"Sometimes I would like to ask God, why He allows poverty, famine, and injustice in the world when He could do something about it... but I'm afraid He might ask me the same question." Anonymous

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Life with Children...prepare to LAUGH- OUT-LOUD!

Tim and I laughed so hard we cried... thought we all needed a laugh, ENJOY!

A fellow adoptive Mommy Blogger http://www.momastery.blogspot.com/ writes:



Friday, December 3, 2010

Officer Superhero
So...

I’m at Target yesterday with Tish and Amma. We’ve made it through the shopping part and we’re in the check- out line. I can see the Promised Land, which is: We’re Done Shopping, Let’s Go Back Home.

I watch Amma notice a pack of gummi worms. Her eyes widen. I brace for chaos. She grabs the worms, shows them to me with tears already in her eyes and says, “I need dese worms!” I say, “Uh-huh. That’s the curse of Target. It makes me think I need all this junk, too. The Target curse is why you’re not going to college, baby. No gummi worms. Put them down.”

Now. You know I try my hardest to describe my ridiculous little life to you. But there is no way to convey to you the drama that crashed down on poor unsuspecting Target immediately following the word “No.”

Amma threw herself down on the filthy Target floor and screamed like a person who maybe just found out that her entire family had died. Amma’s particular tantrum style is that she chooses one phrase to repeat seven million times at seven million decibels until everyone around her seriously considers homicide or suicide. Yesterday she chose, “I SO HUNGWY! I SO FIRSTY! (SKULL SPLITTING SCREAM.) I SO HUNGWY ! I SO FIRSTY! (SKULL SPLITTING SCREAM.”)

This was a long, crowded line. And every time the line scootched up I had to grab Amma’s hood and drag her forward a few feet while she kicked and screamed, like I do with my luggage in the security lines at the airport. And then Tish started crying because it was all so ridiculous. And so I gritted my teeth and made my scariest face at Tish and growled STOP at her like some kind of movie monster, and this sort of thing does not tend to calm a child down. So she cried harder. People started moving away from us and shoppers were actually stopping by our aisle to stare. I was sweating like I was in a sauna, and wishing the “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” song that was on replay would just end. With the kids jinglebelling and everyone telling you, be of good cheer! Riiiight. My experience exactly.

Up until this point, I kept my head down, but it seemed time to offer my best beleaguered, apologetic, what are you gonna do? looks to the other shoppers, in hopes of receiving some sympathetic looks in return.

But here’s the thing. When I finally looked up, I realized with mounting discomfort that there weren’t gonna be any sympathetic looks. Everyone was staring at me. Every. One. One elderly couple looked so disturbed that the grandmother had her hand over her mouth and was holding tight to her husband’s arm. At first it appeared to be an effort to shield herself from my rabid animals. And I thought, I hear ya lady, they scare me, too. But then I realized that she wasn’t looking disapprovingly at them, she was looking disapprovingly at me. I locked eyes with her and without subtlety, she looked down at my clothes, then to my cart, and then away.

So I did the same thing. Down at myself, then to the cart. Oooooooohhhh, I thought. Shoot.

My stupid Lyme is back, and I’ve been sick for a little while now. Yesterday was a bad Lymie day, and so was Wednesday, so I may have forgotten to shower or brush my hair. For 48 hours. And also, when I looked down I noticed that I still had on my pajama top. Which apparently I had tucked in to my ripped jeans. Like seventh grade. I looked bad. Not like a little bad, like offensively, aggressively bad. And also, here is what was in my cart: 6 large bottles of wine and curtain rods. Which wouldn’t have been so bad if my smallest child would have stopped screaming: “I SO HUNGWY, I SO FIRSTY!”

And since I was so tired and in such a state of self pity - I couldn’t even bring myself to feign sympathy towards my starving, parched child on the floor. Because I wasn’t sympathetic, not even a little bit. I definitely remembered feeding her the previous day. Faker.

But based on all of these things, I decided to forgive the frowny, judgmental lady. I had really left her no other choice.

I resigned myself to suffer through. I stopped trying to help the girls at all. Just left Amma there on the floor screaming and Tish beside her crying and prayed the line would move faster. I am sure there were a lot of people praying that the line would move faster.

All of a sudden, a uniformed police officer started walking toward us. At first I was alarmed and defensive. But he stopped in front of me and smiled warmly and winked at me.

He looked down at the girls and said, “May I?”

I was not sure what he was asking exactly, but I allowed myself to hope that maybe he had a paddy wagon and was planning to take them away. And so I nodded at him.


The police officer patted Amma on the head gently. She looked up at him and stopped mid-scream. She stood up. Tish fell silent and grabbed Amma’s hand. All of a sudden they became a pair of grubby little soldiers. At attention, eyes shining, terrified.

The police officer said, “Hello girls. Have you two ever heard of “disturbing the peace?”

They shook their little heads no.

He smiled and continued, “Well, that means that your mama and all of these people are trying to shop in peace, and you are disturbing them, and you’re not allowed to. Can you try to be more peaceful?”

They nodded their little heads yes.

The officer stood back up and smiled at me. I tried really hard to smile back to show my gratitude.

I noticed that the girls grabbed each other in a bear hug and held on for dear life. It appeared they had lived to die another day.

He said, “Being a parent. It’s a tough gig sometimes.”

For some reason, I became desperate to be perceived by him as something other than a struggling mom, so I blurted out, “I’m also a writer.”

He looked genuinely interested and said, “Really? What do you write”

“Lots of things. Mostly a blog.”

“What’s it about?”

“Parenting, I guess.”

His eyes twinkled and he grinned and said teasingly, “Oh. Does anybody read it?”

And I said, “A few. Mostly for laughs, though. Not for . . . well, advice. Obviously.”

I miraculously found the energy and ability and space and breath to giggle.

And my officer smiled and said the following:
“You know, my wife and I raised six kids, and I think that’s actually the only parenting advice worth a damn. Just try to keep laughing. Try to keep laughing. It’s good advice. You’re doing good, mom.”

Then he tipped his hat to me and my girls, and walked away.

In the end, only kindness matters. Thank you, Officer Superhero. Merry Christmas.

The girls were silent until half way home from Target when Tish announced loudly, “I can’t believe we almost went to jail. We better not tell daddy.”

And I said, “No way. We have to tell him. What if we don’t and then he sees the report on the news tonight?”

More silence.
Joy to the World!

2 comments:

  1. That was HILARIOUS! Thank you for passing it on!

    Carmen

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh my goodness, I laughed out loud so hard I thought I was going to have an accident. Thanks for brightening my day :)

    ReplyDelete

Current time in Ethiopia

Addis Ababa

Adoption Time-line

02/02/10- Ethiopia adoption application & fee sent.





02/17/10- Accepted into America Worlds Ethiopia Program!





02/20/10- Paid initial AWAA program fee.





Start paper chase...



03/02/10- Ordered our birth certificates.



03/02/10- Spoke w/and chose GLAD as Home-Study Agency.



03/03/10- Got Angi's employeement & life ins. verification.



03/04/10- Received Tim's birth cert. in mail.



03/04/10- Went to courthouse, got Marriage Cert.



03/05/10- Received Angi's birth cert. in mail.



03/05/10- Scheduled Tim's phys. letter doctor appt.for 3/8



03/08/10- Mailed GLAD application letter & fee.



03/10/10- Ethiopia made big change- 2 trips required now.



03/11/10- Rec'd GLAD/AWAA Post Placement Agreement.



03/11/10- Rec'd Tim's Health/Life Ins. letter.



03/12/10- Jack & Annie rabie shots/Home Study Requirment

03/13/10- Rosie & Sara rabie shots.



03/21/10- Began Hague on-line required training course.



03/22/10- GLAD beginning our background checks.



03/22/10- Our HIV tests and Tim's HEP B blood draw done.



03/23/10- Tim's TB Test scheduled for 3/30/10.



03/25/10- Notary notarized all paperwork we've collected.



03/26/10- Kyla, our social work came for 1st & 2nd home visi



03/26/10- Adoption Tax Credit raised to$13,100.00! Go God!



03/27/10- Kyla finished 3rd Home Study visit.



03/27/10- Finished family photo pages.



03/30/10- Tim rescheduled TB Test until 4/6/10.



03/31/10- Picked up Tim's HEP B test results.



04/02/10- Received Archie's referance letter.



04/06/10- Tim had TB test placed.



04/06/10- Angi got bloodwork records.



04/06/10- Re-did Financial Statement/faxed to AWAA.



04/09/10- Tim's TB test results- negative :)



04/10/10- Completed Hague On-line training course.



04/10/10- Dog vaccines done.



04/20/10- Faxed Florida CPS request to FL today.



05/03/10- Had our physical visits today.



05/26/10- Angi's bloodwork drawn.



05/28/10- Angi's bloodwork result- normal.



05/28/10- Tim's bloodwork drawn & normal result.



06/01/10- Our 14th Annivesary- Renee notarized physicals!



06/07/10- Picked up our physicals & faxed to GLAD/AWAA.



06/07/10- Found out GLAD rec'd FL CPS checks 6/4/10.



06/07/10- Requested Dr. letter for Angi.



06/10/10- Picked up & faxed Dr. letter to AWAA.



06/10/10- Waiting for AWAA to approve Home Study.



06/15/10- AWAA read Home Study & requested corrections.



06/23/10- GLAD corrected and sent H.S. back to AWAA.



06/24/10- AWAA approved our Home Study!



07/01/10- Got money order for final GLAD payment.



07/01/10- Met Klya/GLAD in Vincennes, got final HomeStdy



07/02/10- Mailed I-600A application & fee.



07/09/10- Renee notarized rest of Dossier paperwork.



07/09/10- Sent 2 papers to IN State Dept.for Authentication



07/12/10- Fed-Ex package received at IN State Dept.



07/13/10- We rec'd Authenticated papers in mail!



07/14/10- Rec'd Immigration Fingerprinting appt for 8/9/10



07/23/10- Went early-Immigration/Indy. for fingerprinting.



07/26/10- Called USCIS & left msg for Immigration Officer.



07/29/10- Officer Opfer called, USCIS back-logged 3 weeks.



08/05/10- Rec'd I-171H today!Thanks Officer Opfer-speedy



08/06/10- Renee notarized new MOWA letter & I-171H.



08/06/10- Got Cashier's check to go with Dossier.



Paper chase completed!





08/06/10- Shipped Dossier to AWAA by Fed-Ex.



08/10/10- AWAA received Dossier packet.



08/13/10- AWAA approved Dossier, maybe DTE next Fri?



08/13/10- Rec'd U.S.State letter stating I-600A sent to ET!



08/19/10- AWAA Fed-Ex'd our Dossier to Ethiopia!



08/25/10- Dossier arrived in Ethiopia today!









The WAIT begins...