Well, where to begin?
Yesterday morning, Keith called me as he normally does and during the course of the conversation, mentioned that he'd had breakfast with our old friends from Colorado, who are now cozily ensconced on base.
While he was there, the wife mentioned that one of her man's soldiers had stopped by with his wife and infant girl. She noticed that they appeared to be completely ignoring the child and said something.
They replied that they weren't sure they wanted her any more and were thinking of putting her up for adoption.
Let that sink in for a moment.
Ok, so Keith said immediately that he and I were wanting to adopt and he would have to talk to me about it. Of course I was all in.
So, all yesterday I called and bugged my husband to contact our friend to find out more about the situation. Did they have family they were thinking of giving the child to? Were they thinking of an open or closed adoption?
Keith couldn't get a hold of him until this morning. The girl is six months, give or take a few months, and her parents definitely expressed a desire to put her up for adoption. So Keith told him that we were "all about it" and of course the fact that we would pay for all the legal work. (I've already found four lawyers in Louisville who specialize in adoptions.) So our friend will pass this on to his soldier and now we are waiting to hear back.
Will this happen? Who knows. It's so hard to imagine raising an infant for half a year and then deciding one doesn't want to raise that child any further. Maybe it's putting an untold amount of stress on their relationship and maybe they are very young and want to the do the right thing instead of possibly losing it with the child, and possibly losing the child to the foster care system.
Of course the odds of this adoption happening are very small. But of course I've already invested a lot of emotional energy into the situation. I'm thinking about how we need a crib, a changing table, a car seat, a swing, pacifiers, bottles, rubber tipped spoons, rice cereal, applesauce, onesies, burping clothes, loads of diapers.
I'm thinking of how we would change her name, put her given name now as her middle name and give her the first name that we always planned to give to our first daughter. I want to do this not to erase her heritage from her birth family, but to cement the fact that she's a genuine part of ours, that when we dreamed of our first daughter, it was always her, even though she's not our biological child. I don't want her to feel like she was added on.
I've thought about sleeping schedules, how Keith would have to move the man room downstairs so the spare room could become the nursery and the man room become the spare room, I've imagined moving with the child when we PCS in a year and how we would set up the rooms in the CO house, if we end up moving there. I've imagined family holidays this year, with her on my lap or scooting around on her bum, chewing on a bright little rubber key chain and being irritable because she's teething.
Sigh.
Anyway, in addition, I must add that I am experiencing some interesting symptoms that make me think I am pregnant, this is certainly not like any other monthly cycle I've had before. I have to wait another seven days before I can find some answers. Keith and I are both holding our breath and not talking about it, which is our survival strategy after almost a year of dashed hopes, month after month.
So, there is the possibility that after having no children, I might have two in short order. There is the much better possibility of having two crushing disappointments, one right after the other. I'm writing all this out on the blog because whatever happens, when it happens it will be very impactful and I don't want to have to write a massive blog explaining everything from the beginning.
In addition to all this, our housing manager called to say the roof of the CO house has sprung a leak, which is like the kiss of death to any home owner. It could be just an isolated leak that simply needs a patch for about a hundred dollars. Or it could be something serious and underlying which would cost about twenty thousand dollars. The roof is new, so we are really, really hoping for small and patch. But we're still waiting to hear for sure.
Also, just as soon as we got everything paid off or paid way down, Keith's brother came down this weekend to claim the man room TV, which was part of the deal when Keith bought his work truck from him. I always thought that was a bad deal to make and I was very clear with Keith that if he lost his TV before we could afford the one he wanted, he would be TV-less for months.
Keith solemnly swore to be TV-less for as long as needed. And well, by the time his brother finally took the TV away, we were at a pretty good place financially and Keith had waited almost a year, dreaming, researching....we ended up going out TV shopping that very day, as soon as his brother left, the gargantuan TV hulking, tarp covered, in the back of the little Toyota. It was the very cutting edge of technology back in its day, a whole decade ago when Keith bought it in Germany.
I wonder just how many sharply hissed marital spats the unfortunate salespersons as Best Buy are privy to each year before the glittering wall of flat screens? Many, I can't help but think. We, I am afraid to say, we not above the call of the wild.
Keith saw a 60 inch LED/LCD 120hz Sony beast and immediately lost his marbles. The sixty glorious inches of blind blowing picture clarity and brilliance went to his head like sweet, sweet wine.
"It's only three hundred dollars more," he hissed at me.
"Plus taxes, and the wall mounting stand alone is three hundred dollars. That's nearly a thousand over our budget," I shot back, glowering, wondering where my normally deliberate and reasonable husband had gone to.
"But it's zero percent interest financing for three years," countered the man.
"I'll get a zero interest card from USAA."
Arms were flung out in despair. We were hung like gutted fish before the screens, faces washed out, our heads humming with the background noise of all the programs, the games and the tinned music from the speakers. I felt slightly sick to my stomach and almost wavered, but I held firm, like the Rock of Gibraltar in sea of excessive spending.
In all of this, our fresh faced young sales associate tip toed around delicately, averting his head at the worst moments, politely pretending not to notice another couple coming apart at the seams. I rather liked him, he reminded me of my youngest brother, sweet natured, with a sharp sense of humor.
"Fine!" burst out my husband, after everything was said and done. "Fine! I won't get any."
"No TV?" I asked, puzzled by this sudden shift. "What will you do?"
"I'll stay down stairs and drive you crazy until you give in!" he cried, looking daggers at me.
"Fine!" I declared passionately, eyes lighting up with the fire of Battle: "I'm up for it!"
And we turned on our heels and strode from the hall of consumer hell, each of us stewing away. Before we disappeared between the isles I looked back in time to see a huge grin on the face of our associate, it looked like he was having a hell of time trying not to laugh out loud. I couldn't help but grin myself in sudden humor. The unexpected pressures of marriage can strand a person in some of the most ridiculous positions ever.
Of course then the truck wouldn't start because he'd left the headlights on. We had help from a couple of gangly Kentucky boys who push started the car. It was raining and we'd been shopping for over two hours at that point.
However, things began to get better when Keith at some point decided not to follow through with his plan of domination by irritation and instead drove back on base, where we purchased a fifty five inch LED/LCD 120 hz TV from LG. By the time he got it home and dragged it up the stairs, he was repenting of his earlier madness, which was my cue to finally express my own, pent up anger.
"And it wasn't just three hundred dollars more!" I bellowed at him, stomping down the stairs to angrily wash up and sputter away to myself.
Then the dog pooped on the carpet and Keith needed my help to set the gargantuan TV up on its little stand.
"Honey," he said in a small voice. "I...I'm sorry. I just saw that other TV and I just lost my mind, I don't know..." His voice drifted away in wonder as he thought back to just how mysteriously and powerfully compelling was his attraction to the behemoth still wall mounted at Best Buy.
"I know," I said, because I'd felt it myself. It was like entering another dimension, where money and prices suddenly had no meaning anymore and anything was possible and within reach. I'd had to hold on to the idea that three thousand dollars was an inane, impossible price for a television with every bit of my sanity, and I'm a tight fisted Yankee SOB.
Then we cleaned up the poop and had chili for dinner and went to bed early, exhausted.
That TV! Fifty five inches is no joke. It's a massive piece of the wall now, and as thin as the width of my hand. The clarity is such that even movies like "Black Hawk Down" look cheaply made, even down right weird. The TV has a brain and apparently coordinated all our remotes on its own. It also tries to connect to the Internet. It's a little intimating, I won't lie.
And we're never going to Best Buy again.
