Digging around in the history of adoption, I'm finding some fascinating bits of what our world was like in days gone by.

Here, for example, is something that directly addresses the very issues we talk about here. This is a much like a form letter that was sent out to families who were applying to adopt an infant, but where the woman was over forty. It's from the 1940s, so those babies who were too young to have older moms are now in their 60s.

We... more

From thousands of miles apart, two women writing for two newspapers are responding with like minds to the barrage of negative reports on older women that have been making headlines recently. From London and Los Angeles, today's news on the topic is speaking with one loud, intelligent and amusing voice.

Up... more

Today we're doing our version of Thanksgiving here. Since there's no 4-day weekend, a Thursday feast is silly, so instead of an afternoon of gluttony and football, we'll have a Friday evening meal with friends. I have actually managed to find another American to break turkey with this year, though. Well, not exactly, as she's vegetarian so will be sticking to the mashed potatoes ... or visa/versa.

My point in all this is to say that since I have a load of cooking to do today, I don't... more

The blogger email program has been changed recently and for some reason it's not working well with my system.

If you've written, and I've not responded, it's likely that I've not seen your mail. If you've commented on a post from more that a day or so back, I may not have seen that either.

Also, I understand that some folks have tried to leave comments and been bounced out. This is now supposed to be fixed.

My apologies if I've missed something, and I hope the experts in charge of such things have this all sorted out soon.

In the meantime, I will keep writing and checking back over the comment sections in an attempt to keep the conversation going.

I... more

Continued from my previous post, where I was yammering on about my negative relationship with all things numerical.

There are, of course, aspects of modern life that require numbers, so I suffer from my affliction. Thankfully, Gay is happy enough keeping score for our Scrabble bouts, but I can't very well expect her to do all my reckoning.

Unfortunately, money eventually ends up being about numbers, so I'm really bad with it, too.

Don't... more

I'm a word person, not a numbers person. Anyone who knows me even slightly knows at least this about me. I can live with the thought of coming up with 86 blog posts per month in addition to the other sentences I'm expected to string together in the course of my work and regular life, and have even been known to spend time writing just for fun and my own amusement. (I talk for those same reasons most of the time.)

Some numbers I'm fine with, oddly enough. Phone numbers, for example, I remember for decades, and even after living outside... more

I have a deadline this week that has me working myself to a brain-dead frazzle, so instead of blather from me, you're getting photos from yesterday's Great Sunday Adventure with Mark, Sam and Cj. They hiked around our valley and had a picnic on the rock across from the house. We could just hear each other if we really shouted, and I watched them through binoculars for a while before dragging myself back to work ... which actually was the point of Mark getting the kids out of the house for an hour or so.

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And a few more photos from the event:

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We're full into post-birthday depression here this morning, so I've just had the talk with Sam ... the one that acknowledges how sad it is when something so special is past, instead of future or present ... Presents? And, with that he brightened considerably.

Christmas is on the horizon; then a host of other events, eventually leading to his next birthday. It's all about context. Or not.

Maybe it's actually all about diversion.

He had a GREAT time. ... more

Our boy is FOUR YEARS OLD today.

Sheesh. That sure went fast. Funny enough, before Sam came home ... a 13-week-old at the time ... Mark talked about how he looked forward to him being four. Something about the age sounded somehow magical to him, and conjured visions of fishing trips and man-to-man conversations ... or something like man-to-man.

I warned him at the time just how fast this would happen, but being that Sam was the first baby he'd paid much attention to,... more