No news...

Is not always good news. We have our first homestudy meeting next week, and I have been going back and forth between excited and stressed.

I'm stressed because:

• We're nowhere near done writing our autobiographies (about 50 pp each); mostly because the H's stupid job has been keeping him crazy hours this week.
• A million little what-ifs keep popping up in my head; this prospective adoptive parent support group I've joined is kind of a mixed blessing in this regard. This is going to be a long, hard, expensive process, with a lot of opportunity for the random fallible human being somewhere along the line to keep us from adopting based on their personal values rather than objective facts.
• I do not want to get into it here, but my medical evaluation was a less than positive experience. Not only did I get the impression that the doc was actively looking for a reason to fail me (seriously, who makes someone repeat bloodwork THREE times?! It came back all good the first two, WTF do you think subsequent tries are going to turn up?), but the doc made so many negative comments about international adoption and wives/moms working outside the home (daycare is NOT the same as an orphanage. I understand the beans will have separation anxiety till they understand we're coming back after work to get them, but come on) that I'm petrified to have the homestudy social worker speak to him. I need a new doc, and fast, as well as a good story as to why I changed at this juncture.
• Cost. OMG. Ethiopia is a very reasonably priced country, but this is all relative when adoption comes into play. We have to lay out about 7K over the next two months, which is a challenge when our home is underwater and nobody's giving loans. It's extra annoying, since AFTER the adoption is finalized, our employers will reimburse us pretty much everything. We just need to come up with the cash, now; had the credit market not collapsed this would not be an issue. I have some fundraising ideas, but especially in this economy, I am not sure how well they'll do, not to mention I feel badly hitting up friends/family/loved ones. Need to make a decision about Stella & Dot today if I want to get the cheap sign up special.
• Our beans being unhappy when they come home - missing their caretakers at the orphanage, hating our cold winters, facing racism here in the US, feeling like it's their fault that they were placed in the orphanage, etc... I could go on and on.
• The SW not liking us, and denying our homestudy.
• Who we're going to ask to be our references. I don't know how much work it is to be a reference, not to mention most of our "friends" that have kids are actually relatives who can't serve as references anyway.

I'm excited because:

• If the HS goes well... we will become parents!