Cross 'em If You've Got 'em

I got an e-mail today letting us know that the county we want to transfer to will take us if our home county will give permission for that to happen. I’m working on a letter to the county director making the formal request and plan to send it out via e-mail or hard copy on Monday. I am currently crossing everything I’ve got that this happens.

And now, a confession. I am a geek.

There is a commercial for overstockdotcom that’s been running for a few weeks. It brings a halt to anything I’m doing each time it runs. It starts with a gentleman going into a restaurant and having his picture taken. A beautiful girl puts the Polaroid of him up on a bulletin board and then turns to the computer and orders a Christmas gift for him. The next scene is of the restaurant, Marcy Jo’s Meal House in Tennessee, with white lights on the eaves and wreaths on the windows as a few people run inside to get out of the cold winter’s night. Inside the restaurant is just as lovely, with lights sparkling, and friends gathered together to open their gifts – each one labeled with a Polaroid of their beautiful smiling faces. The commercial then cuts to a woman and a man, Joey and Rory, sitting in front of a Christmas tree singing a song to their friends called “If Not For You” as he plays the guitar. Their harmony is lovely. Her voice is sweet and true. It gets me every time – makes me sigh and feel warm and nostalgic. And each time it ends, I think “Damn overstockdotcom, you’re good! Perfect nostalgic scene, homey restaurant, friends gathered, beautiful decorations, extraordinary song and voices that wrap around you like a warm blanket. Wouldn’t it be nice if all that was real instead of the creation of some advertising guy in an office somewhere?”

This is where the (first) geeky part comes in.

I went to youtubedotcom to see if the song “If Not For You” is on there. It is – well, the commercial is. Then I googled “Marcy Jo’s Meal House”. It’s a real place. Owned by the woman singing in the commercial, whose name is really Joey. Who is married to the guy harmonizing with her in the song. Whose name really is Rory. He wrote the song. They live two hours from my house, in Columbia Tennessee.

I watched the tape they sent in to a reality show called “Can You Duet?” talking about their lives and their love, their singing and his song writing. At the end, as she’s talking about him, she says, “I’m his singer” and he then the camera cuts to him and he says, “and I’m her song.” And I started to cry. Geek-o-rama. I’m not the only one, though. There is a clip on youtubedotcom of them singing Freebird on “Can You Duet?” Naomi Judd is bawling up a storm too.

Anyway, it’s real – the warmth and beauty and love in the commercial is real, and that, along with those beautiful voices, makes me cry.

My husband is buying me their CD’s and is taking me to Marcy Jo’s for our anniversary in a couple of weeks. That is, if I think I can go in there without immediately bursting into tears.

I hope you love them too.

Mini Update

Well, I have a little bit more information, but not a lot at this point. This is what I know.

O and I had several long conversations about the kids over the weekend and I e-mailed J this morning letting her know that we were definitely interested, but had some additional questions. She wrote back right away and said the worker trying to place them really wants a home with experienced parents. Except that one of their prerequisites was also that it be a home with no other children. Mmmmkay. Not the first time I've been confused by D*C*F*S.

Anyway, the state worker who has our still-incomplete home study was going to send what paperwork she had to the kids' worker anyway, for her to review and see if we might be suitable even with the lack of parenting experience.

I told one of my close girlfriends about this opportunity on Thursday night and as we were ending the conversation she said, "I'll be praying that you get (boy) and (girl) and that you can adopt them." A very sweet sentiment, but I corrected her and asked instead for her to pray that it becomes very clear to us and to the workers involved whether we are a good fit for them and vice versa. If they are, then fantastic. If they aren't, it wouldn't be a good situation for any of us. So that's what I'm keeping in mind. If they are supposed to be "ours", they will be. If they aren't, then there is a another child (or children) out there somewhere and we are slowly working our way towards each other.

J is also checking with her supervisor about us switching to their county. I'd thought that it wasn't possible for me to loathe our county any more than I currently do, until I found out this morning that the state worker still doesn't have our background checks from the state Bureau of Investigation or the F*B*I. Nicole was supposed to send them back in the early summer. I told her if they didn't have them at the county level and we needed to go be fingerprinted again, to please let me know right away. Never heard another word. I wrongly assumed that at least THAT little piece was taken care of.

Apparently not.

Loathe.

Holy Cow, by the numbers

8 - the number of hours it takes (with pit stops) to drive to Greenville Mississippi from our home

3 - the number of days we were there while O was working

1 - the number of O's wives who were going stir crazy in the hotel room

45 - the cost of getting a rental car on the last day to alleviate said stir craziness

2 - really neat places to buy Christmas decorations

1 - happier wife

30 - approximate number of e-mails received whilst in Mississippi

1 - number of e-mails that made my heart pound

2 - the number of children we were contacted on Thursday about adopting

1 - much, MUCH happier, if stunned, wife

J, the girl who taught our foster/adopt classes wrote asking if we would be interested in adopting a brother/sister pair they are trying to place pretty quickly. I was dialing her number before I even reached the end of the e-mail. We spoke for about 45 minutes and she had all their paperwork in front of her, so she was able to tell me quite a bit as I frantically tried to get some of it down on paper.

The very basics are this: The kids are legally available for adoption.

They were briefly on the state website and received up to 20 inquiries per day, most being out of state. Their worker wanted to give it one last shot to keep them in-state and had been calling J over and over to see if she could think of anyone locally who would be interested.

Ironically, we made an inquiry about them way back when, but of course it didn't go anywhere because of our incomplete homestudy. J didn't think the status of our homestudy would be a problem. She said when our interest in these two reached the state worker, either she'd be on the phone telling our county to "Finish it NOW" or J said she's drive over to our county, copy every piece of our paperwork, and do whatever it took to finish the homestudy herself.

The kids come with some challenges, but so far none of them are deal breakers for O and I. Of course, that was just a first conversation and we have lots of questions. In fact, O has been so slammed with work and was so exhausted on our drive home last night that we haven't had to opportunity to really talk about it in depth yet. That's on the agenda for this weekend.

So there you go.

1 - tired husband

1 - tired wife

2 - excited people

Update

As you can probably tell from the silence around here, I haven’t felt very “bloggy” lately. I’ve sat down several times over the past couple of weeks to write a new post, but I end up staring at the blinking cursor for a few minutes and moving on. Nothing’s wrong. Just feeling quiet, I guess.

Our trip was beyond wonderful - a much-needed time away for both of us. We spent each night right on the coast, with the surf pounding outside our windows. Heavenly! And yes, we did visit the Roloff farm, or more specifically, their pumpkin patch. We saw Matt's parents, dressed up as sheriff and cowgirl and even more exciting, the Roloff's dog Rocky, who was tearing across the field to the house. (I didn't even know he could run! On the show he just wanders around looking old.) No sightings of any of the main family, but it was fun just the same.

My mother-in-law’s valve replacement last month went really well. The surgeon had to replace more of her aorta than he’d originally thought, which took longer than we expected, of course. We had our section of the waiting room filled to overflowing as friends and family came to wait for news with us. O’s cousin B (who is very close to my MIL) was her nurse from the moment she came to the CICU, which was a huge comfort. I guess it was very hard to get her stabilized for her first couple of hours in the CICU, which we thankfully didn’t know at the time, but after that she did really well. She was in the cardiac unit for three days, and was then moved to a step-down room for almost a week. She’s been in rehab at a nearby nursing home for a little over a week, where she’s working on regaining her strength. I expect she’ll be there most of November.

In the meantime, her kids decided this was the perfect time to redo her sewing room, hallway, and one of her bathrooms. Hardwoods have gone down, paint has gone up on the walls, and knobs, hinges, and lights have been replaced in the bathroom. It’s been hard to keep it a surprise. One of her friends drove past the house on the way to see my MIL and commented on all the workers at the house. Sigh . . . As I’ve said before, you can’t change underwear in that small town without everyone knowing about it.

Anyway, we spent lots of time at the hospital, and now try to visit rehab every day or two. I’m also doing her laundry and trying to keep my FIL stocked with dinners so he won’t revert to his favorites: Vienna sausages. Bleck! His birthday was this past weekend and we got my MIL from rehab we all went to dinner at a nearby restaurant. It was a lot of fun, but also showed me just how far my MIL still has to go before she’ll be even close to back to normal.

I haven’t talked to/heard from Nikki since we traded those snotty e-mails back in late September. I purposefully took a break to get through our trip and the surgery without having to think much about it. C, our wonderful state contact, spoke with the worker assigned to our case at the state office last week. She did receive some paperwork, but it wasn’t what she needed. C contacted Nikki who said they’d “get on it” but the they were short two abuse/neglect investigators so our SW Mia was having to do some of that work too. (Of course, if Mia had done her job in March, April, May, June, July, August, September, or October, that wouldn’t be an issue.) In short, C said she really didn’t have any idea of when they’d get the paperwork to the state.

So, I have contacted the county where we did our foster/adopt classes requesting a transfer. Even if we have to do our home study over from the very beginning, we are happy to if it means that we can break ties with our worthless county. Of course there is the possibility that they may not have the personnel to take us. And then there’s the fact that our county has to give APPROVAL for another county to handle our case. I’d imagine their funding is based on the number of cases they have, so they may not be too eager to let us go. Should that happen, I will be contacting every member of the state’s D*C*F*S board, the D*C*F*S Commissioner, my senators, my representatives, and the newspapers until I find someone who can help us.

I am through being screwed with.

October

misty Cannon Beach afternoon

ever so pretty

on top of the world

hotel room window moonset

ahhhh - Oregon 

geeky TV groupies

pretty Mt. Hood wearing clouds

waterfall hiking speck of a husband

 

Peter Peter pumpkin carver

The end.

Fall

Fall, glorious fall!

I've spent the better part of the last couple of hours sitting at my desk working on first one thing and then another, but my eyes keep being drawn out the window - to our dogwood tree that is turning a beautiful reddish-orange, to the leaves drifting lazily down from the trees in our yard, and to our cat Meow-Meow who has been chasing them around.

Lots on my mind these days, both joyful and troublesome.

All has been quiet on the D*C*F*S front since Nicole and I exchanged those somewhat snotty e-mails several weeks ago. Frankly, I've just needed a break from thinking about it, though earlier this week I did contact the worker who taught our foster/adopt classes to find out what we'd need to do to have our case switched to her county. She got back to me within a few mintues and said she'd love to have us, and gave me some advice as to where we go from here.

O and I have decided to reevaluate in early November and make a decision then. I am pretty certain we'll switch simply because I don't think either of us trusts that a good, honest working relationship with this county is possible anymore. Of course, our current county has to "approve" a switch, and I believe their funding is based on the number of cases they handle each year, so we may have a fight on our hands. that's fine. I've got my ammunition.

I was transferring all my birthdates and anniversaries from my old planner to my new one last weekend and was startled by an entry I made October 9, 2007 - one year ago today.

"First G*P*S class".

I remember how excited I was to get started. I just KNEW that becoming a mom was right around the corner for me. Silly silly girl.

My mother-in-law's heart valve replacement surgery will be October 22nd at one of the hospitals near our home. She (and O and his two sisters) met with the surgeon last week and really liked him and are confident in her choice to have surgery close by.

My cousin A, only three months older than me, is scheduled for surgery tomorrow. Several years ago they found a malig*nant growth on his kid*ney. It was non-invasive so they didn't forsee any further problems. Recently a growth came up near his ear. It was also found to be malignant. Tomorrow's surgery will be to remove lym*ph nodes down and around his jaw*line to see if the malig*nancy has spread.

If you are so inclined, please keep a good thought for both of them.

O and I leave tomorrow for ten days on the Oregon/California coast. Of course I had my pre-trip sinus flare-up (happens every year), for which I got a shot and some medicine on Monday. Feeling much better - just a few sniffles remain. I love where we're going, particularly Oregon, and have a list of places that I can't wait for O to see. Hopeully we'll have a safe and wonderful trip and can recharge our batteries in preparation for O's mom's surgery soon after.

All for now - I'm off to pack! Happy couple of weeks, everyone!

Nap Anyone?

The first little pumpkin of the year from our pumpkin patch!

Nothing new on the adoption front. At least no progress.

Nicole, the SW supervisor, sent us an e-mail over a month ago listing the last few things that needed to be completed on our home study. She said she’d forwarded that list to Mia-the-worthless-social-worker and told her it needed to be completed immediately.

So late last week when I got an update from the state office letting us know that it was still incomplete, I wrote Nikki the following:

According to an e-mail update I received this morning, our home study in the state office is still incomplete. The worker waiting for the information said she’s received part of the information she requested but not everything, and that you were aware of what was still missing.

To my knowledge based on your e-mail of three+ weeks ago, the following is still needed: 1. our contingency plan and 2. information on our first and second family consultations, which occurred in January and February respectively

Your e-mail also mentioned that you told Mia this needed to be completed “immediately”. Can you please tell me when these three things will be sent to Mont*gomery? Thanks so much!

 In response I got back this snotty little e-mail:

Kelly,

Everything will be sent to the state office as soon as possible. Unfortunately, your case is not the only thing we have to work on. We are receiving reports of child abuse and neglect everyday and those have to be completed immediately. To my knowledge, Mia completed the home visit with your contingency plan and is in the process of typing the needed information. As soon as this is completed, it will be sent in.

I was so livid when I got this that I was literally crying, and that has never been my reaction to anger. DO NOT talk down to me and DO NOT act as if I’m being impatient or unreasonable. My response was as follows:

Nicole,

It wasn’t my intention to irritate or disturb you and from the tone of your last e-mail, it seems that I have.

O and I are very much aware that your first priorities must be the children of this county who may be in danger and the foster parents who have agreed to care for them. Because we have chosen not to foster, we know that we are on the bottom of the priority list. That is how it should be and we have no problem with that.

That being said, our final home study visit was the first week of March and our paperwork is still incomplete. Experience has shown us that if we sit back and assume that things are being taken care of, months can pass (and have passed) with no progress whatsoever. That’s why we try to keep on top of the status of the remaining paperwork every couple of weeks.

I referred to the word “immediately” in my previous e-mail because that was what you wrote in your e-mail of August 29th: “I have sent Mia an email with a copy to the Director telling her this needs to be completed immediately.”

We clearly misunderstood because after reading that, we actually did think that completing our home study would then become a priority for Mia and that it would be taken care of quickly – at least within a week or two. Now over three weeks later, I didn’t think it was unreasonable to send an e-mail wondering what the status was and why the worker at the state office is still waiting for several things.

Heaven knows we are certainly not perfect people, but I think we have been pretty patient through this process. However, if you found this morning’s e-mail unreasonable or irritating, I certainly apologize.
What I actually wanted to write would have been a bit more - colorful, shall we say - but would have most likely removed us from consideration as potential adoptive parents.

Anyway, I sent that final e-mail last Friday and never heard anything back – didn’t expect to.

But we’ve got bigger fish to fry at the moment.

We’ve discovered through a routine C*A*T scan that O’s mom has an aortic aneurysm caused by a leaky valve in her heart. She’s had the leaky valve for years, but it’s much worse now so she’ll need open hea*rt surgery.

Her regular cardiologist was out of town so she went to one of his partners to get her test results. (It’s never good when you have a test like that and they call you two hours later to come back to discuss the results.) That was a less than successful appointment. She and her husband were already scared and on edge, I’m sure. Add to that some snippy nurses, and a doctor with a hard-to-understand-accent who was running extremely late and had no bedside manner and it was a recipe for disaster. She left scheduled for surgery this week.

But when I started looking at the operative releases they had her sign, they didn’t match up with what she and her husband thought she was having done. I called O’s sister, E, who is a nurse in the cardiology field, and we basically put a halt to the surgery they had quickly scheduled until we could gather more information. (The surgery was not considered an emergency, by the way, or we would not have cancelled it.)

She had one additional test yesterday which confirmed the aneur*ysm and need for val*ve replacement but ruled out an arter*ial blockage they’d seen on another test, so happily no bypass will be necessary.

I spent literally hours on the phone talking to friends and family to find out which cardiac practices they recommended. We are fortunate to have two of the best in the country within two hours’ drive. She had appointments scheduled with the top physicians at both both, but in the end those were cancelled and she’s going to see a vascu*lar surgeon close to home. My gut tells me to throw a fit and insist that she goes to one of these two top heart centers. If it was my mother, that’s what would be happening . . . period. But I don’t have a say. Anyway, her appointment is next Wednesday. We'll know more then, I'd imagine.

I’ve gingerly done some research on the internet just like a little kid peeking through her fingers at the scary part of a movie. (Okay, I still do that.) I want to gather enough information to know what to expect, mostly so I can let my husband know, but I don’t want to get far enough into it to read all the horror stories I’m sure Dr. Google would have in store for me. Dr. Google never seems to have good news about anything.

And as evidence that I am a complete ass, one of the things I’m worried about in this whole situation is our trip to Oregon. We’re supposed to leave in two weeks but that's doubtful at this point, which makes me want to cry. You have never met two people who are looking forward to (and in need of ) a trip more than O and I.

That being said our first priority is, without question, O’s mom, her health, and supporting her and her husband through this. We’d never for one moment consider leaving if she’s in the hospital or was to have surgery while we were gone. Never. We're just sad at the prospect of cancelling the trip we've been planning for six months.

Frankly, I am mostly concerned with taking good care of O right now. He is so worried about his mom. We’ve both been lucky to be in our 40’s and have all of our parents in good health, so this is a pretty new experience for us.

Well, we’re having friends over for the football game this Saturday and on Sunday will have about 20 people over to celebrate O’s mom’s birthday so I need to go construct a grocery list and get started cleaning this house.

But boy oh boy am I tired. Nap anyone?