jaysaint Getting it all down on paper…

Every month when China releases referrals I send an email to some friends and family with an update. I’ve decided to start putting the update in my LJ as well. I may be glad for the record some day, and some of my Friends may enjoy the blog links. (The blogs I’m linking to have been submitted by their owners for public posting on a Chinese adoption web site, so I’m not worried about linking to them here. But I will keep these entries “Friends only” just to add a layer of privacy for them.)

China has just delivered referrals through 11/21/05. So, seven more days down. Our log in date is 2/25/07. The process remains painfully slow. Right now our likely referral time will be near the end of 2010. But the truth is that we’re too far out for anything to be much more than a guess.

We did have a bumper crop of great referral blogs this month. Here are a few of my favorites:

Waiting for Landree
Winding Vines
And Shayla Makes Three
Donna and Jeff
Waiting for Junie

Have I mentioned that I’m pregnant? 31 weeks today. I’m starting to see the end of the road. I’m not freaking-out ready yet, but I am ready. I know having him in is easier than having him out, but a new set of challenges is in order. One that involves fewer ways in which my body feels alien to me.

I’ve always been a hot-weather (although not necessarily sunshine) kind of girl. I hate to be cold. Or, should I say, hated? I can only imagine that in an abstract way right now. I seem to be carrying a little furnace around with me. Day after day it’s been in the 90s here, with no end in sight. Our one little window unit and our ceiling fan are absolutely no match for it. I’ve never greeted a 10-day weather forecast with something like despair until now.

Combine this with near-daily sudden nosebleeds and my inability to move with anything like grace or ease and I’m ready for some midnight feedings if it means I can start reclaiming my body. I already can’t sleep, so it’s not like I’ll miss that.

I know it’s annoying to post so infrequently and then to show up with an entry full of complaints.

We’re doing well-ish on getting the apartment ready. The paint strippers are finally gone back to whatever alternate universe from whence they came. They clearly measure time in a different way there, but they can really strip wood. There’s still plenty of gear we need, but I figure grandpa Cosmo slept in a shoebox when he was born so our kid is already ahead. The shoe box thing is true. He was a 4-pounder born almost 100 years ago. He was baptized the day he was born, as no one expected him to make it to the traditional Catholic ceremony a few weeks later. He wound up being the only one of my grandparents to make it past his early 60s. He was also tall and handsome, so we’re hoping to get a big scoop out of his particular gene pool.

Damon and I looked at each other just a few day ago and said, “Um, we’re having a baby soon. We’re not going to be at our leisure for many, many years.” Years. So now the furious scramble to find somewhere, anywhere, to get away next weekend has begun in earnest.

I feel like our desires are so small. They all seem to boil down to needing a body of water for swimming. I don’t care if it’s a pool, a lake, or the ocean.

But…

— We can’t afford to spend much money
— We don’t have a car
— We’re not going to fly
— It’s high season on the Jersey Shore and likewise at other nearby beach spots

I’ve never done a NY weekend getaway. I have no frame of reference. Anyone have any thoughts?

But a very cute book proof just landed on my desk. It’s called “Boho Baby Knits.” I know I have some knitter friends. Anyone want it?

My Harry Potter book showed up just about two hours ago. It’s a big day for the mail carrier, as they get such happy receptions everywhere they go. Ours thought he’d have some fun and rang the bell for every Potter buyer at the same time. So we all came skipping into the vestibule and had a 30-second party.

I’m a fast reader, so I’m doing my best to stretch out the experience. I’m sure that I’ll have it finished some time tonight, but I’m fiddling around in between chapters. As is probably obvious by this post-lite.

What’s the statue of limitations on the Potter blackout? A week? How long before I can say something here without being a bad guy? I’m not really burning to write a review, more just curious.