A T-Day convo with the older generation...

A nice conversation with the women of my life about our adoption:


Step-Grandma: Too bad they can't test the mother to make sure there isn't something wrong with the baby first. My friend's daughter who adopted, that baby has all sorts of stomach problems...

Me: Oh, that's too bad, what's the problem?

SG: The baby can't stomach formula, gets really sick.

Me: Oh, does the baby has reflux? That happens sometimes, no matter what.

SG to my 60 year old mom:  Maybe you should carry the baby!

Mom: It would give me CANCER again!  ALL THE HORMONES!! Do you know how many hormones are pumped into a woman doing that?

Me: (rolling my eyes) - She's too old. You're both too old.

Blog challenge #4: Halloween

Blog Challenge #4: What was your (or your child's) "best" Halloween costume ever?

I never won any Halloween contests for creativity (although I did win a costume contest at work once for a non-Halloween event), but that's never stopped me from trying. As a kid I was always into combining concepts (a roller-skating cheerleader!), or using whatever I had available to make something work. For instance, my mom was doing respiratory therapy & myofunctional therapy for some time and had several lab coats & stethoscopes in the closet. Sure, I guess I could have been a nurse, but instead I represented the tongue-thrust fixers of the world and when I knocked on someone's door & they said, ooh, a nurse! I made sure to correct them & tell them I was a myofunctional therapist, thank you very much! My cousin trick-or-treated with me that year (we were about 8) and she was a cowgirl, so we also had to correct people that she wasn't a cowboy. AND, no my cabbage patch doll was not my patient, she was an angel. The nerve!

My actual best costume ever doesn't really count, because it was part of my job. I worked at a Halloween theme park (The Scaregrounds) when I was 19 & was hired first as "Toxic Man" and later it morphed into "Snake Girl." As Toxic Man I wore a Hazmat suit and had professionally-applied gory makeup, complete with a glass eye pasted on my cheek. Then I lost the fake eye & had to wear a gas mask instead. As Snake Girl I wore something like a burlap sack dress & jumped out at people while clutching a rubber snake. Fun times!

The latest around here

Not too much happening. I guess that's why this blog's been a bit quiet lately...
We did end up having our final homestudy meeting a week or so ago. We've decided to wait until we're in the new house to have the safety check done. In the meantime our social worker met us at Starbucks & did our "couple" interview and she'll get everything else written for the homestudy ready to go & then when we move she'll do the actual home inspection, talk briefly (oh, please be briefly) to my mother-in-law, and then submit it & we'll be approved in a week or so after that. That timing seems to work just fine for us, although I have to admit, people who were at our first session are already in the books & that's a bit hard to see... but we're doing things the way that's right for us, right?

Blog Challenge #3 - the "grown-up" moment

Blog Challenge #3 (somehow I missed #2, & even this one is late):

What is a specific moment/event that made you realize you were truly "a grown-up"?

I was standing in line at a bakery my family had gone to for generations. I eyed the chocolate cakes and cherry pies and vanilla eclairs with my still child-like enthusiasm for sweets, waiting my turn. My number was called and I handed over my credit card to buy a twenty-five dollar "Dream of Cream" cake for my boyfriend's birthday. In a moment, my adulthood began.

For over 10 years I had been living on credit, always finding a way to make my lifestyle last just a little bit longer. I didn't just ignore financial advice, I avoided it completely. All of my life I wanted to be independent, to go where I wanted, when I wanted. I moved out when I was 17, I traveled to Europe at least four times before I was 26, took roadtrips on a whim and kept my calendar filled with concerts and other pricey events. Problem was that I put nearly all of it on credit cards. Of course, I did work, but my jobs were first low-paying retail, then after college, entry level positions that I hoped would get me further in my careers (plural since I switched careers from investigation work to the travel business a few years after getting my B.A. degree in Social Science with a concentration in Criminal Justice ).

I wanted to be independent, but my lifestyle wasn't giving me freedom, it was destining me for dependence. I was able to make the minimum payments on all my credit cards and figured one day I'd have enough money to pay them off, or maybe not, but who cared because I was living the life I had dreamed about. I didn't even know I was already a slave to debt.

I had begun to notice my interest rates were slowly inching up and I can't say that I always paid my bills on time. I started out good, then got haphazard with my commitments and was often at least a few days behind, sometimes as far as a month off. Soon my interest rates had jumped to nearly 30%. At that point I had about $15,000 in debt on credit cards. Every month I saw the balances get larger & larger even when I was doing my best to not use the cards. My minimum payments, though just 2 percent or so on my balance, were beginning to get harder and harder to pay. I was drowning.

So back to the bakery that day in November. After giving my card to the woman behind the counter I heard the words which would eventually make me grow-up: "I'm sorry, Miss, this card's been declined." I sputtered a bit, but having had to break such news to my customers in the past I knew the best thing would just be to play it cool. "Oh, I wonder why that is. No matter, can I write a check?" I'm not sure why a business would accept a check from someone who's credit card was just declined, but they did. I slunk out of the bakery wondering what went wrong.

I came home and looked over my credit card statement. The interest on my card had snowballed so much that even though I had made a payment the interest amount added put me over my limit. I could keep paying it down, but the interest would just keep fighting me back. It was at that point that I knew I needed to grow up and face my problems with debt head-on. Not that my first call wasn't to one of my other credit cards asking to extend my limit... they passed on the opportunity. In any case, in that moment I realized my youth had just stuck the adult me with a big, literal, bill and it was due immediately.

This isn't a personal finance blog, and really nothing I did to relieve my debt is probably relevant to anyone else, especially since there ended up being a lot of unusual situations that are completely unique to me, but since I've brought you along this far I'll go ahead and tell you how I got out of debt. Quite a bit of it is based on luck, but keeping it off has been where I've made the real transformation. Anyway:

-A month after the bakery incident my apartment got broken into. I needed a place to stay, stat, and my boyfriend's mother invited me to live with them. That immediately saved me about $800.00 in rent a month.

-Four months after I moved in with my boyfriend & his mother, my boyfriend proposed to me. I had kept my debt problem as much of a secret as I could from him, but when we moved to a new apartment, just the two of us, I realized quickly that my problems were about to become his problems. I spilled the beans and we were able to work on a plan.

-Our first plan of attack was to transfer my balances to his credit cards. He has never made a late payment, never just paid the minimum and in doing so had several cards with zero percent interest rates and a credit score of nearly 850. This decision was not made lightly, at least not by him. To take on my debt was a huge leap for him, since he had been burned in the past by friends needing his financial help & then abandoning him. He poured over my statements and our finances and could see no other way to stop me from drowning in my debt. By transferring to the zero balance cards we were able to stop any further debt from accumulating. It was a good start.

-Next, we both got jobs that more than doubled our current income. His income was easy to increase, because when we met he was in a teacher credential program and was unemployed for the year before we got engaged. He finished the program and was hired on as a long-term substitute at first, and then eventually as a full-time teacher. I continued to work at my low paying travel job for another year until we got married. I then was able to find a job that paid me considerably more than I was used to, and was steady - not based on fluctuating commission. I had to sacrifice my short-ish commute for one bordering on masochism, but it actually still allowed me to get home at the same time that I was used to, so no family time was sacrificed. We were able to pretty effectively hack away at our debt by getting jobs that actually paid well. Once the debt was gone we were able to out together a nice emergency fund and also contribute the maximum to our Roth IRAs.

-We looked at our expenses & realized we were spending almost $1,000 a month on eating out. I learned to cook. He learned to cook. We still eat out more than we should, but we're working on it.

-We changed our cell phone plans, negotiated a discount on cable and found less expensive car insurance.

-We started selling our things on Craigslist. We started looking out for items left near the dumpsters and selling that stuff on Craigslist. One day I came home and my apartment looked like it was from an episode of Sanford & Son. Our neighbors were moving out and offered all of there left-over stuff to my husband. He readily accepted their lamps, mirrors, couches, tv... and then put it all for sale on Craigslist. We made about $300.00 on their stuff. Every little extra bit that we brought in went to paying off our debt. Even now I keep my eyes open for dumpster finds, and just last month found a set of weights that we sold for $35.00.

-We simply minimized our spending. Our apartment wasn't cheap, but my husband didn't want to trade living in a nice, safe place near his family for saving a few hundred dollars a month, so we sacrificed elsewhere.

-We made lots & lots of small and large changes until we were finally completely debt free. We've been debt free for about 3 years now, I believe. Of course, now we've bought a house, so we have that debt about to start, but by our calculations in the end our yearly house expenses amount, after tax breaks and the guaranteed monthly rent from my mother-in-law, and including insurance, HOA fees and a small budget for maintenance, our house expenses will be almost equivalent to our rent which we are affording easily right now.

-I love to travel, and for the last 4 years all but two international trips have been paid for completely by my employer (Costa Rica, Iceland, Guatemala, Ecuador/Galapagos Islands, and Venice/Croatia). On several of those my husband has been able to join me for a nominal fee.

-Another work budget-saver is that I work in a remote area with no options to go out for lunch. I never brought my lunch before, but now, for four years I have had no other choice. My hubby helps me out by making my lunch almost every day.

It's an amazing feeling to be free from debt, and to have the control over my life that I always desired, to truly be independent, to truly be an adult.

Why I blog

I'm participating in a blog challenge on one of my local message boards. 

The first prompt is: Why do you blog? What do you hope to get out of this challenge?

My first official blog was started about 5 years ago as I was planning my wedding. I thought it would be a fun way to keep our guests involved in what was going on. Unfortunately I didn't get too far with it, although I did manage to capture the weeks leading up to my horrific wedding dress disaster (dressmaker had breakdown, tore my dress apart the morning of my wedding, then sat and cried on my hotel bed while my cousin & hair/make-up lady helped cobble something together), although I didn't actually ever blog about the incident, just what was leading up to it. Anyway, I abandoned that blog. 

My next blog, Fertility Now!!...Insanity Later? helped me tremendously get through a very challenging time in my life, my struggle with infertility. I blogged because I needed a place to catalogue my treatments and my emotions. I didn't want my infertility struggle to define me in real life, so instead of burdening my friends with constant updates and neuroses I took to writing it down.

My current blog, this one, was started as a fresh start, leaving the world of infertility behind and looking forward to expanding our family through adoption. 

By doing this challenge I hope that I can get in a better writing rhythm and light a fire under myself when I haven't contributed to the blogosphere in a while.

Reflecting a bit

Yesterday I read a blog post from the mom of a blogger I read (got all that?). Anyway, the mom recently moved to Korea to study or maybe teach (but not study AND teach, as that's breaking some bureaucratic rules) and has been keeping a blog about her immersion into Korean culture while still in the U.S. (and of course will keep posting now that she's actually made it there). She posted a little bit about the Korean dramas/soap operas she's been watching and made an observation that's really been making me reflect a bit.

In these dramas, when characters (at least the "good" ones) review their life, they tend to ask, "Did I serve enough? Did I help my friend (family, country etc.) enough? Was my life used well enough to protect what I value?" Americans, it seems to me, tend rather to look back and ask,"Did I live life fully enough? Did I dance, love, risk, etc. enough?" Our focus tends to be more self-centered, more on whether we grabbed enough for ourselves. (Am I right on that?)

Sometimes my dh & I talk about death and what we want to have accomplished before we go. Often it's something like "Wouldn't you be disappointed if when you died you had never..." Often I get a little morose and tell him it doesn't matter - when I'm dead I'm dead, seeing the Parthenon or the Galapagos Islands won't have mattered when I'm gone. But... I've never thought much past that. The truth is, I don't feel I've contributed enough to this world. Did I serve enough? No. Was my life used well enough to protect what I value? I don't think so. Did I help my friend (family, country etc.) enough? No, not enough.

The strange thing is, if I asked my 20 year old self this my answers would have been different. In fact, when I've asked myself these questions, most of my positive examples were from my childhood & young adulthood. I was active in Amnesty International, I made sure to call & write politicians when I felt there were issues that needed to be addressed, I was the youngest person (age 15) to ever train for a particular crisis help line. After college I was my grandmother's primary caretaker while she was saddled with congestive heart failure for the last few months of her life. As a very young child I sought out the elderly in my neighborhood & would sit with them, listening to their stories and help out with household chores. I learned so much from them! I was a good person as a child, and then somewhere along the way I got jaded and stopped focusing on the outside world and turned all my attention on to myself and my immediate circle. Isn't it supposed to be the other way around?

Somehow I've got to recapture my youth and be the person I was in training to be. I have a lot to give, and I hope some way I can find away to make a difference.

27 Hours

27 hours - That's how long I can go without touching a computer. I suck.

A break

I was tagged recently for an Honest Scrap blog award - which is so cool - but in it my poor cat Rye was blamed for possibly eating my internet since I hadn't posted for so long. So this is just a quick post to say although it's not out of the realm of possibility that my giant kitten could eat my internet, he hasn't - I've just been in my own world lately. 

I have a few things I'd like to post about, but it will have to wait until next week at the earliest. I'm taking an internet break for the labor day weekend. Unfortunately I am very much addicted to the internet, and it's causing me to neglect the important things in life. I sit down for a second and next thing I know I've been stuck for an hour and then another hour and so on. During the week I only have 3 to 4 hours after work until bedtime and I'm just not using the time well. I see a habit that needs breaking and priorities that need to be re-adjusted. So, I'm going cold-turkey just for Sat, Sun, & Mon (and today once I get home from work) and hopefully I can re-energize myself, work on some adoption stuff, clean my aquarium, get some quality time in with my husband, etc, etc.  DH has vowed to join me (he's not as bad as me, but he has come down with a slight case of a Mob Wars obsession on Facebook).

PS. I have found internet postings from me going back to 1994 (on a Mystery Science Theater 3000 message board no less), so this is really going to be tough. I just keep thinking about how I'm able to go without when I'm on vacation to remote places (although even in the Galapagos Islands there was at least one place to check internet).

I'll be back in the not too far off future!

Hey, did you know I bought a house?

Oh yeah, uh, like a month ago or something.
It's been a really crazy last couple of months. That is a true understatement.

I mentioned a few posts ago that I had some challenges with my home search. Basically, my dh & I had to do our house search with his sister & her family. We all had varying degrees of "must-haves" (theirs being extremely more rigid than ours, by the way), but we had to live near each other. In that post I mentioned a good possibility for us. It ended up that it really did work for all of us, and so we put our deposit down and our two townhouses are being built right now!

It was a long, odd process, and one that doesn't even seem believable in this under-water market right now... The builder is only releasing 8 units at a time for sale. Every time they have another release they raise the price a bit. The price was just right for all of us, and if it went up any more than there was a chance we'd be out of our budget. Since we needed two, the sales rep recommended lining up on Thursday for a Saturday release.

That seemed crazy to us, but since we really had to have two units, and there were only two of the models we needed, we HAD to get in line. Except... someone beat us to it. They got in line on Wednesday, complete with a tent and camping gear & wi-fi... and they wanted our unit.

We resigned ourselves that this just wasn't our month (although it didn't deter my in-laws from getting in line for their place, even though if we didn't get one the next month we were going to all have problems).

On Wednesday night my bil asked us to come up & hold his space while he went home to get some supplies. I stayed in the car and bawled my eyes out. My dh went and chatted with the guy who was taking our unit. I could see through my tears that he was helping him set up his tent. They seemed to be getting along well, which was annoying me to no end.

Eventually we got a call that my bil had gotten really sick when he got home and they decided they would try again in the morning, hoping no one would come overnight to take their spot.

The next day while I was at work I started getting urgent calls, both from my sister in law & my husband. The people who had claimed our unit, the guy my dh helped with his tent, had changed their minds and decided on a different type of unit. Ours was now available!

I have no idea why they changed their minds. I truly think it was becasue my dh was nice, and they could see how upset I was. They changed to a cheaper unit, even though they were downsizing from what they currently owned and could easily afford ours. The reason they gave was that they didn't like the look of our building (I actually agree, Ithink it's the ugliest of the three different types in the development), but still, it wasn't worth not moving into and downgrading in my opinion. But, I guess we'll never really know.

My dh & I spent the next two nights outside the builders office with the rest of the people who will eventually be our neighbors. We got along with everyone, and we are all keeping in e-mail contact with each other while our homes are being built.

So, my sil, bil, and my 2 year old nephew will live in the townhouse right next to us, and my mil will live with us in the 3rd story loft (which has been converted to a 4th bedroom w/ bathroom). We're all pretty excited, and I'm so happy that my future children will have so much family close by. Plus, my own parents live just a few minutes away, too!

Here's a slideshow of the construction so far:

Homestudy part 1

Today DH & I went to our agency's required two day information session. This was the day
that we signed the contract, made our first payment, and had our first homestudy
interviews. I have been waiting for this day for months. I'm now in tears and am
just having a really bad day.

First, after during our short break, dh took me outside and started freaking out
about the finances. It was like he had forgotten everything that we had
discussed and wanted to know if we could pull out and wait until later to start
everything. There's a lot more to it than I can even get into right now, but
needless to say it shook me up & I had to use everything in my power not to
start crying right there.

What he wanted, basically, was to start the homestudy, but not pay for it... He
wanted to just pay part and have them not take the rest until he knew for sure
he has a job in the fall (he's a teacher). Now, the likelihood of him not having
a job is about 1% (he says 10%), AND we had already talked about it and decided
to take the "risk." So now we're sitting out of their office having a terribly
intense conversation & I just can't believe that he's waited until this very
moment to bring all of this up.

I tell him I think we'll be fine, that we're doing all of this now because he
has the time, it's been planned for months, so lets just complete it. OK, no
problem. We did bring it up with the coordinator, and she gave us a little more
time to discuss amongst ourselves & we went ahead and signed the paper work.

Then there's the issue of the coordinator that's been assigned to us. We don't
like her. She seems very efficient, but not warm and we just didn't get a good
feeling from her. We showed her some of the pieces of our profile that we had worked on. She said she wouldn't approve what we showed her, but I know we adhered to all the
guidelines. I actually think it was great,but at the same time I don't want to question her authority. I just wonder if we had the other coordinator if we'd be happier. I think I need
someone with a little more handholding, but I don't think we can change, plus it may
just be our own jitters that's causing the problems.

The Little Seed

I recently entered to win a cool gift basket from The Little Seed and in doing so I was reminded that it's been a while since I updated the blog. See, I visited The Little Seed shop while I was on vacation in Los Angeles as I had heard Soleil Moon-Frye gave out hugs there. Huh? Ok... let me explain...

About a year and a half ago or so my cousin, who lives in LA, went to visit the new baby shop that had opened up not too far from her house. When she walked in she recognized one of her vocal students' wives, but couldn't think of her name. She made small talk about her new baby and about the wife's children, and asked her if she was still doing yoga, etc etc. At the end of the conversation she leaned in to give the wife a big hug good bye. The wife paused momentarily, than smiled and gave my cousin a big hug back.

As my cousin left the store, she realized that it wasn't her student's wife, but actually Soleil Moon-Frye, who is the owner of the Little Seed, as well as star of two of my favorite shows Punky Brewster & Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Don't scoff, I have simple pleasures!

So when I was in LA last month we stopped in the shop to a) look around for cute organic baby stuff, and b) to see if I could catch a peek at Soleil. Guess what? She was there! However, I'm way too cool to show interest, so I just shopped a bit and watched her kids have a few photos taken with some of the merchandise and then she left with her husband & some other family members. Woo hoo, celebrity sighting! Uh, but she didn't give out hugs, and she didn't appear to recognize my cousin this time. Oh well, I got my cousin's two girls some cute things and we went along our merry way.

Is our timeline changing?

I have no idea, really. BUT... it looks like there is a good chance that we may start up with our agency in July, which is quite a few months earlier than I expected. I mean, for all intents & purposes, that's next month (ok, it's actually just about 2 months exactly)...

How did this come about?

Well, we've been waiting to start since we're considering buying a house and we wanted our savings to look nice & robust for when our loan was being approved, and having a several thousand dollar chunk missing just wouldn't look good. But an opportunity has come up to buy a brand new house, but we wouldn't be closing until the end of the year. Which means even if we take from our savings in 8 months we'll replenish lots of it.

Of course, there are lots of issues with this particular property. Not construction related, but relations-related. Basically, my mother in law will be living with us. She's on a fixed income that will be running out within the next 10 years without any way of replenishing it. The plan has always been for her to live with my sister in law... but unfortunately my mil is not a fan of my sil's husband and has vowed that she will never live with him. BUT... she also won't live away from them either. So, all 6 of us (me, dh + mil & sil, bil + our nephew) need to live near each other. We actually already do, in fact we're all at the same address right now, but in different apartments.

My sil was getting frustrated with the whole thing & wrote us this e-mail that pretty much sums up our needs:

How about we all just move in together and drive each other nuts under one big house with 3 cats 2-3 kids and a grandma? It might be easier than finding two homes within a 10 minute walk...considering most homes out there are short sales/foreclosures...other than brand new properties that we would have to risk the interest rate going higher...I really just don't see how we can otherwise guarantee finding 2 regular houses with our criteria given that there is a bidding process involved.

So just to be clear...we are now looking for:

2 homes within 10 minutes walking distance

We are looking at one house not exceeding $X00,000 and the other not exceeding $X00,000

We want a good school district, cities include X, X, X and X

Additional search criteria based on STRONG preferences:

home cannot be older than 10 years

one of these houses must be at least 2 stories

square footage must be at least 1500, although really prefer 1700plus

And guess what, we actually found it. So, we have lots to do to try to prepare for this, but it looks like it's a real strong possibility that we'll be home owners by early next year.

So... I'm hoping things don't change & we really can start our homestudy this summer!

A Blog Award!

T from over at Life As a G very sweetly gave me the Superstar Blogger Award. Thank you, T!

Of course, with any blog award comes rules & responsibility... But, still - how cool is that?

So here are the rules:

Add the award to your blog

Link the person from whom you received this award

Pass it on to 3 of your fav blogs

Leave a message on their blog telling them they're a Superstar!

OK - Here are three blogs (out of the 403 subscriptions on my Google Reader) that definitely deserve mention:

Get AMPed Up! - I don't think S. knows I've been reading her blog (and the one that came before it, Aaron Out the Laundry) for a long time (ever since she left a comment on someone else's blog many, many months ago), but I have, and I love it. S. gives her son his own voice, and it is the cutest thing! Aaron is so lucky to have a mom with such a great sense of humor and such obvious love for him!

Valley Girl Has Baby, Goes Crunchy - E. popped in on my local message board once or twice and I happened to click on her blog - I've been a follower ever since! Her dedication to greening up the world is inspirational. I love how she lets us in on her triumphs and her struggles with making the planet a better place for her children.

They Grow in Your Heart- This blog was one of the first I started reading when I was first beginning to look at adoption. I've been almost able to follow my adoption journey in terms of her daughter's milestones - oh, Lily just turned 2, ok, that means that I've been learning about adoption for about two and a half years now... K. is a true adoption advocate & has several times taken time out of her day to answer questions I've had, and just be really supportive in general.

:)

I did it! I told my mom & my step-dad about our adoption plans.
It went so well!
My mom at first was a bit confused, asking "adopting a what?"
But soon after that they were both super supportive, asking lots of questions, and not one of them was a bad or offensive question.
We touched a bit on my infertility treatments, and they were respectful of not pushing me to reveal too much, other than to feel sympathy with me that it wasn't successful.

My mom said she's already thinking of the baby shower, and my step-dad really seemed genuinely excited.

So, there you go - it's out in the open, and I feel good.

Oh, and DH went out with his mom & told her, too!

Will I do it???

Tomorrow I'll have a chance to talk with my mom about our adoption plans... will I go through with it?? Well, I've got everything ready to go:

Reading material: (Cat not included)


A cute, discreet zipper envelope for it all.
I chose the Russian dolls theme since she went to
Russia a few months ago, not becasue we're
adopting from there. I hope it doesn't confuse her!


I hope it goes well. I'm not too worried about her reaction, but at the same time, I think it will be a shock to her. I have to prepare myself to give her some time to grieve the idea of having biological grandchildren.

I'll update again tomorrow!

Oh, Rye!

Announcing our adoption plans...maybe

I never told my parents about our IF. In fact, if Mom asked if we were thinking of having kids I always just changed the subject with an "um, I don't know, we haven't been married all that long. We're still enjoying being newlyweds." Yeah, that worked until you realize that we're both 35 this year, and we've been married for about 4 years. My mom, very surprisingly, has never pushed the subject. But... I've never felt comfortable confiding in her either.

But now, with adoption on the horizon, I really want to tell her. I sort of want to blindside her with it, so her first thought isn't that I'm about to announce a pregnancy. At the same time, I want to make telling her about our plans kind of special. So I'm looking for a little package I can put together with positive stuff about adoption included. I ran over to Borders & B&N to see if they happened to have anything appropriate, even a magazine or something. Yeah, right. Nada. So now I'm going to see about downloading some articles, maybe have a couple issues of different adoption magazines and maybe some other neat thing about grandparenthood or something. Let me know if you have any ideas!

About the adoption orientation on Saturday...

I've been waiting a bit to write about our experience on Saturday
because I needed to make sure I wasn't just getting caught up in the
moment.
I really, surprising, liked this new agency. I actually still love the
other agency, but I think this one just fits our needs a little bit
better. I did not go in thinking that I would want to switch. I just
wanted to get my husband a little bit more information so he could
understand the adoption process and have more information to decide if
it's right for him.
After this seminar he said, "I'm feeling hopeful." It's not something
I've heard from him regarding adoption before. It made me smile and
get all giddy inside.
Everything was so nicely organized, and having it on a Saturday, where
we aren't crazy rushed from commuting in rush hour traffic, I think
did wonders for both of our comprehension levels.

So, yay! we are feeling really confident with this decision! I'm so
grateful that they gave us every bit of paperwork (personal & medical
references, fingerprinting & background checks, the autobiography
questions, etc.) we would need for the home study. Being able to look
through this before making any decisions puts my mind so much at ease.

I'm also now very confident in working with an agency, and not a
facilitator or attorney. It's just the right fit for us.

Of course, it's not a normal day for me unless something awkward
happens, and Saturday did not disappoint. As I was introducing myself,
and right in the middle of a sentence about struggling with
infertility, the mailman walks in with a delivery. He looked really
embarrassed, maybe more than me, although I was really, really red.
So, I had to stop mid-sentence as the package was signed for and then
I started laughing uncontrollably and making comments about my ovaries
and what not, because why not make an awkward situation even more so?
Nice.

I'm so excited, I just want to get everything started and start
telling people, which is the greatest feeling in the world. I'm
beginning to realize that because of my infertility, and my
embarrassment over it, I've detached myself from so many people. Now I
feel I can let them in on this journey, and start rebuilding some of
the most important relationships in my life.

Back when I was "single"...

My husband returned from a week of chaperoning Science Camp yesterday, yay!

We had a nice little conversation:
DH: I'm so happy to be home, I really missed you. (aww)
ME: I missed you, too... you hear a lot of noises and bumps in the night when you're single-
DH: Single? You do realize that just because I was gone for 4 days doesn't mean you were single, right?
ME: Uh, sure...

I brought up being "single" a few more times during the evening, just to have a little fun with him (DH: Did you brush your teeth, yet? ME: You know I didn't have to deal with this kind of stuff when I was single. etc, etc.)

Hee, we have fun.

Oh, we had our latest Adoption orientation today, but I'm too full (don't ask) to write about it right now, but will later. It went great, by the way.

Adoption Seminar on Saturday!

I'm really looking forward to this. I'm not sure about the agency, yet, but I really like that it's a 4 hour class, and really will get in to what open adoption is all about (I hope).

I sent my husband away to Science Camp with a copy of "Adoption for Dummies" so he could get a little prepared for this... we'll see how far he got when he comes home tomorrow.

We have gone to one other agency seminar, which I blogged about **here** That agency left me with a very good feeling, and so I'm very interested in what I'll take away from this new agency's seminar. The other agency's seminar was really just a quick overview of the process, with some Q&As. It lasted maybe 2 hours, with a bunch of that time taken up by introductions. I think my husband will get a little bit more out of this meeting.

And then, we're going to an Open House of a home we may be interested in buying! Exciting times!

A new blog for a new beginning!

Hope. I think I have it. I'm feeling so excited right now by the possibilities of what lay ahead.
So, today, while my husband is chaperoning his school's science camp, I'm going to start my new blog, "A Whole Lot of Hope."

My last blog, Fertility Now...Insanity Later?, took on a weird tone, I think. Definitely not hopeful. I think I was defeated by months, years, of not being fertile,and not overcoming it. But, that's not who I am - I am not Infertile M. I'm Marisa, and I love my life, I love my husband, I love my family, and I love my pets. And guess what? I get a whole lot of love back, too! I am a very lucky person!

As far as content... well, this blog is going to start with the purpose of chronicling our adoption journey. A journey I think I'm ready to start. We have some roadblocks in the way, but they aren't insurmountable. But, my life isn't all about trying to be a parent, so I hope to also share some of my day to day going-ons. I'd like to open up my life a bit..maybe even out a picture or two of me up here. Get some photos up of my aquarium, my silly cats, my living space, my obsessions (currently obsessed with weird vending machines. I'm ready to go to Japan just to experience their crazy vending machines)...whatever comes to mind.

I hope you'll follow along!