After close to two years of writing these blogs, of being up to the third wrinkle above my left eye in adoption-related issues on a daily basis in efforts to keep myself and you informed, I find my patience wearing thin and my mood degenerating into a far less sunny disposition than would be healthy.

Okay, I've never been the Suzy Sunshine type, being far too irascible by nature to constantly look on the bright side ... the Monty Python version of the tune with that theme is more my speed ... and a tendency to over-think usually nips any overly-optimistic thought-blooms in the bud. Given that I've been like this since childhood, I'm comfortable enough with a constant level of discomfort, but lately things have been chafing more than usual.

If you don't mind, if you pop over to the news blog about now you can read about the chafing and get a description of the resulting rash.

So, I'm tired. I'm tired of explaining to people who have no investment in understanding that I do not condone, and find reprehensible, coercion of birth parents, buying children, adoption for flakey motives, greed, lies, unethical practices or any of the other dire and shady aspects that may occasionally enter the adoption picture.

I'm tired of endlessly advocating for something that seems such a total no-brainer -- families for children that need them -- and running headlong into so many who refuse to acknowledge that there is a need for such a thing.

I'm tired of seeing the guiltless guilt-plagued and beating themselves to bloody pulps, all the time encouraging everyone else to join in because it hurts so good.

I'm tired of the "that's enough about me, let's talk about me" attitude that will not open up to the possibility that it's really not about them, but about the millions of others who should have a chance, too, whether they liked theirs or not.

I have guests arriving next week, so I'll be taking some time off for relaxing with friends, long conversations that will have nothing to do with adoption, and a couple of days passed in quiet splendor on Bird Island ... if the squawking of a million terns can be considered quiet splendor.

Since a jump from this Sandra to that Sandra would be a shock to my delicate system, I decided to warm up with a little relaxation therapy ... an hour and a half massage ... so I called my friend Johanna and she set up her table on my veranda and proceeded to pummel pamper the tension right out of me.

I'm doing it again next week, and maybe every week from now on.

I'm hoping a regular dose of extreme pamper will make it possible to keep the blogs coming with me on-form and fighting for what I know in my heart is right ... the preservation of the option of adoption for the children of the world.