Toddlers and Torchwood

I had a fairly productive weekend.  Right now, I'm a bit stressed because I'm neck-deep in a semi-crisis at my agency.  It's a combination of typically high turnover and terrible communication practices by social workers.  Perhaps they practice keeping secrets so much that they forget how to actually tell important things to large groups of people.  I don't talk about my job here, but I will say that I have a bit of experience when it comes to the psychology of communication about change.  You really should not have the junior-most person in the organization sending stakeholders a mass email saying "I'm leaving and everything is changing, but I won't say exactly how, I'll just let you the reader fill in the blanks with the worst-case scenario, but don't worry, nothing will really change."

On the bright side, we finally have a subsidy and reimbursement amount for BB, which means a presentation date can be scheduled soon. I'm happy with the amount. I'm going to regard this as a solid enough milestone to go ahead and buy some general parenting books on toddlers.  I'm especially worried about attachment issues.  I remember reading "Toddler Adoption" a while back, but I need to go dig it up again. 

I've also been watching a lot of Torchwood lately.  It was added to the Netflix Watch Instantly list, and I thought I'd give it a try.  The only thing I knew was that it was a Doctor Who spin-off with more adult subject matter. IT. IS. SO. FREAKING. GOOD.  I'm not typically the kind of person who falls in love with TV shows.  I mean, I like exciting, character-driven, well-written shows like Buffy and Angel and The Wire and Six Feet Under and Big Love and Battlestar Galactica (yes, I cried at the end even though the end was kind of stupid) and so on. But I can't recall a TV show that hooked me in as quickly as Torchwood!  It's like television crack, and I'm totally addicted. Now I'm listening to Torchwood radio plays and buying Torchwood books along with the toddler books.

Here's why.  I'll get the bad stuff on the table right away.  The series starts off a little unevenly.  I thought that some of the first season episodes were too sentimental.  And if you're into serious/hard science fiction (and I am) you need to suspend your disbelief.  Like Doctor Who, it's really more "science fantasy".  Especially factoring in all the time travel, there are often plot holes big enough to drive a truck through.  Much of the basic plot structure clearly comes from a kind of Buffy/Angel/X-Files secret team format.  Plus, you don't really get the full picture unless you're watching Doctor Who, and I was never a huge fan and have only sporadically watched the new Doctor Who series.
 

The good stuff: the acting is fantastic. The show takes a lot more risks than any American equivalent I can think of.  The subject matter is dark and the body count is high, so even the plots may start off as derivative, they soon get complicated.  You know where the shows start but not necessarily where they're going to end.  The characters are actually changed by what they go through and events are taken very seriously... but there's still plenty of cheeky humor.  And then there's the fact that the team is led by a heroic bisexual cosmic space slut. Captain Jack Harkness is an absolutely fantastic character.  To really get the full story on Captain Jack, you have to jump back and forth a bit between Torchwood and Doctor Who, and luckily Netflix Watch Instantly has them all available.  If you want to start from the very beginning, watch Doctor Who Series One Episodes 9-12 then start on Torchwood Series One.

I only have one episode left to watch: Children of Earth Day Five. Day Four was grueling... and heartbreaking. I knew what was going to happen, but I still cried just a little bit.

At least I know there's going to be a Season Four.  There's also a development to Americanize the show to some degree and put a version on FOX.  I'm rather leery about that.  It's not Torchwood without awesomely gratuitous gay sex, and I don't see that happening on FOX!

Right now I'm trying to get my mother to watch Torchwood too.  She's not really a sci-fi head like me, but she's much more of an Anglophile, so it shouldn't be too hard.  She thinks anything from the BBC is brilliant.  I've argued with her before that there are just as many crappy shows in the UK, it's just that they only export the best of them.  And even those are frequently fishy.  For every "Father Ted" there's an "Are You Being Served". I think my husband is probably a lost cause, though.  His favorite BBC show is "Lovejoy".

Happy Holidays! And a mini-update.

I have a lot of stuff to catch up on. 

Summing up: my cousin had another really bad breakdown, which we think is exacerbated by involvement in a particular local 12-step group that has mutated into something secretive, hierarchical and cultlike. Then we had an extended-family dispute over Thanksgiving that was very depressing to me, but I'm not going to talk about it any more.

I received some documentation on BB that states he was meth-exposed, which I half expected.  I did not expect that learning about BB's medical issues would give me so much insight into Sunny's issues. Really, it's like a lightbulb went off in my head. We don't have much medical info on Sunny beyond basic hospital stuff, because he didn't come into foster care until he was almost three.  But by all accounts, he had almost exactly the same issues as an infant that BB is having now.

On advice from Tubaville, I'm going to make an appointment with a neurologist ASAP.  This makes me really sad for Sunny. Much of his behavior must come from the fact that his brain was literally damaged by  destructive chemicals. Again, it's a possibility that was always in the back of mind, but I never really brought it to the front.  It's up there in the front right now, for sure. And unlike ADHD, which I feel confident about discussing widely, meth-exposure has a greater stigma, and so that raises huge privacy issues for me.  If this blog goes private for a while, that will probably be the reason why. On the other hand, this is really, incredibly important stuff for other parents to know about, and we stay ignorant when we don't listen AND talk... it's hard to say.

We're also halfway through a med change for Sunny.  We're switching from an atypical antipsychotic to an anticonvulsive. It's supposed to have less potential side effects, but Sunny has already been complaining of stomach pain, which is really worrying me. We're going to keep it up because so far the pains have been intermittent, haven't affected his appetite at all and there's a chance they'll go away as his body adjusts to the new medication.  He has a new diagnosis -- IED -- and if you know what that stands for, it's sort of a baloney diagnosis, but then again I take all these diagnoses with a grain of salt.

I'm mostly keeping up with my fitness plan. I'm getting burned out on Debbie Siebers but I still do Burn It Up a couple times a week and I'm exercising at least 5 days a week. 

So far Christmas is going OK.  I IMed my dad in Hawaii the other day and wished him a Mele Kalikimaka (Hawaiian for Merry Christmas).  I expected him to IM back something like "I don't believe in that garbage" or "you will burn in hellfire forever".  Instead, he wished me a Mele Kalikimaka right back!  He really has mellowed a lot in his old age.  Maybe one day he'll even buy me a present on Christmas, or let me buy one for him.

We're going to have a small Christmas, and my cousin is getting a day pass from her clinic to join us.  Sunny has been tracking Santa and making calculations about the chimney size.  I'm a bit stressed but staying in good spirits.

I'd also like to congratulate Thorn, who has a special visitor this season.

Short Sunny Update

Guy is out of town this week.  When we went on the same trip last year, things kind of fell apart.  That's the first time that Sunny ever hit me during a tantrum. Guy being away seemed to flip a switch in his brain and probably activated all his memories of the other people in his life that left him...

This week, it's been hugely better, so far. Guy wrote seven notes with little drawings and messages like "I love you" and "sleep tight", and I give one of those to Sunny every night.  He also emails Sunny from the road.  Sunny has a clear goals -- 5 nights of "reading nicely" and "no fits" means two visits to the play center this weekend.  His days are also much more scheduled. 

Guy does so much around the house.  Washing the dishes and getting Sunny's lunch ready and all the other stuff isn't easy on my own. I do have my mother helping out -- she's picking up Sunny from afterschool every day.

Sunny says "I miss Dad" and "I'm sad because I miss Dad" a lot.

After dinner we usually play a game of chess together. We've also tried (and failed) to do some dance videos together.  It's so hard! Also, Sunny really does not have good dance basics.  That's one reason I keep up with his hip-hop dance classes.  I think it's a generally good thing to know how to dance, and as Sunny grows up hip-hop is what the kids his age are going to be dancing to.  He doesn't dislike the classes -- if he did I'd have to discontinue them -- but he's not really excited about them, either, the way he is about chess club.

He loves singing punk rock songs though... or singing AOR soft rock songs in the style of punk rock. Guy recently taught him to sing this one.  It's not very hard to learn.

Our Halloween Visit

The visit this Halloween went well.  Sunny and I flew in on Saturday, and flew out Sunday night.  I scoured the web for coupons and specials and got very good deals on the hotel and rental car.

It's enjoyable spending time with Sunny's foster family. They're incredibly nice people and their family is large, boisterous but harmonious.

It's just that their environment really gets me down.  They live in a solidly middle-class, very white suburb.  It's a great place to be a little kid. Neighbors know each other. It's safe to play in the streets. But when you get to be a teenager, especially someone like me, it can turn into hell on earth. From the age of about 8 to 15 I lived in a similar environment.  Towards the end I simply refused to leave my mother's house at all.

It's in a different region, but it inspires the same familiar feeling of dread.

Plus, the food is awful. The regional food is practically inedible. I'm not going to sing the praises of Southern food -- it's mostly overcooked, oversalted and overgreasy -- but at least it has some taste.  If I can have a pork chop with some collard greens and fried okra I won't complain.  Even a barbecue sandwich is acceptable. When I visit Sunny's family I have to carefully plan out my meals. My only real options are chains: Cracker Barrel, Chipotle and Subway.  I don't know what I'd do without Cracker Barrel. Sunny's family mainly eats massive amounts of pizza, pasta and mashed potatoes. I would never refuse food in a formal dinner setting, but it's often a "make yourself a plate" situation there, so I'm usually able to duck out politely.

Being a food-snob burb-trauma victim makes the visits increasingly rougher. Once a year is more my speed.  Sunny's foster mother and I also discussed sending Sunny up there for a week visit as an unaccompanied minor. I think that's what we'll definitely do in the future, but I'm not sure if he'll be ready yet next year.

The family really goes all out for Halloween.  They had a corpse on the roof, and a collection of animatronic witches and bats on the porch.  I told their oldest son about how nobody trick-or-treated in my neighborhood, mainly because there are a lot of Baptists and others who think Halloween is anti-Jesus. He told me that the one time he was in Georgia he hung out with some "country boys" and was pretty amazed at how they would hellraise all week and then go to church on Sunday.

Their neighborhood was full of trick-or-treating kids and everyone had an incredible time. Sunny was Darth Vader. Toward the end of the night, he had to use his lightsaber to fight off a whole squad of Imperial Stormtroopers.

My other problem was that we had a fire drill in my office the Friday before Halloween.  I walked down an ungodly number of steps. That day, I was fine.  On Saturday, I woke up with agonizing pain in my calves. I could sit, I could stand, but anything in between and it felt like someone was stabbing me in the calves with a fiery poker. I could barely bend my legs.  I started walking like an arthritic penguin.  On Sunday, my back pain came back in full force, because I hadn't been maintaining proper posture. I could barely move. I was trying to spend a lot of time bonding with BB but I couldn't even pick him up.  It was so frustrating.  In order to fly back to Atlanta carrying our luggage -- luggage that included many pounds of Halloween candy -- I bought some compression bandages and wrapped my calves really tightly, and even then, it was tough.  My back pain finally went away on Monday and my leg pain went away a few days later.

I didn't want to show Sunny exactly how badly I was hurting. Little kids like it when their parents are a little bit off their game, because then they can show off being useful and helping out.  But they can get panicky if they think their parents are really not doing well; it's upsetting to their worldview.

BB looks great. He eats and drinks constantly, and is very active.  Some of his favorites activities: pushing his toy truck around the house, spinning things around, tipping over the trash can, dancing up and down, throwing himself down on a blanket, getting tossed up and down.  He's still not saying any words yet (he's 16 months old) but he does make happy sounds and frustrated sounds and excited sounds.  He plays nicely alongside other children.  In contrast, Sunny's foster mom's grandson, who is a few months older, is much more advanced developmentally but also likes to run up to people and hit them and throw things at their faces!  It's still kind of cute now, but hopefully he'll grow out of it soon.

Sunny and BB got to do some bonding, which was very sweet.  Sunny didn't have the patience to play with him, but he would stop and kiss BB on top of the head whenever he ran by.

On Sunday, Sunny went out with NN to a local playground.  They also hung out with his uncle, the one that Sunny used to think was his father. NN told me that her ex-husband, the disagreeable grandfather, even showed up, although he didn't interact with Sunny that much (this was the grandfather that threatened to disown his son, Sunny's uncle, if he adopted Sunny).

After we got back, Sunny was on pretty good behavior.  Then it fell apart on Wednesday.  He had a very long fit that night, although there was really more crying than hitting involved. He had a crying fit in class so that he had to be taken out of the classroom temporarily on Thursday.  He had another two fits on Sunday.  There's definitely some fallout from the visit.

We have an intake appointment at a promising new therapist office next week.  We're not looking into the ABC of Atlanta right now because we're really looking for play therapy, not attachment therapy, but thanks to anyone who left suggestions anyway.  This week is shaping up to be tough because Guy is going out of town for the rest of the week.  Sunny is NOT going to handle that well, no matter what we do and how we prepare.

When I walked into our office tower the Monday after the trip, it gave me a sense of shameful joy to notice that a quite a few other people were still walking like penguins.

Weekend Update with Gun Violence Q&A

I'm closing the weekend on a down note, although it has mostly gone well. Sunny's behavior has been pretty good. He had two rewards he was working hard towards. The first was going to see Astro Boy; I promised I would take him as long as he didn't have a fit or major snit. The second was a candy bar, which he could get if he won the "anger management game". This is just a simple point system where we get a point if he loses his temper and yells or backtalks, and gets a point if we tell him "no" and he doesn't lose his temper.

We spent the whole day together, since Guy was off on a day trip. Sunny ran lots of errands with me and was extremely helpful. He got in some quality play time as well.

I was very appreciative of Sunny today because I had a horrible nightmare the other night. In the dream, my family was vacationing in a city by the beach. The city was full of nightclubs and restaurants and hotels built almost vertically on high cliffs above the beach. The beach was full of swimming vacationers and also full of large sea turtles... it was hard to walk down the beach without stumbling over a sea turtle. Something complicated was happening and I had to run from place to place handling various issues. I ended up in a restaurant balcony on the cliff, watching Sunny play far below. All of a sudden, I saw a huge, 100-foot tall wave rushing out of the ocean -- it wiped the beach completely clean of everything and everyone. Guy and my mother rushed over to the restaurant, I figured out that Sunny had been lost to the wave and I started crying, and kept crying for what seemed like forever.

I have recurrent nightmares involving tsunamis. I don't know why. In real life, I have very little fear of the ocean or even of large waves, and I'm a strong swimmer.

We had an interesting talk about guns in the car today. One of my friends that Sunny knows was once shot in the chest during a failed mugging in Little 5 Points, and Sunny is kind of obsessed with that incident... I think it ties into his long-standing obsession with Abraham Lincoln getting shot. I had to answer a lot of questions about guns today.

If someone shot at our car, would the glass stop it?
- No, because the car doesn't have special bulletproof glass.

If someone shot at our car, what would we do?
- I would yell at you to duck down, then I would duck down and keep driving, and we would get away.

But what about you? I could duck down because I'm little, but you're too big, you wouldn't fit under the seat.
- I wouldn't need to duck down all the way.

How could you keep driving if you were ducked down so you couldn't see out the front?
- I could drive while peeking out of the corner of my eye.

Have you done it before?
- No, I've never driven under gunfire but I'm pretty confident I could manage it if I had to.

Can people who are big get shot and live like your friend who got shot and lived?
- Yes, but it's a better idea not to get shot in the first place.

If you get shot by a bazooka could you live?
- No.

If I was shot would I get killed because I'm little?
- It depends on where you got shot.

If I got shot in the leg I wouldn't die.
- Well, if the bullet hit your femoral artery in your leg, you might bleed out and die. Like I said, it's better not to get shot in the first place. A lot of kids die each year because they play with guns and they shoot themselves or their friends by accident. They think guns are cool because kids see so many movies where guns are cool, but they don't realize how dangerous they are.

So they didn't mean to do it? That's impossible!
- No, it's really easy, maybe they look down the barrel and they hit the trigger by accident.

How come Abraham Lincoln got shot in the head and he lived for three days?
- (I should have this answer down cold by now but I don't) Umm, because the bullet caused his brain to bleed, and the doctors couldn't get into his brain to stop the blood, so it took three days but he was bleeding too much in his brain to live.

The brain has a lot of blood in it because we need blood to give us lots of energy to think!
- That sounds right.

I was oddly touched that Sunny was worried about my safety during gunfire.

He also made me a really nice offer later on. I was pulled over by a cop for an annoying reason: not seeing a minuscule "No Turn on Red" sign. Luckily, the policeman didn't give me a moving violation ticket, but instead of letting me off with a warning, he gave me an even stupider ticket: not having proof of insurance (I had an insurance card but it was expired). Georgia has an automated system and they can look up proof of insurance in seconds, so I didn't even know you were still required to carry around a current insurance card! He obviously knew I had valid insurance... this "no proof" ticket is just a stupid nuisance. Anyway, Sunny said he felt bad for me and offered to pay my ticket out for his birthday present money! I told him, "No, it's my responsibility since I was the one driving, but thanks a lot anyway."

Back to the gun stuff... I believe in being pretty graphic about what guns can do. Here in the U.S. we get a ridiculous amount of positive messages about guns. Guns = instant power = instant masculinity, and so on. Gun messages start at a preschool level and just get stronger and stronger. There's no way to totally shield kids from these messages, and the idea of the gun is too powerful to fight against. The pragmatic remedy is to try and balance the idea with the reality. If you just tell kids that guns are evil and leave it at that, I doubt they're really going to take it to heart.

It's also important to know what to do in case of gunfire. I've talked about that with Sunny before. If you hear a gunshot, hit the ground and crawl to cover. I've had to do this more than a couple times in my life. Just last year in Charlotte, actually!

People who don't understand these simple lessons, perhaps because they were lucky enough to grow up somewhere without a strong gun culture, are really vulnerable. For example, I remember a party I went to a long time ago in Miami, where a friend of a friend publicly announced that someone had taken his .22 out of his backpack. He spent an hour trying to find it, then went to the police station at 2 in the morning to report it stolen (otherwise, if someone had shot someone with that gun, he might have gotten blamed for it). It turned out a drunk German backpacker who had washed up at the party had taken it, thinking it was a toy pistol, and was passed out on top of it in a bedroom corner somewhere.

I've heard a lot of anecdotes about young Europeans getting into serious trouble in Miami. In a lot of European countries, if you get in a bar fight, people hit each other, and the worst that happens is a bloody nose. But people are more polite in places like Miami, where everyone and their grandmother has a gun, because you should take for granted that your opponent isn't going to start a fistfight... instead, they'll just go out to the parking lot, get their gun and wait for you. Drunken soccer hooligan type behavior in a gun culture is a disaster waiting to happen.

Sunny's Pawpaw (Guy's mother's husband) has a gazillion rifles but he keeps them carefully in a safe. J's father (J is Sunny's friend, the pinecone lighter) also has a gun and keeps it in a safe. But realistically speaking, someday Sunny is going to end up in a house where somebody is not responsible, and kids/teenagers can get hold of the gun...

I've spent so much time writing about guns I'm too tired to talk about the reason I'm feeling down today. It's all about my dad. I was relying on him for something and he let me down. He can be such a jerk sometimes. Maybe I'll write about it later.

On all other fronts, things are going well. I feel pretty good about my health. Today was a day of rest -- relative rest, that is, considering all the stuff I did with Sunny. Yesterday, I finished my 5th consecutive Level 1 Slim in 6, did weight training at the gym and got an extremely painful but effective massage. There was a scapula pop involved. I'm not sure if I'm going to get all the way through Slim in 6 in 6 weeks, simply because my arm strength is not very good... I'm fine with all the leg work but I can't follow along 100% with the arms. At one point I think you're suposed to do about 16 push-ups and I can barely do 6. It's going to take me a while to build up the arm strength, and I'm going to be conservative and not start the next level until my arms are ready for it.

I also need to write a post about Astro Boy and adoption. The movie has huge, huge adoption issues, including a portrayal of two extremes of bad adoptive parenting: 1) the parent who wants to force an adoptee to fit their image of the fantasy child 2) the Fagin-type parent who takes in and exploits the orphaned.

Although, when you think about it, adoption issues are all over children's and fantastic and superhero stories. Superman? Transracial adoption. Spiderman? Relative adoption. It's rare to encounter a story without it. It's like a reliable motor to drive a story with.

I'll leave with some Twitter stuff. The hash tag #oneletteroffmovies has been really popular lately, and all the funniest one letter off variations have been done already. I contributed my own variation, #oneletteroffWernerHerzogmovies, though I warn you it will only be somewhat humorous if you're German, a film geek, have a juvenile sense of humor or some combination of those three qualities.

Aguirre, the Wrath of Cod
Bad Lieutenant: Poot of Call New Orleans
Cabra Verde
Fescue Dawn
Nosferatu the Vampire
Little Dieter Needs to Fry
My Best Friend

I love Werner Herzog. I can't wait for the Bad Lieutenant remake that's coming out next month. I don't know if it's going to be good, but it's going to be extremely something.

Health Plan

I hesitate to write this, because I might jinx it, but I feel like I'm starting to climb out of a hole in terms of my physical health.

The last month I've been depressed.  There are several factors but the largest one is the situation with BB.

I'd call this a mild functional depression.  I had truly deep depression only once in my life, when I was 19. It lasted about a month and was something I don't think I could ever handle again.  When I dragged myself out of bed in the morning, I just had one thought: how I could ration and kill time until I went back to sleep. I could only talk in monosyllables and was constantly on the verge of crying. At the time, I was feeling terrible isolation staying in Tokyo that summer... I'd flown there soon after sitting for a month at my grandmother's deathbed in Florida, waiting for her to die slowly of emphysema. She weighed about 60 pounds at the end. I held up well during the time, because I was supporting my mother, but fell apart shortly afterwards when I was on my own and didn't have an emotional "job" anymore.

If something that bad ever happened to me again, I'd go to a doctor and get some kind of antidepressant. My only experience with medication has been the time I tried Wellbutrin to quit smoking. I couldn't take the side effects and stopped taking the pills after a week.  I ended up quitting a year later on the patch.  The Wellbutrin gave me dry mouth, I needed to pee all the time because I had to drink so much to get rid of the dry mouth, I couldn't get to sleep at night, and I kept looking over my shoulder all day because I had a low-level paranoia that people were sneaking up behind me. But at least I was getting stuff done!  Being miserable with side effects while getting stuff done would be my preference over being miserable while vegetating.

Anyway, because I've been depressed recently, and very inactive, I'm about 15-20 pounds overweight.  This is turning into a disaster.  I'm not healthy at this weight.  My bra size has gone from 36A to 38B, which freaks me out.  Even though a lot of boys and girls made fun of me when I was younger for having small breasts, I've never felt bad about them, and I love the freedom of almost never having to wear a bra.  Now I've had to buy a bunch of new ones, and wear one every moment I'm upright, or else I'm in pain. I HATE IT.  Second, the weight might be aggravating my scoliosis.  I have rib pain that comes and goes because the 36-degree sideways curve of my spine squeezes some ribs together and spreads the other ones apart too much, and it's been getting worse recently. 

I'm adding different things to a regimen of trying to get healthier and get to my optimum weight.

- Going back to taking the supplements that I had unwisely started to skip.  I also have mild anemia and need a multivitamin with extra iron.  Of course, the extra iron gives me (ahem) digestive issues and I have to take fiber powder to counteract that.  So I've got to take 1) SAM-E in the morning for mood 2) multivitamin, fish oil and primrose oil capsules, plus fiber, in the evening.
- Going back on the South Beach diet.  I'm doing a modified Phase I. My only problem with the South Beach Phase I food guidelines is that they don't include a lot of Asian dishes... I'm sticking with 90% of the guidelines, but substituting in fairly low-carb things like miso soup and curried lentils. The main part is cutting out all bread, all rice, and all added sugar.  I've been making sure to cook dinners where there are still rice and potatoes and pasta for Guy and Sunny, but I can be full eating everything else.  And also remembering to eat 5 times a day and not let myself get hungry.
- Starting an exercise program.  I've started the "Slim in 6" home program and did the first set last night. I felt great afterwards!  I'm going to try add in a gym session once a week, on the weekend, for weight training, which I think is a realistic goal.  Three times a week is setting myself up for failure.  I was going to buy a rowing machine, but I realized that would be murder on my back because of scoliosis, so I'm going to stick with fairly low impact fitness videos like Slim in 6, and yoga.

Beyond just getting back to normal, here's my extra motivation! I have a naturally blocky build - broad shoulders, wide hips but not much waist - here are some actresses (Michelle Rodriguez and Katee Sackoff) rocking the body shape I'd like to achieve after some major fitness work:

I've hardly seen any Asian women with a body type like mine.  Although I have the typical long Asian torso/short legs (I have to buy petite-size pants even though I'm 5'8"), it seems like I'm a lot wider from shoulder to shoulder than any East Asian woman of my comparable size.

Anyway, here goes.  I hope to be in pretty good shape by the end of this year.

I fondly remember the best shape I was ever in... when I spent several weeks in a small beach town in Mexico in my early 20s.  I ate lots of awesome seafood, street tacos, fresh fruit and French pastries.  I spent all day bodyboarding and snorkeling, which builds the upper arms, and all night dancing to reggae, which is like doing a gazillion squat exercises.  Sigh... I wish being fit nowadays could be that fun.  Atlanta right now seems rather cold and grim.

Personal Update and Blog/Racialicious Comparison

Last week was really exhausting. I need another vacation! My weekends are becoming an extension of the working week... and this is mainly my own fault, since I really need to organize them better.

Sunny has a 101-degree fever this morning. Guy had to pick him up from school yesterday because he had a sore throat, but then his throat quickly got better, so Guy took him right back to school. Last night Sunny's appetite didn't suffer: he ate a huge pork chop, with sides of couscous and grilled asparagus with cheese on top, then some grapes for dessert. It's hard to know how to handle Sunny being sick because 1) he's ridiculously healthy and 2) he's sort of a hypochondriac. In all the time we've had him he's been sick exactly once, and that lasted less than a day. I think he has a very powerful immune system, so when gets sick, the symptoms are light, and go away quickly. Because he's so dramatic, he doesn't exactly lie, but he does exaggerate his symptoms greatly. All kids do this to some extent, but Sunny does seem a bit extreme. His friend J has a much more stoic approach to illness and injury. On the other hand, because Sunny's so energetic and restless, I think he gets up and moves around when he really should be relaxing...

I just hope he doesn't have the swine flu, or the regular flu, for that matter. I've been watching the news and calling our pediatrician to find out when I can get him the vaccine, but I don't have a date yet.

Right now, his cousin (Guy's sister's daughter) is visiting, and they're hanging out on the couch, watching Voltron and playing Legos together. They'd be out running around if Sunny was feeling better.

I just noticed comments from Sarah (hi!) saying, among other things, that I sound a lot different at this blog than I do at Racialicious, where I comment frequently and guest-post occasionally. I haven't thought about it that much, but that's right. I'm much more of a hard-ass at Racialicious, ha ha! It's a good jump-off point for talking about online communities in general, though.

I really don't like using terms such as "safe space" and "triggering" on the internet because I think they're infantilizing. But what I observe is sort of a continuum of environments. The parameters include the following:

1) Who are the members who will interact with you?
2) Who are the members who read what you say, but will not interact with you?
-- For anything posted publicly, 1) is unpredictable and 2) is REALLY unpredictable, and much larger than 1).
3) What's your degree of hard control over who will interact with you? If you're a moderator of a group, you can kick another member out. If you run a blog, you can delete comments. If you're on a forum, you could use the "ignore" feature on someone.
4) What's your degree of soft control (level of respect in you, or your peer group) when it comes to who will interact with you? If you tell someone they're being offensive, are they likely to listen to you and stop? Can you marshal support? If you have a whole posse of people and they all tell that person to stop, will they listen?
5) What is the range of opinions permissible in the environment? Is your perspective inside that range, outside that range or on the edge?
6) What do you want to get from the environment? Concrete bits of useful information? Psychological validation and a sense of human contact? Entertainment and light humor? Establishing lasting links with new people? Revenge? A sense of power over others? With these last two, we're getting into troll territory, although they're negative tendencies that can surface in absolutely anyone.
7) What do you want to give to the environment? Do you think you have anything of valuable to impart, and do you want to educate others? If so, you need to tailor your message to the audience (so we go back to 1 and 2).
8) What is the cost to you of participating in the environment? This is crucial. Navigating all these elements is hard. Just when you think you understand one of them, something changes. You get disappointed, angry, you feel like no one is listening to you, you thought you were in a "safe space" but someone attacks you, someone you thought was your ally disagrees with you strongly, you feel betrayed, you feel unwanted, you feel like you have to maintain a false face and hide your true self in order to gain acceptance, or you become disappointed in yourself because you engaged in negative behavior out of anger... internet drama takes a toll. Sometimes you want to be in an environment, but it's just too damaging, and you're better off turning your back. Sometimes the cost is very high, but what you're learning/getting is so valuable that you need to stay.

Though people will often say "I just want to express myself", it's never as simple as that. Unless your expression is totally private, "self-expression" will have a social element.

When it comes to 1) and 2) for this blog, I agonize a lot. I control my interactive audience by limiting comments to people with Google accounts. This means most of the people who interact here also have Google blogs. They're more invested in leaving substantive comments. So I almost never get drive-by comments. The trade-off is that I lose out on substantive comments by people who aren't registered and don't feel like registering. For 2), I removed this blog from Google listings for a while, then a few months ago I put it back on, and just now, I took it back off again. I do NOT want people who know me personally surfing in on key words. Especially my mom and dad. I'm very close to my mother. We work on certain projects together, we see each other every other day, but one of the reasons I don't talk about her much on this blog is that I don't want to put down key words that would lead her here, because she's internet-savvy and on more social media than I am! Partly because we're so close, I want to maintain certain barriers so I don't feel smothered. My dad is the opposite of my mom: he's an intensely private person. I am also protecting Sunny's identity and that of his biological and foster family. I have a lot of reasons to want to maintain anonymity.

My control over this blog isn't total, in the soft sense. I care about what other people think. The feelings of regular readers and commenters do factor when I'm writing a post. It's not the number one factor, but it's in there. Number 5 -- the range of permissible opinions -- is also difficult, because I'm blogging at the intersection of some practically incongruous communities. What's held as standard and inarguable inside one community might be totally outside the envelope at another. I flatter myself that in this respect, I'm quite honest, I don't censor myself and I don't avoid controversies. I put that opinion out there and I also analyze why it's outside the envelope to begin with. I've already talked a lot about what I've gotten from being part of a blog community (great, life-changing advice and support) and what I want to give back (more of the same). The emotional cost of running this blog mostly has to do with anonymity-agonizing... other than that, it's very low.

When it comes to Racialicious, all of these factors are different. A lot more people read there, and a lot more people read there that will never comment, but are still very important because what they read there might change their opinions. I don't have any hard control there, but I have a degree of soft control, because I've been hanging out there so long that I've built up respect. When it comes to the range of opinions, I'm mostly on the inside. So although there's a lot of tussling and heated debate that go on, the emotional cost to me is fairly low, because I feel like I'm arguing from a position of greater strength. Plus, there are a lot of posts on topics I have little experience on -- e.g. Native American identity, Islam -- and on those, I'm a member of the passive audience, learning but not necessarily interacting.

I used to participate in more online communities, but I don't have the time for a wide range. And when I analyze the emotional cost, it's often too high. There are a few communities I've participated in where I just wanted very concrete bits of information, in which I made sure to have a race- and gender-neutral handle, and got in and got out again right away. Because otherwise I would have been harassed and it would have been horrible. A few months ago I got burned when I was in a certain community and complained (in what I thought was a mild and reasonable way) about a racist Asian joke and about twenty members just piled on me. Race card, PC, no sense of humor, Asians are all doctors or lawyers anyway, blah blah blah. I walked around for a day in real life while fuming, and that wasn't healthy. Arguing a case in a hostile environment can do a lot of good (remembering, again, the passive audience) but it comes at a high emotional cost.

I don't think I'm really saying anything different at Racialicious, but I am talking about different aspects of the same things, and in different ways. I also let loose my evil sense of humor a bit more over there.

Update: by the time I finished typing this up, Sunny seems to have recovered... he's full of beans again, and playing some kind of high-volume racing game with his cousin.

Mushroom Hell

The aftermath of all those great wild mushroom dinners we've been having is the inevitable pickling. When Ojiichan can't eat all the mushrooms he finds, he pickles them in salt and stores them in jars in our fridge.

To eat these pickled mushrooms, you have to go through a special soaking/rinsing desalination process that lasts 2-4 days. The end result is a vaguely mushroom shaped, tasteless brown lump of chewy congealed slime. If cooked in miso soup it's at least edible, in all other forms it's absolutely vile.

The jars of pickled mushrooms in our fridge have been... well... mushrooming. He left this morning for Japan and I really wish I could just chuck all the jars out. But then he'd get mad the next time he came back to visit, because he knows I hate pickled mushrooms and wouldn't have eaten them, and wasting food drives him crazy.

We get along pretty well in most environments, but the kitchen is an area where arguments can flare up very quickly.

The last big argument we got into, last visit, involved me trying to brew myself some herbal tea. I started a pot, then walked back into the kitchen five minutes later to pour the tea, and discovered it was no longer there. "What happened?" I asked my dad.

"I THREW AWAY YOUR JUNK TEA!!"

"How could you do that! Why didn't you just tell me you wanted to use the teapot?"

"IF YOU WANT TO MAKE STUPID JUNK TEA BUY ANOTHER TEAPOT!"

I walked away and didn't talk to him for the rest of that day. I have somewhat of a temper too and the easiest way to avoid blow-up is to depart from the situation.

If he ever moves in with me permanently he has got to have a separate kitchen.

Mushroom Heaven

It's been a wet, stormy week in Atlanta. The weather has made our neighborhood a mushroom-hunting heaven for Ojiichan, who spent the last few days combing through people's yards in search of boletes and giant puffballs. Luckily, no one reported him to the police. Last night we ate a delicious wild mushroom-centered dinner spread.

Sunny is doing well. I'm kind of exhausted right now... I'm at an intensive stage of the most recent infertility treatment. I'm also halfway through my next piece on Buddhism for Racialicious, but it's growing longer than I want it to be. I probably won't get it done before the weekend.

Right now Sunny is watching through the first season of Avatar. We don't have television, but Sunny gets to choose what he wants to watch from Netflix on-demand, and I also download some shows for him. Avatar seems like a pretty decent show. Of course, Ojiichan has determined that it's "garbage" because he happened to find out it was made by Americans.

Guy had added The Suite Life of Zach and Cody for Sunny last week. It's really not Sunny's type of show, but I think he wanted to see it again because his tween- and teen-aged foster sisters used to watch it. I had to take it back off the queue because I was shocked at how sexist, racist and moronic it was. Maybe I caught it at a bad time, but... wow. A series of jokes about how one of the boys was a total pussy because he got beat up by a guy who got beat up by a girl who knew kung fu because she was Asian. It sounded like frat boy humor, not something for kids. Sunny didn't complain too much when I took it off, since I replaced it with Avatar.

I'm so glad we don't have television, and haven't had it for a year now. It keeps Sunny from obsessing over objectionable shows. It also keeps him from watching commercials and pestering us to buy him stuff that he'd never even play with if he got. All the bad messages from commercials seep into kids' brains so easily. For example, Sunny used to be able to sing the "Free Credit Report" song by heart.

We saw Ponyo a few weeks ago. Sunny liked it. Guy wants to go back and see it again on his own, so he can concentrate on the amazing visuals without having to answer Sunny's gazillion questions: "Where is she going?" "Watch the movie and you'll see." "What's he doing?" "I don't know, watch the movie and you'll find out." "What's going to happen next?" "Watch the movie." "Mom, dad, did you see that?" "ARRGHHH!!"

I love Miyazaki movies and think they have great messages for kids. Of course, some of them are a bit too dark for Sunny. Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke would scare him too much. Maybe he'll be ready for those in a few years.

Ponyo is a beautiful movie but it doesn't have much of a plot, and the usual ecological focus of Miyazaki is not present, or else it's present in a very different form than in his other work. A lot of that comes from the fact that he's adapting a pre-existing story (The Little Mermaid) instead of creating his own. I recently left a comment defending Ponyo on that point in response to criticism from another Miyazaki fan:

I think Ponyo was more about compassion than ecology. In the movie, compassion was a supernatural force. It could destroy the world or save it.

The original Little Mermaid story has a really strong Christian influence and the themes of sacrifice, redemption and original sin are central to the story. Miyazaki translates it into a more Buddhist/animist frame (Ponyo’s mother as Kannon, the Bodhisattva of Compassion/Goddess of Mercy) and there is neither original sin nor sacrifice remaining.

I do agree that this philosophical translation isn’t successful in that the conflict and decision point don’t have much weight. But I enjoyed the dream logic of the visuals that carried the movie along in place of conflict.

The End of Our Long Back-to-School Nightmare?

Sunny had a five-star day yesterday, the first one he's had since beginning the behavior chart. I think it's also the first time he got the "No Backtalking" star. To clarify, we define backtalk as saying "NO I WON'T" when asked to do something like brush his teeth or set the table. Light arguing and bargaining attempts don't count as backtalk.

We gave him a ton of praise and lots of well wishes that he could earn the same number of the stars today.

I think his ability to bring himself back down from a rage has improved. I had to hold him down on Sunday night, but I was able to let him back up again after only half a minute of holding. The difference was that as soon as I had him down, instead of raging and screaming, he took a series of long, deep breaths.

Ojiichan arrived on Monday, and will be staying with us for the next two weeks. He brought Sunny a new Hawaiian suit (matching shirt and shorts in a loud polyester flower print) for Sunny's Hawaiian suit collection. Sunny loves these suits, and I can't stress enough how striking he looks in them!

We've signed Sunny up for afterschool care. He likes it, and it gives Guy a nice break. Instead of picking up Sunny at 3pm, he's got a couple extra hours to get stuff done. I think between that and our new no-homework-at-home regime, we'll have the structure that Sunny needs. His behavior often falls apart on the weekends when he gets bored, so that's something we need to work on more. Soon enough we're going to have structure up the wazoo. Weekdays: chess club, gymn lessons, tutoring, therapy. Weekend: swimming and/or hip-hop dance lessons, church.

Also, I just had a great conversation with my cousin. She called me up and we talked about some of the communication problems we've been having. Her issue was that my mother had told her that we had been talking about her situation, so my cousin wanted to hear what I had to say directly. So I cleared everything up... I told her, I would love to have told her these things directly, in fact that would be my usual mode, but I didn't want to upset her because I knew she was very sensitive about being judged, and I didn't want to make her feel worse, but if she was ready to hear, I was ready to talk. And I was just concerned she was spending too much time wrapped up in other peoples' problems instead of working on her own.

She told me she didn't see it that way: she could detach enough from the drama, and her circle of friends from Alanon was really supportive, and her sponsor didn't encourage codependency, and so on. She was happy and felt like she was finally starting to get a grip on her life. But she could see why my mother and I might think the way we did. I responded saying that the fact that we were even having this conversation showed that she was doing really well.

I didn't say this, but I still don't agree 100% with the path she's on. But it's her path, and if she's doing well on it, great. I totally meant what I said about her conversation with me showing that she's improving in confidence.

I explained to her that I'm a really blunt, judgemental person, and to look at how often I tell other family members what to do. I just gave my father a lecture last night for drinking a glass of wine... what did he think he was doing, giving himself cancer! I'll often tell people, you should do such and such. But if they don't do it, or tell me to butt out, I don't get mad. I'm judgemental but I'm not a control freak.

She says she wants to be able to talk more, without any awkward silence between us. So I'll open up more, and she'll tell me what her boundaries are instead of assuming that I can read her mind. I told her that's a great idea and I'd be happy to do that.

She also told me she wasn't angry about my decision not to let her drive Sunny. She was mad at the situation, and her car crashes, but not mad at me. I was relieved.

Anyway, I feel like we've made a breakthrough in our relationship, and I'm very happy about that.

24-Hour Turnaround

It's too soon to call it a trend, but Sunny's behavior has improved remarkably after the first day of school.

This morning, I was careful to list the things he did right, and congratulate him on good behavior:

- He walked out the bedroom not dressed correctly, I reminded him to change, and he accepted it
- I told him he couldn't have breakfast at school instead of home, and he accepted it
- I told him we didn't have time to put another Lego in his bag, and he accepted it

He didn't use any of these things as an excuse to start an argument or scream or throw himself on the ground. He was happy and excited to get to school and start his day.

His behavior was great last night as well. This morning, I put up four stars on his chart for Monday. He got all the stars except for "no backtalk". I encouraged him to try hard for five out of five today.

I'm also reminding myself to correct him with a smile on my face and a cheerful tone instead of a peevish tone.

And in response to Johannah... thanks. I actually get enough time to myself. I don't complain much in that area because I'm very lucky. My husband really spends more time with Sunny than I do; in fact, sometimes I worry that I don't spend enough time with Sunny. But Guy really loves to do some of the same things as Sunny, such as skateboarding and biking and going to the water park.

My mother gives us frequent breaks. Sunny has a sleepover at her house once every two weeks, sometimes once a week. Sunny also spends a lot of time over at the neighbors... the ones with the older son with Asperger's syndrome. Sometimes we have to be careful that he doesn't intrude on the neighbors' time too much, because Sunny can be very pushy, but they're happy to have him over almost any time because he helps their son with socialization. We joke with each other that Sunny has the opposite of Asperger's.

So although Sunny is very demanding in some ways, such as his inability to be alone, we've got a good routine built up where either one of us can take a break when we need to.

Intersections

Race
Adoption
Infertility
Parenting

The main reason for my month-long blog absence is that I'm trying to figure out where to speak from the intersections.

Take adoption and infertility, for example. I'm doing things backwards, adopting before infertility treatments. There's no social pattern for doing so. There's a lot of positive stuff focused on "moving past infertility" into adoption. There's also a lot of negative stuff focused on how the framing of adoption as a second choice hurts and commodifies adoptees. By switching the order of the choices, and talking about it, am I already situated inside a noble frame, or a villainous frame? It depends on the reader, of course. I'm a very independent person, but I'm also somewhat affected by my projections of what other people might think about me. If I wasn't, I'd be a robot.

So I say to myself, "if I talk about infertility treatments, does that mean that other people will think that I'm not satisfied with Sunny because he's adopted, and when I have a "REAL" child, I'd ignore Sunny? Will they think that Sunny will be hurt?" I don't think that's the case. Of course, Sunny was adopted as an older child and he's already very familiar with the concept of a blended family -- foster, adopted, bio -- all living together.

I don't feel like a hero or a villain. I do feel guilty in one area... the best choice for Sunny would probably be to adopt another child around his age or slightly older. He loves playing with other kids so much. But he also gets along well with younger kids, and I think he'd still be happier as an older brother than an only child. Neither Guy nor myself can face entering the process again for the short-term future. It was so grueling. In comparison, infertility treatment is a walk in the park. It's had its low points... about three weeks ago, very low indeed. But it just doesn't shake and batter me the way that waiting to matched with Sunny did. Besides, we're already in a semi-agonizing waiting period for BB. That goes under "Parenting"... if I do get lucky soon, and BB comes to live with us, we'll be raising two children under the age of two at the same time. I think we're up for it, but realistically, it would be pretty challenging for a while.

I don't blog much about my infertility treatments. It's too personal. I'm OK talking about some very deep emotions on this blog, but talking about my body just feels weird. I probably have a fair number of readers who know a lot about infertility already, though! I will say, I'm staying on a very hormone-light road. In fact, I left my first RE because they kept on ramping the injectables up.

Also, I've probably internalized a lot of negative stereotypes about women dealing with infertility. We're supposed to be selfish, narcissistic and hypersensitive. I should try to explore this more, because those stereotypes are based on nasty misogynist stuff. But whenever I start, I bump into the fact that "infertility solidarity" can have disturbing consequences.

Here's one example. I hold a heretical position in infertility circles... I'm against anonymous donation of sperm and eggs, because I believe children have a right to their genetic heritage, and medical and state institutions should not be allowed to deny children that right. I think anonymous egg and sperm donation should be a topic held open for debate. In infertility communities, it's not. I've run across posts where mothers (who are anonymous, of course, like me) say very frankly that they're not even going to tell their children about the egg or sperm donation. I keep my mouth shut about my belief, although I've tried to hint at it in gentle ways. I wish I was braver about it, but I just don't have the energy for a full-scale fight on that front.

Here's another example where I couldn't keep my mouth shut. Someone on one board told a stupid racist Asian joke. I didn't even say anything about it initially. Yes, I'm a race blogger and I ignored an Asian joke, I've done it before and I'll do it again, because Asian jokes are EVERYWHERE and I can't invest my time in complaining about all of them. Someone else did object, very mildly, and then the defense came up... "well, we're infertile, so as a member of an oppressed group it's OK to blow off steam by making this joke..." At that point, I had to pop in... "AHEM so there aren't any infertile Asian women? Your argument denies my existence and is highly offensive!" At which point someone else who claimed to be Asian then claimed not to be offended (these cowardly excusers make it so hard for the rest of us) , then I rolled up my sleeves and it snowballed from there.

The idea that infertility communities are "safe spaces" is pretty much a joke for me. They're more like minefields. It also bothers me that negative coping is often encouraged by these communities, mainly, the constant accounts of freaking out and collapsing in psychic agony when a friend tells you they're pregnant. Call me a heartless bitch, but I find this very disturbing, and infantilizing, and I don't think it should be encouraged with choruses of "me too!" and "it's OK to feel that way!" In what other areas of life is this acceptable? If you lose your legs in an accident, is it OK for you to freak out whenever you see someone walking? If your mother dies, is it OK to feel constant bitter envy that your husband's mother is still living? Expressing pain, yes; collapsing and blaming other people, no. I guess this goes back to my hatred of the word "triggering". Even when we're discussing clinical PTSD, the person suffering PTSD ideally has a goal of working through PTSD. The shellshocked soldier wants to get to the point where they can just wince a little when they hear a car backfiring... not throw themselves on the ground, or demand that all cars stop backfiring. I think these women would advance farther and ultimately experience less suffering if they treated themselves with a communal mixture of sympathy AND honesty .

Then, I think, am I being a hypocrite... support for me, but not for thee? Ahh, it's so complicated. Maybe I really am a heartless bitch. I'm currently taking a break from infertility AND adoption communities.

I'm in a privileged position to be able to do so. Parenting, on the other hand, isn't something I can ever take a break from anymore. And I'm having a difficult time blogging about how parenting intersects with race. Again, there's no frame that fits my stories, and I also feel sort of inadequate. I don't have many teaching moments with Sunny about race. He overhears adult family conversations about race, but he doesn't fully understand, and in fact he gets a bit bored. He's just not interested in hearing complicated stuff about institutional racism and I'm not interested in teaching him anything before he's really ready for it.

One thing I've been thinking about recently is that the concept of "black/African-American" is especially difficult for him to comprehend. He has a sense that people with his medium skin tone are like him, but light-skinned black people (like the across-the-street neighbor kid) and dark-skinned black people (like the next-door neighbors) are different. And in a child's literal imagination, of course they're different!

I want him to grow into a positive sense of black solidarity... that is, the idea that black people 1) face a set of common problems 2) should support each other in facing those problems 3) while realizing their common strengths 4) but not minimizing their diversity. This isn't an easy lesson. Colorism is a major negative force against the formation of this solidarity. Since his peer group is mostly African-American, I worry about him picking up colorist messages... it's something I have absolute zero background in dealing with.

Most stuff about race and parenting deals with reinforcing the self-confidence of minority children in predominantly white environments. I have an overlapping but different set of concerns.

He asked me last week, "Am I black?" My answer sucked. I talked a lot about who his mothers and fathers were and what other people saw him as... I basically said "Yes, maybe, sort of, it's complicated."

I just don't want him to feel forced into any identity before he's ready. It was only last year that he kept telling me his bio father was white. In fact, he'd been confusing his mother's brother with his father. And then he would ask me if his mother was black.

So I don't want to force him into establishing an identity right now, but I also want him to develop a sense of solidarity, and I don't see these two goals fitting together very well at the moment. At least we've gone a long way towards establishing that race and identity are safe to talk about.

On the bright side of blogging, I've embarked on a major, ambitious blogging project at Racialicious: a series called "The Surface of Buddhism" (introduction and Part One here). I don't talk about my religion much. I don't even talk about it with friends and family. Yet again, I don't have a frame. I'm trying to draw one and fill it in at the same time.

More on My Cousin - Venting Frustration

My cousin had a brief period a few months ago where she had to go back into the mental facility for a few days, but other than that, she's been living in a stable situation at my mother's house in a nice basement bedroom suite. Every few months her condition strikes or she has some sort of crisis (like this one in November) but nothing as terrible as the initial episode that cost her job and any hope of a normal life for the short-term future.

I still feel sad we're not closer, but I don't see that changing soon. I quickly stopped giving her financial advice because it ended up contributing to her insecurity. She'd get excited about it, then wouldn't follow up and would feel really embarrassed. I would give advice if she asked again, but otherwise I never bring up finances. I don't give her any advice at all, with the exception of reinforcing the simple point that my mother and her therapist and every other person in her life repeat again and again: "PLEASE DON'T TALK TO YOUR DAD".

If I was giving her more advice, I'd tell her to stop going to so many Al-Anon meetings. She goes every day, often multiple times a day. Most of her friends are from Al-Anon, and all the others are from the institution support groups. I feel like there's a time when you need to stop substituting support groups for real living.

I don't have anything against the Alcoholics Anonymous approach or Al-Anon (for those who don't know the distinction, Al-Anon is for friends and families of alcoholics) and in fact I know some other family members who really need to go back to AA and stick with it. But like any other group, it's possible to have unhealthy group dynamics, and I think her Al-Anon group has some weird and almost cultlike aspects. It demands an insane amount of her time. I think she should be using this time on disability checks to explore how to form a new life for herself. She could be taking a few noncredit classes, and doing some volunteer work to build up a resume for a potential future career that she can work around her disability. She could be finding constructive low-demand, low-stress activities and hobbies, healing while preparing, going to meetings not more than once a day... instead, the Al-Anon acts like a cocoon. She's immersed in an environment where she can't focus on herself because she keeps getting dragged into other people's drama. She wakes up, goes to therapy or a support group meeting, hangs out with friends from her support group, goes to Al-Anon meetings, then goes out to dinner with friends from Al-Anon, then goes to sleep. And this has pretty much been her entire life for a year. I don't see her more than once a week... and I'm at my mother's house all the time.

The worst thing I heard about Al-Anon is how my cousin's mother praised it. "I've been going to Al-Anon for twenty years. I go almost every day. I wouldn't get by without it!" Great... so it's enabled her to stay a completely ineffectual woman who cheerfully stands by the side of her alcoholic husband and fails, for decades, at the job of protecting her children from his verbal and emotional abuse. I thought Al-Anon was designed to stop codependency, not provide an excuse for it. I hate to think my cousin is following in her footsteps. She's not an addict, yet almost all of her friends are people struggling with addictions. It's like she's addicted to addiction.

Anyway, I don't say that. In a low-key way, I try to suggest things we can do together, like go see a movie. So far it hasn't worked... because she always has a meeting to go to. We're two relatives that love each other, but I know she finds it hard to be around me because I make her insecure.

Something happened recently that will probably damage our relationship even further. She's had two serious car crashes, one in which her car was totaled (her dad got her a new one). She really shouldn't be driving at all because of all the medication she's on. Her license would have been taken away if not for some bureaucratic glitches. I have never said anything judgemental about these crashes or her driving, though. I know driving is very important for her to stay independent and go to her meetings and so on. But I did mention to my mom that it wouldn't be a good idea for her to drive Sunny anywhere.

She asked my mother if she thought that I thought it would be OK to drive Sunny to the zoo or the museum. My mother said that I would love her to spend a day with Sunny, but that she doubted I would want her driving him anywhere.

I wish she had let it go at that. But she didn't. A few days ago, she called me up and asked me directly. I said I was sorry, that I knew it was embarrassing, but I didn't think it was a good idea. She said "is it always going to be that way?" I felt so terrible. I said, "No, absolutely not, I just don't think it's a good idea... now." I told her that Guy could drop off Sunny at an outing with her, and then pick Sunny back up again, or he could go with along with the two of them... there were a lot of options.

She must have known she'd be disappointed. Or maybe not... maybe she actually imagined that someone who's been in two serious recent car crashes for unknown reasons could still be thought of as a trustworthy driver.

I think that's part of her problem. She can't compromise. It's all or nothing. She's either a princess or the worst person in the world. I don't mean that as an insult. It's a tendency she's aware of and she's mentioned trying to work on it during therapy. She thinks she might even have Borderline Personality Disorder in addition to her other diagnosis.

Sometimes her sense of entitlement is just amazing... I think part of her feels like she really deserves an upper-class white Southern pseudo-aristocratic yacht-owning lifestyle, e.g. she should not have to compromise by doing things like taking public transportation.

It makes me sad, but it doesn't make me angry. She had a lot of material advantages but massive emotional handicaps. I feel privileged in many ways. I had to work since I was 15, at very non-glamorous jobs, but I never doubted that my parents loved me, or doubted my ability to be independent. In fact, every time I talk to her, I feel like I'm walking on eggshells because I don't want to rub it in her face everything I have that she doesn't.

It's going to take a long time for her to get better, but I'm desperately hoping she can make it. In the meantime she has a free place to stay. My mother would like her to move out, but only if it's into a stable situation. Moving in with other people who are barely out of the halfway house doesn't count. She's had a couple of those opportunities crop up, but she's been wise enough not to take them. She's a codependent friend, but that's better than being a codependent girlfriend (she hasn't gotten sucked into a dysfunctional relationship). I wish she would make better choices, but at least her choices are sort of bad, but not truly horrible.

ETA: I found a great personal narrative that includes some of the concerns I have about my cousin's involvement with her group.

From SoozinTX at Open Salon:
Why I Quit Al-Anon Yet Still Recommend it to Others

[...]

I know from experience the idea of growing past attending a particular 12-Step program is anathema, if not downright treason, to the majority of members at the meetings I attended. I heard all the dogma of which theglasscharacter speaks, often delivered by sponsors and group members as if it were holy writ. I know the talk says there are no authorities in 12-step programs. Yet I can tell ya from walking the walk there are those who think they run the groups and make the rules. In their own unconscious sickness, these “rulers” use their power abusively in the act of helping others who show up at meetings in a weakened emotional state. These people can and do garner a powerful amount of peer pressure around them from those who are their followers. This creates an experience of organizational enmeshment & cult-like conformity that can quickly outlive its usefulness to those who are truly growing in the program. I now know that all meeting groups are not this way, but I sure didn’t know that in my first few years of recovery.

I had a “black-belt” Al-Anon sponsor who had rules you had to follow if you wanted to be her sponsoree. And I mean had to, if you wanted her to sponsor you. I conformed for 2 years because for awhile, I needed the sanity & structure provided by those meetings & that sponsor like I needed air. I was afraid I would completely lose it one, day, throw an angry fit, and either shoot the alcoholic man I was married to or myself . And I was stone-cold sober! That’s the insanity of being on the other side of the bottle and thinking you ought to be able to do something about the person who is abusing alcohol.

I learned many excellent coping skills & life philosophy skills in Al-Anon that I still use today. I received incredible support from the members as I went through my divorce process. I learned how to let go of my intense anger and worry. I learned how to have friends and be a supportive friend. Then as I began to branch out, make more decisions for myself, and seek out other forms of personal growth, my sponsor “fired” me. I was not following her stringent rules by daring to cut back to attending only 1-2 meetings per week. I wanted to (gasp!) pursue some other personal development opportunities.

[...]

My wish for newcomers is they truly take what they can use and leave the rest. No, really, leave it, as in walk away from it, with no guilt or shame, when the whole process no longer serves your highest spiritual growth. And let those who are uncomfortable with your chosen path deal with their own discomfort. It’s not your job to make them feel comfortable with your path. It’s your job to be fully present on your own path. Any discomfort others are experiencing is a lesson in tolerance and judgment for them.

ETA x2: One thing I just realized after typing all this up is that my cousin is a lot like Sunny in that they're both highly socially skilled AND terrified of being alone with themselves. I've been lonely in life too, but I don't have that same magnitude of terror.

Sometimes I worry how I'm going to relate to Sunny when he gets older, and the ways in which his personality differs radically from mine become more apparent. He has strengths I've never had and weaknesses I've never had. So it's good practice to understand how my adult relatives think differently from me, and how that affects our relationships.

I'm a Legal Mom, and Other Updates

Our adoption finally went through last month. Yes, I'm way behind on the news. Sunny is our legal son!

I'd like to report that some pre-adoption behavior cleared up, but things are pretty much the same. I don't think the adoption ceremony meant that much to him. In the future, it's going to end up figuring a lot more in his thoughts, but he'd already accepted us as his permanent parents a while back.

We happened to draw the oldest, palest, gloomiest judge in Atlanta. He said some nice words, but also gave an odd speech about how hard it was to make a success of yourself in this cold cruel world even if you came from a family with two biological parents and no troubles. My mother cried. I videotaped everything. Sunny loved getting to dress up and shake hands with the judge. It's a striking picture... Sunny in his sharp black dress pants and black dress shirt, the judge in his long black robes.

We have to wait a while for the amended birth certificate, and then get a new social security number. The amended birth certificate is a terrible practice and the source of needless injustice for adoptees. It won't harm Sunny, in practical terms (I have several copies of his Original Birth Certificate, which doesn't list his father's name, and he knows quite well who his biological mother was) but I wish it wasn't the common practice.

In practical terms, now that he's officially adopted we can:

• Allow our friends the neighbors to drive him to the pool or to the movies
• Have a babysitter without making them get a drug test, a physical and fingerprinting
• Sublet our basement suite or use it for charitable purposes like hosting
• Go on trips without getting permission first
• Get him a passport so he can visit Japan or Mexico with us
• If anything horrible happens to us, he won't be taken right back into the foster care system

Another thing we are now allowed to do, which we weren't before, is spank him. And this was something we did try, on the advice of our therapist. It's embarrassing to blog it. But I thought it was worth a try. Her argument was that it shouldn't reactivate trauma for him because we know he wasn't ever physically abused. And it would help him internalize that hitting people is wrong. We tried it several times -- three swats on the butt -- when he went into a violent rage and lashed out. At first, it worked. It completely stopped a rage that would normally last 15-20 minutes and made him enter the remorseful crying stage right away, instead of at the very end when he was exhausted from being held down.

Then spanking stopped working. It just didn't affect him at all anymore. The rages -- two or three times a week, 15-30 minutes in duration -- were unaltered. The last time we spanked, he yelled that he wished he was bigger, because then he would spank dad back... "WITH A PADDLE!". We might have gotten another favorable "short-circuit the rage" effect if we'd stepped up the physical punishment beyond three mild swats, but that's something we had agreed way beforehand we wouldn't do. One try, and then we'd move on. But I can see that's how parental abuse gets started. A little works, but then it stops working. So try a little more... and I don't want to go there.

I don't have much experience with physical punishment. My father used to whack me on the top of the head when I was a kid (and tried to do it into my teens, actually) but it never had the effect he wanted.

Scratch that technique off the list. No more spanking, ever.

We're starting to see a new therapist. I don't want to discount our old one, and we'll continue seeing her irregularly. She's given us some great advice in the past. She's a mature African-American woman with a ton of experience who is incredibly insightful when it comes to a lot of stuff, but we're going to try someone totally opposite: a young white guy who lists foster care experience and has a PsyD instead of an LCSW. We'll see how that works. I'm also setting up an appointment with a psychiatrist (a new one, not the icky stupid one) in August to discuss medication.

One technique we're going to start soon, suggested by a friend of my mother's, is audio/video feedback. This means recording the bad language and hitting he uses during a rage and showing him later, when he's calm.

I'm a bit skeptical about the neurofeedback treatment. It doesn't seem to have altered his rage frequency in any way. But the one thing I do believe it has helped with is his sleeping. Since he started neurofeedback, he hasn't woken us up at 4AM anymore, liked he used to do about once a week. And that's really huge once you start thinking about it. It improves our quality of life and mental state tremendously.

He used to have frequent nightmares about a man chasing him with a chainsaw trying to cut his foot off, but he rarely reports those anymore, and I ask him every morning. I'm sure he still has nightmares, they're just not as strong or frequent, and he's learned to put himself back to sleep after waking up to one.

His foster mom said he used to wake up the whole house at 5AM on Saturday morning, just running out in the hall and screaming and screaming until he made sure all 10+ family members were awake.

I'm not sure if we're going to continue with the full course of neurofeedback, and my high hopes for it have adjusted somewhat. Still, I think the sleep improvement was worth it.

We're arranging a visit with his bio grandma in a few months. She'll be driving over and staying with us for several days. I think this will be a good chance for them to bond a bit more and talk about his maternal family.

She sends us pictures of BB every Wednesday, which is when she has visitation. And BB is doing well, but it's gotten so depressing for me to even look at the pictures. Is this my son, or not? He's going to be walking soon. He's going to be a year old soon and I wasn't there for hardly any of it. It's not important to him that I love him now. It will be in the future, whatever happens, but not now.

In happier news, although it hit a stifling 96 degrees this weekend, Sunny was having the time of his life at the water park. He loves the water so much. He spent almost all this weekend having aquatic fun. The last four days have all been fit-free, and if he makes it to seven he knows he's getting a nice bonus from his sticker chart.

Edited to Add: I reread this post and realized how negative it all is. I should have just done a separate "We did the adoption ceremony and it's great we're officially legally a family." If I put up a picture of the event, you'd see we're all smiling, even the gloomy judge.

Break Explanation - and Legacy of Shame!

This is the longest break I've ever taken on this blog! But there's no emergency or anything. Well, we did try and take Sunny off his medication, but the attempt failed horribly, so we're going to try again later this summer, and if that doesn't work, hold it off for another year.

Other than that, I've just been extremely busy. I'll be on vacation next week though.

And I did break my blogging hiatus just last night, in a rather incendiary way: David Carradine's Legacy of Shame is up at Racialicious and APA for Progress as well.

Update and Link

We have a lot of stuff going on this week, but I'm too tired to blog it! Sunny's behavior got really bad, then got better again. My health has not been great, either... I have a nasty sore throat right now.

I should mention that I had another guest post on Racialicious called "Geishas and Whores". It's a deeper exploration of an issue I've already touched on in the early days of this blog. The title turned out to be less controversial than the editor and I predicted. I guess I did a good job of explaining my word choices within the body of the piece. Commenters have already added a lot of interesting discussion.

Frivolous Post

I haven't bought anything for myself this year, so I have an excuse for spending several hours today at yesstyle.com.

I really like the clothes there! I don't know if the quality is any good, but I'm going to give it a shot. It's mostly South Korean brands at relatively cheap prices. Of course, the women's clothes don't fit me, because I'm too big. I'm happy with my weight, I'm just way too tall and broad-shouldered to fit in non-plus-size clothing ranges in an Asian country. Whenever I go to Japan, I don't even bother looking at women's clothes... also, the largest shoe size they stock is still three sizes smaller than mine.

Men's clothes (especially pants) often fit me better than women's clothes. I found out I wear a Korean size M/L, so I have quite a large selection to choose from. The men's clothes are colorful and neat-looking. The models are also very easy on the eyes!


Mr. Scowly


Mr. Not-the-Face


Mr. Dreamy


Mr. Space Cowboy

They even sell matching couples outfits. I love the idea of this trend. My husband would fit in these clothes, but I'd never be able to persuade him to wear them.

I Suck at Support

I thought I'd mention this in relation to the last post.

My cousin (here's my last long post about her) has been up and down. She hasn't had a major attack in a while. Her disability checks finally started coming in, so her financial situation is better.

My mother went to therapy with her earlier this week. My cousin mentioned that she was very intimidated by me, and I often made her feel insecure, even though she said she knew it wasn't my fault.

For example, recently my cousin told my mother and me that the therapist did a budget with her, and she felt like it was a really great step. I said, "Awesome! Now all you have to do is stick to it."

In light of the fact that I'd made her a budget last year that she never followed, apparently my words really hurt her.

From my perspective, it's hard to know what to do about things like that. I'm a straightforward person, and I'm not good at reading other people's emotions and predicting their reactions. I thought I was doing well because I never once nagged her about not sticking to my original budget. In that original financial advising session I told her she should cut out all salon expenses, and then a few months later I saw she got a new weave, and I never said anything. Using a budget is 10% formulation and 90% follow-through... that's all I wanted to stress to her.

She doesn't blame me, I don't blame her, but our relationship is not what it could be.

I tend to think she's a lot more secure than she really is. That's a common issue with her. She used to be a high-powered saleswoman; she cracks jokes all the time and appears to be totally confident. I used to be a bit envious of her confidence and social ease, in the sense that I sometimes wondered, "Would I have grown up to be that way if I hadn't been through so much social trauma as a kid? Is that a genetic inheritance that should have been mine as well?" But my mother explained how it's all just a front she had to put on in order to survive her toxic family environment. It's even self-defeating, because people assume she doesn't need the help that she really needs. I don't have that insecure core because I was raised in a healthy family structure.

It's almost impossible for me to act in a way that I don't feel. I'm kind of an anti-actor. I can be diplomatic, I can choose words carefully, I can put on a very detached front, I can slip into a teaching persona if I speak in front of a crowd... but that's about it. I'm incapable of manipulating people. I'm even incapable of flirting. It's been both a blessing and a curse. It's hard for me to understand the behavior of people who are presenting with a "false front" because I can't put myself in their shoes.

I want to make a positive difference in people's lives, and I think I've succeeded in some ways. I have to work within my limitations. For example, I'd make a terrible therapist. If I know something that can help someone, and they're interested in learning it, I can teach it to them pretty well. But other than that, it seems like it's better for me to step aside and just listen.

Sigh... anyway, I've offered to go into the next therapy session with my mother and cousin. This is with the understanding that it's totally for the benefit of my cousin, and is not all about me. I just want to know the best way to support her. My mother let my cousin know about my offer, so I'll wait and see if she wants me to come.

Big Holiday Update Post

Our vacation was great.

It was a bit stressful being with Sunny 24/7 in my father's studio apartment. Luckily, the apartment does at least have a shoji divider, so we had 2-3 hours of semi-privacy every night after Sunny went to bed, which we mostly used to watch Season 2 of Prison Break on our portable DVD player. We ate a lot of great food, went to beaches every day and drove all over the island, although we couldn't afford any inter-island or boat trips.

Since Sunny was missing almost two weeks of school, he had a fair amount of make-up work, including a daily journal of at least four sentences per day. Getting him to do his work for an hour every night wasn't fun, but we didn't have any major homework blow-ups.

Sunny quickly learned how to make the shaka sign. There was a guy in the apartment building who kept running into us and saying to Sunny, "what up, li'l bruddah!" and Sunny just loved flashing the sign back at him. As usual, he was treated like a miniature rock star everywhere we went.

Sunny was a lot more interested in the ancient Hawaiian village than I thought he'd be. I tried my best to explain the difference between "people who live in Hawaii" and "Hawaiians". I told him that the Asian people he saw mostly came from Japan, the white people came from the mainland, the Hawaiians were already there before anyone else and got the raw deal, a lot of people were mixed ancestry, but everyone was an American.

I went to a very nice Jodo Shinshu service. The reverend had a thick Japanese accent and at first I thought the sermon would be rather impenetrable and arcane, but I was quite wrong. About halfway through, the reverend broke out the props -- a balloon and a sign reading "G.A.S." -- and used those to illustrate a point about joyful daily living and how we need to be filled with "good gas" not "bad gas". He had everyone laughing in the aisles.

It looks like Hawaii is in for a lot of pain due to the economy. The newspapers were full of dire statistics about hotel residency figures. I feel really bad for the people there. I used to work in the tourist industry... it's highly unstable, the jobs don't get a lot of respect and the tourists you depend on drive up your cost of living to the point that you can barely afford to live in your own home.

Sunny was not too bad on the three-leg airplane flights there and back. He didn't sleep very much, but kept occupied with his PSP.

We made a good adjustment back to Atlanta. It helped that we had a nice warm snap, and last week the temperature was in the 70s... hardly any colder than Hawaii.

The next time we go on vacation, we definitely need to do a combined trip with my mom and stepdad. It would be nice to have just one day to ourselves! By then, at the end of next year, I hope we'll have Sunny's brother as well. There's still no major update on that front. The biological father is refusing to get in contact. He's established paternity but isn't answering calls or showing up in court.

According to ASFA I imagine it could take 18 months to do a TPR if he consistently avoids every contact. If he or a relative doesn't want to parent, he needs to act. My worker tells me they are probably going to threaten him with paying child support if he doesn't move one way or the other, so that might cause a resolution.

Meanwhile, Sunny's baby brother is doing well with his foster family. We sent him a present: a little Hawaiian fleece robe. He's visited every week by his (and Sunny's) bio grandmother. I'm in regular contact with her now, and we'll give her a call tomorrow on Christmas Day.

Sunny misses his foster family a lot.

He had a blow-up last night that was probably related. It all started over the PSP (AKA the PCP). The PSP is going to be off limits for several weeks as a consequence. He pushed his dad, slammed doors and yelled a lot of things like "I hate you".

He was very, very sad afterwards. As he was crying in my lap, he said "I'm so dumb! I don't know why I said those things! I said all the good times we had together were ruined!"

"You didn't mean that, did you?"
"No!"
"Nothing could ruin the good times we have together. I know why you say things you don't mean, you say them to try and hurt us. And you wanted to hurt us because you're angry. It's okay to feel angry, it's just not okay to show it like that."

We talked about alternate ways to show anger. He already knows about taking a deep breath. When he can remember to do that, it helps. I also suggested a new one: going to his room, closing (not slamming) the door and yelling into a pillow.

I just realized his inability to be alone presents a real conflict with anger management. If you're angry, the fastest, easiest way to cope is to temporarily remove yourself from the person or situation causing the anger. But that route is closed to him. He moves away, but then snaps right back like a rubber band because he fears solitude so much.

I think without that problem, his tantrumming would not be a serious issue. He's actually more emotionally articulate than most children his age. I recently talked to another parent from our agency who's also having problems around this time (pretty much everyone is, which is why the agency holds a workshop on holiday coping) and unlike Sunny, his daughter doesn't say what's on her mind and who she misses and why she feels bad... she acts it out.

Sunny has already gotten a ridiculous amount of presents from one set of grandparents. He got multiple Transformers, Pokemon figures, remote controlled truck, air-rocket-launcher, slinkies and Hot Wheels. I wish they hadn't bought him so many toys. He loves getting them, but he plays with them for five minutes and then rarely uses them again. He just doesn't know how to play with toys by himself.

It's sad hearing about kids who come from foster homes with nothing but a trash bag. That's about the complete opposite of Sunny's experience. His foster family shipped us EIGHTEEN BOXES of his clothes and toys. We donated many of those toys, since he'd outgrown them. We just tell him that he needs space for new toys, so he needs to fill a box with the ones he doesn't want anymore so that other kids can play with them. He's always quick to do it and happy to help drop off the box.

We keep trying to downsize toys so his room can stay cleaner, but this Christmas is going to be a challenge. We were planning on having a small Christmas and de-emphasizing gifts, but grandparents got in the way. Also, it's his first Christmas with us...

He's getting about five presents from Santa. We've bought him a pair of inflatable swords that he can share with his friends, a flashlight that straps to your head (he loves flashlights), more Hot Wheels, a calculator, a hoodie with a flaming skull and guitars on it, a PSP game, Greatest Hits of Queen and Best of the Rockin' 70s CDs (he likes classic rock a LOT more than we do), a dinosaur sticker book and a chess set for beginners. On top of that there will be presents from two more sets of grandparents and foster family.

He's going to have to live without the PSP for a while, but we found him a great alternate game. It's at fantasticcontraption.com. Using a limited set of building blocks and the laws of physics -- gravity, friction, etc. -- you have to build contraptions to accomplish a simple task.

Right now, we severely limit any video games. I noticed even the educational ones were just encouraging button-mashing and shortened attention span, but this game looks like an exception. It's not too stimulating: simple shapes, slow motion, calming music. There's no time limit. You create a design, test it, then try to fix it when it fails, then test it again... failure isn't as emotional as in a life-based game like Super Mario Brothers. Sunny loves Fantastic Contraption, and he can keep his focus on it up to half an hour. I think it's helping stretch his attention span, so I don't mind if he plays it. He's solved it up through Level Five.

I hope everyone who reads here has a happy holiday season! Also, an extra thanks to Christine for commenting on my Racialicious post, because I think your perspective added a lot to the discussion.

I'll close on a negative note by mentioning one of the only things I HATE about Hawaii... the godawful Hawaiian Christmas reggae the radio stations there love to play. Hawaiian music, great; reggae, great; Christmas, great... but put all three together and you get a form of music guaranteed to make your brain bleed out your ears.