Quote for the day

In place of my own thoughts, which are mainly occupied with corporate finance and the weighted average cost of capital (occupational hazard for an MBA)...

"I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that he didn't trust me so much." - Mother Teresa.

Fall scrapbook

Fall seems to be the time of year for us to reunite with our college gang, better known as the LSF-ers. We've been fortunate to spend lots of time with them lately, whether it was watching Mizzou football at our house, seeing "The Dark Knight" in theaters (again), getting together for the presidential debate (we are almost evenly split on politics - I think our collective votes will all cancel each other out), or just playing endless rounds of cards. Here's are some photo highlights from the last month-or-so:


Watching the first presidential debate at Julie's house.


Sarah and Ethan. Don't be fooled by the blue blanky; this kid is sure to vote Republican in 18 years.


I don't always agree with PC's politics, but I have to admit his cookie decorating skills are SWEET.


My debate bingo card. I missed a few squares 'cuz I was knitting the whole time.


Random dog photo from beginning-of-October-ish. We are BFFs.


We hosted a Court Whist night last weekend, and Mr. Joe took the crown! What a good sport.

Happy blog birthday to me!

Thank-you to my sister-in-law Becky, who reminded me that today 10 Cents a Word is 1 year old. It is officially graduating from bottle to sippy cup!

Since the blog is not old enough to drink, I will celebrate with an ice cold Coke Zero and some unbaked cookie dough. Also, I will break a rule of blog etiquette and ask for your comments. (I don't really know if there is such a thing as blog etiquette, but I think begging people to respond to your writing is a little pathetic. Which is why this is a one-time birthday wish.) So, c'mon people! Show me some birthday love! I'll give you an easy multiple choice to start the conversation:

The first time you read 10 Cents a Word, you thought:
a) Genius!
b) This is mildly entertaining.
c) I hope this means Lynde will call me less now.
d) This is not what I was expecting when I Googled "Babes in Haiti."

Real life, Real news

One of the things that made me a good reporter is that I take it personally when people withhold information from me. The worst possible taunt I can imagine is: "I know something you don't know." What?! TELL ME!

So you can imagine what a constant toothache the adoption process feels like to me. We know where we are in the process, but we have no info about where we are going or how long it will take. Nothing. Nada. Zero. Zilch. I know it is hard to imagine, but all of the guesses I could make would be based on stuff I read on other people's blogs. As a parent, I am no better informed about the future of my child than the guy behind me in line at Starbucks would be if he had a few spare hours and a Web connection. You can see how easy it would be to become obsessed. I have tried to set up certain limitations for myself, including the following:

• No Web site about adoption may be viewed more than once an hour.
• Always speak positively about the Haitian government, our lawyer, the orphanage and anyone else involved in the adoption.
• When in boring meetings or classes, avoid doodling the name "Richecardine Langdon" more than twice on one sheet of paper.
• Don't blame other people who have kids for the fact that I am not a parent yet.
  
• Remember that every day is one step closer to THE day, even if I don't know when that day is.

Obviously, there is a lot of fear to be had during this very uncertain process, and with fear comes anger (to quote Yoda). I am not one to empty my emotional trash can on the World Wide Web, but I found another adoptive mom today who perfectly describes the anger of adoption on her blog here. It ain't pretty, folks, but it's real.

Shout out to Canada

Today is Canadian Thanksgiving. I have to chuckle when I think about how, almost one year ago, Canadian Thanksgiving saved our butts. You might recall how our adoption dossier translators refused to complete our file before Thanksgiving, but the French-speaking Canadians bailed us out. All because they had already celebrated Thanksgiving on the second Monday in October.

Happy Thanksgiving, Canada!

Nesting

Our slow-but-steady process of preparing Vivine's room continues, now in living color! You might recall that two months ago we scraped the 90210-era wallpaper off the walls of our guest bedroom.


Messy!

We quickly realized why the past owners of our house decided to put up wallpaper in the first place. The walls had more pock marks than a pimply teenager! Additional scraping ensued, this time to add joint filler and make the walls nice and smooth.


Smooth as a baby's butt!

The fact that we spent two months prepping the walls for paint turned out to be a good thing. It took PC and I that long to agree on paint colors. At first I wanted white, and he wanted pink. Then I wanted pink, and he wanted white. Yesterday we landed on a compromise: one red wall and the rest pink. (Every good compromise includes something nobody wanted in the first place.) Specifically, our chosen shades are Berrylicious and Sweet Pink. Yum!


Girly room in progress

Tonight we put one coat on the red wall and trimmed out on the pink walls. As usual, we are pacing ourselves. I have to say, I am so very glad I let PC talk me into pink walls. Anyone who attended my wedding knows that I love, and I mean LURVE, pink. Slathering that delicious pink on the walls tonight was like icing a big cake o'love for my little girl. It reminded me of the Strawberry Shortcake dollhouse I had when I was Vivine's age. The walls were pink, and the roof and shutters were red. What more could a girl ask for?

Tagged

Courtesy of Jaime

4 things I did today:
1. Got up early
2. Worked
3. Took a little nap
4. Surfed the web
Wow, I am boring.

4 things on my to-do list:
1. Finish Bible study lesson
2. Finish Finance homework
3. File old bills
4. Eat dinner (You know I always like to have one easy thing on my list.)

4 of my guiltiest pleasures:
1. Popping zits (C'mon, who doesn't love that?)
2. Using "payroll deduction" to buy cute stuff from the hospital gift shop. If it comes right out of your paycheck, it feels free!
3. Turning on every light in the house. I like it bright, people!
4. Watching "Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List."

4 random facts about me:
1. I have a pacemaker.
2. I was a virgin when I got married.
3. I love St. Louis, but I really miss my family in Texas. That's why I call them so much.
4. I was a hideous dork in high school. As an adult, I am actually quite popular.

Jaime, what do I do next?

Updated: I tag Adam, Tom and Sarah. Sarah, I know you don't have a blog, but it's high time you started one!

An early morning blog

I'm blogging at 6:22 a.m. Wow. Those of you who have had to pleasure of spending the night with me (in the platonic sense, obviously) know that mornings are not my best time. Never have been. I growl, snort, whine and stare with angry eyes at any living creature that crosses my path for the first hour I am out of bed. I hit the snooze button for an hour on average. Until this week.

For many reasons, I decided it was time to be a grown-up about this morning thing. For one thing, mornings are my only opportunity to truly have quiet time to myself, with both husband and dog resting soundly. Also, I have had too many close calls (and a few embarrassing moments) with accidentally sleeping in and getting to work late. Finally, I wanted to see whether I could start the day feeling happy for once, instead of pissed at the world for sending the sun to interrupt my precious sleep.

I made just a few small changes: I set my alarm for the actual time I need to get up, not one hour earlier; I tuned the alarm to my favorite radio station instead of that cursed horn sound; I set the coffee maker to go off automatically; and I started to say a little prayer before I fall asleep that God would help me get up in a good mood. So far, it's working! OK, it's only Day Four of this new regimen, but the fact that it worked at all is a miracle. I lived in grouchville for 27 years!

Gotta run to work! Don't want to be late!