If I told you 'bout my life, I'd have to kill you...

I've been possibly the worst blogger in the history of the sport this summer — which, incidentally, beat all speed records for how fast it flew by.
Time does fly when you're being thwarted.
Beaux and I have been creating two separate realities this summer for the girls. By night, we do things like hang out until 2 a.m. watching the meteor shower out by the lake whenever we get the chance and can muster the energy. By day, we work long hours and drag home exhausted, him from disease and me from I don't know what.
On that recent jaunt, I made a mental note that, hopefully, that moment would stick in their mind as they recalled this last year. Memories of time together, instead of fears about what may be coming as Beaux gets sicker and his need for a liver transplant grows dire. We know it's coming, but we really are trying to do happier things. And although we don't talk about it, I suspect we're trying to fix memories in those young minds.
The other daytime activity has been the most aggravating of my life. Here it is, in a much-condensed form:
In May, our health insurance at work changed. The transplant will be covered. Anti-rejection meds will not. Those are a lifelong necessity and, depending on how much rejection you're experiencing, run between $900 and $3,200 a month. We don't have it. So we've been trying to connect Beaux back in with the Indian tribe to which we've been told he was born. That meant opening his adoption, which took place in 1965 when he was almost 4 (he'd been in foster care with his adoptive parents for quite some time).
People said that would be hard, but aside from having to figure out which county in Arizona did the adoption, it was not bad, thanks in large part to a very nice judge. We used the Indian Child Welfare Act and in early July received information about his birth parents. She was reportedly young and unmarried, so he was "allegedly" the father.
The tribe ran a quick scan and said they had only one match, and the girl was too young. I pointed out we thought she was very young and they said we should get a birth certificate.
Laugh here. Ugh. It's been sealed for almost 50 years.
I provided the court order opening the adoption records, but it wasn't good enough for Arizona vital statistics folks. So I asked the judge for another order, which she granted. It, too, was not worded to the taste of vital statistics. But third time's the charm (Thank you, Judge for being so patient!) and we finally, last Friday, got the original birth certificate.

Which listed entirely different parents than those named in the adoption. . . I have no clue what we're to make of that. I literally alternate between wanting to cry and throw up. And I've talked to a couple of friends who are juvenile court judges here in Utah who say they've never heard of such a thing.
I am not sure how we resolve it. I've written to the poor, long-suffering judge who probably wishes she'd called in sick the day the original adoption petition came in. And I have fantastic scenarios playing in my head, like the 28-year-old of the birth certificate is actually his grandmother, who managed to get someone to fake it so she looks like the mother instead of her daughter, who is listed on the adoption paperwork....... But nothing really makes sense and I have no idea who to ask or what to do.
In the meantime, the tribe enrollment officer, who asked me to get the birth certificate, isn't returning my calls. And we don't qualify for help from the pharmaceutical companies.
That sound is me shrieking in frustration....


The photo, which shows how I feel, was taken by Alyson Kyle, age 10 at the time.

Have we met?

The Deseret News not long ago hired a fellow who for whatever reason appeared to dislike me. I decided, at first, it was a generational thing. He's one of the younger journalists, a fellow half my age.
Still, I'd watch him in animated conversation with practically everyone else, but though he sat right next to me and I tried countless times to strike up a conversation, he refused to take the bait.
"So, Ryan, what do you think of the healthcare reform debate?"
Not so much as a turn of his head.
It has really bothered me a lot, perhaps in part because I've always prided myself on being friendly. When we hire new people, I've always tried to get to know them and help them figure out the minutiae.
As we've gone to different shifts, though, it has become harder. For instance, we hired a fellow named Ethan on the police beat, but we've apparently always worked different shifts. I'd never so much as laid eyes on him.
About a month ago, I had one of those lightbulb moments that I seem to be in increasingly dire need of.
"Ethan?" I whispered tentatively to the oh-so-snobbish Ryan. "Is that you?"
His head whipped around and he smiled at me.
It helps immensely if you call someone by his actual name. I have no clue, now, where I came up with Ryan.
I'm thinking about this because my friend Ethan -- who got a tremendous kick out of my stupidity -- became my friend. (I think he thought I had an imaginary friend named Ryan and he was too courteous to make fun of me for it). And now he's moved on to graduate school and other adventures and I miss him.
This kind of thing seems to happen to me increasingly. And I'm left wondering if I'm confused or just too lazy to be a good caretaker of other people's details.
And I'm hoping it's the former, because the latter is a choice.
A bad one.

Forget abstinence...

Nancy Reagan made "Just say no" to drugs sound easy, but a whole generation of kids proved it was a lot harder than that.
In my fair state, they like to take the same approach to sex and the twin problems of sexually transmitted diseases and teen pregnancy. Abstinence education -- just say no -- is the core of the effort to deal with the raging hormones and poor judgment that are so much a part of adolescence.
And guess what? It doesn't seem to work as a deterrent for sexual activity any more than it did for experimenting with drugs and alcohol. Go figure.
I've given the issue a lot of thought. And by that, I mean A HELL OF A LOT OF THOUGHT because my two girls, now 11 and 12, mean everything to me and I want them to have their very best shot at an education and a childhood and .,.. well, you know what I'm saying. I don't want them to sabotage themselves.
I have listened to experts, read the books and yet, my moment of epiphany came in a most unexpected moment. I was sitting in the grade school library, helping ring up sales at a book fair, when it hit me.

Tell them about PTA. If you get pregnant, you will have children. Who will go to school. And you will be expected to participate in PTA. Tell them in detail. About the meetings. And the projects. And fundraisers.

If that doesn't scare them into behaving, they're already lost.

It really is peaceful

We've been dividing our time this summer in an almost bipolar fashion.
On one hand is the frenetic, almost-panicked efforts to get Beaux reconnected with his tribe so he can access the anti-rejection medications that a change in our insurance put out of reach.
I've learned to write legal petitions and whimper and take nothing at face value. For instance, two days ago we were told Beaux is not Yaqui, according to their records. I asked a simple question and now no one's so sure. We need more information to figure it out. Next up for us is a quest to get the original, before-the-adoption-created-a-rewrite version of his birth certificate.
We're also frantically trying to keep up at work, an extension of the adoption/tribe/medical stuff.
The really good stuff is happening on the side, when we move slowly, more wandering than anything. At least a couple of times a week, we go looking for a spectacular sunset or a photo or flowers or a piece of nature.
This past week, we discovered what may turn out to be my favorite place ever. And it is, oddly and ironically enough, a cemetery.
Mt. Olivet, up by the University of Utah campus, is one of the loveliest places I've ever been. And I'm not the only one that thinks so.
A small herd of deer have moved in. So have a few rabbits, some ducklings and I can't begin to count how many birds.
Twice this weekend, we wandered over there to meander in the shade and read the headstones and -- the main event -- take photos of fawns who are wandering around.
Their ears are so big they look like kangaroos and their legs are so skinny and wobbly they seem like stilts. And I'm enamored with all of them.
I don't believe I'm going to care where my corporeal remains wind up after I'm gone. I'm not going to need them or hang around them. But if I believed that my body was going to roam near where it was buried, I'd vote for Mount Olivet. My body's pretty happy there while I'm alive, too.

God's foot and other wonders

I've been watching the skies a lot lately because they've become really colorful and funky, no doubt because of the wild little thunderstorms we've had every day or so.
Two days ago, I saw a cloud formation I'm calling "God's Foot."
Unfortunately, I was on my way to pick up Beaux at the time and didn't have a camera with me, so I called Alyson and asked her to run outside and look south. "You'll see what looks like a gigantic foot coming out of the clouds," I told her. "Take a picture. No one's going to believe me without proof."
She called me back a few minutes later with sad news. By the time she grabbed the camera and ran outdoors, then searched the sky (trying to remember which way is south), "the toes have separated from the foot, Mama. Now it's mostly just a mess, though I can see how it might have been."
This morning, when Beaux and I left for work before 6 a.m., we were stunned by a rainbow perfectly framed down the end of our street, a ribbon of color that hung suspended in the sky, unattached to anything. It was just a piece of joy, hanging there. I ran into the house and grabbed the camera and did catch that one.
What a lovely way to start the day. And it stayed in front of us all the way to work.
Beaux's getting sicker now, but rather than dwell on that, we're finding joy in odd places. Like a piece of eye candy in the sky.
If you click the second picture, you'll find there's a bird flying across it, as well.

See you in a few days

Hello, blog. Sorry I've been neglecting you.
I've been hellaciously busy and all the lovely rain, which otherwise delights me, has kicked up my allergies to the point of insanity. Seriously. This morning I got a Z-pack for the resulting sinus infection.
Work has also been insanely busy. Between 12 hour days and my sinus issues, my house looks like kindling in search of a blow torch. If I don't get ahead of it soon, I can't even predict what will happen.
Today, I had a million things to do, but between dropping Beaux off at 6 a.m. and visiting the doc, I managed to finish some shopping so we'd have crucial items like mosquito repellent wipes and red licorice — not necessarily in that order. Got the girls new sneakers and held an impromptu deli picnic lunch in a small park, then we drove them to Pleasant Grove for an overnight space-simulation camp they've been hyped about since Feburary. Today's the day.
Found out Beaux needs an MRI to see what a "shadow" on his liver is. Could be good or bad -- good because it can move him up the transplant list although we haven't lined all our ducks up for the antirejection meds. We'll deal with that one when we get back.
Tomorrow's my last chance to get ahead of things and get ready, but I've got to go back to Pleasant Grove 45 minutes south and pick up the girls, then deliver my great-niece to Paradise, 90 minutes north. I can feel my day trickling through my fingers. We're leaving tomorrow right after Bx gets off work.
And, yet, I am just busy counting blessings. And ignoring you, dear blog. Sorry.

Did I mention?

We've been spectacularly busy the last couple of weeks, but are seriously loving the wet, April-like days in what's usually a water-hogging month in the garden. But I am way behind in updating anything and I don't actually have much to say. So on the theory that a picture's worth a thousand words, here are a few things we've seen in the last couple of weeks.
Sunday we went to the air show. Never go the sunny day. Much more fun to go when it might drizzle a little.


This is what our "drizzle" looked like at one point! Whoohoo!


This lovely fellow is Tiger, our super-sized creature. He has a super-high falsetto voice, a foot fetish and the softest fur I've encountered in 50 years of cat lovin'. But he's dumber than dirt. Seriously.




And it wouldn't be us, taking pictures, if we didn't see birds somewhere.
Have a great Monday and beyond!