Posting

. . . has been a little light, and will continue to be through this coming Wednesday. Attila the Hub and I are working on getting the house ready for what the social worker calls the "home vist," and we are calling "the inspection." Interesting little facts about this phase in the adoption process:

1) We have to pull credit reports on both of us, and I'll have to explain that I've used my own checking account (and credit cards) as a sort of wading pool, playing around because I know that whatever I do won't affect the family finances (until it finally did, drastically increasing the challenges when we refinanced the house—and I therefore had to stop acting liike a 14-year-old; this is always such a painful moment for the middle-aged:

Discussion about twenty years ago with my dad—

Attila Girl: Your parents were full of caveats when you borrowed their car.

Attila Dad: They treat me like I'm 16 years old.

AG: Why?

AD: Because I acted that way till I was in my mid-forties.

AG: When did you stop?

AD: A couple of weeks ago.)

2) I have clutter all over my house, which simply won't do because it makes the home less inviting, and creates all kinds of tripping hazards. Therefore I'm getting rid of what I can, and boxing up the rest to hide in storage. This process would be less tramautic if it didn't involve all kinds of self-flagellation: "how did I let these stacks of books pile up this high? And why do I even have these? I haven't even read half of them!" And so on: "Bad Attila Girl. Bad. Bad!" These questions, naturally, answer themselves: I let the piles get high because I knew someone was going to mentally abuse me when I started tackling them. And I need to stop doing this, because I certainly have no intention of treating my child the way I treat myself. Or the way I have treated myself historically, let's say.

I've been told that clutter stems from a mild form of ADD, or ADHD. I tend to think that in my case it's learned behavior, or possibly a genetic quirk: my mother doesn't acquire things so much as marry them—and her father was the same way.

But I must stop accumulating junk and dodging my bill deadlines. Maybe I'll start overeating, like the rest of my countrymen. Or I'll become a moonbat, and construct elaborate arguments as to why all my problems stem from Chimpy McHalliburton. But compulsively, substituting the new behavior for the old. I'll start a blog, and obsessively write entries when I should be sleeping. Oh, wait . . .

3) The standards for "baby-proofing" these days are so high that my husband is once again joking about how he shouldn't have survived his childhood, what with all those exposed electical outlets without little plastic plugs in them. We now have a "configure gate" (which is a little baby fence) around the upstairs fireplace, gates on our balconies, a gate at the top of the stair, and a baby fence that blocks off access from the bottom of the stair. And netting around the railing that surrounds the stairwell, as well as netting on the outside railings.

It does strike me as rather insane. But in our particular case, it's mandated. So there's no philosophical discussion to be had on whether all the baby-proofing in our culture is somehow an abdication of parental responsibility, a way to avoid supervising the child's play, and teaching him/her to stay away from dangerous things. In our case we have to do it to the nines, so our social worker will stay happy. (When the social worker is happy, everyone is happy.)

And now I'm off to sleep. Have a great day, and don't trip over any electrical cords—or strangle yourself on them. Don't try to swallow any buttons or coins. Okay?