After months of low key nagging on my part we suddenly have a date for our family vacation. We leave in 6 days. All of sudden summer is over in a rush of preparation and travel. Between now and Monday, the following must occur.
- Grocery shopping.
- My yearly gynnie appointment that due to my complications takes 1/2 a day. Following this I will need to . . .
- Pick up prescriptions.
- Laundry.
- A trip to the Boy Scout Council Store for updated uniform bits.
- Buy stamps, sunscreen and a half dozen other random items.
- 2 days of cub scout camp.
- 1 day of office wrangling to be ready to hit the ground running when we return.
- At least one visit to my grandmother who is in rehab care. (Two would be better.)
- Make hotel reservations.
- Pack for S and J’s scout camp trip.
- Pack for the whole family’s vacation
- Get the car to the garage for an oil change and to find out what the hissing sound is when the vent fan is turned off.
- Help J mow lawn.
- Arrange for someone to feed the cats.
- Water the house plants and the garden.
- See if my Mom can watch S during Aug. while I prep the Fall courses.
The schedule is kind of nuts. J plans to leave at 7AM Monday after coming home from Scout Camp on Sunday afternoon. We will drive 4 1/2 hours to a water park in VA, GO TO the water park that day and spend the night in the area. Yikes! I can see the meltdown already, and not just S, all of us. When we get home from this hastily planned vacation we will leave again in four days for a three day camping trip with friends. A week and a half is all I have to spiff up my courses and design scenery for the first show. After that I start having scheduled activities on campus for the start of the Fall semester, another half week and 2nd grade starts for S. Oh man, I’m tried just thinking about it all.
I have been so inactive for about a year and a half because I have walked away from almost all the work offered to me in the hopes that I would be caring for a baby girl. That did not happen. At first, it was torture, being idle was really hard for me. It was about nine months before I started to adjust to my new (lack of) schedule. Now, I’m so laid back I would describe myself as lazy. It looks like that all ends tonight.
I am fortunate though. All the people who have offered me work in the past are still offering. This kind of lull in employment should’ve been career damaging. But it wasn’t. Two schools have basically given me the pick of their seasons and a more classes to teach than I can actually physically handle. It will be easy to dive into all this work and never look back, or at least pretend I’m not looking. I really do enjoy teaching; it is the only thing I’ve found that rivals parenting in the potential for satisfaction. The next 40 days will fly by and then I will be up to my eyes in courses and shows and plans for two student trips and preparation for our new building and harvesting the garden and getting S off on the right foot in 2nd grade and J’s stepsister’s wedding and and and . . . . . I may drown.
I have not done the research on Taiwan; I don’t know if I am still actually holding onto hope for Vietnam or if I just want to have some time where I don’t feel like I’m teetering on the edge of bliss and disaster all the time. There are days when I think it would be OK to have just S. (Like yesterday when he entertained me by improvising an entire cable system of TV shows centered around slugs to my too loud protests of “GROSS” and “STOP” and my pantomime of a remote control.) But, when I think about doing something, anything with the baby’s room, I am paralyzed. The door is shut, I don’t go in there, I don’t look in there. When I have to deal directly with the possibility of there not being a baby girl E ( yes, I have had a name picked out for about 5 years) I can’t do it.
So, all of a sudden we are down to 40 days. I read on the DOS web site that they expect to have referrals for about half of the 1,700 pending dossiers prior to the Sept. 1st deadline. It all seems like such blatant fiction. If they can do that why don’t we have a referral already? Our dossier has been circulating orphanages since late January, nearly 6 months. How is it they expect to complete 850 referrals in little more than a month when some have been in the system for such a long time already?
Maybe it will all happen very suddenly.
Sounds very hectic. I hope you have fun…have you thought about Korea adoption at all IF Vietnam doesn’t work out? I’ve heard good things about Taiwan, too, like you mentioned above. I’ll bet you don’t even have the energy right now to think about it, right? Me too. Me too.
The local agency that handles Korea does not work with families that are at the advanced age of 42, because I would be 45 before the adoption could be completed. (Age limit set by the agency, Korea’s limit is actually higher.) I would have an additional year to complete an adoption from Taiwan, and that is also more likely since that process moves a bit more quickly. Because we have been waiting sooo long for Vietnam, (more than two years) we will now have to play beat the clock with other programs. What is really bugging me is that we will have to leap right into this again. I was looking forward to a break from papers and waiting
Must you use a local agency? The agency we used, The Barker Foundation in Bethesda, Maryland was fantastic. The age limit is that you must have the paperwork in before your 44th birthday. The wait is less than a year. Ours took 7 months from start to finish, but that was in 2004. (I’m 46 and would have loved to adopt again from Korea, but alas, I’m too old.) From their website:
* Couples married three years or longer are accepted. Each parent can not have more than one divorce. No more than a ten year age gap between spouses.
*All adopting parents must be at least 25 years old and below 43 ½ years old at the time of filing an application with Barker.
*All adopting parents must be in good health physically, mentally and emotionally with a maximum permissible Body Mass Index not to exceed 30 percent. Medical situations reviewed on a case-by-case basis.
*Adopting family cannot have more than four children already in the home.
Minimum household income of $30,000.
*Referral currently received average of 6-8 months after paperwork submitted to Korea
*3-4 months after acceptance of referral, family travels to Korea, or may have the baby escorted to the U.S.
http://www.barkerfoundation.org/Adopting_A_Child/Adoption_Programs/International/Country_Requirements/koreaprogram.htm
Just check it out. Please. They are wonderful, beautiful kids. The best part? Korea doesn’t require a dossier. So you’d be practically ready to go…..
Thank-you FoodyMom!
I will need to speed up my diet though. It is a weird coincidence that my husband and I have been dieting since May. J crossed the BMI 30 mark about a month ago, I still have 13 lbs to loose before I do the same. I’ve lost more the 25 lbs. so far. If I had received that info back in May it would be so different. I will check it out.
I emailed the Barker Foundation tonight. I need to find out if they can place Korean children in my state. I was very impressed with the post-adoption services offered by SWS. I found another agency in NY that is able to place children here as another option. It is 3:45 am. I hope you are asleep!
PS I’m doing well on my diet despite my vacation. Only 10 more lbs. to go.
Update:
The Barker Foundation cannot place children in our state, shame. It did look like an excellent program. Onward to other things!