Novel: Still hate editing. Still need to do it. Bah.
I’m way behind where i want to be; i think i need to stop and figure out a better way to go about this.

Moving: I’m working on starting up a handmade jewellery business, which doesn’t seem very moving-related but if it works, it’s a job i’ll have regardless of where i live. I don’t expect full living-in-a-big-city income but anything helps.

Webcomic:Officially started. But i’m not marking it done until i reach twelve consecutive updates.

Two hundred sit-ups: Took the initial test on Sunday and reached an embarrassingly low twenty sit-ups. (I used to be able to do two hundred… bah.)

Researching adoption: Yup, still depressing.
In real-life adoption stories, a woman recently sent her adopted son back to Moscow with little more than a note explaining she didn’t want him any more. I could spend a long time ranting about this (as my mum, who has already been on the receiving end of quite a bit of ranting, can testify) but i really have nothing to say which isn’t already covered on multiple blogs by people who understand more about the situation than me.
In fictional adoption, i’m currently reading a train-wreck of a book which includes the cheerfully ludicrous line, ‘It’s not so hard to choose an adoptive family.’ (Lest anyone think the line is taken out of context, it’s said by a guy who is helping a rape victim choose a family for her son. Said birth mother clearly would prefer an open adoption, but in Badlyresearchedfictionland only closed adoptions exist. She’ll never see her kid, or meet his parents, or have anything to go on in making her choice but a few pages of dossier. It shouldn’t take a month of researching to realize there is nothing ‘not so hard’ about this situation.)

I am a total research junkie, but i hate researching stuff having to do with children, especially adoption… it just causes me to lose all faith in humanity.

First, anything involving children at all is six-degrees-of-separation (well… more like two or three degrees…) to child abuse, ranging from repetitive verbal tear-downs to brutal murders.

From the moment adoption comes up: ‘Oh, i would never do that! i want the kid to have my genes/i want to experience pregnancy/i want to experience raising my child from day one…’ Which is all great, if it’s someone’s personal choice, but i’ve actually seen people get really offensive about it. Like anyone who chooses to adopt must have something horribly wrong with them.
Well, the good thing about doing my research online: i’m already used to Internet trolls…

Adopting an unknown child is even worse. There’s people who will adopt a niece or nephew or godchild but turn up their noses at anyone who takes a baby through an agency or foster care: ‘ewww, you don’t know where it’s been!’ Fine, maybe the kid has an as-of-yet undetected genetic mutation or FAS or some other problem inherited from a crackhead prostitute mother. It’s a child, not an opened lollipop someone left on a subway seat; if the parent is prepared to take the risk… eh. More trolls.

And there’s people who troll over international adoption… apparently the ‘Made in the USA, WOOHOO!’ trend applies to babies, too. There is a certain logic to their argument; we have an overcrowded foster care system over here, why not take a kid out of it?
Oorrr… you could take a kid from an underprivileged country, where only the really really lucky ones (read: not orphans) have clean drinking water and basic health care (read: stuff even foster kids in this country take for granted). It’s like the pregnancy vs. adoption thing, if someone wants a biological or domestic child, great. More power to them. But to insult others over it? Is there nothing better to whine about in this world?
I actually saw trolls bitching about international adoption in the comments of an article about an adopted Russian child being beaten to death. Granted, it was really mild, by Internet troll standards, but still. GAH.

And adopting Russian children is an extra-special trouble because (as linked above) Americans seem to have a nasty tendency to kill their adopted Russian children and the Russian government is not keen on taking children from one home and shipping them overseas to a new home only for them to end up dead. Russians love their children too…
I don’t know that adopted Russians have any higher death rate than adopted children from other countries but the Russian government seems more likely than others to suspend adoptions when a murder occurs. Which i can’t really complain about, on account of it being one of those annoying ‘trying to prevent child-murder’ things.

blah. People suck.