Wednesday, June 30, 2010

real quick

i'm sorry it's taken so long to let yall know how sunday went....and unfortunately, i don't have enough time to go into all the details this mornin. however, i can say briefly that it went well...not major hiccups, which was (and continues to be) relieving! we have a couple funny stories to share as well, of course! hopefully i'll have time to write more in the next couple days.

thanks for all the prayers!

Friday, June 25, 2010

40ish hours to go...

...before the social worker comes a-knockin...

it's a guy out of the fort worth area, which doesn't do a whole lot to allay our anxieties of the aforementioned country-ness of our house. we're curious as to what he'll say about the old deerborne stoves we have to heat the house. oh well. we called our wonderful landlords about the smoke and carbon monoxide detectors needed, and they brought them over w/in a few hours. we just love them....our landlords, that is. josh made a trip to the hardware store today and stocked up on outlet covers and cabinet door fasteners. he'll be busy tomorrow securing all guns and ammo...both of which have to be locked up....separately. if you know josh, you won't be surprised by the magnitude of this task. meanwhile, i'll be cleanin away...just normal cleanin stuff, really...it's just all gonna happen over the course of a few hours rather than my preferred method of a little here, a little there.

we have no idea what we'll talk about for three hours....but the more we think about it, the more anxious we get....both of us playin out what-if scenarios....makin a list of either things to not talk about, or tryin to figure out a way to talk about them truthfully and plainly.... for instance, josh is a game warden....he carries a loaded gun all the time. the potential (however slight) exists that a disgruntled ticket-recipient would show up at the house, so josh believes it's prudent to keep a weapon close by. we also live in the country....in texas. maybe it's not like this if you live in the country in....say....vermont....but in texas, you keep a gun handy for...well....any number of things....snakes and hogs....or bad guys. however, we get the feelin that our reasonings and cultural influences won't be received very well by the guy inspecting the safety and suitability of our home.

(if you're readin this is shocked and appalled by now.... well.... josh and i both grew up around guns...in a very healthy sort of way, actually. we were both taught from an early age about gun safety, etc.....and in retrospect, i appreciate that. daddy's guns were kept in the closet, and we watched him use them...so they weren't big, mysterious things that continually tempted us...they were just guns. and really, i think this approach is the best...take away the mystery of firearms, and they're used safely....)

movin on...

the old farmer who takes care of the land surrounding our house was out plowin today. josh talked to him for a while and told him about the homestudy hooplah. his response: "that's a bunch of %$#&* %$^*!" they should be payin yall to take a kid!" ya gotta love local support :)

so here we go. the social worker's supposed to be here b/w 1030-1100 sunday mornin. oh - josh asked him if he'd like to eat lunch w/us...."no. i can't" was the blunt response. which is quite unfortunate....we like eatin lunch.

Monday, June 21, 2010

and the countdown begins...

our homestudy is right around the corner... it's been moved to sunday for some scheduling reasons on the part of the social worker. sundays are actually a little easier for us b/c of josh's work schedule. we'll hear from the guy sometime this week for the exact time.

the monday afternoon we turned in our application to the agency, the lawyer/director/adoptive mom said "so i guess yall have heard the horror stories about homestudies, right? the dreaded 'white glove' visit?" we had kinda brushed up against such stories....not any first-hand-account nightmares, really...just the tone of voice and facial expressions associated w/the word...

the anxiety is justified, i think.

a stranger comes into your home. he will be in your home for 2-3 hrs. his job is evaluate you and your home, determining the suitability of parenthood. first of all, that's a long time w/a stranger in a non-crowd-setting. all sorts of things swirl around our minds, wonderin what there is to talk about for 3 hrs....wonderin what exactly the "home evaluation" entails. i mean, are we openin up the closets and hopin the clothes and bags stuffed inside don't escape and attack this poor man? are we lookin under the bed and taking a census of dust bunnies? what about the stacks of books we've collected just since movin in a year ago? i meticulously filled our bookshelves with both practical and decorative intentions...so the nursing texts i've bought since then don't fit...nor do any of the other books/magazines we've purchased or been given....so now the bookshelves have neat little stacks of books and magazines serving as fences around the bottom. and we live in the country....in a wonderful, old, rented farm house....emphasis on "old"...which means the windows are drafty, the wall paper in the bathroom is peelin due to the excessive humidity, bugs get in, and at the moment, we have a mousetrap on the kitchen counter. probably we'll get rid of that by sunday. oh, and i am married to a game warden who likes to hunt....so....yes, we have deer mounts in two different rooms of the house. let's hope this guy isn't a member of peta.

and let's really hope no white gloves are actually involved. even if i dust the mornin of his visit, if the wind blows, the plowed fields surrounding our house will completely negate my work.

since he'll be drivin such a long way, maybe i'll invite him to eat lunch w/us. there's somethin awkwardness-relieving when a table and food provide some casual distraction.

so even though we've been told not to worry, i don't know that i can stop entirely. i've already vacuumed the window sills and couches and emptied the crusty bug shells out of the light fixtures. when i realize the potential overreaction i'm exercising, i shrug it off by convincing myself a little late spring cleaning was in order anyway.

and you'll be shocked to know that josh is, at best i can tell, thoroughly un-worried.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

appointments

we've completed one and scheduled another.

we had to make arrangements to go into wichita falls and have special fingerprints completed. in this increasingly digital world we live in, the old fashioned sink-stained fingerprint cards we already had didn't cut it. so we made a trip into town yesterday and got that done.

and we finally heard from the social worker. he works for the adoption agency on the side...and has a full-time job during the week, so our homestudy has to be done on a saturday. if we lived in lubbock, we might have been able to set it up sooner...but since the guy will have 6hrs of travel time to account for too, a saturday was the best option. unfortunately (in this situation), josh works every weekend....some weekends he's more flexible than others....but b/w josh's work schedule and the social worker's availability, the soonest time we could agree on is june 26th.

it's a little longer wait than we thought it would be/prefer it to be....but three weeks really isn't all that long.

that's all for now. gotta get to work.