Why I Shouldn't Be Allowed on the Internet Without Supervision

I'm sure you've all been to, used (or obsessed), or heard of THIS place. It is a common place to visit (or stalk) in our neck of the woods and even though I am no longer charting I still monitor the start and end days of my cycle.

I was needing to schedule my very overdue yearly and wanted to consult the calender so as not to make the appointment during that time. I logged in this morning and became a little confused at what I saw. My dear friend was telling me that I was on cycle day 35. Well, isn't that just the most interesting thing I've ever seen since I usually get a nice new chart every 27 days, like clock work.

Now, I'm sure most of you are thinking what flitted through my own little head this morning - is it possible? could it be? of course it is since we've started the adoption process(said with SERIOUS MOCKING SARCASM).

But lo, after many mad counts on my fingers I realized I had forgotten to input my last cycle which started two Sundays ago. This is why I should be supervised at all times on the Internet. I may even need to move the computer into the living room. Sheesh.

New Parents and Other Miscelaneous Ramblings

Thank you all for your input. Although we still haven't made a decision as what to do yet (I've only had about fours hours with my husband in the last 9 days and they haven't all been on the same day) time has given us some distance to the matter and we are a little more calm. And by we I of course mean me.

If you do not already know, please make your way over to Yoka and congratulate her on her new daughter Lillian. So exciting!

Now, on to new and exciting things.

Because I don't already have enough on my plate what with the adoption thingy and all, I've decided I need a career. Not a job, but a career. I will be 30 in exactly 18 months and have done absolutely nothing worth while in my life (career wise that is) and am starting to get antsy. I really don't believe that every person needs to be a brain surgeon or an astronaut or anything like that to be successful in their lives. If that were the case then the important everyday stuff would never get done, but I do believe that people should be happy about what they do - whether it be a clerk at the mini mart or a CEO of a company.

I went to college to be a teacher but for certain reasons never finished. I dropped out of Northern Arizona University half way through my sophomore year and pretended to go to many and various community colleges for years after that. And by pretend I mean spent money but never got anywhere. I could never make up my mind what I wanted to do. And now it is kicking me in the butt.

After we first started this baby journey Mr. Sparky and I thought it silly for me to spend money we didn't really have to get a degree for a job I would more than likely never stay at too long since, you know, I'd be at home shortly raising our family. That idea didn't work out so well. So here I am, 28 1/2, nowhere close to a degree and feeling very empty.

I love my job in the aspect that I work with great people and make decent money in the town I live in for only having a high school diploma. But I want more. It's obvious to me that I will not be a stay at home mom any time soon - not just because of the no baby thing, we've screwed ourselves financially and are working to fix it- and feel like I should be doing something with my life. I do not want to be an office manager (glorified secretary) for the rest of my life. I want to do something that I am passionate about, something that I can truly make a decent living at and something that would not require me to attend a college that is 100 miles away from my home.

So there. A little pre-midlife crisis perhaps? Just testing the waters for what it will be like when I'm forty and still a freaking secretary? I have no idea what I want to be when I grow up. All the aptitude tests I've taken over the years tell me I should be a teacher, but really, do you all know how bad the Arizona school systems are? Also, our school district here just layed off a boat load of people. I co-taught for a semester in Phoenix several years ago and while I love the children, the bureaucracy and the parents and the crap just isn't worth it to me.

If any of you know what I should be then let ME KNOW PLEASE or if you are independently wealthy I am available for adoption.

Frustrations

Our experience with our agency so far has been very smooth. With that in mind, I've been waiting for the other shoe to drop. And it did.

Those of you in the process know about the birth letter or match letter. This is the letter that our potential birth mother will choose us from. We spent agonizing hours writing and re-writing and trying to get it to be absolutely "perfect". Finally after months of torture we had a final copy and sent it along with a $1000 check to our agency. Three weeks ago.

On our agency's website they have a page with all the match letters that are current and those that have been matched with a birth mom. We mailed our letter on a Thursday and on Monday it wasn't up. I knew it most likely wouldn't get put up that fast but decided to e-mail our case worker to find out how long the process of getting it up took. I also had other questions so didn't truly feel like a big dork asking about the letter. I wasn't altogether pleased with her response - Our tech guy will put it up when he gets around to it - but let it go because I figured it would be up by the end of the week and didn't want to ruffle any feathers.

Except maybe I should have. I've been checking the site periodically (read - EVERY DAY) and nothing. So this past Sunday(two weeks and 7 days after we mailed our letter!) when it still wasn't up we decided to e-mail our case worker. I was very polite, asked why it still wasn't up and thought three weeks was a long time. I left it at that. Monday morning around 9:00 it was put up on the website. And I still haven't gotten a response from our case worker.

Now if this were a gigantic national organization I could see how maybe, possibly, a letter could slip through the cracks. But this is NOT a big agency, it is a little Christian agency and according to them they have more babies than parents, so WHY WOULDN'T THEY PUT OUR LETTER UP AS SOON AS THEY GOT IT?!

I knew something would have to give sooner or later, this whole process has just been too easy. But it worries me. If they are this lackadaisical about our letter, what else will they not be so sharp about. And I know we went through the process at the exact same pace with two other couples and their letters aren't up yet either. Now that could be that they haven't done them yet, but I highly doubt that. They were both just as eager to get things going as we were. What about the people who don't' feel comfortable stepping up and saying something? We can't be the only couple this has happened to.

What would you do? Would you call the agency and find out why it took so long to get the letter up or would you just leave it? I'm afraid to ruffle any feathers as these people hold the keys to our diploma for parenthood. But we are paying these people through the nose and I would think better service would be provided.

The Details

Thank you for your kind words. Even thought it was difficult to say no, we both knew it wasn't what God had planned for us. This was especially evident by the peace we both felt last night. It's not easy to say no to a baby.

I got an e-mail from a woman (and it's a total friend of a friend of a great-aunt story so I'll name her L to spare you the whole drawn out story) named L saying she had been contacted about a little boy who was born on June 25th and didn't have a family yet. Oh, and he was still in the hospital. Were we interested.

My heart stopped half way through the e-mail and apparently I forgot to breath because my co-worker ( I got an assistant, did I tell you that?) B kept reminding me to. I also thought I was going to throw up for about 15 minutes too. Not having much information to go on I called Mr. Sparky and asked if he was interested. He said sure. So I got in touch with L and she gave me the woman's info who contacted her about it, her name is M.

So I called M and left a message (can I tell you how much leaving a message in a situation like this really truly sucks?) and immediately started calling our friends to start praying. M finally called me back and gave me a little more info. This little boy was born early, very early. His due date wasn't even until the end of this month or the beginning of next. His mom had also admitted to doing cocaine throughout the whole pregnancy. As she continued to tell me all the information, I began to realize that this probably wasn't our baby. Then the final kicker - he's bi-racial.

Now before everyone gets in a snit about that, let me explain. Although my husband and I are both white(extremely. we are so white it's not even funny) we would not have a problem adopting a child of a different race than us, if we lived in a more diverse area. If you've been reading for any amount of time you probably have heard me refer to our town as Podunk. And the reason I do this is because we live in a semi-rural area with about 150,000 people. And only five of them are black. Four of them are under the age of 14 and live on my block.

We do not live in a very diverse area. It still shocks me when I see a black person ( is that even the p.c. term anymore? I'm so behind the times) in our town. It just doesn't happen that often. Our neighbors down the street adopted two beautiful little children from Haiti. A boy and a girl, 11 and 7 at the time they came home. I have never in my life seen people so dark and I grew up in a major metropolitan city. From the moment they arrived they had so many issues. They had their daughter (11) in a Montessori school and that only lasted one month. She was teased so harshly by the other kids because of the color of her skin. And I know that says more about their parents than anything else, but if you don't grow up around something it can seem different and sometimes scary (not that this is any excuse, I found the whole situation sickening).

Based on our demographics and the fact that we would NOT be willing to relocate to a more diverse area, we have chosen a baby of the same race. There are too many issues to deal with in adoption let alone add the race card into the game, especially in a small town with "old school" mentalities still hanging around.

I know I don't need to defend our decisions, we have to do what's right for our family. But I have to tell you it was so hard to say NO to a baby. Mr. Sparky and I talked after I got more info from M and we decided to call the agency anyway, just to see if we could find anything else out. I left a message with the agency and turned around and called everyone I had just called to tell them it wasn't going to work out.

I went for a walk to clear my head and during that time kept praying for that little boy. What an unfair start this little boy will have in life. Once back from my walk I felt this enormous peace about the situation and knew that we had made the right decision. And it turns out that the decision would have been made for us anyway. This morning I got a phone call from the case worker handling his case. Apparently there was a development over the weekend that is going to prevent them from placing this little boy with anyone. She wouldn't give me any details, but I can't assume it is a good thing.

So it was an interesting look into the future and the possibilities that will arise. I can say though, I do not want to go through that again. It was only an hour from start to finish but felt like years. My heart is torn in many pieces - anger, confusion and sadness for this little boys mother and absolute anguish for this little boy who has had such an unfair start in life.

I know our baby will come. Because God is in control, we are just along for the ride.

Almost Isn't Good Enough

We almost had a baby today.

A little boy.

Almost.

But it didn't work out. I'll explain more later.

Inappropriate Behavior on Someone Else's Part

So the letter got mailed off to the agency. Only after a second trip to the printers because they screwed it up the first time. Luckily they redid it for free - which gave me the opportunity to spice it up a bit. But I'm annoyed because they received it a week ago today and it is still NOT UP ON THE WEBSITE! I know they are still showing us to people, but PUT US UP ON THE WEBSITE!


In other news I went to the dentist last Tuesday. I usually enjoy the dentist - we have a great hygienist who is the most lovely woman and who has been cleaning my teeth for the past four years and my hubby's for the last nine. The dentist is actually one of the nicest men I have ever met(it also helps that he is drop dead gorgeous) and very gentle on my mouth. He always gives me lots of nitrous and makes sure I'm very comfortable. He probably does that to everyone, but I like to think that I am special. And the office manager is absolutely amazing. And her husband works with mine so, yeah, it's like a little extended family. My experiences are always good there.

Except for this last time. I had my usual 7:00 am appointment for my 6 month check-up. I got there a little early and the assistant came and got me right away. At least I thought she was the assistant. It turns out that my normal lady (Maria - how much I love you Maria) has Tuesdays off now and they hired a new girl to work that day. Ok, no big deal, I can handle someone different cleaning my teeth. So we chat, she seems nice but a little odd, probably not someone I would choose to associate with on a personal level, but nice. We begin chatting (as best y0u can with someones hands in your mouth) and she couldn't stop complimenting me on my teeth (I have nice teeth - no braces ever and very straight and white) and I told her that when I was little I used to have a HUGE gap between my front teeth (it closed on it's own later - I don't' know why I felt I needed to share that, anyway).

She asked if I was ever teased about it and I said no I was teased for other things. And then she asked what I was teased about. And here is where I take partial blame for the way things ended and I probably shouldn't have said anything but it was early, I hadn't had any caffeine and it came out of my mouth before I even knew what I was saying. I said I developed early and that is why I was teased.


What happened next I would have never expected in my whole life - she lifted up the little dental drape they put around your neck and LOOKED AT MY BOOBS! Then she nodded and said something about nice boobies or something and I was TOTALLY MORTIFIED. If that wasn't bad enough she kept going - saying how she shouldn't' be telling me these things but felt we had bonded and proceeded to tell me icky things about her and her boyfriend. I thought I was going to throw up. BUT!! What do you do when she has pointy sharp things in your mouth and you are in a reclined chair? You do nothing. At least if you are a big old chicken like me.


So I told Mr. Sparky and he of course got mad and wanted me to do something about it and I wanted to die of embarrassment and do nothing about it. He had an appointment today and told our regular Maria that something had happened and she TOTALLY KNEW WHO IT WAS AND THAT SOMETHING BAD HAD HAPPENED. Then she got mad.

After his appointment was done, she walked him to the front and asked the wonderful front office lady what day my next appointment was on - it was scheduled for a TUESDAY- and I didn't even know it. Marie immediately said to change it and the front office lady KNEW that something bad happened. She told Mr. Sparky she thought something had happened by the way I acted after the appointment and was curious at the time but couldn't' ask because the offending party was standing right there!

Oh my. I am glad that it was brought to the open because obviously they have had an issue with her or they wouldn't have reacted this way and who knows how many other people she has been inappropriate with and they have been too scared/em brassed to say anything. Now I have to make another appointment and I'm afraid the topic will come up. I just don't want to talk about it. Yuck.

It took me eight hours to write this post. Mondays stink.