I'm back

Okay, I’m back.

And now for something completely different, here’s an update of my life.

My grandmother (mom’s mom) died recently. The funeral was this last Friday in Kanarraville (just south of Nowhere). So many relatives tried cramming into my grandmother’s tiny house that my wife and I ended up on cots in a tent in the back yard – that first night, my wife actually finally ended up in the back seat of our car at about 2AM because she found the cot too narrow for her to sleep on her side, the floor of the tent too cold, and the floor in the house too crowded with snoring bodies… we found an air mattress the following evening. I enjoyed the funeral more than I thought I would – honest and touching (an almost impossible balance on any occasion much less a funeral, but it happened). And I thoroughly enjoyed visiting with my country mice relatives who are my favorite relatives to spend time with. The afternoon after the funeral, we hiked a narrow canyon in which most of the trail is in a stream bed – soggy fun.

My wife and I are trying to adopt (to inform any of the three people who read this blog who didn’t already know that). On Sunday as I stepped down from the stand after sacrament meeting, a friend of ours at church button-holed me and told me about a sister of a friend of hers… long story short, we met a birthmother on Sunday afternoon. She gave birth on Saturday to a healthy baby boy. She has interviewed three couples that we know of (including us) and she is working through a case worker through LDS Family Services. My wife and I really like this birthmother; she’s someone we totally feel like we could get along with and it wouldn’t be awkward at all to transition into an open adoption with her baby. As of yesterday afternoon, though, she had yet to pick a couple. Every time the phone rings, my heart dances with my uvula. We’re trying not to get too hopeful: the other two couples are apparently more closely connected to her family. Among other things, this interview has awakened my wife and me to the fact that we had next to zero supplies to bring a baby home to. So we spent some time shopping to get some basics – a few clothes, a few bottles with formula, some new-born diapers, and a carseat to actually carry a baby home in – just enough to last the first few days after a baby gets placed with us. We hope it will happen soon.

But until then, we’re keeping busy, which is good to keep our minds from obsessing about not having a baby yet.

So, this coming weekend, my wife and I are flying to Seattle. Ostensibly, this trip is for me to present part of my MA thesis at the Rhetoric Society of America conference. In preparation, I’m trying to figure out how much of the conference I can ditch so we can enjoy Seattle a bit for the weekend. I’ve already picked out some restaurants downtown that look good (and affordable). Of course, if the birthmother calls anytime before our plane takes off on Friday, we’re canceling the trip.

After that, I’m defending my thesis on Wednesday, May 28. I’ve gone up and down with my thesis. My relationship with my thesis really smacks of an illicit affair. I began the relationship excitedly – almost furtively – as I realized that not much had been written about the specific subjects I researched. A flurry of rendezvous followed which distracted from other personal concerns while I compiled research and wrote the darn thing. Arguments followed – with my thesis and other facets of my life – as my thesis threatened to consume even the normal parts of my life. Now, as the relationship comes to a close, I find myself largely at peace with the whole thing. Perhaps I’ll look back on this phase of my life with nostalgia and relief: it’s been fun and it nearly capsized me… Now, to do this again in a few years, just more intensely with a PhD dissertation.

Two days after my thesis defense, my wife and I will drive to Indiana to try to find a house around Purdue University. We’ll stay a week during which we hope to talk to a lender, find a house, make an offer, and start the long paper work process (which we hope we can complete long distance from Utah). Two nights ago, my wife and I took a community ed course on first-time home buying. I wish I had other non-cliched words, but the whole process of buying a first home simultaneously scares and excites me.

When we get back from Indiana, I’ll start teaching my very last sections of Honors 150 at BYU and Ethics at UVU. It really feels like the end of an era…

We drive out of Utah to move everything to Indiana on August 15.

Okay, so the blog. I have some ideas that have ceased to ruminate in my brain, so I will make sure they get out in digital form here. I aim to have weekly posts from here on out.