That's Incredible!

There are no crazy stunts or video game competitions, but you do get two posts in a single week. You can thank me later -- with whatever denomination of dollar bill you see fit.

Our second waiting families meeting of the week was held in the new co-op building in which Bethany will house the office of Julie, our home study writer. The setup there will be pretty sweet when it is completely ready; they have a little café area, several meeting rooms, a big conference room, a library (complete with a copy of Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, although I could not locate Josh McDowell's Evidence That Demands a Verdict on the shelves), and at least two (2) jars of Smucker's® jelly. We had a bit of trouble finding the place because that area of Johnson City features several roads which vanish for a while and then resurface on the opposite side of your current street. In our hometown, this is known as 'pulling a Clemmonsville Road.'

The meeting's topic was the hospital experience. Our guest speaker tonight is a social worker with the Holston Valley Medical Group, who has worked with Julie for a while. While much useful information was dispensed, something near the beginning of the discussion somewhat sent me into a place academics like myself call 'la-la land.' Part of the paperwork birthmothers fill out at the hospital authorize adoptive parents to do things such as feed the baby without the presence of hospital staff; without this, someone would have to be in the room in case we were to do something like, oh, drop the baby. At this stage, I must explain that I have an intense, irrational fear of baby-dropping. Seriously -- I have nightmares where I drop my child and am instantly ostracized by the entire planet as a baby-dropper, complete with fingers pointed in my direction. In the worst scenarios, a social services worker is actually parachuted to my location to get the infant away from my obviously perilous mitts. This problem of mine has arisen at previous meetings, and everyone is quick to assure me that I will not drop my child and that children are pretty resilient. After my ears took in the words 'drop' and 'baby' tonight, the gears were set in motion, resulting in a burning desire to ask what would happen if we were to drop our baby in the hospital. While folks once again tried to calm my doubts, I did notice that my question was never really answered.

Between shudders at the thought of the cry 'baby-dropper,' I was able to determine that hospitals (at least the one where our speaker works) do their best to accommodate adoptive parents during the birth. However, the hospital is not under Bethany's control, so we must be prepared for unexpected complications and general wackiness. For instance, the birthmother's confidentiality can easily be compromised if we get slapped with wristbands containing her full name. There is also a risk that the birthmother could change her mind about the adoption plan while in the hospital, with us in the next room. While we have no need to dwell on these possibilities when there is a perfectly good chance of my dropping the baby, we have to be prepared.

In closing, I need to issue an errata to my last post. The Knoxville Bethany office made sixteen domestic adoption placements last year, rather than the seventeen I claimed. I would have simply edited the post itself, but I thought it good for posterity to see that I am fallible. So little evidence presents itself, after all.

Stop laughing!

Look -- Something Adoption-Related!

For the first time in a while, Sandi was off work this past Saturday. We had invited my parents to visit once we knew of this beauteous happenstance, and confirmation came on Friday morning. As an added bonus, my aunt, uncle, and grandmother were also coming to see the house for the first time. My uncle had technically seen the house, since he helped us move, but I digress. We had a great visit and look forward to the next time the gang can get together in our neck of the woods.

I can hear your collective voices now: "What does any of that have to do with adoption?!?" "Do you not know me any better by now?" comes the wicked riposte. Anyway, this week features not one, but two waiting families meetings. Tonight had us journeying to Knoxville to hear the story of an adult adoptee, from what are sometimes called the 'dark ages' of the adoption process. If Dawn's case is typical, the name should be 'inky pitch black lightless abyssal ages.'

Her birthmother did not want to place her for adoption; both her adoptive and biological parents received patently false information about each other; there was no follow-up counseling of any kind. Anyone who knows me well knows how well I handle dishonesty, but perhaps the most telling evidence is a copy of records Dawn requested for medical purposes. Any identifying information on the papers is methodically cut out with scissors. Could they have made it seem any more like something was missing from the woman's life? When people get wistful about the good old days, they seldom remember that things like this happened. Or things like this and these, for that matter.

While the story above is somewhat less than heartwarming, my indignation was blended with a profound sense of gratitude for the care Bethany takes in dealing with birthmothers and adoptive families. The mountain of paperwork we had to submit seems quite worthwhile now. On another positive note, the Knoxville office has already placed two younglings this year, after seventeen placements last year. Go God!

Look for further updates on our Thursday meeting in Johnson City. Have a good one, folks!

Out of the Gate

We are now one week into the new semester at King, which means my class rolls might finally snap into something permanent. I am teaching one section of Calculus I, Differential Equations, and a topics course in analysis. It has been several years since I last taught first-semester calculus, so I had to go rummaging through the last of our boxes from the move to find my old lesson plans. That had the unexpected benefit of unearthing the power supply to my own personal soda machine. You read that right -- Phil's office has its own vending services. I am that awesome. My analysis class should be interesting, as the textbook I chose gives some historical motivation for the stuff we see in those abstract first-year graduate courses that leave almost everyone at sea. If your interest is piqued, take a look at David Bressoud's A Radical Approach to Lebesgue's Theory of Integration. Go over to amazon.com; I can wait.

Sandi had to work this weekend, but we had some time to spend together in the afternoon. She had been home sick from work on Thursday, when she had started sewing a miniature blanket from remnants of her previous quilting endeavors. Its size upon completion made its utility somewhat questionable, so we decided it would be better off as a pillow. Our time after church on Sunday was filled with the most glorious of all possible weekend activities; I speak, of course, of an afternoon nap.

Those of you who know me well have most likely noticed that my writing here is conspicuously devoid of information about my hobby of games, be they electronic or tabletop. In an effort to keep this about our family experience, I shunted my ramblings on my beloved pastime to another blog, which you can find here. Sandi also included a link to my blog on the sidebar, although I was apparently unable to unseat Steven Curtis Chapman atop the list. We will discuss that at some other time.

I am seriously tired right now, so I should probably stop writing before I say something silly -- well, sillier than usual. Have a great week, everybody!

I Forgot to Mention . . .

My brother-in-law Stephen sent me a link to an article in the Wall Street Journal last week, which in turn led here. Take special care to note the top job on their list, and try to withhold your envy. As it turns out, Mel Brooks was right. It is good to be the king!

Preparations

Our week was largely uneventful -- and wet. Since eastern Tennessee has been in a drought for most of the time we have lived in the area, I tend to shy away from complaining when rain arrives. However, the necessity of keeping the Big Bazooka indoors during the scads of precipitation that have fallen of late stretched all our nerves quite thin. Things were serious enough that I took Ranger for a walk while it was still drizzling. Good times.

Classes begin at King on Tuesday, so I have returned to the office in the daylight hours. We are in the process of amending the core curriculum (you might hear it called the general education curriculum elsewhere), which means the department needs to massage some of its lower-level courses to better fit what is to come. As a no-longer-newbie, I get to shoulder some of this responsibility while teaching my current courses and hurling myself back into my research. Strangely enough, I am looking forward to this semester.

God smiled upon our little household this weekend, for not only was Sandi off work, but the weather cleared sufficiently for Ranger to get some time outdoors. We greatly enjoyed doing absolutely nothing of import yesterday; our time was spent playing Blue Dragon on our Xbox 360. This morning, we tried out a new church, which we will visit again next week. We then went to Lowe's to buy an electric fireplace insert and proceeded to laze about the house for the remainder of the day.

Wish us luck as the new semester takes flight. Have a great week, everyone!

With Three You Get New Year

I apologize for the lack of updates, but the days following the Christmas holiday have been quite full for the Carroll household. Tomorrow, we will have to get back into whatever will compose the 'swing of things' for this brave new year.

In a much-welcomed snub of our longstanding New Year's traditions, we had company. Joyce and our niece Haley traveled up here from North Carolina, along with B.J., to celebrate the dawn of an arbitrarily-assigned new orbital period for planet Earth. The arrival of guests meant, of course, that I spent the first half of the week straightening up the house for the occasion. Our little house was quite full from Wednesday afternoon until Saturday morning, when the sojourners returned home. Despite the fact that Joyce and Haley were here for almost three full days, I find myself at a loss for writing material in hindsight. Perhaps Tolkien was right when he wrote in The Hobbit that "things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to." We loved having them stay here and look forward to their next visit.

We spent this afternoon changing the feet of our new loveseat. I always do enjoy ham; I would eat it on a tram -- wait, where was I again? Anyway, the thing originally came with these skinny spindle feet that we knew would frown on our constant sliding of furniture. Yesterday evening, one of them finally had enough and walked out on the rest of the piece. At this juncture, we decided we might as well get some completely new feet made of sterner stuff. Other than that, the day has been fairly quiet. Sandi awakened to an upset stomach, while rainy weather has stranded Ranger inside to build up massive stockpiles of energy; a walk will most likely be in order tomorrow afternoon.

Happy New Year, everybody!