I Survived Pre-Court and All I got was this lousy t-shirt

Last night I got a call that pre-court would be at 9am this morning.  It threw me off having to be ready that early, practically the crack of dawn.  My usual action alert doesn’t come until 10am so this was a full hour earlier.  Plus I actually had to look, well, like I at least combed my hair.  So this morning was action packed and actually involved the use of a curling iron.  (As an aside, I have no idea how I’m going to kick back into gear when I have to return to work where Target seems to run on “farm time” and people starting arriving at the office at about 7am.  10am seems such a civilized start time.

 

Apparently, the chief judge thought so too. We may have arrived to see him shortly after 9am, but he clearly thought 10:30 was a more reasonable hour to start his day.  Inna, Rada and I filed into his office after an hour and a half wait. I had passed the time by showing Inna and Rada how to play scrabble using my trusty palm pilot.  I am ashamed to say it was a close game between the two non-native speakers and me, the English major.  *sigh*

 

Anyway, back to the judge’s chambers.  We sat down, he flipped through my file and first asked me about my family and specifically asked me how many brothers and sisters I had.  I almost lost the game right then. I was trying to say something coherent when Inna jumped in and saved the day. I’m not sure what she said, but he nodded and moved on.  Then he asked me a lot about my ability to afford this baby, given that I am single.  What if you lose your job, he asked.  And I thought – is he channeling my mother?  He actually got into the details of my mortgage payments.  Then he asked if I thought my job would fire me because I was a mom now.  I thought that was an interesting question. I said, no, lots of moms work and he said, “well, it seems strange to me that a corporation would work against it’s own interests by hiring women who are mothers”.  I obviously didn’t pursue it the way I would have liked to, but merely responded that many companies in the US are invested in keeping women in the workforce even after they have families.  Clearly, not in line with his thinking.  And with that, it was done. He agreed to accept the papers for my adoption and schedule a court date.

 

Hurdle #1 cleared.  Now, only the actual court appearance left to go. 

 

From court it was on to the hospital for an abbreviated visit with the kiddo.  Here is the visit in pictures and videos.

 

1) Feeding Time (note the copious amounts of milk still pouring out her mouth as she adjusts to my new bottles)

 

2) Sitting up progression:

Day 16_files\Sitting 1.MOV

 

Day 16_files\Sitting 2.MOV

 

3) Attempted to video our flying time. This is a hard angle to film by myself, but you get a flavor of her laughing while she’s in the air.  Kid is definitely the next evil knieval.

 

Day 16_files\Flying Video.MOV

 

4) Loving the kid

 

 

After visiting Belly girl, it was off to a celebratory lunch with Andy and Allison at the Rainbow Room.  I know, doncha just love that name? Sounds like it should be in a basement with smoke, lounge lizards and a frank Sinatra crooner.  Instead, it’s just a restaurant with slow service, good vegetarian pilaf (among other things), and good beer. 

 

After lunch, not being content to slink back to our respective houses just yet, we headed out on a big time adventure: our destination?  The Kokshetau Museum of History, evolution, world war II, the local weather, and of course, a few Kaz warriors. With some textiles thrown in.  And a yurt.” Or something like that. This is a very interesting dusty little museum that covers everything from Soviet era scientific discoveries, to local luminaries to a disturbing natural history section that seems to cover the evolution of man from ape (did this perhaps happen first in Kokshetau?), the discovery of gold and the thing Kazakhstan is perhaps best known for throughout the world… the flamingo.

 

Oh, you think I am kidding?

 

Laugh not my friends, laugh not.

 

 

Yes, that is a stuffed flamingo, native bird of Kazakhstan.  So I guess Flamingos… they’re not just for Florida anymore.

 

These next pictures are a little more of what I expected to find in this museum. After all, I’m no expert on Central Asian history, but wasn’t this the area that was run over back and forth by Genghis Khan and his type? 

 

 

Sadly for us, the capitalist spirit hadn’t yet caught up with The Kokshetau Museum of History, evolution, world war II, the local weather, and of course, a few Kaz warriors. With some textiles thrown in.  And a yurt.  There was no gift shoppe to while away a few more hours and most particularly lacking was the ability to buy a flamingo lawn ornament to remember my time in Kokshetau with .  I don’t think I could find one of those anywhere else in the world.  So sad.

 

PS- Sorry to everyone I’m taking so long to respond to emails.  The internet has been giving me problems and it’s all I can do to upload my journal entries. I am answering emails but only a few at a time!