Boo!

Holy cow, it’s literally been 6 months since I’ve blogged! I admit that I’ve always been a bit of a procrastinator but good Lord, that’s an accomplishment even for me!

I initially had such grand intentions and truly loved writing my last post. I really gave it everything I had.. time, heart, and honesty. It was totally worth it too but sheesh, it took a lot more than I had expected. As it turns out, blogging is a bit harder than I imagined! Lol. But it looks sooooo easy, doesn’t it??

I mean, you see those long-ass posts with the coveted recipe hidden waaaaaaaay at the bottom and you have to scroll down past the center of the earth to find it, skipping past ten thousand paragraphs full of whatever blah they’re blabbering on and on about…
I mean, how much could you possibly have to say about Oreo Spider Cookies??
Yet here I am blabbering on about it because I totally made those spider cookies!!!!
PS they’re so stupidly adorable that it was worth all of that annoying scrolling! And it solidifies the fact that a 1st grade Halloween party requires mentally deranged spider cookies in order to be truly successful.

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Oreo Spider Cookies

Ingredients:
Halloween Oreos
Pretzel Sticks
Candy Corn
Mini Marshmallows
Black Gel Icing
Directions:
Split the Oreos.. do that little twisty turn move.. you know the one. You need two Oreos per spider. And you’ll use the sides with the most frosting.
Break the pretzels for legs, cut off the white tips of the candy corn for little fangs. Shove it all into the frosting of the bottom Oreo half. Top it with the other Oreo half. Cut a marshmallow in half. Attach both halves to the top of the cookie with a dot of the black gel icing. Use one more dot on top of each marshmallow to complete those weird little eyes. Boom. Done.

Happy Halloween, my friends!!! 🎃👻🕷

And here’s to finally getting off my ass and blogging again. I can promise you that my posts won’t all be super epic and heartfelt… you can just go ahead and consider this Exhibit A 😳😂❤ But I’m back anyway!
oxo,
Summer

 

 

Full Frontal: An Adoption Story

I’m a hugger. I hug my family. I hug my friends. I even hug most of my clients. If it feels right, I do it.

My hugs are usually well received and reciprocated because life is freaking hard.
Each of us runs around, barreling through the day in a distracted, frazzled rush of commitments, schedules, and obligations and a hug is a sweet reminder of the simple goodness in this moment right now.

I mean, hugs are warm, fuzzy, and just make everyone happy, right?
As it turns out, not everyone is a fan.

I have come to realize that the cherished social hug that we all love so very, very much is more American than universal.

My German brother-in-law is the undisputed King of the side hug. With the fluidity of Baryshnikov, this dude maneuvers to the side hug with so much grace that it almost doesn’t feel awkward.. almost.
My brother-in-law just doesn’t understand our American, breast-to-chest, full frontal expression of casual affection. I suppose when you think of it that way, it actually does sound kind of pervy. He’s probably onto something…

I have a back wax client who I truly adore as a person. We have the best conversations about parenthood, life, politics and everything in between. In one session, we can reimagine the universe and solve all the world’s problems.
However he is also without a doubt, the most awkward front hugger ever.
At the start of every appointment, it never fails.
He comes in toward me with that hug..
strong, direct, full frontal, borderline intimate, and lingering just a bit too long.
I mean, you know when you hold onto a hug too long..
you know.

But the universe quickly balances in two words: back wax. Sometimes I enjoy my job more than I should 😉

If there is any justice in this world, that relationship is most likely penance for the most horrible, tragic, full frontal hug in all of history..
Given by me.
I like to refer to it as: that one time I accidentally tried to molest my child’s birth father.

Every international adoption story is unique. Many children and babies are abandoned but others are relinquished by their parent or parents to local, government officials and then taken to an orphanage.

When we finally received notice that our adoption case had been approved and we could return to East Africa to bring our baby home, we were also informed that during that trip we would have an opportunity to meet our daughter’s birth father.
My husband and I traveled together for our first trip aka the court trip. After 3 years in the adoption process and 11 years of marriage, we were finally, miraculously, a family of three. And she was absolutely perfect. Two and a half months later, my sister took the final journey with me.

On the day prior to gaining custody of our daughter, her birth father traveled to our guest house to meet me. He was brought by our adoption agency’s social worker and culture expert.
Oh my God, I was so nervous that morning. I couldn’t tell whether I needed to cry or throw up. There were so many emotions and so many worries.. My heart was exploding with the immense burden of being face-to-face with a parent who was losing his child to me. How do you even begin to receive approval for that? I can’t imagine the deluge of thoughts, memories, anxieties, and hopes that were flooding his mind.
And as completely ridiculous as this sounds, I genuinely wanted and needed him to like me.

As he walked up the front steps of our guesthouse, I begged my sister to sneak a peek because I was too terrified to look. Her response: “Oh my God, he’s so young.. like you should be adopting him too.”
I wanted to laugh and also die. Perfect. His first thought would probably be: “Great. Old, white lady. Figures.”
When he walked into the room, her words rang true. He was in his early 20’s. I was in my early 30’s. He was young, handsome, and sharply dressed. He also avoided eye contact with me. It may have been the intensity of the situation but it could have also been cultural.
He sat on one couch with the social worker/translator and I sat across on another couch beside my sister.
My heart was both full and empty as I held my carefully typed list of questions that I had so painstakingly authored for the past few weeks. Being in his presence made so many of them simply disappear from the page. I immediately felt embarrassed that I had actually considered asking such personal, probing memories from him. I had stupidly created a version of this story in my head and fantasized magic in this precise moment. I had clearly watched too many cheerfully edited YouTube adoption videos. There was too much loss in that room to feel anything but the heaviness of life, the burden and unfairness of opportunity, and the overwhelming gratitude for this man’s precious heart and faith. Here he sat, all options exhausted, helpless, and choosing to love his daughter enough to let her go.. Humbled doesn’t even begin.. guilty too.
All I really wanted was for him to know that we would take care of her and love her with our whole hearts for our whole lives. I promised him that she would know her story and would love him and her birth mother.
He smiled.
The last question I asked, “what are your hopes and dreams for her?”
His answer was “to be educated and to be many things..” He looked down at his lap after speaking and then placed his right hand on his heart and twice moved it toward me. His words once translated were “I give her to you.. she is yours.”

My heart was shattered. The room around us crumbled leaving only tears and indistinguishable emotions.
It was beyond magic… bigger. Real.
I looked over at the social worker and asked the only thing I could find the words to ask: Can I give him a hug?
He agreed and I approached him with every ounce of love and maternal kindness in my being.. and without a second thought, you know I went Full Frontal.
Full-Frontal, American, breast-to-chest on this poor, unsuspecting soul.
Good freaking God.

His body’s immediate response was a lightening speed bow with his head down and hips back. So now instead of the perfect moment of my all-American hug, his head was strangely in front of my chest, his face looking down at our feet, and the rest of his body was safely two feet away.
Naturally, living up to my crazy, old white lady reputation, I did the only thing I could think of: a quaint, nonthreatening, little “Granny-pat” to the back of his head.

I’m pretty sure the entire debaucle is caught on video but even after 5 years, I still can’t bring myself to watch it.

So yeah, like I said..
Penance. And well deserved.

I’m totally still a hugger though. It’s good stuff.. mostly 😉

The Easy Life

Sometimes life is just easy….
The day begins joyously, the air smells fresh, you weigh less than you did yesterday, you accomplish literally everything on your to-do list, your children and husband do exactly what they’re supposed to do without reminders, nagging, threats, or yelling (sweet Jesus).. no one freaks out, not even you because this life is all rainbows & fun and the sun is literally shining straight out of a unicorn’s asshole like a glittery, gold beacon of hope and effing happiness!

Now that sounds pretty spectacular, doesn’t it? God, I really need one of those weeks.. although I’m unsure whether they exist for the unmedicated.
But the delusion and dream of those weeks is the very reason we choose to keep living when the inevitable shitstorm of reality engulfs us. They’re the reason we don’t flip the eff out & assume the adult version of the fetal position (“hiding” in your closet drinking wine while pretending to let your child “seek” you for 20 minutes..)

Because there are days when you get home at 7:30pm after a 10 hour work day to find the gift of a broken heater on the coldest night of winter. Bonus: your husband is working that super-sweet night shift that was only supposed to be temporary 🎉 and you get to wake up tomorrow at 4:30AM to do this all over again! And yet you have a ravenous child nearing the emotional, bedtime breaking point of hysteria & of course you have no groceries in the house.
Side note: Pita chips and string cheese are a legit dinner in this house. Adding some sort of random fruit for her & wine (fruit 👌🏼) for me and ✨✨✨ the guilt just magically flutters away!

That perfect moment can be made even more golden by your child then revealing a strange, bumpy patch on her ankle that is most definitely ringworm.
So now you really need to wash everything in her room and yours but truthfully you might just call it & burn the freaking house down instead because remember, you have no groceries and without food, there really isn’t a reason to go on anyway.

Assume fetal position.

However all of that is massively tempered by the pure, simple sweetness that is childhood.
In those “just kill me” moments, you hold off in anticipation of the good stuff that is absolutely positively worth the wait.. every.single.time.
They’re small but precious moments: finding a tiny note saying in fat, crooked letters “I love you momy becusz I love you”.. or when your child tells you with precious, bright-eyed honesty that you’re their very best friend.
And nothing prepares you for the choking swell of pride in realizing your child just legitimately clobbered you at Connect Four and you didn’t even see it coming.

Personally, my favorites are the moments of blissed out hilarity such as turning around, while cooking dinner, to witness the badassery of your Kindergartener’s dance moves which could only be described as psychotic, injured porpoise meets Rihanna. (Nature vs Nurture adoption study right there)

The insanity of those unpredictable fluctuations are precisely why we are all craaaaaaaaaazy.. but they’re also why we carry on and why we cry and why we drink and what bonds us together because those moments are all normal. They are real life.

I remember thinking through each phase of my life, that when “x” happened, then I would be happy. But then “x” happened and so it was replaced with “y”.. and once “y” happened then I would be happy. And then.. and then.. and it just always seemed to cycle on with happiness always lingering just beyond my grasp.

I think at some point in each of our lives, we buy into the idea of “the perfect life” and in that instant of acceptance, so begins the lifelong quest that will literally kick our asses and steal so much of our joy along the way.
Then one day, you look at the life that you created, at the world & the people around you, you look at the very life you spent your entire life waiting for and building year by year by year, and you stop………
And you realize the only thing you’re still waiting for is you…. waiting for you to just finally be in this moment and be happy.

So this is me. Being me. Hi.