I am turning into a huge dork.

I love this stroller. It is soooo cool. I read online that this stroller appeals to the ultra hip parents.

Ok, so you're wondering what could possibly be that cool about a stroller. Watch this......

'Nuff said.

Helloooo...it's Sexy Time !

It is true, I finally sat still long enough to watch Borat. ( I managed to get the pseudo-ADD side of me under control just long enough ) It was very funny and I liked it quite a bit. The bigger picture, I believe, is that by and large Americans treat foreigners like crap.
Especially New Yorkers. I found it heartwarming that the Pentecostals tried to expel the demons from his soul and then gave him a ride to California.
That being said, I am going to try to be nicer to immigrants.

BTW, did you know that you can watch REM videos on YouTube. This makes me happy happy happy.
It also warmed my heart to see REM ( I love REM ! ) inducted into the Rock & Roll hall of fame. Actually no, it made be ecstatic to see them inducted. The kind of ecstatic like when you're a little kid and you hear the ice cream truck.

Side note: We went for Chinese last night and my fortune cookie read " You are the crispy noodle in the vegetable salad " I think this describes me well, no ?

XXOO Amigos !

Bunny

The journey so far....

A lot of people have been asking how the adoption process has been going. I thought I spend a little time going over details and such. I'm not quite ready to turn this into a " baby blog " just yet, but I will post updates periodically.
The time line so far has been as follows.......

• July 26, 2006 - General information meeting at Wide Horizons for Children in Waltham, MA.They had an excellent presentation that over viewed all of their programs.
• July 26, 2006 - Over dinner at Naked Fish in Waltham, MA Brock and I decide to apply to the China program at WHFC.
• July 28, 2006 - We mail our " application " with a nonrefundable check to WHFC. I put applications in quotes because this was the first of many, many applications had to fill out.
• August ?, 2006 - We get the real " application " for WHFC. Holy Cow ! We had packet A and packet B to fill out. I adoption circles this is called " paper chasing ". We had to get copies of our birth and marriage certificates. We had to get records of the cats shots. We had to get a carbon monoxide detector. We had to get forms filled out at the Dr. And so on and so on.
• Sept 2006 -Our completed packet A went back to WHFC.
• Sept 2006 -We are assigned a social worker, Jane.
• October 20, 2006 - We have our first in office meeting with Jane.
• October 27, 2006 - We attend the ( mandatory ) pre-adoptive parents group meeting.
• November 3, 2006 - Brock has his 1 to 1 meeting with Jane. He was a little bleary-eyed as we had gone to see the 10:30 p.m. Carlos Mencia show the night before.
• November 3 - 5, 2006 - We went to Austin, TX for Ryan and Sara's wedding. Very, very lovely wedding.
• November 6, 2006 - My 1 to 1 meeting with Jane. I was a little bleary eyed as we had gotten in very late from TX.
• November 10, 2006 - We complete packet B and return it to WHFC. Technically you are not supposed to start work on packet B until after you home study, but it is not like WHFC has spies. I had this done waaayyyy ahead of time.
• November 17, 2006 - THE HOME VISIT ! If you really want to see two usually very calm freak out, send a social worker to their house. We were, sort of, bleary eyed as we stayed up very, very late cleaning the house the night before. I have to tell you, our house has NEVER been as clean as it was on this day. Jane gives us the thumbs up ( we are suitable adoptive parents ) and instructs us to call the China program in Waltham for the dossier .
• November 2006, - We get the China program dossier instructions. We were able to get this done fairly quickly as most of the papers were copies of things we had already filled our in the initial application.
• December 2006, - I returned our I-600A application to WHFC. An I-600A is a Citizenship and Immigration application for the " Advanced processing of an Orphan ".
• January 17, 2007 - Little glitch with some papers and our I-600A is held up. We get all of our other papers notarized.
• January 23,2007 - Glitch fixed - our I-600A goes to the Citizenship and Immigration Office in Boston.
• January 31, 2007 - We get CIS approval ! Now we can get fingerprinted.
• February 9, 2007 - We get finger printed at the CIS office in Boston.
• February 14, 2007 - We are approved to bring an orphan into the U.S. !
• February 22, 2007 - Brock takes all of our documents to the Mass Secretary of States office for certification. Brock also picks Paula up at the airport.
• February 23, 2007 - We pick up our papers from the Secretary of States office, and freeze Paula to death in the process.
• February 25, 2007 - Brock runs a 10K in Hyannis. He was 3 minutes faster than he was last year !
• February 26, 2007 - We are at the last step ! Send our documents off to the Chinese Consulate in NYC for authentication. Or so we thought. We called WHFC only to find that the deadline for dossiers is MARCH 15 ! The turn around time for the Chinese Consulate is 1 to 3 weeks ! PANIC !!!!!!!!!! WE WILL MISS THE DEADLINE ! Upon further investigation we find that if you appear in person at the Chinese Consulate you can get your documents back in the same day. For a hefty fee.
• February 27, 2007 - Erica takes the first train out of Providence, RI to NYC. I was a little bleary eyed as we had to get up and get going at 4 a.m. I was successful in getting our documents certified and was able to take an earlier train home.
• February 28, 2007 - My sister comes over to take more pictures of us for our dossier. Brock gets them printed off at CVS while I compile our dossier.
• March 1, 2007 - Brock brings our completed dossier to WHFC. We got an email from the China team giving us extra bonus points for " creativity and neatness ".
• March 2, 2007 - Our dossier is mailed to China. Yeah ! WoooHooo !

And now we are waiting...................................

Why China you ask ? We both got a really good vibe when they described the program and we felt it was the right one for us. It was a very concrete and predictable program.

Why Lahela ? I liked this name from the beginning. However, Brock did not. We really struggled for a long time over a name. At one point I was even reading the boy name section in baby books for ideas. We wanted something unique, but not weird. One day Brock decided he liked this name. So, her name will be Lahela Bliss ( orpahage name ) Rafferty.

XXOO

Bunny

Today's post was going to be about garbage...

Then again, do any of you really want to know about our garbage ? Probably not. Long story short, Brock overslept and missed the garbage man last week. You can imagine that by last night ( after we cleaned out the fridge ) we had quite a bit of recycle and trash to go out.
I thought Brock was going to need a Sherpa to get all of it out to the curb.

So, no ( lengthy ) garbage post today. This was funnier, by far.

XXOO
Bunny

Who Knew.....

Our cat hates wind chimes. This is something we were completely unaware of until today.

We were cleaning out a closet and came across a set of wind chimes. Innocently enough I hung them on one of the 6000 random nails in our apartment. ( word is the previous tennant, our landlord's son Joe, had quite an elaborate video/TV/playstation set up with wires strung everywhere. Hence the 6000 nails. )

Whenever one of us would jingle the chimes the cat would FLIP OUT ! He would howl like someone was trying to kill him. Even when the chimes would stop jingling, HE WOULD STILL MEOW !

He is awfully cute, but not too bright.

Brock. The Man. The Mystery.

People who don't really know Brock have no idea how funny he is. He is the only person I know who can make me laugh so hard I snort. The other night he watched " The Departed " and ever since he's been obsessed with it. He's been walking around the house calling the cats

" cawk-suckahs " for two days. He usually follows that up with " Are you re-tah-did ? "

For those of you not familiar with Boston lingo " cawk-suckah " is the phonetic Boston-ese pronunciation of " Cocksucker " and " Re-tah-did " translates to " Retarded ".

Lord help me, its like I live with Mark Wahlberg.....

Other things you may not know about Brock......

1. He loves Ghetto crunk music. DMX, Public Enemy, NWA......you get the picture.

2. He changes the lyrics to almost every song he hears on the radio...for example just today Steve Miller's Abracadabra ( I want to reach out and grab ya...) was changed to " Abra -abra-cadabra, I wanna reach out and smack ya " Nice.

3. He can impersonate any family member (mine or his) dead-on. This is what usually makes me snort.

4. He makes the best mac n' cheese with soy milk and soy cheese you've ever had.

I'm sure I'll have another post about Brock again sometime soon. Until then.........

Hasta Mi Amigos !

XXOO Bunny

Hysterical.

If you are in need of a good, hearty laugh.......click here.

www.classicsquares.com/lyndesquares.html

Hardy Har Har.

WE"RE GOING BABY CRAZY !!!!!!!!!!!!!

We have crib bedding ! I don't know about you, but I am totally jazzed ! A few weeks ago Molly ( Hi Molly ! ) and I went to the Boston Baby Expo and saw the most exquisite crib bedding set.
I thought it was fresh and young without being baby-ish. Sophisticated, but not stuffy. You get the idea. The picture really does not do it justice. After the Baby Expo I did a little digging online only to find that the name of the pattern was " China Doll ". So you know I had to get it.
Anyway, the only place I could find it was at this very shishi boutique in Hampton Falls, NH. I called them before we drove all the way up there to see if they still had it in stock. They had one....and it was on sale. Lucky me ! I know this is beginning to seem like a dissertation on crib bedding, but please stay with me on this one. Brock and I are not really Suzy's Zoo-Winnie the Pooh-Twinkle Twinkle Little Star People and a lot of the traditional baby stuff makes me want to hurl. There was a set I liked at Pottery Barn Kids, but I LOVE this set.
So, we have crib bedding. Yeah !!!!!

After that we ventured into China Town in Boston to do a little exploring. We also got this very cute pink Chinese silk dress. Very, very cute.

Ahhhhhh...vacation.

As of 11:40 this morning I was officially on vacation. Mind you, we have no real concrete
" vacation " plans.
We did toss around the idea of going on a last minute trip to the Dominican. ( there were some super deals on travelocity ! ) Alas, we are too cheap to fork over the cash for such frivolity.

We are currently cleaning the house. I am going to address the pile of crap that has amassed on the kitchen table whilst by betrothed cleans the bathroom. Living the dream I tell ya !

However it has not been all work and no play. This morning we went out for breakfast and then to IKEA, with a side trip to the Red Cross in Brockton to retake my med certification test.

Going to back to breakfast......we went to the Mom n' Pop place down the road from us ( Goochie's ). Now, I like to think I am not too fussy, but apparently I am. I was trying to explain to the waitress how I like my eggs. I HATE runny eggs ! Hate 'um. I prefer my eggs not so much hard, but a little more than medium. So there I was, yammereing away to the waitress about eggs when Brock interjects with " My god you are a pain in the ass ! "
To which the waitress responds with " Hey, no domestics at table 12 " And we all chuckled.

I still got runny eggs though. Sigh.........

Won't you be my neighbor ?

Hello Friend ! Today is Fred Rogers birthday ! I used to LOVE Mr. Rogers when I was a kid.
( Isn't it funny how we use the qualifier " when I was a kid " sometimes ? Is there really anything wrong with liking Mr. Rogers currently ? ) But I digress.......as I was saying, I loved Mr. Rogers when I was a kid. My dad , however, had a different opinion of Fred Rogers. If memory serves me correctly I believe he used to call good ol' Fred " A Faggot ". Which would just send my mom into orbit ! I guess her reasoning was that calling Fred " A Faggot " was by far more damaging to my sister and I then Fred himself was.
Even though I really dug Mr. Rogers, I really found the woman who hung out with the owl a little annoying. And lets face it, if anyone was a faggot on that show it was Mr. McFeely.
Special Delivery ?

For your consideration............One never listens to Sade just because they like Sade. If you're listening to Sade it's because you want to get your freak on.

Good Bye Neighbor !

Bunny

Well Steph, here it is.

I finally got a blog. I've been thinking I should do this for a while, but needed the right forum.
MySpace just smacks of " My Super Sweet 16 " ( does that show just make you want to gag ! ) I I'm feeling pretty good about this though. I'll be posting ramdom crap soon enough.

Hasta !
XXOO Bunny