AHIOHGIOHSDIOCHIOH!!!!!

That, my friends, is the feeling in my brain and chest right now. Just a minor anxiety attack. Trying to take deep breaths, but since that's not working, I thought I'd blog about my stress.

In no particular order (because if I tried to put these in any logical order, that would stress me out more):

I NEED!!! a shower. You might think that with my current state of "fun"employment, I might be able to do laundry before it reaches crisis proportions. How does this relate to showering? Okay, here it is. We start with this weekend's Jewish holidays, meaning that from 6ish on Friday to 7ish today, no shower. Yuck. Then add in that Friday when I was getting dressed for Shabbat and the holiday, I noticed that I had only three... of a certain type of garment that one generally does not re-wear when dirty. One Friday night, one Saturday, one today, and in order to get dressed after a shower, I need clean laundry. Three more minutes in the dryer.

I interviewed for a job a few weeks ago that really excited me. I liked the people I interviewed with and left the interview wanting the job even more than before. When I checked my email about an hour ago, I discovered that the job has been re-posted. The listing says that people who applied before need to re-apply. (As opposed to listings that say something along the lines of "if you applied already, we have your application on file and don't worry about it.") So does this mean that none of the candidates (they interviewed a BUNCH) were good enough? Or that there was an HR problem and they have to start the process over again?

A friend of mine from law school got married today. I wasn't invited to the wedding which makes me a little sad, though I wouldn't have been able to go anyway and it's not like he and I have been super close since we graduated. But with Facebook, I saw that a lot of my friends were there, and they were posting fun status updates, and I missed all of them and am feeling jealous and "homesick."

In my Google reader there were 31 posts in my "foster/adoption" folder. Just from the last two days. Sorry guys, I skimmed most of them because I was too overwhelmed.

And there are another 450 posts in the rest of my folders.

I'm planning a vacation and even that is stressing me out.

And if I were in my apartment rather than the laundry room, I would be overwhelmed by the disaster area that is my apartment.

Finally, while I was napping this afternoon (after two nights of sleeping like poo) my landline telephone rang. It wasn't my mom because she is out of the country visiting my dad, so I wonder if it was the agency calling about a placement. I would say no because of the vacation, but...

Anyway, dryer is done, so it's time for a shower.

Know anything about Northern Virginia?

My friend Liz (names changed to protect the innocent!) is A-Mazing. I recently learned just how amazing. She and her younger brother are both adopted, different birth families, and while she had the benefit of a healthy time in her birth mother's womb, her brother did not. He has all sorts of mental health and developmental disability issues, compounded by a stay at one of the well-known but has-abusive-tendencies residential treatment centers.

Liz's parents aren't able to provide her brother with the support that he needs, so Liz is his primary support. She is his representative payee for his SSDI/SSI and pays out of her own pocket for him to see his current therapist.

The problem is housing. Liz's brother lives in Northern Virginia, and needs to stay there because that is where his therapist is. (Among other reasons, but this therapist has been successful at getting Bro to take his meds.) Liz found Bro a room in a house that he could afford, but it turned out that the roommates were dealing drugs, and Bro didn't want to stay there. So he moved out and is now homeless.

I want to help Liz help her brother, and am wondering what resources might be available for a mid-20s adult adopted as an infant with mental health and developmental disability diagnoses in Northern Virginia.

Thanks for any help you can give!

Shopping!

In just a few minutes I am going to dodge my neighbors who are putting up our building's sukkah (for the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, which follows shortly after Yom Kippur) so that I can GO SHOPPING! I'm off to Tar-jay for all of the bare necessities of parenting--a booster seat, a waterproof sheet, play dough... Any guesses how much I'll end up spending? Leave your guess in the comments and if I get enough responses, maybe I'll turn it into a contest. So leave your guess and what you think an appropriate prize would be for the winner.

Pigs are flying

I'm licensed! Woah! Hooray! And it only took 55 weeks.

I got the email from Licensing Worker earlier today confirming that all is well and the license (do you all have actual paper licenses? I will, and I think I'm required to hang it in my home) will be mailed in a few weeks.

Lest you think that Licensing Worker actually displayed competence, however, in sending me the email, you should know that my new Support Worker called yesterday. (Okay, confession time. I didn't realize that the Support Worker had left me a message so I didn't realize this until after I got LW's email.)

Support Worker, on the other hand, has already defied my (very low) expectations. Hopefully the trend will continue. Support Worker, who will get a name, I assume, once I know her, left a message yesterday and when I didn't call her back, called me AGAIN today. None of this "let's leave it for a week and when she doesn't call back we'll just forget about it" stuff. And not only that, but she called at 4:45. On a Friday. She wasn't checked out and ready to get started on her weekend. No. She followed up. Late on Friday afternoon. Wow.

So Support Worker is coming to my apartment on Wednesday; I don't know why or what to expect, but now I KNOW that Sunday and Tuesday are going to be spent cleaning. Things have gotten, well, a little out of hand.

P.S. If you have any idea what I should be prepared for when Support Worker comes, please let me know!

Woah.

On Friday night I enjoyed Rosh Hashanah with a family I'm friends with. Mom, Dad, 4 boys, and Grandma. I love them all (though I don't really know Grandma). Dad and I gchat during the day, he can convince me to get up to go to shul at 7:30 in the morning on the occassional Shabbat, etc.

But.

But Dad seems always to be yelling at the kids. I am sure that it is stressful raising four boys. I'm not there all the time. And I know it's not my place to comment on his parenting. But he'll yell at one or more of the boys to stop doing something, or to do something they're not doing, or to correct how they're doing something, and then not give the boys time to switch courses before he yells again.

And then I was at their home and it was all family except for me, so I don't know if the filter was off or it was just a more stressful time, but from the time I walked in the door it was awful. (For me.)

So we're enjoying dinner and at some point I excuse myself to use the bathroom (I know, TMI, but it's relevant). I'm sitting in the quiet and all of a sudden I realize why I'm so stressed--because I feel like I'm at home with my mother who didn't necessarily yell (and I don't recall doing anything wrong in my childhood anyway) but who was always negative, and my passive father who didn't do anything about it, and their friends who I now wonder if they were inwardly cringing the way I was last night. Woah. (Dad was also interacting with his mother the way my mom interacts with her mother-in-law.)

Crying in the bathroom, what a great way to start the year.

I finished reading How to Talk so Kids will Listen... this afternoon and want to slip it in their mail box anonymously. Probably not an effective plan.

While I was writing this, the boys' mom called and asked if I could pick up Boy4 from pre-school tomorrow so that she can take Grandma to the airport. So I'm excited about getting to spend a bit of quality time with him without his dad. I need to do that with each of the boys more often.

Oh, and...

Re: my last post, I am aware of the fact that I should mangle Jewish superstition and my love of all things West Wing and go outside, turn around three times, and spit.

You might be interested...

...in the email I just received from Licensing Worker's supervisor (She Deserved The Promotion Worker (SDTPW)):

Hi [Foster Ima],

I just wanted to let you know that the corrections have been made to your homestudy and and I have signed off on your file. Your file will now go to my Program Manager who will review your homestudy and sign it as well. Next, your license will be prepared and she will sign off on it, so I expect that you will be fully licensed and able to take a child by the end of the month.

You can feel free to email our placement office starting October 1st to let them know you have a vacancy in your home. The email address is [xxx].

The placement office typically works from a vacancy list; however, I am suggesting that you email because it usually takes a week or so once you are licensed to be added to the list, to be assigned a support worker and a relicensing worker.

Feel free to contact me if you have any other questions.