Living small

I often wake up in the middle of the night and worry. I worry about a lot of things. Like my various illnesses (see post below), or I worry about the adoption, or paying bills. As David could tell you, I'm never at a loss for things to worry about. His nickname for me is "Ms. Worst-case-scenario." Nice.

Sometimes, I worry that we're so far behind "where we're supposed to be" at this point in our lives. You know, big house in the burbs, 2.5 kids, minivan, large retirement funds. Then I realize how silly I am. I mean, why try to keep up with the Jones's when the Jones's have already lapped us about 6 times? And is that what I really want, anyway? Or do I just think I want it because that's what I'm supposed to want?

It's all very confusing, and you'd think at this point in my life I'd have a better idea of who I am and what I want. But it's all muddled and mixed up with society's expectations, what my family and friends want for me, and my obsession with competition. I have a drive to compete with everyone around me, and at the same time, I hate competition. More often than not, I'll just let the other person "win" because I don't think I can win anyway. I'd rather just step off the track and drink a Gatorade. It's my way of short-circuiting the whole thing.

So as I see people around me buying bigger houses, popping out more kids, buying more expensive cars, I have this urge to chuck it all and run in the other direction. As David and I cleaned out our rented storage unit last weekend so that we could save $66 a month on the rental fees, I kept wondering why we have so much stuff. We almost came to blows as we were trying to squeeze my cool antique church pew in our little basement storage room. We rearranged boxes of junk that we haven't cracked open for 3 years. Old books, knick-knacks, grade-school papers. When we got married we got rid of tons of stuff, but we still have so much. And it's weighing us down.

So lately I've been thinking maybe we should be really counter-cultural and get rid of everything and be total odd-balls. I want to sell our place and buy a really tiny house, like this. It's one of the tiny homes made by the Tumbleweed House Company.


Then I want to sell our car and buy a minuscule car like this Smart Car.



I want to live small and light. It sort of like traveling to Europe with a backpack instead of a trunk. It will make the journey so much more pleasant and allow us to focus on the scenery.

Summer in the city

Chicago's at it's best in the summer. Beautiful sunny days and lots of festivals and events. Last weekend we spend a wonderful afternoon with our friends Dan and Celeste at the Folk and Roots Festival. Dan and Celeste took Polka lessons in the "dance tent" (David and I only lasted about 10 minutes then we sat on the sidelines watching and taking pictures.)

Polka! Celeste is Polish....and determined to teach Dan how to Polka.

Call the doctor...

In the past few months I've had:

breast cancer
heart attack
skin cancer
Lou Gehrig's disease
MS
Carpel Tunnel syndrome

I also think I may suffer from a wee bit of hypochondria.

It all started with a pain in my bosom. I tried to ignore it at first. I tried to remember the words of my doctor, who told me breast cancer lumps rarely cause pain. But the more I thought about it, I was convinced it was....something. Something serious. I mean, I've had three friends die of breast cancer in the past few years. So my friends and I can no longer kid ourselves that "we're too young" to get breast cancer. Right?

So when I got home I tearfully broke the news to David: "Honey, I think I have breast cancer."

To be honest, this isn't the first time I've mentioned my breast cancer symptoms to him. This happens about once every other month.

He looked at me, gave me a big hug, laughed and said, "Not again?!!"

I sighed, and started laughing, too. I knew I was being a little bit, well, alarmist. And sure enough, a few weeks later I got a mammogram and it was all clear.

Mysteriously, the bosom pain went away. Well, it didn't go away, it just moved to my legs and morphed into an achy, tingly feeling. Then I was convinced I had Lou Gehrig's disease. Or MS. Didn't my friend who has MS say her legs were tingly?

Suddenly, I felt too weak and exhausted to work out. I imagined the next few -- the last few -- years of my life as I declined and became weak and paralyzed. I would be brave and stoic and profound and maybe even write a book about my experience. I would make enough money so David could live comfortably without me.

I went to the doctor and told him about my exhaustion. Turns out it's not Lou Gehrig's disease. Or MS. It's probably just the side-effects of my headache medication. Whew. I dodge a bullet with that one.

But I was still worried about the red spot on my neck that kept itching. I first noticed it one day at work when I was wearing a beaded necklace. I figured the necklace was scratching my neck, leaving a red patch. But after a few days of going necklace-free, the spot was still there. In fact, it was bigger and redder. I started getting suspicious. I called my sister, who recently had a spot on her skin removed. "Was your spot itchy and red and wouldn't heal?" "Yep. That's exactly what it was like!"

So I had skin cancer. But I didn't panic. This was just the mild form, not that big nasty melanoma kind, so I could wait a few days before seeing the doctor. In fact, I was going out of town for the weekend, so it would have to wait until the next week. My days of sun tanning were finally catching up with me. It was the first of many skin cancer removals, I was convinced. I imagined my aging body with not only wrinkles and sun spots, but with divots from all of the skin-cancer removals. It was the beginning of the end.

So I went away for the weekend to a women's retreat and the whole time noticed the skin of my fellow retreat-ers. They had smooth skin. Beautiful skin. Not skin pocked with the scars of skin cancer. I was sad, but accepted my fate.

Mysteriously, though, a few days after I returned home the red spot started to fade. It didn't itch any more. Then, surprisingly, it was gone! I had dodged another bullet. I didn't have skin cancer after all!

Then came the heart attack. I had pain in my left arm. Achy pain, throbbing pain. Wasn't that a symptom of a heart attack? At work I kept my index finger on the artery in my neck. I felt my heart beat. I wanted to make sure it was still there. If I was having a heart attack, wouldn't my heart beat feel weird -- maybe racing or erratic or something? For the next few days I was fully in tuned with my heart beat and achy arm. Then the weekend came and my arm felt fine. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I realized my arm just hurt when I was at my computer. Typing. Maybe it wasn't a heart attack after all. Maybe it was just Carpel Tunnel syndrome.

All of the sudden, both of my arms ached and I felt tingly in my hands. I Googled my symptoms. Google: A hypochondriac's best friend.

Sure enough, my symptoms perfectly matched Mayo Clinic's list of warning signs for Carpel Tunnel syndrome. Then I started reading what can happen if it's not treated. It can cause permanent damage in your hands, making them useless. The treatment is surgery where they cut open your wrists. Surgery that would leave long, ugly scars.

I decided not to let it get that bad. Excuse me but I have to go now and call the doctor. When I see him maybe I'll mention this mysterious pain on my scalp...

Obscure movie recommendation

I typically don't enjoy animated movies. They bore me. I don't know why. But David brought home "Persepolis" last night and I was blown away by it. The animation is unique and beautiful, like a graphic novel, and the writing is smart and provocative. It's based on Marjane Sartrapi's autobiographical novel of the same name, and tells the story of her childhood in the midst of the Iranian revolution. I wish I would have seen it on the big screen, instead of our dilapidated hand-me-down television. The movie's about an Iranian, but it's filmed in French with English subtitles. It was nominated for an Academy Award for best animated feature, and also won an award at Cannes.

It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon....

My friend, Jane called me up on Friday and asked if I wanted to go with her to a live broadcast of "A Prairie Home Companion" at Ravinia (an out-door amphitheater on Chicago's North Shore). Jane has a good friend from college who's a writer for the show. Fun job, eh?

It was a perfect evening, and we had a wonderful time. We even got to meet Garrison Keillor.

Okay, he looks a bit goofy in this photo, but it was between posting a photo of Garrison Keillor looking goofy, or a photo of me looking goofy. So, it wasn't a hard decision....

Um, never mind....

Sigh.

This post is hard to write, especially after telling you all in my previous post that we were moving forward with the adoption. Well, now it's on hold again.

We had a heart-to-heart with our Social Worker last Thursday. The long & short of it is that we need to wait until December to really move forward. There are several reason for this, but mostly it's because David is in school right now and not making much money. Our situation doesn't look great on paper -- even though last year we made a 6-figure combined income, and once he's out of school next year we'll be rollin' in the money (well, not really, but at least we'll have two salaries again.) The other reason is because we want to adopt an older child (over 2 years old), once we get the homestudy done the adoption could move very fast. While some people are waiting over a year for an infant, we could be matched with a child in six months or less. It really would not be a good thing if we got a child while David's still in school. So it's safer if we wait until December to make sure we don't get a child before next summer.

To be honest, I'm relieved. The whole reason we were trying to get started because we're, well, on the "older" end of the acceptable adoptive parent spectrum. It was my understanding that because of David's age, we had to move as fast as possible before we "aged out" of the system. However, we found out last week that Ethiopia really only looks at the adoptive mother's age. Whew! You'd think I would have known this already, after all of the reading and studying I've done, but Wide Horizons was very vague about it and I felt like everything I read said something different. So it was a relief to get the official word from Wide Horizons (thanks to a call to them from our social worker), that we'll be fine if we wait six months or even a year. (On a side note, the person at Wide Horizons told our social worker that she was working with a 70 year old woman who is trying to adopt! Can you imagine?!)

Having an extra six months will also give us a chance to pay off some debt, which will make us "look better on paper." And by then David will have a better idea of his career opportunities after graduation.

Anyway, the only risk in waiting is that international adoption is a moving target. Things could change in Ethiopia at any time. They could decide to change the age cut-off or decide to tighten the adoption requirements (like China), or the whole program could shut down for some reason (like Guatemala). So that worries me a bit, but this whole thing is a lesson in Trusting God. Not something I'm very good at.

Basically my whole life has been about WAITING -- so I don't know why this would be any different. Maybe God is continuing to teach me patience. Maybe I just haven't gotten it yet.

During my 3-mile walk yesterday I listened to a sermon by Tim Keller titled "The Timing of Jesus." It was a good reminder that our timing is not God's timing, and usually when we're forced to wait that means God's up to something that we don't understand and can't yet see. But that we have to believe in his goodness.

Hmmm, I think I'm going to listen to that sermon every day for the next six months....

One step closer....

We're moving forward again with the adoption. We got stalled there for a few months, after dental and medical bills kept eating away at our freelance income that's trickling in. But now we're back on track. We handed in more paperwork to The Cradle this week. We also had to write our "autobiographies" -- a 5 - 7 page story of our lives -- so the social worker can get a better idea of who we are. Next, she'll schedule individual meetings with us to talk more, then we have one more meeting with her where she'll come to our home and make sure we don't live in squalor. I guess I should pick up that 3-foot pile of clothes I have in the corner before she arrives. And wipe down the stove, which currently has a layer of cat hairs sticking to it. Cooking grease and a cat shedding her winter coat is not a good combination. I swear I wipe it down every other day (the stove, not the cat), and the cat hairs just find their way back.

Now that David is finished with school for the year, he can spend a little more time working and making money for the adoption. Plus, our friend Val graciously offered to
help us put together a fundraising concert, which we're hoping to have at the end of July / beginning of August. We have "talent" lined up and we're just trying to find a great venue....that's free. No easy task. Here's the lineup so far:

A friend of Val's from Chicago's Lyric Opera will be singing (thanks Val!)

Our friend John Judd will perform a theatrical piece with our other actor friend Celeste. John just finished shooting a scene with Johnny Depp (!) for Depp's new film about John Dillinger. If his scene doesn't get cut, you'll see John in the very first scene of the film -- he's playing a prison guard that Depp beats up with a revolver.

Our friend Rae Ann will sing a few numbers.

Val will play a piano piece (I think)

Nordic Voices of Chicago (my choir!) will perform

Our friend Mike Lipuma will read some poetry

David might sing a few tunes.

Hopefully we'll have a few more acts lined up before the big night, but I'm getting excited about it. Even if we don't raise a lot of money, I think it will be fun!

Stay tuned for more info.