Home Improvements and other things

Well, I am nearly finished with the table and chairs. I finished staining at 1:30 am (final coat since the others were still too light for my liking). I forgot to clean my brush last night so I'm waiting for it to try a bit before I start putting polyurethane on them. It's hard work and very tedious, but I'm enjoying myself. The problem is that I just don't have the space to do these projects so I have been carrying them out in the living room. It should be completely done today...I'm going to put a couple coats of lacquer on. Goin' for the big shine!

I picked up a book last week that I had heard about in one of my adoption magazines. It's called Forever Lily: An Unexpected Mother's Journey to Adoption in China by Beth Nonte Russell. I'm halfway through it now and I have to say, I really don't like it. If I understand correctly, this is supposed to be autobiographical account of how she came to adopt from China. She didn't pursue the usual channels, like most the readers of this blog. She was accompanying a woman who was adopting who didn't/wouldn't bond with her baby. She basically gave Russell her child. Although the writer claims to have traveled the world extensively this is her first trip to China and she seems to complain about it. A LOT. Every culture has some undesirable aspect to it. Those that are adopting from China should KNOW this before they ever submit a dossier. I guess I get tired of all the adoptive parents complaining about the fact that their daughters were abandoned because they were girls. If they hadn't been abandoned, they never would have become their daughters, would they? I'm not saying it is right, far from it, but put yourself in the shoes of the birth parents. If you haven't already read it, I suggest reading Karin Evan's book The Lost Daughters of China. She really delves into these issues in detail. China is not the only country to place more value on the life of a son. India has a growing crisis, much like China, with an orphanage overpopulation of girls. The majority of Middle Eastern countries still place more value on male lives than female lives. When I worked in Terre Haute I worked with a LOT of Middle Eastern and Indian physicians. These a**holes actually made me walk 10 feet behind them. Whenever I would walk next to them to update them on how crappy their patient was doing they would speed up so we would not be confused as equals. Heck, in our own great nation women still make only 70% of the dollar men make. Just because we aren't abandoned here doesn't mean we are equal to men. We also know China is a communist country. We know they don't support religious freedom..well, they don't support many freedoms that we enjoy here. We aren't going to change them. Like any country, democracy is something they are going to have to find on their own. We have seen how well it works when we force our version of it on others. I'm not saying that the author calls the Chinese idiots, but it is obvious that she sees some serious flaws in their views. One last complaint about this book--she has a mysterious dream sequence weaving throughout the book. In the dream she is Chinese and has been chosen to be empress (not yet sure what dynasty she is in at this point). It just seems to be overkill.

Anyway, thanks for letting me rant. I'm hoping the next half of the book will strike a better chord with me. On the positive side, she is good at describing her bonding with "The Baby" and you can feel as horrified as she that any adoptive parent would opt to send her new baby back to an orphanage.