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  Printouts that have been superseded by later printouts (like ferinstance, an updated version of the adoption petition) go in the shredder.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.