Home Sweet Home

We got home last night having driven 1200 miles in three days. No more box truck for me. Ever. By the way, it's 26-feet long, my quasi-trucker husband informed me.)

I was closing the laptop after having written my last post the other morning and stopped to quickly check my e-mails. So much for my "on with my life" attitude.

My D*C*F*S e-mail buddy C wrote me with a list of the tangible things missing from our home study. They were: our marriage certificate, relative forms for each of us, C*A*N Clearances for both of us, Criminal History Clearances for ME, and references forms or letters from each of the six required references for adoption.

They had most of that from our foster/adopt classes so I was confident that a lot of it had been sent.

Imagine my confusion, though, when I learned that the state was missing my state Bureau of Investigation and F*B*I clearances, not O's, as Nicole had told me the previous Friday.

Imagine my further confusion when I read the following:

"The home study did not mention the family’s contingency plan and that person or family also needs to be personally interviewed and assessed as to their complicity to care for a child this couple might adopt. "

You know why our home study didn't mention it? Because Mia never ever asked us about it. Not once.

And this was the icing on the cake:

"I also did not see evidence of the first and second family consultations during the GPS process. If these are documented separately in the narrative of the record, please submit these."

Know what that means? That there is no mention in our home study of Mia ever being in our home for either our first home visit or our second home visit. Nice thorough home study there Mia.

I was just so disheartened. I thought that finally FINALLY we might be "there", where once the missing paperwork was mailed on Monday, the SW would have everything she needed to review and hopefully approve our home study. But that clearly isn't the case. We've never even discussed our contingency plan with anyone, and those people definitely haven't been personally interviewed.

I e-mailed Nicole immediately, asking about the fingerprint mix-up, and why this was the first we'd heard that they needed written documentation of our contingency plan and to interview anyone. Oh, and also why our home study didn't reflect two of the three visits we had with Mia.

She wrote back immediately, apologized for the confusion, said she'd contact C to find out exactly what remained to be done, and she'd get back to me. Instead, I gave her the name and e-mail address of the worker who actually has our file at the state office. I don't think I'm supposed to have that information, but I've got it. She said she'd check with her and get back to me. I'll give her the rest of this week and then I'll be back to her on Monday morning to set up an appointment to complete our homestudy and for her (or whomever) to sit down with my in-laws to interview them.

I was talking to a foster mom friend the other day and we were marveling how people who aren't proactive and organized like we are ever get anything at all accomplished with D*C*F*S.
Anyway, the rest of our trip was fun. We stopped and had a nice dinner on the way home last night and fell happily into our lovely king size bed, thankful for our 500-thread-count-sheets and to be home sweet home.

Next Verse . . . Not the same as the 1st . . . or 2nd . . . or 3rd

Greetings from beautiful Statesville NC.

O and I left early yesterday morning driving a brand new, nearly palatial 20-foot box truck headed for the Carolinas for a few days. His company has closed a bunch of stores in the area (even as they open more), so O volunteered to drive up and pick up a bunch of the remaining phone and computer equipment. He's meeting one of his technicians this morning to get started loading. They'll do the same thing tomorrow in SC.

Me? I'm still under the covers watching Sportscenter and eating the fruit O brought me for breakfast.

The drive yesterday was too long, too loud, and too bouncy. Car crazies set in about two hours from Statesville. But being with O was wonderful. He now fancies himself a trucker so from time to time he'd start singing one of those 1970's highway/trucker songs. (Unfortunately there are more of those than you think.) He also enjoys using his somewhat limited CB lingo on me.

In the very highest elevations in the mountains just outside of Asheville, the leaves were starting to change - just a little bit here and there. Oh did that make me HAPPY?!?!

What didn't make me happy? Nicole called, as promised. She said our C*A*N form and paperwork were ready to go and would be dropped in the mail yesterday afternoon. O said she used the phrase, "I promise" three times.

Good, right?

But remember how she told us on Friday that our fingerprints were back? Well, apparently mine are - both state bureau of investigation and F*B*I . They don't have either of O's.

Shit!

I have a copy of his F*B*I results, so I'll fax them to her when we get home later this week. She is hopeful that they will suffice without redoing his state bureau of investigation check. I'm betting that won't fly, but we'll see.

I heard from my e-mail buddy C, and she said she thought more was missing from our home study than just the things Nicole mentioned, so she was going to check with the actual worker who is waiting for the remaining paperwork to find out what she needs. Please oh please don't let her come up with anything else!

I guess this is the perfect opportunity for me to practice my "on with my life" philosophy. I'm in a beautiful part of the country with my wonderful husband. I'm going to set aside this mess and enjoy myself - as much as a girl can in a too-loud-too-bouncy-nearly-palatial-20-foot box truck.

Same Day . . . Different Story

Well, I think we may possibly have stumbled upon the actual truth, or some semblance thereof, anyway. Of course, I've thought that before . . .

After talking about it this afternoon, my husband decided to call Nicole to see if he could cut through all this bs and just get some answers from her. I know you'll be stunned (not) when I tell you that he got yet another, completely different, story.

O began the conversation by saying that he understood from the direc*tor that the holdup was our finger*print check from the state bureau of investigation .

No no no, that's not it. The fingerprints are back. The problem is that the county (Mia/Nicole) never sent our C*A*N form - a form used to run a child abuse/neglect check with some group or another.

Nicole apologized profusely several times, admitting that it was all their fault - that they messed up. She said that as of today, "all the paperwork needed to complete our home study" is still here at the county offices (our C*A*N form as well as the paperwork from our foster/adopt class) and "will go out Monday," when the woman who generates the C*A*N forms is back in the office. She's on vacation.

I guess she was on vacation last week and the week before too. Hrumph!

Nicole took O's cell phone number and said she would call him on Monday when the paperwork had been sent, just to let him know.

Mmmm hmmmm . . . . I've been at this place before, where I think that finally - FINALLY we're on our way. Call me cynical, but I'll believe it when I see it.

YHGTFBKM - The Sequel

(No this photo has nothing to do with this post, but my camera has a "fireworks" setting. Who knew???)

O called and talked to the director this morning. She says our paperwork is complete but that the holdup is (and has been) the state bureau of investigations portion of our fingerprints. Apparently there is a backlog. Our FBI check came back fine months ago.

I have no idea if she actually investigated this for herself or if she's taking Nicole's word for it, but it doesn't explain my D*C*F*S e-mail buddy C's conversation with Nicole two weeks ago that our home study was incomplete - the one where Nicole was going to "sit down with Mia and her supervisor" and "get the paperwork sent to the state office immediately".

I continue to be baffled by this situation. Why someone can't simply pick up the phone, contact the state worker, and find out what she needs is beyond me. Instead, five months worth of stories are flying fast and furious and none of them fit together to make any kind of sense.

(By the way, part of the holdup may actually be the state bureau of investigation , but I would absolutely bet my life that the rest of our paperwork was never sent down to the state offices. No doubt in my mind.)

I've sent a note to my e-mail buddy C, to see if she can investigate a little further (given that she's the only one I trust). I don't want to get her in trouble, though, and have no interest in putting her in the middle of some sort of "she said" "she said" situation. Unless she can shed anymore light, though, I think at this point I'm stuck. One person says the paperwork is complete. One person says it isn't. Someone's either lying or mistaken, and we suffer as a result.

In any other situation, my inclination would be to arrange a meeting at D*C*F*S and start demanding answers but if we ever ARE approved to adopt, these very people have a lot of input on whether we get a child or not. In fact, unless something changes, MIA is that person. Baaa Haaaaa! So we are walking an incredibly fine, incredibly shitty line.

Oh, and don't forget my favorite part - something I was told several months ago by a D*C*F*S worker . . . WE are not their clients. They do not work for US. The CHILDREN are their clients. They work solely for the CHILDREN.

Must go now. Choking to death on the laughter.

Clarification

A couple of you mentioned in comments and e-mails that we should consider taking a child who is not yet be available for adoption, but who is headed for TPR (termination of parental rights), which in our state is called a "legal risk placement". We have told our workers all along that we were willing to accept that type of placement, provided that it was a situation we were comfortable with. Perhaps I should reiterate that at some point but today I'm still in "I couldn't care less about this topic" mode and frankly, it's a pretty nice place to be.

Just wanted to clarify. Off to live my life!

Uncle

Thanks to those of you who left comments or e-mailed to check on things in my little corner of the world. I must admit that I’ve been “in my head” quite a bit recently, thinking thinking thinking.

There’s nothing to report, really. We got an unsolicited e-mail from our SW’s supervisor Nicole about a month ago. She’d checked with the state office to find out why approval was taking so long. Seems the worker assigned to review our case has been quite busy – doing chart audits, handling a full caseload (including a disrupted out-of-state adoption) and let’s not forget planning and attending her wedding in mid-June in Florida. Mmmm hmmmm. That’s my favorite part. Planning and attending her wedding in Florida, and I’m sure there was a lovely honeymoon to follow.

Now, I’m not a heartless person. I love a good, romantic wedding as much as the next person. But our file has been sitting in the state office for five months. Five months. She hasn’t, in twenty plus weeks, found time to review our case? Seriously? I don’t know about y’all, but if I’d had any kind of chart or file or issue sitting on my desk for five months at any one of my previous jobs, I would have found myself in the unemployment line.

Today O called Nicole just to see if she’d heard anything in the past month. She gave him the “once it’s out of our hands and at the state level, there is nothing we can do” and “the state is going to do what the state is going to do” and all that b.s.. She frames it as if there isn’t an actual PERSON working on this – it’s “the state”. In actual fact, there is a worker at the state office (newly-married, apparently) whose responsibility it is to review our case. Nicole hasn’t called and spoken directly with this woman. Or her supervisor. She’s been getting her information from a third party.

Anyway, as par for the course, today’s call was a big fat waste of time. She did ask again if we were interested in fostering. (Apparently our county has 11 foster homes and 50-something foster kids.) When O told me about that, for a moment I wondered if they were withholding approval to adopt so we would agree to foster, but I quickly dismissed that. I don’t believe they’re that diabolical.

Anyway, I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but very honestly, I think I’ve finally run out of energy and emotion to devote to this situation. The bigger part of me could not care less if they ever call. I’ve felt like that for about a month. I know it sounds strange, given how hopeful and excited I’ve been at the prospect of adopting through the foster system, but that’s truly how I feel.

I haven't looked at a state D*C*F*S website or Heart Gallery in weeks.

I’ve wondered if a part of it is self-protection – hardening my heart in case we are never approved.

I’ve wondered if part of it is that I’m simply tired of my life being screwed with by people who don’t seem to give a shit.

I’ve wondered if part of it is the experience of having a houseguest back in early July (the world’s BEST houseguest, by the way), realizing again how happy O and I are here in our little house together just the two of us, and wondering if I even want to mess with that by bringing someone else into the mix.

I really don’t know. What I DO know is that we took down the crib in our “child’s room” this afternoon. I got tired of walking past it every day.

Tomorrow I will be removing the fire escape plans and the emergency numbers we posted in our home becauseD*C*F*S required them. They’ll be tucked away in our filing cabinet.

Before the end of the week, I will be removing the child proof latches from our bathroom and kitchen cabinets. It makes me mad every time I open one of them, especially since I never remember they’re on there.

I will also be removing our meds from the lockbox they’ve been in for six+ months.

It’s time for me to get on with my life. I’m tired of living in limbo, in this strange world we’ve created, where crayons and coloring books go un-used, where games sit un-played, where kids clothes remain folded in drawers, where books go unread, where teddy bears go un-hugged.

I’m so very tired of living with this nameless faceless ghost child. It’s time to take my life back and get on with the business of living it.

And who knows, maybe one of these days I’ll care again. Perhaps someday we might even hear from D*C*F*S that we’re approved to adopt and my heart will soar and the safetly latches will be reinstalled.

But for now, I’m calling “uncle”. I'm over this and I'm picking up my toys and going home.

Life Goes On

Still nothing from the state office. A couple of e-mails sent back and forth that I could blah blah blah about but the bottom line is that we’ve had absolutely no news. (Insert frustrated noise or curse word of your choice here.) Good thing I’ve been busy, to keep my mind off all that is not happening.

I mentioned in my last post about the tragedy at the air show in late June. But what I didn’t mention was just how much we loved seeing the Blue Angels the day prior. We’d been to a family reunion earlier in the day so when we arrived at the air show, we weren’t sure where they were in the day’s schedule. There was some acrobatic flying going on, which was fun to watch, but we figured the Blue Angels show was over. I called my parents to try and get them to look up the schedule either online or in the paper, but that was just one nightmare after another, so eventually we decided it was probably soon over and got ready to go. Then the Blue Angels’ support plane took off and O said, “Something’s about to happen.” Soon after, the jets came out of nowhere and roared just over our right shoulders. My response? “Holy Sh*t!”. They flew for almost 40 minutes and we loved every moment. As much as I enjoyed the flying, I think I actually had more fun watching O and listening to his ooing and aahing. It was one of those perfect afternoons – hot and sweaty and steamy, but perfect.






As I mentioned, we’d been at my mom’s family reunion earlier in the day. HER mom, my grandmother, died when I was in 6th grade but I adored her and still miss her, so it’s nice to get together with her brothers and sisters and their families once a year. One of the most wonderful things about it was getting to see a photo of my grandmother as a young girl – one I’d never seen. I immediately whipped out my camera and took several shots of the photo, and they came out good enough to enlarge once I got home. It's a treasure. (She's the one standing on the far left.)


We had our dear friend K visit from New Or*leans over the holiday weekend. The morning of the 4th, we went to an old–fashioned walking parade in a nearby small town. Think elderly gentlemen holding the color guard and leading the parade, followed by 30-40 children with decorated bikes and painted faces. It was such a short parade that my friends K and I jumped in the car and drove ahead of it to watch it again. Twice. At the end of the parade, there was lemonade and watermelon for all the marchers. It was the perfect patriotic way to start the day.



The evening of the 4th, we had a cookout with several friends. As usually happens, the “boys” ended up chatting either at the grill or in the den, and the women were in the kitchen talking and laughing up a storm. I just love evenings like that, where the conversation just clicks and time flies by. My husband even made his very first batch of homemade vanilla ice cream for the festivities. Not to be outdone, I tried my hand at homemade lemonade. We used my MIL's recipes, so both turned out delish!

Oh, and I only caught the stove on fire once the entire weekend. Apple pie residue in the bottom of the stove + 350 degrees = smoke and 6” flames. Neat! It’s kind of a tradition, though. When K and another one of our friends were visiting about three years ago, the stove’s heating element caught on fire. The actual heating element. So really, it wouldn’t be a visit to our home without at least the possibility of using the fire extinguisher.

In the last few weeks, I’ve done something that I’ve always wanted to do – can things. Stop laughing! I don’t know what it is about Southern girls, but most of us either can things or want to can things. I’ve been staunchly in the “want to can things” group, or rather the “want to can things but have seen/read too many things about botu*lism and is too scared to do it” group for a long time. But for some reason I got brave and decided to go for it. I am now the proud owner of a steam bath canner, a canning funnel, canning tongs, and more canning jars than you can shake a stick at. Oh, and a few blisters.

My first attempt was apple butter and I have to say, mmmmmmmm mmmmmmmm good. I’ve done several batches since then, and also made green tomato relish. (O & I grow tomatoes. We have to – another requirement of being Southern. Yet we don’t actually EAT tomatoes. Thus, the need for green tomato relish.) I have big plans for strawberry jam, spiced pear preserves with pears from our tree, and some fresh tomato sauce. Not today though. Today I’m working on my FIL’s family history.

Our gardens are going gangbusters with tomatoes, squash, peppers, corn, and green beans. We’re so grateful for the rain we got in May and June. That really helped. It won’t be long till it’s pumpkin planting time!


O had to meet one of his technicians a ways away yesterday morning so I drove down with him on Monday. The town we stayed was tiny with nothing to do and I spent about 14 hours riding in a cargo van, but we had such a good time. On our way home, we were listening to ES*PN radio and they were talking about traditional male and female roles, about men being “men”, and how rare that is anymore. The conversation came up because an NFL football player, Tony Gonzalez, saved a man’s life last month. He was in a restaurant and a man started choking on steak. Apparently no one did anything until Gonzalez stepped up and successfully performed the Heimlich.

It started me thinking about how much things have changed. On the way down to meet his technician, we passed a young girl sprawled out on the side of the road, trying to change her car tire. Hundreds of people must have passed her while she was there – trucks driven by men too busy or too apathetic to stop and help a young lady. Our fathers would never have done that. Heck, my nearly-80-year-old FIL would still stop! And of course, without missing a beat, my wonderful husband whipped the van around and went back to help. I so love that about him. It just wouldn’t occur to him NOT to stop and help her. That’s just who he is. He believes that women are meant to be taken care of, not in a demeaning or suffocating way, but in a loving gentlemanly way. I’m a lucky lucky girl.