fox

my boss at my old job -- who hated being called anybody's boss, but too bad for her, because she was -- and her husband long desperately for children. two years ago this summer, their first (possibly their only) crack at a fertility treatment didn't take; even at the time, they were beginning the process of trying to adopt, and the thing has been in the works since then.

finally, a couple of weeks ago, they headed to russia to get their kids. i don't know entirely how this works; i'd have assumed that they'd have adopted the kid(s) and just gone to russia to bring them home, but apparently not. this is turning into a whole drama of filing more paperwork, scheduling meetings, getting the runaround from this office and that other person, complaining to the agency, and hopefully -- eventually -- finding The Right Child(ren) for them. but today, they finally had the meeting they've been trying to have for at least a week, and they met some kids and found children they'd like to adopt.

there are four of them, a boy and three girls, between the ages of four and seven. they can't be separated -- not that my friends would even think of doing such a thing -- but because there are four of them and they're not babies the folks at the center don't think there's a good chance they'll find a family if my friends don't (can't) take them. the approval, before they went to russia, was for two children. they need to communicate with their social worker back here and hope he signs off on their adopting four.

this is a total of six people who deserve to have this work out in their favor. my boss and her husband should, by rights, have been parents long ago; and these kids, whose prospects for adoption are so grim, deserve the kind of parents my friends will be. if you're a praying sort of person, please spare one for them.

i am frustrated and trying not to get all the way to angry (or even annoyed). other people must feel this way, at least from time to time. how do you refrain from yelling and screaming and breaking things?

it's a little too early for me to be going to bed, so anyone who wishes to amuse me is welcome to do so. :-)

it's always unpleasant to discover you've been mistaken, and that people don't give as much of a damn as you'd thought they did.

eventually, of course, you assimilate the discovery, you re-work your expectations and move on and everything's fine. but no matter how many times this happens (and it can't not happen, unless you make a conscious decision never to stop doubting people ever, and that's just not in my nature), the moment of realization is never going to be much fun.

i forgot to mention this first thing in the morning, but today? is officially september 13.

because i said so.

[hugs]

accompanied the LJ-less terri today to deliver the computer to emrinalexander and trislindsay. darthrami also joined us. entire operation was a thundering success. continue to be allergic to cats. will post further details at some later date. all of you are wonderful. they kept saying so.

Yeah, so, I'm not unhappy or upset or angry or any of that; I think the mood I'm in now is precisely, accurately, described as "cross."

I'm cross with Ms. JKR for reasons known to those of you who know what I'm talking about. I'm cross with myself for being so involved in a fictional universe that it can affect my mood for four days (and counting).

I'm cross with the girl who sits in front of me and to the left in Russian for never paying a damn bit of attention in class, spending the time instead drawing cartoons in her notebook, and then (obviously) not knowing the answer when she's called on, although she seems to be anxious or ADD or in some other way not entirely responsible for her manner (though I do believe she's responsible for her behavior). I'm cross with the grad student who teaches the evening sessions, Sunday through Thursday, for not being better organized and therefore presiding over an hour and a half five days a week in which several of us show up to learn nothing, reinforce nothing we've learned elsewhere, and have our time wasted.

I'm cross with the weather for being so damned hot.

I'm cross with the Boy for [see previous entry]. I'm cross with myself for giving a damn, which I hardly even do -- but like I said, it's not the what that I object to, but the how.

I'm cross with my friends for living so far away that I can't just call them up and make plans to hang out the same evening. The fact that, in every case but three, I'm the one who moved away -- that's irrelevant at the moment.

I'm cross with everyone I know who is happy, for being happy when I'm not.

I'm cross with academia for not dropping a plan for the next phase of my graduate study fully-formed into my lap. I'm cross with my apartment for harboring tiny little fruit-fly-like buggy things (which, fortunately, make no noise and don't bite, but are nevertheless really annoying), even after I cleaned it from top to bottom, took out all the trash, and subjected it to inspection by exterminators. I'm cross with my neighbor for playing her music at a volume precisely loud enough that I can hear only the percussion.

I'm cross with curling season for not being year-round.

I'm cross with myself (for the third time, now) for not having what it takes, assuming "what it takes" exists, to just get the hell over it and quit being cross at all the above people and things. I've tried, and all that happens is what happens when you try not to think about elephants.

I really feel like if any one of the irritants named above were fixed, I'd be immeasurably happier.

three weeks ago, my cousin told us she was pregnant with her second child, due in november.

have just received e-mail from my aunt: the fetus has no heartbeat.

So I'm about to go on a brief road trip with my two best girlfriends. (We're going to visit the fourth member of our little coven and talk about her wedding, which is taking place in about seven months.) Total distance: about 1700 miles, round trip. Car we're going in: mine. Issue: how much should each of us contribute?

One of these friends was my roommate in my senior year of college, and when we graduated we went on a (much longer) road trip with our other remaining housemate (the bride in the above wedding had originally been our fourth housemate, but that's another story). On that trip, we took my car; we split the cost of each hotel room, campsite, etc. three ways; and we took turns buying gas, one, two, three, one, two, three.

This seemed Not Unfair, but possibly Not The Best Way To Arrange Things, as in the course of the trip I had to buy a new tire, and then not long after the trip ended I had to get two more tires and three new rims. While not denying that the owner of a car assumes the responsibility of maintaining the car, there was wear and tear on the car as a result of the road trip that I wouldn't have incurred without it, the same way I wouldn't have bought all that gas without driving cross-country. In short: each passenger should be responsible for one-third of the cost of the trip, not for one-third of the cost of the gasoline. Right?

I'm not freakishly devoted to this concept. (My parents are, but their opinions carry the weight of suggestion, not of instruction.) All the same, it seems reasonable to multiply the mileage by 36.5, which is the federal cents-per-mile reimbursement for work-related travel, divide that by three, and have each person kick in that amount. Doesn't it?

One friend -- the one, as it happens with whom I have not taken a road trip before -- agrees with me. The other may or may not; I'm letting the non-car-owner float the proposition by her, so it won't be a case of Fox Asking For More Money. College-roommate-friend is, and I appreciate this, not swimming in cash; she and her husband are about to move a thousand miles to another state so he can pursue his Ph.D., so, you know, not flinging money around wildly. Now, I've been fortunate not to have the same kind of debts they've had -- but on the other hand, I've only been working with one income all this time; and I'm also about to move to another city and become a penniless graduate student, and I'll be a grad student without an employed spouse to help me with the expenses. So I'm not precisely rolling in it either.

I don't want this to be a Huge Thing, and I don't know if my friend will choose to make it one. But I don't want to be taken advantage of, either. Argh.

They'd come to a Parting of the Ways, apparently. Or, they hadn't come to it, but they could see it in the offing -- though why The Ex With The Non-Broken Fingers needed to force the issue now when, by the time it arrives, it might have become a non-issue is a mystery. Very, very sad, but equally sad on both sides, so no vengeance need be exacted. This time.