A Band-Aid for Sadness

The referrals were released from China today and they only covered about two weeks of June 2005. That's great when you think that they have been averaging five days worth of referrals per month. It's not so great when the referral process has become erratic. Who knows, next month they might go back to only five days worth of referrals. That means, if they keep with that trend, we won't see our child for years. If they keep with this two weeks worth of referrals, it will be another 12 months of waiting. That means we are looking at 18 months of waiting before we would get our referral and then another two months before we could travel to pick her up. So today, we are sad. Today, we feel a little hopeless. Today, there is no light at the end of the tunnel. Today, we feel like jumping ship. Today, we know that a family member who just found out she is pregnant, will probably have her baby before we do. Don't get me wrong, we are happy for our friends who are closer to their referrals. We are happy for expectant family member. We are just sad for us.

We decided instead of moping around the house to head out to my favorite spot in the world...a beach. And while Galveston is not my beloved Stinson beach, it is a beach that has the calming noise of waves crashing onto the shore. So we packed up and headed down to the island for a walk and for some dinner. The weather was beautiful. The birds were out in mass. And we even managed to catch a hermit crab. Would it be wrong if we headed off to Jamaica for a few days of ocean therapy?

After our walk we headed down to the Strand for dinner at Fuddruckers. We soothed ourselves with big fat hamburgers (turkey burger for me since they didn't have the veggie burger) and milk shakes. We then walked around some more and I caught up with this beautiful butterfly. Now I heard it was good luck for a butterfly to land on a person. This butterfly had to have been special because it let me pick it up and then it stayed put for about five minutes. It kept trying to search for nectar under my fingernail. It felt so weird and it was pretty funny! It finally flew away but I just felt peaceful after that.


Despite our sadness and this dismal outlook on our China adoption, we had a good day.