Veeka's treehouse, curled around a plum tree in our back yard

See that contraption near my garage? That is Veeka’s new domain and her own little kingdom. There’s a very old plum tree in my back yard that was going kind of rotten, so I had several of the branches cut off a month ago. The severed branches had trunks that, if you sawed them a certain way, you could place a platform atop it. And so Veeka was constantly clambering up this tree, as she had gotten captivated about the idea of *reading* in a tree after I’d told her that is how I had spent a lot of my childhood. Oma had done the same thing as well. Anyway…I got the idea to actually put railings around this platform and make a little house out of it. I got a few people to help contribute toward the expense and got a carpenter to draft a plan as to how he’d build the thing. So the second photo is of Veeka sitting on these trunks, waiting for the ‘house’ to be built.

At the beginning

Well, this week was the culmination of her little hopes. All week long the carpenter was sawing away and bringing in wood and constructing all sorts of things and by Thursday afternoon, voila! By the time she came home, the paint was already on and, although she was told to wait til it had dried overnight, by 5 pm, she was clambering up the ladder. Today she finally had one of her little friends over to play in it with her and sure enough, they ended up transporting several potted plants up the ladder and somehow ended up cutting one of my prize irises in the process. Now Veeka has somewhere besides her room to hang out. She also got to go to the National Zoo this week with her class, so she’s riding high.

Midway through

Her mommy has gotten a temporary gig helping a friend do a PR campaign for a book, which will also go towards paying for that tree house and other bills. Freelance writing assignments are a bit scarce at present, so we are working on book proposals. One desired job possibility fell through but there’s another on the horizon, so never a dull moment. Tomorrow (May 13) is my fifth Mother’s Day – and my parents’ 62nd wedding anniversary. Next Saturday, which is MY birthday, I’ll be speaking at a book festival, plus some friends are planning a ‘female poker night’ which I must say I’ve never experienced before. This is the season of spending my Saturdays doing yard work, as now’s the time to get everything planted and seeded before the mosquitoes show up for the summer, making life outside miserable.

At last!

Veeka and I dancing at the Kazakh ball. Notice the Kaz flag to the left

Which is why I was sad to learn about the new adoption regulations that Kazakhstan has just come up with. They’ve been closed to new adoptions for two years, only to come up with really onerous rules that require a 30-day bonding period with your child. I “only” had a 15-day bonding period and believe me, that was long enough. Both parents have to be there for that, which is nearly impossible for some people who don’t have 30 extra days to sit in Kazakhstan. Plus, they’ve made the process a two or three-trip slog, as Russia has done. Three trips to that part of the world is thousands more dollars. Russian adoptions cost about $50,000 these days and it appears as though the Kazakhs are trying to get theirs to cost nearly that. And worst of all, they are limiting adoption to married couples, similar to the Ukraine. It is as if they took the worst aspects of Russian and Ukrainian adoptions and made them the new Kazakh policy. Obviously I could never adopt Veeka today under those rules. I’m convinced more than ever that these countries care very little for their orphans because of all the road blocks they’ve put up. The head of the adoption agency I worked with told me that she doubts there will be many adoptions in Kazakhstan under the new rules, as they’ve made it so much harder to get a child. Very few people can spend 2-3 months in Kazakhstan waiting for the bonding period, the court decision, etc. The hotel costs, if nothing else, really kill you. My hotel was $60/night, the cheapest place in town and 5 weeks staying there really added up. Plus parents without children have to be open to a child of either gender and, boys being much more numerous than girls in Kaz orphanages, you’re basically made to adopt a boy.

An obliging party-goer dances with Veeka

Life continues apace here as Veeka is learning to read. Instead of Dick and Jane, she reads sentences like “Cat got wet. Hen got wet.” Numbers are still a struggle, as are challenges like counting backwards from 31. She’s also studying three-dimensional shapes, so we walk about the house trying to find spheres, cubes, cones, cylinders and rectangular prisms. I don’t think I had that stuff until fifth grade.

Waiting to blow out candles

Saturday was my baptism of fire in terms of Little Girl Birthday Celebrations. I invited 16 kids. Half that came, which amazed me a bit – only one child from her classroom came and I’d invited nine girls. Fortunately I reached out to other girls Veeka knew from previous schools, daycare last year and the neighborhood and so we had 8 in all. Which was plenty considering there was just me and my long-suffering friend Karen to help. One thing I did not foresee was how nearly half of the girls – upon arriving – grew deathly silent and wouldn’t talk to anyone, mainly because the only person they knew at the party was Veeka. I managed to soothe the fears of most of them but one child was so miserable, she insisted on leaving even though everyone else was dashing about and having a good time. So Karen walked her home.

Poof!

Lesson 1 in party planning: Kids don’t tend to follow your carefully laid plans in terms of what outdoor games they play. My attempts at leading them through “Red Light, Green Light” and “Duck Duck Goose” lasted all of one minute and they reverted back to the game they really wanted to play which was Hide ‘N Seek. My plans to have them all make themselves bead necklaces succeeded a bit better – that lasted about 10 minutes, as did pin-the-tail-one-the-unicorn. Musical chairs took up a bit more time but by the time two hours had passed, Karen and I were wiped out. But Veeka had a lovely time and a few girls lingered afterwards to build themselves a fort in the back yard, so the fun times lasted most of the afternoon. Since the party theme was rainbows, unicorns, My Little Pony and butterflies, I made a special rainbow-hued cake. Please see below for the multi-striped batter I managed to whip out. And yes, those are lilies of the valley (aka muguet des bois in French) from our front yard on the table. It was 30 years ago this month that I flew to France to join Karen and her soon-to-be fiance Tim while they were spending the first part of 1982 in Paris. I had just left my job of three years as a police reporter in Oregon City to run around Europe for 10 weeks. I remember how the street vendors in Paris sold bunches of muguet des bois on May 1 to passers-by. The smell of those flowers always transports me back  to that era.

my rainbow cake

On Sunday, I had a booth at a local book fair called the Kensington Day of the Book. Last year, it was sunny and hordes of people came. This year, the temps started out in the mid-50s and drizzling. By early afternoon, it had fallen into the upper 40s and it was beyond miserable. I had borrowed a canopy tent from a neighbor and had brought my harp there to attract customers. Even sold two books. But finally I too packed it up – along with all the other local booksellers hoping to make some money – and dashed home and stood in a hot shower for a long time. I’ll be speaking next month – on my birthday in fact – at the Gaithersburg Book Festival from 12:20-1 pm in the Rachel Carson non-fiction tent, then selling books afterwards so if you’re in the area, please come! Hopefully the weather will be a lot more reasonable.

Mother Carol (the rector) and Veeka

Recent Easters have been pretty crummy weather-wise but this one came through with cool, windy and sunny weather. Some of us were talking about how Easter frocks are never made for the real weather that comes this time of year. What one gets on the racks are summery dresses when the reality is quasi-wintry weather. Anyway, the day before, Veeka participated in an egg hunt at St. Andrews where she happily collected lots of plastic eggs with stickers and some candy. We returned there the next day for Sunday service, followed by a leisurely afternoon with old friends Karen and Tim Forsyth and their son David. It was this time 30 years ago that I was about to fly to France to spend 10 weeks running about Europe. I based myself in Paris, where Karen – who was almost but not quite engaged to Tim at the time – was working as an au pair. It was a fabulous spring running around Europe after 3 years of working my tail off as a police reporter at the Enterprise Courier in Oregon City. And so, 3 decades later, here we are. It is good to have old friends. We even dyed Easter eggs; something I have not done in who-knows-how-long.

Our little egg collector

The aforementioned Wall Street Journal piece got 37,000 (!) hits the weekend it ran and that was before it was picked up on Drudge that Monday morning. The young serpent-handling pastor I wrote about was overjoyed at the news – and then this week he was laid off of his minimally paying job at the local supermarket. Am hoping that someone in the IGA hierarchy didn’t go after him because of the article. As he has a wife and 4 kids 5 and under, I am very concerned about him because there aren’t tons of jobs in La Follette, Tennessee. Also on the writing front, I got another Post magazine article published this weekend. You can read it here. I only had two weeks to put it together but it was fun – has nothing to do with religion but it does concern a new local university that gives out BS and MS degrees in animal studies.

Karen, Tim, Veeka and moi

Currently presents and cards are arriving on our doorstep for that big Day of Days: Veeka’s 7th birthday. I just finished making 21 pink strawberry cupcakes starting at 10 pm for her little classmates to eat up. Invites to her birthday party have already gone out and I’ve bought some of the decorations. I sent out 13 invites, most of them to her classmates and although a few have told Veeka they are coming, none of the parents have contacted me (except one to say her kiddo can’t make it) which is pretty stunning; what do these folks think the word “RSVP” means?? So I have no idea how to plan, how many adults and/or teens to ask to come by to help, how much food to buy, punch to make, etc. etc. Since I needed to get some branches of one of my backyard trees cut down, I had the lovely idea of putting a tree house up there. Veeka is dying to have one ever since I told her that I read books in trees when I was little. And Oma did the same thing. And Veeka is just starting to read. But there are no climbable trees nearby. Then I got the estimate for how much it’d cost. Sigh. It’s about $1,200. Yes, I know the materials are $400+ and the labor is $600+, but still…Am taking contributions for Veeka’s Treehouse Fund if anyone feels so moved!

New plantings outside the garage

We’ve had unbelievable weather in the past few days: crisp, golden spring days with blue, blue skies. Kind of nippy temps in the 50s but it goes up to the 60s in the afternoons with a cool soft breeze. Took Veeka to an egg hunt this morning at church, then lingered afterwards to help arrange flowers. Miss V is losing so many of her upper teeth, she’s taking on a vampire look. But with those teeth come visits by the Tooth Fairy which allow Veeka to buy packets of her beloved Trident gum. We’re still working on her counting abilities up to 100 and on Saturdays I am teaching her how to dust – about time she helped Mommy, no?

More tulips underneath the crape myrtle

Am also trying to get a treehouse built in time for her 7th birthday which is coming up. Tonight we head to a meeting of the American-Kazakh Association at some ballroom in Virginia. Decided to splurge on tickets as it’s the first ethnic-y thing I’ve been able to take her to. Have been reading “Inheritance,” the last of the 4-part Eragon series by Christopher Paolini – what a pleasure it’s been to lie in bed and read cool fantasy. And for your viewing pleasure, here is an article I have in today’s Wall Street Journal – my first in that publication – on young snake handlers. It was supposed to come out weeks ago but they delayed it three times until – finally – today. Enjoy it here.

Veeka next to our family cherry tree

Still, I am getting some nice money back on taxes (my tax guy way overestimated what I needed to pay in so I ended up loaning the US government more than $2,000 for six months) so we are solvent for a little while. Have been involved in writing lots of things, planning a birthday party for Miss Veeka (am finally breaking down and having one for her little friends; have managed to avoid doing this but she is turning 7) and of course recovering from the death of our dear Felicity. Haven’t gotten another kitty, as there still remains one: Serenity, age 19, who is crazed as they come. She left another pile of poop in the dining room today and is just generally an all around disagreeable feline these days.

Miss V with her new suitcase

New stuff: we endured 2 months of swimming lessons only to be told Veeka needs to repeat level 1 (!) which disgusted me to no end (not with her but her instructors) so now she’s doing karate on Thursday nights and loving it. At some point need to buy one of those little white karate “gi” uniforms. And last weekend, we went outside the Beltway for the first time in three months to Pittsburgh, where Veeka stayed with friends while I stayed at a B&B in Dilltown, Pa., while attending a meeting of the Appalachian Scholars Association, where I was delivering a paper. Lauren Pond, the photographer with whom I’ve been working on our serpent-handing articles, was also there to display her photos and we got 35 people to come to our session. Which, judging by the attendance at other sessions, was pretty good. I got a bit of hassle from some folks who thought I wasn’t being academic enough. I should have been nastier and reminded them I’m a journalist, not an anthropologist. We may have the last laugh; a publisher’s rep met with us to discuss a possible book so we left there happy.

Veeka and Anna

Veeka was also happy in that she needed separate luggage for the weekend so I gave her an early birthday present: a zebra-striped overnight bag on wheels. She adored it and pranced around the back yard with it and all over the house. She loved being with her friend Anna for the weekend having fun with lots of other kids in the house while her mommy attended boring old meetings.

One more nice thing: Since the beginning of Lent, I’ve been keeping to a new diet known as Fat Flush (see here) and I’m pleased to announce I’ve lost 10 pounds in five weeks, which is darn good for me. My jeans are quite loose and Veeka is happily talking about Mommy not being so fat (!) so maybe there’ll be photos at some point of my new svelte self once the last five pounds have been dispatched with. We’re two-thirds of the way there. And yesterday, Uncle Steve dropped by and took Veeka to the Baltimore Aquarium and gave her a stuffed penguin who looks like Happy Feet. Which is the movie Veeka is watching right now as I write this.

Veeka and her godparents

And I have no camera so am relying on friends to supply photos, which one kind friend has done when she took a picture of Veeka and her godparents when they were celebrating the birthday of their little boy. We were there til at least 10:30 and we have lots of fun. The balloons were Veeka’s favorite part. And the wonderful guests of course. My little one has turned into quite the little girl – today she and her friends were experimenting with Mommy’s old eye shadow and wandering around looking like Dracula but all was erased thanks to some eye makeup remover. The little princess still has a hard time going to sleep so I’ve unearthed a huge brown book that was old when I was a child (published in 1935) with photos by N.C. Wyeth. It is “The Anthology of Children’s Literature” which I have used to introduce Veeka to all sorts of fairytales. So she’s listening to “Thumbelina,” “The Wild Swans” and “The Ugly Duckling.” Some of those tales are a bit too exciting to induce sleep so I’ve turned to the poetry section from which I’ve been intoning rhymes I’ve not read in 45 years. Tonight I was chanting “Sweet and Low” and “Wynken, Blynken and Nod.” I’ve also unearthed William Cullen Bryant’s “To a Fringed Gentian” which was my favorite poem when I was young. Once we run out of fables and fairytales, we’ll start on “The Hobbit” in time for the movie at the end of the year. We’ve already read all seven of the Narnia Chronicles, btw.

Veeka says good-bye to Felicity

After Veeka left, I managed to get some fluids into the kitty but it was tough going. I called the vet to say my cat was dying and could I come in. By the time the poor thing was lying on the table at the vet’s office, she was breathing shallow breaths. Her body temperature was so low, the vet tech could not even get a reading. I had gone through this with my little Tenacity, who died six years ago and I knew that when the body temperature drops like that, it’s a matter of hours. We discussed options but it was clear the kitty was fading fast. And so at 9:35 a.m., Felicity died.

When Veeka came home from school, we buried her in the back yard with an appropriate song and daffodils cast on her grave. It had just started to rain. I do have one more kitty, Serenity, age 19 1/2, left, but my little tortoiseshell has kitty dementia and tends to howl at various hours of the night for no discernible reason. She sleeps 90 percent of the time, curled up behind the harp and I don’t doubt her journey over the rainbow bridge will come within the next year. I do miss Felicity, who was far more sociable and would often in recent months beg to be taken into my lap for some human comfort.

Veeka at the Naval Academy

Two days later on a Sunday, I went to the morning service at the Naval Academy chapel to hear a visiting speaker and to show Veeka the grounds. As a military family, we used to drive about the grounds all the time 40+ years ago and it was so strange to be back there. Veeka and I loved walking along the waterfront in the cold but sunny weather. Afterwards, we attended the baptism and celebratory party for Ashton Louis, the newly adopted son of Grace and Jeff Kuhner and it was a bash to end all bashes: More food, wine, champagne, balloons, party favors, a DJ, prizes and guests than anything I’ve been at for some time. Kind of took my mind off my little kitty. Veeka was voted the best dancer there – she never stopped bopping about the dance floor and everyone was amazed at her talent. Pretty good for a six-year-old.

The little one jams away on the dance floor

This past week, I’ve dug out my old brown book of Hans Christian Anderson fairytales and today got her started on “The Wild Swans” and “The Ugly Duckling,” two of my favorites. Up til now I’ve always had to have pictures for Veeka to be interested in a story but now she’s able to listen and taken a story sans illustrations. She’s about to lose her fourth tooth, so my little moppet continues to get bigger.  This weekend is being spent hard at work on a pile of freelance assignments that came in all at once plus try to keep to a strict diet I’m on (conveniently during Lent) to get off some pounds that have crept on over the years. One of the things I have do without is caffeine (!) as the Fat Flush plan makes you go off anything that keeps your liver from metabolizing fat and apparently all that morning joe slows those processes down. It’s all protein, fruits and veggies and lots of flaxseeds, flaxseed oil and cranberry juice I’m buying in bulk from Trader Joe’s. It’s stricter than South Beach! But the weight going down, am glad to say.

February flowers

Veeka continues to be her sweet self. She’s been concerned about my jobless state, so she said not long ago, “Mommy, I’d like to help you find work. I have scissors and paper and snowflakes and glue.” Hmmm. Maybe start a greeting card line?

Recently the little notebook in my car that registers how many miles I clock per gas fill-up ran out of space. I was amazed to note that I began it on Aug. 9, 1993 when gas was 99 cents/gallon! The summer of 1993….I was living in Pittsburgh and I had driven to Houston to attend a wedding and wrap up research on my book. I still had the golden Toyota my parents gave me after I got my master’s degree. By the following June, prices had crept up to more than $1/gallon. During the early fall of 1994, the gas stations marked on the ledger were along my 1,907-mile move from western Pennsylvania to New Mexico. By the time I moved from NM back to DC 13 months later, gas was about $1.19/gallon. Once again, the ledger showed my 2,172-mile drive to northern Virginia where I would live for the next 12 years. (I had told my aunt and uncle I’d be in the area 2 years, tops. But the job was turning out better than I expected and so I stayed and stayed and stayed). By this time, I was in a maroon Honda station wagon. Gas had gone over $2/gallon in 2005. There was no mileage in early 2007, as I was in Kazakhstan for 7 weeks. Then on Nov. 9, 2007, gas went over $3/gallon. On June 13, 2008, I paid $4.01/gallon. At that point, I had just bought my green Subaru.
Interspersed with my notations are notes for various articles I was doing on the road; when I had forgotten to bring a notepad, so grabbed my gas ledger for something to write on. I wrote down other things: names of cool childrens’ books, phone numbers of friends, email addresses, shopping lists and directions to various places. Also notations of when I saw cameras flash at my car when I had gotten stuck in the midst of an intersection in DC. I needed to note down when it was *not* my fault that I was caught in the midst of a red light just in case a ticket came in the mail.

Bedside lamp

By this time, I was living in Maryland, so the names of my favorite gas stations had changed. The ledger ended last fall, just after my 4,362-mile trip through eastern Canada plus a shorter trip to West Virginia over Labor weekend to visit the serpent handlers.

In case you wonder what this odd photo is to the right, it’s what Veeka takes of her room when she can get into my purse and sneak off with the cell phone. She’s learned how to press the camera button and snap away. What shall I do with this child???

Veeka's new flag

Many months later, I read on one of my adoption blogs stories of other single moms who also had no happy faces waiting for them at the airport so I realized it wasn’t just me who lacked for a welcoming party but to anyone who reads this, please realize that when you’ve been the air nearly 24 hours and you’ve just adopted a child, it really matters when people care enough to show up at the airport. Not a day or several weeks later but at the airport with balloons and nice signs. Those of us who adopt never get the congratulations that pregnant women get so this is our big hurrah. Being that I never got a baby shower, either, I decided two months later to throw a birthday party for Veeka’s 2nd birthday, which did attract a nice crowd. I’ll also say that Veeka’s Aunt Susan provided enough gifts for Veeka the Christmas before to make up for two missed showers.

"Where's Aslan?" she wonders

And so – five years later, it’s been a quiet winter here. Things will get a bit sparser next week when I embark on a new diet during Lent (not very spiritual, I know, but oh well) that believe me, is very much needed. We are now in late winter (as opposed to early winter or mid-winter) and I’ve been reading the Narnia books to my daughter at a very fast clip. We galloped through “Silver Chair,” “Prince Caspian” and “Horse and His Boy” and are nearly done with “Magician’s Nephew.” Then it’s on to “Last Battle” and we’re done. Veeka is slowly learning how to read and I make her sit down almost daily and go through one of her simple reading books with me.  She loves anything that makes her a bit independent and she’s really good at getting up on a stool to sneak cookies out of the kitchen while I’m upstairs working. She’s never hungry during dinner but she’s always hungry at other times. Some things don’t change.