Frank Notes

Alrighty, so here we are, the day before our interviews and home inspection.  I’m feeling surprisingly calm. I believe everything has been done to our home that needs to be done (Although I have called Ms. Yates again confirm what she will be looking for.  I’m beginning to think she might be screening my calls. 😉 )

Thanks for all the wonderful comments and words of encouragement.  I’m sure this will all go fine.  I’m surprisingly much calmer than I thought I would be.  I mean, what’s the worst that can happen?

I would like to clarify two points.  First, in HH’s defense, I am sure he has a supremely difficult job and must be absolutely certain that he is placing children in the safest, most appropriate homes possible.  I am also sure that after a while that begins to take a toll on one’s, um, psyche.  Kudos to HH.

What I disagree with is the way in which he pontificates about how valuable his time is and how he, over the course of 6 weeks and 11 class meetings, actively discouraged people from completing the process.  That is where I take issue.  Caution?  Of course!  Rudeness and discouragement?  No way.

Second, there are two concurrent parts to adopting through the county.  We are working with the state to get our home licensed as a Foster Family Home.  At the same time, we are working with the county to make sure our licensed home and inhabitants are conducive to raising children.

Our appointment in the afternoon is for the former.  Our trials and tribulations with HH are for the latter.

Again, thanks for the words of encouragement.  I will likely post again after tomorrow is over!

Wow, that’s a new record!  Over a week since I last blogged.  Sorry faithful friends, Frank is STRESSED!

This is the list of things we’ve accomplished to get ready for our home visit on Friday (YES FRIDAY!):

• installed a new wooden handrail on the stairway (We tore out the old one when we moved in and never reinstalled one.  Of course Mr. Designer (my SO) can’t just put up any old handrail, it’s got to be something fitting with the period of the house with angles and turns and blah blah blah.  Jeesh.  Anyway, it’s done.)
• bought a crib (WHAT a deal!  I got it from Craig’s List and paid much less than I would have thought and it’s BRAND NEW!  The baby never slept in it because it sleeps with it’s parents.  The mattress was spotless.  Super great deal.)
• bought a gate (Another great deal.  We need gate at the top and bottom of the stairway, so this one will go at the top since the opening at the bottom is like 4 feet wide.  It’s not easy finding an affordable gate that opens that wide, although I am waiting to hear back from someone on, you guessed it, Craig’s List.)
• installed locks on the drawers and cabinets (Actually, poor L drilled through one of our drawer facades while installing a lock on the knife drawer.  THAT was a fun day…  NOT!)
• installed a locking medicine chest in L’s bedroom closet (Don’t ask me where he got the idea that medicines had to be locked away in some secret location.  It’s done.  Choosin’ my battles here…)
• put thoes white electrical outlet covers on all the electrical outlets.
• got a new power cord for our phone so we have a land line phone (Before we only used our phone line for DSL service. Our phone system is from Bang & Olufsen.  It’s a complicated phone with complicated wiring with the power cord and phone cord merging into one cord and proceeding into the phone itself.  The power cord got damaged during our last move.  I called B&O to find out how much it was going to cost.  The first person I spoke to told me he didn’t know the exact price, but that he thought it was $100-something.  sigh…  He never called back, so on Saturday I called the Beverly Hills store and asked the same question and the guy on the phone told me it said on his screen that it would cost “three sixty-nine”.  I about drove off the road and had a coronary and screamed, “Three hundred and sixty-nine dollars for a power cord?!” To which he replied, “No, three dollars and sixty-night cents.”  I said in a quiet voice, “Hold it for me, I’m on my way!”  Come on, nothing at B&O is $3.69!!  There was clearly a mistake and I’m sorry, I was weak in character at that moment, but I didn’t clarify.  I took the cord, handed him $4 and made a run for it.)

Since I last blogged, I have also scheduled our individual interviews with our social worker, Heil Hitler, HH for short.  He’s a freaking control freak who pontificated over 6 weeks for 33 hours about how valuable his time was and how much burden it put onto his busy schedule to have people who submitted their paperwork only to fail to complete the system and how only half of us were actually going to finish the classes and how only half of those were actually going to proceed to the end and how not all people are meant to be parents and how if we decided not to complete the process he wouldn’t hold anything against us as long as we didn’t submit our paperwork and waste his time. (Needless to say, I’ve got issues with HH!)

So after three unreturned phone calls, I get HH on the phone to ask that we be placed on a list for some special classes to deal with drug-dependent children (just in case).  HH begins talking about he’ll put us on the list but the people who are further along in the process will be given priority.  I asked HH how far along he thought we were in the process (because honestly, I feel like we’re pretty far along and have completed most of our requirements).  This spawns another pontification (in the truest sense of the word!) about how we’re just beginning and we’ve just finished our classes and you haven’t even turned in your application (Have you?  Oh, you have?  Well I haven’t read it, I’m so busy.) and you haven’t gotten your health screening (Done) and you haven’t completed the survey (Done) and you haven’t had your inspection from the state (Done Friday) and you haven’t submitted your fingerprints (Done Friday) and you haven’t done your First Aid class (Not done, got me there) and (the clincher:) I haven’t written the report and your ability to adopt is based upon what I write and how I write it and it takes time and I’m so busy and it won’t be done for some time.

So ultimately it doesn’t depend on how much I bust my ass, in the end the ball is in HH’s court and there’s nothing I can do but wait for him to have precious time to make us qualified to receive a child or children into our home.

That was the sound of me trying to catch my breath.

So much has happened in the week (!!!) since I last blogged. It’s incredible. Let me try to recount.

For the most part, last week was uneventful. Well, except for the whole first week of school and all the associated craziness.

Friday, however, was a different story. I had a brilliant (NOT!) idea that our staff needed more opportunities for fun and socialization. And since you can’t recommend anything on my campus without being volunteered to spearhead it, I decided to start a Social Committee (some are trying to call it the Sunshine Club, but I reject that name for obvious reasons).

The first duty for the Social Committee (hereafter referred to as SC (NOT to be confused for Sunshine Club!)): Beginning of the Year BBQ.

Of course, in retrospect, I should have made “Recruit Committee Members” the first duty. Besides one other teacher (who is a First Year Teacher and hence currently in one of the Three Stages of Hell) the committee is currently nonexistent.

And hence I planned, shopped, prepared, and BBQed for 35 people. Corn and Black Bean Salad. Grilled Vegetables with crumbled feta. Burgers and brats. Within about 4 hours. And a budget of $250.

Dude, I’m awesome! 😉

So that made Friday a tiring and eventful day in its own right.

THEN, while flipping eggplant and zucchini, I got a call from the licensing agency that is going to issue our foster home license. Ms. Yates called to schedule our home visit! So we’re getting the white glove treatment on August 31 between 1-4 p.m. (Yes, much like the cable guy, they give you a window of time. No appointments. But what am I gonna do, complain?!)

After I wiped the tears from my eyes and calmed myself down, I realized all the work I had left to do to prepare.

So Saturday was spent at Ikea getting bedside tables (red),  chairs (one red, one lime, and one blue), and a dresser (blue) to begin the conversion of our Guest Room into “The Kids’ Room” (!!!!) Of course there was also much assembling, some unassembling and cursing, and a little use of a hammer (no, that wasn’t in the directions, but it worked).

Sunday was more of the same, with quite a bit of time spent on Craig’s List looking for baby stuff (crib, monitor, gates, etc.).

I have a photo of the before and not-quite-after (there’s a lot to be done, but progress has been made), but it’s on my camera.

Of course I’ve started waking up in the middle of the night remembering stuff I need to do or questions we haven’t answered. Like the whole “last name” question. Or how to afford taking a 6-week unpaid family leave from work. Or what we’re going to do if one of the children is school-aged (likely kindergarten).

So much for calming myself down and catching my breath!