This is a picture from a week ago, when our friends Jim and Steven came over for a picnic.  This is just to reassure people that Shasta doesn’t obsess over the adoption twenty four hours a day but actually takes a few seconds each day to smile. 

This weekend, she smiled a lot, chez Jennifer and Jody. We sat by their tiny (five foot, inflatable) swimming pool and ate and drank and talked.  Their lovely little zoo (three chihuahua and two Chinese crested dogs) was so well-behaved, it was like something out of a Disney movie –each dog with his or her own personality but the whole group –I don’t know, Jody and Jennifer like a friendly Shrek and Fiona with a miniature squad of donkeys at their feet.  Well, that is, if Shrek and Fiona were played by two stars from the WB. 

Yesterday at work, I got into a political discussion with some co-workers.  We were discussing gay marriage and one of us said that no matter what most political and religious leaders would have us believe, most people really “don’t care.”  It was not, to his mind, the end-of-the-world issue people make it out to be.  Jennifer said no, she DID care.  She wanted everyone to have the same rights.  I said that I cared, and that it was a fairness issue.  “If you want to get married in a church,” I said, “then you have to play by the rules of the church.  But if two people want to go to city hall, then it should be for any two people.”  I reminded my co-workers that when my parents got married, it wasn’t legal in every state either –because my mother was Chinese-American and my father was white.  Around this time, an older teacher said, “I just can’t do it, I can’t be politically correct any more.  Look, I don’t like gays or towel-heads. There, I’ve said it.” 

By “towel-heads,” he meant not just Arabs, but the Asians who run several local gas stations.

This morning, I got up in my usual pre-dawn dark and thought: I really don’t want to go to work today.  I’m tired of my co-workers, my students, and thinking about adoption.  I’ve still got my health.  I just need to feel healthy. 

So I’m going to take a sick day and go with Shasta to the Y, where we’ll swim and read books.  I’ll climb out of the water and hold my wet face up to the sun.  The big bright afternoon will fill my thinning hair with summer.   Max said the other day, “I can’t wait until you get a kid and can’t work out every other day.  Then you’ll look forty!”

I can’t wait either, brother. But life is still good, all the same.