My husband leaves tomorrow morning for his first round of training. He will be gone the better part of the month. I have a stack of paperwork that is ready to be notarized, but will not be until later this month.
It's frustrating because I had painstakingly planned the final few weeks of his being home and the adoption tasks that coincided with the time, but I did not account for unexpected distractions--like the rotavirus that invaded my husband's usually ironclad immune system. It put him down for the count on the very days I had planned to revisit our friend who notarizes our documents.
I have a big stack of stuff that I want to put in our dossier file that will have to wait until his two day break at the end of March. I will need to spend the next few weeks becoming super organized because I know he will not want to spend his precious at home time watching me furtively shuffle papers.
The only thing keeping me from becoming despondent over this chain of events is that my goal of finishing our portion of the dossier paperwork by the end of March has not yet been completely thwarted. It's still possible. We are very close now. It's just a matter of a few appointments, a couple requests, and very little else.
Another sticky point that I'm holding my breath on is our inevitable fingerprint appointment with USCIS. We have filed our application form and they are waiting on our homestudy to complete our application file. Eventually, they will contact us regarding a fingerprint appointment. I e-mailed the adoption coordinator late this past week to ask what options are available to us given two things: 1) my husband's time is no longer his own and 2) our field office is only now dealing with applications from September of 2008. Kind of makes the timeline a wee bit wack-a-doo. Pray that they will allow him to go to the field office or another acceptable location to give his fingerprints when he is actually in the zipcode. I worry that time will pass and he will be headed south and then overseas and this issue will persist.
I have to just trust that things are happening according to a timeframe that is the right one, even if it isn't our personal idea of what is right or good or even timely. I have to remind myself we just started all this a few weeks ago and that we have already come so far. That reminder rings hollow, though, when I think about M3, who knows about us now, wondering when we are coming for her.
Patience is a virtue, that is very true. It just isn't one I've quite perfected yet!
Melinda...
I want to let you know that I'm also a notary and would be willing to come to your house to get something notarized for you (or your significant other)...anytime! Just let me know enough in advance so I bring my stamp home with me as I normally leave it at work.
Charlotte
Posted by: Charlotte Chumack | March 09, 2009 at 11:16 AM