Today has been hard….

I’ve decided that I’m just going to type this as it comes out, stream of consciousness style. You’re no doubt saying to yourself, “Gee, isn’t that how all your posts are, Ashley?”  But you have no idea how much editing and revising and crafting goes into one of my ordinary posts just to give it some vaporous semblance of readability.

I don’t have the wherewithall for that today. I’m just going to let it spill out, like warm Shiner on pavement, let it splash and foam and subside until it soaks in and is gone. (If you’re wondering what Shiner is, then you’re obviously not from Texas. Come visit; I’ll enlighten you).

Our social worker comes this weekend for our first homestudy visit. She will inspect my house, interview my family, and decide whether we are, in her opinion, fit and able to bring a couple of Eastern European orphans with Down syndrome into our home. Along with the homestudy is a scavenger-hunt list of items for us to gather up and present to the social worker: certified copies of birth certificates, our marriage license, sworn statements from our doctors that each member of our household might be expected to live to see an adopted child reach maturity (yeah, I thought that was a little morbid, too).

Assuming that we are found competent (snort. sorry…), there is the issue of finances. Our adoptions will cost about $26,000 each.   $52,000.  I get a little woozy every time I say that out loud. Actually, I got a little woozy typing it just now, for that matter. That’s a lot of money to raise.

We have a few fundraising events in the works. I am baking my almost-famous Key Lime Pies like crazy, selling them to sweet friends and family who are eager to be a part of our journey. But with life-and-death in the balance, we have to hustle to raise the money quickly.

Now, The Hubby and I have this automotive fantasy. It involves my first car, which is at this moment parked in my mother’s garage:  Sadie, a 1969 Cougar convertible. Red. 351. Sequential tail-lights. Rrrrrowww….  We’ve always planned to restore it one day. It will be our old-people car, the one that we’ll drive around town with the top down, letting our white hair blow in the breeze. He thinks I’ll let him drive. And I might. Once in a while.

A 1969 Cougar, from mustangandfords.com. Not MY Cougar, because all my pics are stowed away in boxes somewhere....

It’s a wonder I didn’t get myself killed driving that car around as a teenager. Man, she could haul like a scalded dog. I remember the adrenaline rush of pulling up to a stoplight next to some testosterone-infused JohnnyDangerous in a hot-rod of his own, revving the engine, inviting me to race. Nothing like being a 17 year-old girl, smokin’ some dude on Pioneer. Those were the days.

My father bought the car for my mother in 1975, with no consideration of the fact that it wasn’t practical for hauling two children, dry cleaning, and bags of groceries. He put it in her name, and when he left my junior year of high-school and mom needed me to have my own vehicle to get around town…well, Dad implored her not to let me drive it. It was too much car for a reckless teenager, he said. He said I’d end up totalling it, or worse. And mom said something like maybe-you-should-have-thought-of-that-before-you-left-me-on-my-own-to-raise-two-children-as-a-single-mother.

In the years after the divorce, that car became my connection to my father. Our relationship was often rocky. Not I-hate-you-you’re-ruining-my-life rocky, but the kind of rocky that happens when two people are too much alike to get along for extended periods of time. My mom used to say that when my father and I got into it, she could see laser beams extending from between our eyes. I have my father’s amber eyes, and she said that when the two of us were locked in battle, our matching glowers were too much for her, and she had to leave the room.

As I navigated the tricky sea of distance between the home he no longer shared with us and the home where I visited him a couple of times a month, it was the Cougar that gave me a sense of still belonging to him. I remember sitting in his garage as he replaced a CV joint, talking comfortably without the darkness of everything that had changed hanging over our heads.

I always thought I’d keep that car forever….

My father loved cars. Racing was his hobby: a Ford Fairlane when I was a baby (he told my mother it would make a great “family car.” The first thing he did when he got it home was rip out the back seat and install Hooker Headers); sleek, fiberglass-bodied European S-2000 class when I got older. He worked in auto fleet and leasing. A couple of years before he died, he personally went up against Lee Iacoca on a bid for the US Government…and won. 

As a celebration present, he bought himself a beautiful, blue-green Mazda RX-7, which I ran over in my driveway while he and The Hubby were at a NASCAR race. Backed my Nissan Pathfinder right up over the hood, coming to a stop inches from the windshield, taking both pop-up headlights out in the process. He passed away suddenly a month later. The last words I said to him in person before he died were, “I’m sorry I ran over your car, Dad.”

But even though he loved cars, he always said, “A car is just a metal box to get you where you need to go.”

Where I need to go right now is Russia.

A couple of years ago, my big-blue-Suburban refused to start in the parking lot of the Kinko’s where I’d just run copies of my manuscript (have I really been working on this novel for THAT long?).  A big, burly man in a pickup truck came along, gently berated a slightly-built good samaritan for his cheap “toy” jumper cables, and proceded to hook up his own behemoth, industrial cables under my hood. I commented that I felt a little out of sorts underneath this hood, that in my ’69 Cougar, I knew exactly where the best place to ground the negative was.

Turns out he had an old Cougar, too, that he’d restored himself. Furthermore, although we were in a neighboring city at the time, we lived in the same small town, just 5 minutes from eachother, and I had seen his Cougar out in front of his house.

Today, as I was driving around town to obtain two more of the items on my scavenger-hunt list, American Pie came on the radio. My dad and I used to sing along to that song, watching each others lips to see who would stumble on a line first. I was on my way to the bank, just a stone’s throw from the shop the Cougar guy owned. As I drove on, a Ford Fairlane pulled onto the road in front of me. It didn’t have the snazzy red-orange-and-yellow paintjob that Dad’s Thunderbolt sported after he quit pretending it was a family car and devoted it to weekend racing, but it was a Fairlane, a rare sight these days.

I started to cry.

God puts us where we need to be, and He puts people in our paths for a reason. And he hooked me up with a hot-rod mechanic who just happened to have rebuilt a Cougar and who just happened to live in my little small town. God has gone to great lengths so far in our adoption journey to put the cookies on the bottom shelf for me. 

All these years, I haven’t wanted to part with the Cougar because it was my father’s car. But now, I realize that it’s really my Father’s car. It’s only been on loan to me these 25 years. Time to give it back.

I cried while I was talking to The Cougar Guy. He said I can have AAA tow the car to his place sometime in the next couple of weeks, and he’ll give me an idea of how much we need to put into it to make it saleable. Funny thing is, I’m really okay with it. I’m excited about it. It’s bittersweet, but sweet nonetheless.

On the way home, I hit the CD button. Soolaimon. I remember my dad—-the impetus for my love of old Neil Diamond—- singing Soolaimon. Lord of my wants…God of my needs…Leading me on….  I will never listen to Soolaimon the same way again.

I’m glad it wasn’t queued to Crunchy Granola Suite….

If you want to know why it’s so urgent that we rescue these children, click HERE for a video clip of what life inside an Eastern European mental institution is like.

And if you want to know what’s going on in the lives of a couple of other crazy, hip bloggers like me, click HERE.

I have not been in a posting kind of mood lately. Don’t get me wrong—life has given me the usual copious amount of material. But I’ve been wrapped up in some new adoption developments, and I just haven’t been able to channel my creative self. Not even when I walked past the guilty-looking dog, right into my bedroom–where said guilty-looking dog had shredded a dirty diaper in the middle of the carpet. I mean, if that doesn’t just scream INSPIRATION, I don’t know what does.

But then—bloggy-salvation! CJ over at The Crazy Hip Bloggers featured me as the BOTW (Blogger of The Week). Ta-dah!  Luckily, I answered her interview questions a couple of weeks ago, back when I was feeling a little less blaaaaaah. So head on over and check it out. After all, it’s my very first interview. I feel almost famous. Kindasorta….

Read the interview HERE!

Mindy and Taya are beautiful, healthy little girls who happen to have Down syndrome. Within the next two weeks, both girls will celebrate their 4th birthdays.

Mason celebrated his 4th birthday last August. We took him to Chuck E. Cheese, which is the surest sign that a parent loves their child. I wouldn’t suffer through three hours with the Big Gray Rat for some kid I just liked okay.

In case you don’t know, Mason can’t tolerate corn in any form or amount. Makes him terribly sick. So I made corn-free cupcakes to celebrate the occasion. Sounds easy enough, right? I mean, when’s the last time you saw a cupcake recipe that called for a cup of corn? But corn is sneaky and subversive. Down right evil. Corn is found in vanilla extract, baking powder, and powdered sugar. It sneaks into the eggs and milk of corn-fed livestock.

Are you wondering how Mason liked his cupcakes?

That is The Daddy using his mad persuasion skills on the Mason-cupcake situation. It is also Mason using his mad resistance skills on The Daddy. Like so much of a mother’s work, all of my effort on the birthday cupcakes went unappreciated. He really dug the candles though, and the whole “hey, everybody’s singing to me!” thing. He enjoyed tearing the wrapping paper off boxes and then throwing the boxes onto the floor. And mostly, he loved running around and being a kid spending his birthday at Chuck E. Cheese.

Birthdays are awesome.

Unless you’re a Russian orphan with Down syndrome.

Mindy won’t have cake or presents when she turns 4. Nobody will sing “Happy Birthday,” she won’t puff out her cheeks trying to blow out her candles until her big brother or sister finally helps her out.  Instead of cards, she’ll get transfer papers. And instead of a trip to the pizza parlor, Mindy will take a one-way trip to a Russian mental intitution, where she will live out the rest of her short life in squalor, surrounded by the rest of the people that her society wants to forget even exist.

The morning after his 4th birthday, Mason woke up to the sound of his big sister beckoning him to come play with his new toys. Shortly after her 4th birthday, Taya will wake up to the shrieks of her desperate fellow inmates, groaning in misery. Mason got hugs and cuddles and wide-eyed comments of “My, you look older today Big Boy!” Taya will spend her entire day in a metal crib, without so much as a smile cast in her direction.

Don’t take my word for it….

Click here to watch the Today Show video of what life is like in one of these institutions. 

As I type this, Mindy has 5 days left. Taya has 11. Mere days until their lives go from pitiful to horrific. I pray that their forever families find them before it’s too late. And I pray that they won’t let finances stand in their way. Nearly all of the adoptive families I’ve met through Reece’s Rainbow had to raise the funds for their adoptions. Very few of us have the extra money sitting around.

Please, if your heart breaks for these precious children, if you cry for them, if you wish you could do something…

…do it.

Find out more about Mindy and the other angels of Reece’s Rainbow at the Reece’s Rainbow website And by all means—if you want more info, LEAVE A COMMENT! I read each and every comment, and I can hook you up!

I’m taking a break from my usual snarky, goofy self (or at least, that is my fervent intention as I begin typing). I know I’ve made a committment to not get to serious on this blog, and to provide nothing more than an opportunity for you to laugh at someone besides yourself for a few minutes of your day.

I hope you’ll forgive me for waxing more serious today. And I hope you’ll keep reading, despite the fact that I’m typing with a wicked head cold, so my thoughts aren’t as organized as usual (I can’t believe I just said “as organized as usual” in reference to myself). But I made the mistake of taking a couple of Sudafed–the REAL ones that they keep behind the pharmacy counter, the ones that they make you show ID and sign a sworn statement that you don’t run a meth lab (because of course the guys out there running meth labs would totally go, “oh, wait–I can’t sign this because, you see, I actually AM a meth dealer. Darn.”) but which actually work, unlike the decongestants that they stock on the shelves which now contain a substitute ingredient which has shown to be completely ineffective in lab tests.

Was I going somewhere when I started this rant?

 ….Sudafed—got it. I took 2 Sudafed last night before bed, even though I know Sudafed makes me jittery and keeps me up all night. At the time, I was thinking that I’d rather be awake and able to breath than trying to sleep with a stuffy nose. About 3am, I was seriously questioning that logic. But anyway, it means that my thoughts are decidedly more rambling today, and that I don’t have the brainpower or the energy to rectify the situation before I hit the “publish” button and go take a nap. You love me anyway, right?  Hang on, here we go….

My family is in the process of adopting a little Russian girl with Down syndrome. If you aren’t familiar with our journey so far and you’re interested in the details, I have a tab at the top of this page that will take you to our Adoption Journey.

We are embarking on this journey with the wonderful community over at Reece’s Rainbow , a group of people who truly have hearts for those I believe Jesus was speaking about when He charged us to care for the least of these–the orphans. Specifically, Reece’s Rainbow advocates for orphans around the world with Down syndrome, but they also help find families for children with other special needs.

Throughout most of the world, children with Down syndrome are routinely abandoned at birth, consigned to life in an orphanage. In Russia and other Eastern European countries with few resources, these children face an ominous reality as they approach their 4th birthday. It is at that point that they are transferred to the mental institution.

I’m going to wait a moment and let that sink in.

Mental institution. In a former soviet block country. Think about that for a minute. Do you even want to imagine what a Russian asylum is like? Now, put yourselves in the shoes of a 4 year old with Down syndrome, ripped from the only poor semblance of home they’ve ever known and thrown into an environment of sheer bedlam. Most of these children die within a year—ONE YEAR—from neglect. I assure you, whatever horrors are running through your mind right now, you haven’t even cracked the shell.

Reece’s Rainbow does a PHENOMENAL job of getting the word out and helping families on their adoption journeys so that these precious children can be saved from such a tragic fate. But there are so many orphans. So many…. And when the message goes out that another child has been transferred to the institution, there is much grieving.

Right now, a sweet little boy named Dennis is facing the institution in a matter of weeks. By the time our children are slipping Valentine’s Day cards into their classmates’ boxes, little Dennis could be lost. Forever. He’s so little. He’s so helpless.

Ohmygosh—look at those little ears! Couldn’t you just nibble on them? And that beautiful little face—I think I’d spend all my time kissing him. The funny blue spots on his tummy are iodine—like the “monkey’s blood” they used to put on us when we had owies as children. And the fact that he’s hiking his leg up at a 90 degree angle? That’s the hypotonia I told you about in “Life With Mason.”  It means he’ll be an awesome dancer and climber.

Dennis needs someone who already has a completed international homestudy. He needs a miracle. He has over $3,000 available in his grant fund toward his adoption. Please pray with me that God will bring forward a family for Dennis.

There are so many more children waiting for forever families. Children who, like Dennis, will face institutionalization soon if someone doesn’t save them.

God moved my family from “we can’t afford adoption” to “we’re adopting!” in less than 8 hours. We don’t have the money—but what I’ve learned is that most adoptive families don’t. They pursue fundraising opportunities and grants to raise it. And that’s what we’re doing.

Truthfully, our biggest obstacle—way bigger than finances—was the day-to-day commitment of bringing home another child. Face it, you ain’t reading the “Competence Diaries,” or the  ”I Have it Totally Together Diaries.” When I tell you that I am a basket case, what I mean by that is that by the end of any given day, I am wishing for a basket big enough to either hide in, or else big enough to fit all the children in so they’ll be safe while I go sing Kumbaya in my closet. I’m stretched thin. I’m tired. I’d like a little more free time, a little less laundry.

And it gets back to finances, too. Not the up-front costs of adoption, but the costs of the proverbial extra mouth to feed. God has provided and He covers all of our needs, but we don’t end up with much left over at the end of the month. I don’t get manicures or have a gym membership. The Hubby’s been driving the same vehicle for 13 years, and frankly it’s been putting in its bid for retirement for about the last 4.

But for us, it boiled down to this: am I going to say that my comfort is worth protecting at the cost of a child’s life? Am I going to make the conscious decision that I’m not willing to scrimp a little more, to cut back here and there, to maybe give up satellite tv and bottled water, in order to save a child’s life? Can I look at those helpless little faces and say, “Sorry, kid, but I’m really attached to my Starbucks in the morning.”

A friend of mine through Reece’s Rainbow–who has adopted 5 children herself—said it something like this: your comforts don’t seem so comfortable when you think of what’s at stake. And she’s right. I can’t cling so tightly to my “lifestyle” when these children are fighting for life.  I live in the richest country on earth. I have more than 90% of the world’s population. And while maybe I can’t change the world, I can change the world for one child. Or two. Or….

Please visit the Reece’s Rainbow website and look at the beautiful faces of the children who need you. Not everyone is called to adopt. But there are many ways you can help. You can donate. You can spread the word. You can sign up to be a prayer warrior for a child. You can just scroll down the list of sweet children and pray as you go.

Thanks, friends. We now return you to your regularly scheduled chaos….

“Is that the guy that plays Hank in your book?”

We were watching LOST together—my 10 year-old moppy-headed boy and me. It was last season, when the Oceanic 6 returned to the island (I can’t keep seasons straight–5? 4? Heck, I can’t even tell you how old I am without subtracting 2 years from The Hubby’s age. Unless it’s that beautiful season between May 31 and July 11, when I get to be THREE years younger for the 41 most glorious days outside of Christmas).

Anyway, we were watching LOST, and it was a scene with Frank and…well, I’m not going to pretend I remember what scene it was. It’s immaterial anyway. The point of this is that Ethan was talking about Frank, played by Jeff Fahey.

image of Jeff Fahey in LOST, "Confirmed Dead" from Wikia entertainment

Frank’s character was introduced a couple of seasons ago (3? 4?),. Now, if you’ve read the little blurb about my life (marriage, yada yada, Down syndrome, yada yada, llama), you’re no doubt wondering how I find time to watch tv. All I can say is I hope Mr. TiVo made himself a nice fortune, and is enjoying it on some island somewhere with one of those private striped cabana thingies and a valet to bring him fruity drinks whenever he wants.

Without TiVo, I’d never get to watch anything. Even with TiVo, it’s dicey. Is Biggest Loser over already? I’ve been TiVoing the whole season, haven’t watched a single episode. Finally gave up on Heroes, Survivor, The Amazing Race (sniff), pretty much everything except LOST.

To be completely honest (what, you think I’d lie?), I’m using the term “watch” in the loosest of all possible senses. See, me “watching” an episode of LOST goes something like this:

Me, talking to myself(oh, like you don’t), finger hovering over the fast-forward button : “Walking through the jungle…more jungle…talking!” At which point I switch from “fast forward” to “play,” then try to rewind back five seconds to catch the beginning of what they said, which is really frustrating because for some reason you can’t rewind back five seconds with TiVo, so I end up rewinding 15 seconds and watching the 10 seconds of walking through the jungle that I just fast forwarded through (okay, maybe Mr. TiVo doesn’t deserve the private cabana thingy until he fixes that little glitch). And usually I’m changing a diaper at the same time, because that’s the only time I can steal away to my room without being followed. 

So…diaper…jungle…TiVo…oh, yeah—Frank.

So, Frank’s character was introduced at the end of the season, during a moment when it just so happened that Mason had kicked the remote control off of the bed during a diaper change, so there was no fast-forwarding going on. I happened to glance up at the tv to see if the lack of dialogue was due to walking through the jungle (it wasn’t), and said to myself, “Hey, that’s Jeff Fahey.” And then Mason managed to get one foot free and haul it up over his head (there’s that ligament laxity again) and kick the box of wipies across the room, narrowly missing my face.

I had to save the rest of the episode for another day (that’s another thing about me “watching” a show: it takes a good 6 days for me to watch an entire 1-hour program). That night, I had a dream about…well, it’s kind of vague now, but there was this chick, and there was this shady secret agent type guy–who happened to be Jeff Fahey. You know that novel I’m writing (the one that’s THIS CLOSE to being finished, only I haven’t had time to work on it since starting the whole adoption thing? And yes, I realize I haven’t blogged about the adoption thing. Geez, like I need more pressure….)? Well, that’s kind of how it all started, with a 90 second dream.

And to answer Ethan’s question, yes. That’s the guy. And then it hit me that Ethan had never seen The Lawnmower Man. Yeah, I realize I’m kinda random. I’m assuming that fact didn’t totally blindside you. But it wasn’t so random at the time, because the kids had just found this old video that we bought back in the early 90s called “The Mind’s Eye.” It was a compilation of early (waaaay early) computer animation. Back in the day it was cutting edge. And it was about that same time that The Lawnmower Man came out. So see, everything ties together all nice and neat.

“What’s Lawnmower Man?”

So I explained to Ethan that Lawnmower Man was about virtual reality, and that it was one of the first movies to use computer animation. Not to mention the fact that the main character (played by Jeff Fahey) is a man who happens to be intellectually disabled.

Ethan was intrigued at the prospect of seeing what passed for cutting edge back in my day, and having a brother with Down syndrome, he’s always up for the topic of intellectual disability. So I TiVo’d it (on one of the channels that edits out language and ‘nudery’). Once I was able to ignore Ethan’s ridicule (“THIS used to be high-tech?”), I realized that having a child with a cognitive disability gave me a different perspective on the movie this time around.

When I was in 5th grade, I read “Flowers for Algernon.” Amazing book, even as an 10 year-old.

The “Algernon” of the title is a lab mouse who experiences a quantum leap in cognition following a breakthrough surgery. Subsequently, the title character–an intellectually disabled man named Charlie– undergoes this same surgery. Not only does it ”cure” his condition, but he becomes a genius. But Charlie isn’t prepared for his sudden change in IQ, and his story doesn’t end well.

Lawnmower Man follows a similar theme, only it’s a chemical cocktail developed by the military instead of surgery that ‘cures’ main character Jobe, plus it’s got some virtual reality, a chimpanzee instead of a mouse, and an abusive Hugo-esque (Hunchback of Notre Dame ring any bells?) priest who views Jobe’s disability as a curse thrown into the mix.

As the mother of an intellectually disabled child, I appreciated Fahey’s sensitive portrayal of a young man who takes great pride in his work, who loves his friends dearly, and who is painfully aware of the taunting of the town bully. His story ends better than Charlie’s, but only because you can pretty much break all the rules when you’re talking about virtual reality. And only if by “better,” you mean he gets to pretty much kill everyone who ever hurt him.

Both works show man’s desire to tinker with God’s creation, to “cure” what we see as imperfection. Charlie was perfectly happy as a janitor. Jobe was happy mowing lawns. Neither of their “cures” made them better people.

I read today that researchers think they have a “cure” for the cognitive delays associated with Down syndrome. The treatment has evidently shown promise in mice, and they’re hoping it will yield similar results in human subjects someday. Think of it: a “cure” for cognitive disability. A breakthrough treatment, and my Mason could be just as smart as any other kid on the block. Normal. Ordinary. And in the process, just maybe it would “cure” him of his unquenchable joy, his resilience, his steadfast persistence. Maybe when things didn’t go his way, instead of cocking his head to the side and flashing his trademark smile maybe he’d stomp his feet and pout and give up.

At what cost, this “cure?” How do you extricate the “self” from cognition? How do you pull one thread from the rug without compromising the pattern? And what if you can’t? What part of the “self” do you kill in this quest for perfection?

I won’t vilify the parents who jump at the chance to increase their children’s IQs. I hope it works out better for their children than for Charlie and Jobe, I really do.

But I think I’ll pass. Last thing I need is an angry kid with a lawnmower….