Torrefaction

Took the day off to plow through a heap of paperchasing.  Got the I-600-a form sent in (even though the home study is still in progress--our social worker said to go ahead and file now), picked up my police clearance report.  Called to nag various folks - doctor, work references - so hopefully those chunks of paper will be ready soon too.  Left a message attempting to sign up for our home study agency's required adoption class.  Spent 3 hours last night learning infant cpr.  We can't schedule our last home study meeting until we've assembled everything our social worker needs to see, so that's still hanging over us.

I'd really hoped to have all of the needed stuff for the home study pulled together by the end of March, but it's not looking like that'll happen.  Hopefully within a couple of weeks, though.  Identix is checking to see what happened to my fingerprints, since they didn't apparently end up making it to the Illinois State Police, although Hub's did and he was cleared.  The FBI has another set of our prints which will take a few/several weeks to produce a result.  Once LCFS has all that they can finish the home study, which will then be sent off to USCIS for the biggest most important clearance.

Thus far, here are things that make managing the paper mountain a little easier.  Some of them cost money, so take this for what it's worth to you:

1. a laser printer.  Dear God I love my laser printer.  I print everything out, over and over and over.

2. a shredder.  Printouts that have been superseded by later printouts (like ferinstance, an updated version of the adoption petition) go in the shredder.  That way I don't have to worry that I've got the wrong version of something in my "real" pile

3. extra copies of everything.  We bought 5 copies each of our birth certificates & marriage certificate.  That way we can attach them to anything where there's any question about needing them, and if someone just needs to see them, we have spares handy.  The passport folks send your certs back when they've finished, by the way.

4. manila envelopes.  These are the bomb.  Every piece of paper I've got is in a manila clasp envelope, with the contents marked on the outside.  e.g: "CCAI application--completed (photocopy)", "LCFS adoption info kit"  "Docs in progress" "birth and marriage certs" etc etc etc.  Whenever I'm getting a form or filing ready, it gets its own manila envelope, and I list what's needed on the outside.  Once I've assembled everything in the envelope I carry it with me to FedEx (see #8),  photocopy everything (see #9), and put the originals into the FedEx envelope and the photocopies into my manila envelope for easy reference later on.

5. Sharpie markers in every color of the rainbow.  Officially, for writing on the envelopes.  unofficially, because sharpies rock! 

6. A multi-level to-do list.  Sections for "ASAP," "Soon," "Whenever," and "Done."  When I complete something I move it to the "Done" section.  It helps a lot to look at everything that's finished when I'm feeling swamped.

7. Mini Post-it notes.  When I'm filling something out, I use bright heart-shaped post-its (I know, gaack, cute, but hey! I like hearts!) to flag everything I can't fill in or that needs Hub's signature.  I write what's needed on the post-it and pull each one off as I take care of that item.  That way I can fill stuff out in multiple passes, without having to reread the whole form looking for blanks every time.

8. Fed-Ex, for every piece of paperwork that has to go in the mail.  Yeah, it costs 18 bucks to send something, but the peace of mind that comes from being able to track it and see who signed for it is worth it.

9. Photocopies.  Everything I send or give to someone else, I copy first.  That way I can refer to it if I need it later and make sure things like financial statements match up perfectly.

10. A dedicated "Adoption Stuff" folder on my computer, *backed up* to an external drive.  All the documents I've created or downloaded (pdfs etc), go in here.  I'm not obsessive enough to have scanned all my paper-only stuff (yet!) but I have keyed in my own versions of a couple of things that I only had on paper initially.  The LCFS biographical questionairre, for instance--it's about 8 pages of questions, and I don't like writing by hand.  So I created a fillable word doc of it, filled it in on the computer, and saved it to my Adoption Stuff folder. 

11. An alternate project.  It helps to have more than one thing that I'm focusing on.  Even though some days it seems like my freelance work is cutting into my paperchasing time, at other times it's a real relief to *have to* think about writing and art  for a while instead of adoption.

Posted by alchemist at 05:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

1. The bright colors.  Being tall and wearing a 1x doesn't make me feel conspicuous enough, so I'm delighted that designers avail themselves of every color in the PAAS Easter-Egg-Decorating pallete.

2. The high waisted pants.  As belly buttons move outward, they also apparently move upward by several inches, and it's nice of the designers to notice this. 

3. The wide, boxy cuts.  Women gain weight evenly all the way around, like sausages, and it's so great to have clothing that reflects this.

4. The short shirts.  My poochy belly wants the world to see it, damn it!  So I'm glad no-one thinks to make a shirt long enough to cover it.  It's particularly edifying to find a shirt wider than it is long.

5. The waist-to-hip ratio.  Although I weigh 200 pounds and am shaped exactly like a voluptuous potato, I like to imagine that my waist and hips are in the same proportion as a swimsuit model, so I'm glad designers keep nipping in those waists.  Nothing's so calming as the sound of the extra fabric around my hips flapping gently in the breeze when I wear pants that fit comfortably in the waist.

6. Dart-free construction.  Rather than sew shirts to fit boobs, designers just make the whole shirt bigger.  So flattering, and gives me plenty of fun opportunities to talk about how I'm not pregnant.

Posted by alchemist at 12:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Well, I needed a little filling but didn't need any novacaine, so it worked out ok.  Today we're still in a frenzy of cleaning to prepare for our social worker's home visit.  Of course she told us in advance that it's not a "white-glove check," that she's there to make sure the baby has somewhere to sleep and that we have enough smoke detectors, etc.  But it is our one chance to put on our best show for the powers that be, so we're doing it up right. 

I keep thinking of how you prepare a house for a social worker visit - have to keep reminding myself that we're not trying to sell the house, so real estate tricks like having a pie baking in the oven are unneccessary (not that I know how to bake a pie).  We're also not having a party so filling the fridge with beer isn't the thing either.  I don't really have enough time to, you know, re-landscape the yard.

So we're just doing the usual pick-up, vacuum & clean, and do an extra sweep through the place to make sure we don't have any books called "how to ruin a child's life" or what have you.

Posted by alchemist at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I went to the doctor yesterday for my physical exam for the adoption.  Also to get my exam forms filled out for my life insurance company, so I can increase my coverage.  And I figured I may as well get my hepatitis innoculations started.  So I got stuck in my right arm for hep A, my left arm for hep B, my right arm again for my TB test, and the back of my right hand (ow ow OW!) for the blood test.

Ah, well.  The doctor was super nice, my blood pressure hasn't gone up as much as I expected after two months on the pill, and I'm all done getting needles stuck in me for the rest of the month.

Except...at work today, I was too busy for a regular lunch so I settled for some "machine cuisine"-- peanut brittle and smartfood cheddar popcorn, specifically (I am allergic to chocolate, so vending pickings are slim).  The smartfood didn't make me much smarter but the peanut brittle certainly brought out the brittle in me. I chipped a tooth, bad enough that I have to go get a filling tomorrow if the dentist can fit me in.  So that'll be another shot, and drilling and half a day wasted when I'm supposed to be getting the house ready for our social worker's visit on monday morning.  Crap!  And of course I've been twiddling my tongue over the sharp part of the tooth so I've got a little owie starting there too.

Normally shots, owies and such don't bother me -- I had 4 years of immunotherapy (a.k.a. allergy shots--worked GREAT by the way) and I have 3 tattoos so I'm down with getting stuck.  But I'm just not in the mood at the moment...feeling like whining instead.  Waah, waah, waaahh.

Posted by alchemist at 10:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For my first Tuesday self portrait I've chosen a CGI image.  I spend a lot of my free time noodling around with 2d and 3d computer graphics.  This image was made with ArtRage, a free paint app.  One of the nice features of the program is that you can put virtual tracing paper over a photograph so you have a guide for painting. (You can also paint directly onto a photo).

You can get the software at http://www.ambientdesign.com/artrage.html.  There's a free edition and a $20 edition with a few extra features.  It's a lot of fun and if you've never tried computer graphics, it's a very good place to start.

Posted by alchemist at 07:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

So I'm writing this...thing. It's not worthy yet of being called a novel, or a draft of same.  But it's a thing and I've been working on it for a while.

Of course I've bitten off way more than I can chew.  It's what I like to do...take on an impossible task, and wrestle it into submission.  It's how I learn best but it doesn't always work; sometimes I'm the one who ends up hitting the mat.  So this thing has 3 major POV characters and covers a couple hundred years of future history--flashbacks, hidden connections, the works.  I've been wrestling with the best way to get into the full draft--really get into it.  Not writing bits and pieces, like I've been doing, and not outlining, but sitting and writing the thing from one end to the other.  It's like trying to catch a water balloon.

This morning I finally figured out how to do it.  I've been focused on plot, and that ever-elusive bangup first chapter, the thing that'll hook the reader and drag them kicking and thrashing into the book the thing.  But trying to plot this up front is like trying to detail a clay pot before actually throwing it.  Instead, I need to focus on story--the chronological progression of events--and get everything down in draft form in the order it happens in my fictional world.  As long as I mostly choose the right POV character for each scene, I should be able to use the chronological draft to piece together a workable plot for the second draft.

This is good.  This is exciting.  I finally have a door into this thing, instead of an endless series of windows.

Posted by alchemist at 08:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last night I dreamed that I had a baby prematurely, and that several of the babies in the ward that same night died of pneumonia--including mine.  I spent part of the dream trying to find out what kind of unsanitary conditions could have led to so many babies dying at once, part of it trying to find someone on the staff who actually cared about the deaths, part of it looking for some of the other parents to see how they felt about it, and part of it weeping.  The weeping part went on for quite a while.

In real life I don't let myself cry all that often.  So I guess this dream is my way of having a weep over my infertility.  Let's hope I don't need to have too many more like it.

Posted by alchemist at 12:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by alchemist at 06:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)