Recanting

So I guess I've put myself at risk by beaking about IA and ABC. It's hard not to get a bit worked up when you hear about things that come off as injustice. I'm not going to say what's happening with certain situations is fair, but I can't say with certainty that they are unfair. Because I'm not really in the know, I'm just Jane Observer looking from the outside in. Except when it comes to ABC. I am in the know. I know they are pretty sketchy.

FAT Tuesday

Okay, apparently I'm bit of a pessimist this month. I've blogged in irritation about both my agencies. Whoops! Maybe it's me, then.
Anyway, lent starts tomorrow. BUT TODAY IS FAT TUESDAY and I take that seriously. For lent, I'm giving up eating out, butter and sugar. So today, it's lunch out, and then pancakes for dinner, covered in butter and syrup. Yum.

IA: What a Disappointment

Okay, how does it happen that IA can refer a child for adoption while the child is at the transition home, and then the orphanage that child came from just comes and takes the child back? I don't understand! Adoptive parents pay IA to take care of their hoodlums, and if they are not at the TH and IA has no idea about what is going on with them, how can they pass that off as taking care of our kids? You may not know what I'm talking about, or maybe you do -- this has happened to one of my fellow adopting bloggers. I do not understand. But based on this, and the agency's response, I am seriously questioning my choice of agency. When I talked to E about the conditions that my child will be in, I was encouraged that the staff: child ratio was 1:4. That's comparable with North American standards. How can they talk about this great TH, but not mention that the children they refer may not actually spend the time from referral to gotcha day there? I honestly can't believe that this has happened. I can't imagine how numb the mom must be not really knowing anything about where her boy is. Absurd. Brutal. IA, what the hell? We expect better of you. You have led us to expect better of you. What a disappointment. Lose the faith of you clients, and your business will soon follow. Pull up your socks. Get your shtuff together.

Tagged!

Cool! I've never been tagged before. Here are the directions:
Go to your fourth folder of photos.
Post the fourth photo you find there.
No editing allowed.

This is a pic of my family Christmas morning. From left to right: my sister Cierra, my Jonah, niece Miriam, sister Caitlyn, niece Carmen, and nephew Finnegan.

I was tagged by Laura, and will go ahead and tag my sister Melanie, Rhonda and Lucilia (because I know she's got pictures aplenty!).

Cheers!

Boo to You ABC

So! Apparently I am the laziest person ever to blog (or not to, as we've seen in recent weeks). Since I don't have the Internet at home again, I'm taking it as an indicator that I'm working really hard at work and don't have the time to blog while I'm there. Yeah, that's what I'm going with.
So a couple of things in the last couple of weeks: a new timeline announced by the agency (sigh), and a possible new home for us. Let's start with that timeline. I talked to my caseworker E this week, to clarify about this new timeline buzz, and indeed, it has been extended, again. That is crappy. I really thought that at this point I'd be half way through the referral wait. HA! Actually, according to the original timeline I was given, I could be expecting a referral any moment. Yeah. Obviously that is ridiculous to even think. We are now looking at 10-11 months for people currently receiving referrals. But that means that the people who have been waiting 10-11 months right now can expect a referral shortly. That does NOT mean that I can expect the same sort of timeline. In fact, I can pretty much be guaranteed a longer timeline. So, I have adjusted my hopes to a referral by Christmas (that'd be 13 months of waiting -- I hope HOPE that is as liberal an estimate as I think it is). Travel by summer 2010? The upside, I tell myself, is that there is no risk of getting caught in court closures, so yay.
There is, of course, always a chance that I will get a match with some medical issues and so the referral will come earlier. I did get the amendment done. Whether or not it'll go through approval anytime this millennium is another question. Seriously, I am so ticked at my HAR (home assessment report) agency. Yes, I'm talking about YOU, ADOPTION BY CHOICE (yeah, I said it). I had to get this amendment done in the first place, because the child desired section of the HAR was not done the first time around. I get that the SW who wrote it for me was new, and I was her first, but seriously, shouldn't there be some guidelines she goes by; some training she goes through for the job? I guess not. And so I paid the extra, and in all fairness the HAR writer recognized that it really should have been done the first time, so I had to pay the agency for the job, but she did not take a cut, so it may have been cheaper. That was nice. But then the amendment is done, and I ask when it'll be sent to me, and they say no, I don't have to sign it because it is just an amendment. Seems odd to me, but hey, they know their job, right? WRONG!! After 6 weeks of waiting for the AB gov to approve the 3-page document, I call Anne Scully at the department, and she looks it up, and says, oh, it wasn't signed and was returned to the agency. What the???! So I call the agency and they say, yes, it's on the way to me, and once I return it, it'll be sent off again. And apparently it's supposed to jump the line, but I'm not exactly holding my breath at this point. Fooey.
Anyway, I have to follow my boy and feed him, because he's wandered (we're at my mam's for the weekend), and I don't want to dump him on my mam this morning, as I often do. I'll tell about the potential new home soonish.

3 Months and a Mid-Life Crisis

Coming up on three months here, and feeling like the time is flying by! I sort of expect that it will feel a lot more like crawling in about 5 months, but right now, I am satisfied to putter around in my everyday world, teaching, parenting, and living. I do have a fine life, that I enjoy more often than not. These last many months have been tough ones for me, but there’s a warm breeze in the air (not literally, unfortunately), and things are looking up.
Report cards are done (painfully) for another term. Usually, I’ll admit there are some assignments that do not make it onto the report card just because they are not marked in time, but I am very proud to say all my marking is now up to date, and from here on, I expect that I will be motivated to keep up, so as not to have the dreaded knot in my stomach that comes with knowing there is a mountain of paperwork waiting for me. Ugh.
My sweet boy’s father has made a return today. I had wrote him a letter saying, basically, that he needed to explain what the heck was happening, that he was not calling or visiting, and that he needed to make a choice to be in or out. And instead of answering the questions, he tried to arrange a visit for this weekend! I’ll have him come to see our boy, but I want him to explain what the… Am I being petty? Be honest; I won’t be offended.
What else, what else? I’ve been thinking more about the whole foster-to-adopt dealie. I don’t know. I really want my girl – no doubt about it – but am I ready to be a mam of two next month? Maybe not. And I know it may not go that fast, but I also know it could. That’s fast. Really fast. And the adoption wouldn’t go through right then, but there would be a baby. The two processes are sort of polar opposite. The one could have me parenting two in mere weeks, while the other will still take over a year (before baby is home with me). I would love an inbetweenie sort of deal. Kind of like the original timeline I expected when I began. Huh. Oh well. It’s not about my time.
I’ll admit I’m sort of having a crisis in my head. Really, my head can be my worst enemy. I’m sure I am not the only one out there with a plan. You know, a plan for my life. There are things I want to do, and things I have expected for my life up until this point, and very few of those things worked out the way I wanted them to. I really thought that by my mid-20’s I would be married and working on building up a family the size of a soccer team. No luck there. It’s hard for me to imagine that Jonah will be my only pregnancy, especially since I found it hard to fully celebrate at the time, for fear of being a single mam, and the uncertainty of how things would work out between his dad and me. The thought of Jonah being my only pregnancy makes me sad. Sorry to anyone reading this who is still eagerly waiting for child #1.
I know people who have divorced, and who maybe wonder when they will meet that great love they’ve wanted, but I’m still waiting on husband #1. Okay, I only want one, so that didn’t come out quite right, but you get the point. I’ve never been married, never lived with a man, unless you consider the many roommates I’ve had. It’s a hard pill to swallow, that I may always be a single, but I guess that’s life. It kind of makes me want to live a much freer life though. Go do good works, be a missionary, build and operate a compound in Africa, providing people with medical care, education, training, supplies for farming and survival, etc. I think sometimes that that’s the reason I am single. I have it in my heart to do that, so maybe that is what I’m meant for. Maybe God knows that if I have a husband, my heart will be on my own family unit instead. Still, I can’t really deal with the idea of being just me from here on. My biological clock is ticking, and for the first time in my life, I realized yesterday, that this is it! There is only one go round. When my body (which has never failed me) is past it’s prime, then that is done. No more bio-babies. That’s it. It’s very final. I know that it’s a common knowledge sort of thing, but still, I’d never though about it before.