I make a printable television schedule every Olympics so my family can keep track of the events we don’t want to miss.  For whatever reason, for the last few Olympics, news sites have been creating convoluted schedules that require a lot of clicking.  I need to see it all written out in a simple manner, so I create these printable television Olympic schedules for myself and put them online in case someone else wants it too.

After the last Summer Olympics, someone contacted me and told me that a link to my printable schedule was being passed around the blind community because the format works well with a screen reader.  Which is just so damn cool.  I love the idea of the world coming together over these games.  So a special hello to anyone who is hearing this from a screen reader.

I’ll be keeping the printable schedule up-to-date in case anything changes.  I had to make it as a page, or every time I added to it, it would reset the permalink and you wouldn’t be able to find it again.

You can access the schedule here.  If you want to help spread word, you can post this link on Twitter or Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/2014olympicschedule.

So, which event are you most excited to see in the 2014 Olympics?

The Daily Dot had a post this week about adoption via the Internet instead of an agency.  I clicked over to read it because the title mentioned crowdsourcing, and I assumed they were writing about adoption fundraisers a la Kickstarter on the Internet.  That’s in there too, but it’s more about expectant parents and potential adoptive parents connecting online.  The Daily Dot writes,

Thanks to the Internet, a growing number of prospective parents are connecting with birth mothers directly—outside of traditional adoption agencies. And online resources like social media are helping to push the complex web of relationships between birth parents, adoptive parents, and the kids themselves into something more open and accommodating than in generations past.

What I thought was interesting is that the Internet is the tool for removing the gatekeeper whose purpose is to keep adoption ethical (and yes, I’m aware that there are plenty of agency adoptions that don’t follow ethical guidelines) AND it’s the tool for making it easier for all members of the triad to remain connected.  One tool used in two completely different ways: to drive people out and to keep people close.

The Internet is the key in starting the relationship online and continuing it online.  It can help bring first parents back in contact with children they delivered.  It can help adoptive parents and birth parents stay in touch via social media on a day-by-day basis.  It can help all members of the triad find others in their group in order to gain support.  But this article is about the idea that amid all that connection, the Internet can also nudge out the middleman, the agency.

The reality is that most agencies remove themselves after adoption.  Just as the RE steps back soon after you get pregnant, most agencies step back soon after the adoption is finalized.  There commonly isn’t on-going support such as continuous workshops on maintaining openness within adoption or coping mechanisms when parenting problems unique to adoption crop up, it does call into question whether agencies are necessary anymore if one can do it on their own.  Do agencies need to step up their on-going support for all members of the triad in order to stay relevant?  People are still going to go to REs because we can’t perform our own embryo transfers.  But will people keep using adoption agencies if expectant parents and potential adoptive parents can connect online?

This, of course, brings out the distinction between “can” and “should.”  Should we do away with ethical agencies?  Of course not.  All parties in adoption benefit from ethical agencies.  But it does open up a conversation: beyond keeping the adoption ethical, what purpose does an agency serve?  Can it do more in order to keep providing benefits not found by going about adoption alone?  Do agencies need to be more inclusive as the Internet levels the playing field, making it easier for single parents-to-be or those in a same-sex relationship to adopt?  Do agencies need to lower their administrative costs?  As is, domestic adoption of a newborn is prohibitively expensive, putting it out-of-reach for those who may have enough money to raise a child, but can’t come up with the five-figure agency fees.

Have agencies themselves set up a system where they will be rejected once they’re no longer needed?  Have they made the process so difficult and expensive that people will forgo the good points of an agency in order to not experience the bad?  I keep thinking about how little I even knew to ask before I started parenting.  New questions crop up all the time.  A good example would be breastfeeding.  Most people take a breastfeeding class before they start parenting.  But we still need lactation consultants to guide us on the other side, when we’re actually ensconced in the act of breastfeeding.  Why don’t adoption agencies use this same model?

And then we keep coming back to where ethics fit into this picture.  Is it really an ethical process if there is little support offered once parents have their child?  New questions will pop up years into the future.  Where should those parents go?  Is it really ethical if the birth parents aren’t given continual emotional support to get through the process of placing their child?  What about adoptees — what do adoption agencies provide beyond yearly picnics to celebrate those matches?

I hope as agencies restructure, they start looking at support as a lifetime process.  They have the potential to help all members of the triad navigate open adoption.  They can run on-going support groups, provide the option of check-ins to answer questions, have counselors on-staff that specialize in adoption issues.  The RE is followed by the OB who is followed by the pediatrician, a doctor for every step of the way to answer questions and support that life that the RE helps create.  What if adoption agencies created a similar model, with different professionals on-staff in order to help support all members of the triad?

Your thoughts?  I’d especially love to hear from any member in the triad — what support is given after the adoption is complete?

I hurt my back on Saturday.  Actually, I’ve been in the process of hurting my back for weeks according to the nice doctor at the urgent care clinic.  He hypothesized that working for 12 to 15 hours a day over winter break caused me to scrunch my shoulders toward my neck in stress and hunch over my keyboard, therefore creating this tension in my back which exploded on Saturday.

The irony is that the only position that is comfortable is scrunching my shoulders towards my neck.  So it’s sort of like wanting to eat candy bars because I’m down because my clothes no longer fit me.  There’s that too, but right now, the problem is my back.

The doctor prescribed painkillers and a muscle relaxer — neither of which helped — but I took them over the weekend.  They made me glassy-eyed and drooly, like a zombie.  Except without the pale skin.  Or the penchant for brains.  But everything else was very zombie-like, especially because I’m dragging my body around and groaning.

But I can’t take the painkillers/muscle relaxers during the week because I have to drive the kids places and do work.  So I’m hunched over in pain, trying not to be hunched over because I’m making it worse, and quietly (or sometimes not so quietly) cursing everyone I come into contact with because I’m in a foul mood.  All those smiling people, walking upright without an ounce of back pain.

I wanted to write back everyone who left kind words on my Happy Tears post, thanking them in advance for reading Apart at the Seams, and I’ve been trying to delurk all over the place and leave a lot of comments.  But being in pain makes words feel hazy.  Like I can’t hold onto them for very long before they float away.  So if I owe you an email or a comment, I’m sorry.

I’m off to another lie down with the hot water bottle.  That thing has become my best friend this week.  If you see the book dedication is to my red, rubber water bottle, you’ll know why.

Amy Chua, who wrote Battle Hymn of Tiger Mother, is back with a new book called Triple Package, which seems to be called as such because she attempts to offend people on three fronts.  Oh sorry.  It’s called that because in order to have success, you need the triple package of feeling superior, being insecure, and having impulse control.  It turns out that she’s offending people on more than three fronts, anyway.

The book lists the eight superior groups in the world.  Do you belong to one?  More than one?  That would make you doubly superior:

• Jewish
• Indian
• Chinese
• Iranian
• Lebanese-American
• Nigerian
• Cuban (but only exiles.  Apparently remaining in Cuba makes you not superior)
• Mormons

I know what you’re thinking right now.  You’re thinking, “I had a book that could have put something good into the world, but it was rejected by every agent, and THAT woman gets another chance to offend all of us?  Those are the sorts of books that hit bookshelves?”

And the short answer would be yes.  I believe that the US, in looking at alternative fuel options, is trying to generate power with our ire.  Amy Chua is an ire-generating machine.  All she needs to say by this point is “I have a book idea…” and she doesn’t even need to write it.  The mere fact that she is thinking of a new thesis is enough to enrage.  Because she is a superior rage inducer.  Because she has that triple package.

In the same way that I didn’t need to read the Bell Curve once I heard the premise, I equally do not need to read the Triple Package, regardless that it’s “coolly and cogently argued” according to Kirkus Reviews.  I have a limited amount of hours on this earth, and I don’t want to spend any of them with this book.  Just as I spent zero hours with her other book.  Life is too short to spend it with manufactured controversy.

I am disappointed when I think about all the books that won’t get published this year: the ones that people will shop around, trying to find a home.  They’re good books that would put good information into the world.  But apparently good doesn’t sell; offensiveness does.

January

My year begins four times every 365 days, therefore, I have four chances to get it right.  It restarted six days ago, complete with reflection and resolutions.  The four of us wrote out the high and low points of our year and sealed the pages into an envelope to open and reflect upon next January 1st when we do it all over again.

It is strange to have the year restart in the middle of winter (well, our winter, Southern Hemispherers) when everything is dead outside.  The landscape right now is brown and white, muddy and icy.  It doesn’t feel like a natural restart in the same way, let’s say, spring feels like a good time to restart.  But perhaps it’s only because I always have babies on the mind.

September

I was a student for 21 years overlapping with being a teacher for nine.  So for 27 years, my year mentally began around Labour Day and ended soon after Memorial Day, with those intervening months feeling like a ravine of time that I fell into between school years.  I still prefer calendars where the first page is September instead of January.  I can’t mentally plan out 2014, but I can plan out the 2013-to-2014 school year.

There were a few years between when teaching ended and the twins began school, and even though no one in the house was tied to that typical educational calendar, I still found myself thinking in terms of September to June.  Is it so deeply ingrained in me that I’ll still be thinking that way in my sixties, when the twins are out of college, or will this restart fade away by the time the loans are paid off?  Will summer always feel like a valley, a dip in the year, between two plateaus of time?

Rosh HaShanah

My spiritual restart falls between September and October when the Jewish calendar year comes to an end and begins again with Rosh HaShanah — which literally translates to “head of the year.”  It aligns closely with that educational calendar, a second vote for an autumal start.

I guess I’ve always wondered about religions that don’t have a spiritual reset; a day on the calendar where you reflect on the past year.  I mean, yes, there is the secular January 1st, but that isn’t really the same thing.  There isn’t ritual associated with January 1st unless you count congregating in Time Square (or watching people congregate in Time Square on television).  It isn’t a time period where people ask for forgiveness or try to atone for their wrong-doings.  Rosh HaShanah isn’t a big party — we have that a few weeks later with Simchat Torah.  It’s an introspective, quiet time, punctuated by services and familial meals.

I didn’t appreciate it much when I was younger.  I do now.

June

My year mentally resets on my birthday, when I add another number to my age.  I am turning 40 this year.  I keep having dreams where I realize I’m 40. (And in all of my dreams, I start calling out hokey things such as “good lordy, I’m 40!”  Perhaps my subconscious has to release these sayings so I don’t call them out in the real world.)  I’m okay with aging in my dreams, but when I’m awake, I’m not so great with accepting the fact that I’ll be in a new decade.  Not that I want the alternative.

My thirties have been great.  I’m sure my forties will be too, but I remember being little and 40 sounding so old.  40 is middle aged.  Spalding Gray called it the Bermuda Triangle of Health, where your body starts to break down.  I don’t want my body to break down or change.  Being 40 isn’t cool.  There was a television show called Thirtysomething.  There was never a show called Fortysomething.

I have a fear of being less vital, less needed.  Everyone wants to know their place, and being needed is about knowing your place, knowing where you should be.  In my thirties, I knew exactly where I was needed.  The forties look a lot more amorphous.

But that year doesn’t restart for a few months.

What are your yearly restarts?