Two

Man-Sickness

I've been so sick for the past 5 days that when I answered the phone over the weekend my mom said, "Well hello, my future son-in-law!"

I have been playing a lot of Professor Layton and have had over 11 quarts of orange juice but so far I still feel like I've been run over by the ass truck. I tried to take a picture of my throat by sticking my phone in my mouth, just to see if there was some kind of, I don't know, obvious sign of DANGER, but this was exactly as effective and you'd think it would be.

Matt is home sick today too, and while you may think that this is cute, the two of us at home snuggling on the couch and drinking chicken soup broth out of a two pronged straw, you are very very wrong. I want to cuddle, he wants to not touch me, the dog wants to jump all over us, we're both hungry but no one has the energy to cook so we just look at Pioneer Woman recipes and drool.

Have I mentioned we don't do sick very well? I think I'll go wander from room to room whining and wishing for cinnamon rolls.

Screw The Rat

I think that 2008 will henceforth be known as The Year of The Rat HOLY SHIT. Life is about to change in a million different ways, by this time next year you might not even recognize me. I'll have an entirely different name, for one thing. I have two more weeks of classes, then clinicals for 12 weeks (working for free), then I graduate. Then I take my boards and hopefully pass, so I should be starting a new and lucrative job by the beginning of July. We start our foster parent classes tonight, so by the end of April we'll be legally licensed to accept placements. Placements = Babies and I don't know if you guys know anything about babies, but you have to feed them and bathe them and put them to sleep and they aren't allowed to stay home alone while you go out to the Indian Buffet. From what I hear, dogs are not considered acceptable supervision either. This may change our household dynamic somewhat.

Not to mention the fact that we're getting married in August. And we're trying to get Matt back to school to start his second Bachelor's this summer. AND now because of the market, we're considering trying to buy a house instead of just renting something bigger. Could we find a few more stressful things to cram into the next six months? Maybe someone we love will die or there will be a gigantic natural disaster or our dog will get tired of babysitting and run away.

The truth is, I'm actually feeling pretty relaxed about all of this. I'm excited about every single one of the changes and I know we'll deal with them together as they come. I'm ready for a new way of life. But yesterday a recent graduate of my program came in to talk to our class about what the transition from school to her career was like and about all of the stresses of your last semester and passing your boards and getting licensed, etc. "I thought I was doing fine," she said happily. "I was handling everything, I didn't think I needed help or to talk to anyone about all of the changes I was going through." Sound familiar? "AND THEN, I broke into gigantic hives all over my face and had paralyzing chest pain and didn't know why until I realized that I had been bottling all of my stress up inside."

So this post is my official un-bottling, do you hear that hives fairy? I am expressing my feelings in a healthy and adult manner so I will not be needing your services of exploding them all over my face as itchy red welts, but thank you. It's the thought that counts.

The best part about being engaged so far.

Matt keeps on calling me Fiancé Knowles and then yelling LET ME UPGRADE YA.

I Guess We're Hitchin' A Ride On The Matrimony Train

MMMM

Everything went well with the visit yesterday and we're starting our classes this coming Tuesday. Everyone has to take 9 weeks of "Don't Kick Babies" classes before they can get licensed. So if everything goes smoothly we should be licensed by the end of April. Considering the popularity of the population of kids we're accepting right now (newborn to one year is the most requested age) it will probably still be awhile before we get a placement. We are going to move into a bigger house once I graduate in June, so waiting until after that will probably work out better for us anyway. Who knows? is pretty much the theme of this whole thing though. It may be June of next year and we could still be baby-free. But I am excited about getting ready and at least getting all of our ducks in a row.

I also made stuff this afternoon for Matt's preschool's Valentine's Day bakesale tomorrow. These cupcakes are by far the cheapest and easiest dessert to make for that kind of fundraiser, the ingredients cost a total of $5 and I piped them all using Ziplock bags.

Said I don't go, where I'm supposed to go

Tomorrow is our first home visit from a foster care licensing caseworker. I'm not nearly as obsessed about making the house look nice as I was the first time (that got canceled because of snow) but we still did some cleaning and tidying up tonight. It's weird because even though I've already worked with the person and know that she's very nice and nonthreatening, I'm just not quite sure how invasive the whole thing is going to be. I know she has to test our water for toxins, see that we keep our cleaning supplies safely out of poisoning range, and make sure we're not keeping a baby-eating factory in the basement, but other than that? Is she going to look inside of our cabinets? The refrigerator? Is she going out to the garage? Because dude. That is full of bags of garbage from the last 3 weeks of forgetting to put it out on the curb.

We had sex during our lunch breaks today, and it was nice for all of the reasons that that is always nice. Afterwards when making mental note to be sure and take my birth control on time, I realized how funny it is that we're so worried about making sure I don't get pregnant while at the same time taking all of the necessary steps to get a baby. Not all things have to make sense, I guess.

And I actually used Flickr like a normal person!

My Fair Choppa: Maybe Baby?

At first we said we weren't going to tell people because we had no idea what was going to happen. Well, we still have no idea what will happen, but we've pretty much been telling everyone we see, so. I guess I'll tell you. Sorry to any real life people who I haven't had a chance to tell yet and might find out here (Hi, Jill!).

I have been really careful not to mention my job on this site in anything other than casual passing, being a firm believer in Be Ye Not So Stupid. Writing about my job is especially touchy, because it has to do with sensitive information, and there are several painful ways to torture you for breaking confidentiality laws. Starting by sending you to jail. So for the past 3 years while I've worked at a private social service agency with children in foster care, I've pretty much just kept my mouth shut. Basically I transfer foster kids to visits with their birth parents and birth siblings and document the visits for their files and for court. It has its ups and downs like any other job, the ups include getting paid to drive around in a company car a lot and sometimes spending the entire afternoon at the park or the local swimming pool. The downs include that one time my boss sent me home because there was a client coming to the office, she had made it quire clear to several people, for the sole purpose of punching me hard in my face.

Overall it has been a great place to work, my boss is fantastic, and my co-workers, while peddling the Jesus like there's no tomorrow (remind me to show you the fake $100 bill that's really a tract that one of them put in all her Christmas cards), really are good people. They have let me leave for camp every summer and have been more than accommodating with my school schedule. But I'm in the home stretch, and as of 5 weeks from now, my school schedule will finally become too daunting to accommodate. March 14th is my last day of working in child welfare. I'm really going to miss it.

But I have seen more suffering at this job than I really care to admit. I will not miss the disappointed faces when daddy doesn't show up, the prying brothers and sisters apart after one more hug, holding teenagers while they cry in the driveway because they don't want me to leave them here, explaining why they can never go home. I will not miss the decisions that don't help anyone, the destruction of families, the lack of funding, the lack of caring, the system that is so far past broken. But now, finally, I feel like I can help.

We're getting licensed to be foster parents. I read enough blogs to know that the internet seems to view writing about parenting as a free pass to call in the Judgment Police. The Mommy Wars, the Daddy Wars, I am not interested in this. I am not interested in people who think we are too young or too liberal or too unestablished or too poor or too white. And I know a lot of you will think those things. But real life people will think those things too, people we know. People we are related to. You'll all get over it.

We only decided this for sure a few weeks ago, and we put the pedal to the metal because we had a specific baby in mind who needed a home before April. She has since found a good placement where she can be with her sister, which is great, but we are still going ahead with all of our classes and paperwork. We were supposed to have our first home visit from a caseworker last Friday but it was canceled because of the snow day and rescheduled for next week. Our application is finished, we both just need to get physicals and have our fingerprints done. We are both really excited as well as appropriately scared shitless.

If I know one thing, it's that nothing is certain in foster care. We are interested in a baby, no older than one, with a strong chance of eventually being adoptable. We could get everything squared away and get a call two months from now to bring a baby home. It could be this time next year and we could still not have a placement. We really have no idea. But soon, every day will bring the possibility of SURPRISE, YOU'RE A PARENT! or NO SUPRISE HERE! CONTINUE TO WATCH PROJECT RUNWAY IN YOUR UNDERWEAR. It's going to be quite the game.

So, now you know.

Go Bears!

We're headed off to my parents' house for a full day of way too much pre-game talk and way too much food. They have a mini Frialator that they use about once a year because using it more often than that has been scientifically proven to make you poo deep-fried turds and oh yeah, DIE. I really am looking forward to this, the greatest of American frivolous holidays. When else are you basically supposed to eat 17 cheese sticks for dinner? I also spent this morning baking a shit ton of even more unnecessary football-themed food.

Just call me in the morning if you need 27 cupcakes and 9 boxes of fried ravioli.