I haven’t had a shower in two days – I keep forgetting, when I get home, to leave the water running at a drip, and the pipes are frozen solid.  It’s not something I’m accustomed to.  One wouldn’t think that a four floor apartment building one would need to do these things.  A single family home, maybe.  But individual apartments?  I have just enough water to make cha (tea) and brush my teeth afterward.  Necessary because Korean tea (except green tea and barley) is incredibly sweetened, which I don’t like.  But I do like it’s cinnamon aftertaste and how it has walnuts and pine nuts floating in it. Despite it being cold enough to freeze pipes, two fruit flies circle around my head, here because I forgot there were persimmon seeds in the sink strainer.  Even in winter, one must keep their food waste in the freezer.

The days of avoiding work are falling into a routine.  I come home, nap, check my email, it’s always about adoption, cut up a persimmon (the light, hard ones) or peel a mandarin orange, turn on the boob tube for sound/company, and spend time surfing, and it’s usually about adoption.  Just when I’ve taken care of all those electronic loose ends and am ready to tackle some adoption-related work, the computer sounds like it is in its death throes.  Sometimes, ten minutes after I’ve turned it on, it will race like a motorcycle being run through its gears, and it gets too hot to have on my lap.  So I close it up and watch t.v.  Sometimes I get sucked into a movie.  The other day, it was Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto, which was incredibly engaging, despite one or two really implausible scenes.  Then I try again, starting all over again, email, more adoption, writing, about living here in adoption land, getting in the mood to do some adoption work, only to fear the computer will blow up. Adoption adoption adoption.  I hate that it’s my only company.  I wish it would go away.  But there is nothing to replace it.

About this time I look at the clock and the whole evening has disappeared and I feel like a total waste of human life.  And then I want a snack, but am already in my blanket sleeper (I keep the thermostat low to save on money and because the floor heating is too oppressive) and going to the store would net me nothing healthy to eat, if the store is even open, and it’s certainly not worth piling on the layers for the trip.  I look for snacks, but of course I have none.  Sometimes I make toast.  It’s really frightening how long Korean bread lasts without going moldy.  It must be 1 part preservative for every part flour.  One time, I forgot and left some cooked lentils, covered, in a pan.  It seems Korean mold is orange.  A rusty, burnt orange color with a crust of white.  I wonder what Korean sourdough bread would end up like.  I remember Alaskan scrapple and wish I could have some.  I remember home canned salmon and wonder if I’ll ever get to experience that again.  I wonder if fermented soybean tastes different in Korea than other countries, as a result of cultures in the air that turn lentils orange and white.

I wonder if Kim Sook Ja has eaten scrapple.  I remember I got a possible relative’s email.  I’ve been so caught up in my adoption OCD that I totally forgot I need to email him and begin one of those, “you don’t know me, but…” letters.  I want to do this right now, but the computer is laboring again.

*****

6:00 am.   I wake up early because the faucet is running.  I return to bed, thinking about my up-coming open class and how there is too much practice and not enough new lesson, about my up-coming teacher exchange at a friend’s all-girl school, about what I’d like to change about my presentation, and how I should add about having to write the “you don’t know me, but…” letter.  I think about Steve Kalb telling me they had to protect Kim Sook Ja from me.  I think about Oregon adoption law, which states only the adoption agencies can make contact and they must do it by phone.  I wonder if that law was written about siblings trying to find each other and doubt it.  I wonder how much Holt had a part in writing that law.  I think about all the LIES Holt has told me over the years.  How they had given me EVERYTHING.  And then how, OOPS! I didn’t have everything, but what I didn’t have WASN’T IMPORTANT.  I think about how that WASN’T IMPORTANT has affected the rest of my life.  And I don’t even believe anything Holt has told me.  I don’t believe they’ve called Kim Sook Ja, or if they did they didn’t tell her the whole story.  And they don’t want to protect Kim Sook Ja.  They want to protect themselves. From me.  Because I’M PISSED.  Because I believe Holt International was/has/is obstructing justice.  My justice.  A crime was committed against me, and the criminal holds all the cards.  And if this crime isn’t against the law: it should be. I need to talk to a lawyer.