Hi S,

I hope you had a good weekend.

I have been trying to get a hold of D for almost a week now, T and I are ready to make reservations at the campground and need to nail down the dates we have in mind with her.

I am concerned about the campground booking up for that week and I feel like I need to nail this down. I am a planner and I don’t like not having concrete details. We are planning on leaving 4 weeks from today. I want to check in on the 18th and out on the 22nd. But again, I don’t want to make reservations if she thinks that might be too long of a visit. I also don’t want to make it too short and I get overwhelmed with meeting so many people in too short of time. I want to be able to take an hour or two to myself every day so that I can process my feelings and thoughts.

Do you know how D is feeling about all of this? Does she have anyone to help her through this? I can only imagine how this might be hard for her, or how this might be bringing up old struggles and memories. I don’t want to make it any more difficult on her than it has to be or should be.

Are you comfortable or do you think it might help her for you to give her a call? I don’t know what your relationship is like I and the last thing I want is for you two to have a strained relationship just because I’m asking for insight. I also don’t want her to feel like I’ve gone behind her back or over her head. I just have no way to know how she is doing with this whole thing.

Any suggestions?

(emailed to D's older sister)

I have several fragments of thoughts regarding my feelings about my upcoming trip. TONS of what if’s have run through my brain; what if it doesn’t go well, what if we don’t get along, what if I get along with some of her other family members better, what if her boys resent me, what if she regrets her decision, I cant afford the trip, the bugs are bad, we get a flat tire, we have nothing to say to each other… the list goes on and on.

The feeling of not having any control of how the week will go has me obsessing about things that really are rather small in the grand scheme of things. Like; the route we will take to get there, what hotel we might stay at on the way, exactly what time we will leave home, when I will bring my dog to ‘grandma camp’. I feel like I need all of the logistical things worked out.

I have decided that we will be staying a bit longer than I had originally thought. I'm thinking that we will leave on Sunday, stay within 2 hours or so from our final destination. That way I can get a good nights sleep and shower before The Meeting. I have not talked with her about it yet, but I'm hoping we can meet Monday morning for breakfast, just the three or four of us (me, T, D and D’s boyfriend). Then from there we can check into the campground, set up and spend the day as just the four of us. This way we have a day together before she takes me on, what I expect to be a tour of the family.
By getting there on Monday, I hope to not have to meet large groups of the family all in one day, hopefully we can spread it out a bit over Tuesday and Wednesday so that on Thursday, my birthday, whoever comes out for dinner I will have already met.

...Rae

RaeAnne Marie
That was the name she gave me.

I know I have not talked about the fact that I am adopted at all yet. It is not always something that I think about. I have always known that I was adopted as well as my brother. I have always had the desire to find my birth family.

When I was 22 I started looking, I hired a case worker to go about the search in a legal way. As well as not scare the crap out of the biological family I have out there.

I used to send her flowers on birthday. I found a florist in her home town, told them what I was willing to spend and instructed that they be delivered ON the 21st, not the 20th or the 22nd, the 21st. The card never had my name in it just ‘thinking of you always epically today’. And then my cell phone number.
Last year I didn’t have the money to send the flowers, so instead I sent her a Facebook message titled, ‘because I couldn’t send you flowers’. She responded in 20 min.
Now, almost a year later T and I are planning a trip west to see her for my 29th birthday. The first one I will have ever spent with her.
I have not spent a lot of time cataloguing my thoughts and feelings about it all. I am excited, scared and cautiously optimistic. No big profound thoughts yet just fragments.

It Stinks In Here

I work in a corporate office. The closest ladies room to my cubicle has about 8 or so stalls. During one of the first few weeks that I worked there, I happened to notice a certain odor in the bathroom. I didn’t think anything of it. It is, after all, a bathroom. I’m sitting down, minding my own business when another lady walked in. The first thing I hear is, “It stinks in here”. Of course it stinks in here, it’s a bathroom! Now, I don’t know if she thought she was the only person in there and just talking to herself or if she thought she was trying to engage me in a conversation. Kind of odd, really. I am not the type of person that tries to talk to other people while they are in the midst of their personal time. Especially if I don’t know who is in the stall next to me. If, however, I happen to walk into the bathroom with someone I know and we happen to choose stalls next to each other, I might continue the conversation we were having prior to having my panties around my ankles. This is not the point…

The point is, if someone can’t relieve themselves of the used food in their body in a public bathroom at a cooperate office where we spend up to 12 hours a day where then, can they? Excuse me Nose, but did you want us to poop in the parking lot? Or maybe in our trash cans at our desks? Didn’t your mamma teach you that everyone poops?
I understand that there are some people in this word who will not poop in public and that’s ok. It’s up to you. But, in my opinion, if you gatta go, you gatta go. Why can’t I poop in a public bathroom? If it’s there I’m gonna use it, why? Because that’s what it was built for!
So in response to my fellow bathroom user, and her, quite obviously working nose, I let out a giant fart. My only other option was to let loose in my cube. Of course I could have gone ‘crop dusting’ past her cube, but that? That would have been rude.

Welcome back, right?

I know I haven’t written in a while… I was using this as an outlet, a way to talk myself through thoughts and ideas running through my head, a way to process.

The title of this blog and even my screen name are all about the names I am called.
Stacie; one day as I was giving my husband a hug he called me Stacie. He has never dated or even knows a Stacie, it just came out. Now when I’ve had a few drinks in me my alter ego comes out and she has kept the name Stacie. Not that I am not her, she just does and says things that I would not normally do. Sometimes she is my outlet, a way for me to let loose.
Stessie; my oldest nephew couldn’t say my name when he was little. Stessie is how it came out and now it stuck. Many of my family members call me Stessie. With the kids, I will always be Aunt Stessie.
Rae…