Genetic ache?

I was listenting to a PBS review of the movie Juneau tonight--it's apparently a sensitive, important film about a young teenager who gets pregnant and places the baby for adoption, then goes right back to her boyfriend and her teenage life. The reviewer most identified with the baby and the "plight" of adopted children. They always feel, she said, a "genetic ache," no matter how wonderful the family who raised them. It's the kind of talk that raises my hackles as the mother of four well-adjusted adult adoptees. My kids and I have talked about it and none of them have much interest in finding the biological parents--one fears finding "poor white trash" and another is resentful of a mother who did drugs and may have caused some problems. Only one has said he'd like to "see" his family from a distance but doesn't want to meet them. Why do people persist in believing that happily adopted children still long for that biological connection?
We did a book one time, a sort of memoir, by a man who didn't know the identity of his father and felt pushed by his mother's creeping Alzheimer's to find out before it was too late. It was as though his whole being depended on identifying that mythical, long-gone figure. I simply don't understand it, and I often wish that people who take a look at happy adoptees. I guess it's like anything else--happy people don't make good copy. Wish I could think of some way to write about those happy adoptees, but my version would come out a memoir of some wonderful kids. Oh, they weren't perfect--I can recount a lot of low points, tense moments, etc., but the good outweighed the bad. Both girls went through that teeenage "I hate my mother" phase (boys are wonderful because they don't do that) but that passed. I think we were a normal, essentially happy family--especially for a single-parent family. So, hogwash to the genetic ache.
I've decided I want to write a book about Scottish settlers in Texas--and therein lies a brick wall. There is no information. Only today I learned it might be a stone wall--the masons who built the state capitol and the Tarrant County courthouse were Scots. But who were they? Did they bring their families? How did they adjust to life in Texas? I have no idea where to look for those answers, but I'll keep trying.
I do know that Scots did not come in colonies, like, for instance, the Germans. They were far too much determined individuals. That, of course, makes them even harder to trace. But look at all the Scottish names at the Alamo. There's a story there, I know it. I just have to keep chiseling, like a stone mason.
I made chicken burgers for supper tonight. Never had them before, but both Jordan and I decided we probably like them better than turkey. The recipe called for adding fresh basil to mayonnaise; lacking fresh basil--who would have it in February?--I added a cube of pesto and some chopped dill pickle. You put a bit of that into the chicken and slather the rest on a piece of bread. It was actually sort of hard to eat but delish. Jacob did not like it, but he loves to suck on a piece of lettuce and get the dressing off. He's got a sour tooth--loves lemons and that lemony salad dressing that Jordan and I make.

A $40 mistake and other tribuations

Last week the ceiling fan on the porch broke--actually I went to turn it off and the cord came away in my hand. I called Coty, the electrician, and he sent Travis to fix it. Travis tried several solutions valiantly but none worked. I finally decided I was spending more money trying to fix an old fan, with peeling paint, than it would cost to buy a new one. I bought a new one, and Travis put it in Monday. He assured me Coty would send a bill.
Tuesday, the a/c went out late at night, so Wed. I called Andy Rhinefort, the a/c man, and he sent someone to fix it. A simple matter--a fuse. The repairman gave me a bill, and I assured him I would pay it on my computer right away. I did, only I paid the a/c bill amount to Coty the electrician. So this morning I had to call Coty and tell him what I had done. He laughed and laughed but finally assured me he was laughing with me not at me.
Then this afternoon I noticed, as I was unloading groceries, that my front passenger side tire was really really low. I try to be a self-sufficient female, but I have no idea what to do about a low tire--how to put air in, how to measure it, etc. So I called Jeannie who said putting air in was foolish, we'd go to her favorite hole-in-the-wall tire place. So we did, and as we drove in two mechanics watched us--and laughed and laughed. It seems that when I had the car inspected not long ago, I threw away the inspection sticker and put the back part on the windshield. So after they fixed the tire, they re-inspected the car, which cost me another forty dollars. Plus there were two nails in the tire. I said I felt really dumb, but the owner shrugged and said to me, "It happens." They were really nice people and have secured my future business--though I hope I don't have any soon.
To top things off, I got a notice of default in the mail today for the ticket my old Toyota got long after Jordan and Christian had traded it in. Christian and I scrambled and sent in notarized paperwork to testify that I no longer own the car. Who knows what happened to the paperwork? The city of Dallas thinks I defaulted, and of course there's no phone number where you can get a live person. Those that know me are still laughing at the idea of me getting a ticket on Harry Hines Bouelvard in Dallas--I have perhaps never driven a car in Dallas in my life! Another nuisance to worry about.
I'm assuming I've now gotten all my repair disasters and goofs out of the way and can go happily about my business. All the children and grandchildren are coming this weekend, so I'll be cooking. Today I cleaned the garage apartment--well, sort of but better than nothing--and put clean sheets on the bed. Somehow I've lost a bed pillow out there and am wondering if it got folded into the hideabed.
Meantime I'm trying to keep up with my desk. Tonight I finally finished the reading for the online class--a disturbing novel, The Awakening, by Kate Chopin. I've reread the lecture on it but need to explore the outside readings. And I'm reading, bit by bit, the book How the Scots Invented the Modern World--preparation for the spring trip, but it's a dense book, and I keep worrying about how much of it I'm retaining. I wish I had my mid-twenties graduate school brain back. Still I'm fascinated by what I'm learning--how the Calvinist religion established our ideas of public education and the rule of the will of the people, how the Scottish Enlightenment shapes so much of our contemporary thinking. It's true--the Scots invented the modern world.
Lots of exciting things coming up--the kids this weekend, the next weekend the arrival for four days of longtime friends from Omaha, and then Jordan and I will take a weekend trip to Houston for Morgan's second b'day.
Life is good.