Hi to the small group of everybody who is following this blog. There's some to catch you up on.
First of all, our first foray into adoption fizzled. I found out that it wasn't going anywhere when I overheard The Husband talking to a friend and saying "things are going so good right now, I don't want to change anything." Which was, needless to say, aggravating, but whutcanudo? So that was in the spring of 2011, I waited a year and we talked about it again, and I offered that we could go for another round of infertility treatments, but at the end of those, if we weren't pregnant, I wanted his promise that we'd go ahead with the adoption.
So, this past May was all kinds of fun. My body reacted to the Clomid with pregnancy symptoms and for a little while we thought that we might actually be pregnant, but the stick never turned blue. The doc ran some blood tests and came back with a diagnosis of Low Ovarian Reserve, said the words "egg donor" and that was the end of that. We are now off to the races on getting ready for a kiddo.
We're getting back on track, and that's great. I didn't write in the interval because a hundred posts about "I want a kid but B is scared so we're not going to get a kid and boy am I pissed" isn't really either enlightening or therapeutic.
Our second home visit is a little over a week away. The house is a wreck. We're putting a new floor in upstairs, replacing the carpeting with bamboo one room at a time. We've decked out the kiddo's room (formerly the guest room). It used to be furnished with a boxspring and mattress that rested on the floor, a folding chair beside it as an end table, and a hand-me-down IKEA dresser. The dresser's still in there, but now we've added a real bedframe, a matching end table, and a bookcase. When I came home with the bookcase, B made a comment about that room now being the best furnished room in the house.
In other news, shopping clearance furniture at World Market, you find some fabulous deals.
Showing posts with label pouting about the inevitable. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pouting about the inevitable. Show all posts
Monday, July 23, 2012
Thursday, July 8, 2010
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.
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.
Monday, May 18, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, April 27, 2009
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.
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.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
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.
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.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Challenges
We have to write autobiographies as part of the home study. This is a standard requirement and the length is typically somewhere between 5 and 25 pages. For those of you who know me, you can probably guess that generating 12 pages of whinging about my mother followed by 3 pages of explaining that I've learned to deal with it (my favorite way of expressing this is to say that I've excused myself from the focus group for her particular brand of crazy) is no big deal. I have some concerns about exactly how much I want to reveal about my mother's (and her family's) particular brand of crazy: should I explain exactly what my brother means when he refers to what they call "family game time" as "guns or knives Pictionary"? should I include the most fantastic liberating moment of my life, the one when my mother told me that once, when I was three, I took my dad's hand and refused to hold her's and she has felt rejected by me ever since (I am not making this up, and it was more than twenty years later she hauled this story out and expected me to feel guilty about my selfish toddler ways) and it finally occurred to me that if an infant's capriciousness was enough to wound her for decades that her emotional baggage was neither my fault nor my problem nor my responsibility and I was free, glory hallelulia, Moses take me to the promised land!
Should I explain that one of the most formative moments of my life was when my mother's twin sister tried to force my youngest brother to eat vomit? And that I wish to this day that I'd had the guts to stand up to her and make her stop? Or even just to be openly sympathetic towards him while he sat at the kitchen table for hours in front of a plate of his own puke? Should I explain that the reason I don't have control issues as an adult was from learning then from my aunt's revolting example that the more you attempt to control others, the more you risk losing control of your own moral center?
These are the issues we're dealing with here, people, and this is heavy stuff. But there is a much harder question that I have to find a way to answer: how do I get a man who once responded to an assignment to write an essay on "What I Did on my Summer Vacation" by writing (and this is the entirety of his essay):
But for you, Annie/Oliver, we'd never know how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop.
*Update: Nobody's commented about the vomit thing and I understand that because it's just revolting and I was honestly afraid to put it up on a public blog, but after I'd done it, it felt great. We're only as weak as our secrets are strong - it's saccharine but true.
Anyway, I thought it could use some context because as it is it sounds bizarre and because it's kind of cleansing to tell. She didn't start out by trying to make him eat vomit, she started out by trying to make him eat overcooked yellow squash. The stuff was revolting (and I generally love squash), all slimy and gross, and Danny doesn't do vegetables anyway. But it got - fast, head-spinningly fast - into this place where he. was going. to eat. the squash. because she told him to and he wasn't doing it. He took a bite and said he felt sick and she told him he didn't and he said he needed to get to the bathroom and she said he couldn't and he threw up right there at the table (which did nothing to make the squash more appetizing for the rest of us, let me tell you) and she just couldn't let him beat her like that. So she told him to eat it and he wouldn't and then she told him that he wasn't going to get up from the table until he had eaten it and he just sat there for about three hours and the rest of us were told to stay away from him and we did. I'm ashamed to say it, but we did. And we lived in a place where things like that though generally not as graphic happened for about five months and then when Mother moved in too it got a little better and my aunt didn't try the really outrageous stuff anymore but things were still tense for about another five months and then we moved into Mother's house and we got a whole different flavor of crazy, although Mother was always better by comparison with her sister and brother-in-law. Like, for instance, the time that the five of us kids were alone at Mother's and Uncle Bob showed up for a few minutes and, when I told him that I was starting to feel really sick, he collected the other four kids, left me alone in the house and didn't call anybody to let them know that I was ill or check up on me again (he lived about two miles away, in case you're wondering). By the time Mother got home and found me, I was severely dehydrated, fever of 104 and I had collapsed halfway to the bathroom in a pool of my own... why do these stories always involve vomit? But, for extra fun, I'd also lost control of other... it was gross, let's just stipulate the total and absolute grossness of the general situation. Anyway, it was not a super fun time to be me. So for any of you out there who knew me then and for several years afterward and always thought there was something a little too tense about me, now you know (knowing is half the battle, yada yada, etc).
Frankly, I'm surprised I turned out as well as I did.
Should I explain that one of the most formative moments of my life was when my mother's twin sister tried to force my youngest brother to eat vomit? And that I wish to this day that I'd had the guts to stand up to her and make her stop? Or even just to be openly sympathetic towards him while he sat at the kitchen table for hours in front of a plate of his own puke? Should I explain that the reason I don't have control issues as an adult was from learning then from my aunt's revolting example that the more you attempt to control others, the more you risk losing control of your own moral center?
These are the issues we're dealing with here, people, and this is heavy stuff. But there is a much harder question that I have to find a way to answer: how do I get a man who once responded to an assignment to write an essay on "What I Did on my Summer Vacation" by writing (and this is the entirety of his essay):
It is none of your business what I did on my summer vacation.How does that man write a five page autobiography?
But for you, Annie/Oliver, we'd never know how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop.
*Update: Nobody's commented about the vomit thing and I understand that because it's just revolting and I was honestly afraid to put it up on a public blog, but after I'd done it, it felt great. We're only as weak as our secrets are strong - it's saccharine but true.
Anyway, I thought it could use some context because as it is it sounds bizarre and because it's kind of cleansing to tell. She didn't start out by trying to make him eat vomit, she started out by trying to make him eat overcooked yellow squash. The stuff was revolting (and I generally love squash), all slimy and gross, and Danny doesn't do vegetables anyway. But it got - fast, head-spinningly fast - into this place where he. was going. to eat. the squash. because she told him to and he wasn't doing it. He took a bite and said he felt sick and she told him he didn't and he said he needed to get to the bathroom and she said he couldn't and he threw up right there at the table (which did nothing to make the squash more appetizing for the rest of us, let me tell you) and she just couldn't let him beat her like that. So she told him to eat it and he wouldn't and then she told him that he wasn't going to get up from the table until he had eaten it and he just sat there for about three hours and the rest of us were told to stay away from him and we did. I'm ashamed to say it, but we did. And we lived in a place where things like that though generally not as graphic happened for about five months and then when Mother moved in too it got a little better and my aunt didn't try the really outrageous stuff anymore but things were still tense for about another five months and then we moved into Mother's house and we got a whole different flavor of crazy, although Mother was always better by comparison with her sister and brother-in-law. Like, for instance, the time that the five of us kids were alone at Mother's and Uncle Bob showed up for a few minutes and, when I told him that I was starting to feel really sick, he collected the other four kids, left me alone in the house and didn't call anybody to let them know that I was ill or check up on me again (he lived about two miles away, in case you're wondering). By the time Mother got home and found me, I was severely dehydrated, fever of 104 and I had collapsed halfway to the bathroom in a pool of my own... why do these stories always involve vomit? But, for extra fun, I'd also lost control of other... it was gross, let's just stipulate the total and absolute grossness of the general situation. Anyway, it was not a super fun time to be me. So for any of you out there who knew me then and for several years afterward and always thought there was something a little too tense about me, now you know (knowing is half the battle, yada yada, etc).
Frankly, I'm surprised I turned out as well as I did.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
In Which I Relate News of No Importance to Anyone by Myself
The release of Sims 3 has been pushed back from February 20 to June 2.
I. am seriously. pissed off.
Will I be playing Sims in June? No. I will be buying and moving into my first house in June, or getting ready to buy and move, or having just bought and moved and now looking for someplace to sit, and I will be knee deep in the selection and placement process besides. And, while work right now at this moment is pretty lax, we will be paying the price for this wait-and-hurry-up strategy starting around - three guesses - June. There will be Lots Of Shit going on in June. Lots of Very Important Real Life Shit (or LOVIRLS, for short). That is what June is going to be like. February, March, April and the first week or two of May, those are going to be very boring, anticipatory months. Boring, anticipatory months that were going to be whiled away by playing with my new computer game. Which is now delayed until... JUNE.
I. am seriously. pissed off.
I. am seriously. pissed off.
Will I be playing Sims in June? No. I will be buying and moving into my first house in June, or getting ready to buy and move, or having just bought and moved and now looking for someplace to sit, and I will be knee deep in the selection and placement process besides. And, while work right now at this moment is pretty lax, we will be paying the price for this wait-and-hurry-up strategy starting around - three guesses - June. There will be Lots Of Shit going on in June. Lots of Very Important Real Life Shit (or LOVIRLS, for short). That is what June is going to be like. February, March, April and the first week or two of May, those are going to be very boring, anticipatory months. Boring, anticipatory months that were going to be whiled away by playing with my new computer game. Which is now delayed until... JUNE.
I. am seriously. pissed off.
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