auction. I didn't put Roo up on the auction block. I placed her, thankyouverymuch. But I didn't want to make a thing of it.

"Yep," I said.

"Well, good for you!" Brittany said. "Do you still get to see her?"

"Yeah." Good for you?

"That's great. So, Dr. D. wants to get a few x-rays ..."

Good for you? Good for you?

Brittany was already draping me with the lead apron, but I was still hung up on those three words. Good for me? What the heck was that supposed to mean? I wanted to ask her, but Dr. D. wanted all of my teeth x-rayed, and that kept my mouth busy.

Good for me? No, really, what does that mean? Does it mean good for me, or good for me? I wish she'd thought to put more emphasis on one word or another. It was my own personal "These pretzels are making me thirsty" moment. Did Brittany mean I'd done something good, that Roo's adoption met with her approval? Or did she mean that placing Roo was a good thing for me? Like I did it because it was in my best interests?

Good for me? Who says that, anyway? What the heck kind of reaction is that to the news that a woman has placed her child for adoption? Good for you? How am I supposed to take it? I suppose that a normal person wouldn't "take it" at all. Anyone else would let it go. But I'm not most people. Two things I know about myself very well are that I value precision in language, and I have a hard time letting things go.

Good for me? Good of me, perhaps. Good for Roo. Good for me? I don't know about that. Not that placing Roo has been bad for me. It was awful at first, but things are so much better now. Adoption has turned out to be a wonderful thing for me. But I get uncomfortable with that line of thinking. I don't like to focus a lot on how great things have been in my life since placement, because I feel like doing that makes it sound like placement was a selfish thing, something I did for me, because it made my life better. I'm not saying I have to suffer just to prove to Roo that placement was a selfless decision. But I have a hard time thinking of placement in the context of how much better my life is now.

Good for me? Maybe. But that's not why I did it. And it's not even why I try so hard to make something of myself now. It's for Roo, all of it. I placed her for her, and I want to be someone she can be proud of.

I guess a good start would be to stop obsessing over three little words spoken by my dental hygienist.

Story Time

I thought I would take a break from adoption-related blogging to share a personal story. I've had a bit of writer's block lately and I'm hoping that telling this story will help get the words flowing a bit better. Anyway.

Today I am going to share a story about balloons.

I moved into my apartment on January 1st. It is a beautiful apartment, much nicer than I had any right to expect, but it's mine just the same. One of the things I liked about it is the sliding door in the living room that leads to a surprisingly spacious patio. The patio is shaded by a roof but also by this big gorgeous tree right outside. So I can open the curtains and let the sunshine in without raising the temperature of my apartment by 15 degrees (which is a hazard here if you've got an un-shaded window).

The day after I moved into my apartment, January 2nd, I opened the curtains to let a little light in. I discovered that three mylar balloons were attached to a tree branch outside my patio.




"Oh, how nice," I said to myself. "It's someone's birthday." They looked to me like the sort of balloons a little girl might have at her party, and I thought that perhaps my downstairs neighbors, who I hadn't yet met, had a little girl, and that they'd put the balloons in the tree for her birthday. I pictured a small party on the downstairs patio, with party hats and a pastel-iced cake and a pigtailed birthday girl.

I went to church that morning with that delightful image in my mind. When I came home from church several hours later, the balloons were still in the tree. "Perhaps," I said to myself, "the party was just this afternoon, and they haven't yet got around to taking down the decorations." When my family came over for dinner that evening, I pointed out the balloons with a smile.

The next morning, I opened the curtains so my houseplant Rufus could get some sun. To my surprise, the balloons were still in the tree. This puzzled me. Didn't the birthday girl want her balloons in the house where she could be a nuisance with them? I squinted at the pink ribbons to which the balloons were attached. To my surprise, the ribbon was not neatly tied, but rather a tangle - knots tied in knots. Closer inspection (in the form of my leaning dangerously far over the edge of my balcony) showed that the balloons were not tied to the tree branch. They were stuck to the tree branch, and it didn't look intentional.

Well, this was interesting. Some little birthday girl had lost her balloons. But I told myself, a storm was in the forecast, and the wind would certainly remove the balloons from my tree. I went inside and closed the patio door. I noticed a splash of pink on my floor. I poked at it with my foot, which turned pink. I turned around and saw the sunlight catching on the heart-shaped balloons, causing the pink to bounce from the surface of the balloons to the surface of my living room floor.

This vexed me. And as the sun rose higher, my living room was bathed in a rosy glow. This vexed me further. But, I thought, the wind was coming in a few days, and my problem would be solved. I learned to be careful in my living room when looking up, to make sure a ray of mylar-assisted sunshine didn't burn my retinas.

The storm came, and the winds blew. A large branch of the lovely tree snapped, and hundreds of leaves were blown away. The tree no longer provided quite the degree of shade it had before. This wouldn't have been a problem, except that the weather had failed me. I kept my curtains open the night of the storm, which gave proof through the night that my balloons were still there. Oh, the rain had hit them, certainly, and other storms did as well. They looked shabby indeed by the middle of February. And at this point, one of the heart balloons had conceded defeat and, deflated, was carried away by a breeze. The other heart balloon, which had by now lost a great deal of its luster, had more room to wiggle with the absence of its twin. Now I found that it was impossible to sit on the sofa and not be blinded by a piercing beam of sunlight. I couldn't predict when they'd hit. The breeze was fickle. Just when I'd convince myself it was safe, the wind would shift.

It was quite the inconvenience, but I grew used to it. After a few weeks, I even began to enjoy the flashes of blinding pink on my living room. It reminded me a bit of a suncatcher I had as a little girl. I'd enjoyed the rainbows my suncatcher made, and I learned to enjoy the pink graffiti in my living room. Where I had once checked the balloons each morning for signs of wear and tear, I now simply averted my gaze when I opened the curtains.

A few weeks ago, after a late-winter storm, I arose one morning to find that the dark pink balloon was gone!



I hardly knew what to do with myself without that last heart balloon fluttering at me in the breeze. But as the weeks passed, I grew accustomed to a single annoying balloon in my tree. I re-learned what times of day it was safe to sit on the couch or at the kitchen table. I adapted, and I marveled at the tenacity of that balloon that should have blown away ages ago.

This morning I opened my curtains as usual. I didn't think to glance outside. I was busy getting ready for work. But when I got home from work and sat down on the couch to relax for a moment, I looked out the sliding glass door to my patio, and much to my surprise ...




... the birthday balloon was gone. Only a knot of filthy ribbons remains.

And that's that.

Oh, I suppose there ought to be a moral. Good stories have morals, right? Well, let's see ...

In many ways, my experience with the balloons is a lot like life. Life is full of annoyances, some of which we have to face every single day, but if we stick it out ... um, the weather will get rid of them? Something like that. Sorry, morals aren't my forte.

But the dang balloons are finally all gone! Isn't that exciting? I'm excited.

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Maybe I should stick to writing about adoption.