One Last, Jangling, Frazzled, Raw Nerve Left

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.

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Paperwork Is Kind of Like A Game Of Ping-Pong. At Midnight. When You Have The Flu.

... Except that O would tightly say that the correct terminology is "Table Tennis".

Doesn't matter. Right now it's all the same- you think you get one thing crossed off the checklist, and just as you are exhaling with the satisfaction of being one more step ahead than you were yesterday, poof! The document disappears.

After Friday's ordeal of getting somebody to agree to have the Stupid House Letter done so I could pick it up, today I get a phone call from the borough telling me there is no way they are going to type up and sign anything, because they consider it legal quicksand. So they have a lawyer down at the main City Hall looking in to it, and will get back to me "whenever they can". In this city, that means the kid will probably be blowing out 18 candles on her birthday cake before we get any answers or help.

So I have called our adoption agency to have them contact the borough to explain the situation and to come up with a solution. O says we're certainly paying them enough money- let them figure something out. He says I'm stressed out enough trying to get all this other stuff done. Which is true. We still need duplicate copies of police and interpol background checks (again), our marriage certificates (again) and more doctor's visits with medical reports stating we are in good health for the Ukrainian government. Again. All of this stuff was submitted 6 months ago for social services, but of course since our registration date in Kiev is July 29th 2010 it makes all of the documents too old to use. They have to be issued within 6 months of your registration date. Hence the doublemint twins for everything we've already done, and the matching bill to prove it.

Murder by Papercuts

A trying day. It’s the last evening I have, being home alone with the cats before O comes back from his business conference. So naturally, the day has been spent running around tying up loose ends before the weekend begins and civil servant life in QC as we know it grinds to a stop. I was expecting this to happen at around noon, but lo and behold, our tax dollars keep the office hours going till a slave-driving 4:30pm! How do they survive? Mush, mush, row row, mais non?

This afternoon I had to trot down to the borough office to attempt to obtain a document for the Ukrainian government, after spending yesterday mostly on my hands and knees. I’d make a joke here, but it would be in poor taste and I would probably need to get another notarized paper from Social Services explaining to the provincial powers-that-be that I was only joking. Sigh. Fearing the worst, I collected up all evidence that I actually *do* own the home I spent all afternoon measuring the previous day with a tape that only went up to 16 feet at a time to calculate the "actual living space" (minus closets, entry vestibules, decks, and places where things like washers, driers and hot water tanks live) and then again to calculate everything INCLUDING outdoor walls... but minus interior ones. This is to satisfy a country where 20 children live in a one room orphanage that may or may not have running water. They need to be assured that I live in better conditions than they do, I guess.

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