There are three things I really enjoy in life [gardening, cooking, and writing], and I got to do them all today, which made it a good day, even though there was some sadness, too. That's just life, right? The bitter and the sweet.
Early this morning, I watered everything in the gardens and was delighted to note how well my flowering plants are doing in the front yard. After Michael planted my new little rose bushes for me I was afraid they wouldn't make it, but I fertilized them and I am still watering daily, and they are coming back. The yellow one even has some small blooms on it. I have some blossoms on my side garden tomato plants and that is thrilling to me. I hope I can harvest enough tomatoes to make some marinara sauce and freeze it this summer. The one yard thing I hate to do is pull weeds. I decided a few weeks ago I would pull a few weeds each day and not try to do them all at once in any one particular area. It workes better that way and it's easier on my back.
After Mother finished breakfast and Alesia got the kitchen cleaned up, I made my pound cake and put that in the oven, in three loaf pans, then I made Ina's curried chicken salad recipe. Now, I don't much like chicken salad, but that is GOOD. I used dried cranberries instead of raisins. Mother helped me a bit and said even she liked it, and she really doesn't care for curried stuff. The revelation to me was that the fat bone-in skin-on chicken breasts I got at Publix turned out so delicious. All I did was rub them with olive oil, salt and pepper, and bake them on 350 for about 40 minutes. They were moist and delicious. I had to have a couple of bites that didn't make it into the salad, I have to admit. So, so good.
When it's so easy to make something so tasty, why don't more people cook?! I will never understand that.
Two of the three pound cake loaves came out really well. The third one, the bottom got a tiny bit too done, so I saved that for us to eat. I am taking the good loaves to church tomorrow afternoon for the High Tea.
I spent part of the afternoon composing the cover blurb for my new book, The Warrior's Box. That was an interesting exercise. Trying to condense the story into a few sentences wasn't easy. I enjoy even mundane writing tasks like that, though. It's like solving a puzzle.
Not everything today was pleasant, unfortunately.
I had to turn down a job interview today, for a website writer. I didn't realize when I sent off a resume what sort of website it really was - it's for an infertility clinic. I looked through the entire website after I was sent an email today and I thought, this is awful. Nowhere on the site was adoption mentioned as an option for infertile couples. Lots of photos of parents with cute babies. No photos of heartbroken people unable to conceive and scared to adopt. I've never dealt with infertility, but I know a lot of couples who have gone through that heartbreak, including my own brother and his wife. Urging people to pour thousands and thousands of dollars into treatments that have only 5-10% chance of success makes me angry. There are SO MANY babies and toddlers in foster homes and orphanages around the world who need parents. All the infertile couples I know who turned to adoption were happy with their outcomes. A child is a child, and every child needs love and care, and when you're looking into the eyes of your child, biology just really does not matter, even if that child has brown eyes and you have blue ones.
I am trying to help my friend Alla at Adoption Ark find an adoptive family for a 6 year old boy in Bulgaria who is missing both hands, a congenital limb difference. Most people won't even consider the boy, but let me tell you something - with decent prosthetics and some physical therapy I am sure he can lead a totally normal, productive life. Doesn't he deserve a loving mama and daddy?
As most of you know that read this blog, even casually, my daughter Alesia was adopted from Khabarovsk, Russia, in 2004. One of my fellow single moms in my Yahoo group for Russian adoptive moms shared a link about her recent visit back to Russia with her now teenaged daughter, to find the child's birthplace. I read the entire account of the visit, In Search of Krivuha, and wanted to cry. I could envision making a similar journey with Alesia one day. The little village looks a lot like the village Alesia is from, and it even resembles the poorer section of Khabarovsk. The houses look to be 100 years old, and there are huge potholes and garbage everywhere. This is not Moscow or St. Petersburg. Krivuha bears a much closer resemblance to the real Russia, the non-tourist places. The poverty is impossible to imagine if you haven't been there.
There's also great beauty though. Russia is a land of harsh contrasts.
This is Alesia the day I took her out of the orphanage, on the banks of the Amur River.