Saturday, February 25, 2006

Who watched it?

So did anyone else watch the Darryl McDaniels (one of the guys from Run-DMC) adoption story on VH1 tonight?

If you missed it, it comes on a few more times this weekend. Check it out here.

Wow. I'm pretty much at a loss for words - I can't belive I just watched someone on TV talk to their birth mom and then meet her for the first time. It was a little hard to watch at times, I don't know why. I guess it was hitting a little too close to home. I literally couldn't continue eating my dinner at one point because I felt so nervous watching what was going on. I am going to be a mess if any of this stuff actually happens to me.

It's A Constant Process, This Is

I started this post a few days ago and didn't really know where I was going with it. It was just a list of things I was thankful for, saved as a draft. Then I went to church tonight; we're finishing up a series called Turning Corners, and tonight was the last part of the series. It's making sense now...

I'm turning a corner. I'm going through something big right now, and I'm not going to be the same when I'm done and I've made the decision to learn from all of this, no matter what the outcome is. For the past few weeks, a line from a Bradley Hathaway poem has stuck with me: "It's a constant process, this is. Growing you into the person you are to become." It is a constant process, it just happens to be a little more intense right now than usual. Tonight we talked about things that can make you lose sight of what God is trying to teach you, and one of the things discussed was that instead of complaining, we should be thankful. Complaining is easy, but when you are thankful it puts things in perspective.

So here is the list I made, and looking back over it, it makes me see how lucky I really am:
My mom didn't abort me and she took care of herself while she was pregnant with me.

I have at least a little bit of information about my birth family. Some people know nothing, or worse yet are never told they were adopted.

My mom and dad took me to church when I was a kid - without my faith I think I would be a really bitter, angry person.

I'm thankful for all of the people that I've met over the course of my life and for everyone I've yet to meet.

I'm so thankful that my parents never introduced me as their "adopted daughter" or treated me any differently than my brother and sister, who weren't adopted.

I'm thankful I was adopted in a county where searching for your family is so easy. I've not had to pay exorbitant fees, and hopefully I won't have to wait for years for an answer.

I'm thankful for the kids that I'll adopt one day - if I weren't adopted myself I'm not sure that I would have considered adoption.

I'm thankful for all the lessons I've learned by being adopted: Every person has a purpose. People aren't mistakes. God loves everyone and can use anyone, no matter where they came from. God saw a need in this world and is using me and my specific abilities to fill that need.


When I think of all these things, I'm most thankful for the impact my adoption has had on my faith in God. The two are intertwined in such a way that I don't know who I would be without one or the other. Would I believe in God if I hadn't been adopted? Could I handle the concept of being adopted without God? I don't know. But I do know that I have a choice - to be bitter and angry which accomplishes nothing or to be thankful and try to learn something from my circumstances. It's not cut and dry - sometimes I am angry, bitter, sad and jealous. But I'm trying to learn.

Friday, February 24, 2006

Take Care

Since I've started searching for my birth mom, I've found myself thinking about both the worst-case and the best-case scenarios. It is really scary to be this out of control of a situation; one minute I'm thinking about what it will be like to meet my mom and another minute I'm trying to figure out how I'll react when I find out she doesn't want to contact me.

Someone asked me the other night if I was prepared for what it would be like if my mom doesn't want to contact me. I thought for a second and told her no. I don't know how you could be prepared for that. I've thought about it. I've thought about how I won't have any idea what to say to anyone who asks me about it. I've thought about what I would write on this blog. I've thought about whether I'd be able to go to work that day. But thinking about those things doesn't prepare you.

The other day I was listening to Copeland's album, Beneath Medicine Tree (one of my favorites, highly recommended), while my mind was racing through possible outcomes that this search could have. I'm not sure if this happens to anyone else, but sometimes when I'm listening to music, something clicks and the lyrics suddenly jump out at me and I "get it":
Don't lift a finger, let Me show you
The only way to let this go
Don't lift a finger, let Me hold you
Hold you here until the pain it has all gone
I'll take care of you
Have faith that when you call My name
I'll be there, I'll be right there

I've learned a lot about adoption, myself and faith over the past few weeks. Last week, through this song, I learned to just stop worrying about it. There's nothing I can do to change the outcome of all of this, and I know I'm not alone - I have a supportive husband, an amazing group of friends, a group of bloggers who really do know exactly how I feel, and most importantly the promise that God will be there with me - to take care of me. So I just need to let it go. Instead of worrying about it, I'm starting to do something I've never done before - praying for my birth mom.

I think it was a combination of being so convinced that adoption wasn't supposed to be discussed and the feeling that my birth mom wasn't a real person that made me never even consider praying for her. That is really weird - the first time you talk to God about your mom. Praying for her is a little scary, too, though, because it makes her seem even more real, but it is so much less stressful to pray for her than to worry about what her reaction will be. If you pray, maybe you could say one for her, too.

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

A Thought

Growing up, I thought about being adopted. I don't remember how often I thought about it, but when it did cross my mind I thought about it in great detail. You'd think that in twenty six years, I'd have thought of everything. I'm quickly learning that I didn't think of everything. Here's something that has blown my mind over the past few days...

this
and
this

Holy crap - there could be a picture of me and my mom out there somewhere? It had never occurred to me that anyone except maybe the hospital had a picture of me before I was adopted at four months old. Is there a picture of me hidden away in a jewelery box or an attic? Might I one day be able to see what I looked like when I was born? It's pretty crazy to think about...

Saturday, February 18, 2006

The Tipping Point

I just finished reading a book called The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. What I appreciate about The Tipping Point was how the ideas that were being communicated were supported by data. I am not one who enjoys spending hours reading about someone's speculations. I would rather sit down and spend hours formulating my own speculation and theories, I guess. I don't generally read for pleasure, I read for information.

In my adoption reading thus far, it seems like books are either based on the author's personal opinion with very little data, like the writing of Sherrie Eldrige, or as in the case of Journey of the Adopted Self by Betty Jean Lifton, it seems as though the data is based on a subset of a minority of adoptees that are not the norm. Both kinds of books are fine - and both are needed. I've been pleasantly surprised at how much I've enjoyed reading other people's opinions on adoption, even though the books tend to deal with abstract ideas like emotions - that can't be quantified or proven. There is also relevance in books, like Lifton's, that address the needs of adoptees who have deep psychological issues as a result of their adoptions that may be a part of why they act out in harmful, disturbing ways.

I guess what I'm getting at is that when I read, I am a skeptic. You can postulate all you want, but unless you've got some numbers, I might not believe you.

Back to The Tipping Point.

The Tipping Point isn't an adoption book, rather, its a book about social behavior that has some business applications, which is why I was reading it. However, as I came to the end, it actually talked about adoption, and since the purpose of this book wasn't to appeal to birth moms, adoptees, or adoptive parents, I see the author as an unbiased source of information about adoption.

Gladwell begins to address the issue of nature versus nurture which has always been fascinating to me, as it probably is with most adoptees. He writes about the Colorado Adoption Project of the 1970s. They studied 245 babies who had been given up for adoption by following them through the years and administering personality and intelligence tests. The adoptive parents took the same tests. As a control, they also administered the tests to sets of parents and their biological children. The biological children scored similarly to their parents. To quote Gladwell:
For the adopted kids, however, the results were downright strange. Their scores have nothing whatsoever in common with their adoptive parents: these children are no more similar in their personality or intellectual skills to the people who raised them, fed them, clothed them, read to them, taught them, and loved them for sixteen years than they are to any two adults taken at random off the streets.

Wow. With all the reading about adoption that I've done over the past few months, its odd that I've found what I find to be the most interesting study highlighted in a book that I didn't even know would mention adoption! Sure, everyone would guess that this were the case, that bio kids are more like their parents than adopted kids, but like I said, I'm a skeptic, so until your prove it to me, I probably won't fully believe it.

Even more interesting is the conclusion of this study. Gladwell wasn't trying to discredit the "nurture" argument, but rather, where the environmental impact actually comes from. He goes on to provide compelling data to suggest that children are actually more influenced by their peers than they are their parents.

The whole thing was quite interesting for me to read. He really hits the nail on the head - it sometimes does feel like my parents are two random people off the street, because essentially they are - biologically they are probably no more similar to me than any of you reading this blog right now. The difference is they invested their time, money and love into my development. But it still feels random.

The idea of environmental influence coming from peers is completely accurate in my case. Once I was old enough to go to friends' houses to spend the night, I was never at home, I always wanted to be at a friend's house. I have always had the tendency to elevate my friends to "family" status if that makes any sense. This week, I really identified with something another adoptee wrote on her blog (which you should definitely check out here):
When it comes to my family I feel disconnected and displaced. I feel very much connected to my husband and friends.

I can really relate to that. It isn't that there is a lack of love for my family, its just that there is a lack of similarity with them, and I've been able to find that similarity to some degree elsewhere - my friends.

Funny how you sometimes learn new things in the least likely of places...

Friday, February 17, 2006

The Group is Growing

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I am starting a group at my church for adoptees/adoptive parents/birth moms. The time is drawing near for our first meeting on March 8th.

So far, including my husband and I, there are nine people in our group. I've been emailing everyone as they join to find out how they have been affected by adoption. Up until today, it was all adoptive parents - a couple who adopted from Russia, a woman who adopted from China, and the other group leaders who had an open adoption in the US. I was especially excited about the people who adopted from Russia, because we've talked about adopting from Russia and I would love the opportunity to talk with someone who has done it before.

However, since signups began a week or two ago, I've been a little discouraged, because I felt like it was going to end up being a parenting class, populated with people who couldn't have children and that, through adoption, have been able to start a family, which is really wonderful, but I'm at a little bit of a different stage in my thoughts about adoption at this point. I used to think that way, that adoption was a win-win solution to a problem - a baby that was an accident, and family that wanted a child. Hook the two up and every one wins. And I think it can be a really great situation for adoptive parents and children, don't get me wrong. But it seems that there is a lot more to it. Parents are angry and disappointed that they can't have kids before they land on the adoption solution. Mothers have to make a painful decision on behalf of their children. And the kids sometimes have a lot of mixed emotions about the whole thing.

Today I got an email that another couple had signed up for the group. I emailed them and just got their response back - they are just about to start the international adoption process. The story sounded pretty typical as I read through the email, and then I got to the last sentence,

"Oh, and my husband was also adopted, as was his sister."

I am so excited and relieved that not only will there be another couple there that doesn't already have kids, but there will also be another adoptee!!

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

The Replacement Baby

Until about three years ago, I had never thought about why my parents adopted me. I thought that they were just nice people who wanted to help a baby that didn't have a home, so they adopted me. Then, a few years back, a friend of mine asked me why my parents adopted me. I had never been asked that before, and I was a little stunned. I'd been asked a host of other questions, the typical questions, but never why.

That is what initially put the thought in my mind that my parents had trouble conceiving and adopted me as a result. Now that I'm learning more about adoption, it seems really obvious, but honestly, I was 23 before that thought ever crossed my mind. The thing is, my mom was pregnant five times over a period of seven years while I was a kid, she had a lot of trouble - miscarriages, stillbirths, etc. and only actually had two children, but still - five times in seven years seems like a lot to me. So, I vetoed that theory.

At one point when I first started searching, I went to the website for my adoption agency, a local agency in Erie. I read the requirements to adopt and it said you had to have a letter from your doctor as proof of not being able to conceive, so I started thinking about it again.

Then yesterday, I was talking to my mom on the phone and she was telling me about the cataract surgery she's having on Wednesday. She said the nurse called her today and asked her about any surgery or medical procedures she'd had done. She said "I told them about my miscarriage, stillbirths, having my appendix out..." and then she said something about some kind of ovarian surgery I'd never heard of. I asked her if that was the surgery she had when I was a kid, right before she had my sister that made her able to have my sister. She said no, that this surgery was shortly after my mom and dad got married, before they adopted my older brother and it was for people who couldn't get pregnant.

Yeah, that will mess with your head a little bit, to go your whole life thinking your parents picked you because they were just being nice, and then finding out that basically you were the second choice, because after ten years they couldn't get pregnant. Now I just feel really stupid, like everyone else already knew this, and I've just now been enlightened.

Not to say that my parents didn't adopt me because they were nice, but knowing what I know now makes me view adoption in an entirely different light. Did they say things like "I guess we'll just have to adopt"? I'm sure they were excited to get me, but was it a big disappointment for them to settle for someone else's baby?

I'm actually very thankful that I didn't find out about this until now. By growing up thinking that parents adopted kids because they were nice people who wanted to help is always what made me want to adopt someday. And that is still why I want to adopt - I want to help kids - maybe kids that are older, kids in other countries, I don't really know, but I've always felt this need to help kids because my parents helped me. If I had grown up thinking about adoption any other way, I probably wouldn't want to adopt a child myself.

Saturday, February 11, 2006

Little Known Fact

Little known fact about me: I have an older brother.

Honestly, I forget about him most of the time. He is ten years older than me, almost to the day - his birthday is December 29 and mine is December 28. He was adopted, too. Through this search I've been reminded of him a lot.

His story is quite a bit different than mine. His mom and dad (his dad was my adoptive dad's brother) both died in a car accident when he was three. There was a big family battle over who would get custody; apparently his maternal grandparents put up a good fight for him, but my parents (who were really his aunt and uncle) won. (It's great to use war metaphors like "battle", "fight" and "won" to talk about the future of a child.)

My older brother was definitely rebellious. He smoked, drank, swore, didn't get good grades, ran around with girls my parents didn't like, and was always in trouble for his bad driving. Seemed like he got in a car wreck about three or four times a year and it was almost always his fault...He was racing his friends, his girlfriend covered his eyes, really stupid stuff. He always fought with my parents and I hated it. He made it a habit to miss curfew, lie about where he was going and cheat on his girlfriends. Every time he missed curfew I remembered dreading the moment he'd get home because I knew there was going to be a big fight. I'd stare at the clock as the seconds turned into minutes and sometimes as the minutes turned into hours and think "Why can't he just be good?"

He was always kind of mean to me. He took me to see my first concert (The Beach Boys!) when I was in elementary school - but only because my mom made him take me. The first movie I ever saw was with him, again, he spent 30 minutes complaining about how he didn't want me to come, but eventually he gave in. He always let me know how annoying he found me and complained every time my mom made him do something with me, even if it was just me wanting to ride downtown with him to pick up a pizza for dinner, or getting him to give me a ride to a friend's house. When he was seventeen and a senior in high school, my mom had my little sister. She was my older brother's favorite, and he would let me know about it.

When my older brother turned eighteen, he got a large amount of money from his real parents' insurance policy, something like $100K. He moved about 700 miles away to go to college. He came home for the summers for the first few years. Then, when he was twenty, my mom had my little brother. My older brother stopped coming home at all shortly after that. My little brother and my older brother have seen each other about three times. The last time my mom, dad, and little brother saw him was in 1989, when my little brother wasn't even a year old.

My little sister and I went to visit my older brother and his wife in 1993. I was in eighth grade and she was in kindergarten. I know he didn't want us to come visit, but my mom told us he was excited about seeing us and we went. She took us to the airport and shipped us off to go visit him, as if that was going to fix her relationship with him. He was late picking us up from the airport, that's one of the few things I remember from that trip.

He got married and didn't invite any of our family to the wedding. We found out a few months after the wedding, when my mom called him. Same thing with his first child. Had my mom not called, she never would have known. He's since been divorced and remarried, and hasn't ever called to tell us about any of it. My mom would send him a card for every holiday imaginable - but he never responded. We only knew what was going on in his life if my mom called him. The last time she called him was about 4 years ago, before my wedding to ask him if he was going to come. He said no and I think that made her stop sending him cards and Christmas presents.

In 1997, some friends and I went to visit colleges and one of them was in the town where my brother worked. I went into his office and he looked at me and said "Hi, What can I help you with today?". How do you even respond to that? I said, "Um, I'm your sister." He acted excited to see me, and said he'd call me and we'd get dinner later that night. That was the last time I saw him, because he never called.

We were both adopted, and I wasn't a bad kid, so I never understood what his problem was. At least he knew where he came from. However, as I've been reading about adoption over the past few months, I am starting to understand him more. He needed counseling, but I suppose that in a small industrial town up north in the 1970s, counseling was only for "crazies". I mean, he had to remember his parents, he was three (almost four, I think) when they died. Granted, I wasn't there when he was little, but from the time when we both lived at home, and judging by how my parents handled the topic of my adoption, I doubt anyone ever asked him how he felt or told him anything about his parents. And he was probably like me, afraid to ask about them. We didn't even have a picture of his parents in our house, in fact, the only time I've ever seen a picture of them is at my grandma's house. Why? It makes no sense to me. From what I've read, the mentality among adoptive parents used to be "the kids will forget about it, so just don't bring it up" and I guess my parents bought into that idea, however, I can't totally blame them. Someone probably told them that and who is going to argue with a social worker who does this for a living?

Now I'm finally starting to understand why he was so mad and rebellious. I have his address and I'm thinking about sending him a card. I don't really know why I would want to do that or what I would say to him, but worst case scenario, I'll never hear from him - which really wouldn't be any different than now so I suppose there's nothing to lose.

Thursday, February 09, 2006

Three Weeks

I spent 30 minutes Tuesday morning psyching myself up to call the investigator who is supposedly working on my case. I said I'd call after I got a shower...after I got dressed...after I fixed my hair...after I put on my makeup - and finally, I had nothing else left to do except call or leave for work. So I dialed the number.

About this time, I realized I had no idea what I was going to say or even why I was calling. Half of me thinks the person on the other end of the call probably talks to adoptees all the time and would be kind and understanding. The other half of me feels like I'm going to be scolded when I call, as if I'm doing something I shouldn't be doing by searching for my mom.

I really just want to call to find out what exactly they're doing, what the process is. It sounds crazy, but I honestly didn't believe there was a real person out there "investigating" anything - it seemed like a big hoax to me.

The phone rang...and rang...and rang. Voicemail. I hung up. I tried again Wednesday morning. Same thing - lots of psyching myself up, but no answer - voicemail. Hung up again. I don't know what I want, or why I'm calling, so I don't really have a "message" to leave - "Hi, just calling to see if you are a real person or not. Call me back if you are"?

This morning was a bit different, instead of ringing five or six times, it rang once and went to voicemail. I thought maybe this meant she was on the other line. So I waited ten minutes and called back. This time she answered. Her name is Carol.

I was caught a little off guard by the fact that someone actually answered. This is the woman who can give me the info I want, I certainly don't want to piss her off. So I told her I just had some questions and she said "Ok, go ahead". I explained that I just wondered what exactly was going to transpire, and told her I didn't really understand the whole process of was going to happen. Carol was completely understanding, and I really appreciated her no-nonsense tone (and her northern accent). I really do like they way most people in the north are usually very direct. I have lived in the south for a number of years now and a lot of time I feel like people tend to candy-coat things, afraid of sounding rude or offending someone. I also work in the music industry where people have a tendancy to lie, blow things out of proportion and say what they think you want to hear without ever following through. I like it when people are able to just say it how it is without the fluff. That is something I really appreciate about Carol.

The first thing Carol told me was that she does three other jobs at the court house and that looking for adoptees' families is lowest on the totem poll. She said she works on it as often as she can, in between hearings and that this morning was the first time all week she'd been to the office that handles requests like mine. Sure, that's not encouraging news, but I SO apprecaite her honesty and bluntness. There are four other files that she will be working on alongside of mine.

She told me that she will always be 100% honest with me and that she would call me every step of the way. The first thing she will do check and see if my mom ever updated my file with any info. If so, I can have whatever info she gave them.

If not, the next step is to find out where my mom lived. I always assumed my mom lived in the town where I was born: Bradford, Pennsylvania. She told me that in many cases, women left home and stayed with relatives while they were pregnant to avoid the stigma that comes with being young, unwed and pregnant. This blew my mind. Thirty seconds into the conversation and she's already shooting potential holes in my story, just like I thought she would.

If my mom was from Erie county, she can check marriage/divorce records right downstairs at the courthouse. If she was from another county, she has to write letters and it takes a little longer. If she can locate her, she calls her and asks her if she wants contact or not and that's it.

If she can't find her, she sends letters out to potential family members asking for her contact info to "update records". Then she follows up by calling them. If they manage to put two and two together and ask her if this has to do with the adoption, she is allowed to tell them about me. I remember her exact words, she was slow and deliberate; she said she had been doing this a long time and I think she knew this was going to be weird for me to hear:

"Now...if your family members ask about you...I can tell them about you...I'll call you and find out more about you before I call them so I can tell them about you if they ask..."

That is so weird. THAT IS SO WEIRD! I never once thought that I might have aunts uncles and grandparents that knew about me. It was always just my mom.

Finally, she told me that if she finds out my mom is in jail, I can change my mind and not proceed any further with the search if I want to. That's a pleasant thought. Of course it has crossed my mind before, but I really and truly believe she is a good person.

I talked with Carol for another few minutes, all the while trying as hard as I could to scribble down every word she said and listen intently, like she might slip up and give me a name on accident. I felt really good about the whole situation after hanging up. I felt like she was on my side, and I got the vibe that she loved this part of her job, even if she couldn't dedicate a lot of time to it. She told me that it will be another two weeks before she has time to dig into my file and to call her in three weeks if I don't hear from her. It's lame, I know, but I'll be counting down the next three weeks until I can call her again.

Saturday, February 04, 2006

Room At The Table

I'm reading a book called Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. It is amazing how those writer-types can concisely communicate what they are trying to say, all the while keeping their writing interesting and not comprimising the art. I'm no writer, but Donald Miller is, and in one chapter of this book, he writes about finding a church. The analogy he uses is not only great for his purpose of conveying his idea about finding a church, it also sums up in about 4 sentences what took me 4 paragraphs to try to explain in my last post:
"In the churches I used to go to, I felt like I didn't fit in. I always felt like the adopted kid, as if there was "room at the table for me." Do you know what I mean? I was accepted but not understood. There was room at the table for me, but I wasn't in the family."

Ha! Yeah, Donald, I do know what you mean...

Just a Glimpse

Yesterday for work, I went to a showcase for a new band. They are a brother and sister duo - and they looked EXACTLY like each other. It was fascinating. I couldn't stop staring at them because they really looked like twins. After they played, I was talking to the girl, and found out they have five more sibling at home - seven kids in all. She told me how close they all were and that they were all musical. I wondered if they all looked just like her and her brother. I am so intrigued by people that look like their relatives.

I guess that is one of the reasons I'm searching for my birth family. I have spent my entire life trying to fit in with a family that I really have very little in common with. Every time I introduce my parents to someone, I feel like they're staring at me - thin, tall, brown hair, fair skin, freckles - and staring at my mom and dad - my mom who is short, not-so-thin, blonde hair, blue eyes and my dad who is short and stocky with olive skin - and wondering what kind of freak genetic accident occurred to make someone who looks like me come from people who look like them. When I show people photos of my siblings, I generally get a "that's your brother?" or an outright "you look nothing like your family", which is fine. It doesn't bother me at all, because I know it is true. The wedding pictures are always fun to try out on new people who don't know I'm adopted. = )

My personality is really different from everyone in my family, as well. Although my little brother and I do share a similar sense of humor, he's still a lot different than I was at his age. Both my brother and sister are really shy - I was never shy as a kid. Everything that goes on at home is a major drama. I have always been much, much more laid back and relaxed than anyone in my family.

I guess I am hoping to find a family that I don't feel like I have to make excuses for. Why don't we look alike? Why don't we act alike? Why am I so tall? Why do I have freckles? I am so tired of feeling like I have to prepare people to meet my family for the first time. Don't get me wrong, my family has always been there for me, and I've had a good life. I'm not trying to replace them. I just want to have what they already have with each other - a sense of belonging, a biological connection.

A thought occurred to me for the first time while I was visiting home over Christmas this year - I was sitting in the living room, trying to watch something on TV and I looked around - my mom in the kitchen talking to herself, my brother in his room with the door shut, my sister using the computer and my dad just standing in the middle of the living room - Who on earth are these people and what am I even doing here? I felt like I was with someone else's family for Christmas. It isn't that I'm uncomfortable when I'm there, I'm perfectly comfortable. Besides living in a foster home, that house is the only place I ever lived growing up. But it isn't about being comfortable, it is about feeling like you belong.

Yesterday at that showcase, I caught a tiny glimpse of how amazing a sibling bond can be and that made me think - my husband and I want to adopt kids someday and I always just assumed we'd adopt one kid at a time, but how cool would it be to adopt siblings? I feel like a person could be so much more at peace with adoption if they had grown up with a brother or sister from the same family, the same mother, who looked like them and acted like them and had some of the same personality traits and mannerisms as them. Just one physical thing to link you back to where you came from seems like it would be enough to put you at ease about being adopted. Sure, there would still be questions and struggles, but at least you wouldn't be all alone - you would always have your sibling, who you knew would understand what you were going though.

We're sold on the idea = )