I probably shouldn't even be writing on this now, because the emotions are running a little high. Did you know that this has been the year that my hair actually has begun to turn grey? I'm being totally serious about that. I haven't had any grey hairs up to now on my head, but this year I've got 2 little patches at each temple that are getting silver. Kind of where my devil horns would be if I could grow some. It's been an exhausting week for me. Each day I have been completely conscious of the fact that the days are beginning to count down now, properly, to Database Day in Kiev. It's pretty much all I can think about because it feels so surreal. Sometimes I catch myself amazed at the moment because these are really the last times it's going to be just us 2. After almost 13 years of being together alone, it's all going to change with the addition of another person to our family. It makes me excited, it makes me wistful. Sometimes if I am truly honest, it also makes me feel a little bit sad, too. Then guilty for feeling a little bit sad. Which is how I've come to be here because I feel like I've brought all this on myself.
Phone call this morning from our agency. All of our paperwork has arrived safely to the Ukrainian office and has been looked over and is being translated as we speak. Except there is a problem. And it makes me scared and also angry because I should have listened to my gut- but I didn't. On our medical certificates, there are 2 sets of dates: the first date where our doctor did half the physical exam, then another date when we went back to get the results of required blood tests and he completed the second part. I called our agency not once, but TWICE to confirm that this was OK, and wouldn't cause confusion or a problem when it came to our file being reviewed in Ukraine. I was told twice that it was no problem by our agent. So we left the doctor's office, these double dated papers in hand.
It seems the 2 sets of dates now ARE a problem. I don't know if we are being told the truth, or if they are covering their butts, but apparently their contact at the children's welfare office in Ukraine has changed, and now this new person is more fussy, so we must have only one set of dates on each medical exam. Note that our deadline for filing is in 4 business days. Well, not even, because in 4 days they enter all our information into their database IF our file is approved by this "new fussy person". Not having the right dates on this one sheet of paper means we'd be rejected, and we would have to start the process all over again next year- with an anticipated deadline of March 2011. So waiting another 7-8 months just to get another appointment date, plus all the added expense and headache of getting every single document from every single source all over again, paying the lawyers again to notarise every page here and in Ukraine, translating each page from English to Ukrainian, driving to Ottawa however many times to do the limit of 10 pages at a time, and the 3 ring circus called the Canadian Embassy, etc etc.
I lost it a bit this morning with all of this. We've come so far- 4 days away- to have something so stupid, something I felt in my GUT we should have corrected- ruin everything we put together over the last year. My nerves are shot at this point. I really don't know how much more I can take. I'm ready to give up on Ukraine. I really am. To have even the slightest hope of making the current deadline, our agent has to be in the car on the way to Ottawa tomorrow morning to file it in Canada after a lawyer notarises it there, then she has to hope to make FedEx in time to courier everything to Kiev, where it still has to be translated then notarised a second time by a Ukrainian lawyer before being presented to their Ukrainian office for filing on Thursday. I hope the lawyer includes a barf bag for free, because with all the stress I'm constantly feeling like I'm going to puke. And I kind of feel like maybe this is a bit of punishment of sorts, for having those times where I wonder what it's going to be like going from a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants couple to being parents of a toddler. Maybe this is fate's way of saying, "maybe you don't want this as much as other people do". It's awful, and it makes you see just how much of your life can be down to dumb luck.
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