"Shaky Veins"

Today Taevy could tell I was stressed about something and said, "Mom, it looks like you've got shaky veins." Mmm...okay. That works. Let me explain the drama and why the blog that was to go private, didn't end up going private after all.

I mentioned last night in "Samren's Story: Part III" that I was paranoid about putting up part of his story--the part that we are ashamed about and the part that still makes my hands sweat when I think about. I'm not naive enough to think that after 8 years in the adoption world I have no enemies. But I hoped that nobody would really be THAT mean, so I put my entire transparent message out there because I feel like part of my whole mantra in life at this point is to be transparent. Transparent about my life now, and transparent about the mistakes that have been made in the past. So I posted Part III and that was the end of it. Until this morning...

When I'm bored I check my blog stats. My blog stats give information that includes the location of the person who checks my blog; the time they came; how long they stayed; what pages they looked at; and the name of their internet/email provider. I noticed someone with the internet provider/email provider of "state.gov" spent 15 minutes reading my blog this morning...reading Samren's adoption story.

I absolutely freaked out. It wasn't 3 minutes later that the blog went to private and I notified the 5 groups I'm on that I went private. I called my mom and we cried together--both terrified about what "they" could do. Could they do anything? Could they take Samren back? Could they prosecute us? Lots of tears all morning. I couldn't reach Eric because he was at a training until noon.

Finally noon rolled around. I started bawling and asked Eric to give me grace. He really doesn't like how "open" I am on my blog (he's very private) so I just knew he would be furious with me. Quite the opposite. I almost think he wanted to laugh (in an "Oh honey, that's silly to worry about" sort of way), but he held himself back because he could tell I was on the verge of completely freaking out! He said that he didn't think there was anything to worry about. That DOS has bigger fish to fry than an adoptive couple that was put into a horrible position without their permission over six years ago. He said that even if they were checking out what I said, at most it would be to get information about the person actually paying bribes (and those asking for it).

That made sense. I felt a little better. But I still didn't feel secure. So I started researching perjury. After all, that's the word the DHS guy threw around if we were to lie. From what I can tell, the statute of limitations on perjury is 5 years on federal cases. So we should be clear even if we did perjure ourselves. But we didn't. In order to perjure yourself you have to go into it with a "guilty mind" and with the "intent" to lie. Neither of those were true for Eric and I. If someone simply makes a "mistake" or "forgets the truth", that's not perjury. I think that what we did would qualify as making a "mistake."

So after learning all of that I was feeling pretty good. Feeling good enough to start thinking about other things more rationally. Am I really SO important that DOS is going to be checking out my blog for incriminating information less than 12 hours after I wrote the post? Really?! Not! Am I really so important that a person in Virginia working at DOS checks into my blog only 30 minutes into the work day? I'm kind of thinking not. Doesn't make sense.

So who was it? I don't know for sure. But I have on idea (not confirmed). One of our AAI moms actually works for the US Embassy (DOS) in Africa. I'm pretty sure she's told me before she checks out my blog. If she checked out my blog from her work (the Embassy) it would have showed up as "state.gov." Furthermore, I think the location would have said "Virginia" rather than the country she is actually in, because all of the DOS/government stuff runs through central computers before being passed to a recipient.

All this to say...I think I over-reacted big time and had "shaky veins" for no good reason. At least I hope so. And now that I'm armed with more information about what perjury is and what it is not, I feel safe(r).

I never want this blog to be private. I hope nothing ever happens (for real) to cause me to do that. This has given me much to think about for future posts. I also edited the "Part III" post to put it into different and more detailed terms what happened with Samren's adoption.

If you're still reading this...thanks for hanging in there with me. Sorry for the flip-out. I go into crazy "mama bear" mode when I think one of my kids' could be jeopardize and the thought of losing Samren after all we've done to keep him with us, would be the end of me.
Anita