I defy the trends. I am what my husband calls the opposite of the unification trend. His career involves working with, writing and speaking about and reviewing the latest techno-geeky stuff which, right now, happens to be Unified Communications. Back when his work involved mostly anti-virus stuff, I refused to use AV software (still do). My theory on anti-virus protection can be summed up like this:

Don’t be an idiot.

Harsh, I know. But I’ve never had a virus. So there ya go.

Back to unification: this trend toward making every last thing you use be accessible in one single gadget or application. Yeah, I don’t like it. I have spent years failing at technological unification:

• I tried to use Outlook to do everything: email, calendar, contact list and to-do list. I love it for email, only sort of use it for my contacts and a few important calendar items and have failed more times than I can count to use it for my task list which is, arguably, what I need it most for!
• I bought a PDA several years ago - failed to use it, failed to sync it, failed to keep it charged.
• I tried to use both Mozilla and IE for my blogreader. Failed. Good ole Bloglines is the only way to go as far as I’m concerned.
• My cell phone? I like it to be a cell phone. I like it to make calls with actual buttons that don’t require a multi-lane auto accident in order to dial while driving. I don’t need voice commands or one-touch commands. I’m not planning on writing blog posts on it. I just like to make calls. While I’m out. I sure as hell don’t need email access, internet access or MP3 access on my cell phone because those features do not help me make calls when I am out on the road.
• Bluetooth is the bane of my existence. If I am too busy to hold a phone in my hand and talk on it, I am too busy to take the call. Period. And who ever thought of bluetooth-enabled CARS?! Because it is always so convenient, when you are the parent of 4 kids, to take your calls over speakerphone while you are driving down the highway! Not.
• My home phone - aka land line - it will never be replaced with my cell phone. Why? Because my cell phone, which lives in one of two places (my car or my purse), is for when I’m AWAY from my home phone. Never the two shall mix. If you call me and leave a message on my cell, you can expect me to get back to you the next time I’m out on the road because that’s when I’ll check it.

So you get the drift. I like my stuff to be separate. Compartmentalized. I don’t really want to have access to everything all at once and I know from past experience that I just won’t use it. I’ll use one main functionality and the rest will go to hell.

So all of that rambling to say that I’ve finally done gone and made myself a photoblog. I was tired of feeling both held back and selfish for wanting to post tons of pictures on my blog and feeling the need to balance my wordy posts with my photo-heavy posts. So for purely selfish reasons, I bring you:

Stepping On Legos: Behind The Lens

It has its own separate RSS feed (compartmentalization, people!!) so if you usually come to my blog by way of an RSS feedreader, you will need to add the new RSS feed to get updates on new photo entries.

I can post a million pictures that will probably bore everyone but me and I won’t feel bad about it at all! So come on over and see Addy’s 2 Year pics that I took at the Arboretum and see a very rare glimpse at my girl in smocking! Her dress was a gift from my Aunt while we were waiting to adopt Addison. I have been waiting patiently for it to fit her and then to have the perfect opportunity to take pictures in it so I was thrilled to finally be able to get some shots this weekend.

There will not be any pictures in this post for reasons that will soon become obvious.

I’ve been to a dog park before but never with my dog, Lilo. And never in Texas.

Let me preface this by saying that there are real definite differences between “dog culture” in the north and south. In Michigan, it is really difficult to find small or toy breeds to adopt or rescue. They just aren’t available. People seem to take the ownership of these small breeds very seriously and they are hard to come by if not directly from a breeder. They don’t seem to end up in rescue very often. What IS available? Labs and Golden Retrievers by a millions. Here in the south I immediately noticed that there are two breeds of dog: the toy/small breed and the rabid pitbull. That’s what people in the south own, apparently. When we tried to find a Golden Retriever rescue, they actually had very few dogs in need of rescue and the shelters were not overflowing with them at all. It took us about 8 months to finally find The Perfect Dog. Back in Michigan, it probably would have taken 8 hours. I’m definitely thankful for my Lilo - she was worth the long wait, to be sure! Now if I wanted a small breed I could have hooked myself up in a matter of minutes. Same for a scary-ass breed like the pitbull. The sheer number of pitbulls being bred and attempted to be given away or sold is shocking. Every weekend backyard breeders sit in their pickup trucks in empty parking lots and grassy medians with their crates full of killers-in-the-making, trying to offload them while they are still cute (except honestly I think pitbulls aren’t even cute as puppies). In case it isn’t apparent, I think they should be illegal as pets. I think it is unethical to adpot them out or sell them or give them away. I think its irresponsible to put dogs like this into a situation where they will be villainized for doing what they were bred to do. It isn’t fair to the animal, it isn’t safe for the neighborhoods or the children or poor guy who comes to read the water meter! I don’t want them in my neighborhood, I don’t want them at the damned dog park. Ok? Ok.

So today we went to the dog park with Lilo. I thought it would be really fun for her and it would prepare her to be kennelled next month when we are out of town. I didn’t plan really well for this because I failed to consider that if you bring CHILDREN to the dog park, the children need to be above  a certain age (in this case, 9) . But there were a bunch of other 3 year old girls playing inside the dog park so in a moment of sheer stupidity I figured I’d break the rules too and in we all went.

But there were these big dogs. BIG dogs. A rottweiler, a large mixed breed and two - count em TWO - pitbulls along with another bulldog of some sort. And all these tiny little girls running around who were like scooby snacks for these dogs. It freaked me the HELL out. So I held Addison in my arms. Fun.

Then I considered not taking the leash off my dog because really what I wanted to do was run the hell away. But I figured if she was attacked by one of these huge beasts, she would need to run and not be restrained by a leash. So I let her off.

It took me about 5 seconds to realize she didn’t want to be there any more than I did. She was totally freaked out by the dogs. All she wanted to do was hang out with any human willing to make eye contact. Then she wimpered over to the exit gate and cowered until I leashed her and we left. About 5 minutes later there was a huge HUGE dog fight. Who the hell knows what happened to the little girls who, by the way, were playing RIGHT in the middle of the dogs the entire time. And by middle I mean under foot, literally surrounded. I was long gone to the other side of the park (the human park this time) - all I know is that what I heard did not sound good.

We hung out at the skate park and the human park and that was much more Lilo’s style. She had a great time. One our way out of the park I noticed that the dog park was now empty (gosh could the humungous dog fight have caused an evacuation, ya think?!) and so we stopped to try again.

Lilo had a better time this time - she sort of sniffed around, briskly walked once or twice, acted excited about some tennis balls until the balls left my hand (this retriever has NO retreiving desires at all!). Meanwhile the adjacent *small dog* dogpark has two otherwise friendly dogs running around playing just fine when some lady drops in with her two Jack Russell Terriers, lets them in and - bam - dog fight. What the hell, people? If your dogs aren’t well socialized, keep them the hell out of the dog park! So all parties try to break up the dog fight (mostly unsuccessfully) and the owner of the nasty JRTs gets her dogs out of the small dog park so they don’t go back for seconds. Whew - crisis averted.

Except then she lets them in the big dog park! Gosh if they didn’t get along with those other dogs maybe they could come pick on MY dog. Or my kids! Frap. They immediately charge my dog who is now literally frozen with fear. I’m grabbing my kids and dragging them toward the exit as fast as possible and calling to my dog to follow. You’d think the owner of the JRTs would notice and intervene but that would be giving her way too much credit since clearly she doesn’t get that her dogs have some dominance/agression issues. Lilo bolts for the exit and into the safety of the van. So much for the dog park.

Is this how they all are? Why would anyone want to take their dog to a place like this? I think we’ll be sticking with the human parks from now on.

It may be back but suddenly life is very VERY busy. Most of these things were still around before, was I just ignoring them all? Or balancing better?

Balance. I think that may be a post-in-the-making for the Roundtable.

One of the problems with being inspired to write is that I am having a really hard time writing about nothing. If there isn’t depth it feels worthless. I know that’s silly - this blog was meant to be a living history of my adoption and later parenting experiences. It doesn’t always have to be deep.

So here’s something fun: yesterday a big ole SUV pulled into my driveway and two classy women with clipboards and pens came to my door. I was in my pajamas, the baby was naked. The house was a little messy. It was not the best time for visitors. I considered not answering the door at all but I did. This is the conversation that followed:

“Hi, we’ve come to walk through your house.”

?????

“We are realtors, is this 111 John Doe Road?”

?????

I tell them “This house isn’t on the market.”

“Hmmm. I have the MLS print out right here.  With a picture of your house. Are you SURE this house is not on the market? I don’t see a sign.”

I tell them “Yes, we’ve lived here a year and just extended our lease 2 years. I’m quite sure this house is not for sale” but really I am panicking. Because it is all there is black and white - that IS our house on an MLS listing from THIS WEEK.

I send them away and look up the MLS and sure as day, there it is! To say that I panicked is probably an understatement. I FREAKED!

The house is being sold, silently, as an investment. Our own lease is secure and is part of the terms of sale. The listing stated that the property is occupied and we should not be disturbed and also listed our lease terms as part of the terms of sale. So obviously this idiot agent made a huge categorical mistake by knocking on my door but damn, it scared me to think that right when we are FINALLY unpacking we might have our house sold out from under us.

I could go on and on all day about the benefits of leasing over home ownership. I think so many people consider leasing to be the Poor Person’s Home Ownership and are surprised to hear that we lease by choice as do many people in my neighborhood.  We have a large beautiful home in a beautiful neighborhood in one of the top communities in Texas. We could have afforded to buy a house here  - in fact the homes here are significantly less expensive per sq foot than the houses in Michigan. But why would we do that? Our landscaping is provided for us, our pool maintenance is provided for us. When something breaks (like the entire furnace, the pool filter, the roof, the garage door opener, the electric wiring and various other major and minor issues we have had in just the last year) we don’t have to stress it at all. We don’t have to deal with contractors or worry about what it will cost to fix. We sit back and it is *handled*. It feels like The Rich Life with all these *people* who *work* for us! haha. Add in the lack of concern over property taxes (a big deal here in Texas) and it is one huge weight off our shoulders to lease.

I have owned two homes and aside from the large LARGE (incredibly large) sums of money I have lost in the sale of both homes, the other downfalls for me are gigantic. There is not a single aspect of property ownership that appeals to me. And since the only true perk would be the investment angle and some top economists have since declared that home ownership is no longer considered an investment at all, I truly wish to never own again. I have also leased two homes and both experiences were BY FAR more positive than my home ownership experiences. And when the lease was up? I could just move on if I wanted. Or not! I didn’t have to sell or negotiate a buy. I just chose a new place like I might choose a new car and moved right on in. Oh glorious lease!! How I love thee!!

For a minute I thought my Love of the Lease had forsaken me. I freaked that, at very least, we might end up with a new property management company who sucked. But then I remembered that after we signed our last mortgage, it was immediately sold and then resold again. There is little assurance, even through home ownership, that who you CHOOSE to work with will be who you get to work with the entire time. I guess this is no different. Our lease is being sold like our mortgage, before it, was sold. We weren’t supposed to even know so hopefully it wont affect us at all.

Sometimes we consider whether we will build again when our lease here is up. And then we laugh becuase building is also SO not the awesome thing I think people (who have never built) think it is. It is hard work and a lot of oversight. And it is insanely expensive to pay for all of the little things (lawn, fence, pool, paint besides builders paint, landscaping, mature trees, window treatments, etc etc) that come, for free, with a house that’s been around for awhile. Of course the trade-off is that it is very hard to find The Perfect Home if you don’t build it yourself. There are MANY aspects of this home that I do not love, it will never be the wonderful house we left in Michigan. But it will always be lower maintenance, more enjoyable, less expensive and subsequently it will feel more like home and less like a burden.