Dew Drop Learns About War

{And Mama Planetista raises a little bit of hell about it}

Babba came home a few weeks ago with a worried expression upon his face.

He pulled me into the house and mouthed these words:

Dew Drop learned what war is today.

What? How? Why?

How the hell did she learn about war at the grocery store or the playground?

My outrage at what happened caused me to pen this letter and send it along to a community leader, who then put it in the hands of a town council person, who in turn went to the local armory and chewed out a drill sergeant on my behalf :

Dear Important Community Person:

So Babba and Dew Drop are at the playground. Sunday morning. Just got groceries.They were really excited about the new playground equipment there.

The next they know the Amy Reserves are staging a war game right next to the playground. There are Army guys with what looked like scarves on their heads- covering their faces- making high pitched screams. They looked like they were playing the part of Arab insurgents or something. Then you had the Drill Sargeant guy dropping F bombs all over the place like "Get on the fucking ground and give me 50!!" They were acting like they were prisoners, like Abu Gharaib. It seemed like they were re-enacting something like that.

I'm sure it made sense for the Army guys to be practicing. Whatever.

But what is so strange is that it's positioned RIGHT NEXT to the playground. They need to either move the playground or move the army games. These wars aren't ever going to end, and there will always be war guys practicing (why are they in town? why not a big field somewhere?)

So immediately Dew Drop is transfixed by what's going on. And Babba's trying to get her to suddenly leave, even though he'd just finished lovingly drying off the entire playground of rainwater with a bath towel he brought from home so that she could play without getting soaked. She wanted to know the game they were playing. She started asking a lot of really intense questions- and she didn't want to leave.

Obviously, one day she's going to understand war. But really is this the time to have to tell her? A playground is no place to be next to a real war game. It was scary and upsetting.

They could build a barrier that would block their war games from the kids at the playground. Thick bamboo might be a nice option- then they could pretend they were in Vietnam!

Anyways, it just seems like something that could be easily remedied.

Imagine if instead of war games if it were a movie set shooting porn? Those people would be in prison in a second and forever called sex criminals for making their movies within sight of little kids. It's like that.

Anyway, maybe the town could think of a creative solution to this.

Patriotically yours,

The Lost Planetista

The Lotus Eaters

Definition of 'Lotus Eater' according to Merriem-Webster:

1. Any of a people in Homer's Odyssey subsisting on the lotus and living in the dreamy indolence it induces.

2. an indolent person

Synonyms: couch potato, dead beat, do-nothing, drone, idler, layabout, loafer, slouch, slug, slugabed, sluggard.

Antonyms: doer, go-ahead, go-getter, hummer, hustler, rustler, self-starter.

How This Pertains To Us:

In summer we gasp at the lotus flower.

In spring we weed our lotus pond.

We remember hearing about eating lotus roots.

We learn how to prepare the roots (it's easy).

We wonder how we never tried this before (the stir fry is delicious)

We congratulate ourselves at our self-sufficiency

and flies in the face of the definition of

lotus eater.

Living Art and Reading the Signs

Dew Drop at the Nature Fix-O-Matic machine. Babba and I created this dispenser for kids who suffer from Nature Deficit Disorder.

Being an only child, living in our wacky world that we create, Dew Drop has a lot of time to explore her own imagination. She plays for hours and hours all throughout the garden.

Babba came up with this sculpture last week. I dig the praying hands on top.

I made this sign last week during a particularly hard day of waiting for something to happen with the adoption. I need to remember to make art during those times- it always helps lift my mood. Or maybe it's the spray paint fumes.

This is one of my favorite paintings of Babba's. I've always loved it but I think it looks especially wonderful hanging outside on the corrugated metal wall.

...but is it a delusion if the sign decomposes?

Can you read this? I thought so. Dew Drop is learning to write!

Let Go. I think this is a really good reminder. I know I need it daily.

Adoption Freaky Scale For Support System Folks

Found this little gem of a freaky Scale in my inbox from a friend who Gets It. It can't be easy being an innocent bystander to an adoption. We've been waiting for 18 months (you know that already but it's cathartic to write it out, and writing it out again further proves my attempts to be understood.)

But as an innocent bystander? It must be weird to ask the right questions. Or say the right things. I know I'm touchy as hell. I'd fear me too.

But so often with adoption no one asks about how it's going.

Should they bring it up?

Is it too touchy?

People only ask about the time line, "When is it going to happen? When will you know more? What happens next?!"

The answer is that we don't know shit about shit.

People very rarely want to connect on a deeper level about how it is to wait.

They think: maybe I should just play it safe and talk about myself some more? And so they do.

Most people have no idea what's even going on with our adoption (for the record: nothing, and that's the problem).

So people just avoid the subject. And that sucks in its own way. Because there's no way that we can avoid it.

But it's not like we really want to talk about it a lot either. Talking about it sucks too.

See? It's a pickle.

When I asked my friend exactly what part of the Adoption Freaky Scale For Support System folks she's on she said : I would say I am on hat downward slide to "Get back at the task at hand and support my friends, gosh darn it!" I take that as she's been feeling my stress lately. Being The Lost Planetista, naturally I feel guilty for my friends sponging on my full on craziness as of late. But still? It's really nice to feel understood. And not like we're on this journey all alone. And loved. Just that.

Adoption Freaky Scale

Time to check in with The Adoption Freaky Scale.

I have purposefully not mentioned (lately) that we're still waiting

because it just

sucks

so

much.

I can't explain the kind of freaky that goes on when you're waiting to adopt a child.

Any analogy or comparison I attempt would be shallow and not even skim the surface.

What I do know is that we've reserved a place in our hearts and our lives for another kid around here.

We'd imagined this vacancy would have been filled by now but it isn't.

Maybe it was driving 6 hours in the car through a state that's been ravaged by mountain top removal coal mining in order to renew our fingerprints for our future child's immigration visa that got us worked up.

Or maybe it was feeling stuck in time- that the world is moving on and we're still stuck here waiting-

like some kind of vortex.

Either way this week just sucked.

We found ourselves in all sorts of frenzies about what to do in life and how to do it, and when we followed those frenzies back to their sources we realized they were adoption related.

I guess that puts us in the "Check Your Head" realm at last.

So we do what any pseudo-rational wanna-be-farmers do when they're feeling

crazy....

we move brush.

We move brush manically.

Because that's all there is to do

and it needs done.

Truckload after truckload.

Sometimes the brush is so rotten and wet it weights 3 times the amount you think it should

when you pick it up.

Other times, a tree that looks like it should weigh 100 pounds

is as light as a feather-

we laugh at those stumps and call them Hollywood props

nothing but styrofoam.

I haven't mentioned the greenbriar, the honeysuckle or the wild rose

that all have thorns

and sometimes whip you in the face

until you bleed.

Sometimes, if the day's schedule permits, I'll see Babba out working in his pajama pants-

and on those mornings I'll help Dew Drop

into her new purple riding hood cape

so she can go out and supervise.

Then I know it's all going to work out-

that if we can all stay connected

to the earth

it will

see

us

through

this.

Motherducker

I don't know what to blame it on.

Maybe the never ending adoption process that has me at my wit's end.

Or maybe it's a pathological mothering instinct that makes me want to nest even more than I already do.

Or maybe it was saying goodbye to the goats.

Or maybe it was reading

this

book

again

and

again

and

again,

while I was vulnerable

and in a foreign country that happens to have a lot of ducks

(once you start noticing them),

but either way I'm soon to be a certified

Motherducker

come mid May

around my birthday

when 10 of these

little

duckers

arrive

via

snail

mail

at

my

local

post office.

It's The Journey

"Mama, why you taking pictures of cows again?"

I'll never, in a million years, understand why Americans don't paint their homes beautiful colors.

One of the last places we stayed- a little cabin slung over the hillside, looking out into the ocean with a windowsill full of fruit.

You couldn't honestly call most of the towns we went through 'One Horse Towns' because most towns had many more horses than that.

Coming soon to a Lost Planet near you: this sign replicated.

Island living is hard to beat.

Dew Drop's first boat ride inspired dramatic kisses.

Dew Drop is turning into a really great traveler. Seriously.

All along the way we found beauty and fun.

Lunch break.

Pica Pollo anyone? Me! Me! Me!

Speaking of pollo.

Little pink houses.

I don't want a pickle...I just want a motorcycle (in the bucket of a tractor going down the road)

Scenes through the windshield.

coconuts and sky.

Skinny dogs of the world unite!

Nice graffiti. If it weren't for Michael Jackson you'd probably see this sign replicated at The Lost Planet, too.

Home again.

Home again.

Tra-la-la.