My SW rocks!

She does and here's why:  she doesn't want to meet at my house for the home study.  Yep, you read correctly.  We are going to meet at Starbucks, have a bite to eat and review what we need to review.  She thought she could crank the home study report out pretty quickly.  Hallelujah!

Thank God, she doesn't want to come over.  It's not a big deal, but I'm exhausted.  I'm fighting off some sort of inner thing so I'm a bit dizzy, I've been sleeping a lot and nothing has gotten done around the house.  I could whip it into shape quickly if needed, but I'd rather not since my week at work is so crazy.  It's the first time since I started the new job that I looked at my schedule and wanted to cry.  It's so busy!  I have meeting after meeting and next week I'm in Dallas.  Thankfully I got some cookies made yesterday to distribute to the IS/help desk for putting up with me and being so good to me the last few months.

Tonight is my all-nighter and I'm already tired.  I'm going to try to fit in a nap before going back.  It's going to be a very long night...

Moving right along...

My social worker is actually a contracted SW for my home study agency so I think her schedule is more flexible.  I emailed her last night to let her know where I was in the process and see if she was caught up to me yet.  We have a tentative meeting set up for Thursday to have our official home study visit!  I'm actually pretty excited, but now I have to start cleaning.  It's not bad because it is still pretty picked up from Thanksgiving, but I certainly need to get the vacuum out again.  I don't think I will be nervous like I was last year.  I'm just so grateful that I have the same social worker again this year. 

I keep getting excited thinking how smoothly things are flowing and then I remember how things went last year.  Everything flowed smoothly until USCIS time--yep, they lost my prints.  I am praying, hoping, wishing that the same thing doesn't happen again next year. 

Orphans

I think for some of us, adopting is more than just starting a family.  We consider it to be a gift from God.  To think that someone would entrust me to raise their child is a huge leap of faith on both parts.  I can't imagine what the birth mother must go through when she realizes that the child she is carrying can not exist in her world.  Can you imagine how hard that would be?

Big Red Spot

I think I neglected to mention a little something about my visit to the allergist's office the other day.  My home study requires a TB test and a urine test as part of their international adoption packet.  Because I am allergic to thimerosal (found in the TB solution and some contact cleaning solutions) I have always documented on my personnel file that I am allergic to TB tests.  For my job, I am required to get a chest x-ray every other year to prove that I don't have an active infection.  Well, I explained all this to my doctor on Tuesday but she said that I didn't have a well documented case of allergy.  As a nurse, and as a nurse certified to give and read TB skin tests, I know how to interpret the results.  You measure the induration, not the swelling or redness at the site.  My doctor tried to tell me that redness indicated a positive exposure and that even though I have consistently had a negative chest x-ray and never had a single symptom associated with an infection that I might need to be on INH for 6 months (which would NOT make me a candidate for adoption in any country).  What the heck?  I wanted to scream it's an allergy and you are an allergist, figure it out! but I didn't. 

So today I wake up and noticed that I have a bright red, puffy area on my forearm where I was injected with the solution.  Oh crap.  I had untold numbers of co-workers look at it...some were certified in reading them and others weren't.  All agreed it was red and slightly puffy, the uncertified ones thought I had a positive reaction, while the certified nurses said it was negative.  Wanting to get it documented before I go to the doctor, my office mate pulled some strings and got me in to see the employee health/infectious disease nurse.  She took one look and said "it's negative".  She felt it, rubbed it, double checked and then told me explicitly why it was negative and then she nicely documented on official papers that it was negative and why it was negative.  Armed with those papers I walked into my doctor's office for the nurse to read it.  Two of them agreed, red, but no induration!  They completed my physical form and before the doctor could look at my arm, I was out the door! 

In case you are wondering, my pee was ok too. 

Physical--done!

I've had an appointment scheduled with my allergist for about 2 months--which is longer than I have been working on this adoption.  Given the problems I have had getting into my primary MD office, I decided to give my other doc a chance.  I called her office yesterday and said that I just had a smidge of paperwork...just needed height/weight and vitals. Well, that was a small fib.  They said it was fine. 

I walked in today and expected her to give me a hard time about filling out the home study medical form and signing off on my other form (thanks to Jen and Jonathan who e-mailed me the specifics--I promise to get a blog roll moving soon).  She was delighted to help!  She was so excited, the nurses were excited, it was exciting!  Actually, I was ok with it, they were the ones worked into a frenzy.  I'm guessing not too many people walk into an allergists office and ask for adoption paperwork to be filled out.  She even ordered the lab work and tests required by my home study agency.  She wasn't really sure what to work for the diagnosis code so she put DX: Adoption.  Yeah, the lady at the hospital registration desk just looked at me.  I explained it was a part of my routine physical which was a part of the adoption.  Hopefully that flies with the insurance company.  The doctor did make me promise that I would send in photos once I had photos to share.  She told me that she and her husband (also a doctor) really wanted to have a 4th child, and she wanted to adopt, but he wasn't too keen on it.  Anyway, that's one last thing down...the homestudy is the only other big item.  Yippee!  I just love marking things off my list. 

Let there be light

"Isn't this magical"

           Fat Bastard, Austin Powers 3

So, I'm sitting here at my desk about 3 hours ago composing another awesome post about life in the adoption fast lane, when my computer went dead.  Well, to be fair, everything went dead.  All the lights went out.  We were having a rain storm, but it didn't seem to be that bad.  I turned the computer back on and 5 seconds later the same thing happened.  After that I heard a very ominous sound and I went into my living room (with the wall of windows) to investigate.  Right as I was looking out the window I saw the electric pole (for lack of better terminology) begin the sizzle and flash from red and pink to white in color.  This happened twice and then everything went very dark.  Minutes later the fire department shows up.

Great. 

I had a lot of computer documents I wanted to type up.  I quickly called the energy company on my cell, and since there was very little light in the house in order to actually do anything, I decided to take a nap.  An hour and a half later I wake up, the lights are still out and I call again.  The message this time promises that the electricity will be on 5 minutes.  Well, about 5 minutes later the repair people did show up, but in their defense the weather was pretty nasty in the 1 1/2 hours before they showed.  Lightening and thunder that roared for over 30-60 seconds.  I was actually pretty concerned...and then I fell asleep.  I can't help it, my cat curled up on my lap and she is natural sedative.

I'll try to recreate the first post that got DELETED in the power outage.  My problem was pretty minor and I am thankful.  The house did get colder, but I am not suffering compared to those in the northern states that were hit with the full brunt of this storm. 

It's on, baby...

Many thanks to my good friend Kristen whom I met while completing my China dossier.  Without going into too much detail (I am after all, a very wordy person) here is our story.  We were both approved by the same agency last year to begin the paper chase for our China girls.  I am a highly competitive person, which is why I rarely choose to play games.  They make me mean.  My coordinator is also a highly competitive person and we were in frequent contact during the paper chase.  Every morning when the coordinators would discuss our progress (we had to have our dossier submitted by February 28th) my coordinator would say "my girl is still first!".  Until January.  Kris posted a message on our agency Yahoo site stating that she was DTC.  I had been beaten!  While disappointed that I was not #1, I decided to e-mail her a message of congrats.  From there we learned that we have a great deal in common.  Actually, we have a ridiculous amount of things in common.  In June I traveled to visit her in WI and in August she returned the favor. 

My big fat thanks goes to Kris because she has been the person that I have called, emailed, or left crazy messages for since beginning this journey to Haven.  She was also one of the few people who knew how much I longed for this son, even as I was paper chasing for my daughter.  While our journeys are slightly different now, I am so glad to know that she is still with me pushing me on.  I'm not kidding, she emailed me a list of things that I needed to get done for this week!  She's that kind of friend.  I know it isn't easy for her to hear how excited I am or how frustrated I find the whole process.  All I can say to her is, aren't you glad you didn't know in the beginning of the China process????  Many thanks from your neurotic friend, Erica.

In other news...I got my dossier packet!!!  I guess you know what I'll be doing this afternoon.  Yep, reading every single word.  I'm not a skimmer.  My first career was as a nurse and I learned that you need to read and understand every word of any document placed in front of you requiring your signature.  Even when I get my oil changed and they ask me to sign here, initial here and here, I still read the whole page.  Sometimes I just do it to piss them off.