The Yuletide festivities have passed, the presents have been
opened and my hips are another inch wider.
Hoorah! Tory is down with the flu
after taking care of her own kids, so she’s taking it easy and I’m posting.
But today we re going to snark about a girl who can eat as
much junk food as she wants without getting a pimple or gaining a pound. It’s Claudia!
And she thinks she’s adopted! Her
logic is astounding and um, flawed.
We see Claudia snoozing her way through science, wondering
why the word species is species no matter how many you have. Well, Claud, it’s a Latin word used in
English…but you don’t really care, so let’s move on. She’s counting down the minutes because she
gets to leave early today. Janine is
getting an award at her school; Claud and her family are going to attend the
ceremony. They are escorted to the front
to the reserved section by a gushing teacher.
I don’t remember my school making such a big deal about awards; we had
pep rallies. Apparently they focus on
academics here at SHS. Janine gets her award and afterward, the Kishis are
approached by teachers. Claudia is told
again and again how they can hardly believe she and Janine are sisters. Well, here’s a thought, Claud. You’re dressed like a bad 80’s Sears
catalogue (a very short black skirt, an oversized white shirt with pink and
turquoise poodles printed all over it, flat turquoise shoes with straps, and a
ton of jewelry, including poodle earrings.
Hair pulled to the side in a high pony tail with a pink clip) and Janine
looks…normal (hair cut pageboy, pleated plaid skirt, white shirt with a round
collar, stockings and blue heels).
Claudia doesn’t want her parents to think she’s jealous, so
she’s happy to escape the auditorium and go home with her dad to the quiet of
her room after all the interviews and congratulations that Janine has
received. We then have 19, yep 19 pages of exposition. It’s a Monday, so it’s
meeting day. Kristy calls the meeting to
order and instantly starts stressing about Emily Michelle. Her pediatrician is concerned about her lack
of speech development. Apparently EM is
also having nightmares and doesn’t even play like a two year old. Well, let’s see here peeps. This child has a) lost her mother b) been
stuck in an orphanage c) been transferred to a new family in a new country d)
been given an overachieving sister who demands nothing less than Gabby Perkins
in a sister and e) now repeated her second year of life in the BSC time
loop. Do you think there might be some
reasons why she’s not progressing?
Well, Kristy’s mom calls needing a sitter and Claud gets the job.
After the meeting, she’s back to being a little depressed,
but decides to get creative with the dinner salad. There’s a cake to go with dinner as well, to
celebrate Janine’s achievement. Along
with her award, she gets $250, which she plans to put toward college. Claud about spontaneously combusts; she’d
blow the entire amount of money on a sweater (day-glo, never the less), art
supplies ( not so bad) and candy. Yes,
child, be glad you don’t gain weight. If
you buy that amount of candy to eat, it’s a miracle you’re not suffering from
childhood obesity and type 2 diabetes.
But then you and Stacey can be diabetes buddies. Maybe that’s her goal!!
Claudia rustles through the living room and finds some photo
albums. They’re mostly of her mom and
dad after their marriage and then an album of Janine. But hardly any of Claudia. Very few baby pictures. She starts rustling through her dad’s desk,
looking for pictures that weren’t put into albums and comes across a lock
box. Suddenly I understand why Claudia
struggles in school; her logic is way flawed.
Because a) there aren’t a lot of pictures of her b) she and her sister
don’t look a lot alike and c) there is a lock box in her dad’s desk, she’s
adopted. Yep, that’s a pretty big
leap.
She keeps her awful secret to herself for the next
week. She comes up with a couple of
different scenarios of what happened; my favorite is the one where she’s stolen
from the hospital, bought through a crooked lawyer for a huge sum of money and,
when discovering they bought a stolen baby, her parents decided to go
incognito.
Claudia manages to get through the week and heads to sit for
EM and DM. EM cries for her parents, as
Claudia is warned she might. She
struggles through the evening and finally gets EM and DM to sleep. Stacey calls and Claudia confesses her
secret. Stacey is skeptical, but
consoles Claudia that she’s not related to Janine. A loud crash of thunder and EM is awake with
a nightmare, so Claud signs off, but not before warning Stacey to keep this a
secret.
Dawn sits for EM and DM.
She stops EM from putting a pebble in her mouth and wonders if 2 year
olds shouldn’t be putting things in their mouths anymore. Well, when comparing EM to Gabby Perkins,
it’s no surprise that she’s behind. Any
normal 2 year old would be. There’s so
much pressure put on kids now to do more and be more at younger and younger
ages that it’s no surprise child suicide is on the rise. Anyway, Kristy approaches Dawn, concerned
about EM and how she didn’t make it into a school program because she’s not
toilet trained. I can’t think of ANY
program that has that requirement for a two year old. Grrr….
Claudia starts searching for her birth mother. She starts with the agency the Brewers
adopted EM through, called Love Bundles.
Seriously?! That name just
screams “illegitimate business!!!” Turns
out they only started five years previously and only deal with Vietnamese
adoptions. Claudia’s next step is to go
to the bank to get her birth certificate, but she doesn’t exactly understand
how the whole key thing works and ends up leaving embarrassed. Her last stop is her pediatrician’s. It turns out she had another pediatrician
when she was born and didn’t start seeing Dr. Dellenkamp until she was almost
2. The receptionist looks at her like
she’s nuts and Claudia heads home, certain Mrs. Wilson is hiding
something!!. Dun, dun DUN!
Claudia sits for EM and DM again. DM takes off for a
friend’s house and Claud is stuck er, staying behind with EM. Claudia starts trying to get EM to pick
different color crayons and give them to her and finally EM catches on to what
Claud’s up to. Elizabeth gets home, squees and asks Claudia
to tutor EM.
Stacey sits for the St. Perkins girls, who make cookies
without a recipe. Stacey finds a book
about adoption and mentions it to Claud.
Claudia has to have this book and checks it out of the
library. She also skims through the
paper from the time she was born and finds birth announcements of baby girls
who were born the same time she was. Her
name is not there…she must be adopted!
There is a girl named Resa Ho born around the time she was; it must be
her! She calls Stacey, who comes over to
calm her down a bit. Claudia goes
through all of her discoveries and Stacey somewhat questions her logic. Stacey, the mathematic genius, can’t sense
that it is statistically improbable that her friend is adopted? She actually encourages Claudia to start her
search. Heh boy.
Claudia calls all of the families, hoping to find out who is
missing a daughter. She is able to
account for all of the girls…except Resa.
She calls Stacey (who is feeling tired) to dish and heads over to her
house to take a break.
Kristy sits for DM.
He’s feeling left out and lonely because EM is getting so much
attention. They have a Krusher’s
practice and Bart shows up to walk her home.
They arrive back at the mansion in time to see Nannie return with EM
after her re-evaluation at the hoity-toity preschool.
The next day Claudia is tutoring Emily again. Emily’s starting to talk more, knows some
colors and shapes and today Claudia is going to teach her how to count. Seriously?
My two year old can’t comprehensively count yet; she just zooms through
the numbers. I guess its time for a
tutor. As soon as EM leaves, Claudia
calls Wyoming
and the Hos. She gets numbers for three
Ho families and is able to reach two of
them. One woman does not answer, so
Claudia immediately assumes she is that woman’s daughter. She calls Stacey, who (finally!) puts the
breaks on Claudia’s imagination and tells her to talk to her parents about
this.
She and barely get through dinner, to the point that her
parents ask to talk to her. She breaks
down and starts crying, accusing them of lying to her about her birth and not
telling her she’s adopted. I’m sure of
all the things her parents expected to come out of her mouth, that wasn’t
it. She spews out all of her “discoveries”
and dares her parents to tell her it isn’t true, which, of course, it isn’t. Turns out her birth was announced in a
discontinued paper, there aren’t as many pictures of her because she’s the
second child and her parents were busier and the lock box in her dad’s desk
contains $500 in emergency money.
Claudia, of course, feels stupid, but her parents assure her they love
and appreciate her for who she is.
Later, they show her a picture of Mimi at the same age and they could
have been twins.
The Friday meeting arrives, along with Stacey, who is yet
again beat. Kristy arrives and announces
that EM was reevaluated and the school says she will be accepted in the fall. Claudia is to keep working with her because
her mom wants EM to get used to being with people outside of her family.
After the meeting, Claudia decides she likes being a part of
her family and rousts Janine away from her computer to make dinner together.
Hoorah!
