So Near, So Far, So Good

Monday was a pretty eventful day on the two big projects. We met with our adoption/foster social worker for our first visit of our Home Study, and I finished the third draft of the novel. In both cases, it’s a little like being a skyscraper climber looking down, impressed with yourself on how far he’s come and perfectly aware how far there is to go. And then you plod on.

The social worker was very nice, and gave us great compliments about the house, which was squeaky clean. Our cat Floyd was well-behaved, though after she played with him for a little bit, he got a bit of the “crazy eyes” and we knew he was ready to up the game to the thing he does where he closes his entire body on your hand like a bear trap. After we diffused that, I think we came off as the right mix between serious and easy-going, structured but not set in our ways. At any rate, she returned our Thank You email afterwards, which is something.

We have to finish our paperwork outlining out budget, doing maps our house with “fire safety routes,” getting references plus employer references, DMV records, proof of income (two paystubs), evidence of home owner’s and car insurance, our domestic partnership contract, and get the pool fenced. Hard to believe it, but the list used to be much longer, and most of the stuff on there is easily done. I mean, I need to show proof of car insurance at a moment’s notice, don’t I?

On the novel front, I finally finished the agonizing Chapter 3, and am rereading the book as a whole as quickly as I can to see how it all works as a whole. One of the things I’ve found tricky about doing a long piece of work like a novel is staying with a consistent voice. The tone I know can shift – there are funny scenes, there are sad scenes – but I’m watching out for changes in style.

So far, though so good. Ian’s reading it now, and I’ve sent a copy (with lots of admonitions that this is a rough, rough copy I haven’t even checked for spelling yet) to a friend who is in the medical / elder caregiving field to get her insight into the subject, since that’s pretty important to get right in the book.

This is the part where I talk about the enjoyment being in the journey not the destination. Is that the truest cliche or what?

Being The Perfect Parent In Eight Words Or Less

On Monday, we’re meeting with our social worker from the Foster/Adoption Agency to begin our home study even though not quite all of our paperwork is done. It’s a lot of thoughtful work to fill in some of the forms. One question, for example, is “How would you react to bedwetting?”. You want to say you wouldn’t shame the child and make a big deal about an occasional bedwetting. You want to say that if it were chronic or you suspected it was a psychological reaction to abuse, you’d seek out a therapist. You want to say that you would definitely clean the sheets and have some spare sheets, because even though that sort of answer seems overly obvious, there’s probably no such thing as being overly obvious when filling out a form that will be sent to a government agency . But you have four inches of black line to do this in, so you have to find just a few words to answer all that.

We’re nervous, and of course planning on spending Sunday scrubbing our house down and hiding our liquor and pornography.

And I’m finally, after two months of being waylaid by it, finishing Chapter 3 of the novel. It’s turned out to be quite a good one, but a bugger to write, with a sermon and two flashbacks, balancing action with exposition. There’s nothing like the feeling for a writer when your characters surprise you. Must be a bit like being a dad.

Dragged Kicking & Screaming Towards Doing The Right Thing

So my sister-in-law, Kelly, like me, doesn't have a landline, and like me, lives in California, not a battleground state, so she, like me, hasn't been getting robocalls. She did, however, this week get a call on her cell phone from the No On Proposition 8 (for those of you out of state, and even some of those of you in state, "No" means you're for gay marriage, and you're saying "No" to no gay marriage, and "Yes" means you're against gay marriage, and you're saying "Yes" to no gay marriages) and she told the caller to go on, that if this were a different issue, she'd be pissed about them calling on the cell phone. So she talks to them, and ends up volunteering to do some phone calls of her own.

And now she's going to UCLA on Saturday for an information session where they prep you to take a shift outside one of the polls during election day, clarifying Prop 8 to people. She asked if Ian and I want to do it too.

Short answer is: no, not really. I've given money to the Human Rights Campaign for the fight, and towards the No On Proposition 8 group specifically. I'm not rich, but I have more money than time. At least that's what my initial reaction was, until I started thinking about it. One shift on election day on an issue that's important and relevant to me. Kelly has a busy life too, but she's managed to find time to fight for my rights.

So, grudgingly, I'm tagging along it seems.

Guilt: a positive motivator.

Always Sweat The Small Stuff

Any big project, like a novel or adopting a baby, can seem overwhelming from the start, unless you begin with the easy, fun parts so before long, the progress you’ve made makes the whole of the project less intimidating. The downside is that the last 10% of the project takes twice as long because it’s the shit you never wanted to do in the first place.

On the novel, it’s been this terrible Chapter 3. Chapter 1 and 2 were about introducing characters and the situation, and they went pretty fast. Chapter 3 through 20 brought everything to a climax, and they went pretty fast. Chapter 3 is about making sense of the stuff that I wrote, trying to explain how any of this stuff is possible. In other words, it’s exposition, and it’s a drag to write in a way that makes it not be a drag to read.

On Saturday, I went to a pumpkin carving party at my little brother’s house and there was a psychic who had me roll a pair of dice as an answer to a question. I silently asked about the novel and got a 4 and a 5 which interpreted as, basically, pay attention to the details. Do sweat the small stuff.

The paperwork we’ve been putting off on the baby front is the short answer questionnaire which asks questions like “What are you limitations?” (One and a half lines to fill in the answer), “Describe your saddest day?” (Two whole lines to describe it), “How do you handle stress?” (Three lines!). I know that the agency is just doing their due diligence that I won’t fill in answers which say I like to do heroin every night, crying children make me want to bite things, and I enjoy sacrificing small, cuddly animals on an altar to my dark god. But I want them to like me, and think I could be worthy some day of a Greatest Dad In The World coffee cup, so I struggle. The usual bullshit answers don’t apply. In an interview for a job, we know “Describe your weakness” is always best answered as “I’m a workaholic” or another typical make-vice-into-virtue replies. But you don’t want to give a child to someone who says he’s obsessed with perfection, or phobic about disease, or anything that screams Daddy Dearest.

In the details and the limitations, I might just have to do the unthinkable and Be Honest.

Body, Soul, and Fingertips

Since the last blog entry, we’ve completed some more paperwork and done our LiveScan, where to the tune of $20 per finger, Ian and I sent our prints in to the FBI and Department of Homeland Security (wasn’t one of the recommendations of the 9/11 commission report to get the intelligence agencies working closer together, and that’s why the department of homeland security was invented? And they can’t share my fingerprints?). I had this little fantasy that my prints would be matched to some unsolved cold case file, but no one’s come knocking on my door, so I guess I turned out to be not at least a known criminal.

The big expense still to come is putting a fence around the pool. We haven’t found anyone to do it for better than $2500, so that’ll be the one we’ll probably go with. Sure does suck to drop that dough before the holidays.

I will say that one result of this whole adoption home study is that I’ve become a much healthier person. Not only have I quit smoking, but as a result of my doctor’s recommendations (I had to go in to have a physical, and I hadn’t been to a doctor for anything in years and years), I’ve been eating better and exercising, and dropped 30 lbs. So that means I’ll be one of those slim, non-smoking dads? What fun are they?!

About the novel, I’ve finally gotten to a stage on the accursed Chapter 3 where it’s moving along. The tricky part is that I set it up that it is a series of flashbacks happening during a church service in January. I came up with a little sermon for my priest to give from the Second Letter to the Corinithians, Chapter 5 which would be appropriate for the flashbacks I wanted to give, and I got into the first of the flashbacks, and then I made the mistake of talking about the chapter to my brother and his wife, people who actually go to church. They reminded me that there are certain readings from certain chapters delivered at certain times of the year in the church calendar, at least according to the Episcopal church. I really hope that January is a fine time to read from the Second Letter to the Corinthians, or I can make the church a Presbyterian church or some denomination with a more relaxed view about when to read certain books of the Bible. I wrote to their minister for advice, but evidently she has more important religious duties than helping a non-religious novelist work out his Chapter 3 because it’s been a couple weeks and I haven’t heard back.

So, as usual, I assume it’ll all be fine and plod on.

Sometimes people mistake that for optimism when it’s just laziness.

The Dry Spell

I had been doing so well. Every day, something was written on the novel. Every day, we moved a little further forward on getting certified for foster adopt. I had really be impressing myself. The last month though, it’s been a crawl.

What happened? The list of excuses is legion and sometimes legitimate. My parents came to visit. We took a long weekend trip. I caught a nasty bug. There are deadlines at work that need to be met. The end result is that I got out of the habit of working on the novel and filling out paperwork.

I have to finish Chapter 3 which is a difficult exposition-filled chapter where I need to give the reader a lot of information in an entertaining way. I have to get a fence built around my pool, attend a Water Safety class, measure all the rooms in my house, come up with a budget, get Livescan checked, ask some people for references, and sign here and here and here and here and here.

Doesn’t sound like too much, does it?

Okay.

Okay, today.

I’m off!

Book and Nanny

I am looking for a babysitter for my non-existent baby. I don’t know whether I need childcare for a boy or a girl, or twins, and whether we’re talking a toddler or a newborn. I don’t know if he or she (or they) have special needs, or requires medication. But in order to complete my home study, I need to have one or two babysitters, who have had their criminal background checks certified by Live Scan and updated tuberculosis tests and are certified in CPR and First Aid, for my mythical child. The chicken or the egg question may be still up in the air, but I can tell you that the sitter comes first.

I haven’t started any interviews, but I’ve done plenty of other things for my theoretical baby. I’ve quit smoking, like I mentioned in the earlier entry (9 weeks, 2 days, 10 hours, and 48 minutes according to Quit-o-meter on Facebook, saving me $327.25), have started exercising more and eating better, since in addition to getting a babysitter for my non-baby, I’ve had to get a physical. On Saturday, we’re also getting our second estimate for a pool fence. Wouldn’t want our fictional baby to drown.

On the subject of my baby who is fiction rather than fictional, and may or may not be drowning, the second draft is going very well. Some chapters are better than I remembered them being, and some are a little … bloodless. What’s supposed to happen in them happens, but it just reads, in technical terms, kinda blah. My plan is that after I’m finished with the second draft, I’ll put the book aside for a couple weeks, and then attack it fresh. I have to finish the last chapter and completely rewrite Chapter 3 before I can take that kind of a break.

I had hoped to have it in good enough shape that my parents could read it at the end of August when they’re visiting L.A. Will this motivate me to bust my ass and get it done? … Hard to say. My motivations are a mystery to me as much as anyone.

That will be something I’ll have to say in my interview with my no doubt bewildered nanny-to-be.