Political Rant Ahead.

Posted on January 23, 2025 by Lori Finding Joy

I’ve spent this week disassociating by binge-watching House and eating Trader Joe’s peanut butter cups and knitting. I sort of knew the onslaught would come, but I didn’t anticipate things like emails from our school department alerting us that ICE can now raid schools. And apparently the solution to deporting parents is to throw their kids into foster care? By all means, let’s take a broken system and break it more. *heavy sarcasm*

Meanwhile, on the “Blue Sky” side of the fence, I’ve been hearing a lot about building community – in “real life” rather than online, and so I let my husband talk me into going to a local writers group last night. I struggle with these things, partly because I’m introverted and anxious but also they tend to happen right smack in the middle of the kids’ bedtime. {In fact, I actually had to bail early, because while the advertised start time was 6 pm, by 7:30 the guest speaker was still in full form and the open mike readings hadn’t started.} But even though I left early, it turned out I actually really needed to hear what the speaker had to say. His name is Cliff Hakim and he wrote a book called “Walk In My Shoes: The Path to Empathy and Compassion”, and boy was his message on point. He talked about kindness, and how one small act of kindness can have a ripple effect. At some point in the middle of the night I woke up thinking, “since when did common kindness and human decency become political?”. I mean, I *know* how, but it still baffles me.

***

Related: earlier this week, I had to go to the Social Security office to straighten some things out related to our adoption. Even though I had an appointment, I had to sit and wait for half an hour. It was like the UN in that waiting room, I was definitely in the minority as most people there were from another country and spoke little English. At one point a supervisor came out and as politely as possible announced that if you didn’t have an appointment you would need to come back tomorrow. The problem, of course, was that the announcement was made in English, with guards standing nearby. Social Security offices are considered government property and are secured as such. At any rate, there was much confusion as people thought they had appointments but did not, or actually had phone appointments not in-person appointments, and it had the potential of going chaotic really quickly. My number got called just as things started getting a little heated, so if there was any real drama I missed it.

Sitting next to me in the cramped waiting room was a little guy, maybe 2? His mom was holding a baby, and he had her phone in his hands. He tottered over to me and grabbed my hands, and started giving me high 5’s and poking me. At this point I’m pretty kid friendly, and my white hair screams GRANDMA, so I was happy to entertain him. I’m not sure his mom was happy, though? I’m guessing they spoke Portuguese and were probably here from Angola, but alas my Portuguese starts and ends at “obrigada” so I could be wrong. At any rate, there were language and cultural barriers there and I got the distinct impression I wasn’t necessarily coming off as “harmless white lady” to the mom…but that little guy didn’t know it. Sometimes I wish I had a button that said “Licensed Foster Parent – I’ve Passed Multiple Background Checks”, but sadly that doesn’t even mean much these days. My point to all this is, the adults are suspicious of each other but the kids are not. That suspicion is taught. And what, pray tell, will immigration police marching through the hallways of elementary schools teach our kids? I’m pretty sure this is not the future my dad had in mind for his grandkids while he was traipsing through Vietnam wearing a US Army uniform.

The other thing is that it’s convenient to frame these issues as “all or nothing”, open borders or build a wall. In reality, our country was built on the backs of immigrants, and it’s just way too complicated an issue to be reduced to sound bites. Honestly? I’m not sure I actually have a problem making changes to birthright citizenship. I think we do need to have some hard conversations about what the influx of immigrants does to community resources. But it would be really nice if we could start talking TO each other instead of AT each other, rather than just branding everyone who disagrees with us an idiot.

***

And then: finding joy? I finally finished knitting the baby’s blanket. I had to buy more yarn to make it bigger because when I started knitting it he was maybe 6 months old, and now he’s almost 18 months old and a heck of a lot longer. I got up early with him this morning and he was rocking out to Baby Shark, wearing nothing but his diaper, and good lord is he a character. Tonight he didn’t want any dinner until I sat down on the living room floor with a plate, and he toddled over to steal my fork and eat off my plate. There are times when I feel like it’s wrong for him to be with us, because we are so old, but then there are days like today where I cannot imagine him being anywhere else. Tomorrow: Friday, and some work on a project, and maybe a long over-do lunch with my husband? Finally: January is almost in the rear view mirror and it is no longer pitch dark at 4:30!

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Finally.

Posted on January 12, 2025 by Lori Finding Joy

This past week we finalized the adoption of our 6 year old foster daughter. It was simultaneously joyous and sad; I love that she is officially part of our family now but I hate everything she went through to get to us. And it’s hard, because she is old enough to understand some things but not old enough to completely understand.

Some thoughts/observations:

  1. After the hearing I felt this wave of exhaustion come over me, and it’s lasted now for 3+ days. Granted, I have whatever virus du jour the baby brought home from daycare, but this is different. Honestly, this feels like all the pent-up stress over the past couple years finally hit me, and now that it is over my body is finally able to start letting go of it.
  2. Now that I’m not overthinking/worrying about court, and (fingers crossed) everything is finalized with DHHS, my brain doesn’t know what to do with itself. In some ways this is good, because I really need to go back to working full-time and having a functional brain again is kind of a necessity. In the meantime, I’m on one of my “I need a new project!” rampages, despite the fact that I have a zillion unfinished things to do already.
  3. My appetite is back, with a vengeance. Usually when I’m sick I don’t want to eat, but like I said – this is different. My niece made us hazelnut macarons and I need a million more of them and sadly they are all gone, so I am ransacking the kitchen.
  4. I find myself having a really visceral reaction whenever someone congratulates us or tells me how wonderful we are for doing this, or how lucky our daughter is to have us. We just severed all legal ties to her biological family, and even though it was necessary it doesn’t mean it doesn’t break her little heart, you know? Is this really something to celebrate? At the same time, I WANT to celebrate her, and how far she has come, and how she is now officially part of our family. I WANT her to know she is loved and has a permanent place to call home. And we are the lucky ones, to be able to give this little girl love, a home, some semblance of stability and security, and a safe space to feel however she needs to feel. It all seems so…basic, right? And yet, not.
  5. If money were no object I’d be marching myself back to school, whether it be for another master’s degree or some other program where I could really delve into the US foster care system and compare it to other countries. I have some theories, mind you, but the problem is it’s impossible to just shut it all down and rebuild it from the bottom up (or top down); it’s not like the world just stands still until we figure this out. Meanwhile, the kids…oh, the kids are suffering. Case workers are suffering, foster parents are suffering, biological parents are suffering…I’m convinced if you have even half a heart and do this for any length of time you probably have PTSD.
  6. Y’all: I feel okay with posting this photo as you can’t see the faces of either of the girls, but this picture is just EVERYTHING. (credit: Amy Lewis Photography) These girls push buttons neither of us knew we even had, and yet we have these moments that are just so incredibly awesome and joy-filled and magical that even our grumpy selves can’t shut them down. Having kids is HARD and EXHAUSTING, and MESSY and STICKY…don’t even TALK to me about things I have thrown away because the girls got slime all over them including clothing, tablecloths and sheets (there was even some on our long-hairded orange cat but I was able to cut it off). But then there are days where we all sit at the table and color, or sing in the car, or manage to go on an adventure without someone having a complete meltdown (rare, but it has happened). And in between, there are dolls and Magnetiles and books scattered everywhere, juice boxes and applesauce pouches found in odd places, and “potions” in every bathroom. Chaos, but…home.

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Errands and Messes

Posted on January 6, 2025 by Lori Finding Joy
  1. I had planned on making some baked stuffed french toast for New Year’s day breakfast, but life happened and I finally made it yesterday afternoon – and baked it off this morning. It wound up being delicious and it’s all I have eaten today. I am contemplating going to buy another loaf of brioche just to make more. I won’t, because it’s not the sort of thing one should eat every single day, but the temptation is real. (I used this recipe, adding fresh raspberries and not doing the crumb cake topping because it seemed unnecessary.)
  2. Still no goals or deep thoughts about the New Year. I started knitting a temperature blanket for 2025 – basically you knit one row every day in a color that represents a temperature range. So for example, yesterday the high was 28 degrees so I knit a row in purple, because I assigned purple to the range of 20-30 degrees. Mind you, it FEELS much colder, but for sake of ease I went with the daily high temperature. It just so happens that so far the blanket is mostly blue (30-40 degrees), so the 6-year old thinks it is for her because blue is her favorite color. I don’t have the heart to tell her that I give this project six weeks before I fall so far behind I can’t recover and it lands in the pile of unfinished things to languish for eternity. That said, I am considering using red yarn to represent the day of her adoption in case by some miracle I actually do finish it.
  3. Meanwhile, in the wash at the moment is a very nice wool blanket from Cuddledown because I took the 6 year old to the grocery store yesterday afternoon (after using up all the milk for the french toast) and when we returned, we discovered the 7 year old had been eating pickles on the couch and the 1-year old decided to help himself, and there was my husband trying to clean up pickle juice that had spilled on the blanket, the couch, the baby, and the living room floor. I’ve run wool items through the delicate cycle in the washing machine before and it’s turned out fine, but I’m not entirely sure how I am going to dry this. Normally I would dry it outside, but with the current temps being what they are it would just turn into one big rectangular icicle. But yeah, pickle juice all over everything was not on my bingo card yesterday.
  4. I think there was someone I went to high school with at the grocery store yesterday. That was also not on my bingo card. I’m pretty sure I caught them ducking into an aisle to avoid me which just seemed…unnecessary? I don’t know. A friend in college once said to me, “Lori, you think everyone hates you” and honestly, truer words were never spoken. (Anxiety disorder for the win!) And to be honest I did my own share of ducking, partly because I was too busy keeping the 6-year old from climbing into the refrigerator case of Lunchables and partly because I was pretty sure I had french toast batter all over me.
  5. I drove the kids to school/daycare this morning and amusingly discovered a Christmas gift that my husband had bought for me and misplaced, in the glovebox of his car. It’s a set of watercolor paints, which need to be hidden away before the kids get home lest they are destroyed, or a cat gets painted, or the baby eats them. Painting is like playing the guitar to me — I SO badly want to be able to do these things but I have zero talent, but keep plugging away anyway. Stupid F chord is my guitar block, and the inability to draw anything is my painting problem. I keep having to remind myself the joy is in the doing, not the end product, and also that I am (hopefully) setting an example to the girls that you don’t have to be good at everything (they are both perfectionists, in different ways, and get frustrated when they cannot immediately be good at things). Alas.

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New Year

Posted on January 1, 2025 by Lori Finding Joy

First: we survived Christmas, Elf and all, and although at one point the 7 year old had a meltdown and declared it THE WORST CHRISTMAS EVER (because she opened a box of clothes I bought her), it was a pretty good holiday. Not one handmade gift I had planned made it to the finish line, except for a hat and sweater that I knit for one of my daughter’s teachers who is expecting a baby. Knitting each kid something was a laughable goal, really, especially since I keep starting new things instead of finishing something. I am *close* to completing a sweater for my 3-year old cousin, but in full transparency this is the third sweater in two years that I have been close to completing for him, and I’m about to run out of yarn.

Second: Happy New Year! I wish I had something thoughtful and profound to share about my goals for the coming year, or even a word to focus on. The trouble is that when you are 53, with three small-ish children, you are pretty much always in survival mode just getting from one minute/hour/day to the next. There’s not much time for navel-gazing, which is really unfortunate when you are the sort of person who loves nothing more than to sit and think – even though it often turns to ruminating over things that are really best left alone. Whether it’s anxiety or latent ADHD or menopause, my brain nowadays just won’t shut up unless I’m doing something like knitting or sewing patchwork, when I can get into a groove and just focus on the task at hand. Plus, with the kids, instead of philosophizing or plotting unwritten novels in my head I have oodles of more mundane things to obsess over. What shall I worry about today, I wonder? The better question is probably what WON’T I worry about, because the list is always a mile long.

And yet, amongst all that background noise, the same things I’ve obsessed about and agonized over for decades still crop up from time to time (alas, I am no goldfish). The New Year is ripe for this sort of thing, as is the start of school every fall. Those times of year when you think, it’s all going to be different this year! I’m going to do X, Y and Z instead of A,B and C and it’s all going to be great! The anticipation is always better than the reality, because we all know that within a couple of weeks we all settle right back into being our actual, complicated selves. And change is hard for us humans, especially for those of us who are sensitive to seasonal changes. For me, it’s also complicated because from September to the middle of February are the hardest days because of the light (or lack thereof), and even medicated I just basically white knuckle it until the sun starts to stick around a bit longer and a bit brighter.

But! This is supposed to be a blog about finding joy, not wallowing in seasonal funkiness and the might-have-beens of past Lori (even thought that is the reality of the moment). And there is joy to be had amongst the mismatched sock pile! I am excited that this month the adoption of our foster daughter will be finalized, and even though it comes with A LOT of complicated feelings we are grateful that she finally has permanency with us. People like to glorify adoption but it’s the result of trauma and loss, and I promise you that we do not see ourselves as saviors of anyone — we have a lot of love, but we also are willing to hold our daughter’s hand and keep her connected to her safe bio relatives while also helping her find her place in our own family. To quote Ram Dass, “We’re all just walking each other home”, and I feel that in a very visceral sense with her. It’s hard at times, and it’s not all roses and sunshine, and we have made mistakes along the way, but we keep trying because this little girl is just the bravest and sweetest thing you’ve ever met (wild, mind you, but sweet). Now we can finally think about planning a celebration for later in the year as she wants a bounce tent, and even with global warming winter in Maine just isn’t bounce house friendly.

Practically speaking, since our daughter has been with us for 2+ years our day-to-day existence doesn’t change but certain things become a lot easier. For example, we will be able to travel out of state without getting permission from DHHS anymore, which means I can bring the girls to see my family in MA or go to NH more often (Storyland, Santa’s Village, etc.). Because we have our daughter’s half-brother, who is still in foster care, DHHS doesn’t go away completely but it definitely decreases; for example, instead of two caseworkers visiting monthly it will only be one. (I honestly don’t mind those visits, it’s just hard to schedule!) Most importantly, I don’t have to say “our foster daughter” anymore – she’ll just be our daughter, and that makes me happy.

Watching: The Gavin & Stacey finale. If you’ve never watched this show please do — it’s a British comedy and not one for kids, but it’s one of my favorite shows ever. I have watched the finale 4 times and I still don’t know how I feel about it.

Listening: The Weepies. Years ago I used to take the commuter rail every day from the suburbs into Boston for work, and I used to listen to The Weepies on my ipod a lot. I genuinely do not know how I managed the commute, except to say that I was single and childless and spent most of my time pining over some dumb boy or another, and the train ride gave me OODLES of time to ruminate. But! When my daughter was born, I used to sing her the song Somebody Loved and it made me happy — it sounds like a lullaby, even though it isn’t, and the lyrics are much more about a romantic relationship than the parental sort. Still, when I was 8 months pregnant the heat in our apartment DID go out, and I did sometimes feel like we were dancing together – her in my belly. But mostly, while people certainly loved me before she came along it was her that turned me into a mother, which is an entirely different sort of love altogether.

Rain turns the sand into mud
Wind turns the trees into bone
Stars turning high up above
You turn me into somebody loved

Nights when the heat had gone out
We danced together alone
Cold turned our breath into clouds
We never said what we were dreaming of
But you turned me into somebody loved

Someday when we’re old and worn
Like two softened shoes
I will wonder on how I was born
The night I first ran away from you

Now my feet turn the corner back home
Sun turns the evening to rose
Stars turning high up above
You turn me into somebody loved

~Deb Talan & Steve Tannen

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‘Tis the Season (of elves and tantrums and ghosts of dishes past)

Posted on December 4, 2024 by Lori Finding Joy

The Christmas season is ramping up at our house, albeit a lot more slowly this year. Having a one-year old in the house means we have to be much more thoughtful about decorations, for one thing, and for another we can’t find our old Christmas tree anywhere. I vaguely recall my husband deciding to toss our artificial tree last year, but he has no memory of it. Either way it meant buying another one. (While we prefer a live tree, the cats would destroy it.) This past weekend the 7 year old and one of her friends dragged some things up from the basement, and in one of the crates was a green glass bowl that I swear I have not seen in 30 years. It was my mother’s, and she used it for chips every Christmas Eve when I was a kid/teenager/young adult. I was instantly transported back to our old living room, eating chips out of that bowl while my grandfather delivered presents and my uncles were deep in the booze. I half want to use the bowl, and half want it to go back into the basement because anything glass in our house is just doomed. Also, we have Christmas pictures scheduled to be done this weekend which has sent me scrambling trying to find the kids’ matching Christmas PJ’s that I bought last year, which means that I have ransacked every closet in every room, and random boxes in the basement, and I have found all sorts of clothes that mostly need to be donated. This is a long way of saying that laundry has taken over the living room – although I am happy to report the last missing PJ pants were found yesterday, so I can now move on to other things.

One of the worst parenting decisions I ever made was embracing the Elf on the Shelf. Ours is a girl named Collette, named after my brother-in-law’s girlfriend. (We don’t know why the 7 year old chose to do this, except that while on vacation Collette let the 7 year old ransack her luggage and a grand old time was had.) As much as I would like to just forget about it, the girls love it and honestly, this may be the last year that both of them believe. However, because we’ve had some real behavioral challenges with the girls over the past few weeks, I have been putting off this year’s arrival of our Elf on the Shelf. I finally caved last night, putting our elf on our fireplace mantle with a note that basically said, “great job at school now stop acting like maniacs at home”. Our elf brings surprises – usually little treats or toys, but occasionally bigger things – and despite my pre-parenthood insistence that I would never stoop to bribe a child of mine, both girls are easily incentivized. This morning there was virtually no fighting and we actually got out of the door on time, hallelujah and hurray. No one threw a fit, either — last year the elf’s first offering was matching pajamas and the then-6 year old was furious because “pajamas aren’t a surprise!”. This year the elf took a big risk on some Christmas-themed shirts, fully expecting that they would be thrown in a fit of rage, but both girls happily wore them to school. Parenthood is half effort, half luck.

Anyway. The behavioral challenges…the girls are perfectly well-behaved at school and excellent students and friends. My grandmother (Geraldine) always said that kids “let their hair down at home” and, wow. That has absolutely proved to be the case at our house. Their teachers act shocked when I regale them with our tales of woe and tell me that it must be because they feel safe at home. (Talk about no good deed going unpunished…) In reality a lot of it has to do with two former only children learning how to share parents and have a sibling that is very close in age. When it’s good, its great — they play well together and enjoy each other’s company, until it suddenly turns on a dime and everything erupts into shouting and tears. But these tantrums are interspersed with some incredibly sweet moments. Recently the 7 year old had to get some shots, and immediately after leaving the doctor’s office she insisted on calling home to talk to the 6 year old. “I had to get shots and it hurt!”, and the 6-year old said in a very worried voice, “Oh no! Are you okay?” And then the conversation immediately devolved into laughing over poop jokes. At any rate, everyone I talk to with multiple kids just laughs and says, yeah sounds normal to me, but ooof. To paraphrase Ted Lasso, their fighting is like Woody Allen playing the clarinet and I don’t want to hear it. At all.

Watching: Man on the Inside on Netflix is REALLY good, even though the fact that I loved it probably confirms that I am middle-aged, heading into even older territory. Also? I’ve hate-watched a couple of Christmas movies on Netflix and there seems to be an endless supply of them. When did Christmas become about romance? How did we get from the pagan tradition of yule to the birth of Jesus to career-woman-gets-stuck-in-a-snowy-town-and-trips-over-some-impossibly-handsome-nice-guy? And why are the plots virtually the same in all of them? I mean, I was single for years and often went home to my snowy rural town for the holidays, and the only men I ever ran into were twice-my -age alcoholics with several ex-wives in their rear-view mirror, chasing them down for child support. (To be fair, these movies do not appear to be taking place in rural Maine.)

Listening: On Spotify there is an Alternative Christmas music station that is mellow enough to play while trying to get the baby to sleep but holiday-enough to fit my mood.

Doing (other than laundry): help me, because I got it into my head to knit each of the kids something for Christmas. I have 22 days to finish a blanket I started for the baby six months ago, and then knit the girls a cat and a rabbit along with clothes for said cat and rabbit. I also have a whole pile of unfinished sewing projects, including the Halloween quilts for the kids I never finished.

Not Doing: taking my thyroid meds (I keep forgetting), wallpapering the baby’s room, hanging up artwork, cleaning out my car, about a million other things.

Finally, I leave you with this: in my social media scrolling I stumbled across this poem by David Gate called Joy Is An Act of Rebellion – you can find his site here. As someone who grew up on the Star Wars movies I love a good rebellion, and I love the notion of true joy being something that cannot be commodified means it flies in the face of everything our society seems to value. The joy of singing and rocking my babies to sleep, the joy of seeing excited little faces waking me up to tell me the elf came back, the joy of making things with my hands, and the joy of a cat purring next to me – impossible to put a price on, impossible to sell, and free to give and share.

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Thursday Random Miscellany

Posted on November 14, 2024 by Lori Finding Joy

Happening: Today I had to go to the DMV to renew my license, which had expired six months ago. The sad thing is that I didn’t even realize it – I had to take the girls to urgent care a few weeks ago and the lady checking us in told me. I finally got my act together and dealt with it (hello, procrastination) and resigned myself to spending the afternoon waiting for my number to be called. As it happened, I only had to wait for half an hour — but in that span of time no less than 4 older men failed the eye test. I know this isn’t a scientific sample but I found it disturbing anyway. By the time it was my turn I was convinced *I* was going to fail, because awhile back the baby pulled my glasses off my face and they broke, and I’ve been wearing my back up ones because again, procrastination. It turned out the eye test was really easy and so the fact that ANYONE failed the test after clearly driving themselves to the DMV just terrified me more. Kind of like all the people at the grocery store who reek of pot and clearly drove to the store stoned. Also, I got the same clerk that I had when I registered my car last year and he is super nice, which is a refreshing change from years ago when the clerks were surly and just glared at you. Then I went to the toy store downtown, and they didn’t have what I was looking for (a stuffed alligator, admittedly a bit of a niche item), and the lady looked shocked and explained she had just sold the one she had not an hour beforehand. She recognized me from the (many, many) times I have been in before, and called to some of their other locations to see if she could track one down. Alas, no luck, but then I had some time to kill before picking the girls up from school and went into the candy store and lo and behold, they had a stuffed alligator. Actually they had 3, of various brands and sizes. Why the candy store had stuffed alligators is beyond me, but I can cross one more thing off the Christmas to-do list.

Music: For some reason I’ve been listening to David Gray on repeat. As the Eras Tour winds down, maybe my brain is finally moving on from my own Taylor Swift era? I’ve pretty much listened to nothing but Taylor since her Folklore album came out, so after 4 years it’s probably time for a change. (oh the irony…). I’m 53, for crying out loud, and also the 7 year old yells at me when a Taylor song with a bad word comes on in the car. With her best eldest daughter tone she hollers from the third row of the car: MOM SHE SAID A BAD WORD WHY ARE YOU LISTENING TO THIS? *sigh*

Why David Gray? I heard “Please Forgive Me” somewhere, maybe the grocery store, a song I used to love that I had completely forgotten existed, and that turned into listening to Spotify playlists. Oddly, I have a very strong memory of driving around Brewer sometime around 2005, I don’t know why I was there but it must have been work related and I had his White Ladders album playing in the car for the whole trip. I don’t know why that memory sticks with me, but it does. He also has an album called Skellig, which I assume is named after the island off the coast of Ireland, which is featured heavily in the last Star Wars movies. While I haven’t been to Skellig, I have been to the Skellig Experience visitor center. And while it was interesting, I confess that their slogan “Ireland’s Most Exciting Visitor Attraction” is a bit of a stretch…but to be fair, we didn’t do the boat trip. We also skipped the Guinness factory tour – I was with my BFF Diane for our 40th birthdays, and I spent the majority of the trip chugging cold medicine and Irish coffees. It was also on that trip that I discovered Smithwick’s, and honestly prefer it over Guinness even though several native Irishmen have told me that is tantamount to sacrilege. Over the years Ancestry continues to lower the percentage of Irish blood in me (overtaken by the Scots), so maybe this explains it.

    Books: I have been reading a number of foster care and adoption books from the library, none of which have so far impressed me. I feel like no one addresses the proverbial elephant in the room, which is the prevalence of substance use disorder causing kids to come into care and how that has turned the system on its head (in my opinion). That’s a whole other rant for another time, though. I am supposed to be reading The Anxious Generation, in fact tomorrow I have a school parent group discussion about it, but I am dragging my feet because I just know it’s going to make me regret a significant number of parenting decisions I’ve made over the years. But mostly I’m reading bedtime books to the 6 year old. My current favorite is about an alligator with false teeth, because it’s fun to read out loud. (And yes, this book is why I was trying to find a stuffed alligator.)

    Watching: The Great British Baking Show, of course (Nellie should have won!). The second season of The Diplomat. Old Warehouse 13 episodes while doing laundry and cleaning the living room.

    Wearing: a wool dress and my winter coat. Mother Nature seems to have realized it’s November in Maine, and I’ve finally had to stop wearing my summer dresses and shoes.

    Mostly, I’m clinging to the idea that we are almost at the end of the darkest days (ie, the winter solstice approaches). Even though we’re in Maine, by February I start seeing a shift in the light and I start to feel like myself again. Liturgically, it’s almost Advent and this time of year always has me in a weird headspace. Kathleen Norris, one of my favorite authors, has called this season “a challenge to begin again”, which I feel gives it a nice set-up for the inevitable New Years resolutions and goals that follow the Christmas season. Honestly this year has been one of the hardest ones I’ve had in awhile, at least since my dad died, and I’m really looking forward to putting it in the rear-view mirror.

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    Catching Up

    Posted on October 17, 2024 by Lori Finding Joy

    Are blogs even a thing anymore?

    It’s been 4 1/2 years since I’ve posted anything here, and unbelievably 9 years since we said goodbye to my father. His last words to me were “you need to write a book”, and every anniversary of his death I find myself stewing about this. I feel weirdly guilty that I have hardly written anything since my daughter was born, like I’m letting Dad down, and yet life is so chaotic right now that one more project would be sheer insanity. I thought maybe I could start small and try writing here on a regular basis. We’ll see; it may be another 4 years before I post again.

    At the same time, ask me how many times I have re-watached Ted Lasso and Shetland, or how many hours I have spent on Wordle/Spangram/Connections, or how many hours I have spent doom-scrolling social media. I get frustrated with myself sometimes (ok, a lot), but also? Two years ago we became foster parents and last year our foster daughter’s newborn brother came to live with us. I’ve been busy raising a brand new human, so I should probably give myself some grace. With three kids running amok, it’s not surprising that any downtime I have often consists of me lying in a dark room reading about Taylor and Travis, or sitting on our front porch just staring into space. And yet, not for the first time in my life, it occurs to me that I could have wasted my time in much better ways.

    Speaking of space, we have been able to see the northern lights twice this summer from our yard. It was really neat, but also made me miss my dad something fierce. We used to sit outside at night on our back deck on lawn chairs, staring up into the sky. We were so deep in rural Maine that there was zero light pollution, and you could see the Milky Way. Dad used to point out constellations and stars that he knew, and sometimes if we sat still enough it seemed like we could feel the Earth’s rotation, spinning our insignificant selves around in circles. Coincidentally I’ve had a number of dreams about my dad and while I’m usually quite a skeptic about these sorts of things the last dream absolutely felt like a visitation. I’ve always had vivid dreams, sometimes to the point of not being sure if things I remember actually happened or not, but this one was just off the charts.

    At any rate, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about love, and how if anything defies death it is love. Our foster son has brought us so much joy, even though by any sane standards we are too old to be raising an infant, and there are times when I wonder if my dad’s soul may have hitched a ride with him to come back to me for awhile. It’s crazy, I know, but early in our foster care journey we decided to only take girls since our bio daughter was so young. Despite that, I kept having visions of putting a baby boy to sleep in the spare room. And even though we swore up and down we couldn’t take him, I think some part of me always knew we would. He calls me MumMum, which delights me to no end, and likes to drop things on the floor just so he can say Uh oh! I have zero idea of what the future holds, but right now it’s giving me comfort to know that just like my dad, I can love him wherever he is.

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    Vampires on my Mind…

    Posted on March 8, 2021 by Lori Finding Joy

    Well, we managed to escape/survive our first known COVID exposure.  O’s daycare had several cases, and we’ve had to quarantine.  I was shocked when our tests came back as negative, because I have literally seen those kids lick each other, but it was a big relief.  We’re lucky we got this far without a legitimate scare (as opposed to ill-founded paranoia when one of us coughed funny or had the tiniest bit of a headache). 

    As O is about to turn 4, I feel like I’m finally starting to come out of the fog.  I don’t know if all mothers go through this, or it hit me particularly hard because I was so old, but I swear that during pregnancy and those first few years of childhood my brain got completely rearranged.  I’ve read that studies show this actually happens – motherhood literally changes our brain structure.  Throw in a worldwide pandemic this past year, and the political challenges we’ve been in, and…wow.  To say that both the outer and inner landscapes have changed is an understatement.  And then, underneath it all, the loss of my dad still resonates. 

    I’m also about to turn 50 and it’s hard to wrap my head around the fact that my life is half over – statistically, probably more like 2/3 over.  I still feel like I haven’t accomplished a whole lot, and I really want to be intentional about how I spend whatever time I have left.  I don’t know what that means, exactly, but I’m working on it.  At some point I will stop talking myself out of all my ideas and choose one, but for now it’s all rattling around in my head (and heart) and it’s not really productive.  It’s also hard to pivot from working with a small child on bodily functions (sleep, eat, poop, brush teeth) to “lets plan the next 25 years of my life”.  Mixed in there is the never-ending pile of laundry, an elderly cat that just keeps hanging on, and the daily question of “what’s for dinner?”. 

    Mostly, what has been on my mind lately is the difference between “finding joy” and “being joyful”.  As important as the former is, the latter is really what I’m after.  You know how every once and awhile you cross paths with someone who just exudes joy?  They are just present and engaging and make you feel better for being in their presence?  They have a way of marveling at the world and enjoying all it has to offer?  That’s what I aspire to be.  I’m not sure my sarcastic, impossible-to-please, New England-raised, iced-coffee drinking inner curmudgeon will allow that, though.  We’ll see.  In the meantime, these lyrics have been rattling around my head:

    It’s knowing that this can’t go on forever
    Likely one of us will have to spend some days alone
    Maybe we’ll get forty years together
    But one day I’ll be gone
    One day you’ll be gone

    (If We Were Vampires, Jason Isbell)

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    Sunday Miscellany

    Posted on November 1, 2020 by Lori Finding Joy

    1) I finally was able to finish watching Hamilton this afternoon, and while I’m glad duels have gone out of style, were they to ever come back this will be the week. Good gracious me.

    2) Today we started transitioning Miss O from her toddler bed to a twin bed, starting with the twin mattress on the floor (because I knew all too well she would use it as a trampoline). We put on the new mermaid sheets that she picked out at Target, plus the quilt my dad’s mother made me when I was in high school. So grateful to have things like this to pass down.

    3) There was a flock of junco’s on our lawn this morning. I feel like they normally don’t show up until December, and I am slightly alarmed we are in for a harder winter than usual.

    4) We also started cleaning out our playroom, which has been an unmitigated disaster for months, and has to be sorted before Christmas. I cleaned out one corner, only for Miss O to immediately plop down and strew toys across it. I also put away the Halloween books and brought out the Thanksgiving books. I have no idea what the holidays will look like this year, but I’m trying to keep some rhythm in place for Miss O, even though at her age she is pretty oblivious. She is, however, OBSESSED with decorations (which she calls “decorins”), and if she had her way the Christmas tree would already be up right now. She’s not going to be happy when the Halloween stuff comes down.

    5) I am knitting again! I *almost* finished a baby sweater for one of O’s daycare teachers, but O refused to nap so I still have half a sleeve left, plus sewing on buttons and blocking. I really wanted to sew patchwork this weekend but between Halloween and no naps, it didn’t happen.

    6) We actually had a great Halloween! Our neighborhood has tons of kids and we devised a plan where we put tables at the end of our driveway with pre-bagged goodies. It worked so well that honestly I plan on doing it in the future as well – I didn’t have to stay behind and hand out candy, and the cats weren’t hiding under the furniture from the doorbell constantly ringing. Miss O insisted on wearing her costume from last year, which thankfully still fit her, though I had a princess dress stashed in the trunk of my car in case she changed her mind at the last minute. Santa will leave it for Christmas instead.

    7) In six months I turn 50. I just…can’t.

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    Where’d the Time Go?

    Posted on October 28, 2020 by Lori Finding Joy

    Let’s catch up, shall we?

    The “baby” is now three and a half, full of spitfire and opinions and moods.  Her hair is still as red as ever, though it lightened up a lot this summer. Her eyes have gone more gray than blue, and sometimes even look a little hazel brown.  She is hysterically funny, a true character, and continues to push buttons we didn’t even know we had, both literally and figuratively (so much for the baby gates…).  She is also sunshine personified.  She still walks around the house singing to her dolls, is almost unfailingly polite, and is incredibly loving and sweet.  I just wish she would SLEEP.

    We have, so far, managed to weather the pandemic.  Being in Maine certainly helps.  We spent April, May and half of June home together, as our work went virtual and we didn’t feel comfortable sending her to daycare.  In terms of our daily stuff, we’re more-or-less “back to normal”, although we are still avoiding crowds and family functions.  We occasionally see our moms and sisters, but that’s been pretty limited.  We have done a few outdoor activities, like apple picking and a local corn maze, but mostly we stick to home, the grocery store and Target.  I’m back in the office full-time, which I am not thrilled about, but at least I have my own office with a door.  Cases here are rising, though, and we fully expect that we’ll be buttoned back up at some point.  I just spent an ungodly amount of money ordering winter gear for myself, because it’s pretty clear that I’m going to have to spend time outside this year, partly because the kid will insist on it and partly for my own sanity.  I would like to sleep until March, but alas.

    On top of everything else, there’s the election to contend with.  We did early voting, which I have weird and conflicted feelings about.  I much prefer feeding my anonymous ballot into a machine, rather than sealing up a personalized envelope with tape (because masks!) and handing it to a woman who casually tossed it in a box.  (She was busy putting other ballots in some sort of order, alphabetical maybe.)  I am normally a pretty political and opinionated person, but this year I have just shut down.  It’s not that I don’t care, it’s that I care too much, and I can’t have one more fire burning within me.  I expect I’m not alone in this.  And honestly, my husband has enough political rage for both of us right now, and we have an unwritten/unspoken rule that we have to take turns having meltdowns.  He’s taking this one for the team!

    I am slowly trying to find my hobbies again.  I am knitting more than anything else, as it’s portable and while my daughter is curious and likes to play with balls of yarn, she appears to be past the point of trying to actively destroy my projects.  We set up our old kitchen table in our absurdly-large bedroom, and in theory it will be a space for me to sew.  Right now it’s a dumping ground for who-knows-what; maybe this weekend I’ll get it cleared off.  Not holding my breath.  I really miss taking nature pictures; I mostly take pictures of my daughter with my phone now.  We moved last fall, and my camera battery has still not turned up.  It’s somewhere in our basement, with a hundred other boxes that still have not been unpacked yet.  

    Mostly I miss writing, and I’m trying to find my way back.  My Facebook posts have gotten more frequent and lengthy, and I fantasize about dragging out my half-written drafts of things…essays, novel sketches, a children’s book or two.  I can never seem to carve out the time and headspace to do it, though, and there are always other priorities.  Plus, work has been ridiculously busy, and so the last thing I want to do is stare at a screen any more than absolutely necessary.  That said, I am hopelessly addicted to my phone, wasting untold amounts of time, and I’m working on that.  In six months I turn 50, which seems completely impossible, and while my 40s were an incredible ride I still have a huge bucket list that needs to be addressed.  

    Meanwhile, this is what’s keeping me going right now:

    • Music:  The Wailin’ Jennys (YouTube Mix)
    • TV:  Great British Baking Show
    • App:  Relax Melodies (meditation app, pricey but SO worth it)
    • Reading:  Rachel Hollis books
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