I can't really say what I've been doing for the past two weeks because there has been so much that I've almost been overwhelmed. To be brief: processing an adoption, starting a new job while still working at the old one, and house projects.
The next step toward Wu has been completed. Actually, there have been two steps. We went to our local Department of Homeland Security about 10 days ago to be fingerprinted so we can be deemed acceptable to bring an orphan into the country. I may have mentioned that we filed this petition in May and have been waiting for our fingerprint appointment for several weeks. Fortunately, the waiting part was pre-Wu, so we were able to get it done first. If we were trying to file/get fingerprinted now, the process would have set us back a couple of months more. We also sent our first set of paperwork to the agency to be translated before being sent on to China. This included our Letter of Intent (LOI) as well as some other documents. When it is sent to China, our agency will Fedex it, so we can track it's arrival. At that point, we wait to hear back from them so we can move on to the next step, which is...more paperwork. Does this sound repetitive? That's what a lot of it is about, though. Hopefully, we will hear back about our LOI in less than a month.
I started orientation for my new job last week. It's been a lot of policy review and learning the computer system. If I can remember a lot of this stuff and give myself time to adjust, I think I will really like it. The only part that made me nervous was this: my orientation class was for all new healthcare staff, not just nurses. In fact, I was the only one who was an RN and going to be a school nurse. Everyone else in the class was a technician or a subsititute. I'm not knocking the work that they do. But during the class, it was repeatedly stressed to everyone that if they get into any kind of situation where they don't know what to do (angry parent, someone bleeding profusely, a drunk student, etc) they should just call the nurse. It was said, again and again, call the nurse. The nurse will know what to do. She will fix it. I finally raised my hand and pointed out that I was the nurse. What do I do? I am a little nervous about being in charge of something that I currently don't know much about. I guess I will just have to learn.
Through all of this we have also been working on home projects. It's not like we really even have time for this, but we do it anyway because we are crazy. A couple of weekends ago, we decided to paint the exterior of our house. A very good idea, since it has been a dull brown for two years (and most likely, much longer than that). And, last weekend, we helped my in-laws move into their lovely new home. It was quite a job.
There were many knicknacks involved. Oh, and did I mention they like lawn ornaments?
In all, we got through it and we got some beer and pizza out of the deal. Isn't that what families are for? We were still happy and tired at the end of the day.
