Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

I don't know why...

I don't know why I keep going to the Rumour Queen site, but I do.

I don't know why I keep believing her 'rumours' of a speed up, but I do (only to have a crushing realization when things go *SPLAT*).

I don't know why I keep getting on this stupid roller coaster every month, hoping that something is going to change, but it doesn't.

I don't know why I bother, because it's not like anything is going to change for us in the foreseeable future. We've *easily* got another two years of this, with really no end in sight. I'm not trying to be negative, just realistic.

I know I'm not the only one that feels this way, and I know there are a lot of you who are closer and are feeling this even more. I just wish we had some kind of idea as to when this would happen. I'm tired of having to tell people 'another two years' and being asked 'I thought you said that six months ago?!'

How can you miss something that you've never had?

Responses

Hi all - Donna here.

1. Is the new rule about not allowing concurrent adoptions effective immediately or after a certain date?

- my understanding is that it is effective immediately. CB families, you could call the office and check with Susanne on that though.

2. Is this the CCAA's attempt to purge the waiting list?

- no idea.

3. When will CB be sending an email about the homestudy updates?

- sorry, no idea. Money wise, unless they've changed the requirements since they first sent out the notice, I believe you'll need to pay for a homestudy update visit with your AP (and they all charge differently - maybe around $200 or so??), and for your medicals, IF your doctor charges for those. Lastly local police clearances - IF you have to pay for those in your area - some charge, some don't.

I really hope that some day I'm posting wonderful awesome news on here - I feel like the "doom and gloom" person. :-(((

Happy Halloween???

Friday, October 26, 2007

What's this pedal for?! (and other bullet-y goodness)

Since everyone seems to be jumping on the bullet bandwagon, and I'm never one to miss the 'in' thing, here's my attempt...

- Wednesday morning I got a call from my mom saying that she was in a car accident (she's fine). She was in a four car accident. The a-hole that hit her, who was driving a 2007 BMW he only had for a week, mixed up the brake and the gas and hit her three times which forced her to hit the car in front of her...and that person hit the person in front of her. There was at least $3,000 damage to her car, not to mention the damage to the other two. The a-hole's car barely had a scratch.

- At the accident scene, he gave out his business card (who does that by the way?!), so I decided to Google his ass and I found out that he's a director at a company...Director of Transportation (insert guffaws here).

- He tried to 'settle' at the scene of the accident with everyone and said he would pay for all damages. My mom turned to him and said 'I work in a law office', and he turned white. Unfortunately in Ontario we have 'no fault' insurance, so my mom can't sue...or rather, you have to be half-dead to do so. Instead his insurance will go through the roof. Maybe now he won't mix up the two pedals. ;)

- I got a call from the vet the other day and Deuce is fine. He doesn't have feline leukemia. As happy as I was to hear the good news, I wanted to strangle the doctor for making me worry for nearly a week.

- We finally got our kitchen pantry installed today. WOO! We also got our bedroom closet 'system' in as well. Now I can finally hang up my clothes, or rather, gather them all up from the other bedrooms and hang them in ONE room. You have NO idea how excited I am about that. (I know, I'm weird.)

- Tomorrow we get our other set of kitchen shutters installed. The idiots who measured (twice, no less) forgot to take the valance into account when they were originally taking measurements, so we've had to wait almost a month for this set.

- Everything seems to be coming together, finally, for the housewarming in just over two weeks. Now if I can just unpack the last 20 boxes in time...GRAH!

- Tomorrow is my friend E's (AKA Spitgirl) wedding and we hope she and A are VERY happy together! Send them your best in the comments...hopefully, when she has a chance she'll read them. ;)

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

For Doris...

Me again...

I know it sucks. It sucks BIG time.

As for all of this causing waves - it might, but as I've said before, the "waves" don't necessarily mean a thing to China. Remember they're a communist country....not a democratic one. Their country, their rules. They can tell us to piss off if they want to - we can't do a damn thing about it unfortunately.

I know that this is a CCAA policy because our Cultural Liaison person just spoke to the CCAA over the weekend. This isn't something posted on their website (that I know of anyways - maybe it will be eventually).

Re: South Africa - unfortunately the program is available only to Ontario residents right now. I don't know why. For Korea the reason is because the Korean gov't feels that a child would be exposed to the Korean culture moreso here in Ontario than in other provinces of Canada. Not sure if the same applies to SA? (we don't make all the rules as an agency - the countries set the rules). Definitely contact whomever you need to in your province, and ask if they can be licenced.

Let me know if there are any other questions. I'll do my best to answer them!

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Information Update (*updated*)

Hi all - Donna (Paonessa) here.

I thought you should all know about some new information that I just received since it was one of the topics of discussion on here a while ago. Rhonda has given me permission to post.

I know you're all down about the process right now so I certainly hate to add insult to injury, but better that you always have correct information.

Some of you have asked if you can be in process to adopt from more than one place. In the past it has been allowed (in Ontario) to adopt domestically at the same time as being in process to adopt internationally. This has now changed (insert spit balls here).

The CCAA is now saying that an adoption application has to be withdrawn if a family would like to pursue a domestic or another international adoption. I'm not sure if this goes for the United States as well (since this is a CCAA rule, I'm assuming it does, but best that you all check with your respective agencies).

The good (!!!!?????) news is that if someone gets pregnant while being in process to adopt from China, the file can stay as is, as long as the family is not close to referral. In the past a family had to withdraw from the CCAA right away. The CCAA requires that there is a 1 yr age difference between your children.

Lastly, I think someone asked me some questions about South Africa that I never did answer. If you want to post them again, go for it.

Ontario CB families - Martha is still waiting to talk to the Ministry folks about the new homestudy guidelines. They're all in meetings for the early part of this week. She has put together an email blast that Nick will send out tonight. Just to clarify, these guidelines have been implemented by the Ministry, NOT the CCAA.

**update** - Martha is still in discussion with the Ministry who apparently will be sending something further out to the AP's - the email blast will not go out until we have further info (I KNEW I shouldn't have said anything yet!! Should've stuck to my initial instincts).

I'll exit stage left now - please don't shoot the messenger! Just thought it was important info for you all to have.


Take good care of yourselves.

Friday, October 19, 2007

He has to be wrong...right?! ***UPDATE - AGAIN***

I took Deuce into the vet this morning because the rash on his chin wasn't healing properly and he was bleeding a little the other day. I figured it was better to have him checked out than to leave it like this. He wasn't in *ANY* pain from it, I could stroke his chin and he wasn't scratching at it.

This all started when we were packing up to move, he would go up to the boxes and rub his chin on them. At first I thought he was just trying to rub his scent on the boxes (as most cats do), but he persisted, and I felt it was high time to get him seen. He also needed a few shots today as well.

He was good in the car, I opened the cage door so he could poke his head out and he ended up sitting on my lap (my FIL drove us). We got to the clinic and he knew where he was, but for the first time EVER he let me put him on the scale (he's 14 pounds).

For those of you who don't know Deuce, he can be a bit pissy hissy at the vet and they usually need a few techs to hold him down.

We were finally seen by the vet and he told me that they don't do the shots for FIV (it's basically HIV for cats - yes, THAT HIV), but they would test him to make sure he didn't have that. They also don't do the vaccination for Feline Leukemia anymore, but would do a blood test for that as well.

Deuce got a bit upset on the exam table so the vet ended up taking him downstairs for his exam. He came up a few minutes later saying that Deuce has...acne. Yes, acne. Apparently he has a few in-grown hairs, so they ended up shaving his chin (poor baby) and I have to apply a warm compress to his chin a few times a day and rub a cream into it afterwards.

Anyways, while Deuce was being examined downstairs, the vet told me that cats who get this kind of thing are prone to having Feline Leukemia. Great.

I told him that we've had Deuce for nine years and that he's been healthy all along. He told me that it could be dormant and then show up all of a sudden. Long story short, they took the blood sample but I won't find out if he has that until sometime next week.

I hate weekends...

***I'll be updating the post and answer all your questions/concerns here (so the post might get REALLY long), rather than posting a comment on my own posts (if that makes sense). I don't know how many of you would bother to come back and re-read it.

M, the reason they aren't vaccinating him anymore against FeLV (Feline Leukemia) is because he's a 100% indoor cat. He's never been outside and he's never been exposed to any other cats (and those are the main ways he could become infected). I'm not really sure why he said that Deuce could have it though, but I'm still more than a bit worried (and will remain so) until the results are in.

No, Robin he doesn't have a new food bowl. I thought at first he might be allergic to the new carpeting or perhaps it's just a stress reaction from all the 'new'.

Heather, thanks for letting me know that I'm not the only freak (and I mean that in the nicest possible sense) out there with a cat that has acne. ;)***

Thursday, October 18, 2007

This, that, the other, oh, and that too...

I heard from the jeweller about the charm that I gave back to them and they're going to be replacing it in the next few days, no questions asked. Which is really good of them, considering that it most likely got scratched during the packing, moving and unpacking...

We're getting out kitchen table at some point today. I was told originally it would be between 9:00 and 5:00, but I got a call this morning saying it would be between 1:00 and 4:00. So it *SHOULD* be here any time now...

I'm not sure if I mentioned this, but when we had our shutters installed in our kitchen, neither the salesman nor the installer took the wooden valance into account, so they had to re-do the second set of shutters. I hadn't heard anything for the past week or two from Sears, so I called the salesman yesterday. He called me this morning to say that the shutter would be ready next week. WOO!

It seems that everyones in the adoption community is down lately. It seems that not many people are posting nearly as much as they used to (count me in there as well). It's pretty tough to always put on a smiley face when there's absolutely no news. There's so little news out there that our agency is starting to suggest that we read the rumour site. How sad is that?!

For quite a while now, this blog which was originally intended to be a record for our child of our adoption journey, has been more about our daily (boring) lives than anything even really resembling it's original intention.

That sucks.

The only thing that's getting me through the long wait is the incredible friendships we've made through the process.

Whenever I bring up the topic of the adoption to my family, I can't even say when we're going to get a referral, or even take a guess. All I seem to keep saying is 'at least another two years'. It seems that I've been saying 'another two years' for quite a while now, and we're only logged in a little over 13 months.

What do you all think, are we even a third of the way through the wait?! I think it would be 'easier' if I knew that definitively...but of course nobody knows the answer to that question. *sigh*

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Lucky 13?!

We started off yesterday running around like crazy, buying yet MORE furniture for the house and we finally settled on a kitchen table, and we got a SWEET deal on it. We got it from The Brick, but not the same one as Stalky McStalker worked at. They basically built the $50 delivery charge into the price of the table. Woo for us. We'll be getting the kitchen table this week. YAY!

Then we went into Sears and bought a front hall table which, while a bit pricey, is going to look SO nice in our entryway. They were having one of their scratch 'n' sniff save sales, and you could get anywhere from $20 to $100 off any item in the store. We had been in the store a few times last week to measure and examine the table before we bought it. Anyways the saleslady had us both pick a card and which ever one was a higher discount, she would give it to us (she didn't have to do that). So, I went first and I got $20 off, which doesn't really amount to much...then Josh picked and he got $100 off. WOO! On top of that, it was double points day, AND he got a $30 gift card. Niiiice. We'll be getting the table delivered on November 1st.

Also, yesterday Josh and I celebrated our 13 month LIDiversary (and our first in our house). Woo. We decided to go with a Bavarian chocolate mint ice cream cake from Baskin Robbins...*drool*

I also went out and got another charm for my bracelet. This month I got Josh's Chinese astrological symbol (a rooster <---insert obvious jokes here).

I had noticed that one of my charms had some enamel scratch off (probably due to the move...I have a bad habit and NEVER take it off). Anyways, I decided while I was at the store I may as well say something and see if they would do anything about the charm. They documented the scratch, took the charm and they'll probably give me a new one or my money back...even though it's been two months since I bought it AND I didn't have the receipt for it. Granted it was in their computer, their policy is that you have 14 days to return any item. I should have an answer from them in the next few days.

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Mexican Thanksgiving...and other 'fun' adventures

Yesterday Josh and I went over to Michelle and Mark's for Thanksgiving brunch, along with Cari and Dateboy*, and Nic and Zubin. We had a GREAT time (as always) getting together with everyone. We had super nummy fajitas and "THAT" salad which Michelle needs to give everyone the recipe for because it's really THAT good.

There was plenty of cuddle time with Zubin, who I swear keeps getting cuter and cuter.

As many of you know, we recently bought a house and we're currently buying some things for it. Long story short, we're looking for a table to go in our front hall and we've been to a number of stores looking for the right one. We decided to go into The Brick after work today.

Have you ever gotten the feeling that you were being followed while you walked through a store?

We walked into the store and a woman (obviously an employee) started walking near us...not with us, not behind us...just near us. I asked Josh if he thought she was following us, and he wasn't quite sure, but every time we turned around and looked at her, she 'pretended' to be writing something down in her notebook. I said to Josh 'let's have some fun with this...'

For shits and giggles we started walking up and down each aisle, turned around and did a 180 and giggled as she did the same thing. We literally covered every inch of the store going up and down every aisle, and in and out of every nook and cranny. By the end of it (since we ran out of space in the store), we were laughing so hard we had to run out of the store, but not before I turned to her and said 'is there any reason you were following us?!' to which she replied 'it's my job'.

She'd make a GREAT stalker...

Anyways, we went to Sears and FINALLY found the table that we want and we're going to go back on the weekend and buy it. WOO! Now we just need to find a mirror and a lamp to go on it. :P

*I'm not sure if I'm allowed to use his name yet...so Dateboy will have to do. :P

Friday, October 05, 2007

Short, sweet and to the point

Thanks i-Con for the ducky reminder!















Another month, another trip to the bank. Whee. I decided that since the dollar is above par that I'm going to take advantage of it and switch over a chunk of it to U.S. dollars for whatever year we're going to need it... ;)

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

It's better than a kick in the...teeth ***UPDATE***

...but not by much.

As a few of you know, Josh got an offer for a new job.

Rather than the required one month's notice, as stated in his employment contract, his new employer wanted him ASAP and so he offered two weeks notice. When he offered his resignation, he received congratulations from his boss and silence from two other high level directors who had been his bosses in the past. The owner of the company wished him well and thought it was a calculated risk to buy a house and try to find a new job in tandem.

With a sudden change of staff comes a transition plan, who does what when Josh is gone? Nobody volunteered to do his job as they knew how much 'fun' and challenge that the job offered.

His boss asked the other directors to hold a 'going away' party for him today, complete with cold pizza (kosher and not), birthday cake (umm, whose birthday WAS it?!), and a 'going away' present.

The going away presents, which were gift-wrapped, included one broken motherboard taken from a project completed ten years ago (he's only worked there for four), and a phony Swiss watch, purchased for $20 on the streets of Kuala Lumpur by his boss on a business trip to Malaysia. The watch crown (winder) is broken and needs to be fixed.

I don't think his boss realized the symbolism of his gifts...

Broken technology from a company that has run out of time. :P

***I forgot to add that the watch was KNOWINGLY broken at the time it was given to Josh. His boss told him the other day that he broke his 'cheap watch'...then he turned around and gave it to him. Nice, huh?

I'm still stumped as to why they would give him a chipboard from a project he was never involved with. They were probably so taken aback that he was leaving that they just threw anything at him and thought that he would appreciate it. How much thought or effort is involved in getting him a good bottle of scotch? (something he can...use) :P***

Congrats!

What wonderful news to wake up to...

I just found out that a bloggy friend of mine got her referral! Go and wish her a hearty congratulations.

Tuesday, October 02, 2007

5 days...

really, they couldn't even get into December. *sigh* Fling the streamers around and dance the freaking hokey pokey. I don't know how much more of this I can take.

The only upside is that December is SUPPOSED to be smaller than November was...so we might be finished with 2005 in December? I know, wishful thinking. At this rate 2010 is a real possibility...unless things slow down even more, and I refuse to even think about going there.

Monday, October 01, 2007

Review shmeview

While I was busy moving, I found out that we're now officially in 'review'. Woo. I think.

Yes, it's a big milestone and it's great and all, but I can't see the end of the proverbial rainbow. I know, deep down (REALLY DEEP DOWN) that our daughter is out there somewhere (though some days, like today, I doubt it's going to happen anytime soon), I just don't feel all that excited about being in review.

We don't have anything to worry about with being in review (as far as I know) so I'm not nearly as excited as I've seen others get. Now don't get me wrong, I don't mean to downplay this, it's just that I'm not all that jazzed about being in review when we still have 2? 3? (who knows how many) more years ahead of us.

I think I'd feel a bit better if we had some sort of crystal ball time line as far as WHEN.

With the 'rumour' of the next batch being 5 days, I can't get excited about that either. The only upside in that is we'll finally be out of November 2005. Perhaps we'll be out of 2005 at the end of the year...who knows. *sigh*

Who knew that trying to have a child would take this long and cause this much heartache? Is there something wrong with me that I can't feel any excitement about this?

I don't mean to sound trite, it's just the way I'm feeling tonight. I'll get out of my funk soon enough I'm sure. I think I'll go to the kitchen and pop some bubble wrap...

My bloglines exploded...

It seems that while I was busy moving my Bloglines exploded and I had 455 updates to read. Umm, no offense people, but there's no way that I'm reading that many...

If there's anything that I've missed, leave me something juicy in the comment section (it doesn't even have to be true - I just need a break from unpacking). :P