· Stay up until ridiculous hours of the early morning night obsessively reading adoption blogs. May I recommend http://my--fascinating--life.blogspot.com/ and http://anymommyoutthere.com/adoption and http://www.welcometomybrain.net/ ? And will someone please teach me how to embed links that look like words instead the actual website address? And how to write like these amazing women?
· Obsess about fundraising. Brainstorm ideas for raising money. Set up a website for donations. Rapidly get on a first name basis with the website's help desk person. Ask a dozen people for feedback. Hyperventilate about getting our first donations. Decide we need to design cheap but lovely cards to send to people who donate. Obsess about said card’s design. Find myself about to announce, “I need a giant piece of paper, so I can write all the fundraising ideas down in different parts of the paper and see how they overlap and figure out a workable schedule. Do we have a giant piece of paper? Can I use the back of one of your posters?” Decide to hold off on this request. Email to friends to ask for letters of reference for grant applications. Decide one friend is taking too long (four hours) to respond, and email another friend. Realize I sent the first request to the work email of another teacher on vacation.
· Test out lullabies. “You Are My Sunshine.” The other night, as I lay sleeping. I dreamt I held you in my arms. When I awoke dear, I was mistaken, so I hung my head and cried. Hell no. “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” When you’re down and out, when you need a friend… I thought I had a winner, then I tried singing it, and discovered I don’t quite have Paul Simon’s vocal range. “Make You Feel My Love.” There’s nothing that I wouldn’t do to make you feel my love. Nice! Or how about “Three Little Birds?” Don’t worry ‘bout a thing, ‘cause every little thing is gonna be alright. Now we’re talking. And of course, the classic “For Baby (For Bobbie)” What? You’re not familiar with John Denver’s entire oeuvre? I’ll be there when you’re feeling down to kiss away the tears that you cry. I’ll give to you the happiness I’ve found: a reflection of the love in your eyes. Then it occurred to me that I’m adopting children who a) don’t speak English and b) weren’t alive in the 1970s.
· Nervously scan sections of seven different adoption books. Decide that I can handle anything except peeing everywhere. Or putting knives under our pillows. Or sexually molesting each other. Come to think of it, peeing everywhere is probably something I could cope with.
· Fill out paperwork. Realize the I-800 form is not savable after filling out. Drive to the library and fill it out again so I can print it. Print out the I-684 so I can fill it out at home, in pen. Worry that it will look shabby and they won’t be able to read my printing. Start filling it out at home, and realize that actually I need the I-864W. Go back to the library and print that out. Realize that I forgot to print out the supplemental page I had to add to the I-800, because they give you four whole spots to enter your adoption expenses to date, and even just focusing on agency and legal fees, I needed many more than that. Go back to the library. Get home and get an email that I have 15 overdue books and 2 overdue videos. Go back to the library to return the books, and to print papers for the adoption grant applications, feeling like a criminal because I owe them so much money, yet here I sit, using their computers. Get another overdue notice. Call the library and point out that I turned that stuff in YESTERDAY, geez, and get them to knock $4.30 off the fines.
· Read a parenting magazine. In the doctor’s office. Like I’m a parent or something. Take pictures with my phone of two different great ideas. Like I’m a lunatic or something.
I'm so not ready to go back to work on Monday. Not only do I have this vague feeling that people will expect me to have a lesson plan and pay attention to what my students are doing, but there is SO MUCH MORE TO DO to get ready for our family.
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