Summer sighs.

Both of us are sleep-deprived today. This is a regular occurrence in my life but not usually in Ted's. We both got in bed by 11:30--Ted was working the New York Times crossword puzzle while I was reading more of One Year Off by David Elliot Cohen about a couple who sell everything to take their three kids around the world for a year. It's good reading, and I recommend it (if you can get past the author being a bit hoity-toity ...or maybe it just bothers me).

There were fresh, clean sheets on the bed, air-conditioner on full-blast, ear-plugs installed firmly in my ears, and oncoming drowsiness induced by the book and time of day. I drifted off even with Ted's lamp still on. After a few moments, I felt a jabbing in the tenderest part of my side. It was Bang Bang wanting to sleep on me, despite having his pick of any number of cozy spots on our California-king size bed. He has quite a knack at finding the most sensitive part of our sides to jamb his paw into when he's settling in for the night.

I pushed him away and tried to go back to sleep. He was having none of it. When Bang Bang sets his mind on something, there's no deterring him, just like the time he tried to escape from being locked in the attic by ramming the door open with his face. Ted eventually turned his light off, and the battle for my side of the bed continued. I pushed Bang Bang away countless times, and Ted did his best to pull him away from my side as well. This went on for at least an hour. You may ask why we don't just shut the cats out of our room at night: because they, especially Bang Bang, claw, cry, and scratch at the door making it impossible to sleep. At least if they're in the room with us, they'll settle down somewhere on the bed and sleep too. I guess this is our way of trying out "attachment parenting," which some of our friends are big proponents of.

After some time, I heard Ted get up and go downstairs. I thought I'd still be able to go to sleep, so I turned on my left side while Bang Bang promptly nestled himself into the space behind my knees, satisfied at last.

Then I couldn't fall asleep. I got up eventually and found Ted writing emails at the computer. It was 2:20 am. Ted never has this much trouble sleeping. I went to the guest bed downstairs so that he could sleep not having to worry about waking me up, free to move around as much as he needed to.

I know that I slept eventually because I woke up in the morning. I couldn't have fallen asleep before 4:00 am though, which I thought was bad until Ted told me that he was up until 5:00. He'd gone back upstairs and worked more of the crossword puzzle, just not sleepy. Weird. He thinks it may have been the four shots of espresso he had yesterday.

So today is a hazy day. Ted's building railing on the deck, and I'm cooking pots of jambalaya and turnip greens. Ted's dad is coming over to eat dinner, something he sometimes puts up a fuss about, sometimes even saying, "Oh don't want any of your g*d*mn southern cooking!" When I told him two weeks ago that our friends Banyon and Melissa moved up to Oregon from Mississippi, he said, "Who do you people think you are, trying to take over our state with your backwood ways?!"

Ed's pretty good at pretending to be a curmudgeon. It's going to be an interesting two weeks in Ireland with him later this summer. I'm looking forward to observing Irish Ed in the homeland. He's going to so quickly fit in at the local pub, amidst the locals over pints of Guiness.

I did talk to our social worker today about the status of our homestudy. There had been a bit of confusion (on our part) about who actually proofs it, so we'd been thinking that Gladney currently had it. I called Gladney this morning to ask how the proofing is going, and our case worker knew nothing about it. After a very slight panic, I talked to our social worker who explained that, no, our home study agency has been proofing it for the last couple of days and that when they're done, Gladney can proof it.

Whew. That's a heck of a lot of proofing going on. It should be worthy of a Pulitzer by the time everyone's done with the thing.

As I was writing this, our social worker called to get the email for our Gladney caseworker so she could send it there. Yay. So it's officially off to Gladney, as of about a minute and a half ago.

Getting these final things done has really been feeling like it's dragging on. It felt strange to put our final envelope in the mail last week (extra passport photos), knowing this envelope is most likely the last one we have to mail. Now we're just waiting for our homestudy and dossier to be finished, both of which are out of our hands.

In the meantime, we're building our deck, forcing yankee relatives to eat southern cooking, taking our cats for walks at night (yes, it's true--all three go for nightly walks with us around the block--how awesome is that?), sleeping when we're able to, working crossword puzzles, reading good books, being inspired by pictures like this, and watching Oregon berries grow, like this one in our back yard.