The Obligatory "Sorry I Haven't Been Updating" Update

I haven't updated this blog in more than two months. I think I may have said this before, but I'm coming to appreciate how hard it must be for couples to update their adoption blogs. What is there to say when there's nothing to say? Absolutely nothing has changed. I'm doing all the things I'm supposed to and it just hasn't happened yet.

I've talked to my bishop about things because I've been discouraged. His advice wasn't anything shocking - focus on the things I can change, improve myself, and let God take care of the rest. And so I'm working on it. I'm going back to school in January if I can get financial aid worked out, and I'm looking into student loans that will also cover living expenses (rent, for instance) so I can move out and be independent and meet new people in a new place.

I don't want to say I've given up on adopting a husband. I would still love that more than anything. But I'm not obsessing about it anymore. Que sera, sera and all that. I'm trying to take the mental energy I used to spend thinking about my (lack of a) love life and channel it into something more productive.

I'm considering learning to knit, for instance.

Only I seem to remember giving knitting the old college try a few years back, and I also seem to remember sobbing, in the fetal position, surrounded by piles of knotted-up yarn. Maybe knitting isn't for me.

I could learn Spanish. I'm thinking that's a good idea, actually, because I was recently called to play the piano in my stake's Spanish-language branch, and the only Spanish I know is ... let's see, los nombres de los animales, y los colores, y un poquito de las palabras yo no hablo delante de mi madre.

(And please don't comment to correct my horrible Spanish. I know it sucks.)

My biggest problem in not focusing on my lack of a love life is my mother, whose most recent Facebook status update was "It's raining men!" I have tried to kindly explain to her that it's difficult for me to not focus on romance when it's all she ever talks about. I have done this more than once, and I still find myself listening to her talk about a dinner date with one man, a lunch date with another. And one of her more persistent suitors sends flowers several times a week, so there are visual reminders as well.

I feel like a jerk for telling my mom, basically, to shut up about her love life. I really do. But if I were on a diet (which I am, incidentally) and she was constantly talking about fattening desserts she'd eaten, it wouldn't be unreasonable for me to ask her to stop. I have to consider my own sanity, right? Such as it is.

Anyway. That's about all I've got to say on the subject for now. I'm working on a few actual, relevant blog posts. We'll see how that goes.

Mama Said ...

Sometimes I like to make my mother listen to me whine about being single. It's fun. For me, anyway. Not so much for her, but I can't be arsed to worry about that. One thing she likes to tell me to try to make me feel better is that there is an amazing man out there for me. She doesn't seem to know where on earth he is, and neither do I, so that doesn't do me much good.

She also tells me I have to be patient and that things will happen when they happen, not when I want them to. Not that that's news to me. I KNOW I have to wait. I can't just make thing happen because I'm tired of waiting.

So, this afternoon, I was washing dishes, and although I've heard that song about whistling while one works, I've never been able to whistle. So I had the TV on instead, on one of the music channels we get as part of our cable package. I prefer channel 925, which is Party Favorites. I started to sing along with one of the songs that came on halfway through my dish-washing, and as I did so, I thought, yes! That IS what Mama said!

No, not that there'd be days like this (my mom's an optimist), but that you can't hurry love. You've just got to wait!



Apparently, Diana Ross and I have the same Mama.

Waiting

I think I've mentioned it before (if not I know it's somewhere in my sidebar) that I am a birth mother. Several months ago, I could mostly only see adoption from my side of things, and I had a hard time relating to or understanding adoptive couples. Their perspective was distinctly foreign to me, and although I couldn't understand their position, I didn't envy them for it either.

Then a few months ago I decided maybe I needed to approach marriage from the same angle as couples who want to adopt. I wasn't having any luck with the way I was thinking, and if the hoping-to-adopt angle helped grow families of two into families of three or more, it could certainly grow my family from one to two!

And while I would never, ever presume to say that I understand the heartache and the interminable wait that couples go through, I think I've got a bit more sympathy now than I ever did before. Because I am doing everything I can possibly think of to keep myself occupied while I wait, and I'm running out of ideas and starting to wonder what exactly it is that's kept me from being chosen yet.

I've long since grown weary of people's suggestions for things I can do to attract a potential husband. But I've taken them anyway. And I've run out of ideas. Now I'm at the point of second-guessing even the most minute of my decisions and actions. I'm just not sure what more I could possibly do. What in my life is lacking? Marriage is a righteous desire. I pray every night that I can meet a good man who will marry me in the temple. Am I somehow unworthy? Has God found me wanting? Undeserving of a husband and children?

I'm not only second-guessing my decisions, I'm second-guessing myself. I'm at the point where I think, something must be wrong with me, or I would be in a relationship. My mother assures me that there's nothing wrong with me, that I am smart and funny and clever and a good writer. She doesn't usually say I'm pretty, which makes me think I fit the dreaded "great personality" category reserved for people who can't honestly be described as even okay-looking.

Again, I certainly don't ever want to diminish the pain that infertile couples feel. But I've always thought, they at least have each other. All these amazing couples who are certified with LDS Family Services might not be able to bear children, but they are sealed to each other for eternity. I've got bupkis.

It stinks. There's nothing I can do but wait. Waiting is the hardest part. It's interminable. I could be waiting for the rest of my life. Sometimes it already feels like I've been waiting forever. I don't know what else I'm supposed to do. And so I wait.

I Almost Forgot!

My brother was kind enough to point something out that I neglected to mention, something that is very important to me and my family.

My late father would never, ever forgive me if the husband I adopted was a fan of the New York Yankees. I realize these are fighting words, but in my family it's better to die alone than to marry a Yankees fan. So, let's add that to my list: must love baseball, but not the Yankees. A Dodgers fan would be a plus, but so long as you're willing to root for whomever's playing against the Yankees, it's all good.

Oh, Ireland ...

I had the idea in my head that I might adopt a husband in Ireland. Oh, not really. I'm not stupid. But I thought, wouldn't it be nice? And I do love it here, so how perfect would it be if I got to get married and live here to boot?

Alas. It seems that every citizen of the good old R of I has either a drinking problem, or a smoking problem, or a swearing problem, and quite frequently it's all three. Men here also seem to think that an appropriate way to let a woman know they find her attractive is to honk at her and shout suggestive things through the open windows of their automobiles.

Classy.

So I think I'm back to the idea of adopting domestically. Fewer legal issues to worry about, and I'll at least know where my future husband's family is coming from. There aren't a lot of big, important cultural differences over here, but I think, what if I did marry an Irish man, and his mother held it against me that I'm American? What if she'd had her eye on a local lass for her son to marry and she hated me for ruining her plans?

Really, I've dodged a bullet here. Ideally, I'll adopt a husband from a nice family who loves me and thinks I'm great. People here just seem to think I need a flatiron.

But it is lovely and green, and I'm going to miss it. I'd love to come back someday soon. I'm thinking honeymoon.

I swear ...

(rant alert!)

If I hear one more 19-year-old complain about how she's so tired of being single, I'm going to scream.

Shut up. You haven't been "single forever." You barely know how to drive.

Haven't Met You Yet

I'm sure y'all have heard this song a million times before, but I'm a little slow and I only just discovered it. It's by Michael Bublé, and it's called "Haven't Met You Yet." It's the sort of song that's written to make women swoon and feel all warm and fuzzy. But I like it just the same. I like the idea that an amazing, wonderful guy is out there for me somewhere, and that I just haven't found him yet.



But maybe one of you have met him already! Let me know if you think you have :o)


(I'll confess, I'm slightly irritated that the person who made this video used the word "loose" when the lyric is "lose." Lose, the opposite of win, only has one O, people. With two Os, the word rhymes with goose and means something else. I will shout it from the rooftops if I must.)

In the Meantime

When a couple is hoping to adopt a baby, life becomes an interminable, unbearable wait. Different couples deal with the wait differently, but many of them choose to do what they can to prepare now, so that they'll be that much more ready when they do finally become parents. The big thing to do is to decorate the nursery, painting the walls and buying furniture and bedding and accessories. I've tried to imagine what that's like, planning for a baby that may come in three months or thirteen years. I can't imagine it. I think it takes a little more faith than I've got right now.

I thought to myself, though, that there's got to be something I can do now to prepare for the husband and family I'll have someday. I've done quite a bit already. Since I planned on marrying younger, I took every opportunity I got to buy little household items here and there. I've got almost everything I could need for a kitchen already. I have, in fact, got quite the collection of things for the home I'll someday make.

But without an apartment or house of my own, I'm limited in how much of that I can do. There is, after all, only so much storage space in my mother's garage. So I've decided to approach things from a different angle - money. My first thought was to just save as much as I can for the future. But where's the fun in that? I'm still contributing to a more generic savings, but in a addition, I've started saving for a few specific, more fun little things. A regular savings doesn't end up being much fun. I saw in my parents' marriage how the few hundred dollars stashed away here and there ended up going toward a home repair or a new appliance or a car part.

In the words of Groucho Marx, pardon me while I have a strange interlude.

My mother was a hairstylist for most of my growing-up years. She had a shop in our home, which was nice. She brought in an income, but she was still home. I'm the youngest of four children, two of whom are male. Food never lasted long in our house, and we always bought the cheap stuff as a result. Pizza was usually out of the question because it was too expensive. But if my mom did a perm or two, there was extra money, and that frequently meant pizza. Because it was a home salon, when she did a perm, the entire downstairs would smell like perm solution. But to me, that meant pizza. I'm probably the only person on earth who craves Little Caesar's when they smell ammonium thioglycolate.

Back to my main point. I love pizza, but all too often, the money wasn't there. So I've started a little pizza fund. I figure, ten bucks here and there and before too long I'll have enough saved up to make sure that, for at least my first year of marriage, we can have pizza once a month. And wouldn't it be fun to rent a movie every week? $52 buys a year's worth of Redbox, so I'm saving for that as well. As I think of fun little indulgences, I start other mini savings.

It's not much, and it'll only end up being a couple hundred dollars. But it helps me feel like I'm doing something to work towards having a good, financially sound marriage. It gives me something to do, and it means that no matter what my future husband does for work, we can eat out every now and then. If we want to see a movie, we can see a movie. And when I'm pregnant with our first child, we'll be able to afford a 3D ultrasound.

For now, that's enough. Although, just because I haven't chosen paint colors, doesn't mean I'm not collecting color samples from the hardware store ...

The Hinckleys

One of the couples I love to read about is Gordon B. Hinckley and his wife, Marjorie. Theirs is one of my favorite love stories. I tear up when I read this quote from President Hinckley:

"I look upon my dear wife, soon to be 92 years of age. Her hair is white; her frame is stooped.

I take one of her hands in mine and look at it. Once it was so beautiful, the flesh firm and clear. Now it is wrinkled and a little bony and not very strong. But it speaks of love and constancy and faith, of hard work through the years. Her memory is not what it once was. She can remember things that happened half a century ago but may not remember what happened half an hour ago. I am like that, too.

But I am so grateful for her. For 66 years we have walked together, hand in hand, with love and encouragement, with appreciation and respect. It cannot be very long before one of us will step through the veil. I hope the other will follow soon. I just would not know how to get along without her, even on the other side, and I would hope that she would not know how to get along without me."

And another:

"I sat at dinner across the table from my wife the other evening. It was fifty-five years ago that we were married in the Salt Lake Temple. The wondrous aura of young womanhood was upon her. She was beautiful, and I was bewitched. Now, for more than half a century, we have walked together through much of storm as well as sunshine. Today neither of us stands as tall as we once did. As I looked at her across the table, I noted a few wrinkles in her face and hands. But are they less beautiful than before? No, in fact, they are more so. Those wrinkles have a beauty of their own, and inherent in their very presence is something that speaks reassuringly of strength and integrity and a love that runs more deeply and quietly than ever before."

How awesome is that? I hope and pray to find a similarly wonderful man to grow old and wrinkly with :o)

25 Random Things About Jill

1. I am not afraid of public speaking. In fact, I enjoy it.
2. I don't dot my Is when I write. I also don't cross my capital Js.
3. I have never tipped less than 30% in my life. I usually tip around 50%. I've worked for tips, so I 1) know how lousy most people are at tipping, and 2) appreciate how much it sucks working for tips.
4. I can play the harmonica.
5. I have never been to Mexico.
6. I don't eat anything that swims, in part because
7. I am afraid of fish. Horribly, pathologically afraid of fish. I think if I ever touched one I'd have a seizure.
8. I've had my gallbladder and my tonsils removed.
9. I would rather have a root canal than play a game of Monopoly.
10. I hate competition - anything more intense than a board game is too much for me.
11. I once caught a bat with my bare hands. Not the smartest thing I've ever done.
12. I wrote a cowboy song about my therapist's cat.
13. I am a licensed cosmetologist. And yes, my last name is Barber. Ha-ha.
14. I have been blogging since 1997.
15. I think pigeons are cute.
16. I've taken 4 years of Spanish but I can only really remember the animals and the swears.
17. I'm pretty much unbeatable at Super Mario World.
18. I have never seen "Titanic."
19. My current ringtone is "Fat-Bottomed Girls" by Queen.
20. My first celebrity crush was Kermit the Frog.
21. I am allergic to lavender.
22. I was 5'2 when I turned 11. I was 5'2 when I turned 12. And when I turned 13. And 14, and 15, and 16, and 17, and 18, and 19. When I turned 20, I was 5'3, and I'm still not sure what happened.
23. When I was 12, I wrote a musical political satire set to tunes from "The Phantom of the Opera."
24. I hate wearing long sleeves, even when it's cold out. I always end up pushing them up.
25. I'm really good at untying knots. I just read over that and realized that in the context of marriage, it sounds like I'm good at breaking people up. I'm not. I am good at untying literal knots - like, in rope.

What I'm Looking For

It's never good to have a list - that's something I've been told more than once and with great vehemence. If you've got a list, you could miss out on an amazing man, just because he isn't what you thought you were looking for.

I get that, I really do. But I also know this: marriage is hard enough as it is. You've got to know what your deal-breakers are so you don't end up in a relationship that's harder than it needs to be. And you have to have standards! I've learned that the hard way.

Here's the important stuff - things I think of when I imagine the man I will someday marry:
First and foremost, he will have a strong testimony of the gospel, especially the Atonement. He'll have to understand and appreciate that I am the person I am because of what I've done and been through.

He'll have a current temple recommend and honor his priesthood. He'll be dependable and mature but have a good sense of humor. He'll treat his mother with love and respect. He'll want children, and he'll be willing to make Roo and her family a part of our lives.

Finally, he'll accept that this is the body I've got, and this is what it's supposed to look like. I've had these hips since I was eleven years old. They're not going to get any smaller. Even at my thinnest, I had ... I believe the vernacular is a "ghetto booty." I'm okay with that. He will be too.

The less important things - a few ideas I've had floating around in my head:

I'd like him to be a few years older than me (but no more than 6 or 7 years older). I like a man who can tell a good story. And I can't imagine liking a man who doesn't like baseball. And while I'm not looking for a guy who's made horrible life choices, I think that life experience is important. It teaches patience and maturity.

I prefer an interesting face to one that is classically handsome.

My husband will love Roo. That's a deal-breaker. If he doesn't dig the level of openness in Roo's adoption, he's gone.

Why I Am Hoping to Adopt A Husband

My mother got married when she was 19. When I was little, I thought I would get married at 19, too. Then I got to be a teenager and I thought 19 was kind of young. When I was 17, my sister got married. She was 22, and I thought that was the perfect age. I decided I'd marry at 22, and I planned my life (and my education) accordingly.

22 passed, and I'd never been asked out on a date. I realized that I wasn't going to marry when I wanted to. I prayed to know where to go and what to do to meet people - to meet my future husband. The past few years have been crazy and busy ... and I still haven't met him yet.

I tried on-line dating for quite a while. Boy, did I try it. I have been on LDS Singles, LDS Mingle, eHarmony, Chemistry.com, Match.com, OK Cupid, and even a couple of dating websites specifically for geeks and techies. Every single one was disappointing, and after a few years I came to realize that wherever my future husband is, he's not looking for me on an internet dating site.

I have been going to singles wards for nine years now. I haven't always gone to every activity, but in the past year or so I've stepped up my attendance to maximize my odds of meeting the right man. I have gone to FHEs, firesides, institute classes, Break the Fasts, and activities on every level - ward, stake, and regional.

Owing to my lack of social experience, I've not had any luck in the dating department despite my being at every conceivable activity. I've talked to every married person I know and almost every single one of them meet their spouse through friends. So I've turned my focus to my friends - and, as follows, the world of blogging.

One of you reading this blog may very well be acquainted with the man I someday marry! And if you can find him for me, I will forever be in your debt :o)

Why Jill Will Be An Awesome Wife

Of course, every woman thinks she'll be a great wife. Or, rather, no woman wants to think she won't be a great wife. But my mother suggested that I make a list as a reminder to myself of what I have to offer. If any of it sounds like bragging, that was probably my mother's input :o)

Here's the list, in no particular order:

-I want to be a good wife. I'm willing to work at having a successful marriage - I know that marriage takes work!
-I have a strong testimony of the Gospel and especially the Savior.
-I'm thrifty. I'm not a spoiled princess. I can live on a small budget. I don't expect a lot, and I don't need a lot. I'd be happy in a trailer.
-I want to be a mom. I'm a good mother, and I make beautiful babies :o)
-I know how to work hard. I have a good work ethic. I've had a job since I was 13 years old.
-I have - and use - a temple recommend.
-I'm a good housekeeper. I like cleaning and I like having a clean home.
-I've got a marketable skill - cosmetology. It will save money and I can always get a job doing it if I need to.
-I'm mature and responsible. I eschew drama.
-I'm smart and, I think, rather clever.
-I'm witty.
-I've got a nice, hourglass-shaped figure (my mother made me put this one down).
-I've got great hair, soft skin and pretty eyes (my mother made me put this one down too).
-I love children and would like to have many of them.
-I'd love to be a stay-at-home mother.
-I love my mama.
-I'm unselfish. I can put others first, even when it hurts me.
-I can do hard things and make hard decisions.
-I'm low-maintenance and don't cost much to keep.
-I can fix a haircut, a car, a meal, a toilet and a hem.
-I am kind, empathetic, enthusiastic and loyal (mom again).
-I'm in therapy and have been for 5 years. I can work on and through my problems, accept responsibility for my faults and actions, and change myself for the better.
-I rarely trash-talk and I hate gossip.
-I am eloquent. I write well, express myself well, and communicate effectively (this is starting to sound like a résumé).
-I am a fairly decent cook. I am willing to try new foods.
-I'm a good citizen. I obey the law. I vote. My driving record is immaculate.
-I tolerate well the irritating habits of others.
-I'm healthy. I take good care of myself.
-I can sew things. I can mend and repair things. I can re-use and re-purpose things to save money.
-I don't have affluenza or a sense of entitlement. I wasn't raised with much, and I don't need much to be happy. I think I mentioned this one already.

I hope this list isn't too braggy. I think I've got a lot to offer as a wife and mother. All I need is the right man to make it happen!

About Jill - the Short Version

Age: 26
Birthday: October 23
Height: 5'3 (that's what my driver's license says!)
Eyes: blue
Hair: Auburn, naturally curly
Ancestry: Ulster-Scots, English, Swedish, Spanish
Education: AGS, Cosmetology license
Occupation: Personal and administrative assistant
Hobbies: Reading, writing, blogging, going to the temple, photography, yoga, bowling, going to the zoo, sewing, video games
Important to know: I had a baby girl, Roo, in July of 2009 and I placed her for adoption 9 weeks later. I've since been to the temple for my endowment.