Isolation

I am a loner at heart. I like people but I do not make friends easily and that bothers me to no end. I am afraid that I will be hurt, laughed at or ignored so I tend to hang back at the fringes of the group. I want to be friendly, to make a connection but I don't have the words. I don't know what to say or how to say it.

If I am lucky enough to make a connection I will be a loyal friend. I may not always call, social anxiety still affects me. But I will be there for you if you ever need me.

This has always bothered me but I have accepted it as fact. I am not meant to have a lot of friends. I am meant to be a lone reed, if you will.

And it really doesn't bother me. The friends I have I will cherish forever.

But then there are days, days like today, where I would give anything to have that ability to converse easily. To make friends that I can call at any time for any reason. To have that person close by (because I do have those friends who live far, far away) that I can call when times get tough. Someone to say come over, I am here for you.

Things have been rough with Bunny. We are going through a growing phase. She is testing me and I feel like I am failing. I know so many others have faced these problems. But I don't have that access to them. I don't have anyone to call and say how did you handle this.

My friends who have children do not live here. They are not SAHMs. We are not going through the same things at the same time.

And so I flounder. I try and I fail. And then I try some more. I have some success and then more failure. I cry and I laugh and then I cry some more.

I want to have the personal connection. The ability to connect with someone, to commiserate, to share stories. But I am awkward. I am all angles and sharp edges. My pieces do not fit in easily to the communal puzzle. I know that if I could just shave an edge off, I would fit in. But I don't know how. So I sit on the edges, a piece belonging to a different puzzle long lost. If there were a land of misfit toys, I would be there. The elf who wants to be a dentist, a train with square wheels, a cowboy who rides an ostrich.

And I get mad at myself for this. Its my fault. If only I could be less like myself, I could have what I want. I could have that friendship, I could be less alone.

And I know its true. How would you know how lonely and afraid I am? How would you know how much I want a friend? How would you know unless my tounge could speak the words only my fingers can say?

So every day I say, today I will try. Today I will make a connection. And every day I fail, I remain quiet. Every day my fingers type the words I cannot say.

(I worry about hitting publish here. Should I say this? I am lonley but not alone. I have support from my husband and from my family. I just miss having friends around who know what is going on. I will get through this. I will survive. And maybe just maybe I will make a new friend . . . someday.)

Looking For Signs

I am one of those people who read into every situation. I'm always trying to find out the hidden meaning in things.

If this happened then it must mean that X will happen or Y will not happen.

It like I am looking for fate to determine my path in life.

I do this all the time. When I'm getting dressed, if the blue sweater falls out of my closet, then I'm going to wear the blue sweater.

I did it with my career. I quit one job with out another lined up and then received a phone call out of the blue from a friend hiring me for a job. That must be fate, I must be destined to work there. Then, I post on a message board that I want to quit another job and BAM! myself and my entire office staff are let go. (I mentioned this in a long rambling e-mail to Kate when she wanted to talk career. I think she meant her career and she may now think I'm totally crazy, but whatever.)

But what about other areas of life? If something happens, does it mean that I should go with it? Or should I stick with my original path even if there is a twist, turn or detour on that path?

I was faced with one of those possible signs recently. We had decided to move forward with Turtle's adoption after postponing it for a while. I had joined a local group of parents who had or who are adopting from Ethiopia. I started reading books on Ethiopia to learn more about the issues facing the country and the children. After reading There Is No Me Without You , I was convinced that we were doing the right thing. In fact, I wanted to adopt 10 kids right away (okay maybe not 10 but more than one).

So I got out our list of things to do and started making headway on it. Then I called our social worker to schedule our homestudy visits. There was no response to my first e-mail so I sent another. There was no response to that one either. I thought it could be possible that she was on vacation so I called to leave a message.

She answered the phone and told me the reason she had not contacted me is because her agency was no longer processing international adoptions. I asked when that came in to effect, she said the first of the year. Interesting. I had been in contact with her at the end of November telling her we were going to put off the meeting until after the new year. She said nothing at that time. At no point up until I contacted her in February did she make any effort to tell me that they were not going to be working with us. She said her director would call me to discuss this further (yeah he hasn't called - big surprise).

Of course this happened on a Friday afternoon and I was left with no real opportunity to come up with any alternatives until Monday. So I stewed all weekend long. I did what I always do. I wondered if this was a sign. Did this mean that we shouldn't pursue the adoption? Did this mean that we should look into other options? Was someone trying to tell me something? And if so what the hell were they trying to say?

Our international agency contracts with local agencies for the homestudy process. They have another agency we can work with and I have heard good things about them (although I had heard great things about the one that screwed us). But I contacted the international agency to see if we could use our social worker from our first adoption because we know her and trust her. They haven't made any determination yet.

So here I sit, totally frustrated. We can go with the new homestudy agency and move forwar with our current international agency. Or we can find a new international agency and move forward with our old social worker. Or maybe, just maybe, the universe is trying to tell me to do something different.

The Automatic Flushing Toilet is Evil

We started potty training Bunny during Bubs' staycation and it worked. She is basically 99.9% trained (crosses fingers, knocks wood, hops on one foot in a circle and spits). Accidents have been few and far between. She even made it through an entire week dry (overnights included). And yes I'm bragging just a little bit.

I'm glad we waited until she was ready. All in all its been awesome . . . that is until we encountered the automatic flushing toilet.

Now I know the automatic flushing toilet was invented as a convenience. It exists so that we don't have to touch the germy handles, too keep things cleaner. It just exists and I never gave it any thought. As far as I was concerned, it was a good thing. Until now.

We had a lovely day at the zoo on Saturday. It was 45 and sunny. We were enjoying it because we knew it wouldn't last, the snow was due to hit on Sunday. Trips to the zoo would stop for the year. We hit all of our favorites including the baby orangutang, Mahal, for mommy and the snakes, jellyfish and bats for Bunny.

But then we had to hit the bathroom and it was not so nice. The automatic flusher went off while Bunny was sitting on the potty and she freaked the heck out. She wouldn't go. We tried the potty at the giraffe house. No. The lion house. No! The visitor's center? No, no, no.

She took one look at the potty and made up her mind, if she didn't see a flush handle she wasn't going to go. I tried telling her that we could cover up the automatic flush so it wouldn't go off. Yeah that didn't work so well.

"No momma, I don't like these potties. No flush. I want to go home and use my potty."

You can't really argue with that logic. And I really didn't want to mess up all of her hard work becoming potty trained so we went home. She was a trooper. She made it home without an accident.

But of course you don't want to have to leave every place you are to use the potty at home. We may not be so close to home the next time. We have to solve this before it becomes a huge problem.

So I did a little research on the issue and you know whats supposed to work? Post-it notes. You just put one over the red eye on the potty and it won't flush until its removed. So simple, so easy. So now mommy is going to buy a huge stack of post-it notes and never leave home with out one.

Shoo

We have an unwanted visitor in our home that is slowly driving us all insane. A fly has found its way inside and has been tormenting us all for the past few days.

As I may have mentioned before I am not a fan of bugs. And my budding entimologist hates flying insects. So it hasn't been fun.

At any given moment during the day you are likely to stumble upon the following scene in our house:

"Momma a fly. I don't like flies. Go away fly." While uttering these words Bunny will sprint towards me grab my leg and bury her head into my knee. Of course I am clutching a rolled up magazine looking to go all Carl Spackler on the fly. So there I am hunting the fly with a crazed wild look in my eyes while dragging a 30 lb. toddler on my leg.

Needless to say that doesn't work. The fly continues to buzz happily around our house while "I'm All Right" plays in the background.

Hoping that a different tactic would work, Bubs got all zen like a Fly Whisperer this morning. He tracked the fly to the back stairway. He calmly asked the fly to fly closer to the door. "I'm going to open the door and you are going to fly outside," he told the fly, expecting it to listen.

It did not listen. Why would it want to go outside into the cold when it could stay in our nice warm house.

The cats are no help either. When they were younger, they would have at least tried to catch the fly. There would have been flying leaps off of furniture at the fly. You would have seen them standing on their hind paws stretching up to pluck the fly out of the air. But alas they are in their golden years and they are content to lay in front of the heater curled in a ball while the fly buzzes around their ears.

So now I am developing a nervous tic. I imagine the fly is everywhere. I can hear his buzzing but I cannot catch him. Bunny is no better. She stops what she is doing every so often to scream "go away fly" and duck her head.

Go away indeed. We can't take much more of this.

Note: That sound of manical laughter you hear is me. The fly is no more. Ding dong the fly is dead.

Big Girl Words

If you are the parent of a toddler, you have on more than one occasion asked said toddler to "use your words" instead of screaming incoherently. The reason being you can help them if you know what the heck is going on.

If the tantrum is because they can't find a favorite toy, great. Why don't we both look for it together.

If they are hungry, that is easily remedied.

If they are tired, you can move them towards a nap or bed (hopefully).

If they want to do something they are not supposed to do, well hopefully you can distract them with something else.

But the key is having them verbalize their emotions to let you know what is wrong.

Lets look at how we at the But Why Mommy household have put this theory into action. Bunny is an incredibly verbal child and we have encouraged her to verbalize her emotions.

Exhibit A:

"Frustrated. Momma, where baby lizard?"
"I don't know baby, let's look."
"Frustrated, momma."
"He's not here. He's not over there." Now momma is getting frustrated.
"Frustrated, momma. Where baby lizard?"
"Let's retrace our steps. We got up, got the lizards out. You played with them. Momma vacuumed . . ." Has sickening realization, runs to vacuum, pulls out bottom half of small rubber lizard. Oh no.
"FRUSTRATED!" Real tears streaming down her face. "Fix him momma. Fix him."
"Momma can't fix him, baby."
"FRUSTRATED!"
"Would you like to watch Dora?"
"Yes." Tears subsiding, no longer frustrated.

So the theory doesn't work quite as well in practice. But at least we all know how we are feeling.