Itsara

Nothing new to report. We’re waiting, often impatiently. The doctor says it could be any day now, but we already knew that.

Keep praying for patience and then all the stuff we (mostly Cindy) will need when the time comes: peace, strength, endurance, etc. We’ll let you know more when we know.

You know how the air gets very still just before a tornado hits? Yeah, me neither. But I imagine it’d be something like what we’re experiencing now.

Cindy’s due date is the 25th. The doctor is thinking it’ll be sometime next week. Regardless, Cindy is not teaching dance now, and she’s not tutoring. She is cleaning things up and making sure everything’s ready for the baby. Though most of that is done, so really we’re watching Friends and playing Agricola.

Cindy’s mom arrived yesterday to help us out. So now Cindy’s not even cooking and the boys are often taken care of. It’s good and bad. We have a lot of time to relax and prepare, but Cindy has a lot of time to stress about the birth.

I’m even taking a break from writing. Yesterday I finished work on novel #2 (working title: Air Pirates) and sent out my first batch of queries. That’s really exciting for me, but only vicariously exciting for you since it’ll probably be months before I have any other news.* In any case, I don’t plan on writing for at least a couple days, maybe not until after the birth.

And then there’s the rest of our family. Isaac and Nathan are finally (FINALLY!) sleeping through the night in their room. Pan and Lu are doing life as normal, though everyday they wonder if we’ll be here when they come home from school.

We’re still getting stuff together to adopt Pancake; we plan on going to Bangkok during the April break to turn everything in. We’ve also heard about other kids we might take in, but no real news yet. I can’t tell you how many kids we’ve said yes to but then couldn’t have for one reason or another. As always, I’ll give you news when I have it.

So that’s it. The quiet is nice, but temporary. Something big is coming, I can feel it.

* If that. It takes 1-2 months to hear back from agents at all, on average. If they actually request to see the novel, it takes even longer. You won’t hear much from me on the subject until I can say, “I have an agent!” in 3-14 months — if I actually get one.

And that’s just getting an agent. Don’t get me started on how hard/long it is to get a book deal.

Emmet’s come and gone. My parents are here for another few days. And Our Young Apprentice is due to appear in about a month. For the most part, this is the calm before the storm (although it’s going to be a really cute storm, with drooling, diapers, and nursing). Cindy’s dance class is done for now, and I’m trying very hard to finish up edits on my novel in the next couple of weeks.

I’m still working on getting Lutiya a birth certificate, so she can be a full-fledged Thai citizen. It’s complicated, but I haven’t hit a dead-end yet, so I’m not worried. Yet.

We’re still trying to get all the documents together for Pancake’s adoption process. That’s also complicated, and there’s so many fears we have about what the government will say about what we’re doing and want to do. We just try to remember that God’s the one putting this family together. We often have little say in it.

Anything else? We went Airsofting and I put some welts on Lu’s leg and my dad got hit in the head. And we’re late on our truck registration (though it’s really not that big of a deal here; just a small late fee).

I’m sure I’m forgetting something. And probably something terribly important if I’m telling you about our truck registration. I’m sure it’ll come to me…

I skipped a whole week and didn’t even realize it. Way to go, Adam. (Although I did say we’d get nothing done with Emmet around, didn’t I?).

Lutiya is in her village for the weekend, so we haven’t yet celebrated our family’s official Christmas. This week for sure (before Pan goes back to her village for New Year’s). We’re still working on getting her birth certificate. We’ve gotten a lot of good documentation together which makes me hopeful. I’ll know more later this week as to whether it’s enough or not.

No word on Pancake. We’re still collecting documents for the adoption process. We’re also going to see what we can do about adopting Nathan again. I mentioned how well Finland keeps track of its citizens, but more than that, we may not need the man on Nathan’s birth certificate any more. If his mother divorced and remarried, the new husband may be enough. We’ll see. We’re working on determining what it is, exactly, that we need from the parents before we try to track them down again.

Abigail hit her head pretty hard today, so the Abbott’s are in the hospital with her. The doctor says she’s got a skull fracture and they want to watch her overnight. If you’re reading this, pray for her, please.

Only other news I can think of is my laptop is finally on life support. The last USB port died for Christmas, which means no wireless, no external mouse, no webcam (i.e. no Skype). I bought this thing before we moved out here, so it’s done more than its share of good. But now, I think, it may be time to move on.

I feel like I’m missing something. If I think of it, I’ll let you know.

Here’s a quick rundown of what’s going on around here.

Sunday is Cindy’s birthday, Monday is Isaac’s, and Nathan’s was last month. So today we’re having a sort of joint party/playdate thing with lots of sugar (I’m taking bets now as to who will crash first: us or them; also when).

The Fantastic Emmet is coming to visit soon (and for a while, I hope) before he leaves for Uganda. That means we’ll get a lot less done, but we’ll be having so much fun who cares? We don’t know what we’ll be doing for Christmas yet, but I’ll let you know. Then in January my parents come, followed by a new Heine in February. So lots of visitors, one of them staying forever.

And in other news, I finally sold something I wrote!* It’s a fantasy short story set in the same world as the novel I’m working on. You can see the writerly announcement here. Feel free to ask questions in the comments.

Also, we owe you guys a newsletter. I’m working on that.

* Technically, I’ve already sold fiction. But that Twitter-sized stuff only goes for $1.20 per story. That supports half our family for like an hour.

Nearly all of us were sick this week. Cindy had it the worst, bed-ridden with a fever for nearly 24 hours, while I tried to fight mine off to keep our children clean and fed. We’re mostly better now. All the kids are fine, and Cindy and I are just trying to catch up on rest. Meanwhile, we’ve gotten almost nothing done.

We’re still working on the adoption process for Pancake. Not surprisingly, they need like a hundred embassy-certified documents so they can make a decision on whether or not we are fit parents. It’s like the process I go through to extend my visa every year, but much, much worse.

I’m also trying to track down Nathan’s parents so we can adopt him. Fortunately, Finland keeps very good track of its citizens. See? Invasion of privacy can be a good thing sometimes! I’ll let you know how it turns out.

Also, I’ve been trying to get an official birth certificate for Lutiya. She doesn’t have one — a common problem for children from the tribal villages — and it will cause her problems later in life if we can’t get one. Unfortunately, government laws and corruption have been making it difficult, but thanks to the Coast team I got in touch with some folks who specialize in this sort of thing.

So that’s where things are, except they’re not because we didn’t do anything but recover this week. Hopefully next week will be better.

I had Thursday all planned out. Leave at 8:30 am, arrive at the Finnish consulate when they open at 9,* grab a big brunch at Burger King, then meet some friends at 10 to play some Left 4 Dead.

Everything was going great. I didn’t get lost anywhere and my timing was perfect. Until I walked back to my car after Burger King and found a lock on the wheel.

“The police came by twice already looking for you,” said the owner of the nearest shop. “We didn’t know whose car it was, so they locked it.”

“What?!” It was ten minutes until 10. My friends would be at the game shop soon. “What am I supposed to do?”

Ever-helpful, the Thai man pointed at the sign on my car and said, “Take it to the police. Or maybe there’s a phone number. Here.” (There was no phone number).

“Where are the police?”

He pointed down the street. I didn’t see anything. At this point, I was remembering my experiences with Thai bureaucracy and thinking I wasn’t going to make it to the game shop. Maybe when I was done some 2 hours later, I could pick my friends up and take them home, like we agreed.

Even more frustrating: there were no signs on the street. I made sure of it when I parked there. There was not a single parking sign anywhere, yet everyone was parked on the left side of the street and none on the right. I thought it was because the left side was shaded in the morning. Apparently I didn’t get the memo.

I told the shop owner this, though not very calmly. I was mad. Again, in true helpful Thai fashion, he tried to say something about signs, but soon stopped when he realized I was right. There weren’t any. Not knowing what else to do, he left. Maybe he went to look for the cop who locked my car, maybe he just wanted to get away from the angry farang. I don’t know.

Two other shop owners watched this exchange. They watched as I carefully read the ticket and the notice taped to my car. No phone number. No instructions other than to take the ticket to the police station. How was I supposed to do that without a car?

I asked one of the other shop owners what I should do. I was still very angry, but I realized I had to do something. He pointed down the street. From an earlier parking ticket, I knew there was a police station in that direction, maybe a mile or two down the road. He couldn’t mean there, could he?

He suggested I take a songthaew, but I was in no mood, and my raging brain couldn’t be bothered to find the words for police station anyway. I walked, half hoping I’d run into the cop who locked my car and could take care of it right there.

It was a long, angry walk. I swore a lot (I do that when I’m alone sometimes). I looked for No Parking signs, but didn’t find any. By the time I realized the owner had meant the police station, I was more than halfway there and saw no reason to stop.

The last time I had to pay a parking ticket, there were 30 or 40 people at the police station, and it took me an hour. There was nobody there that morning so I walked right up to the desk and handed them my ticket. They were perfectly nice about it, even when I complained about the signs and how I had no way of knowing I couldn’t park there — realizing, even as the words came out of my mouth, that they wouldn’t care. Why should they?

I went to another desk to pay the fine, and was about to ask about the wheel lock, when the man said, “The policeman has already taken it off.”

Really? I asked him to repeat it. Had they contacted him? I hadn’t seen them do so. Did he do it when he’d seen the ticket gone? I wondered if I couldn’t have just walked back after removing the ticket and found the lock gone, without having to go all the way to the police station.

And yet, for all my anger and swearing and frustration, I got to my car at 10:15 and the game shop at 10:30. My friends were a little late anyway, and I only missed 15 minutes of zombie-killing. Had all that really only taken half an hour? What was I so mad about? And what did I expect to accomplish with my anger?

I was still mad at the injustice of it, but in the end, who cares? Not the shop owners. Not the police. Not the hundred other people who had parked on the correct side of the street. Just me, and my trouble was over.

There’s no point to this story except that anger is stupid. I’m ashamed at how angry I got. What makes it worse is the only reason I knew where the police station was, and what to do there, was because of a parking ticket I’d gotten previously — which I was also unreasonably angry about at the time. At least I didn’t do anything stupider, I guess.

* Trying to find Nathan’s legal father so we can adopt him. Turns out we’ll have to try the Finnish Embassy in Bangkok instead. Also, I don’t think the consulate in Chiang Mai employs a single Finnish person.

Question Time produced two questions: What should we name our baby? and Is it a boy or a girl?

The answer to the latter is we don’t know. We’ll tell you when we see it.

The answer to the former is we don’t know. I’m pushing for Serenity or Morpheus. I’ll let you know if I’m successful.

There’s another post coming later this evening.

From The Great Divorce, in which two men living in a sort of Hell or Purgatory discuss the state of the place:

‘It seems the deuce of a town,’ I volunteered, ‘and that’s what I can’t understand. The parts of it that I saw were so empty. Was there once a much larger population?’

‘Not at all,’ said my neighbour. ‘The trouble is that they’re so quarrelsome. As soon as anyone arrives he settles in some street. Before he’s been there twenty-four hours he quarrels with his neighbour. Before the week is over he’s quarrelled so badly that he decides to move. Very likely he finds the next street empty because all the people there have quarrelled with their neighbours — and moved…. It makes no odds. He’s sure to have another quarrel pretty soon and then he’ll move again. Finally he’ll move right out to the edge of the town and build a new house. You see, it’s easy here. You’ve only got to think a house and there it is. That’s how the town keeps on growing.’

‘Leaving more and more empty streets?’

‘That’s right…. The nearest of those old [interesting historical characters] is Napoleon. We know that because two chaps made the journey to see him. They’d started long before I came, of course, but I was there when they came back. About fifteen thousand years of our time it took them. We’ve picked out the house by now. Just a little pin prick of light and nothing else near it for millions of miles.’

Living in community is hard. Really hard. It’s hard enough to be married, share a house, children, money… To make decisions good enough for two people instead of one. It’s harder with more.

The four of us have a unique situation. We each have our own house wherein our word is law (more or less), but we’ve also got this huge, fenceless space between where we have to agree on what’s done. Especially in regards to our kids, who have no boundaries and love to run back and forth between the houses.

Sometimes it comes to a head. Especially for someone like me, who doesn’t like to talk about things. I’d rather work on my own problems, let other people deal with theirs, hope the problems go away with time… But every so often, those little problems grow and fester until they explode in an ugly mess of puss and blood that gets all over everybody.

It happens to me all the time. Heck, I can’t think of a single person I lived with that I didn’t fight with. Every couple of years, I need a reminder that I have to interact with people to love them; I have to communicate to be a brother. I used to think something was wrong with me that I’d always get annoyed with people, but now I know it’s normal. People fight, and when they share space or authority those fights need to be resolved or the relationship needs to end.

We can’t pick up and move like the shadows in Great Divorce, and for that I’m thankful. It forces me to learn how to work with others. God didn’t put us in a world where ending relationships was a viable way to live. He intended us to fill this world, run into problems of shared space, and then work them out.

The other option, which I’m constantly in danger of (I guess we all are), is to end up alone. Maybe not alone physically like Napoleon, but spiritually and emotionally for sure.

‘What was [Napoleon] doing?’

‘Walking up and down — up and down all the time — left-right, left-right — never stopping for a moment. The two chaps watched him for about a year and he never rested. And muttering to himself all the time. “It was Soult’s fault. It was Ney’s fault. It was Josephine’s fault. It was the fault of the Russians. It was the fault of the English.” Like that all the time. Never stopped for a moment. A little, fat man and he looked kind of tired. But he didn’t seem able to stop it.’

6:30 AM: Either Isaac or Nathan — both being in our bed with us — wakes and either (a) cries until we get out of bed, (b) goes to their room to find Mommy, who moved there so she could get some sleep, or (c) puts their face 3 inches from Daddy’s and says, “Daddy, downstairs?” over and over until I get up.

6:45 AM: Lutiya and Pan, being responsible young girls, are ready for school. Pan takes them on the motorbike.

7:30 AM: The boys have calmed down, eaten, had their diapers removed, and/or Abby has come over to play with them. Mommy and Daddy can eat.

8:00 – 10:00 AM: Mommy and Daddy try to accomplish things.

10:00 AM: Mommy leaves to tutor a friend’s children. Daddy stays home and tries, much more difficultly, to accomplish things.

10:30 AM: Daddy gives up on accomplishing things and instead spends time with, or disciplines, the boys as needed.

12:00 PM: Mommy comes home for lunch.

1:00 PM: Daddy leaves to write. Mommy puts the boys down for their nap so she can accomplish things.

1:45 PM: Mommy wakes up from the nap she didn’t mean to take with the boys and gets ready for dance.

2:30 PM: Isaac wakes up.

3:00 PM: Daddy comes downstairs and helps move furniture, sweep, and change the water for Mommy’s dance class.

3:30 PM: Mommy’s dance students arrive. Nathan (finally) wakes up. Daddy attempts to keep one eye on the boys and one on the computer. Daddy fails.

4:30 PM: Mommy’s dance class is over. Lutiya and Pan come home from school.

5:00 – 6:00 PM: Mommy makes dinner. Daddy spends time with one or more of the kids.

6:00 – 7:00 PM: Dinner, then chores.

8:00 PM: Struggle to get Isaac and Nathan into the shower (or, if they go in easily, struggle to get them out).

8:30 PM: Daddy begins the almost-literal song-and-dance show that Isaac and Nathan have come to expect before they sleep. Lutiya and Pan shower.

9:00 PM: Everyone goes to bed (or at least their room). Mommy and Daddy either talk, watch Friends, eat Secret Snacks, or pass out.

11:00 PM: Isaac and Nathan climb into our bed…