Hairy

In July, in the thick of the morass, I decided I needed something to mark the passage of time, like the tick marks in a convict's jail cell or the rings of a tree. We weren't sure at the time what would come of our match with Rodas—would we get to keep her, would we have to move on to another match, would this drag on indefinitely? The only two things we were certain of were that uncertainty was guaranteed, and time would eventually bring about an end to it—whatever that happened to be.

So, I came upon the idea of neither cutting my hair nor shaving. I figured we would then have a visual record of what kind of time had passed. It is now the first week of November and it has been since the first week of July when I last shaved. Four months. My last haircut was probably sometime in late May. I now look like a wild man. (I've actually been told throughout this by various folks that I look like Fidel Castro, Rasputin, Jim Bridger, The Unabomber, Yusuf Islam, and a younger Walt Whitman. Thanks, guys!) The beard hasn't been trimmed (Julee won't let me lest it brings back the bad luck) and my hair has curled up something crazy, but I think it looks okay considering.

The idea was that it would only last until we got her release and then I would shave and get a haircut. Well, we got that, but it turns out I like the beard and so does Julee. And I like the long hair. And, now that we have to sweat out the mother appearing in court, I'm not touching a hair on either to keep the run of luck with us. I have to shave before we fly out because I'm clean shaven in my passport photo (and flying overseas with a crazy beard probably isn't a good idea). I might keep the long hair, though.

In more important news, here are five of the July pictures of Chloe. The first three are the official adoption agency update pictures. The other two were taken by one of the adoption agency's workers on a visit to Ethiopia. You can see Chloe's adorable dimple in some of them.

More July pictures soon.