Yeah, I’ve been pretty sorry about posting lately.

Anyway…

Last week while down in Tampa I went swimming with the kids. I had Madi in my arms in the pool. She petted…yes petted…my chest hair and:

Madi: what’s dat?

WK: It’s my chest hair

Madi: Why?

WK: Well, when boys grow up, they grow chest hair.

Madi: Nathan and Charlie have it?

WK: Not now, but they will when they get older.

Madi: And me too!

WK: No. No you won’t. Just the boys

I love her innocence.

I was playing LIFE with Nathan last night. It wasn’t his night and at some point in the game when I landed on a particularly good thing, he said, “That’s not fair!” I explained to him that if I were cheating, then yes, that would not be fair, but as it was, the randomness of the spinner caused me to land on that spot. There was nothing fair or unfair about it.

I felt bad latter. Why do I have to be so precise? And we wonder where he gets his need to be right.

We had an appointment with a lawyer yesterday. No, Jen hasn’t finally seen the light and is going to leave my sorry butt. No, this was about re-adopting Mei here in Georgia.

Here’s the deal. While in China we legally adopted Mei. We obtained her Visa, classified as a foreign orphan. When we landed stateside, she became a U.S. Citizen. I even got her a Social Security card. But…if we ever wanted to get her a Georgia birth certificate, we have to re-adopt her here in Georgia.

I know, kind of silly.

Anyway, there seems to be only one lawyer here in town that does this sort of thing and she is with a big law firm. So, that meant retainer…pretty sizeable in my humble opinion. So much so, I had to go to the bank last week to take out a small loan.

*sigh*

It’s going to be hard telling Mei why she won’t be getting a pony when she’s 9.

Back to the story. We met with the lawyer who was very friendly. She asked for a bunch of paperwork. We took our briefcase thing we lugged across China because it had all our paperwork. As she would rattle off what she needed, I would dive into our paper work to find it.

This went great until the very end. She had everything. She had the following papers:

Mei’s Visa
Mei’s passport
Our marriage license
Our Home study
Mei’s Chinese birth certificate
Mei’s certificate of abandonment
Mei’s adoption decree

That was all we had. But she was hung up on one thing. She wanted the translators credentials.

What the hell?

How the hell am I suppose to know that?

The person spoke Chinese and English…I don’t know.

She said she hoped it wouldn’t be a big deal.

It sure as hell better NOT be.

Look, all the papers she had were good enough too: fly to China, adopt a baby, get the U.S. Consulate to issue a Visa, fly home and for Mei to become a U.S. citizen AND get her Social Security card….none of those things required the translators credentials.

If this holds us up or costs me more money, I’m going to have to camp out at my Senators house until he fixes this.

Gah!!!

Remember when I wrote that I got a bike for Fathers Day? Well today was day one of my new exercise routine. I got up at 6 am and went on a 5 mile bike ride. It was great! I checked the rout and just two more blocks would’ve gotten me 6 miles. That is what I will do tomorrow.

The only thing? Yeah, my butt hurt bad. It’s a combination of not having ridden a bike in almost 20 years and having a large backside. Hopefully I will get used to it and my butt will shrink.

I’m still reading my WW2 book. It’s good, but it lacks adequate maps. I plan on using Google Earth to help me tonight after I watch Futurama. I swear the maps he does have, don’t even have north arrow. That’s like the most basic thing. I need to know which way is up…

Welp, off to watch my stories.

Later.