Adendum to Murphy's Law

The day after your family and friends get together and help you move that &($^%&** piano that you promised them they would never have to move again, you will receive no less than 10 inquiries regarding your advertisement of a Free Piano.

OMG houses are expensive

Went to Lowe's over the lunch break. Then went into shock when I saw the bill...

Everything Old is New Again

I love my new house. I especially like that it's mine.

But night before last, I was talking to B and said "you know what? It's official. There isn't a single light fixture in this house that I don't want to replace."

"Even the dining room chandelier that's held up with a piece of rope?"

"Nope, not my style. I do like the rope though."

B feels the same way about the plumbing fixtures. All the plumbing fixtures. The diverter valves in all the showers are blown - when you try to take a shower, you get a trickle out of the shower and a deafening waterfall out of the tub faucet. B has replaced one of the faucets so far, the other two showers are still on our Lowe's list. But that still leaves the faucets, the toilet seats... the sink stopper in the upstairs hall bathroom broke last night and when I tried to close it, it stayed closed. B fixed it, for now at least. One more thing on the Lowe's list.

I tried putting something away on a shelf in the kitchen and discovered when the shelf wobbled crazily and deposited its load back on the counter. Lowe's list.

It's a twenty year old house and we knew what we were getting when we made the offer. And I don't mean to suggest that we bought a fixer, we just bought a twenty year old house that has never been updated in any way. And we did this on purpose, we chose this over new construction that we could have chosen all the finishing for. We did this not (only) to save money, but because we relish the chance to make it our own by making these changes ourselves, one at a time.

This weekend, I tried to put a huge cutting board away in a cabinet that was perfect - narrow & tall - for holding large cutting boards and cookie sheets. When I tried to put it in though, I discovered that the cabinet also had a shelf in the back of it. B + 1 hammer + 5 minutes = perfection. The cutting board is snug now in its new home with the cookie sheets.

Bliss.

Entendez-vous dans les Campagnes?

We closed on Bastille day. It's fitting in its way. I had visions in the morning of us emerging from our apartment into the sunlight, rubbing our eyes, and marching down the street toward liberation. At which point I remembered that glorious, inspirational demeanor of the actual head of the original parade out of the Bastille was a man who had been imprisoned there because he was under the delusion that he was Julius Ceasar. In all the excitement of the people rising and creating a grand republic, they lined up to parade behind a would-be tyrant. It really ruined the metaphor, but what the heck.

There was much driving back and forth yesterday, and there was outright panic from Holly. After six weeks of slowly growing anxiety, yesterday morning it really came to a head. She started the day by making a break for it out the door, and nothing would calm her down except letting her get in the car. She's been running and roughhousing with Minnie since we got to the house yesterday, and burned some of the frantic crazy off in the process, but it's going to be a while before she's convinced and settles in. She slept between us last night (which is very unusual), ending up this morning jammed in between the pillows, curled up at both our heads.

We had a last minute of comedy. The keys to the deadbolts for the back doors had never been available while the house was being shown, and our agent tried to track them down for us yesterday. She sent me the email trail at the end of it because it was so unbelievable - the sellers are saying that in the ten years they owned the house they never had keys for the back doors, both of which open to the deck.

(Before you say "you want to rekey anyway" - yes, we know that. But if the door is deadbolted shut, to rekey it you either have to drill out the lock or take the door off its hinges before you can remove the old lock (if it was easy to remove a locked deadbolt there wouldn't be much point in having one in the first place). We're at the point of laughing about all this though - it's all no end of crazy).

When we went to bed last night, B was talking about how great it was to know what he's going to do the next day, and to know that there's so much that needs doing and that he knows how to do, and he was awake and dressed before 8 this morning. I am loving this house owning thing.

Puppy Pics

The pic of Minnie holding the monkey is from her first night with us. The one with her playing with Holly is more recent - you can see all the packing going on in the background.

Puppy pics have been requested. This is Minnie between 6 and 7 weeks. She's... substantially larger now.

Back in the Saddle Again

I really couldn't bear to look at this blog over the past year. It's been an agonizing holding pattern. Looking at the date on the last entry, I realize that it's almost exactly a year to the day after I wrote that that we finally made an offer on a house. And today, we got the notice that we're clear to close! We sign the papers on Tuesday afternoon and start picking up where we left off.

Has it been a lost year? Yes and no. I've had a lot going on at work, and work has been going very well for me, but I don't think that would have been materially different if things had gone smoothly a year ago. It's made a vast deal of difference, for the better, in B's life though. He's progressed a lot with how to deal with stress and how to recognize and cope with his co-dependent tendencies that I don't think would have been as easy if he was trying to parent. During this last year, he actually stated a preference as though it was no big deal. Which was a very big deal.

We got a much better deal on the house we ended up with than we could have on the house we had initially wanted. And we got a fantastic deal on the loan. Financially, this was a very good delay.

Balance that against the guilt from knowing that some kid, somewhere out there, spent an extra year waiting for a forever family. I'm able to be rational about it now, but I suspect that when some kid becomes my kid there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth. On the inside.

B has asked for a little time to get settled in before we start the home study, and I can't say no. My youngest brother is getting married at the end of September and we'll have a full house for the week of the wedding, plus we've volunteered to host the rehearsal dinner/backyard barbecue, and B has said that as soon as the wedding is done and behind us that he's good to go to start moving on getting kids home, but he thinks it's a bad idea to compound the stress. And he's right, but I hate to admit it.

That's the drama-light version of this past year. We waited around and worked a lot, then we got a house. The end.

Oh, and there's a new puppy. And she's adorable.

What to do?

Our timeline had been to be making an offer on a house by... right about now.

But, it's looking more and more like it's going to take longer (our biggest hint: we aren't making an offer right now. That's how we know it's going to be sometime in the future.) For one thing, our credit report has some old stuff on it that should have come off because it was paid in full or aged off a long time ago, but even some of the things that were paid in full, the companies/agencies who reported them never reported that they'd been paid. Instead, they changed their names slightly every month to keep the now inaccurate entries constantly current. A credit card that I paid off and closed in 1993 is still on my report. And, because we're going for an FHA loan and credit is tight right now, it all has to come off - all of it - before we can get approved. We're working as fast as we can on getting this done.

Which is just as well, because we've discovered that getting out of our lease is going to be harder than we'd thought. We sent in our letter of intent not to renew our year-to-year lease three months in advance of the anniversary date, as required. Our landlord sent us back a letter informing us that because only B signed the letter, it didn't meet the conditions for not renewing and our lease is now automatically extended to July 31, 2010. If we want to get out of it before then, we have to pay the landlord a $1k non-refundable extra-special-permission bonus and then find someone else to rent the apartment at our own expense.

I've started tracking down other people who are in the same boat with this Fan Apartments as we are - there are at least a dozen I've found already - and one of them told me that Fan Apartments has turned down three applicants for his place already, and he's still on the hook for rent and responsible for finding a new tenant, even though he's already done a walk-through and turned in the keys.

So, long story short, we figure at this point our best bet is to take a breather, be happy that the time pressure is off, work more on getting all the crud off our credit reports and becoming perfect little mortgage-seekers, and then, when we're all ready to go, call the Fire Marshall. Fan Apartments is a repeat offender for chaining and padlocking shut the fire escape on this building. Any port in a storm, right?

Ye gods, I really do loathe this kind of purposeless difficulty. And I still have to call the agency to let them know that our timeline has changed.

Grumpykins

I've been in pain every time I walk (and quite often when I'm not walking) for weeks now, thanks to this wart on my heel that went ballistic and had to be removed, which meant cutting out a big chunk o' heel. It's the limping that's getting to me, throwing everything else out of whack, straining tendons and joints. I'm miserable and stressed to the breaking point, crying a lot over nothing, insomnia, etc. So, if I'm sounding extra-bitchy... that's why.

The good news is: it's healing. This is not the way things are always going to be, this is temporary, and recovery is on its way. We're focusing on that. The other good news is that the husband that drives me up the wall is also the same husband who has been taking care of me, bringing me things, changing the dvd, getting me food, and just being within earshot whenever I take a shower, just in case I slip and fall... everyone should be so lucky as to have a B like my B.

Mile 1

Yondalla has a post up that is wonderful (as usual):

As I read the blogs of foster parents in different places it occurs to me that though our journeys take different paths, we mostly seem to hit some of the same points. I think they tend to go something like this:

1. Pre-placement: "I know it will be hard but we are ready."
During this stage we are often frustrated at people who don't know a thing about foster care telling us that we are naive, that we have no idea what we are getting ourselves into. Right, like they do? We've been reading and thinking about this very carefully for quite a while. We've read the blogs, the books, gone to the training. We know it is going to be hard. We even know that we probably can't imagine exactly how hard it is going to be, but we are ready to get to work. We will face the challenges as they come.

And then there are another seven steps, but I'm nowhere near them yet (and nothing matters but meeeee). And I gotta say, I'm there, she's absolutely right, but she left some things out. Let's add:

1. Really scared that the nay-sayers may be right. Not about teens being the wrong way to go (I'm weird in this way, I know, but teens are now and always have been easier for me to pseudo-parent than younger kids are) but about the sibling groups, yeah, possibly. Most of all, I'm scared that this is going to be harder than I can actually cope with.
2. Because honestly, I still have trouble coping with the behaviors my husband still has left over from his fucked up childhood and the havoc they continue to wreak in his, and through the magic of physical proximity and a shared bank account, my life.
3. FOR INSTANCE, B, although in many ways a delightful person, actually finds it stressful to be in a place that's clean and tidy. He is only comfortable in what most mother-in-laws would refer to as a "sty" (fortunately, my mother-in-law is pretty understanding about this - she is, after all, the only other woman on earth who has had to try to maintain a house in which B was living).
4. And that's just the start. B is getting a lot better, and he's doing it pretty fast, but events lately have made it very clear that our relationship dynamic is that he throws his emotional weight around willy nilly all the time and I keep an even keel. When I start having a tough time - like I was doing last summer, when I was hating my job and not finding another one very quickly, or this past week when several weeks of constant pain and immobility found their way to my last nerve - things become unbalanced very quickly. The good news is that now, if I explain this to B properly, he can get over himself (mostly) enough to not take my bad moods personally. Last summer, not so much. So progress!
5. All the same, B's self-absorbtion, his inability to learn from his mistakes, his inability to cope with rectifying his mistakes, and his innate attraction to Bad Ideas (ooh! shiny!) are a source of stress in good times, and are absolutely intolerable when other stresses are around.
6. You may think I'm kidding, but B announced this weekend that one of the things he's looking very much forward to taking back up again when/if we get our house in the country is knife and axe throwing. Seriously. I asked if he really thought that was a good idea, seeing as how we're planning on also having troubled kids join our family. B's response: "I honestly don't see what's wrong with it." Dude, if you don't see what's wrong with combining troubled kids in a new and strange environment with throwing sharp objects around as a hobby, I don't think it can be explained to you by anything other than experience. And unfortunately, that's the sort of experience that, when you get it, you get to think about where things went wrong from the comfort of at least an emergency room, and at worst, jail (actually, at worst, the afterlife). Sometimes I wonder if maybe I'm the one with the risk-aversion that's out of whack, but then I remember that, while he doesn't see any danger in bringing a teenager with emotional problems into the home of a knife-juggler who doesn't pick up after himself, B does perceive very high levels of risk in things like telling me that the car needs repairs, or in trying a new restaurant.
   
7. Seriously, what am I doing and why am I even considering this? I'm already shepherding an emotionally crippled 40-year old with the wisdom of goat cheese through life. Sure, not having any kids makes me look around at life every once in a while and ask "what's the point, really?" but just because I want them, or even need them to fulfill some biologically-hard-wired life list, that doesn't mean that I'm actually capable of doing right by them. And the big important question in this isn't "is this something I want?" it's "can I offer them something better than they've got now?" I wish I could be sure that the answer to that was "yes."
   
8. But the thing that scares me most about is that nobody can tell me anything about what these kids do that really scares me.
   
   They may smear shit on the walls (literally). Well la-de-fucking-da, so what? It cleans off (and really, just thank your lucky stars it isn't urine, because that can soak into the drywall and molding and then you have to replace the whole thing to get the stink out. Please don't ask me how I know.)
   
   The kids will tell you that they hate you - look, bio kids will scream that they hate you, sometimes in highly entertaining ways, why should an adopted parent expect anything else? Screaming "I hate you!" is kidspeak for "Curse you, Parent-o, my arch-nemisis! Once again, you have thwarted my idiotic and self-destructive plans! I shall now retire to my room/lair to sulk and plan my next childish scheme, which will surely succee-- hey, toys!" I'm not getting kids here so that I can at last have validation that I'm loved/lovable, etc...
   
   And the kids will try to ruin everything they figure out is important to you, well boo-hoo. Ladies and gentlemen, have you met my husband? You know, the one I call "the Destructor," the one who asked me on my birthday about the reservations I'd made several weeks in advance for myself for my birthday because nobody else is going to do it, if I was really looking forward to going out on my birthday, because he didn't want to just say that he wanted to stay home (he wouldn't do something like that, that would be awful!) but if this wasn't something that was really, really important to me, he'd just as soon stay home. But if I really wanted to do it, he'd be willing to go along and make the best of it. Any other time, he'd just refuse, but because it was my birthday, and he had verified by asking if I would be ok with cancelling at the last minute that it was something that was pretty important to me, he wanted me to know that he was willing to suck it up and endure a romantic dinner for two. Because he's like that, you know, he's giving.
   
   
9. Actually, he is a generous, sentimental, funny, scary smart guy and we ended up having a very nice time, it just took him about 15 minutes after we sat down in the restaurant to calm down and let himself have a good time because it was a new place for him and it was fondue and he wasn't sure he'd like it but he let himself take this major chance (with a whole evening and meal at stake!) and it worked out! He's a great guy. He's just a great guy who comes as part of a package deal with a big heaping helping of stupid destructive crazy. As will these kids.
10. Who are going to be coming to me right at the same moment that my career is really starting to take off (I didn't list that first, but it's worth mentioning, especially since everybody involved will be depending on my career for, you know, money to live).
    

Yondalla again:

We knew that kids sometimes say hateful things to the adults who try to help them. We even understood why. We probably judged other foster parents for responding in insensitive ways. Okay, so he threw his food at you and said he hates you, but he is four and traumatized.

Then it happens to us and it hurts. Having someone look you in the face and tell you that they hate you and hope you die, hurts. Imagine if your spouse/partner said that to you, if you mother said it, if your best friend said it. Imagine the feelings you have then. You are going to have those feelings.

You know what scares me? It's that that thought "what if your spouse or mother said that?" - geez, my spouse and mother both are adults who have never let go of childhood traumas. They lash out with worse stuff than that all the time and I'm long past the time when I thought it had anything to do with me. Honestly, "I hate you!" is strictly little league, and Mom and B are more bus league (maybe AA). What scares me is that I want to take on another relationship just like that, and I can't figure out why. Except, maybe this kid, maybe I can help him face his demons while he's still young and still has a chance to make something out of his life.

What am I getting myself into?

Numbers

Days until Sims 3 is released: 40
Days until every single thing in the history of time is cleared off of my credit report so that I can get a mortgage: 15 to 45
Days until I have to give my landlord notice or else renew my lease for another year: 7
Total dollar amount of all items keeping me from making an offer today: $2,087.43
Days left to prepare a level 1 D&D adventure: 10-20
NPCs created for adventure so far: 116
Days left to prepare for seminar on programming for EAV table structures: 2
Slides ready for seminar: 1. Well, almost 1.
Max size of sibling group we'll consider adopting: 3
Min age of oldest child in group: 12
Approximate times I've been told that teens are hard and sibling groups might "gang up on me": 15,000,012

If anybody who has adopted teens or sib groups happens to read this post, did you experience the same reaction coming from family and friends? My friends and co-workers almost universally report that teens drive them crazy. My otherwise supportive family practically turns into concern trolls when I mention the possibility of a sib group. I see it as a kid with an intact relationship and support network; they get very wide eyed, exhale audibly and say "three is a lot of kids."

And for the record, I like teens. They're just like adults but thinner, with less money and more drama. Being around teens is like being a fan of a low-budget soap opera.

UPDATE: so, I opened up the EAV presentation file to work on it, but instead of doing that, um, I did this.