Fire Inspection Complete!

Bert met the Fire Marshal at McDonald's off of the highway exit, grabbed some coffee, and were on our doorstep pretty much right at 9:00 this morning. He measured the kid's bedroom window, investigated (looked at) the optional kid's bedroom window to assess it was the same as the first, tested every smoke detector, and then put lots of stuff in his laptop. The only hitch is that we apparently bought the wrong kind of fire extinguisher; we got one traditionally found in a home kitchen, and we needed the next (enormous) size up with a hose on it like you see in schools. We're going to replace this one, take a digital photo of the new one, and email it to him so that he can see that it's there and then we're good to go. Ain't technology grand? And, as seemed to happen last time, he didn't look at the things we had concerns about.

So. The next step is Bert's actual creation of the official homestudy document that we will hand 'round about. She said it will take 2-3 weeks, because she's wrapping up three of her assigned kids moving here from California this week and next. So in 3 weeks we'll be starting the search! Bert explained that we work from the internet photolistings (such as are listed in the sidebar) and word of mouth, so as soon as we're "Homestudy Ready" we'll be on a mission to get the word out about us to everyone we know. I may also either change the format of this blog, or put up another website for the sake of having a URL to hand around to friends and family.

Keep watching this space!

This morning

As anticipated, I'm much better after having had a night's sleep. Lanse was also very wonderful in letting me cry and vent, speaking some rationality into whatever brain I had left at the time, and praying with me. While we're always taking our feelings and thoughts under advisement, no changes are being made right now, which is good. And we're done with training for a small bit, which is also good... and I'm focusing on teenagers this week for school, which we're not adopting, so that's also good. I have to find a small mental vacation somehow. But overall, it's all good. For the moment.

Overwhelmed!

It's been a very hard week here at home with things unrelated to the adoption, so I'll preface this with saying that I know I'm both sleepy tired and life exhausted right now, so I may not be thinking - and am definitely not feeling - clearly.

We just finished up the last of our home study required training sessions. The last two were on Child Maltreatment and Sexual Abuse. I am so sick to my stomach, angry, and overwhelmed. I'm also in college to get my degree in Child Development, so I've spent the last four weeks studying everything that can go wrong in proper development at all ages due to stress and abuse in an unsafe home environment.

I'm trying to find the right word for my feeling... desperation, hopelessness... whiny?? I just want to be a mom! I can't be pregnant, and we feel like we are personally called to do what we can for our own folk before focusing on the rest of the world, thus older child adoption. Does that seriously mean that my children must be irreparably damaged? Does that mean that because I can't bear a child I have to mother children who had their innocence torn from them? That I'm going to be punished by fetal alcohol syndrome and oppositional defiance disorder and a child who falsely accuses my husband of things because she was molested when she was 2?

Maybe this isn't the way we're supposed to go.... but it's either adopt or don't have children, and we really can't face the latter yet...

Previous post addendum

Ok, so after looking at the fire safety brochure, that's not all they'll be checking. They also look to see that gas related whatsits (like lawn mowers and gas cans) aren't being stored in the house, make sure the fireplace has appropriate screens, the electrical panel is accessible, there's easy exits in case of fire, we have colorful fire exit floor plans posted on the wall, and they want 3' clearance around electrical utilities like the water heater. That last one's actually our biggest concern, because some previous owner built a little room around the water heater out in the garage and there is not 3' clearance all around it. But Bert looked at it and said it wasn't a problem.

If the Fire Marshal has a problem with something, it's not like we're a write-off... we have a chance to fix it and have Bert notify them when we're set. Still... we're ready to move on from this stage.
I don't want anything else we have to have cleared if we can avoid it.

Fire Inspection - Scheduled!

Thanks for your prayers; they're working! Bert got through today and scheduled us for Feb. 27th at 9:00am-ish. After that it's just her putting together the final homestudy document and we're ready to start looking. In the meantime, we have two more online classes to take (about two evenings) and we'll be ready on our end. Good times.

All he's looking for are smoke detectors, a fire extinguisher, and he's going to measure the windows to be sure a fully geared firefighter can fit through them. Sounds pretty straightforward.

Prayers are still good though. Thanks!