Time is flying by. I cannot believe it is the tenth already.
If I were to look back and wonder what was my life like this July, it would feel like dislocation- everything out of its usual order.
For one thing, we are starting to pack up to move. So for the past week, there have been large empty boxes in front hall, waiting to be tripped over. I'm beginning to think they'll be there indefinitely. The spare room got packed up yesterday and today it's to be the closets, I believe.
Keith is home all this week. We were going to visit one of my childhood friends but had to cancel in order to save money, but he's still on leave. This means that there is a constant barrage of noise from morning to night and trails of debris running over all the surfaces of the house. I could use them to track the habits of the husband in his natural environment.
The adoption match is official, but suddenly, there is a whole bunch more paper work, piles of which are waiting on the dining room table and on the copier and beside the desk, post it notes scattered around them.
Awful, awful paperwork. It seems to be coming from every direction. There was the official agreement to the adoption, which was notarized in two places and then both mailed and scanned and e-mailed.
There was the wire transfer that happened later on that day and the bank needed an address and suddenly I had to call someone to get an address and so there is both Keith and I on the phone with a massive amount of money hanging out there, somewhere, in the wires, while we tried to hear the other party on the phone with us over the voice of the other.
Eventually, I had to go into the bathroom and write the address down on a post it. It took us hours to come down from the intensity of all that and by the evening, I was wilting in my chair. I can't blog very well because I can't think very clearly. Or, I can, but I use all of that on paperwork and I have none left at the end of the day.
The state that we're adopting from requires their own mini version of a home study. Why they need the original home study to have a mini-me, I do not know and it just makes me angry.
I sat at the dining room table being extremely angry and trying to write slowly and clearly the exact same information that we've written out on what seems to be countless other forms, in response to more clearly expressed questions.
I'm mostly done with that, but we've run out of copier paper, and so everything waits on that important staple. Fortunately, there is no hurry with that paperwork and we will surely get paper today.
In the meantime, we have more paperwork for the aforementioned original home study, because everything is expiring right about now. So on the same day we had the agreement notarized, we were also fingerprinted for the FBI. The results should be coming back soon.
We also had to get state background checks done back five years in whatever state we've happened to reside in over that time period and military life being what it is, we had a total of three states to deal with and no one knew what the forms were or where to find them or what number to call and it was a big mess.
Now we have to do that all over again. Because those forms are also expiring, and we have to get those done as soon as possible, because the state we are adopting from is very particular about this and must have those forms updated within twelve months of placement, or they won't approve the adoption, and some of those forms- I'm talking about you, Colorado!- took a week or so to come through.
So there's all that. In addition to all that, yesterday I composed the first of what I assume will be many e-mails to the birth family. When I say "I composed..." what I mean is, Keith and I composed and our adoption agent reviewed, so it was like a major collaboration of mind melting stress.
Here's another fun fact: our entire home study itself expires on October 3rd. Guess when the baby is due? Late September. Our home study agent has been alerted to this and is on standby to run down to where we will be and update the entire home study, should that be necessary.
Sometime this month we are heading up to Indiana to visit family and when we return, we should be all moved into the house and next month possibly we'll be visiting the birth family in person.
Also, if the house is not ninety five percent finished by a certain point this month, we will have to extend our credit rating- a must, as they have gone up quite a bit this summer. Extending the credit rating requires extra cash, which we don't have, at the moment.
Also, our renters in Colorado- guess when their lease is up? Yes, that would be September.
September is the last month we'll be getting rent for that mortgage, unless they renew their lease. If they don't renew, we'll be looking for new renters through our property manager while paying their fee, covering two mortgages and the adoption loan and buying cartons of special newborn formula and diapers with... I'm not sure. Maybe Monopoly money.
So, to recap: no solitude, no silence, constant paperwork, phone calls and collaboration, up coming trips, one huge move, looming financial and paperwork deadlines and Monopoly money.
If I were a type A personality, I'd be having the time of my life. I'd be rising to the occasion, snapping up details, herding the group, making lists and checking them twice.
But I'm not. I'm so not. At the end of these days, I'm so fried that when I meditate, I can't even talk. All I can do is breathe. When it gets intolerable, I try to own the awful moment in all its brief awfulness.
Then I realize that it's not so bad, really- I might be looking at a greasy counter, covered with crumbs, with a background noise of Netflix. That's just messy. I might be looking at a piece of paper with a line too narrow and a space too short, trying to remember, again, our address in Kentucky and that's just frustrating.
It's all the things floating around the moment- all the things extending outward. The anxiety that hangs like noxious clouds, the constant, nagging feeling that there is something terribly important that I'm forgetting to do, some important step that I'm neglecting that will come back to bite me in the ass.
I wonder if maybe this is as bad as it gets, though. It might not get any worse than this. In just a few days, Keith will get paid and we will get our rent money this month. I will send off the e-mail to the birth family and receive one in return and the ice will be broken.
The new house should be done on time, we should be moved in by the end of this month and we will skip the first payment and that will help cover expenses later and I will be settled in and at my brand new desk that the Army had left out on the curb at Keith's office before Keith snagged it. It's waiting now in the garage.
I will purchase copier paper with a credit card and hunt down those documents like the sorry dogs they are and fill them out and mail them away and I may never have to do all this again in my life, and provided the adoption is not disrupted, at the end of this intolerable period, I may have a husband at work, a new house and a daughter at home.
