There has been one tiny step forward in the adoption quest. The kid’s bedroom has electric.
When we built the house the bedrooms upstairs were unfinished. This was because we were broke after building the house. They stayed unfinished both because we were broke and because the evil mother-in-law was here. We did not want to make her feel like she had her own bedroom. She stayed 2.5 years while living in the dining room. Imagine how long she would have been here if she had been comfy.
My parents keep asking why we aren’t finishing things faster. I want to say we will finish them when the money starts falling from the sky like rain. My mother would tell me not to get smart.
The first step in adoption is the homestudy. Part of that is seeing where the kid would stay. I was in an adoption conference call where the lady said that the room “didn’t need to be finished.” I perked up at that but apparently by “finished” she meant “doesn’t have to be decorated for a kid.” I know this was because her next statement was a laughing, “They just like to make sure there are no holes in the wall or floors.” Huh, what about no walls at all?
But now the room has electrical outlets and several overhead lights. We also opened up the attic access through that room that had been blocked when they insulated. There is now a floor in the attic and a light in there too. The plan is for my parents to help drywall when they come down after Thanksgiving.
It is sort of scary because there has always been an excuse for not pursuing the adoption before. For a long time we could blame the prescence of the evil MIL and then we could say that we couldn’t do anything until the room is done. Now she’s gone and there is progress being made on the room. I even found our passports that had been lost when we moved here. We need those to do our paperwork. Once we find some money we may be full speed ahead.
Over the past few days I’ve had some strange adoption related conversations at work. I’ve been researching this so long that I forget that there are people who have no idea how the procedure works. One receptionist keeps asking me if I have all the paperwork done. I keep saying that we won’t start anything until the room is done. We could start things but knowing how slow the deadbeat contractor is it doesn’t seem like a good use of energy. She asks me this once a week even though I’ve tried to explain that the paperwork stage is massive and will take more than a few days. It isn’t a matter of just filling out a form or two. This person also seems amazed that I know things about adoption. She’s even more amazed that I found out about it on the internet. “So, you can just go on the Internet and find out about this stuff?” is also asked once a week. I don’t know why she is surprised. She is talking to a person who found her husband on the internet. Why wouldn’t I find a kid there too?
Then the other receptionist asked me out of the blue the other day, “What are you going to do if you get a kid and the first thing it wants to do is get into (the husband’s) pants?”
I was totally speechless. Had no idea how to respond to that. I asked incredulously, “A three year old?”
She said, “I thought you weren’t getting a baby?”
“That’s not a baby.” Heck, in adoption terms the three to five year old we are requesting is practically geriatric.
“That’s a baby. I thought you were getting a 14 year old.” Pause “What in the hell are you going to do with a three year old?”
“I don’t know. What do you do with a three year old?”
When I related this conversation to the husband he took it to mean that the receptionist thought he was hot. I don’t take her too seriously. This is the same person who got mad that the new vet kept referring to herself as Indian when she was obviously not Native American. Wanted to know why she didn’t just admit that she was Fillipino. We had to explain several times that she was from a country called India where the people are called Indian. I’m still not entirely sure she believes us.
