So most of you know that I run a collaborative blog aimed at discussing and educating interested parties about issues of ethics in international adoption, Vietnam specifically. I don’t get paid for it, we don’t accept donations at this time. In fact every month I *pay for it* out of my own pocket by way of hosting the site myself.  It is a labor of love, a calling. I am proud of it beyond words, I am proud of my partner, Chris, who has worked her ass off to provide rich content while juggling her own large family and I’m proud of our contributors and commenters who have brought much insight, information, depth and clarity to such complicated topics that were otherwise only being discussed on private lists and forums. These things need to be talked about openly and publicly to effect change. I am so proud that VVAI offers that opportunity.

But somewhere along the way I lost my passion to write. I think it happened right around the time a bizarre trend started popping up amongst anxious and frightened PAPs (prospective adoptive parents, for those of you who aren’t hip to the lingo): it appeared to be almost a movement to silence supporters of adoption reform and ethics, especially if they also happened to be supporters of the hard work and changes our government was making to help clean up adoptions. I was attacked personally, my work was attacked, my family was attacked, my writing was hyper-analyzed and criticized in many ways not even imaginable. All from the same small group of five or so PAP/APs. The strategy seemed to focus solely on shutting down those with a voice or those offering others a voice. I guess this was their own version of “activism”. I try to empathize with those who come at me with hostile viewpoints: they were coming from a place of ignorance for sure, guilt in a big way and, most of all, fear. But some of these people were so openly hostile and personally critical that, without me even realizing it, my flame sort of flickered. It wasn’t until my partner, Chris, took a family vacation (read: vacation away from VVAI) that I realized how little I had written recently. Compensating for her absence filled me with dread which is odd since the thoughts and words were and always are flitting around in my brain waiting to be applied to paper or screen.

But it wasn’t until yesterday that I realized exactly what was going on. After an outlandish, derogatory conspiracy theory (whose only goal, from what I can imagine, is to further divide an already faltering adoption community) was posted to the largest Vietnam adoption email list, I got my Write back. I realize that I had let my own frustration and exhaustion get in the way of my own goals and affect my motivation and drive. But that ended yesterday. People don’t have to agree with me, they don’t have to support or visit my websites (not this one, not VVAI) and they don’t have to like me. But I have had enough evidence over the last year to know that the work we are doing is more important and more vital and more critical to the lives of orphans than I could have ever dreamed. This isn’t a debate: its work for protection of our littlest humans who have no voice of their own. My voice will not be silenced as long as tiny humans without voices are still being traded and sold like commodities and used for financial gain by unscrupulous American agents.

Although, like I said, the aim of that bizarre message seemed to have no goal other than to disrupt the community- it contained no helpful, new or useful info - it did have one powerful end result: I found me again! Ahhh. It feels so good to have found my voice again.  

And because I have my Write back it only seems fitting and kismet that my friend Melinda was inspired, at this exact same time, to create the awesome Women’s Discussion Panel. Melinda is incredibly organized and has amazing ideas that I know she will successfully implement to create a forum for women, by women, to discuss issues that are important and vital to women. To say I’m excited about this concept would be hugely understating the reality. I woke up at 6:30 am today thinking about it and if there is one thing I don’t do it is wake up early!

The other contributors are all amazing women with amazing voices and I know they will stimulate my mind in ways that it has not been stimulated - well - maybe ever! I can not wait. I constantly have thoughts and ideas swimming in my head and some of them really truly aren’t’ related to adoption (I know, crazy right?) and so often I don’t publish them here becuase, even though my blog is allllll over the place already, they would be truly out of left field. So now there will be a community for sharing these ideas and the timing could not be more perfect for me, personally. Thank you, Melinda, for spearheading this awesome idea.

 Expect to hear more from me at VVAI, on lists, on the Women’s Discussion Panel and within the community. I’m back.

Yesterday I did the Texas Two Step with a few hundred thousand other Texans. No I haven’t lost my mind and become all country, I’m talking about our state-governed right to vote twice! Yesterday Tony and I cast our votes in the primary election and then I returned at night to caucus. I have wanted to caucus every since my dear friend Amy shared her Iowa Caucus experience. I was super-excited to learn about this Texas Two-Step business. Even though Tony flew out to Redmond last night I couldn’t resist my constitutional obligation to cast my vote for the remaining 1/3 delegates the caucus in Texas represents.

If you watched any of the CNN poll results you might have heard a little about how freakin’ insane the caucus was. I can tell you about my experience. I had asked several different groups how the caucus would work so I could judge whether or not I wanted to risk taking my kids. How I was *told* it would work is this:

Show up, stand in line, sign in and leave.  I was told many people would be bringing kids and there would be cookies. Sweet. I love cookies.

So I show up and it is mass chaos, there is no line at all, just people huddling around. It was clear that these are the Die-Hards. They all know each other from political circles, they have all been activists together in some capacity. And then there was Addison and I At least I had the foresight to a) put her in a pull-up and b) bring my sling.

So after waiting awhile we were all ushered into a cafeteria and told to sit at the tables. Except they ran out of tables. I was lucky enough to find a table, thankfully. Then they explained that everyone would have to show their voter reg. card where we had stamped that we had voted earlier (no earlier vote = no caucus vote). Except…oops…they had underplanned for sign-in sheets by 100% So they literally sent some guy to go to his local house and print off several more. And we all waited.

Then they made some announcement how things would progress: first they would do early voters and those with voter reg cards, last they would do those who had no proof of vote (that they would have to look up manually for confirmation).  They would do it by table. I quickly calculated that we would end up waiting many MANY hours for them to get to our table. I started to panic.

But then a line started to form and a few people from my table whispered that this was the “voter reg card” line so I hoped in line and got in at the front before the rest of the room figured out what the new trend was. Did I mention it was total chaos?

Then after THAT line did not move for what felt like hours (but was probably only 15-20 minutes), they made an announcement that we should alphabetize ourselves and they would do it alphabetically which would make it easier to verify information. Except - haha - the people who voted that day (as opposed to early voters) were not alphabetized on the list but were listed according to vote time. But you have not seen chaos until you see 150 total strangers trying to alphabetize themselves in an overcrowded cafeteria.

Halfway into that mania, ANOTHER announcement was made to divide ourselves into early voters and same-day voters and THEN alphabetize ourselves and that people with children would have first priority. At this point I offered my child up for $10 per person

But as it turns out they decided NOT to give people with children priority or at least if they did, it sort of looked like early boarding at the airport where they won’t really say anything unless you come up and start bullying them into letting you on. No one with kids was called forward. I would have thrown a huge fit since I had three kids sitting home alone after dark AND bedtime at this point, but my last name is a ‘B’ and so I had it in good. I wonder how people handled it who had shown up early only to end up at the end of the line with their “z” name?!

So finally when I got my turn to sign, I filled in my info which took all of 20 seconds (why do people take 15 minutes to do this?! It isn’t that hard - name, email address, home address, phone, voter ID, chosen candidate and a few random check boxes for voter stats (gender, ethnicity, age, etc). I swear it is like people were taking the SATs the way they so carefully studied their one line for errors. Sheesh! So I was in and out in like 20 seconds after I finally got to sign.

In the end I was gone for 1.5 hours but I’m guessing the actual caucus (the part you stay for if you are nuts and have no small children, after the signing in) went on for many many hours before they were done.

Whew! So I did it and it looks like those who showed up for the caucus really made a big difference. It is interesting to me to see how different the caucus results are from the primary results. I’m glad I had my chance to vote twice.

And I am particularly feeling good about my constitutional obligation to vote since this week I have to exempt myself from Jury Duty. This is the second time in my life I have ever been called for Jury Duty. The first time was the week Noah was due and I exempted out of that one. But this time I was badly pathetically obsessively looking forward to it. I had dreams about what kind of case I might land, I had fantasies about spending days - maybe months - hanging out reading a book in silence with other adults! Maybe some people hate the idea of jury duty but to me it spells “Free Vacation with a Law Enforcement Twist” hahah. So it literally broke my pathetic heart to have to exempt myself out AGAIN. But Tony is already taking off most of this week for his Redmond trip and he just can’t take off more work so I can attend jury duty. Why do men get to have all the fun?!?!

Will they ever call me again for Jury Duty? Sob. A girl can wish.

First of all, isn’t she just sooo cute? Ugh, I can’t stand it.

Her name: I named her Mrs. Beasley. My boys who, by the way, did not want and were not interested in getting a hedgehog suddenly got all pissy about her name. They wanted to name her Amy. Five points to the person who figures out why. And five more points to the person who gets the Mrs. Beasley reference. So I compromised and now her fancy name is Mrs. Amy Beasley. Hehe.

Answers to questions from the Comments:

Her ears and skin are soft like a kitten, not rubbery.

Oh yes, she hisses, grunts, snuffles. Can I just say that I had a VERY traumatic childhood where “pocket pets” are concerned? I had cannibal gerbils, I had serious awful hamster bites that would not let go, I had a hamster that I killed with my bare hands during a freak accident. And even THEN I was always very VERY reluctant about handling the critters but now I have all sorts of PTSD about it.

Remember our Guinea Pigs? Oh wait - I never blogged about our guinea pigs? Well let me introduce them.

This is Buddha:

This is Bubbles:

The fact that I have such freakish pets probably means I have lost all rights to make fun of Nicole’s Ugly-Ass Dogs, huh? Anyway…

We got them almost 3 months ago and I still can’t handle them myself and GPs aren’t exactly known for their bad tempers But they are shy, they squeak like they are dying when you try to pick them up. It doesn’t take much to freak me the hell out. Snuffling hedgehogs are no exception. Actually, all things considered I think I’m doing really well. Once Amy is out, I can pick her up and move her around and hold her all by myself. Of course it helps that once she is awake and active, she could care less about being handled and we don’t hear anything but happy noises out of her.

I’ve had ferret trauma too. Teegan and Noah really want a ferret but we had one once years ago (before Teegan and Noah) and it was a house pet (had a cage but was litter trained, or so we thought, so it stayed loose in our home) and it made a hole in our boxspring, unbeknownst to us, and would go up there and use it as its own personal bathroom. When we figured it out, I was so disgusted beyond belief. Ew, ew, ew. And then one day we couldn’t easily locate the ferret and we feared it might have somehow gotten outside so we looked outside and found him. Except he was fatter and was acting weird. I brought him into our house to get him fed and watered and rested only to later find OUR ferret hiding in our house somewhere. So who, then was THIS ferret? I was pregnant with Teegan during all of this and very sensitive to things (smells, poop namely, freaky weasels especially). It was not a good scene. Teegan is 10 now but I’m still not over it.

Back to Amy….

She does not bite. I think hedgies pretty much have the temperament of a guinea pig, if you know much about them. In other words, they *could* mistaken your fingertip for the rest of the chicken you are hand-feeding them. Or they *could* get totally wigged out to the point of biting. But I think it is *exceptionally* unlikely. What they DO do is ball up into a spikey ball of pain Amy does not ball. She is very VERY laid back and friendly and we chose her specifically for those traits. The worst she does is cover her face with the front of her quills sort of like in this picture - it keeps her from being eaten when she’s nervous we are hunting her:

Hedgies have more sensitive heat needs than rodents - they aren’t meant to live in climates below 70 degrees and could hibernate which would kill them. Shouldn’t be an issue here. As for size, they don’t get much bigger than what you see. Ours is a “baby” (about 10 weeks old) but they don’t get huge.

My other animals don’t seem to care much about Amy but they are obsessed with her food which is annoying. Hedgehog food is similar to cat and dog food and they know it.

Amy is super soft and VERY VERY active and playful. She literally ran her wheel right off the side of the cage overnight. I had to reassemble it this morning - eek! When we take her out to play she runs all over us, up our arms and legs, into our sleeves. Hedgies are super curious.

I wouldn’t say they make a great FAMILY pet. I didn’t buy Amy for our family, I bought her for me She stays in my bedroom and I don’t really let the kids hold her much or anything yet. Dalton can handle her, Addison definitely can not and the other two kids are somewhere in the middle (mostly ambivalent and unwilling). She is still learning my scent and too many people make her very nervous. She isn’t that cuddly, she is very wiggly. But she is super sweet, very very VERY tolerant and laid back for a hedgehog. I love her.

How did we think to get a hedgehog? I’ve been talking about it for six months and looking and finally Tony and I met at lunch yesterday at a local exotic pet store that has a pretty good reputation in our area. Noah and Dalton were hoping for a Fennec Fox - his very favorite animal that he just recently learned is sometimes bred as a pet down here (I have my limits, there will NEVER be a fennec fox in this house, I assure you).  Teegan and Dalton were hoping for a nice Mountain Chicken which I would not be opposed to if it weren’t for the price. Noah said he’s settle for a marmoset - darn they were all out (seriously they sold the last one before we got there but again, no marmosets in this house!!). I guess you could say we like atypical pets :)  So the hedgehog was pretty boring to my kids, in comparison. I had also considered a sugar glider but don’t think that would be a good pet for our family.

So there ya go - Hedgehog 101. Or All About Amy.