Manifold Updates

My longest ever absence from this blog was born not out of sorrow or trauma, but out of simply being overwhelmed by all the adoption-related stuff. In addition, I have been doing a ton of writing at work lately. Most days, all I do is write all day long. This has completely sapped my writing energy. I rarely work on Sundays, but the very last thing I want to do on my one day off is MORE WRITING.

But my two loyal readers probably wouldn't mind an update, so here it is:

1) Homestudy: We are done with our part of the homestudy, but we are waiting for a police clearance from Washington, DC, which is about to run out of money due to the shut down. So basically, though we filled out the form two months ago, our homestudy has been delayed indefinitely due to forces beyond our control.

2) Adoption Profile: I have finished a draft of this. I need to send it to our neighbor the graphic designer for feedback, but I'm so depressed by the whole endeavor that I can't manage to. DH and I simply aren't picture people. We didn't even own a camera until we bought one specifically to take pictures for our profile. We have hardly any pictures of us, other than the ones we took specifically for the profile. There is nothing to be done about the fact that we have limited photos, but the reality depresses me and makes me self-conscious nonetheless.

And...things have been difficult in our marriage recently. Being married is a funny thing, isn't it. The moment you say your vows, bitching to your girlfriends about how your boyfriend is always late, talks too much, doesn't do enough housework, etc. becomes an act of disloyalty. So I end up feeling like mine is the only marriage with so much strife. Which is why I like complaining about this on my blog, because I KNOW ya'll don't have perfect marriages.

The Adoption Profile itself has been causing a lot of the fights, along with DH's continued underemployment. DH told me that he would take care of the profile, being unemployed and all. Plus, I am visually incompetent and the thought of choosing fonts and background colors makes me feel exhausted and overwhelmed.

But I ended up doing most of the work, because it turns out that DH isn't all that great with software and spent two weeks trying to create the profile on iStudio, the worst publishing software EVER. I switched the whole thing to MS Powerpoint and worked on it every night after coming home from work, which, I believe I've mentioned before, has been completely sapping my writing energy.

So, in the event that you were unemployed, dear reader, would you, after your dear wife came home exhausted on Friday evening, cooked you both dinner and then plunked herself down in front of the computer to finish the profile, repeatedly moan about having poor, low-quality photographers? When your dear wife, in tears, begged you--BEGGED you--not to keep repeating that because she found it demoralizing to finish the profile while you kept reminding her of the difficulty of the task, would you get angry, storm off, and NAP ON THE COUCH WHILE SHE FINISHED THE PROFILE HERSELF???? And then, after a night in which you found yourself with the bed to yourself, because your dear wife had taken refuge in the guest bedroom, would you then proceed to point out to her all the ways in which SHE mishandled the situation? 

In other news, for the second year in a row, I will be taking the cats to the vet because DH "forgot" to get their vaccinations updated, even though we must get this taken care of for our homestudy to remain valid. Did I mention that he's unemployed and that now I must take time off work to get the cats vaccinated?

I'm still sleeping in the guest bedroom, and will be for the foreseeable future.

The Oncoming Disaster of My Sister's Wedding

Readers, please forgive this excursion into (mostly) non-infertility-related terrain.

My sister's wedding is rapidly approaching, and I am having a really, really hard time with it. Her fiancé is.....hm, well, the best way to put it is that he's really not a functional adult. At age 36, he cannot cook, nor organize his day, nor pack a suitcase in under three hours, nor arrive anywhere within twenty minutes of when he said. He recently took a job on the opposite coast from where they lived. She quit her job and followed him, only to have him fall apart from the stress of his new job. (Not that she told me any of this--I heard it from my parents.) I don't want to reveal too much about his career, but suffice to say that it's close enough to my own field of work that I can say with confidence that although it is stressful, it is hardly neurosurgery. He works 80-100 hours a week because he compulsively re-does work he's already done. He interrupts her work in the middle of the day so that she can come to his office and help him with the work he is too stressed to do himself. I called her on Easter Sunday, and she was by herself, because of course, John* was working.

I don't want my sister marrying this man. The fact that he cannot handle his more-stressful-than-average-but-a-long-way-from-neurosurgery job does not bode well for their future. What on earth is going to happen if she has two children, a husband who works 100 hours a week, and no one to help her with the cooking, cleaning, or childcare, because he doesn't have the practical skills to give the kids a bath?

And then there's the issue of faith. Now, I'm not one to throw stones at someone leaving their religion of origin. (DH and I go to an Episcopal church together; we were married in that church.) But I also don't appreciate slanders either of my religion of origin or my adopted religion. Her fiancé refused to get married in a Catholic church because it "would be a betrayal of everything [he] believe[s] in." My sister refused to get married in a Quaker church because "the service makes [her] uncomfortable." So they hatched this plan to have our agnostic uncle get ordained over the internet in the Universal Life Church and cobble together some Catholic-feeling service with my help. I told my mother that I would not participate in cannibalizing the Catholic wedding liturgy to put together a fraud service, led by a fraud clergyman from a fraud church.

Luckily, my dad put his foot down (he who pays the piper, and all), and he and my mom dredged up an Episcopalian minister who's willing to officiate at their wedding despite the fact that no one in the family (except me, I suppose) has any connection to The Episcopal Church, nor do the bride and groom have any plans to worship at an Episcopal Church once they get married. So they are borrowing a faith tradition to plaster some legitimacy on their wedding without any plans to commit to that tradition long term.

But even this Episcopal wedding is not set. The latest development is that John has suddenly (well, this is the first I've heard of it) decided that he doesn't believe in the Trinity, and banned his mother from singing Mozart's Laudate Dominum  at the service, because it ends with the Glory Be. In Latin, a language he neither reads nor understands.

Um, have you looked at the Book of Common Prayer wedding liturgy? It is replete with references to the Trinity. I understand not being able to make a vow "in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit" if you don't believe in the Trinity, but he has a problem with anyone praying to the Trinity at his wedding? Have I mentioned that their wedding is SIX WEEKS AWAY?????

So I emailed my sister, and pointed out the obvious problem with asking an Episcopalian priest to remove references to the Trinity from the BCP wedding liturgy. Her response? "Thanks for the info!"

In my (many) fights with my mother about unwillingness to help with the ceremony, my insufficient happiness, and my "rigidity" and "rule-obsession" I have the impression that my sister's wedding is more important to her than my sister's marriage. Having her family and friends, reunited in her hometown from all over the world has become the most important thing for her. The fact that the bride and groom have not sorted through their conflicting values enough to decide on an officiant and a ceremony, six weeks before the blessed event should give her pause, but it doesn't. I almost think that she would prefer that the wedding go on as planned, and that my sister just get a divorce later, if John doesn't turn out to be the one.

I almost wonder if my sister is planning not to tell John that they have to use Trinitarian references, and then present it as a fait accompli at the rehearsal. Yes, deceit will make a lovely beginning to their life as husband and wife.

My poor father seems to be alone on this. He doesn't like it, but he feels that standing in the way of the wedding will harm his relationship with my sister. I have encouraged him to keep on top of my sister and to make sure that she and John go for their canonically-required premarital counseling sessions at an Episcopal church where they live. If this officiant is going to fall through, either because John will suddenly decide that some priest he's never met should not have authority over his relationship, or because John will refuse to have the Trinity mentioned at his wedding, then my parents need to know ASAP.

For my part, I have wondered if my sister is closing her eyes to the obvious fact that she will have to take care of this man for the rest of her life because of my infertility. Surely the fact that I have had trouble getting pregnant, the fact that two of our aunts suffered the same fate, surely this history has impacted her. Perhaps she's afraid that if she leaves John, she'll miss out of having her own children the way I have. And the thing is, she might be right.


*name changed, obviously