Oh wow!

Did you ever ride a roller coaster? The old classic kind where the first long seconds are spent chugging skyward, really slowly? You can't tell when you're going to reach the dropoff?

Then you feel the car start leveling and then start tipping forward?

And you get that delicious safe terror from knowing something huge and fast is going to happen, and that you can't turn back?

I don't think roller coasters would be half as much fun if it weren't for that moment of realization and of no escape.

I of course have no interest whatsoever in escaping. But I can tell you that the car is starting to level off and the dropoff is getting near.

The visas are in the passports and the passports are in the lockbox.
The BCIS (INS) fingerprint clearance was renewed last week and the I-171H is in the lockbox.
The flights between Albuquerque and Almaty are booked, the overnight hotel in Frankfurt is paid, and the tickets are winging their way to me via FedEx.
The catsitter has come and gone, knowing which fish and cat members of the household get fishfood (all but the black cat) and which members get thawed frozen peas (all but the Siamese cat) and shaking her head.
The neighbor is on the alert for unneighborly things.
My travel companion is on top of everything.
My employer is worried.

The mail is not yet stopped. The employer is not yet soothed. The bags are not yet packed. My will is not yet rewritten.

But I'm going.

I'm going to be presented to the babies of the Malutka Baby House in Karaganda, Kazakhstan on September 4th. Through the miracle of adoption and the grace of about a thousand social workers, notaries, public officials, and private sector guides, twentyfour hours later two humans will have gone from being absolute strangers to being lifers together.

We'll still be strangers, of course :)

God gets alot of thanks, too, for bringing this about. I just have had to pay fewer fees and stand in fewer lines and get fewer ornate and translated pieces of paper for Her office.

The placement agency thinks they can arrange Internet connectivity in the Karaganda apartment they have rented for me. So Mitch and I can blog from the comfort of our own temporary home. We expect to be there for three weeks. Nothing is guaranteed.

I have expectations, I know, hopes and beliefs, and these can be my worst downfall. But how do you do anything without some kind of expectation guiding your decisions and actions? If you step into the kitchen, at some point you should expect that you are making a cake or grilling a steak. So I think I am being reasonable when I expect to become the parent of a healthy child under one year of age.

I have reasonable, I think, expectations of what constitutes "healthy". A little underweight, a little understimulated, a little short of what we consider standard medical care. Nothing that can't be made up though. Nothing that will stand out still in ten years.

Young, too. Under a year. Still ready to bounce back, to relearn how to eat, be dressed, be diapered, be with an adult who is not just a professional caretaker.

That's what I expect. But I know better. I know that all I can say is that is what I am hoping for.

Anything can happen. I know this. If I were alone with any child on a desert island, I would be the greatest mom to that child. It's when we start comparing them to other children, other families, ourselves to other parents that the anxiety comes in.

So me and the mirror (sic) are having to work this one out.

I am going to be the luckiest and the most blessed of mothers (Sorry Mary, but I think it's me). No matter what.