Good News from Ethiopia!

That was the subject line on an email message I got at 11:22 this morning.

Yes, it's what you think it is!

"We are thrilled to be able to share with your family that your case has been approved in court! With the approval from the Ethiopian courts, this means that your adoption is full and final in Ethiopia and you are now the legal parents of your child. This is quite a milestone in your adoption journey. We encourage you to take a moment to celebrate this good news!!"

A moment? I think it deserves more than a moment! This is such a huge thing that I am breaking my vow of Wednesday Wordlessness to tell you all about it!

I can't believe that it happened so fast - just over two months after I got the referral call - especially since I went on such a rant about it yesterday. Though come to think of it, the referral call came the day after a particularly bleak point too, so maybe the secret to getting what you want is to rant about it...hmm...

It's been hard holding on to the belief that this was really going to happen for me, harder and harder as the weeks went by and all I had to go on was a couple of pictures and three little words. I haven't written about this on the blog before, but one of my deep beliefs about life is that other people can get what they want, but I can't. Intellectually I know that it's not at all true, and I know that I lead a privileged life in many, many ways, but it's just one of those irrational feelings we all have that are hard to shake even after all evidence to the contrary. Even after the referral, I've been holding my breath because I wasn't sure that it was safe to really believe I could have this one thing that I want - to be a parent. It just seemed like something could still go wrong and it would all fall apart.

But now! Now it's really, really real! I will be traveling to Ethiopia soon! I don't know exactly when yet - will find out in the next few days - but more than likely ET and I will celebrate our first Christmas together as a family this year!

And the best part of it is that I might just get to meet Evelyn in Ethiopia too!


(PS - I know a lot of you are expecting a picture now, but I guess there have been some changes to what's acceptable and not acceptable, and Wide Horizons is recommending that pictures not be posted yet. I know it will be hard for you to wait to see her lovely face, but I promise you it will be worth it!)

Leaves Upon Leaves

I Heart My Mail Carrier

Why does it seem like I become extra irritated and annoyed on Tuesdays, right before I am supposed to be thankful? It's like my brain wants to rebel against being thankful on a schedule...

Here's what I am irritated about today:

Waiting! I am SO, SO tired of waiting! I was okay with waiting when no one from my agency had passed court yet because I knew I would not be among the first to pass after the courts re-opened. But a week and a half ago, a whole bunch of people passed court, and they got their travel dates last week - one group is going to Ethiopia the last week of November, another group is going the first week of December. So now I am on edge because I could - maybe - be one of the next parents to get the good news about passing court...and it's making me crazy. I am tired of planning, and thinking, and imagining, and worrying about, and trying to figure out what my life will be like with ET - I just want to be DOING it already!

Cell phones! I don't know why, but lately I have been getting a lot of phone calls at inopportune moments, like when I'm driving. I'm irritated about the fact that having a cell phone causes me to be angry at people who call me when I can't answer - what is WRONG with people, don't they know that I am driving, don't they know that most normal people are driving somewhere at 9 in the morning or 6 at night? (Wouldn't it be great to go back to the days before cell phones, when if the phone rang while I was driving, I would have no idea - and no opportunity to be irritated - because the phone was at HOME while I was in my car?) And then I get irritated all over again when I listen to the voice mail messages later and realize that the phone calls were from sales people or were reminder calls from the hair salon or the doctor's office - what is WRONG with my friends, would it kill them to CALL me every once in a while?

There's just no pleasing me sometimes.

Let's see, what else...

...a whole lot of unbloggable crap that raised its head again today, and which can be summed up by the following words: Leave. Me. Alone. That's about all I can say about that.

So, what could I possibly have to be thankful for, you ask? Well, at least three things, as usual - and two of them arrived in the mail today!

• I am very thankful for the check from BlogHer that arrived in the mail today, for the ads that run in the sidebar. And since the amount is based on the number of page views from readers, I am thankful to all of YOU for reading as often as you do! It's the second check I've gotten since I started running BlogHer ads, and I'm hoping to keep up the momentum enough to earn a third one before the end of the year.
• I am also very thankful for the check that arrived today from a friend who placed a very large order for my photos last week - the most I have ever sold to one person, for more money than I made during the entire two days of the Open Studios a couple of weeks ago. Thank you to you-know-who-you-are!
• And in non-postal news, I am very thankful to all the friends who have offered to help me get ET's room ready over the next few weeks. And apparently I have finally figured out that single parenting is one thing I am just not going to be able to do by myself, which has allowed me to do something completely out of character for me - accept every offer of help that has come my way recently.

What are you thankful for this week? It's okay to rant first, and bonus points if the thing you are thankful for arrived in the mail!

Consider Yourself Warned

If you are a relatively new reader here, you might be under the impression that this is an adoption blog. Or, if you come here for the photos and the art show reports, you might think this is a photography blog. I can totally understand how you might have gotten these ideas, since those are the two topics that I have mostly been blogging about lately.

However, if you've read the More About Liz section, I hope you will have figured out that my intention with this blog is to document how I am creating a life worth living, and that my ultimate goal is to inspire YOU to do the same. For me, for right now, creating a life worth living means adopting a child and starting a business selling my photography; I don't know what it means for you, though I would love to read about it in a comment or email, especially if I have inspired you in some way to actually go for it!

In short, this isn't a how-to-adopt blog. It's not a how-to-take-pretty-photographs blog. It's not a how-to-start-a-business blog.

It's a how-to-invent-your-life blog.

Honestly, I don't know how much I will write about adoption issues once ET is here. I'm pretty sure I don't want this to become a parenting blog; I may start a totally separate blog for those topics, and I still have this idea simmering on the back burner for a potential spin-off blog. Stay tuned.

I will probably continue to include a lot of photography topics on the blog, though. I like Wordless Wednesday, for one thing. And the small business aspect of it is still so very new and developing, I'd like to keep blogging about my goals and accomplishments in that area because building up the business is part of my on-going effort to create the life I want for myself and ET. I don't know how long I will keep blogging about photography, whether I become wildly successful at it or fail miserably, or just get bored with it and decide to move on to my next adventure, but I'm pretty sure it will be a regular topic here for the foreseeable future.

All that being said, though, I don't want to turn the blog into one endless advertisement for my Etsy shop. So, I've made two decisions recently:

One - I've created a mailing list for Photos by Inventing Liz. If you want to receive more-or-less monthly newsletters with updates on what I've listed in the Etsy shop, what's on sale, where I'll be appearing in person to sell my work, and special deals and discounts available only to subscribers, please put your email address in the little green box in the right-hand sidebar underneath the Etsy mini-shop. This way, those who are really interested in buying my work will have a way to stay updated, and the rest of you won't have to put up with constant plugs for my business.

Two - I've decided to allow myself one shameless self-promotion post per year here, right before the winter holidays, to make sure that everyone is aware of what I have to offer in time for whatever gift-giving and/or card-exchanging traditions they may participate in. Consider yourself warned: the first annual shameless self-promotion post will appear here next week, and I'm going to go all out with it.

Weekly Reading List 11-15-09

No time for chit-chat, I am very busy cleaning and re-arranging furniture, let's get right to the reading list for this week!

November is National Adoption Awareness Month, and quite a few adoption bloggers are reflecting on what that means to them:

• Dawn at This Woman's Work writes about how she does not mind that her daughter calls her birth mother her Real Real Mama.
• An adult Korean adoptee imagines how her birth mother might feel about this month in What does "Gotcha" Mean?
• And here's a response from an adoptive parent who doesn't celebrate "gotcha" day, at The Berbere Diaries.
  
• At Grown in My Heart, a birth mother wonders how anyone can celebrate adoption loss in What National Adoption Awareness Month Means to Me.

The big news this month in the adoption world is that The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute released a major study about identity in adult adoptees, called “Beyond Culture Camp: Promoting Positive Identity Formation in Adoption.” Don't Call Me Mother has the press release about the study, and Grown in My Heart has more information about it - including a list of activities that adult transaracial adoptees thought would contribute to positive identity formation. Harlow's Monkey has some thoughts on the study as both an adult transracial adoptee and a social worker.

Did you hear that an American won the NY marathon a few weeks ago - the first American to win since 1982. Oh but wait, according to one sportswriter he's not "really" an American because he was born in Eritrea...Resist Racism is all over it.

Also thanks to Resist Racism, I found this post on "the pros and cons of Obama's post-racial America." Here's my favorite part:

Con: Can we please stop calling Obama “cool” like he is Superfly or something.

Look, I get that the cultural stereotype is that black people are “cool,” but let’s be realistic. Obama is a huge dork. I’ve met a couple of Harvard Law Review editors in my time. Trust me, nobody that gets that job should ever be called “cool,” unless you’re being bitingly sarcastic. He can’t dance, and there are 12-year-olds at Rucker Park that could dunk on him if the Secret Service didn’t taser them on their way to the hole. I promise you Michelle has a better fastball. He’s started playing more golf now, which is significant because the greatest golfer on the planet isn’t as cool as the bassist in a cover band nobody has ever heard of.

There’s no suggestion that this big-eared dude was ever a real ladies man. He’s the leader of the free world but has to sneak around to smoke and got guilt tripped into buying a dog by his children — so there is every indication that he is totally pussy whupped. He drinks Bud Lite, a beer that I’d rather bathe in than drink. Obama is not the most interesting man in the world.

So, white people (and SNL writers) please give it a rest already. Swatting a fly isn’t all that impressive.

Finally, here's a cute poem at Love Isn't Enough, about Crazy Hair Day at school written by the "the mother of the only African-American child in the pre-school class."

Now back to cleaning!