| Trip to Mykayla |
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| July 10, 2000 It’s been awhile since the last update. What a busy summer! I had my physical done. Passed the exam fine and he ordered the blood work and urinalysis. Got a call from his office a few days later saying the tests were all normal. They kept the form I gave them to be filled out with his signature and to be notarized. I will have to go by there and pick it up. I had photo for passport done at Wal-Mart and got that mailed off. They say it takes 4 to 6 weeks to come back. I finally got the “invitation” in the mail from INS about fingerprinting. I am to report to the Fort Worth INS Support Center on July 13 between 8 and 3. After class at TWU on Wednesday I will go to my friend Karen’s house in Irving to stay the night. Once I get the doctor’s form, I will have collected all of the documents that I have the power to collect. I will still be waiting on fingerprint clearance and the homestudy report. The social worker left for vacation the first of July and will not return until July 19, so the first visit will not even be scheduled until after that. With the wait I am seeing from others postings on the APC site, it looks like I can forget about finishing the paperchase in August. September is probably more realistic. As soon as I get the form from the doctor I will be sending off all the documents that are finished for certification and authentication. July 14, 2000 Well, what an experience getting fingerprinted. I spent Wednesday night at my friend Karen’s house in Irving and she went with me to the Forth Worth INS office, which is in the Fort Worth Town Mall. I thought it would be nice to have a photo of this being done. Well, as she starts to take my picture—dead batteries. So she runs down to the dollar store in the mall and says “Don’t turn that form in until I get back and take your picture”. So, I’m sitting there with my form and this very nice lady sitting next to me tries to tell me that I should turn my form in and they will give me a number. I try to tell her I am waiting for my friend, but there is a language barrier and in a couple more minutes she tries telling me again. After about four times of this, the guy up at the desk starts motioning for me to come up and turn it in. I keep shaking my head. This is getting pretty comical. Finally, Karen comes back! She snaps a picture while everyone looks at us like we are crazy. After about 20 minutes, they call my number. I go behind the counter and take my seat and Karen comes around the other side to try to get a shot with the camera. Just as she is snapping a picture, the guy looks around at her and starts saying (very loudly), “NO PICTURES!” Well, apparently we aren’t supposed to take pictures in this office, although there are no signs saying this! I immediately say, “That’s okay, never mind”. But he starts asking the other workers about taking pictures and then starts shouting into the back offices about it and we are drawing A LOT of attention. Wow, I didn’t mean to start an international incident!!! Anyway, after everyone calms down, he does my fingerprints. He keeps saying how he has never had anyone try to take a picture before and how he doesn’t care but the government has these rules. I keep telling him it doesn’t matter, but he felt bad when he heard I was adopting and wanted the picture for the baby book. It was quite an eventful trip! Karen and I went shopping at the Baby Depot after our fingerprinting excursion and I bought several little outfits. We had a good time and I treated her to lunch at Spaghetti Warehouse. I still like the name Mykayla. We can’t decide whether to pronounce it Muh-kayla or Mi-kayla. I like the long i sound, but I don’t want her to have a strange name that no one pronounces correctly. I can just hear her saying, “MOM, what were you thinking!” I just love getting mental pictures of my future daughter, even one like this. July 24, 2000 Tomorrow is the first homestudy visit. I am VERY nervous. We have scrubbed the house cleaner than it has ever been. Mom has been over several times in the last few weeks to help me work on it. She’s a miracle worker when it comes to cleaning! The last couple of weeks have been very stressful for me. Besides all of the adoption paperchase, my graduate classes are eating up most of my time. I did my presentation last week, so at least that is out of the way. Seems as though Murphy’s Law is alive and well in my life. The A/C people came out on Friday and put in a new coil. The A/C was working fairly well, but wasn’t cooling very efficiently and the unit is about 20 years old, so I thought I better start the process of replacing it. Well, they left my house Friday night around 6:30 and it was hot in the house because the air had been off since around 2:00 while they were working. I thought it would cool off in a matter of hours. My house has been HOT all weekend. They also turned off the gas while they worked on the A/C and when they turned it back on they didn’t relight the pilots and I didn’t know they should have. When I started trying to light the pilots I couldn’t get the oven to light. I waited around until Mark could come by around 1:00a.m. Friday night, he came by to pick up Sherry and Adam, and he couldn’t do it either. He did light the water heater for me, but couldn’t believe my water heater was 20 years old. Well, we ended up having to cut off the gas to the house for the weekend until I could get someone out here to look at the oven. Mark ended up buying me a new water heater (that stinker!) and the workman that came to install it found out they couldn’t because it wasn’t the right size, but they were able to get the oven lighted. Everything lights correctly, but it still smells of gas even though they checked it for leaks. I guess I will have to have them back out to check on it. They are coming back later in the week to put in the water heater and some cutoff valves. Anyway, the A/C people came back out today also and he said it was frozen up so he turned it off and then left for several hours for it to thaw. So mom and I cleaned, and cleaned in the hot, hot house. Of course, all of this is happening the day before the homestudy visit!!! I guess it could be worse, it could be happening the day OF the visit. The other snafu of the day was picking up my physical form from the doctor’s office. I went for my physical a couple of weeks ago, and I received a message on my machine a few days later that all of the tests came back normal. So I called to check on the form that I had left with the doctor to sign when all of the tests came back. Of course, they couldn’t find the form. This was on Friday afternoon, and they asked me to call back on Monday and they would work it out. So, I went in to the office in person today and they found it (it had been filed in my folder), but it wasn’t signed and notorized and the doctor was at lunch. Oh, and also I pulled in, put on lipstick-very out of character for me- and promptly locked my keys in the car with the car running! Luckily, my mom was at my house and she brought my extra set of keys. So, I left and called back late afternoon and she said the doctor had signed it but the notary said she couldn’t notarize it because it didn’t have that little blurb at the bottom of the page that she fills in! Well, my day just gets more and more interesting! I called GWCA and Kristin said that Texas does not require this and all she needed to do was sign and stamp with her seal, but she did offer to fax another copy with the blurb on it if I needed it. So I went back to the doctor’s office and told them she could either sign and stamp or I could get another form and the doctor would have to refill it out and sign. Of course, she came out with it in just a minute with it all signed. Yea!!!!! It would be easy to go off the deep end and get mad at these people and these problems when they come up. I must admit I was doing some serious why, why, whining in my head. But then, a young lady came up to me in the doctor’s office (she works there) and she said she had over heard me and would I mind if she asked about my adoption because she and her husband have been talking about it and would like some information. Well, of course, I talked with her and exchanged emails and I guess everything happens for a reason. Anyway, I have my form and that’s the last piece to collect except the homestudy report. I think I see the light at the end of the tunnel! |