When Life Gives You Lemons, Make Tanqueray Martinis With Twists!

Well, talk about not being given more than you can handle. This morning I woke up and was feeling so crummy about everything- had nightmares last night, was not looking forward to a day of more endless waiting, looked at photos of the cats on Facebook and burst into tears, etc etc. I just felt like I had finally hit the wall of No More Ukraine. It felt like there was going to be no end in sight to the waiting- first for all the crap we had to do with paperwork and governmental red tape at home, the intrusion of privacy with being questioned and judged about your entire life to strangers deciding on if you are “allowed” to parent a child, then being at the mercy of strangers over here who really don’t give a damn about putting everything on hold in your life so you can dance to the beat of their own little drum like a marionette attached to an ATM machine. It was pity party, table for one, please!

Then out of the blue, a phone call from Anna, our translator saying that Xenia is at the Dept right now, and we have our 3rd appt for tomorrow! We were NOT expecting it at all- the most we were expecting was to hear sometime this week when our appt date would be for next week. We were eating lunch when I answered the phone and I nearly fell off my chair.

Instant butterflies and knots in my stomach. I could barely get my lunch down and keep it there! At this time tomorrow, we could be laying eyes for the first time on a photograph of our future daughter. This is it. And we could be meeting her for the first time on Weds or Thurs morning! Whoa.

We don’t know what time yet, Xenia is trying to get us the best time for what must be “catch up day”. We’ll be going with one other family from our agency who have been here for 6 weeks- I have no idea if they are looking for a child in the same age group or not, but it doesn’t matter. Who is meant for you is who is meant for you. It all works out as it is meant to be.

The only thing that we have left as an ace up our sleeve so to speak, is that we are allowed to call in sick one time. I don’t think this will be a factor, as this is going to be catch-up day with the most files to choose from. However if it wasn’t looking good, Xenia would be given a blow in the ear by somebody she knows in there that the files weren’t good, and then she’d tell the Dept we were feeling ill so we could not attend our appt that day. This would buy us more time until she got word of either another catch-up day, or a normal day when a particularly good file came in. In any case, I am going to pack our suitcases TONIGHT so all we have to do is zip them up and run if all goes well tomorrow. I am feeling very, very positive about tomorrow in a way I have not felt yet for our other appts. I feel like this is really it. Tomorrow is going to be the day we see Mena for the first time- via photograph. I’m getting ready to savour and remember everything about the exact moment when it happens. Finally! Finally! All this waiting, FINISHED. Now we’ll really have a little face and a voice and a real person to cuddle that we have done all of this for- everything just for her after all of this time! I don’t know how I am going to sleep a wink tonight!