Chookooloonks

metamorphosis

Thanks for stopping by; unfortunately, this journal is no longer being updated. If you're interested in seeing what our family has been up to lately, click here (or cut and paste http://chookooloonks.blogphotography.com into your browser) -- our story continues in photographic form.

Always wishing you the best,

K.

a post of endings, beginnings, but most of all, gratitude

When I began Chookooloonks back in early 2004, its sole purpose was to keep family and friends who lived all over the world up-to-date on how our adoption was going. Being as un-web-savvy as I was, I thought making the site private would result in it being far too difficult for them to find -- as far as I was concerned, the obvious reason to make the site public was so people who already knew about it could find it easier.

I know. It made no sense. And I clearly had no idea.

Anyway, as word seemed to get out about Chookooloonks, I remember it coming as quite a shock the first time someone I didn't know commented on the site. Good Lord, I thought, people are actually listening. And even though I found receiving the comments exhilarating, I also realized that I had to be very careful about how I used my words to ensure that my family's privacy wasn't breached, particularly Alex's. I never wanted her to look back and discover that I'd not respected her in some way, by publishing something on the web that she would end up regretting. I also rather quickly made a promise to myself that I would end Chookooloonks sometime before Alex's third birthday, in order to mitigate any chance of that happening. Picking her third birthday was admittedly sort of arbitrary: my earliest childhood memories are from when I was three years old, and I figured it made sense to stop when Alex was at or near a similar age.

Well, my little kumquats, her third birthday rapidly approaches, and lately I can't seem to shake the feeling that it's time to retire Chookooloonks -- at least in its current form. I've decided to replace the journal with a pure photoblog -- to keep my photography skills sharp -- but I'll no longer be updating my thoughts in this format, on a quasi-daily basis.

When I began this blog, I had no idea how much I'd love keeping the journal, considering that I've never been much of a "diary" person. It's pretty amazing how much creating Chookooloonks has helped me both personally and professionally, and as a result, I'm feeling very, very grateful. In particular, I owe thanks to:

- Heather for her doociality; also Megan, for tirelessly answering the neophyte questions of a total stranger ("What is this ... blog ... thing you do?") almost three years ago. It is because of both of them that I took the plunge.

- In no particular order: Tina, Irène, Mir, Jen, Andrea, Chris, Nancy, Kristin, Lisa, Georgia, Tonya, Attillah and Carmen, for extending your friendship beyond the comment boxes on our blogs. I'm better for knowing you. I mean this truly.

And of course, thanks to all of you who have visited here to share your thoughts, advice, encouragement, funny tales and touching stories. Thanks especially to those of you who've taken the time out of your day to e-mail me and let me know how much the site has touched you in some way. Your support has meant more to me than you could ever know or understand, and it's what makes doing this shockingly difficult. I hope you'll continue to visit me at the photoblog (in a few days, the URL http://www.chookooloonks.com will take you right to it), and if you do, I hope you'll leave a comment saying you were there.

Anyway, it's my sincere wish that you'll continue to find ways to express love, both on your sites and in your everyday lives. (For what it's worth, Irène and I will still be scouring your blogs for images for the Love is All Around site, and I'll keep adding names to the kind blogroll as long as you guys continue to show interest). I suspect that I'll continue Love Thursday in visual form on my new site, so, of course, feel free to continue to look for and share links to your images there (and the Love Thursday Flickr Pool) as well. Most importantly, however: I really hope you'll continue to be kind to each other.

Remember: love is the only rational act.

And with that: many, many blessings from our home to yours.

With love,

Karen, Marcus & Alexis

listenin'

To view more recent favourites, click here, but a warning before you do:

1) it's still a bit buggy, and

2) if you're using Internet Explorer on a PC, it's a LOT buggy. But my crack coder (Marcus) is workin' on it.

Have a good weekend.

love thursday: marcus, alex and you

As you know, every Thursday, I try to share some of the best examples of love or loving-kindness that I've seen over the past week. And, as usual, this week there were several instances where I witnessed true caring.

Nonetheless, without a doubt the best examples I witnessed of people going out of their way to show kindness was what you all shared with me in the comments of my last post. Every one of your stories made me smile despite my foul mood -- and they just kept coming and coming and coming! Thank you all SO much. You literally lifted my mood Tuesday night/all day Wednesday, so that by the end of the day I was back to myself again. I hope you'll all go back to that post and read what you wrote and shared, and realize what wonderful lives you all lead. It's so easy to get caught up in the negative minutia of our lives, when in fact, all these great things happen to us all the time. Again, thank you so much for sharing them.

In return, I feel like (at the very least) I should share some other things that made me smile yesterday: Alex also did her best to cheer me up, by gamely agreeing to shoot some more rainy day self-portraits with me...

... until her dad came home.

Happy Love Thursday, everyone. As always, feel free to leave the links to your expressions of love on each of your sites, or your images in the Love Thursday Flickr Pool. Also be sure to continue to check in at the Love is All Around site, for more love inspiration.

And may you continue to consciously notice all the things that make you smile today.

__________

a little happiness and light, please

Tonight I'm feeling exhausted, and overextended, and close to tears, for no other reason than I'm just really, really tired. Not to worry, though: I know all I need is a good night's sleep, and tomorrow morning I'll wake up right as rain.

But even so ... help me out a little, and cheer a sister up:

What good thing happened to you today? What made you smile?

Inquiring minds...

nice job!

Well, the comments are officially closed on the previous post, with the 334th comment coming in just before midnight. I had been planning to go through each post, disqualifying the ones that did not include both city and country, but since that would considerably reduce the amount of money in the pot (not to mention that the thought of culling through 334 comments is pretty daunting), I'm just going to say it's a donation of US$ 334.00, or, by my calculations, TT$ 2,107.24, and call it a day. I'm sure the Cyril Ross Nursery will be thrilled -- thanks so much for your enthusiasm!

Incidentally, several of you inquired about how you might be able to make your own donation to the nursery. If you're in Trinidad, the nursery's website provides their contact information, so feel free to give them a call. For those of you who are outside of Trinidad, I'm sure you can give them a call as well -- however, because I suspect it will be a bit more difficult than just giving your credit card number over the phone, I'd like to make a suggestion: consider finding an HIV/AIDS organization in your own hometown, and make a similar donation there instead. After all, it's World AIDS Day -- and considering how many countries were represented in the comments, if we all did our part in our own necks of the woods -- well, that would be truly spreading the love, wouldn't it?

So anyway, thanks so much for taking the time to show that you cared by leaving a note in the comments -- your response overwhelmed me, and I mean that in the best way possible. I'll be contacting the nursery this week, and continuing my little blogging break as well. In the meantime, pat yourselves on the back -- you did a good thing.

__________

world aids day

Still on my break -- but just popping in to show you this photo gallery from BBC News, depicting the HIV/AIDS problem that currently exists here in Trinidad.

Of all fatal diseases, HIV/AIDS breaks my heart the most. When we lived in Houston, I was on the board of AIDS Foundation Houston, an organization which helps people living with HIV/AIDS, and what I learned about the stigma associated with the disease is astonishing. I continue to serve on their Advisory Council, because I so believe in the work they do.

It's gotten out of hand, particularly in Trinidad, and countries all throughout the Caribbean and Africa (not to mention the rest of the world). We must find a cure. We must.

(Thanks for the link, Gallimaufry!)

UPDATE: Actually, I just had a thought -- since it is World AIDS Day, why don't I do this: for each comment left here on this post, I'll give a donation of one US dollar to the Cyril Ross Nursery for children affected by HIV/AIDS, shown in the BBC feature above. You need to leave your name ("Anonymous" will do, if you'd prefer) and your location (city -- or region -- and country), just because I like to see where everyone's from. I'll keep comments open until midnight Sunday night. Remember: name, city & country.

Come on people, make me poor. Ready? GO!