Still here

I thought a bit of an Internet Hiatus might do me good, but HA. THAT was a dumb idea.

I was away, but I was Working.

Here I am attempting to deliver the first reading at my cousin's wedding on Saturday. What I was not Working was the hair. My God, what happened to my head? Even Jesus is up there, praying over my hair.

Here I am with my brother Alex. We are arguing over who has better readings. I was a little annoyed that he got to read the Prayers of the Faithful and I was stuck with the Responsorial Psalm. "You're not even one of the Faithful!" I complained. "You're going to be SMITED." That's when Alex was all, "FINE. YOU read it!" and attempted to rip off the page, but instead, tore the second reading in half. Oops.

And let's not talk about that ruffly pink horror I'm wearing. Well, actually, let's DO talk about it. This is the questionable look of an incredibly anxious pregnant woman, who woke up at 7:30 that morning absolutely distraught because she could not POSSIBLY wear one of the seven dozen outfits she brought for the wedding. At 7:42 she climbed out of bed, threw on her sweatpants and drove to Wal-Mart, conveniently located across the street from her hotel, and nabbed the first sweater she could find that was not black or smothered in sequins. Anyway, my new ensemble made me look like a slightly immodest grandmother, but trust me, this was much better than the bursting-at-all-seams Girl-Who-Ate-Seattle look I had going on before. But the hair... ye gods.

To get to the wedding we had to go here:

(Hood River=MiddleOfNowhereWashingtonStateVille) and drive over this:

I hate this bridge. I have hated this bridge my entire life. When you drive over it, it makes this awful terrifying WHIRRING sound and you can see the water beneath the car. I don't want to see water! This is scary enough:

Does that little green rail thingy look strong enough to keep my car from pitching over the side? NO IT DOES NOT.

Here is a shot of me and the Devastatingly Handsome Chinese Man at the wedding.

If you don't focus on the ruffly pink horror or the lacquered hair or the fact that my husband's head is roughly twice the size of mine, it's not a bad picture.

Anyway. Lack of posting aside, I am still alive. Photographic evidence! I have some good days and some crappy days and one or two evenings of "I'm sure a bottle of Yellow Tail Shiraz won't hurt the baby TOO much, right?", but most of the time I feel pretty optimistic about Everything Will Be Okay and This Will Not Kill Me. I have been through, as I reminded myself 400 times yesterday, much much worse.

And I know you'll all find this terribly shocking, but life goes on, even when you are mentally unbalanced. Which means I still have to go to work (I KNOW!) and make dinner and visit new babies and think up a Halloween costume and speak at the pre-marriage class at church and people, that pumpkin is not going to carve itself.  As for the pre-marriage class, I guess the last time wasn't such a huge disaster because they invited us back. This time we'll be talking about Family of Origin.

I was thinking about this a lot at the wedding. I was sitting with the only Asian man in a 100-mile radius. The bride is Colombian, adopted into a gigantic, white, American family. The groom is Mexican, said his vows in Spanish and barely said a word to my family because 1) we don't speak Spanish and 2) it's hard to get a word in edgewise around these people. The priest, also Mexican, went on and on and on about what marriage is like in Mexican families and what marriage is like in American families and how my cousin and her new husband will have to think a lot about their FAMILIES OF ORIGIN and learn to adapt to one another. And instead of practicing all the difficult words in my readings, I sat there thinking about adoption and cultures and whether we'll make our kid go to Chinese school and how I've yet to go to Hong Kong and what it must be like for my cousin to look Mexican but not be Mexican. At the end of all of this I had decided that we were crazy fools for having a mixed-race baby, what the HELL are we thinking, let ALONE think about ADOPTING. YE GODS!

But then this morning, when I was practicing what I might say to the Almost-Marrieds, I couldn't think of anything juicy to share. Because honestly, the families of origin thing just hasn't been that hard. Sigh. Even the INTERESTING things about us are BORING.

As for Halloween costumes, I have hit a wall. The creativity, it is the farthest thing from oozing. But I saw Kirsten Dunst on one of the dozen Conan O'Brien shows I watched this weekend, and she said she and friend were thinking about being Double Dare contestants. Which is an awesome idea. Better than being the Flair girl from Office Space, right?

Comments

[Jenn]

Oh good you're back! 'Cause I was worrying a little bit.

But now I can't stop laughing about Jesus praying over your hair.

I was going to be Flavor Flav for Halloween, just for the opportunity to wear a clock around my neck and yell "YEAH BOY" a lot, but no one I know is having a party. And I'm not going to dress up like Flav and sit around the house, nosiree.

[Maureen]

Welcome back, Maggie! And I don't know what you're talking about, you look adorable in the photos.

[Angela]

Double Dare contestants. Wow. Now that is true genius. Doesn't Kirsten Dunst kind of seem like a girl that you would totally be friends with?

Also, I happen to think you look adorable in the pictures! And the one of your brother laughing made me laugh--contagious! Glad you're hanging in there. One day at a time, right? That's what they say anyway...

[Angela]

Hm, you see I did not read the comments before I posted and yet TWO people say you look ADORABLE. Therefore, it must be true, no?

[AmericanFamily]

As someone who has BTDT, I would say the fact that you are already thinking about the issues a multiracial kid will face is a sign that you will all be just fine. It is the parents that insist that love is enough or they "don't see color" whose kids are going to have a really hard time.

For us, thinking about the interracial and cultural issues has really prepared us for our adoption. I promise it isn't that difficult.

When we first started encountering comments about our daughters biracialness (relatively rare, but still annoying), I really liked the book "does anybody look like me? A parents guide to raising multiracial kids." I highly recommend it, though you can probably spend your kid's first year reading general parenting books and be just fine. Congrats again!