Grendel’s Kitchen

Oh, sorry, it was me who was gone, right?

Explanations would be long and boring, with very, very sad parts and very, very joyful parts. I’ll skip sad things, like not wanting to look at the blog to write because Ahab’s great big loving face was there to greet me but not at home, and not having the heart to take off the photos. Wait just a minute — I was planning to skip those things… But I’ll try to catch up the super exciting parts, like helping to launch a new business with dear friends, the bachelor parties and bachelorette parties and parties just for the hell of it, not 1, but 2 big, beautiful weddings, a new baby in the extended family, another on the way, the arrival of a summer houseguest and a new heating system just in time for even more houseguests on the 4th of July. All sorts of things to write about, from the revelation of my husband’s newfound “ministry” (!) and how I feel about calling him “the Reverend” at home to the latest on our baby! Where to begin … hmmm. Let’s start with China (map leaked by the CIA):

The Longest Gestation Ever: Where’s the baby? What’s the baby’s name? When are we going to travel to find our little totally legal immigrant? [Cue lamont Cranston] Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? Sorry, I reread The Crying of Lot 49 this weekend and can’t get that voice out of my head.

The latest group to receive referrals (complete with photo of little one, basic medical info. and province / orphanage) were those lucky parents-to-be whose paperwork was logged in between June 16 and June 28 of 2005 (LID). They can now expect a 2 - 3 month wait until they travel to China. When we submitted our application, the wait for referral was 5-6 months. That June ‘06 batch of referrals brings the current wait to 12 months from log-in plus the 6 months to a year of dossier preparation prior to log-in, and rising. The CCAA (the Chinese authority responsible for adoptions) has a stated goal of holding the wait to less than 24 months and the US Congress has held hearings to address the long delays.

We have an August 30 LID, which makes our wait until referral expected to be another 3 - 8 months, plus 2-3 months until travel. My guess: there’s an outside chance we’ll get our referral in September (travel Nov), a slight inside chance for October (travel Dec) and a reasonably strong chance for November (travel Jan). I’ll plug in the dates as they come up in THE TIMELINE So, as I’ve been saying for two years: 6 months until the baby arrives! Or more accurately, “sometime this year, or maybe next”.
Oh, and John won’t let me name her Oedipa. It makes him nervous. Isolde is out too, but I’ve still got Cordelia on the baby name blackboard in the kitchen.